He hadn’t looked back at me. And I was glad, because the air felt thin as I wrapped my arms around myself. A baby? A dead baby? I was afraid I might be sick, right there on the chief of police’s tall rubber boots.
I thought about Ella. How hot and alive she’d been, wriggling against me when they’d laid her on my chest that first time. How surprised I’d been that my body had actually worked, that she’d made it out in one pink wailing piece. I thought, too, of the next time, when my body hadn’t worked the way it was supposed to. When I’d gone to the doctor for my routine thirty-six-week checkup and she couldn’t find a heartbeat. And the trauma of the agonizing labor and delivery that had followed, for a baby everyone already knew was dead. Everyone, that is, except me. I alone held out hope that my second daughter would gasp and cough her way to life once she was free of me.
She did not. There had been only that awful clinical silence afterward, metal against metal, rubber gloves snatched off. And how she’d felt in my arms. Like she’d been emptied out and restuffed with wet tissue and sand.
No. I should not be letting myself do this—think of it, of her. I would not. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I was not in that delivery room. That was almost two years ago. Right now I was there on the side of that creek with a job to do. And I needed to do it. As if my life depended on it.
“It’s a baby,” I managed. It was a statement, not a question.
Steve was staring in silence down the hill, his face an unreadable mask. “Listen, I understand,” he said with genuine, unexpected kindness. When he turned to look at me, his face was so sincere that I thought I might burst into tears and throw myself against his huge chest. “You’re just trying to do your job.”
“I am doing my job,” I said, trying to remind myself. “That’s exactly right.”
But all I wanted to do was go back to my car and pretend this whole thing had never happened. That Erik had never called me, that I’d never taken the job at the Ridgedale Reader. That we’d never moved to town. I wanted to return home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers up over my head. I might have, too, if I hadn’t known that this time there was no way I’d ever climb back out.
“I’ve got a deal for you,” Steve said. “You run some kind of basic alert right now online—body found, details pending. Hell, I don’t even care if you say it was on university property.”
“Hey, I don’t think that’s a good—” Deckler fell silent when Steve shot him a look.
“You’re here as a courtesy, remember?” Steve said.
Deckler pressed his lips together like a huge toddler trying not to scream. I was surprised he didn’t stomp one big black-sneakered foot.
Steve went on, “You’ll still have a big jump on the story. But I’ve got to ask that you keep that last detail confidential.” As though the victim being an infant were a “detail” at all, like eye color or hair length. “It could compromise the investigation if you make it public now. And I’d like a chance to get our sea legs here before the word gets out. Not long, just a few hours. You do that, and I’ll give you an exclusive interview.”
“Okay,” I heard myself say.
Steve checked his watch. “How about you meet me back at the station at ten a.m.?”
I wanted to say “No, thanks” or “Never mind.” But that baby out there wasn’t my baby. My baby was safe and sound at school. And she needed me to keep it the hell together. She needed me to keep on moving on. Something about turning away from this story—of all stories—felt perilous. As if, unbeknownst to me, I’d be letting go of the one thing holding my head above water.
“Sure,” I somehow managed. “Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”
But already I regretted every word.
Sandy
Sandy wasn’t asleep. But she wished she was, lying there on the stumpy living room love seat, eyes closed, especially when there was a knock on the front door. It wasn’t a regular “hey, anybody there” knock, either. It was one seriously pissed-off bang, bang, bang.
Sandy had learned to tell the difference without asking who was doing the knocking. Motherfuckers looking for money would never leave once they knew you were home. Instead, they’d sit on your place all day and night, making a shitload of noise. That was their whole job: to make your neighbors hate you. Like that could make someone without money suddenly come up with some.
“Open the door, Jenna!” came a man’s voice outside.
Sandy rolled over to face the front door. But she didn’t get up. She wasn’t scared he would kick it in or anything. They never went that far. He could have, though, no problem. Their front door was basically bullshit cardboard. Ridgedale Commons was the cheapest, shittiest place in all of Ridgedale, tucked way the hell in a corner of town, in the only two blocks of nasty for miles around. When they’d moved in eight months earlier, the apartment hadn’t looked half bad, especially compared to some of the places they’d lived. But as it turned out, the okay part of Ridgedale Commons was paper-ass thin. The place fell to shit overnight.
“Come on, Jenna!” came the voice again, closer this time, sounding like his sweaty face—their faces were always sweaty—was pressed against the door. “I know you’re in there.”