Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

Lullaby and Goodnight (12 page)

He smiled when he saw those, and mentioned that Karla always had heartburn when she was pregnant.

He said it almost fondly, and Peyton realized he wasn’t over his wife, regardless of his bitterness or his dinner invitation to an old girlfriend. That was a relief.

He smiled again when he picked up the sonogram image, and he knew, without Peyton having to point them out, where the baby’s skull, spinal column, and knees were. He knew better than she did, having been through this twice before.

“If you need anything, going through this alone,” he offered before they parted, “I’m here for you. Really. Anything you need. I’m great at putting cribs together, shopping for diapers and formula, whatever.”

“Thanks, Gil.” She was warmed by the offer, warmed by his familiar friendship. She might even take him up on the offer.

Stepping over the threshold into her apartment, she tells herself that there’s no reason she shouldn’t simply enjoy time spent with an old friend.

And with a new one,
she adds mentally, thinking again of Tom as she reaches out to blindly deposit her purse into its usual resting spot on the desk chair just inside the door.

She nearly drops her bag onto the floor before realizing that it’s gone.

No, not gone. Just . . . moved.

Frowning, she stares at the chair.

It’s over too far; just a foot or so, but it’s too far. It’s always been closer to the desk. It seems almost as if somebody moved it out of the way to get into the desk drawers, then hastily pushed it back.

Which, of course, is impossible.

Peyton is the only one who could have done that, and she didn’t touch the chair or the desk before she left the apartment this morning. She was too focused on meeting Gil.

Okay, maybe she’s imagining things. She backs up a few yards, out the door, and throws the strap of her purse over her shoulder again. She’ll just retrace her steps without thinking about it. Just do what comes naturally; do what she does every single time she returns home.

You’re just paranoid again,
she tells herself, shaking her head in disgust.

She walks quickly into the apartment and reaches out to drop the bag using reflexive motion.

But she can’t reach the chair unless she takes another step or two.

The chair should be closer to the door.

So if she didn’t move it . . .

And it’s not her imagination that it’s been moved . . .

Somebody was in her apartment while she was gone.

Derry stares at Rose in stunned disbelief.

She must have heard her wrong. She
must
have.

Or maybe Linden put her up to this as some kind of cruel prank. Maybe he’s trying to teach her a lesson about . . .

About what?

About preparing for motherhood? About being optimistic?

It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

“Derry, I’m so sorry. Maybe you should sit down.”

Derry, who refused that gentle yet ominous advice before Rose broke the news, sinks into the nearest chair.

“I know this is devastating for you. I know how much you wanted this little girl.”

“You promised,” she says, too numb to muster sufficient accusation. “You promised everything would work out.”

“I know I did, and I’m so, so sorry, Derry. Sometimes donors change their minds. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of this business.”

Derry shakes her head, staring dully at Rose’s enormous square-cut diamond. What does she know about reality? Sitting there in her prim black suit, with that big ring and fancy purse. What does she know about anything?

“We already had a name for her, Rose,” she chokes out. “Rhiannon.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“It’s from the Fleetwood Mac song. It’s how Linden and I met. We were both in this Seventies Rock chat room on the Internet, and somebody asked a trivia question, and we both knew the answer was Rhiannon. Ever since then, I knew that someday, we’d have a daughter with that name. It’s like our own special code word. Rhiannon. We use it for everything. At least, I still do. Linden used to use it as his ATM code, but he said he changed it. Now I have no idea what he uses.”

There’s silence.

Then Rose says, “Derry, you’re going to get through this. It’s going to be okay.”

“Do you have children?” she asks abruptly. Harshly. She can’t help it.

Rose’s head jerks up a little, as though something bumped beneath her chin. There’s a sharp intake of air in her nostrils.

“No,” she says after a moment, exhaling heavily as though she’s been holding her breath. “I don’t have children.”

It’s because she can’t,
Derry realizes.
She can’t have children.

She doesn’t know how she knows that, but she does. Maybe because she recognizes a kindred spirit. Maybe because that would explain why a woman like her is doing a job like this.

It doesn’t matter how she knows. She’s as certain of Rose’s
impaired fecundity
as she is that this isn’t some cruel prank staged by Linden.

No, this is really happening.

The donor in Iowa really did change her mind. Not about adoption. About Derry and Linden.

“What did we do wrong?” Derry asks dully. “Why doesn’t she want us?”

“It’s not like that. Please don’t—”

“It’s Linden, isn’t it? It’s because he’s blue collar. Or because he isn’t well read, or well spoken.” She hates her husband. She really does. This is his fault.

“Linden is wonderful. He’ll make a wonderful father.”

“Then why didn’t that girl want him? Why didn’t she want us?”

“It’s nothing specific. Don’t torture yourself. This just wasn’t the right match.”

“But it was!”

“Derry . . .” Rose kneels on the floor in front of her chair, taking both her hands.

“That was our little girl. I felt her. I knew her.” She collapses, sobbing bitterly, into Rose’s arms.

For a long time, she just cries, as Rose croons comforting words.

Finally, the initial wave of anguish subsides, leaving Derry as bruised and raw as if she’s suffered a beating.

“I’m never going to be a mother,” she says quietly, wiping her hot, wet eyes with the base of her palm.

“Yes, you are.”

“No. I can’t do this again. I’m finished. I can’t handle any more pain. I’m not cut out for this kind of disappointment, and I’m not cut out for motherhood.”

“I think you are, Derry. It just depends on how badly you want it.”

“I want a child more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

“But you say you aren’t willing to go any further to make that happen.”

She buries her head in her hands. “I just can’t take it. To be so close, and then . . .”

“What if there was a guarantee?”

With those words, something has shifted. It happens so subtly that for a moment Derry isn’t sure. Then she lifts her head, sees the expression on Rose’s face, and realizes that one door might have been slammed shut, but another seems to have opened. Just a crack. Whether she forces her way through it is up to her.

She looks Rose in the eye. “How can there be a guarantee ?”

Rose seems hesitant. “I don’t know, Derry. I shouldn’t—”

“How can there be a guarantee?” It’s all Derry can do not to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “You’ve got to tell me!”

“This is highly sensitive. Highly confidential. If it ever got out . . .”

“It won’t.”

Still, the woman hesitates.

“Please, Rose. You’ve got to help me. I’ll do anything if you can help me get a baby. Anything.”

For the first time since they met, Rose’s smile seems to reach her eyes. “That,” she says, “is exactly what I was hoping to hear.”

She’s just lucky the intruder didn’t steal her valuables. At least, that’s what the police officer tells Peyton when she returns from one last trip to her closet to confirm that nothing is missing.

“Why do you think they didn’t take anything?”

The police officer, who barely looks old enough to shave, shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe you came home before they could get the television or computer out the door.”

She shudders, remembering how she was delayed coming inside, talking to Tom out on the stoop. Was somebody lurking in her apartment even then? Did the sound of her voice carry a warning to beat a hasty retreat?

What if Tom hadn’t stopped her before she came in? Would she have interrupted a robbery in progress? Was the intruder armed? Would he have hurt her?

She wraps her arms around her waist with protective maternal instinct, unable to bear the thought of what might have happened. To both of them.

The apartment that has always felt like a haven in a ruthless city now feels as unfamiliar as it did the week she moved in. She gazes from the hardwood floors she sanded and refinished herself to the walls she transformed with warm-hued paint to the yards and yards of trim she restored to its original finish. She just finished paying off the shabby chic furnishings she bought brand-new at Domain, and the custom window treatments designed with filmy sheers to make the window bars less obtrusive.

Accustomed to looking around her home and admiring anew the hours upon hours of handiwork that turned this small apartment into a pleasant refuge, Peyton now sees only the shadows, the potential hiding places, the blocked escape routes.

“Those are things they usually go for. Electronics,” the officer is saying. “That, or jewelry. You’re sure it’s all here?”

She nods. What little she has is all here in its case in her top bureau drawer, left ajar by whoever rifled among her belongings. The thought of foreign hands touching her clothes, her lingerie, makes her sick.

“If I interrupted a burglary,” she asks the policeman, “don’t you think the place would look like it had been ransacked?”

“Possibly.”

And wouldn’t you think a cop might be a more compassionate type of person? His job, after all, is to help people. She can see where somebody in his position might become detached after years on the job, but if he isn’t a rookie, then she isn’t just past her first trimester of pregnancy.

Resenting his jaded expression, she points out, “Everything was pretty much in its place when I walked in here. Except the desk. And there’s only one door in and out of here. I’d have seen somebody coming up the stairs.” Unless the person had slipped hastily into the shadows before she passed.

She clenches her midsection more tightly, shielding her precious cargo from the mere thought of potential harm.

You’re okay,
she tells the baby—and herself.
We’re okay. Nothing happened. Nothing violent, anyway.

She sinks onto the couch and watches while the officer takes another cursory look around the apartment and jots more notes on his report.

Then he tells her to have her locks changed immediately.

“You think whoever it was got in here with a key?” she asks in disbelief.

He looks over at the bars on the street-level windows. “I’d say it’s likely.”

“But . . . how?”

“Have you lost a set of keys recently, had your purse snatched, anything like that?”

“No,” she says, indignant that he’d assume she wouldn’t have changed the locks already if that had happened, or at least have given him that kind of information right from the start.

“Who has your spare keys?”

“Nobody.” This is New York, not Talbot Corners. She’s not foolish enough to trust a neighbor with her key, let alone hide it under the doormat as her mother does. “I keep one in my desk at work.”

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