Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12
T he baby’s cry jarred me out of sleep.
I fought with the down comforter, kicking free and swinging my heels over the edge of the bed before I realized there was no longer any sound coming from the adjacent room or the baby monitor. Was that good or bad? Was Emmy lying face down on the crib mattress, a victim of SIDS? Were the cries she’d managed to wake me with the last she’d ever make? I raced across the room, falling into the bedroom door, my left wrist taking the brunt of my weight. I clumsily straightened and yanked the door open with my right hand and ran from the room like a fugitive, breath coming in halting gasps.
She lay in the crib on her back. The gently slumbering infant of diaper commercials: wispy nutmeg curls, cheeks glowing through the night-light gloom like shiny copper pennies. Her chubby limbs and tiny Buddha belly enveloped in warm flannel footed pajamas with no blanket. No toys or stuffed animals crowded the enclosure; the firm, ul greenguard Gold and Certi pur-us certified mattress was hemmed by the Babyletto Premium crib’s perfectly proportioned slats, too close together to trap a small child’s head. I’d done my research.
I took a deep breath, arms and legs shaking as the adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream dissipated. Normalcy returning in syncopated tremors. It was going to be a challenge, this day. Like all the others before it. Massaging my left wrist, I felt a sting in my smallest fingertip. Looking at the hand cradled in my other palm, I noticed the gleam of blood seeping into the ridge around my nail bed, the nail tip partially severed. Served me right. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d filed and clipped my nails, much less gotten a proper manicure.
Truth was I couldn’t recall exactly what I’d been doing during the months since Tim left, except worrying he’d take Emmy away. Now I had to endure another day. Close to fourteen hours until twilight would usher in soothing darkness. That’s when I’d gently lift Emmy from her crib or ease her out of the ever-present infant carrier strapped to my chest. I’d transfer her to the state-of-the-art babyzen buggy, complete with bassinet top. Tim had scoffed when I bought it because it had cost half a week’s salary, but it was well worth the money, encasing my precious girl in cozy warmth as the soundless wheels rolled smoothly over the paved streets.
I’d always found it soothing to explore the area. Tim and I used to take post-dinner summertime strolls when we first moved into the neighborhood, years earlier. Back when we enjoyed doing things together.
He’d quickly tired of those walks. Despite how I’d forced the issue when I became pregnant—recalling my mother’s adamant advice against letting the baby, once born, come between us—Tim stopped accompanying me. I kept at it, wandering familiar streets and discovering new routes. Keeping myself fit even before I had Emmy, yet something new sprouted in my mind. Realizations and suspicions growing like the child in my womb: Why was I spending so much time alone? Where was Tim most evenings when I returned from my strolls to our stark, empty house?
Emmy was born in January, a dangerous time to take a newborn outside in Upstate New York, but it was an unseasonably warm winter, and by late March I was once again crisscrossing the streets of our development, this time with Emmy for company.
Our walks quickly became a nightly ritual, each foray into the dusky suburban streets calming us more than the previous stroll. Before long, I was walking for hours each evening, widening our horizons and building my stamina. I’d occasionally head out during daylight hours, even though there wasn’t much outdoor activity during cold winter afternoons. I preferred the anonymity of my nighttime strolls.
That was when things started to fall apart at home—or maybe it was a continuation of the downward spiral that had begun with Emmy’s refusal to nurse, my baby blues, and Tim’s inability to keep us or himself happy. I thought about his after-hour stints at the firm. He’d claimed to be overwhelmed by a new project, but he’d never had to work through the dinner hour in the early years of our marriage.
The night I found a matchbook from a local bar in Tim’s jacket pocket, I shoved Emmy in the stroller and beelined it through the front door, anger sparking my movements, spurring me through the dark streets and farther from home. That was the evening I discovered Deer Crossing, just a mile from my house. It changed everything, sparking an odyssey into a realm previously unknown to me. I’d dutifully returned from the exclusive enclave that night and all the others that followed, but I never really made it back to the place Tim and I had been before.
It was to be expected, of course. How could I settle for the dreary happenings around my house when others were living such charmed lives? These people were like my own neighbors, but younger, fitter. Happier. Especially the couple I’d been stalking lately: Barbie and Ken look-alikes I’d named Matt and Melanie at 21 Pine Hill Road. Just like the couples I’d noticed through their unguarded windows that very first night who’d laughed together and cuddled on sofas in front of large-screen televisions and flickering fireplaces, the positioning of Matt and Melanie’s trim, athletic bodies struck me upon first glimpse, weeks earlier: the way their entwined forms rocked in rhythm to the strains of a song I couldn’t hear, their beauty highlighted by the warm wash of incandescent light overhead. Framed by the living-room window, their faces were a blur, but I was transfixed by how her long dark hair spilled against his cheek and mingled with his blond waves. A pang sliced at my throat, making swallowing painful. The pair was maybe a few years older than Tim and me; I couldn’t recall the last time Tim and I danced together. Perhaps our wedding reception? Why didn’t we focus on each other the way the dreamy couple in front of my greedy eyes did? I squeezed my lids shut, trying to recall my husband’s touch on my skin, but I couldn’t arouse the sensation.
I felt nothing.
* * *
I spied on them all.
Every neighbor too careless or too foolish to keep their shades drawn. Hundreds of houses on display, their interiors glowing with life and bleeding it out into the night. A hemorrhage of strangers gathered around dinner tables, texting on phones while gearing up Netflix, doing yoga. The activities were as varied as the people performing them. And that’s what it seemed like: a show, with the homes’ inhabitants cast as theatrical versions of themselves.
I needed this—the feeling of being a part of something without the responsibility of involvement. Oddly, I felt a connection to these blurry-faced strangers—a connection I hadn’t been able to maintain with Tim since before Emmy was born. He blamed me for the divide. I knew he did. His seemingly innocent remarks rankled. Like his comment after my mom’s fatal accident when I’d been three months pregnant: Maybe you’d feel less devastated if you and your mother had gotten along better .
I stared blankly at him. “My mom was my best friend,” I’d said, amazed that her death seemed to be tearing us apart rather than bonding us in grief—especially since he hadn’t been overly fond of her.
And then there was his advice after the postpartum depression that had set in a week after I’d given birth: If you force yourself to get out of bed and tend to Emmy, the mother-daughter bonding will help you overcome your depression.
I snorted just thinking of his self-righteous remarks. What the hell did he know, anyway? After Dr. Ellison explained that stress, hormonal changes, and sleep deprivation had combined to create a textbook case of the baby blues, Tim grudgingly attended to Emmy amid my crying jags and unending desire for sleep.
He was always willing to do pharmacy runs. I suspected he just wanted to get out of the house, away from Emmy’s endless crying and my incessant requests for help. Hours after departing for the drugstore he’d reappear with excuses of long lines, drug shortages, pharmacist consultations. Anything to make the extended absences seem believable.
I couldn’t pronounce the name of the script Dr. Ellison had prescribed for postpartum depression, but I’d eagerly anticipate the Xanax the doctor told me to take only in emergencies. The medication calmed me far better than my husband did. Tim, watching me pop the pills like a halitosis sufferer scarfing down breath mints, scoffed at what he called my weakness .
“You can’t be hoovering those pills while you’re taking care of Emmy,” he’d complain.
“That’s why you’re here,” I’d point out. “Until I can get myself back on track.”
He’d roll his eyes and sigh. Often, he’d storm out of the house, slamming the door behind him, not returning until my frantic texts begged him to soothe our wailing child.
The postpartum meds hadn’t worked, and I wasn’t able to sleep without Xanax. Claiming to worry about the potential for drug dependence, Tim began monitoring and restricting my intake, leading to endless nights without more than an hour or two of rest, giving my waking hours a surreal, nightmarish quality. Every sound became oddly amplified, as though my ears had reverberating speakers tucked inside; morning light scorched my retinas, sending shards of throbbing brightness straight into my brain, settling into a baseline headache that no amount of ibuprofen could touch. That was the weakness Tim so readily diagnosed. I suppressed my resentment, convincing myself he was only looking out for my health.
Exercise helped. In the soothing dark and silence of my nightly strolls, I could function normally. My stiff legs relaxed into an easy, elongated ramble, and my lungs unclenched, turning my shallow breaths into deep, full inhalations. The later my strolls stretched into the night, the more I felt like myself.
That’s when I realized how much I needed the residents of Deer Crossing. Muzzy Owen and her tribe were the first to catch my eye, and her reciprocal attention bolstered my confidence. I didn’t live in the development, but I had every right to stroll the storied streets. Lately, I’d even taken to waving at Matt as I passed him. He’d wave back if he wasn’t preoccupied by a strenuous yard task, like raking out the flower beds or mowing the lawn.
This August evening the temperature hovered around seventy degrees in low humidity. Emmy cooed like a chickadee content in its nest as I increased my speed up an incline, my arms laboring under the increased weight of the carriage. Gritting my teeth against the pain slicing through my left wrist—a reminder of my morning’s sleep-deprived plunge into my bedroom door—I focused on the exertion. It felt cleansing, just like Dr. Ellison said it would. Now that Tim no longer lived with me, I could walk the streets at any time of the day or night. I didn’t have to get back from my evening strolls before he came home. Didn’t have to figure out where he’d been while I was walking off my resentment.
Even so, Emmy needed a mother and a father, no matter our difficulties. I texted Tim every day about important child-related topics. Asking his opinion about starting Emmy on rice gruel, sharing a milestone she’d reached or a worry over a minor health issue. Even though he seldom answered me, I was determined to keep him involved in our child’s life, and eventually get him back home. I knew only too well how impossible it was to endure a childhood without a dad.
I scooted across the three-lane thoroughfare separating Highland Knolls, my neighborhood of modest ranches and bilevels, to Deer Crossing. Consisting of a few hundred dwellings, the upscale development had two parallel main roads leading off Route 55 and into the neighborhood: Pine Hill Road on the west side, and Woodmint Lane on the east. Connecting them at the northernmost end of each road was Primrose Way, which stretched from the bike trails at Woodmint to the pond on Lakeside, just beyond Primrose and north of Pine Hill. Each of these roads had multiple connecting paths and cul-de-sacs with winding streets and expertly landscaped lots. As I started up Woodmint, I wondered if the neighbors had banded together to create a cohesive planting plan. Even in the muted glow of the HPS streetlights, the perennials peeking around stately birches shut out the memory of the ragged, yellowing hostas lining my house’s walkway. This night I meandered, noting how the light layered over the smooth expanse of lawn extending from house to house like an unending carpet. I could discern no weeds in the seamless stretches of grass.
This should have been my life, my neighborhood. As a mechanical engineer, Tim made a decent buck, and my home-based medical-billing job helped cover the extras. My virtual position meant no childcare expenses, which was fortunate. With my parents gone and Tim’s entire family across the country in Seattle, my salary would have been swallowed by day-care costs had I been forced to commute to an office each day.
I’d wanted the big, impressive house, and we could have swung it. Our other expenses were minimal. We preferred our television to movie theaters, takeout to dining out, comfortable clothes to designer labels. And we’d been saving for the future. I’d talked about a big family, like the four-sibling clan Tim had been raised in, not the sad little twosome that had comprised most of my childhood. But my husband decided for us both that prudence was called for. We’d start in a house we could afford rather than live in a “monstrosity” we’d struggle to make payments on.
I’d reluctantly agreed to our simple two-bedroom ranch on Tim’s assurance that as our salaries and family grew, we’d expand to a bigger place. Seemed like a good plan, until my mother died, and my world began to unravel. Now the modest house felt like a condemnation. I needed a home like the one we’d envisioned ourselves eventually living in, a validation of sorts. No chance I’d ever have it unless I could get Tim back.
At the end of Woodmint, I’d eventually turn left onto Primrose Way and pass Muzzy’s house at the other end of that street, near Pine Hill. With any luck she’d be outside, maybe sitting on her front porch. It was early enough—much earlier than most of my treks into the neighborhood. I walked faster, my gaze lasered once again on the Brocktons’ sage farmhouse as I neared it. One low light was on in the living room. I glanced at the completely dark Colonial next door, which I recalled was the tawny tone of a caramel chewy in daylight.
“Good evening,” came a female voice from somewhere in the shadows. Jane Brockton.
I jumped, heart slamming into breastbone. A dark figure stood like a sentinel at the end of the driveway, next to the mailbox. “Oh, uh, hello.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said, stepping forward. Her tone suggested otherwise.
“No, that’s okay, I’m just...” I trailed off, my pounding heart making breathing and speaking at the same time impossible.
“You spend an awful lot of time on this street, don’t you?”
She’s noticed my snooping . My mind clicked into survival mode, sending desperate messages to my mouth. “Well, you know how it is with colicky babies.” I looked down at the carriage and back at her advancing form. “Whatever it takes to get them to sleep.”
“No, I don’t know. I don’t have children.” Jane’s tone sounded oddly challenging. “What’s the baby’s name?”
“Emmy,” I said, my quivering voice hinting at my reluctance to tell her anything about myself.
She stopped a few feet in front of me and raised her hand, which held an iPhone. She turned on the built-in flashlight, creating a harsh halo of light around her stunning figure. I’d clearly not been able to properly appreciate her attractiveness from a distance. “May I take a peek?”
Seriously? She wants to shine a high-intensity beam into my infant’s face? Good thing she doesn’t have children. I raised the bassinet hood, an urgency to get away from her overwhelming me. “I just got her to sleep; she’s hypersensitive to light.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Perhaps she wanted a child and Rod was unwilling or unable to provide any for her. He was, after all, a good bit older than she was. She stepped back, giving me the impression of a balloon deflating slightly. “You’ll have to stroll by in the daytime when the baby’s awake.” She accented the word daytime .
“I’ll do that,” I promised, pressing on the carriage handle.
“I’m Jane, by the way.”
“Alice,” I lied. “Nice to meet you,” I called over my shoulder as I started to walk away.
“You look like that woman who used to go to Muzzy Owen’s house.” Her voice had a hard edge that sent a shiver down my spine. “But her name wasn’t Alice.”
I froze. “You know Muzzy?” I tried to suppress the surprise in my voice.
“I know everyone in this neighborhood. But I don’t know you.”
“Well, I don’t actually live here.”
“I know that. I can follow people too. Your name is Caroline, so why would you tell me it’s Alice?”
My throat went dry. I turned toward her, my legs shaking. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t even know you.” I held my hand up. “I never tell strangers my name.”
“You’re the stranger here, and I’d prefer you keep it that way. Stick to your own neighborhood. Keep your stroller, your car, and yourself off these streets. You don’t belong here.”
Her petty threat burst my fear like a soap bubble. Who the hell was she to tell me where I could stroll my child? I lowered my chin until my gaze was level with hers. “I can walk wherever I please. If you have a problem with that, too bad.”
“You need to mind your own business. Keep your nose out of?—”
“Out of what?” I sighed, impatience warring with the good manners my mother instilled in me. “Your business looks like a lot more fun than mine.”
Jane’s mouth dropped and I could see her face redden in the ambient light from her cell phone, now glowing beside her thigh where she’d dropped her hand. Before she could sputter out a reply, I turned on my heel and headed down the street, vigorously pushing the stroller ahead of me.
Was that a good idea? asked a voice. The voice that sounded like my mother’s.
“Probably not,” I muttered. But it felt fantastic to tell her off.
I couldn’t properly catch my breath until I was in front of Muzzy’s dark house. So Jane had followed me home one evening? So much for my stealth. Gazing at the shadowy box that was Muzzy’s house, I wondered if my former BFF had filled Jane in on my story. Sadness encircled me like a heavy woolen cape, weighing me down and notching my body temperature up a good ten degrees. I didn’t care. Even if my one-time friend had gossiped all over the neighborhood about me, I deserved it. And it would be a small price to pay to get Muzzy Owen back in my life.
My gaze lingering on the dark house, I walked on. Ignoring the trickle of the fountain in the loathsome pond to my right, I turned left onto Pine Hill Road and approached Matt and Melanie’s house on the corner. A porch light flicked on, illuminating the 21 over the front door, which was open to reveal the profiles of two people. Melanie, her long tresses recently chopped to her shoulders, thrust her arms around the shoulders of a tall, dark-haired man and pressed herself intimately against him.
“I don’t care,” she declared. “Let him find out about us. Let them all find out!”
I paused, staring. The man in Melanie’s arms was not the fair-haired Matt.
“Don’t say that, it’s dangerous,” warned the man, not returning her embrace. He shot a furtive glance toward the street, his eyes catching mine. Alarm crossed his features, followed by anger. With one hand he reached out and caught the edge of the door in his grasp, slamming it firmly shut.
I startled, but I wasn’t sure whether it was surprise or my own anger that made me flinch.
How dare she do that to Matt! She has everything! Good God, she’s no better than slimy Jane Brockton!