“Not about the suicide attempt. I mean, I lied about that, too. But I lied about the reason I was in the psychiatric hospital.” She looks at me. “I said that a relationship had ended. It’s a half-truth, really, I guess. It was a relationship, but it was a professional one.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“I was a counselor at a private school in Maine,” Vanessa says. “And I happened to be the field hockey coach, too. The team won a huge game against a rival academy, so I had the kids over for dinner, to celebrate. I was renting a house from a teacher who was with his family in Italy, on sabbatical. It was still so new I didn’t know where to find things, like dishwasher detergent and extra paper towels. Anyway, a few girls wandered downstairs to the basement, and they found a wine cellar. Apparently, one of them cracked open a bottle and drank, and a teammate who was suffering an attack of conscience told the headmaster. Even though I told him I had no idea the girls were doing that downstairs—even though I didn’t know there was a wine cellar in the house, for God’s sake—he gave me a choice. I could be fired quite publicly, or I could very quietly resign.” She looks up at me. “So that’s what I did. And I hated every minute of it. Of being punished for something that wasn’t my fault, at best, and was an accident, at worst. That’s why I got so depressed. It took nearly killing myself to realize that I couldn’t live in that moment anymore. I couldn’t change it; I couldn’t change what had been said by those girls, and I certainly couldn’t spend the rest of my life wondering when it was going to come back to haunt me.” She tucks my hair behind my ear. “Don’t let them take your career away from you. If that means you want to fight back, then fight back. But if it means you trade those embryos for Wade Preston’s silence—then know I understand.” She smiles. “You and me, we’re already a family. With or without children.”
I look up at the lighthouse. There is a plaque here that says it was built for the first time in 1810. That, after a hurricane in 1815, it was built again, bigger and stronger, this time of stone. In spite of the lighthouse, wrecks continued with great regularity.
Safety is relative. You can be so close to shore that you can practically feel it under your feet, when you suddenly find yourself breaking apart on the rocks.
After I lost my baby at twenty-eight weeks, after I went home from the hospital into a house with no music, I received a phone call.
Is this Mrs. Baxter?a woman asked.
I barely knew who I was anymore, but I said yes.
Daniel’s here. Your son is waiting for you.
The first time, I thought it was a cruel joke. I threw the receiver across the room, and when the phone immediately rang again, I disconnected it. Max found it that way when he came home from work, and I shrugged. I told him I didn’t know how that had happened.
The next day there was another phone call.
Mrs. Baxter, please, Daniel’s waiting.
Was it really that easy? Could I move into an alternate universe just by completing the one act I hadn’t: finding my son, picking up where we had left off? I asked for an address, and that afternoon, I got dressed for the first time since I’d been home. I found my car keys and my purse. I drove.
I marveled at the white pillars, the grand staircase leading up to the building. I parked in the circular drive, black as a tongue, and slowly made my way inside.
“You must be Mrs. Baxter,” the woman at the reception desk said.
“Daniel,” I said. My son’s name, in my mouth, was as smooth and round as a sweet. A Life Saver. “I’m here for Daniel.”
She disappeared into the back room and returned a moment later with a small cardboard box. “Here he is,” she says. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
It was no bigger than a watch box, and I could not reach for it. I thought if I touched it, I might faint.
But then she was offering it to me and I saw my hands folding around it. I heard my voice sayingThank you.As if this was what I’d wanted all along.
I have not been to Reid and Liddy’s house in a few years. There is a profusion of color in the front yard—mostly roses, Max’s handiwork. There is a new gazebo on the lawn, painted white, with heliotrope crawling up its side as stealthily as a jewel thief. Max’s battered truck is parked behind a gold Lexus.
When I ring the doorbell, Liddy answers. She stares at me, speechless.
She has tiny lines around her eyes and her mouth, now. She looks tired.
I want to ask her,Are you happy?
Do you know what you’re getting into?
But instead, I just say, “Can I speak to Max?”
She nods, and a moment later, there he is. He’s wearing the same shirt he had on in court, but there is no tie. And he’s wearing jeans.
It makes this easier. It makes me able to pretend I am talking to the old Max.
“Do you want to come inside?”
In the back of the foyer, I can see Reid and Liddy hovering. The last thing I want to do is go into that house. “Maybe we could go over there?”
I nod to the gazebo, and he steps onto the front porch. He is barefoot but follows me to the wooden structure. I sit down on the steps. “I didn’t do it,” I say.
