Only Ever You (21 page)

The clocked ticked on. Jill thought she might go mad. She circled the table multiple times, counted how many footsteps it took to cross the room. She wondered if this was what it was like to be in solitary confinement, this horrible dragging out of every second, the agony of being alone with only her own anxiety for company.

The door suddenly opened and Detective Finley stepped in holding two steaming insulated cups. “Thought you might like some coffee,” she said, offering one to Jill. She took a seat at the table. “You take it with cream, right? If not, this one’s black.”

“This is fine,” Jill said. “Thanks.”

“How you holding up?” Finley eyed her over her own cup. She took a seat and sat back in her chair as if she had all the time in the world.

“Okay.”

“You must be exhausted,” the detective said.

“Yeah.” Jill wrapped her hands around the cup and tried to inhale its warmth. Exhaustion didn’t really describe it, it was more like moving through a fog, or as if everything and everyone was going on about their lives and she was trapped, like an animal in a zoo exhibit, growing passive the longer she was captive.

“It shouldn’t be too long now; then you can go home and get some rest.”

Did this woman really think that she could sleep? Jill noticed that the detective had a thin gold band on her ring finger. Finley saw her staring and smiled. “Just got married last year.”

“Congratulations.”

“We want to start a family soon. Do you want more children?”

“Maybe,” she said. That insensitive, invasive question asked by so many people. The first few years of marriage it had been the joke of every older couple they encountered.
“When are you kids going to have kids?”
Always the casual assumption that Jill could just produce a child anytime she wanted to, that all it took was having unprotected sex and, presto, out would pop a baby in nine months.

Finley took another sip of coffee, eyeing Jill over the cup. “Children take up a lot of time. It’s hard to juggle having a child and a career, isn’t it?”

She said it so casually, but Jill remembered Andrew’s admonition and drew back internally, feeling her body tense. “At times.”

“It must be stressful.”

Was she hoping for some sort of confession? Jill stared back at her, at that pretty, fresh face, and thought of what Detective Finley would look like as she aged, the lines that time and stress would chisel into that pale skin, the creases that childbirth or the lack thereof would etch into her forehead and at the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines were also tear lines.

She stayed silent, pretending to be absorbed in her coffee, but afraid if she took a sip, the cup would tremble and spill. “No more stressful than anything else in life.” That was a neutral thing to say; nothing could be made of that.

“I’ve heard that children are harder, though. Hard on you, hard on your marriage. It’s easy to understand how accidents happen, how well-meaning people hurt their children. Especially when they don’t share the same blood.”

Jill saw the alertness behind the open demeanor, saw what was being done there, and even though she understood it was Finley’s job to dig for information, she felt a sudden hatred so deep that she wanted to punch the other woman.

She leaned across the table and Finley immediately mimicked her pose, eyes widening. Jill felt her hands twitching, and had to keep them on the coffee cup to stop from grabbing the other woman. “I love my daughter just as much as if I’d given birth to her,” she said slowly, looking directly in Finley’s eyes and emphasizing the present tense. “I didn’t hurt her; I wouldn’t.”

Before Finley could respond the door behind her suddenly opened. Ottilo stood outside with David behind him. “Your turn, Mrs. Lassiter.”

*   *   *

The leprechaun attached the wires to Jill’s body quickly and impersonally, touching her only when he had to and explaining the procedure for a second time before taking her through a series of questions. It reminded Jill of taking tests in school and how nervous she’d always been about being accused of cheating, worried that if she so much as glanced at someone else’s paper she’d be disqualified.

Andrew stood to the side, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He’d taken off his coat and draped it over a chair, and he’d given her a reassuring smile when she came in the room. She was grateful to have him there.

A series of bland questions lulled her. She relaxed a little. The leprechaun stared impassively at the computer screen, his voice even with every question. “Did you cut your fingers on broken glass?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hurt your daughter?”

“No.” Jill startled and Andrew shifted. The leprechaun didn’t change expression, just kept asking questions.

“Did you kill your daughter?”

“No!”

Finally it ended. Jill felt damp through her armpits and along her hairline. She looked at the leprechaun. “How did it go?”

“Everything worked just fine,” he said, unhooking her from the equipment without really looking at her.

“When will we know the results?” she asked, feeling again as if this were some doctor’s appointment, but Andrew had his hand under her arm, helping her to rise, and spoke before the leprechaun got a chance.

“Let’s go, Jill, we’re done here.” He led her out of the room and she saw David coming down the hall with Ottilo. He looked washed out, the skin under his eyes dark and puffy, but he gave her a little smile and squeezed her hand.

“You okay?” He kept his voice low.

She nodded. “You?”

He nodded, holding on to her as they waited at the front of the station for Andrew, who’d offered them a lift home. He pulled up in front of the station, honking his horn to clear a path. Jill and David ran the gauntlet of reporters.

They had to get home soon. They were appearing on an upcoming segment on the
Today
show, the camera crew coming to their home for the shoot. Andrew had set it up; he’d said that they needed to get the national media “on your side.”

“You make it sound like politics,” Jill had protested, “as if we’ve got to win some sort of popularity contest for the election.”

“Oh, it’s worse than politics,” Andrew replied. “You can’t afford to lose.”

Jill left the front seat of the car for David and climbed in the back, resting her head against the leather seat and closing her eyes, letting their conversation wash over her. Her stomach hurt, nausea rising like a storm. Andrew and David discussed polygraph testing, their inadmissibility in court, while she agonized over whether she’d passed. She could sense that she hadn’t done well, she just knew it, and what would that mean? She pictured Detective Finley’s face leaning across that table, thought of her prying questions. Jill hadn’t lied on the test, but she’d lied to her. Parenting
was
more stressful than the rest of life, much more stressful. She remembered the first few days at home with Sophia and how she’d jerk awake to that distinctive, high-pitched wailing, feeling like it pierced her skin. She remembered heating bottles of formula as fast as she could and of cradling Sophia in her arms and offering her the bottle and being amazed at those little hands reaching up to cup it even before she could really grab hold. And she remembered those eyes, Sophia’s dark blue baby eyes staring at her as she drank, an intent, unblinking stare that had left Jill trembling with the sudden realization that for this tiny human being she was the center of the universe.

“Did you kill your daughter?”
No, never. Unthinkable. Except she knew what it was like to be so tired that you couldn’t see straight, that you wanted to do anything to stop that endless crying, that you wanted nothing more than to catch a few more minutes of sleep. She knew what it was like to grit your teeth until they hurt with the effort not to lash out at a stubborn toddler. She knew the secret that most parents never uttered—that you didn’t fully understand child abuse until you’d had children of your own and when you heard stories about other parents harming their children you felt almost shaky with relief that it hadn’t been you.

Andrew and David had moved on to discuss a case they were dealing with at the firm, and she marveled at David’s ability to compartmentalize. He’d always been good at switching between work and home. Much better than she’d ever been. If she’d had a fight with David or a difficult morning with Sophia, she carried the stress with her into the studio and sometimes she’d have to sequester herself in the darkroom for thirty minutes or more, doing some repetitive task until she could drive the sickening feeling of disagreement from her mind.

How would she ever drive this from her mind? People were resilient, she knew that firsthand, but surely there was a limit, a moment beyond which nobody could fully recover?
“Did you kill your daughter?”

The bile rose quickly, like a rogue wave, and she sat upright, slapping the seat in front of her. “Stop the car.”

“Jill? What’s wrong?” David’s head turned to look at her, but Andrew had already figured it out, jerking the car over to the side of the road and shuddering to a stop along the pebbles and grass. She struggled to open the door, the cold air rushing in at her face, and stumbled out, falling to her knees and heaving into the dry, sparse grass.

Her stomach felt as if it was trying to turn itself inside out. She felt David’s hand on her shoulder, a solid, hot weight, but she couldn’t stop, the same horrible retching sound over and over, but there was nothing but bile and a thin, dark drizzle of coffee.

“I don’t think she’s eaten,” David said to Andrew. “Do you have any water?”

“Let me check.”

She was aware of dirt underneath her hands, of gravel digging into her knees. Hair came loose from her ponytail and whipped about her eyes, which were already tearing.

Andrew and David spoke above her, their words lost because she was heaving again, though there was nothing left to expel. David lifted his hand from her shoulder for a moment, stood, but then he came back, squatting next to her. “Here, drink this.” He handed her a bottle and she took a quick swallow, immediately gagging on the sugary taste.

“Sorry, but all I had was an energy drink.” Andrew hovered behind her. The sudden trill of a phone made everyone jump and Andrew said, “I’ve got to take this—hold on.” It didn’t matter where they went; Andrew’s phone always had connectivity.

“Any better?” David asked, rubbing his hand soothingly up and down her back. She nodded shakily, getting to her feet. David helped her stand and they heard Andrew’s voice rising.

“When? Where did they find—” He’d turned from them, walking toward the hood of the car. Jill ducked into the backseat and fished tissue from her purse to wipe her mouth.

“Better?” David said, but he wasn’t looking at her, but at Andrew, who paced back and forth several feet ahead on the road.

Jill, wrung out and weak, discovered that fear had not been expelled with the contents of her stomach. The drawn look on Andrew’s face made her aware that it was still there, like a heavy layer of silt left at the bottom of a parched riverbed.

“What?” she said. “What is it?”

He snapped his phone shut, looking away for a moment, before finally meeting their gaze.

“They’ve found a body.”

chapter twenty-three

DAY EIGHT

“It isn’t confirmed,” Andrew said. “They don’t know if it’s Sophia.” He had to raise his voice to be heard above Jill’s cry. It came from somewhere deep inside her, a guttural, inhuman noise. “We have to go to the morgue,” Andrew continued, his face pale. “They need you to, well, to identify her.”

Jill stared blankly out the car window, waiting for a traffic light to change. They were moving so slowly. It wasn’t confirmed, they didn’t know that it was Sophia. Images of her daughter cycled through her mind—Sophia rolling over, learning to walk, her first tooth, her first solid food, the first time Jill had held her in her arms. All of these images played, a photomontage Möbius strip. She couldn’t be dead; wouldn’t Jill feel it inside if her daughter had left her? She remembered what it had been like with Ethan, how she’d known something was wrong, how she’d had that feeling.

The morgue was in the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office, a long, two-story building on Penn Avenue with a few wooden picnic tables out front. Was that to make it seem cheery? They just added to Jill’s surreal feeling. A patrolman waved Andrew into a fenced lot across the street, just as a police car, lights flashing, pulled up behind them. Detective Ottilo leapt out and came toward them. Jill stepped out of Andrew’s car, amazed that she could walk—she felt completely disconnected from her body, everything was numb.

Ottilo fell into step with the three of them, grim-faced. “It hasn’t been confirmed,” he said. “We don’t know if this is Sophia.”

Jill swallowed hard, managed to ask, “Why don’t they know if it’s her?”

The detective hesitated, rubbing a hand over his face. “The bod—the child was found in the river,” he said at last. “It’s hard to identify after a certain amount of … decomposition.”

“My God!” Jill sagged, swaying like a puppet whose strings have been dropped. David caught her and together with Andrew, they supported her through the sliding doors and into the morgue. Quiet inside, the quiet of the dead, but strangely peaceful, too, like a church or temple. Across a tiled floor, a guard sat at a wooden desk. He paged the medical examiner and indicated some padded benches. Jill took a seat and then David began to hyperventilate and sank down next to her, dropping his head between his legs for a few minutes, struggling to breathe normally.

The medical examiner looked like an aging hipster, with a carefully knotted bow tie peeking out at the top of his lab coat, carefully groomed beard, and square, black rimmed reading glasses. He talked quietly with Ottilo off to the side for a moment before coming over to them. “Does your daughter have any birthmarks or moles?” he asked in a solemn voice. “Or any other identifying marks?”

“She has a birthmark on the back of her knee, a tiny café-au-lait spot,” Jill said. “And she has a few red splotches at the base of her hairline.” She raised her own hand to her neck to show where. “Little red marks—they call it stork bite.”