Even Steven (6 page)

"Where are you going?" William said quickly, pulling himself out of his chair and hurrying after her.

"I'm calling the police."

"No, you can't."

"The hell I can't. I don't give a shit if you go to jail."

William grabbed her roughly by the arm and spun her around to face him. "That's not it. They told me that if I called the cops, they'd kill Justin. Said they'd never even tell us where they hid the body."

Again, April's knees sagged and she leaned against the wall for support. Until that instant, the reality of it all had not hit her. Her son - her beautiful two-year-old little boy - had been kidnapped! By people who wouldn't hesitate to kill him or anyone else to get their way. Logan was an animal. Everyone knew that. And now that animal had her child. "So, what are we supposed to do?"

"He gave me a week to come up with the money. His men promised me that they'd keep him alive that long. But not a day longer. But they said that if Logan so much as heard a rumor about cops, he'd kill Justin."

"So I'm supposed to trust Logan? Is that what you're telling me? I should just let some goon hold on to my child for a week because this murderer told me to?"

"We don't have a choice!"

"The hell we don't!" April yelled. "I'll call the whole goddamned army down on him and they'll throw him away forever!"

"And Justin will die!" Those words brought total silence to the room. "He'll fucking die, April. Is that what you want?"

April shook her head. She didn't want it to be true. "Then Logan will fry in the electric chair."

"No, April, he'll walk away a free man. Don't you get it? There were no witnesses out there. Nobody saw anything. Who's going to believe my story when the only witnesses work for Logan? We don't have a choice here."

The wave of hopelessness started in a place deep down inside April's body, and it spread with amazing speed, until her hands quaked uselessly and the gun clattered to the parquet floor tiles. Images of her adorable little boy bound and gagged and shoved into a closet somewhere flooded her mind and took her breath away. "Then what are we going to do?"

"We'll have to get the money back. I'll have to get it from somewhere and pay him back. I have a week."

"We don't have a week! We don't have an hour! I will not allow my little boy to be handled by that man and his people for a single second."

William scoffed, "Well, we're gonna have to be a little patient, anyway. It's not like I can go outside and shit a pile of hundred-dollar bills."

The smugness of his tone, the lightness with which he spoke the words, made something snap inside April, and she smacked him across his face, hard enough to make his head snap to the side. "How dare

You -"

Then, just as quickly, he fired back, a stunning blow to her cheek. Stars flashed behind her eyes and she fell sideways onto the floor.

"Don't you ever lay a hand on me, bitch," he snarled. "Don't you ever talk to me that way again. I'll get the fucking money, all right? And I'll get your fucking kid back, but don't you ever, ever, hit me again." He disappeared into the bedroom.

April couldn't bear it anymore. Lying there on the floor, she buried her face in the crook of her elbow, and as a door slam shook the apartment, she started to cry.

SUSAN'S NAP DIDN'T last long after the Explorer started moving again. Her mind reeled with all the countless things that needed to be done. The diapers were a good first step. She had cleaned his bottom and replaced the tattered pyjamas with a clean T-shirt from Bobby's backpack. He was still caked with dirt, but she felt as if she could at least hold him now, without cringing against the stench and the crusty feel of hopelessly soiled clothing.

Through all her fat-fingered fumbling in changing him, he never really woke up, though he never seemed fully at rest, either - no doubt pursued in his dreams by the same people who'd done this to him.

Well, he was safe now. Susan would make sure that nothing bad could happen to him anymore. He lay with his head in her lap as they travelled in silence down the highway toward home. Toward their house, really. It wasn't a home yet; would never be until they added the sound of a child's laugh and the sight of fingerprints on the wall; until she could sit down with all her friends and participate in the conversations about what the little darlings were learning, and what mistakes they were making. As it was now, the Martins' rambling brick colonial - their dream home, set in the woods of Clinton, Virginia - stood merely as a shrine to what might have been; to what nearly was.

Susan had known grief in her time, from the death of her mother just a few years ago, to every one of the three miscarriages that had plagued the early years of their marriage. She thought she could be strong, that she could handle grief as it came her way. But then when Steven died, she learned that what she'd thought was grief was really just meaningless discomfort, disjointed training-pain that made you feel depressed for a few days, but then faded away.

To lose Steven, though - to lose him the way they had - was a sharp, enduring, Technicolor kind of pain that just never dimmed. With each passing moment, in fact, the grief only deepened and widened, to the point where sometimes she wondered if she could possibly haul herself through another day.

They'd taken all the usual precautions, refusing to tell anyone about the pregnancy for the first four and a half months - until, in fact, her belly was so obvious that people had begun to troll for hints. "Have you been gaining a little weight?" was the standard from family members, but less intimate contacts would use the more subdued approach: "Do you have any news for us?"

In the past, the miscarriages had all occurred during the first trimester, right in step with all of the predictions from the doctors and the baby books. The first time it had happened, Bobby and Susan had both cried, and they had both felt a sense of loss, but they'd been able to rationalize it away.

It's God's way of making sure our baby is perfect.

The second time around was many times more traumatic, the baby hanging on until the end of the eleventh week before the bleeding started, and the cramping and the anguish. She'd seen the hurt in Bobby's eyes that time, and the look continued to haunt her to this very day. It was as if someone had betrayed him, as if some invisible force were conspiring to hurt his family. With the third pregnancy, Bobby had refused to get his hopes up. He'd steeled himself against the bad news that he knew was inevitable, and which ultimately Proved itself to be true. He held her hand through it all, and he said all the right words as their third attempt at parenthood leaked from her body onto the ambulance sheets, but his eyes never so much as moistened. He knew this was going to happen, so it had just been a matter of time.

Then along came Steven. The first trimester was a breeze, without so much as a bout of morning sickness, and as they passed that magical third month, they celebrated with a bottle of sparkling cider. Everything felt so right. They dared to dream again; to think the thoughts of expectant parents, rather than expectant mourners. Eventually, even Bobby's scepticism turned to optimism. They bought furniture, they attended showers, they even established a savings account for the college fund. Listening to the experts, you couldn't start saving too early these days.

Because of Susan's history, that pregnancy was monitored more closely than a moon shot. She visited her OB/gyn every week for a while there, and she endured every test known to God or babies. Over the months, they'd assembled an entire album of sonogram photos, none of which were legible to her, but that didn't really matter. They were finally, finally going to be parents. All systems go. Everything A-OK.

The only real crisis they faced during those wonderful weeks was whether to learn the baby's sex. Deep down inside, everybody loves the mystery, but on a more practical level, why not know when the answer is already out there? Fact was, neither Bobby nor Susan were wild about the color yellow, and if you wanted to maximize your take from baby showers, it never hurt to know for sure.

It was a boy. Bobby's dream come true. The first of what he'd teased would be five sons, all of whom would choose lucrative careers in professional sports, earning millions of dollars per year, allowing him to retire from the information-systems sales business early. All that, and never a wedding to pay for.

Nothing else mattered back then. The entire world revolved around the hyperactive baby as he boogied without pause, ultimately finding a rib with his foot, and thrumming it in rhythm to a tune only he could hear. Bobby made it a point to be in the bathroom for Susan's nightly baths, just to watch Steven wriggle in response to the hot water.

They were the happiest and healthiest days of Susan's life. People used to stop her in stores just to say how radiant she looked in her maternity clothes, and she would blush and beam. It was all true, and she knew it. Those were days to be remembered, and she saved everything for the scrapbook that she expected to build. She kept the receipts for the furniture; she catalogued all the gifts. She even saved the parking receipts from her trips to the hospital.

March 13 was the targeted big day, and as Christmas became New Year's, and then Washington's birthday rolled around, they were home free. Even if she went into labor at that point, Steven would merely be another preemie, just like millions of others who entered the world earlier than scheduled but went on to be perfectly normal.

With Lamaze classes completed and bags packed near the front door, all they had to do was wait. Bobby figured that Steven would look just like him-the carrier of all the dominant genes - with his thick brown hair and matching brown eyes. Truthfully, Susan hoped he was right. She'd always thought her own complexion to be too light - especially for a boy. But as long as he came through the tunnel screaming and wiggling, the rest meant nothing.

March 1 was a cold, cold night - only the third they'd spent in their new house, their baby-house - and Bobby decided to inaugurate his half of the two-seater bathtub they'd had installed. The sparkling cider was chilled, the lights dimmed, the heater cranked to deep-fry, and all was right with the world as he helped her into the tub, then dropped his robe and slid in across from her. The CD player eased out the John Tesh album that Bobby thought she liked so much, but which she couldn't in fact stand. She just didn't have the heart to burst his bubble. Secretly, she figured that Bobby wanted Steven to perform his dance routine to a real rhythm.

But Steven didn't dance. He didn't twirl, he didn't roll over, he didn't move. Susan nudged him playfully, but her belly remained Perfectly still, the only movement being the vibration of her racing heart.

"He's probably just tired," Bobby said, but the look she saw in his eyes was the most horrific expression of fear she'd ever seen, and although he instantly tried to cover it, she knew what he was thinking. He's fine," she said, stroking her tummy lovingly. "You're right, he's tired. He's been jumping and twirling all day. He's got to rest sometimes too, you know."

Sure. Sure, that was it. Had to be. They'd come too far for anything to go wrong now. Bobby tried to make small talk, discussing troublesome clients and recalcitrant employees, but that look in his eyes never dimmed, and she never heard a word he said.

Everything would be just fine.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

"We're just borrowing trouble," Bobby said, finally addressing the issue head-on. "We worry so much about things that they become premonitions. I'm sure that's all that's happening here. Steven is fine. Tomorrow morning, he'll be doing the coffee shuffle just as he always does. Just wait and see."

And so they waited. She remembered now how hard she had tried to think positive thoughts, to keep the endorphins or the seratonins or whatever the hell they were high enough so as not to let her baby know that anything was wrong. Everything would be just fine. In bed that night, they both lay awake, each pretending for the benefit of the other that there was nothing to worry about, and each of them battling the panic that grew exponentially with each tick of the clock.

Please, God, she'd prayed. Please let him be all right. Let me have just this one thing, and I promise I'll make amends for everything else I've ever done. Please.

Bobby skipped work the next day to accompany Susan to the doctor. Not that he expected anything to be wrong, you understand, but simply to be there to help her through the waiting-room nervousness. Once they found out how foolish they'd been to worry, it would be off to the deli for a nice sandwich and maybe a flute of that sparkling cider they'd never touched.

By the time the nurse finally called her name, Susan calculated that it had been twelve hours since she'd last felt Steven move. She practically ran into the examination room, and Bobby helped her undress while they discussed everything - nothing, really - surrounded by photographs of happy little babies with their slick, wet chins and sparkling, bright eyes. It took every bit of an interminable ten minutes for Dr. Samson to arrive.

Ever Mr. Cheerful, the doctor greeted them both with a comforting smile. "So you're worried that the dancing stopped, are you?" He eased Susan into the familiar sonogram recline.

"This happens all the time, right, Doc?" Bobby said lightly. "Nothing in the world to worry about, right?"

Susan watched Dr. Samson carefully as he made his studiously noncommittal face. "Let's just see what we see," he said, and in that moment Susan knew that her baby had died. As the flimsy gown came up over her protruding belly, and the doctor reached for the microphone, Susan closed her eyes. Suddenly, she didn't want to know.