When We Were Friends (9 page)

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That night, in an attempt to help Star—and myself—feel safe, I helped her push a large trunk in front of the door and hang the bells we used as Christmas ornaments over the openings of the ground floor windows, to serve as a warning in case anybody tried to enter. Star set up pillows by the front door to sleep on, and I slept next to Molly in Star’s double bed.

Molly woke me early the next morning, whimpering, and I gazed at her through blurred eyes, disoriented, thinking
hunh?
Until she hit me with one of her flailing arms and I remembered. I took her hand in mine and kissed it. “We survived the night,” I said.

My day was spent listening feverishly to local radio news reports while trying to stop Star from freaking out, and keeping Molly as quiet as possible for fear she’d be heard by our neighbors through the regrettably thin walls of our duplex. I tried to distract them both by playing with the toys I’d bought for Molly, and soon Star was on the floor with us, helping Molly drag pull toys and slot neon plastic shapes into neon plastic holes, with running commentary about how smart she was. At first Star froze whenever she heard an unexpected sound, the house settling or the rush of water through our neighbor’s pipes, but soon she lost herself in the joy of Molly’s reaction to the games we played.

And I did too, to be honest, almost forgetting how much danger we were in as I marveled at the subtleties of Molly’s expressions, all the degrees of surprise, amusement and frustration, the way she beamed up at us periodically like she was saying,
isn’t this COOL?
I absorbed it, so I could replay it after she was gone.

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, Sydney called. “There’s a problem.” Her voice dropped to a panicked whisper. “You left the house with her, didn’t you.”

I paced to the kitchen, out of earshot of Star. “I had to get diapers and baby food. You left me with four diapers!”

“Well somebody saw you, or at least I think they did. A blond woman with a redheaded baby, they said. Called the tip line and the police brought them in to do a composite sketch.”

My skin suddenly felt too tight. I strode to the sink, hunched over
it, briefly wondering if I was going to be sick. Was it the woman I’d talked to at Babies “R” Us? One of the cashiers? How could I have been so stupid! “Does the composite look like me?”

“I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. But I’m sure they’ll show it to me in the next couple days to ask if I know you.”

“What’re you going to tell them?”

“Well of course I’ll say I have no idea who you are. But dammit, Lainey, what if they start splashing the sketch on the news? There’s a few other tips now, fake tips, people who’re either delusional or outright lying. So maybe they won’t make anything of it, but who knows?”

“So what am I supposed to do!”

Sydney hesitated, then said, “I’m coming there now. I’m at a pay phone in Hampton, I didn’t think it was safe to use my home phone or cell, so I should be there in maybe a half hour unless …”

“Unless?”

“I’m scared, Lainey.” Her voice hitched. “I think David suspects something, he’s acting twitchy when he talks to me, the way he gets when he’s about to explode.”

I thought of the bruises on Sydney’s face, my throat tightening. “You think he might hurt you?”

“No, that’s not it. I mean he might, that’s true, but what I meant was I have to be careful where I go and what I do, in case he’s watching. Like when I was first threatening to leave him, he started basically stalking me; I’d be at the grocery store or the salon and I’d walk out and see his car hiding in the shadows. He’s capable of anything.”

“So I’m supposed to just keep Jacqueline here and wait for him to show up at our door?”

“Lainey … Look, if I can’t come in person I promise I’ll call and we’ll figure out how I can take her from you and disappear. Just give me a half hour and I’ll get back to you one way or another. And—” She sucked in a quick breath, then said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry but I have to ask you the biggest favor in the world. Because the thing is, no matter how scared I am of David now, I’m less terrified than I used to be because I know Jacqueline’s safer with you. So what I have to ask
is, if anything … really bad happens to me, would you maybe consider taking care of her? I mean you can say no if it’s too much, just tell me now either way, but I’d feel so much more at ease if I knew you were watching out for her.”

She was near tears, I could tell, and I suddenly felt my eyes filling too, from a mix of emotions I couldn’t even begin to untangle but that—disgustingly, I know—included an underlying trill of excitement. I squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s okay,” I said. “I promise, whatever happens I’ll take care of her.”

After hanging up I ran my hands under cold water and then pressed them against my eyes and cheeks. How were we possibly going to get away with this, especially if David was starting to suspect Sydney? And the composite, if it was shown on the news, how long would it be before someone I knew came forward to identify me? And when Sydney took the baby and disappeared, which would make it obvious her story was a lie, how long before the police—and David—found me?

“I heard your conversation.”

I spun around to find Star in the doorway holding Molly, her face flat with fear. We watched each other, unblinking, and then I said, “Sit down. I don’t want you dropping the baby.”

She sat at the table facing me, Molly watching me drowsily with her head resting against Star’s chest. “Somebody saw you yesterday.” Her voice trailed to a whisper. “And recognized Molly.”

Hearing this I felt myself splitting away from myself, something I’d been doing for years, a false calm that floated somewhere above my real mind, which I could sit inside when dealing with my mother. “It’s okay, Ma. Sydney’s going to be here in a half hour, and we’ll all figure out what to do. But until then why don’t you take a nap, okay?” I lifted Molly, and she gave a little grunt of protest. “I’ll take the baby and you go upstairs, and by the time you wake up Sydney’ll be here and we’ll probably already know exactly how to make things right.”

Star gazed at me, then stood. “I have to do a reading.”

“No way, you’re just going to freak yourself out.”

“I have to do a reading! We can’t fix things until we know how broken they are, so just stay there and keep the baby quiet.”

I briefly considered slapping Star again—which I guess proves I wasn’t truly in that calm place after all. And it was only the insight that this wouldn’t be altogether productive that stopped me. Instead I followed her from the kitchen, watched her climb the stairs, then brought Molly to the living room and sat with her on the couch, letting her lean against the crook of my arm. I tried to focus all my attention on her to keep myself from thinking, as she drifted between sleep and awake, periodically sucking furiously on her pacifier as if to rouse herself. Her hair was mussed, floating in staticky drifts about her head like molting feathers, and I licked my fingers and used them to flatten it back down, studying her face, her dimpled hands and knees, absorbing every inch of her while she was still mine. And I waited.

And waited.

At five, Molly woke and started to fuss again, and I carried her to the kitchen and fixed a bottle. I heard our neighbor’s front door thunk shut and the sound of Mr. Hauser greeting his wife and son, becoming aware once again of how very thin our walls were, how completely exposed we were to the outside world.

When Molly was done feeding, I brought her to the living room and played with her distractedly, checking the clock every five minutes. Six-thirty passed, then seven. Hampton was only a half hour away, even factoring in the possibility of traffic and a stop off for a snack and/or gas tank filling. It had been three hours since Sydney had called, so where the hell was she? And as the question battered inside me, I became all at once certain that I’d never see her again, that she was in fact lying in some alleyway, bruised and beaten. Or dead.

It was seven-thirty, after I’d turned on the TV, switching from channel to channel searching for coverage of the disappearance or the discovery of Sydney’s broken body, when the phone rang. I jumped up and ran to the kitchen.

“Lainey, I can’t …” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I’m in trouble, I can’t talk, I can’t come get Jacqueline.”

“What?”

“I can’t talk!
Ohno-ohno
, I have to go!” She hung up.

“Sydney? What? Wait, come back!” No answer. I jiggled the phone cradle, then hit the receiver against the wall. “Dammit!”

In the living room Molly gave a plaintive shriek, so I ran to her and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Okay, okay, we’re fine,” I said, hurrying to the upstairs hallway, as far as possible from the Hausers’ kitchen and living room.

Star was on the bed, frantically slapping her cards in various formations on the mattress. I stood outside the bedroom to catch my breath and tried to force myself back into that false, floating calm.
You’re the mom!
I wanted to say to her.
Tell me what to do!
I closed my eyes and pressed my face against Molly’s butterfly hair, then squared my shoulders and entered the room to set a hand on Star’s shoulder. “You okay?”

She glanced at me blankly. “She’s not coming. Something’s gone wrong.”

“Ma, stop.” I felt my nails involuntarily digging into her shoulder, so I pulled my hand away. “Everything’s fine, okay? Sydney’s fine. With all she’s got now to worry about, she just couldn’t find a way to escape.”

“She’s not fine, don’t you see?” She gestured widely at the cards spread on the bed. “All these major arcana! I’m getting them again and again, and what’re the chances!”

It was true, most of the cards she’d laid out were the major arcana: the hanged man, the Empress, the Hierophant, the most powerful symbols of the deck. In spite of myself I felt a shiver, which I punched back down. “It’s because you’re not shuffling enough.” I set Molly on the floor by our feet and quickly gathered the cards, folding them into their velvet square. “You have to stop it with the readings. It’s just getting you upset, and it won’t tell us anything we need to know.”

“I realize there’s things you can figure out without cards, but this?
We’re risking death by a homicidal child abuser and I’m telling you, Sydney’s not coming back!”

I looked out the window, scanning desperately for cars, then clenched my hands and spun back to face Star. “So what’re the cards going to say, hunh? Turn her in? Give Molly back to the man who stuck a burning cigarette on her skin?”

She looked into my eyes a moment, then said, “Who was that on the phone?”

“Nobody, a telemarketer.” I turned away, focusing on Molly who was now shaking the tassels on one of Star’s floor pillows like a pompom girl. Then realizing how obvious my evasion must seem, I looked back at Star to add, “Selling reduced mortgage rates.”

“It was Sydney.” She hugged her chest. “I was right, something happened to her.”

“Ma, calm down.”

“I’m calm!” She jumped to her feet, then slowly sank back down. “I’m calm. But I have to tell you something, Lainey.”

“We’ll just have to wait till she calls again, okay? We’re safe here, she would’ve told me to leave if we weren’t safe.”

“You need to know the universe is talking to you, Lainey, and it wants you to listen. It never gets this loud unless it’s trying to make a change in your life.”

“Are you kidding me?” I threw back my head. “Screw you very much, universe!”

“Just listen to me! I want to tell you what’s in the cards, because when I saw them it all became so clear. I get why this all’s happening because the cards, the universe, they want your soul to grow, and they knew the only way to force you out of this inertia was to take these extreme steps. To force you to leave.”

“What do you mean
leave
?”

“I mean the things growing out of tree branches. What the hell do you think I mean?” Her voice was shaking. I reached my hand toward her, and after a minute she took it.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not leaving you, Ma.”

“It’s not safe here and you know it.” She turned toward the
wall, but not before I saw the tears flushing her face. “Even if David McGrath doesn’t find out you were involved, and that’s a
big
if, a little white baby disappears, especially a little rich white baby, and you don’t think everybody in the state’s going to start looking for her? I’m telling you, you don’t leave now and something worse is going to happen to make sure you don’t have a choice.” She lifted Molly and sat with her on her lap. “Tell me what Sydney said on the phone.”

“She didn’t say anything, Ma.”

Star watched me expressionlessly. Swallowed. Then said, “So it was so bad you can’t tell me.”

“She didn’t say anything! Just that she couldn’t come get the baby and she couldn’t talk.” I remembered the franticness of Sydney’s voice, and what did it mean? Had David been there with her? Seen her call me? Was David even now figuring out how to find us?

“Why don’t you get this? This is bigger than Sydney and bigger than the baby. You need to get away from me, and maybe this is the universe’s way of making it happen.”

“Lovely. The universe is brilliant. It made a man hurt his daughter and his wife, then got me involved in a kidnapping just so I’d get away from you. God’s pretty twisted, hunh? You’d think He would’ve just smote you down and I’d be free of you forever without all the smoke and mirrors. It’d be much more straightforward, but I guess He likes the creative approach.”

She ignored this. “I know what it’s done to you, having me as a mother. You pretended to Sydney you were married?”

My face flushed and she reached for my hand. “I understand it because you
should
be married. You’re meant to be married with kids by now, two children, it’s written on your palms.”

“Oh
please.
”

“I keep thinking of you when you were little, this bright, funny, sparkly nymph of a girl. You had all this enthusiasm for the world, but I’ve pulled you down with me, kept you from everything. You could really
be
somebody; I realize that even if you don’t, and how do
you think that makes me feel? If you don’t start living your own life now, soon it’s going to be too late.”