Lisa Gardner: Alone

He would have nightmares tonight. Horrible dreams where he would thrash wildly, then wake up screaming of pain and needles and demanding that the doctors leave him alone. Sometimes, more rarely, he cried out against the darkness, complaining of suffocating and needing every light to be turned on in the house. It both fascinated Catherine and frightened her that her personal nightmare had become her son's own.

Prudence would tend to him. As had Beatrice before her, and Margaret, Sonya, Chloe, and Abigail before that. So many faces, Catherine barely recalled them all. Of course she remembered Abby, who had been the first. Jimmy had hired her when Nathan was only one week old. Catherine hadn't wanted a nanny. Catherine had thought she'd care for her son herself, even nurse. But a week later, she roamed the house in a sleepless daze, the baby continuously vomiting on her milk-stained breast. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. She compulsively turned on lights.

She held this creature, so small and helpless he mewed more than he cried, and she was overwhelmed by his sheer vulnerability, by all the things that could go wrong. Babies died. They starved, they were beaten, they died of the flu. They fell out windows, they died of SIDS. They were snatched out of cars, they were lured away from playgrounds, they were abused by priests. And there were fates worse than that. She knew of those, too. How some adults were actually excited by the cries of small children. How even a baby, a weak, helpless baby, could fall into the wrong hands and through no fault of its own, become a predator's toy.

How many babies were crying of hunger right now and being beaten for their trouble? How many babies were looking up hopefully into the eyes of their caretakers and receiving a smack to the side of the head? How many infants were born each day, innocent, boundless, sweet, only to be ruined by the very people who had given them life?

She wasn't going to be able to handle this. The world was too evil and Nathan too small. He would need her and she would fail him and that would destroy her once and for all.

She couldn't bear to hold him, but she couldn't stand to put him down. She couldn't bear to love him, but she couldn't stand to be apart. She was disintegrating into a million and a half tiny little shards, a sleep-deprived new mother, roaming the halls with her newborn son and quietly falling apart.

On the seventh day, Jimmy appeared with a young girl in tow. He explained it to Catherine gently, speaking slowly and using small words, which was about all she could understand. Abby would take Nathan now. Abby would feed him. Abby would tend to him. Catherine should go to bed. Jimmy had a glass of juice for her. And two pills. All she had to do was swallow and things would be better.

So that's how it happened the first time. Catherine traded her baby for a dose of Valium. After that, it wasn't so hard to spend a few days at a spa, then a week in Paris, two weeks in Rome.

The first nanny arrived, and Catherine had been visiting her child ever since.

Abby had done well by Nathan. Gotten him on a soy-based formula that briefly settled his finicky stomach. She read him his first story, earned his first smile, watched him take his first step. In the evenings, Catherine would hear them down the hall, Abby reading Goodnight Moon in her soft lilting voice, Nathan making small, snuggly murmurs as he curled up against her chest.

At Nathan's first birthday party, he'd fallen down. When Catherine tried to scoop him up, he'd screamed harder and, in front of all the parents, demanded his nanny. Then he'd flung his arms around Abby's shoulders and buried his face against her neck.

Catherine fired the woman the very next day. And Nathan had cried for a month.

After Abby had come Chloe, another one of Jimmy's choices.

She was a petite, generously curved Frenchwoman, and Catherine hadn't even been surprised to come home and find her and Jimmy in bed. What did you expect when your husband brought home a nanny" who by her own admission had never changed a diaper?

Catherine took over the hiring after that. She stuck to older, true professionals who knew the ropes and could maintain a certain distance from their young charge. They were too mature to appeal to Jimmy, too respectful to comment on how much time Catherine spent away from her son, and too self-righteous to ever know of the nights Catherine stood in Nathan's room, watching her frail son sleep and feeling her heart beat wildly in her chest.

Nathan had made it all the way to four years old now, and still sometimes in her mind's eye, Catherine would see a beat-up blue Chevy turning down their street: Hey, boy, I'm looking for a lost dog.

Of course, Nathan didn't need a stranger to haunt his dreams. The danger for Nathan had come from right between these four walls.

Two a.m. She should go to sleep. She already knew she wouldn't. The press remained parked outside, impatient vultures still digging for dirt. From time to time, squad cars passed as well. Checking the scene, monitoring the press, staring up at the fourth floor.

She had given her first statement to the police within hours of Jimmy's death. She'd been proud of herself, cool, calm, and collected. My husband has a temper. He drinks, he gets angry; this time, he found a gun. What had we fought about? Does it matter? Does anything justify a man aiming a gun at his wife? Yes, I was afraid. In all honesty, Detective, I thought I was dead.

They had wanted to talk to Nathan as well. She'd put them off. My son is too tired, too traumatized, too sick. It had bought her some time. For now.

The investigators had spent most of last night and this morning in the master bedroom. Now the room was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. Parts of the carpet had been removed. Shattered glass gathered. Bedding whisked away. Plastic sheeting covered the hole where the sliding glass door used to be. The cold wind sliced effortlessly through the plastic, however, and carried a host of smells to the rest of the house.

Blood. Urine. Gunpowder. Death.

Her neighbors probably thought she was crazy to stay. The press and police, too. Maybe she was traumatizing Nathan. Or maybe she was insane. Truth of the matter was, where else did they have to go? Her father didn't know how to handle these kinds of situations; arriving at her in-laws would be akin to stepping into the lion's den.

Or maybe there was something more sinister at work. Maybe she just wasn't ready to leave. This house, this room, it was all of Timmy she had left. And though no one would believe her, least of her in-laws, in her own way, she had loved Jimmy. She had hoped, she had prayed with what little faith she had, that it would not come to this.

Now she ducked under the crime-scene tape. Now she entered the master bedroom, a chill, ghostly chamber of black and white. Gauzy curtains stirred, while the plastic over the shattered slider heaved and sighed. The smells were richer here. A pungent rusty odor that made her nose recoil even as it triggered memory.

She crossed to the bed, running her hand over the bare mattress and staring at the darker splatters of blood. She lay down in the middle of the vast empty space.

Jimmy seeing her for the first time and flashing that crooked grin in the middle of the crowded department store.

"Hey, perfume lady. What's a guy gotta do to get a little spritz?"

Jimmy making love to her, then, afterwards, realizing that she hadn't felt a thing and trying to be kind about it.

"Hey, honey, you know what? We'll just have to practice more."

Jimmy fumbling the ring as he got down on one knee to propose. Jimmy staggering wildly as he carried her over the threshold. Jimmy promising her nine, ten children. Jimmy deliriously happy when she became pregnant with their first. Jimmy showering her with diamonds and pearls. Jimmy taking her on whirlwind shopping blitzes where he bought out half the city.