Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Adam
The hotel clerk asks whether I want one key or two.
“One.”
He slides it into a paper sleeve and tells me where breakfast is served. I know. I’ve stayed in this chain so often I could find the breakfast room with my eyes closed. I take the key and my bag and go upstairs to a room that smells of carpet cleaner.
There are two coffee cups beside the machine. I put one in the cupboard.
Then I sit on the bed and call Ray Lambert.
“I need the rest of the week off.”
“What happened?”
“A family problem.”
“You’ve got the Tulsa follow-up at three.”
“I won’t be there.”
Silence. I have worked for Ray for eleven years, and I don’t think I’ve ever said those words without immediately offering a solution.
“Is somebody sick?”
“No. Everybody’s physically okay.”
“Do you want to tell me what it is?”
I look at the wall above the desk. There is a photograph of a sailboat in fog, identical to one I saw in Denver two nights ago. I remember looking at it while Natalie sent me a video of Owen reading a page aloud. I watched the first few seconds, sent a thumbs-up, and went back to the proposal.
“I picked up the wrong baby at daycare yesterday.”
“What?”
I tell him. I use the actual words, though every instinct I have is to tell him something less damning. I don’t say there was confusion. I don’t say the staff made a mistake. I say I took another family’s child home because I was distracted and didn’t check.
“Jesus, Adam.”
“Yes.”
“Was that while we were on the phone?”
“Part of it.”
“You should have told me you couldn’t talk.”
“I should have.”
He exhales. “All right. Send me whatever Helen needs for the follow-up. Then take the time.”
I send the files and the notes. It takes twenty-three minutes. Helen replies that she’s got it, and I sit staring at that message longer than I spent preparing the handoff.
At twelve-forty I pull into my driveway. My mother is already there. Her car occupies the space beside Natalie’s, so I park at the curb.
She opens the door before I reach it.
“She’s upstairs with him.”
“How are the kids?”
“At school.”
Of course they are. It’s a school day. I rub both hands over my face.
My mother steps outside and closes the door behind her. She’s wearing the red scarf Owen bought at a school gift sale, the one that sheds onto every coat she owns.
“I don’t need you to tell me how stupid I was,” I say.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“What were you going to say?”
“That Natalie asked me not to tell her it could have happened to anyone. So don’t.”
I look down at the porch boards.
“And don’t let me,” she adds. “I almost did. I wanted to make you feel better, and she was the one standing there holding the baby.”
Inside, I can hear Natalie talking softly. Benji answers with a small squeal. My mother moves aside and lets me in.
We drive to Little Acorns in Natalie’s car. She drives. I don’t ask to.
Danielle is already in the director’s office with a man named Peter. He stands when we enter. For a moment I think he might hit me, and I don’t know whether I would move. Instead he points to the chair opposite him.
“Sit down.”
I sit.
The director, Louise, has a printed account on the desk. Kendra is beside her, pale and sleepless. Carmen joins us a minute later, then closes the door.
Louise explains the sequence they have confirmed.
I listen while other people describe my hands, my signature, my departure.
At five-twenty-six I left the building with Theo.
At five-fifty Danielle arrived. By five-fifty-four the staff had checked the rooms, called the other staff members, and begun contacting parents.
The first call to my phone came a minute later.
Natalie’s call connected at six-oh-eight.
Forty-two minutes. It is short enough to say in one breath. Danielle sits with both hands locked together as if she has been holding them that way since yesterday.
“I signed Benjamin out,” I say. “I didn’t ask anybody to hand him to me. I saw a baby beside our carrier and picked him up.”
Carmen’s eyes fill. “I should have come around the table. I knew you were his father, and I checked the name, but I didn’t check who you were holding.”
“We failed to complete the handoff,” Louise says. “That is our responsibility. The event should not have interrupted the collection procedure.”
Natalie asks questions I would not have thought to ask. Who remained with Benji? Why didn’t Kendra question why he was still there after I signed? Which parents had been called before she answered? Louise writes down what she cannot answer immediately and promises copies of the completed record.
Then Peter turns to me.
“You changed him.”
“Yes.”
“You fed him.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t know.”
“No.”
He shakes his head. “I keep trying to understand that.”
I want to explain the costume, the low light, the fact that the baby was sleepy. None of it would explain why I hadn’t looked.
“I can’t give you a good reason,” I say.
Danielle speaks for the first time. “When they said he wasn’t there, I went outside. I looked under cars. I knew he couldn’t have crawled out, but I looked anyway.”
Natalie closes her eyes.
“I thought someone was driving away with him,” Danielle says. “And somebody was.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I know you are.” Her voice is exhausted. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that yet.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
She looks at me then, directly, and I force myself to hold her gaze.
Louise outlines immediate changes to collections and offers meetings with each family separately. Natalie says we will not be bringing Benji back. She doesn’t look at me for agreement. I wouldn’t ask her to.
In the parking lot I stand beside the car while Natalie puts the papers into her bag. Kendra comes to the door as if she wants to speak, then stops. Natalie gets into the driver’s seat.
“Did you want to say something to her?” I ask.
“No.”
I get in.
Halfway home, she pulls over beside a playing field. I think the car has a problem until I see her hands on the wheel. She is shaking.
“Do you want me to...”
“No.” She bends forward. “Just give me a minute.”
I sit still. I have been good at moving quickly, finding something to do, making a call. There is nothing I can do here except be the person she is trying not to look at.
After a while she straightens and wipes her face with her sleeve. I take a tissue from the box at my feet and hold it out. She accepts it without speaking.
We are nearly home before she says, “I thought I was going to have to tell Lucy and Owen he was gone.”
I turn toward her.
“Only for a few minutes,” she says. “Before Kendra called. But I thought it.”
I grip my knees so I don’t reach for her without asking.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I have nothing else.
My mother has Benji asleep when we get back. I ask Natalie if I can stay until the children come home. She agrees, then goes into her office and shuts the door.
For an hour I sit on the couch with my son against my chest. He wakes once, blinks at me, and studies the buttons on my shirt. I say his name. He makes a noise and catches my finger, and the relief is so sharp I almost mistake it for forgiveness.
He is six months old. He doesn’t know what happened. That is something I will have to remember when I am tempted to make his smile mean I’ve done enough.
When the children arrive, Lucy walks straight past me to the office door. Owen puts his backpack on my feet.
“Did you find the paper?”
“The reading afternoon?”
He nods.
“I haven’t yet. Will you show me where you put it?”
He leads me to the refrigerator and points to a pink sheet beneath a magnet shaped like a pear. My name is written in the blank for the adult attending. He has drawn a small airplane beside it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“So you’d remember to get off the plane and come see me.”
I read the date twice and photograph the paper.
“I’ll be there.”
He gives me a doubtful look. “Mom can come if you can’t.”
“I can.”
“Okay.” He pulls out a chair. “Can I have a snack?”
I open the cupboard and discover I don’t know which food belongs to lunches, which to the baby, which is for cooking.
Owen solves the problem by climbing onto the lower shelf and taking a packet of crackers.
I tell him not to climb, then realize he has probably done it because the available adult has spent too long staring at cereal.
Back at the hotel that evening, I open the photographs on my phone. Most came from Natalie. Lucy with a missing tooth. Owen asleep holding a plastic dinosaur. Benji in the kitchen sink while his brother and sister laugh beside him.
In that last one, Natalie’s arm runs in from the edge of the frame. Her hand supports Benji’s head. A sleeve is pushed up above her elbow, and there is a small wet patch on it. I remember receiving the photograph in a restaurant. I showed it to a client who said I had a beautiful family.
I said I was lucky.
I scroll farther. There are pictures of birthdays I attended and outings I missed. In one, I am standing behind Lucy at the beach, looking down at my phone. In another, Owen is holding a fish toward me while I appear to be talking to someone outside the frame.
I can’t remember the fish.
I set the phone on the bed and take off my watch.
My father used to leave his on the kitchen counter when he came home, beside the mail my mother had sorted for him.
I knew the weight of that watch before I knew much about the man wearing it.
He died when Lucy was a toddler. At his funeral, people told me stories about him that I had never heard, and I was angry with them for knowing him when I never had the chance.
I pick up the phone again and call Natalie.
She answers quietly. “What is it?”
“I found the reading afternoon paper. I put it in my calendar.”
“All right.”
“And I’ve arranged two weeks of leave. I can be at the house when you need to look for another daycare. If you want me there with your mom, I understand.”
She is silent for several seconds.
“I have an appointment to see a place in the morning.”
“What time?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“I’ll be there at nine.”
When we hang up, I set three alarms, then delete two. I am capable of getting to an airport. I can get to my own house.
Before bed, I watch the whole video of Owen reading.
He sounds out a word, loses his place, starts again.
Off camera, Natalie says, “Take your time.” Benji cries somewhere behind her.
She doesn’t hurry Owen. When he finishes, he holds up the book and grins, and I hear her cheer so loudly the recording crackles.
I play that part twice.
There is a message beneath the video from me: Great job buddy. Tell him I’m proud.
I type a new one to Natalie, then stop. It’s late. Telling her I’ve finally watched something she sent three days ago will only give her another thing to acknowledge.
I put the phone on the charger and lay out clothes for the morning. The hotel room is warm, but I can’t get comfortable. I keep remembering Danielle asking whether Theo cried. She needed to know who had comforted him, and the answer was a stranger who thought he was somebody else.
At home, Benji will wake around two. I know because Natalie told me this afternoon when I asked. She will go to him. I will be here, close enough to drive over in fifteen minutes, unable to make that feel like help.