Then, on page four, Betsy saw it. She drew in a sharp breath and suddenly understood why Gavin had urged Betsy to take a well-earned mental health day.
SERIAL KILLER CONVICTED OF MURDERING FIVE IN FLORIDA IS EXECUTED
Her eyes darted across the first paragraph.
GAINESVILLE, Fla., Oct. 25—The man convicted of murdering five college students here in 1990 was executed on Wednesday by lethal injection. Scott Charles McRae, 42, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison. Witnesses said he stared toward them and began to sing just before the drugs were administered . . .
Betsy stopped reading. She suppressed the urge to vomit. Everything inside of her churned like a fire. And there was his picture, gazing out past her shoulder. His forehead was furrowed and his right hand covered his open mouth. From his still-warm grave, traveling across state lines and decades, she got one last, long look. Betsy could feel her throat tighten. Her heart flipped suddenly and softly in her chest like a hooked fish. She jerked when the phone in her bag vibrated.
“I’m in a cab, sorry, I got a little sidetracked,” said Gavin. Betsy couldn’t speak. She breathed heavily into the phone, wincing with the tightening cramp that was now radiating down her left side.
“Bets—are you there? Everything OK?”
“I found the paper.” She could barely force the words.
“Christ. Shit. Where are you?”
“At Dr. Kerr’s.”
“Elizabeth Davis?” A young nurse in purple scrubs with a long dark ponytail stuck her head out from behind the office door, holding Betsy’s chart in her hand. Betsy felt the baby kick and a tight pull in her left side.
“I’m so sorry, Betsy, I was going to show you at lunch. I just wanted you to get through this appointment first.”
“I can’t fucking breathe, Gavin. Gavin, please, I can’t breathe . . .”
The nanny glared at her, pulling the boy tight to her chest.
“Ms. Davis? Everything alright?” The nurse was standing in front of her now. “Ms. Davis, just try to breathe.”
“I’m on my way, Bets,” said Gavin. “Just hold on.”
CHAPTER 21
OUT OF THE GAME
September 9, 2010
Each morning in the Davis household played out in roughly the same way: awake by 6:45, stirred by the soft pounding of Remi’s feet on the hardwood floor, followed by a couple of perfect minutes in bed. It wasn’t the way it used to be, the blank staring at the ceiling and gradual reentry into the land of the living. Now Betsy relished that handful of blissed-out, uncomplicated minutes under the covers with a tiny four-year-old body pressed against her chest. It was taking Betsy an unusually long time to get used to the idea that her daughter was growing, not just growing up, but growing longer and leaner, with expanding hands that were strong and callused from the monkey bars at the park and cheekbones emerging from a once-round face. She’d sprung up like a sunflower that summer, bright, happy, and sturdy in the wind. Betsy could hardly believe that the girl who was sprinting down the beach, the one with the squealing laugh that carried in the breeze for what seemed like miles, belonged to her.
In the beginning, in those first few hours of her daughter’s life, Betsy wasn’t even sure the baby would live to see her first birthday. When the doctor first held up their tiny daughter, in the briefest minute before she was whisked away to the NICU, Betsy was in such shock that she’d had a baby at all, and so much sooner than she’d expected, that all she could do was marvel at her tiny fingernails and perfect, miniature lips in the way that people admire a scale model of a tall ship.
“How did we make you so small?” Betsy whispered, not understanding enough about what lay before her to cry just yet. The scale read four pounds, three ounces.
“She’s going to make it,” said Dr. Kerr, or Sara, as Betsy had come to know her obstetrician during the intense hours she spent in the hospital fighting to keep her daughter safe inside her womb a little longer. Sara was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, where Betsy was propped up, glassy-eyed, trying to grasp what her doctor was saying through the Dilaudid. “But you’ve got a rough patch ahead. Rest if you can. Remi is in good hands now. She’s going to need you to be strong.”
Sara had explained that what had happened was called placental abruption.