Chapter 27
When I get back to the apartment, I head straight for the kitchen and pour myself a large glass of nerve-calming wine. I can’t get the image of that bee toy out of my mind. I know what I saw. The toy was in the crib, then it wasn’t.
By the time Sam comes home an hour later, I’m still no closer to an explanation for what I saw.
He takes his coat off and drapes it over a chair, then turns to me. His gaze drops to the empty wineglass. “Everything all right?”
“Uh-huh.” My answer is not convincing. I try to sound cheery. Normal. “How was your day?”
“You know, busy as usual. Spent all morning in court and then had a meeting with the city’s Office of Historic Preservation that dragged on for most of the afternoon.” He takes a breath. “I also did some digging into that building Kalina told us about. The Wainwright.”
“Oh.”
Sam keeps going, oblivious to my mood. “I figure it can’t hurt to earn a little goodwill with the neighbors.”
And you love coming to the rescue, I think to myself. “Just don’t get too carried away, okay?”
Sam grins. “When have I ever done that?”
“Uh . . .” I stare at him. My fiancé’s passion for his work is admirable, but I’ve lost count of how often I’ve found him hunched over his laptop at midnight, bleary eyed and adding the finishing touches to an injunction, when it could have waited until the next day.
If he’s moonlighting on this project of Kalina’s, he’ll throw himself into it with the same gusto that he does at his day job.
“All right. Point taken.” Sam pushes his hands into his pockets. “How was your meeting with the Glendale’s board?”
“Great. They want to hire me,” I say, then tell him everything they said, glad for the distraction.
When I get to the part about my huge fifteen-grand payday, his jaw drops. “That’s fantastic.”
“I know, right?” I can’t help a swell of self-satisfaction. “I only charged Hilary $950.”
“Which I told you was a ridiculously low amount for what she wanted. You always underestimate your worth.”
I squirm. “That’s not true. It’s not easy, building a business, and I’ve only been doing this full time for a year and a half. And you’re the one who told me to do it, and—”
“Hey. I wasn’t criticizing. You’ll get there,” Sam says, taking a diplomatic tack as usual. “I know you weren’t sure about starting your own business after what happened, but—”
“Okay, I get it.” I don’t want to think about that, especially after my experience in the basement today.
Because after I lost the baby, I could hardly get out of bed, let alone go back to my job.
I worked as a buyer for a college back then, procuring everything from desks and chairs to art installations for the public areas.
It wasn’t my dream job, but I loved working for the college.
Then came the miscarriage. An event so unexpected and shocking that it threw me into a fit of despair.
I was twenty weeks pregnant, way beyond the usual time frame for such an event.
The doctors called it a “second trimester miscarriage.” I had no symptoms. They discovered that our baby had no heartbeat during a routine ultrasound, and induced labor.
After that came a funeral, which was dreadful in its own right, and weeks of recovery.
Finally, the exhaustion and physical pain abated, but the emotional trauma remained.
I retreated into myself. Refused to talk about it, even to the therapist my father found for me.
There were pills. Lots of them. They took the edge off my anguish but dulled the senses.
Life turned gray and bland. Eventually, I refused to take the meds, tried to pull myself together.
But I still couldn’t face returning to my old job .
. . my old life. That was when Sam said I should work for myself and become the interior designer I’d always wanted to be.
Which is what I did, and it worked, giving me a reason to get up in the morning and keeping me occupied so I wouldn’t dwell on all that we’d lost. Now, eighteen months later, here I am, and I should be looking to the future.
But after what happened in the basement—after my reaction to the crib, and the strange incident with the bumblebee toy—I’m worried that my mind is turning on me again.
That the depression is making a comeback.
“All I was going to say is that you’re doing great. You haven’t had an episode in almost two years, and now your career is taking off. I’m proud of you.” Sam goes to the fridge and grabs a can of soda. He pops the tab and turns back to face me. “When does the board want you to start?”
“They never really said. Now, I suppose. Catherine took me down to the basement this afternoon. They have all this old furniture in storage, and . . .” I trail off as the memory of being locked in that cage rushes back.
The look on my face doesn’t go unnoticed. “What?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
“Come on, Jordan. I know you better than that.”
I hesitate to tell him because I know how it will sound, but I don’t want to keep it to myself, either. “I got locked down there. I was in a storage cage at the back of the basement when the door closed on me, and it wouldn’t open again.”
“I thought you said that Catherine took you down there?”
“She did, but then she left, and I was on my own.”
“And she locked you in?”
“No.” I shake my head. “She gave me the padlock.”
“Then how could the cage be locked?” There’s a hint of skepticism in Sam’s voice.
“I don’t know! The door locked on its own. Which I know sounds nuts, but I swear, it happened. Then Jennifer came down to do laundry, and I thought she would let me out, but she left and turned the lights off instead.” I shudder at the memory. “It was so dark.”
“Maybe you panicked, and that’s why the door wouldn’t open.”
“You’re not listening. I was trapped in there before she came down. I had the padlock, so the door should have opened, but it didn’t. I’m not making this up.”
“I never said that you were.”
“There’s something else, too.”
“Go on.”
“I found a crib down there. It was new. Even the blankets were still wrapped in plastic, like they’d never been used.”
“Oh, Jordan.” The look on Sam’s face says it all. He’s worried that I’m having a relapse.
I’m not sure that he’s wrong. But I need to get this off my chest. “There was a toy, too. A stuffed bumblebee. And—”
“And what?”
I hesitate to tell him the rest of it, because I realize how it will sound.
But I’ve already started, so I don’t have much choice.
“The bee moved. It was at one end of the crib; then it was at the other. Then, after Catherine let me out, I looked back, and it was sitting on the opposite side of the love seat I’d been sitting on only a few minutes earlier. ”
“Toys don’t move on their own, Jordan.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” My tone is so sharp that Sam flinches. I hang my head. “Sorry. It really freaked me out. All I could think of was—”
Now it’s Sam who interrupts. “I know what you were thinking.” He takes my hand and tugs me toward the door. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I ask as he leads me toward the front door.
“To figure this out.” He steps into the hallway, then makes for the elevator. “There’s a logical explanation.”
The terror from this afternoon surges back.
I don’t want to go back to the basement.
Ever again. I want to argue, but what can I say that would not sound unhinged?
I know that I’ll have to go down when it’s time to choose the furniture pieces for the coffee shop, but I sure as hell won’t do it alone.
And if I have to start wearing my dirty clothes inside out and order packs of new underwear online every week, I’ll do that rather than go down there to do laundry on my own.
I dig my heels in and stop.
Sam turns back to look at me with concern.
“I can’t do this,” I say.
“Yes, you can, if only to prove to yourself that stuffed toys don’t get up and wander around on their own.”
“Please don’t make me go back down there.”
“Fine.” Sam comes to a halt. “We’ll call your dad and see what he has to say.”
“There’s no need for that.”
“I disagree. You scared me after we lost the baby. I didn’t think you were going to come back. I’m not sure we can survive going through that again.”
“Okay. Fine.” He has a point. I’m not happy about it, but I force my feet to move, because there’s no way I’m going back into therapy, and I’m certainly not going back on the medication.
We take the elevator to the basement. When we reach the cage, Sam inspects the latch and rattles the door, noting how much give there is, even with the padlock in place.
He checks the hinges to see if something might have caught and kept the door closed.
When he can’t find any reason that the door would refuse to open without the padlock on it, he declares that his first impression must have been correct.
I simply panicked when the door slammed shut.
Then he stares through the wire mesh and asks, “Where’s this bee toy that has you all freaked out? ”
I don’t answer him because I can’t. I’m too busy staring at the red velvet love seat. The empty red velvet love seat.