Are you being sassy with me, you little rodent? Don’t you ever be sassy with me,Fake Mom said, grabbing Mouse by the wrist. She shook her like she had the bear, until Mouse’s head and wrist hurt. Mouse tried to tug her arm away, but it only made Fake Mom hold tighter, long fingernails digging into the skin.
When she finally did let go, Mouse saw the red impression of Fake Mom’s hand there on hers. There were crescent-shaped indentations in her skin from Fake Mom’s fingernails.
Her eyes welled with tears because it hurt, both her head and her hand, but even more, her heart. It made her sad when Fake Mom shook her like that, and also scared. No one had ever talked to or touched Mouse like that, and Mouse didn’t like it. It made a drop of pee sneak out from her insides and slide down a leg where it got absorbed in the fabric of her pants.
Fake Mom laughed when she saw Mouse’s little quivering lip, the tears pooling in her eyes. She asked,What are you going to do? Cry like a little baby? Well, isn’t that just dandy, she said.A sassy little crybaby. How’s that for an oxymoron,she laughed, and though Mouse knew many things, she didn’t know that wordoxymoron, but she knew whatmoronmeant because she heard kids call one another that at school. So that was what Mouse thought, that Fake Mom had called her a moron, which wouldn’t have even been the meanest thing she did that day.
Fake Mom told Mouse to go somewhere where she couldn’t see her, because she was sick of looking at her sassy, crybaby face.
And don’t you come back until I tell you you can come back, she said.
Mouse carried her bear sadly up to her bedroom and gently closed the door. She laid Mr. Bear on the bed and hummed a lullaby into his ear. Then she lay down beside him and cried.
Mouse knew even then that she wouldn’t tell her father what Fake Mom had said and done. She wouldn’t even tell her real mom. It wasn’t like her to be a tattletale, but more so, she knew how much her father loved Fake Mom. She could see it in his eyes every time he looked at her. Mouse didn’t want his feelings to be hurt. Because he would be sad if he knew what Fake Mom had done, even sadder than Mouse felt. Mouse was an empathetic little girl. She didn’t ever want to make anyone sad. Especially her father.
SADIE
I commit the address to memory. I get in my own car and drive to Courtney’s home. I parallel park on the street, sliding easily between two cars. I step from my car. I bring Courtney’s keys with me.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t do something like this. But my back is to a wall.
I knock before attempting to let myself inside. No one comes to the door.
I finger the keys in my hands. It could be any one of them. I try the first key. It doesn’t fit.
I glance over my shoulder, seeing a woman and her dog near the end of the park where it meets with the street. The woman is bent at the waist, cleaning the dog’s mess from the snow with a plastic bag; she doesn’t see me.
I fiddle with the second key. This one fits. The knob turns and the door opens, and I find myself standing in the doorway of Courtney Baines’s home. I step inside; I close the door. The interior of the house is charming. It bursts with character: arched doorways, wall niches and wooden built-ins. But it’s also neglected and unloved. There isn’t much in the way ofthings. The house is unkempt. Stacks of mail are strewn across the sofa, two empty coffee cups on the wooden floor. A basket of unfolded laundry waits at the base of the stairs. Kids’ toys wither in the corner of the room; they haven’t been played with in a while.
But there are photographs. They hang from the wall slightly askew, a layer of dust coating the top ledge of them.
I go to the pictures, nearly run my hands through the dust. But then, in the nick of time, I think of fingerprints, ofevidence, and pull quickly back. I search my coat pockets for a pair of winter gloves and slip them on.
The photographs are of Jeffrey, Courtney and their little girl. This strikes me as odd. If Will and I had gone through with a divorce in the aftermath of his affair, I would have rid my home of photographs of him, so I wouldn’t be reminded of him every day.
Not only does Courtney keep family photographs in her home, but there are wedding photographs, too. Romantic scenes of Jeffrey and her kissing. I wonder what this means. If she still has feelings for him. Is she in denial about his affair, the divorce, his remarriage? Does she think there’s a chance they might get back together again, or is she only pining for the love they once had?
I wander the halls, looking in bedrooms, in bathrooms, in the kitchen. The home is three narrow floors tall, each room as Spartan as the next. In the child’s bedroom, the bed is covered with woodland creatures, deer and squirrels and such. There’s a rug on the floor.
Another room is an office with a desk inside. I go to the desk, pull the drawers out at random. I’m not looking for anything in particular. But there are things I see, like felt-tip pens and reams of paper and a box of stationery.
I return downstairs. I open and close the refrigerator door. I peel back a curtain and look outside to be sure no one is coming.
How long do I have until Courtney realizes that her keys are missing?
I sit lightly on the sofa, paying attention not to disturb the careful order of things. I thumb through the mail, keeping it in the same order that it is, in case there’s some method to the madness that I can’t see. It’s bills and junk mail mostly. But there are other things, too, like legal petitions. State of Maine is typed across the envelopes, and that’s what makes me peel the flaps back, slide the documents out with my gloved hands.
I was never very good with legalese, but words likechild endangermentandimmediate physical custodyleap out at me. It takes but a minute to realize Jeffrey and Morgan Baines were attempting to gain full custody of his and Courtney’s child.
The thought of someone taking Otto or Tate from me makes me instantly upset. If someone tried to take my children from me, I don’t know what I’d do.
But if I know one thing, it’s that getting between a woman and her child will never end well.
I slide the documents back into their envelopes, but not before first snapping a photo of them on my phone. I put the mail back how it was. I rise from the sofa and slip back out the front door, done with my search for now. I’m not sure if what I found is enough to suspect Courtney of murder. But it is enough to raise questions.
I drop the keys into a zipped compartment in my bag. I’ll dispose of them later.
People lose their keys all the time, don’t they? It’s not such an unusual thing.
