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“Does she sleep through the night?” says Vanessa, crossing her slim legs and giving a faintly disturbed look toward the car seat where Annaleigh is still passed out after our four-hour drive to Chicago. We stopped once. I nursed her in a gas station parking lot while guzzling an ice-cold Coke. Other than that, it was pedal-to-the-floor, until we hit the wall of traffic around Chicago.
It’s just after four o’clock, and the light coming through my father-in-law’s floor-to-ceiling windows is cold and gray, making the austere designer furniture and pale floors of the condo look even starker.
“Of course not,” Phil says to Vanessa in stoic tones from the black Eames chair that reeks of money and class. “She’s a baby.”
My father-in-law is absolutely what I expected: tall like Josh, handsome to a fault, with a well-groomed silver beard and an unshakeable demeanor. He’s taken the news of his son’s disappearance as calmly as he’s taking the arrival of his granddaughter and synthetic daughter-in-law.
“I need your help,” I said when I arrived ten minutes ago.
I kept my story simple. Didn’t drag up the past. Didn’t challenge Phil on why he didn’t attend our wedding or acknowledge his granddaughter’s birth announcement. He listened in utter silence, then nodded once, which I took as a sign that he was agreeing to do what I asked: take care of my baby until this blows over.
In spite of what Josh has told me about his dad and the divorce, and in spite of the tanned young fiancée in athletic wear perched on his couch, he is exactly what I need right now. Indifferent and cold? Maybe. But also strong and unflappable. I’d like to see Mitchell show up at this door. Phil LaSala would probably sue him just for knocking, and win.
“She wakes up around nine, and then around two,” I say with forced calm, trying to suppress the voices in my head that are screaming, Do not leave your baby in the care of a seventy-year-old narcissist and a twenty-two-year-old child!
“Two in the morning?” says Vanessa, placing a manicured hand to her chest.
“Yes. Then she usually sleeps until about six. I’ll set up a blanket on the floor for her bed.”
“The guest bed—” starts Vanessa.
“She could roll off it,” interrupts Phil.
I give him a grateful look. “She’s also going to need diapers. Wipes. And formula. I didn’t have time to stop.”
“Not a problem,” says Phil easily. I’ve quickly gathered that Phil has enough money to make most problems simply go away. “I’ll call my assistant.”
“I don’t mind running out, babe,” offers Vanessa, sitting up straight and looking pitifully eager.
“Sherri will take care of it,” says Phil. “I’ll call her now.”
“I’ll set up Annaleigh’s sleeping spot before I go,” I say. “Where should I do that?”
Vanessa leads me into a bright hall. Huge windows are on our left, the city of Chicago spread out beneath us, colorless and vast. On the right, doors to bedrooms and bathrooms. Vanessa opens the one at the end. I see the perfect spot for Annaleigh’s nest, wedged between wall, bed, and window. No cords or outlets in sight.
“Should I pull some blankets off the bed?” I ask as I survey the perfectly made queen-size bed. “Or use something else?”
“Let me get you different blankets,” says Vanessa.
She leaves me alone. The room is small, modern, clean. Black bed frame, abstract art in vivid shades of red. There’s a bookshelf on the wall opposite the windows, splashed with a few color-coordinated books and silver-framed pictures. I walk over to inspect the pictures, all of Vanessa and Phil. On the beach, skiing, resplendent in expensive-looking evening wear. A silver sculpture of a horse sits astride a small stack of flip-book-style photo albums. Curious, I move the horse aside and open the top album.
Josh.
Josh as a baby, Josh’s school pictures, Josh getting taller, getting braces, getting a new bike. The pictures look cheaply printed, like they were downloaded from lower quality computer images. Maybe Phil looked at Josh’s social media, back when Josh had his accounts, to check on his son. Chose a few images to print. It’s oddly touching to imagine this. It isn’t a voluminous album, and we quickly progress to young-man Josh in a cap and gown. Josh moving into what looks like a college dorm. Young, wild-haired Josh with...
I suck in my breath.
Me.
No. A different redhead. Who on closer inspection doesn’t look like me at all, save the red hair, which on even closer inspection looks dyed. She’s not even in the foreground of the picture. Josh is front and center, and she’s behind him, with a few other people. I’d put them all in their late teens or early twenties. Josh’s hair is longer than I’ve seen it. He has a goofy expression, like he’s in the middle of saying something funny. And the girl...she’s gazing at Josh with a look I know.
The look in Andy’s eyes as we sat across from each other at Siam House, just hours ago.
You’re perfect, Julia Walden.
She has to be the stalker girlfriend. The sweet wreck with the surprise dark side. In spite of how open Josh has been about everything, it still feels weird to see the evidence of how far back his romantic history goes, especially when my romantic history started and ended with him.
I touch their little faces and wonder when exactly this picture was taken. At the exciting new beginning? Or close to the disastrous end? Obviously, Phil had no way of knowing when he printed this picture that Josh was about to get massively hurt. And who could have guessed? Josh looks young, happy, and full of life.
