Chương 1
""The first thing I noticed when I opened the front door was that I could hear the refrigerator running from the other side of the house.
I stood with my hand still wrapped around the key, listening for Sophie.
At three months old, my daughter had never been silent for long.
Even asleep, she snorted, sighed, squeaked, kicked the side of her bassinet, or made the tiny impatient noises that Ryan called her complaints to management.
That afternoon there was nothing.
“Linda?”
My voice carried through the living room and came back unanswered.
I dropped my purse beside the entry table and nearly stepped on the plastic ring from Sophie’s play mat.
Her diaper bag was where I had left it that morning.
One bottle sat upside down on the drying rack.
The clock over the stove said 4:47.
I had left work twelve minutes early because my supervisor had caught me staring at the same spreadsheet without changing a cell and told me to go home before I started billing customers in hieroglyphics.
I had laughed.
I had actually laughed.
Now the memory of it made something tighten beneath my ribs.
“Linda?”
A cabinet closed in the kitchen.
My mother-in-law appeared carrying a mug.
She had changed out of the blouse she had been wearing when I left and into one of Ryan’s old college sweatshirts, though the house was warm.
Her gray-blond hair was flattened on one side.
“You’re early,” she said.
“Where’s Sophie?”
“Asleep.”
The answer should have relieved me.
Instead I looked at the mug.
Linda hated coffee after noon because she said it ruined her sleep.
“What room?”
Her face changed slightly.
It was not fear exactly.
It was irritation at being questioned.
“She finally settled down.”
I walked toward the hallway.
Linda moved into my path.
“Claire.”
I stopped.
“She had a difficult day,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“You know how she gets.”
No, I did not know how Sophie got.
Sophie was three months old.
She cried when she was hungry, wet, tired, startled, lonely, overheated, cold, or apparently offended by ceiling fans.
There was no mysterious personality disorder hiding inside those facts.
“What happened?”
Linda pressed her lips together.
“She would not stay still.”
My skin prickled.
“She’s a baby.”
“I know what she is.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
Linda set her mug down on the hallway console with enough force to splash coffee over the rim.
“I’m talking about kicking and waving her arms for hours while I’m trying to get things done.”
I looked past her.
The door to our bedroom was open.
Sophie’s bassinet stood beside our bed.
Empty.
“Where is she?”
“I handled it.”
Those three words frightened me more than if Linda had shouted.
I pushed past her.
“Claire, don’t start.”
I opened the nursery door first.
Empty crib.
Empty changing table.
The little yellow blanket Ryan’s sister had knitted was folded over the rocking chair.
Behind me Linda said, “I told you she’s sleeping.”
“Where?”
“In the guest room.”
I ran.
The guest-room door was almost closed.
I hit it with my shoulder hard enough to send it into the wall.
For a second I could not understand what I was seeing.
Sophie lay in the middle of the queen-size bed beneath the slow rotation of the ceiling fan.
She was on her back, her head turned toward the wall.
A wide floral scarf crossed her chest.
Another length of cloth ran over her hips.
Both disappeared beneath the mattress.
Her right wrist had been wrapped in something white.
I knew the floral scarf.
Linda wore it to church.
“Sophie?”
Nothing moved.
I crossed the room so quickly that my knee struck the bed frame.
Pain shot up my leg.
I barely felt it.
“Sophie.”
Her face looked pale.
Not sleeping pale.
Wrong pale.
I touched her cheek.
Cool.
My hand flew to her chest, but the scarf was pulled so tightly across her sleeper that I could not tell whether she was breathing.
“What did you do?”
Linda remained in the doorway.
“She kept rolling around.”
“She can’t roll around.”
“Well, she was trying.”
I pulled at the scarf.
The knot was beneath the mattress.
I shoved my fingers between the mattress and box spring, scraping my knuckles against the metal frame.
“What did you do to her?”
“I fixed the problem.”
I stopped for perhaps half a second.
Linda looked annoyed.
Not confused.
Not horrified.
Annoyed.
“I fixed her because she moves,” she said.
Something primitive rose through me so fast that I nearly turned on her.
Then Sophie’s arm slipped sideways when I freed it.
It fell against the mattress without resistance.
Everything else disappeared.
I dragged the scarf loose, lifted Sophie onto the floor, and reached for my phone.
My fingers would not work.
I entered the wrong passcode twice before remembering my phone unlocked with my face.
The emergency operator answered while I was checking Sophie’s mouth.
“My baby isn’t breathing.”
The words sounded as though another woman had spoken them.
The operator asked for my address.
I gave it.
She asked Sophie’s age.
“Three months.”
She asked whether I knew CPR.
“I took the class.”
“Okay, I’m going to stay with you.”
I put the phone on speaker.
Linda came farther into the room.
“Don’t tell them I hurt her.”
I looked up.
She had gone pale now.
“Get away from me.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“Get away.”
“Claire, listen to me.”
The operator told me where to place my fingers.
I obeyed.
The world narrowed to counting.
One, two, three, four.
Linda kept talking.
She said Sophie had screamed all morning.
She said she had changed her twice.
She said the bottle warmer was confusing.
She said babies used to sleep on their stomachs and nobody made a federal case out of everything.
I counted.
She said I had left no written schedule.
I counted.
May you like
She said she had raised Ryan perfectly well.
I counted.
