Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Natalie
Iput my hand on the baby’s chest.
I don’t mean to. I need to feel him breathe, although I can see that he is breathing.
His skin is warm through the sleep sack, and beneath my palm his little body rises and falls.
He has the same pale fuzz as Benji, the same soft rolls at his wrists.
His cheeks are fuller. There is a red mark beside his nose, and his mouth is wrong.
I know every part of my son’s mouth. The dent above his lip. The way his lower lip pulls in when he sleeps. This child could have been lying in any crib in any house, and I would know he wasn’t mine.
“Adam.”
My voice is louder this time. Something hits the bathroom floor downstairs. I hear him tell Owen to stay with Lucy, then his footsteps on the stairs.
“What is it?” He comes through the door drying his hands on a towel. “Is he sick?”
“Where’s Benji?”
Adam looks at the crib, then at me. “What?”
“That’s not him.”
For a moment he smiles, a reflex that dies before he gets a word out. He comes closer. The towel drops onto the chair.
“Natalie.”
“Look at him.”
“I am.”
“Then where is our baby?”
The baby opens his eyes. They are dark brown. He considers us for a moment, then starts to cry.
Adam makes a small, startled sound and reaches toward him. I catch his wrist. I don’t think about doing that either. His skin feels cold beneath my fingers.
“Get your phone.”
He backs away, hits the edge of the chair, and fumbles in his pocket before remembering the phone is downstairs.
He runs. I pick up the little boy, supporting his head although he is old enough to hold it himself.
He arches against me, confused and offended, and I press my cheek to his hoodless head.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
I have no idea if it is okay. My son is somewhere else.
He might be at the daycare. He might be in another person’s car.
I try to think of Kendra’s face, of her hands fastening the wagon strap, but another image keeps forcing its way in: a car seat in a vehicle I have never seen, heading somewhere I don’t know.
My phone starts ringing in my coat pocket downstairs.
“Answer mine,” I shout.
Adam is already coming up the stairs with both phones. “It’s the daycare.”
I take it so hard it slips against my palm.
“Where is Benji?”
“Natalie? He’s here. He’s here with me.” Kendra’s voice shakes. “He’s safe. Can you tell me whether Adam has another baby with him?”
“Yes. We have a little boy. He’s wearing Benji’s sleep sack. Is Benji with you right now?”
“I’m holding him.”
“Let me hear him.”
There is a rustling sound, then a familiar indignant squeal. Benji is angry about something. I close my eyes and bend over the child in my arms until my forehead nearly touches his.
“He’s okay,” Kendra says. “Natalie, he has been in the infant room the whole time. I’m so sorry. Theo’s mother is here. We have an officer on the way because we couldn’t locate him, and I’ve been calling Adam, and I tried you just now.”
“I’m bringing him back.”
“Please. His mom needs to know he’s all right.”
“Tell her he’s awake. He’s crying, but he’s awake.” I try to make my voice work properly. “Tell her I’m leaving now.”
Adam is standing against the wall. He has his phone open, and even from where I stand I can see the missed calls on the screen.
“How?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.”
“How did you do this?”
“I thought it was him. He was right by our carrier, and I thought...”
“What did you do when you got home?”
“I gave him some of the bottle. Changed his diaper. He was falling asleep, so I put him down. Nat, I thought...”
“Did you look at him?”
He doesn’t answer. His mouth is open. The baby cries harder, a thin frightened sound, and I turn away from Adam before I say something I can’t stop saying.
Downstairs, Lucy is standing in the hall with Owen pressed against her side. He has one dinosaur bandage on his palm and one bare scrape.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
I force myself to stop at the bottom step. She is watching the baby, trying to understand why his crying has made both her parents behave this way.
“Daddy picked up another little boy by mistake. Benji’s still with Kendra. I’m going to get him.”
Her eyes widen. Owen starts to ask something, but Adam comes down behind me and crouches in front of them.
“Benji’s safe,” he says. “Mom spoke to Kendra. He’s safe.”
“You brought somebody else’s baby here?” Lucy asks.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I made a mistake.”
She looks at him for another second, then turns to me. “I’ll get your keys.”
They’re hanging where they always hang. She knows that. She knows where almost everything is, because she is often the person I ask to fetch it while my hands are full.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
I fasten Theo into Benji’s carrier, checking the harness twice. Adam follows me to the door.
“I should come.”
“The children are staying here.”
“I can call my mother.”
“Stay with them.”
He reaches for the handle of the carrier. I step back. The movement is small, but he sees it, and his hand falls.
“Keep your phone where you can hear it,” I say.
The drive takes eleven minutes. I know because I keep watching the clock and telling myself I am eleven minutes, eight minutes, four minutes from my son.
Theo cries for the first half, then stops so at a red light I turn to look at him.
He is awake, solemn and exhausted, sucking on the edge of the sleep sack.
“Nearly there,” I tell him. “Your mom’s waiting.”
At the daycare, a woman is standing beside the entrance with her arms folded tight across her chest. Behind her, through the glass, I can see Kendra holding Benji.
I abandon the car at an angle in a parking space, turn off the engine, and get out. The woman is beside me before I open the back door.
“Theo?”
“Yes. He’s here.”
She watches my hands on the buckle. I can’t work it quickly enough. At last the harness releases, and she takes him from me with a sound that strips the last of my composure away.
Through the doorway, Benji turns toward my voice.
I don’t remember crossing the pavement. Kendra is saying my name, and then he is in my arms, warm and soft, his face crumpling when I hold him too tightly. I loosen my grip, kiss his head, and start crying so hard I can’t see him properly.
“I’m sorry,” Kendra says. “Natalie, I’m so sorry.”
I move away from her. I need space around him. I need nobody touching him except me.
An officer stands near the reception desk with a notebook. The other mother has sat down on a little wooden bench and unzipped the sleep sack. Her hands move over Theo’s arms, his legs, the back of his head. I recognize the frantic thoroughness of it because I am doing the same thing to Benji.
“I’m Danielle,” she says when she catches me looking.
“Natalie.”
“Did he eat anything?”
“Some formula. My husband gave him part of the bottle I’d made for Benji.” My stomach turns. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how much. I’ll ask.”
“Which formula?”
I tell her. She exhales, pressing her lips to Theo’s forehead. “That’s what he normally has.”
I want to sit beside her, to explain that I wasn’t there, that I would have known. The urge shames me. She is holding her child after twenty minutes of not knowing who took him. She doesn’t need me to defend myself.
Instead I call Adam and put the phone on speaker so she can ask him whatever she needs to know.
He answers before the first ring finishes.
“Are they okay?”
“I’m here with Benji. Danielle has Theo. She has questions.”
He tells her Theo drank two ounces, that he changed a wet diaper, that he carried him upstairs and put him in the crib. No bath. No medicine. No other food. Danielle asks the questions twice in different ways, and he answers every time.
“Did he cry?” she asks finally.
“A little when I changed him. He settled when I picked him up.” Adam’s voice breaks. “I’m so sorry.”
Danielle looks down at her son. “I kept thinking somebody had taken him on purpose.”
Nobody speaks.
The officer asks where Adam is, then takes the phone while Kendra brings us water neither of us drinks. Benji keeps catching my lower lip in his fist. I let him. He is hungry, and when I offer his pacifier he spits it out with such familiar contempt that I begin crying again.
Kendra explains what she knows. The wagons had come inside.
Babies were being lifted onto the play mat while parents found coats.
Carmen was at the sign-out table, and Kendra was changing Benji after a leaking diaper.
Adam signed Benji’s name, collected a baby from beside the carriers, and left.
Carmen had checked the adult and the name on the sheet.
Neither teacher had checked the child in his arms against it.
“Theo’s mom arrived at five-fifty,” Kendra says. “That’s when we realized. Benji was with me, and Theo wasn’t in the room.”
“You didn’t wonder where Adam was?” I ask.
“I thought he was still at the reception. There were parents in and out. I should have checked.”
“You should have.”
She nods, crying quietly now, but I can’t offer her anything. Benji is rooting against my coat. My shirt is damp with sweat despite the cold outside.
The director arrives while the officer is still talking to Adam.
She takes over the practical arrangements, gets the children’s names and our contact details, and says there will be a written account of the incident.
I tell her I want every time recorded. Who saw which baby, who signed, when the calls began.
My voice sounds like someone else’s, precise and harsh.
Before we leave, Danielle hands me the gray sleep sack. Theo is wrapped in a blanket from his own bag.
“I washed it this morning,” I say stupidly.
She looks at the foxes on the fabric, then at me. “I know.”
I fold it over my arm. Neither of us tries to make the other feel better.
At home, Lucy is sitting halfway up the stairs. She stands when she sees Benji and comes down slowly, as if moving too fast might make something happen to him.
“Can I see?”
I lower him enough for her to touch his hand. He closes his fingers around hers.
“That’s him,” she says.
“Yes.”
Adam stands in the kitchen doorway. Owen is asleep on the couch, one leg hanging off, both hands finally bandaged.
There is a plate of toast on the coffee table and a glass of milk with a straw in it.
Ordinary things. I look at them and feel a sudden, unreasonable anger that the house has gone on being a house.
Adam takes a step toward us.
“Not yet,” I say.
He stops. I carry Benji upstairs, and Lucy follows me without asking.
She sits on the rug while I change him. The diaper is one from the daycare, a different brand from ours, and I stare at it until Lucy asks whether I need a clean one.
“I’ve got it.”
“Will the other baby go home now?”
“He’s already with his mom.”
“Was she mad?”
“She was scared.”
Lucy picks at a loose thread in her wing. “I would’ve been mad.”
“You’re allowed to be both.”
She thinks about that while Benji kicks against my wrist. Then she asks me to take the wings off. One strap has twisted beneath her arm and left a red mark. I ease it free and put the costume on the chair.
“Can you stay until I go to sleep?” she asks.
I look at my daughter, at the makeup smudged beneath her eyes and the candy stain on her mouth. “Yes. Of course I can.”
She waits while I fasten Benji’s pajamas, then takes my empty hand and holds it all the way down the hall.