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“I have a baby. You know. Annaleigh,” I begin carefully. My best shot at prying her open is our connection as mothers. “As soon as I was a person of interest in Josh’s case, they sent Child Protective Services to take her away. I...hid her. With someone safe. But I have to get back to her. That’s why I have to clear my name. Not just for myself, not just for Josh, but for her. My baby. That’s what I care about most of all.”
“You love that baby?” She clatters the spoon on the counter and faces me. “You’re telling me you’re capable of that?”
I picture Annaleigh in my mind’s eye even as I look at Deborah. “From the moment she was born.” God. I haven’t let myself think about her very much, but now the floodgates are opening and I could drown in the power of missing her. “She had this face she’d do, when she was really tiny. We called it her ‘mysteries of the universe’ face. Her forehead would wrinkle and she’d pucker her little lips. Like she could fathom all these profound secrets, and if she just had the words to say them...” I feel a pressure on my chest and realize it’s my own hand, pressing down, like I’m trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my body. “Part of me was so scared. She was so...small. It felt like she could just die, any second. I—”
“Mine died,” Deborah says.
“Yes, I remember,” I say softly, hoping I didn’t just make a huge misstep. “I hope you know how sorry I am.”
She turns and rummages in the cupboard.
“Roses are red, violets are blue,” she chants as she pulls down two bowls. “She killed not one, but two times two.”
...two times two? A quiver dances up my spine, but I don’t speak. The moment is too fragile.
“Her name was Shiloh. It was SIDS. You know what that is?” Deborah ladles a thick red substance into the bowls, each move mechanical, deliberate.
I make an assenting sound.
“Then I had Eileen. She made it eight months.” Releasing the ladle, Deborah grips the counter and looks at the steaming bowls. “Then Joey. Three months.” She turns suddenly. “Hannah made it four months. They did an investigation. It was national news. My husband filed for divorce. They called me a monster. Sullivan’s successor. I lost all my friends. Everyone.” Her eyes, instead of being full of pain, remain glassy.
My heart is going crazy in my chest. Losing Annaleigh would kill me. How did Deborah survive that...four times? And then I realize...
She didn’t.
This isn’t a crazy woman. This is a ruined woman. Branded a monster during her deepest grief. Rejected and left alone when she needed mercy. Not judgment.
She turns back to the bowls. “I was acquitted, but just on paper. I thought about killing myself. Instead, I just watched TV. Coward’s way out.” Her eyes turn to the little TV, still on mute, where a female anchor is kicking off a news segment.
Instinctively, I rise from the chair and make two hobbling steps toward her. Reach forward and cover her hand with mine. The skin shifts over her bones, cold and soft.
“I may not be human,” I say, “but I feel your pain.”
She looks at me, and for the pulse of a heartbeat, we’re just two people. Not a monster and a Bot; just two mothers whose hearts beat for their children. Whose happiness is held in those fragile bodies.
“Now what?” says Deborah in a guttural whisper.
I release her hand and lean my elbows on the counter so that our faces are nearly level.
“Tell me about Laura Pine.”
She sighs, then says, “Wait here,” and disappears into the next room. After vague thumps and shuffles, she returns with three fat photo albums, each spine marked JOSH LASALA under clear tape. She opens the top one on the counter, and a baby picture of Josh stares back, all chubby cheeks and dimples.
“Oh,” I breathe. It’s Annaleigh, all the way. I never realized how much she looks like him. “May I?”
She nods. I flip through more pictures. An article Josh wrote for the school paper in fourth grade entitled “Why Sports Are Great!” Photocopies of pages from his high school yearbooks. Even his senior report card. God knows how Deborah got that. Something in me says this should be creepy, that she’s assembled all this information about my husband. Instead, I feel...grateful.
Then I turn the page, and there’s the redhead. Laura Pine, her arm around Josh’s waist and his arm around her shoulder. They look young, happy, carefree. But I know how deceiving a picture can be.
“Her maiden name was Wekstein,” says Deborah, and in spite of the circumstances, a rush moves through me. I was right. Josh dated Andy’s sister.
“Laura got married right out of high school to a boy named Eric Pine,” Deborah continues, “but it didn’t work out. They were together for less than a year. Then she went to college. Purdue. She and Josh started dating their sophomore year. She never did officially get divorced.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Social media. You’d be surprised how open kids can be.” And then, Deborah turns the photo album page and I recoil. Laura, with a black eye, nearly swollen shut. The shot is moody, artistic. Her head is tilted, her expression veiled. The caption reads, When love turns to poison.
“I printed that from Myspace. Good thing, because she took the post down real quick.” Deborah caresses her finger down the page. “I tried to call Josh. I wrote him, over and over. He never had a good father figure. My Josh needed help.”
