Part 6
“Set her down.”
“I picked her back up.”
“You did not.”
“I did. At first. Then Claire said you needed to see what your precious family had turned into.”
Margaret stared at him. He was crying now, quietly, without dignity. She had seen him cry at his father’s funeral, at Anna’s memorial, at the first lost pregnancy when Claire would not let anyone come over but Drew called anyway from the garage and sobbed into a paint rag. She had never doubted his tears before. She doubted them now and hated that too.
“Why lock the door?”
His face folded. “Claire panicked when you started yelling. She said you’d call the police. She said we’d lose everything.”
“You should lose things for that.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You’re saying it because there are uniforms nearby.”
A flash of anger crossed his face, quick and childish. “You think I wanted this?”
“I think what you wanted has been your excuse for thirty-eight years.”
He stepped back as if she had slapped him.
Margaret had not meant to say it. Or she had. Both things could be true.
Before he could answer, Claire appeared at the end of the hallway with Denise beside her. Claire’s face was wet. Her mouth trembled. She looked past Drew at Margaret.
“She’s not mine,” Claire said.
Denise touched her elbow lightly. “Claire.”
“No, she wants to know. Everybody wants to know. She’s not mine.” Claire’s laugh broke in the middle. “There. Happy?”
Margaret did not understand. Then she did, and the understanding was worse for arriving slowly.
Drew turned toward his wife. “Claire, stop.”
“No. You stop. You stopped months ago.”
The hallway seemed to lean in around them, though nobody openly stared except the soccer boy, who had finished vomiting and was now interested in other people’s disasters.
Margaret stood carefully. “Where did Ava come from?”
Claire’s face twisted at the name. “Ask him.”
Drew said nothing.
Margaret’s heart began to knock, heavy and slow. “Drew.”
“She’s Anna’s,” he said.
For a second the hospital lost sound.
Not the baby. Not Claire. Not some affair from last spring. Anna.
Margaret’s daughter had been dead eleven years.
Claire made a bitter sound. “Not your Anna. His Anna.”
Drew closed his eyes again. Margaret wished he would stop doing that, as if darkness were a room he could step into alone.
“Her name is Annalise,” he said. “She goes by Anna.”
Margaret sat back down. The chair was there by luck. “You named your affair Anna?”
“That isn’t what happened.”
Claire laughed once. Denise murmured something to her, but Claire shook her off.
“It’s exactly what happened,” Claire said. “He found the saddest possible woman at work and brought home a baby with a dead woman’s name attached to it.”
Drew’s voice sharpened. “She’s in rehab.”
Claire looked at him with open disgust. “Listen to yourself.”
Margaret lifted one hand. “Start over.”
Drew looked toward the curtained room where Ava was. “Annalise worked in dispatch. Not with me directly. We talked. She was having problems. Pills, mostly. Her boyfriend was worse. I tried to help.”
Claire said, “With his pants.”
“Claire.”
“Don’t Claire me.”
Margaret did not want this in the hallway. She did not want strangers hearing. She did not want Denise with her fox cardigan writing any of it inside her trained, tired mind. But the truth had never asked Margaret where it might be most convenient to arrive.
“Is Ava your child?” Margaret asked.
Drew rubbed his face. “No. I don’t think so.”
Claire laughed again.
“I had a test ordered,” he said. “The results came yesterday.”
“And?” Margaret asked.
He looked at Claire.
Claire’s voice went flat. “He didn’t open them.”
That was so Drew that Margaret almost closed her own eyes.
The doctor came out then, saving nobody. Ava needed observation for a few hours but was warming well. No obvious injury. They would run labs. Because the circumstances involved possible neglect or endangerment, the hospital had already contacted child protective services. Nobody should leave.
Claire began to cry harder. Drew reached for her. She stepped away.
Margaret watched them both and thought, absurdly, of the chicken soup cooling in the kitchen back at the house. She had turned off the burner before going upstairs. She was almost sure she had. Claire would say she had not. Drew might believe Claire if believing Claire kept him from seeing himself.
The CPS investigator arrived after dark. His name was Raymond Little, which made Margaret think of a man who should own a hardware store and know where every odd screw lived. He was tall, tired, and missing the top button of his shirt. He interviewed them separately.
Margaret told the story a third time. By then it had become both clearer and less believable to her. A newborn on a floor. A locked attic. A son at the door. Each repetition made the facts sound staged. She found herself adding small useless details because real memory clung to them: the folded ear under the cap, the granola bar under the shelf, the smell of cold cardboard, Claire’s left hand pressed to the door frame.
Raymond asked, “Do you have any concerns about Drew’s mental health?”
She almost said no out of habit. “Yes.”
“What concerns?”
“He avoids consequences until they grow teeth.”
Raymond looked up.
Margaret sighed. “That sounded more poetic than helpful. He gets overwhelmed. He lies by omission. He tells himself he’s protecting people when he’s mostly protecting himself.”
“Has he ever harmed a child?”
“Not before today.”
“Has Claire?”
“No.”
“Any substance use in the home?”
“Wine. Too much sometimes. Not with the baby, I thought. Drew had gambling problems years ago. He says not now.”
“Domestic violence?”
Margaret looked at the closed consultation room door. “Not the kind that leaves bruises.”
Raymond’s pen paused.
May you like
“They corner each other,” she said. “With silence. With money. With what they owe. With grief.”
He nodded, as if this answer fit somewhere even if no form had a box for it.
