Wells Mike

Baby Talk

Baby Talk

Book 1

by

Mike Wells

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Mike Wells

http://www.mikewellsbooks.com

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Praise for Mike Wells’ Baby Talk

5 STARS!  “Baby Talk" is a hilarious and frightening story of a young couple with an extraordinary newborn. Mike Wells once again incorporates pieces of life that every reader can relate to, and spins a thick web of excitement around it. A must-read for anyone who enjoys thrillers, or anyone who enjoys dark humor.”

5 STARS! “This book just flows, pulled me into the story and kept me reading. Reminded me of one of Stephen King’s books like maybe Carrie or The Shining. The ending blew my mind!”

5 STARS! “I’m a clinical psychologist and I found the notion of a baby who is aware that her father wanted her aborted, “out to get him,” etc fascinating and highly original. I love the “is Neal crazy or is this really happening”? aspect too, that kept me nailed to this. The ending was good and quite unexpected. Wells is a damn good writer!”

5 STARS! “As a nanny, all I can say is this book rocks!!! You will not be sorry buying it!!!”

5 STARS! “I have 3 kids what can I say? Baby Talk is an awesome read, wonderful characters, though I cannot say I liked any of them so much but they are very real people and act real. It was a tragedy actually but very well written and CREEPY, I have to say that! I’m going to be reading a lot more of this author’s books.”

5 STARS! “Feeeed meeeee, Neeeeaaaal!” What a frickin nightmare! I wasn’t sure about laughing or crying this book just knocked me out, I do not know how this author thought up such a weird story. I would recommend this book especially if you have kids. If you don’t have kids yet you might not want to have any after reading it. :) ”

5 STARS!  “A genuine horror novel. Okay...here it is. It's pretty simple. I'm an author myself and I could NOT put 'Baby Talk' down. It's a Chiller! Surprise yourself with one of the most haunting, horrific, *not* for babies, DAMNED good read you'll indulge in for a very long while.”

5 STARS! “This book creeped me out! Horror lovers, get it, get it, get it!!!!!!”

5 STARS! “Hahahahaha I love Baby Natasha she’s awesome Neal gets what he deserves I will read this a few more times and my friends, too. lol”

5 STARS! “Insightful and multilayered...I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the characters introduced in this book. The writing style is smooth and flowing. I forgot I was reading most of the time. Mike Wells is a highly skilled storyteller. Well worth the money.”

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

—Mark Twain

PROLOGUE

Neal Becker was standing on a building ledge, a baby in his arms, the wind blowing through his hair.

Nineteen stories below, police cars and mobile news crew vans were surrounding the front of the hi-rise. A fire truck rolled up with a long extension ladder—all the rescue workers were running around like little bugs, looking up at him. Out in the dawn sky, a couple of choppers flew lazily back and forth, keeping their distance but ready to move in on command. Police radios crackled every now and then.

Neal tried not to look down. Sometimes the gusts of wind were strong enough to make him teeter on the ledge. Mostly he just looked out at the rising sun, keeping baby Natasha pressed up against his chest. He thought she was asleep now.

He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. Over a matter of a few days, his life had become a nightmare. The fact that he was causing the movement of all these big, expensive vehicles and all these important people was hard to fathom. He was almost sure he was on TV now—down below, he could see large cameras with zoom lenses aimed at him.

He felt ashamed and humiliated. But also panic-stricken.

He had no idea why he was up on his building, or what he really wanted.

“How’s it going?” a voice said from the right.

Neal turned his head. There was a skinny guy in a blue windbreaker leaning out the window. He gave a relaxed smile, then slung one jean-clad leg over the windowsill and straddled it. He was wearing Docksiders and olive-colored socks. There was a little headset on his right ear, a small microphone curving up to the corner of his mouth.

“Nice view from up here,” he commented, leaning back against the window frame, gazing out at the sunrise. He might have been sitting on a log admiring a tranquil lake somewhere in the mountains.

Neal stared out at the sun. It had turned a bright orange, some long, thin pink clouds stretching out on either side.

“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Becker? My name is Stan, by the way. Stan Saunders.” He paused. “May I call you Neal?”

“There’s nothing you can do for m-me,” Neal said, a gust of wind buffeting him on the last word.

Stan watched him for a long moment. “I’d really like to help you, if I can. Is there something you want me to get for you? Or your daughter?”

Neal felt tears forming in his eyes.

“There’s nothing I want,” he said, fighting to hold his composure.

Neal heard a low grinding noise and glanced down—the fire truck was raising its ladder.

“Tell them to put that ladder down!”

One of the helicopters was moving closer.

“Get that helicopter out of here!” Neal shouted, thrusting Natasha out over the edge. “I’ll drop her, I swear to God!”

He could hear frightened shrieks from down below.

“Back off,” Stan said calmly into a microphone, gesturing to the chopper. “And tell the firemen to lower the ladder.”

Neal looked into little Natasha’s face. She was awake now, turning her head this way and that, but she didn’t seem to realize she was hanging over 19 stories of empty space. How could she? She was only a baby.

“Mr. Becker, why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk for a few minutes.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“No. But I think you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don’t believe you really want to hurt your daughter. Do you?”

Neal felt hot tears running down his face. Of course he didn’t want to hurt little Natasha. He loved her. She was his daughter.

Natasha started crying.

That sound caused a lot of commotion down below.

Neal pulled her back in and hugged her to his chest. “Shhh.”

“Neal, why don’t you hand her to me, so at least she’ll be safe.”

He hesitated, looking down at all the people, all the cameras.

“Come on, give her to me,” Stan said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Neal could see Stan reaching out for her. They were only a few feet away.

“I didn’t kill my mother-in-law!”

“I don’t know anything about that. I’m here because I’m concerned about you and your little girl. Why don’t you just hand her to me?”

Neal turned and looked at Stan. “Don’t you get it? She’s bad, she’s evil.”

Stan looked confused. “Who’s evil?”

“She is!” Neal said, thrusting the baby out again.

Natasha cried louder.

“Take her!” Neal suddenly shouted, offering her to Stan.

As soon as Neal felt the baby being pulled from his hands, he squeezed his eyes shut.

And he jumped.

CHAPTER 1

It all started one sunny April morning, when Neal was standing in the microscopic kitchen of his and Annie’s apartment, waiting for his coffee water to boil. Only a few minutes earlier, he had picked up baby Natasha from her crib and carried her into the kitchen. If it had been up to Neal, he would have been just as happy to let the infant stay where she was and continue to sleep. Annie had an obsessive fear of crib death and insisted that Natasha be watched at all times. She had gone across the street to buy some formula at the supermarket, but she did not leave until she personally witnessed Neal picking up the baby.

He was standing near the stove, the baby cradled in his left arm, staring absently at the little bubbles that start to swirl and dance when water is close to its boiling point.

Natasha made some small movement that caught his attention.

Neal glanced down at her face. Her dark brown, reptilian-looking eyes opened suddenly. In fact, they almost snapped open—this was the only way Neal could describe it later.

The baby stared at Neal with an eerie, almost angry expression, one that he had not witnessed before.

Then, without any hesitation whatsoever, she spoke.

It was as if she had been formulating the short but shocking sentence for some time and had merely been waiting for exactly the right moment to deliver it—a moment in which her young, inexperienced father was still half-asleep.

“I looooove youuuuuuu,” the infant said.

Neal was so taken aback that he almost lost his balance, as well as his grip on his daughter. Staring at her little face with a combination of fear and disbelief, his first impulse was to get the hell away from her. He half-set and half-dropped the child on the counter, then backed up against the kitchen wall, shivering.

“My god,” he muttered in a tremulous whisper, Natasha’s words still whirling in his mind. This wasn’t normal, it couldn’t be. She was only five months old...that was impossible. Neal wondered if he could have imagined the entire incident.

I love you.

Near shuddered again, the words still reverberating in his mind. Her voice had been so strange and creaky-sounding, almost sarcastic. And the image! He could still see Natasha’s inexperienced, infantile mouth crudely twisting out the words. Something about it made his skin crawl.

He gawked unblinkingly at the baby, unable to get a grip on himself. The hair on his arms was standing on end.

But Natasha didn’t say anything more. The angry expression on her little face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

She lay on her back on the countertop where Neal had hastily deposited her, staring up into space, kicking and wiggling the way babies do. It was as if the entire episode never happened.

When Neal heard Annie coming in the front door, he finally snapped out of his paralysis. He glanced in the direction of the living room, then quickly stepped over to the stove and turned off the burner. He wanted to pick up Natasha before Annie came into the kitchen, but he could hardly bring himself to look at the child, let alone touch her.

As soon as Annie entered the room and saw Natasha, she gasped.

“Don’t put the baby on the counter!” she snapped, scooping Natasha up into her arms. “What’s wong, sweetie?” she cooed in baby-talk. “Did Daddy leave ooo on the counter while Mommy went bye-bye?”

Annie turned towards Neal, her black eyebrows furrowed together.

“What’s the matter with you? She could have fallen on the floor!”

“I...she...” was all Neal could manage to say. He ran his hand uncertainly through his sleep-corkscrewed hair, debating whether or not to tell Annie what had happened. But he decided against it—he was sure she wouldn’t believe him.

He pulled a mug from the cupboard and prepared his instant coffee, then sat down in one of their flimsy, vinyl-covered dinette chairs. It squeaked as he did so.

“Well, Neal?” Annie said. “I’m waiting for an explanation. Why did you leave her on the counter?”

Neal did not answer.

Annie made a growl in her throat. “You know better than that. She could fall on the floor and break her neck, or some other bones. Babies have extremely delicate bones, and even the smallest fall can result in a fracture—my books say so. If you’re not careful, she could easily break...”

Neal gazed down at his cup, no longer listening to his 19 year old wife. Some of the instant coffee hadn’t dissolved. He watched the brown grains swirl around and around, like Annie’s lecture.

“She talked,” Neal interrupted, at no point in particular.

Annie’s mouth was still open, mid-sentence. She closed it and stared blankly at Neal. “She what?”

“She talked, Annie.”

Annie glanced down at Natasha, then back at her young husband.

“I know it sounds strange,” he said, “but it’s true.”

Even though such a notion was crazy, Neal could tell she at least wanted to believe him. He knew that some part of Annie was convinced she had given birth to the next Messiah, or, at the very least, a child prodigy who would grow up and change the world. He supposed all mothers held such hopes.

“You mean, ‘ga-ga, goo-goo’?” Annie asked.

“No. I mean words. Real words, Annie.”

She laughed. “I hate to tell you this, Neal, but five month old babies can’t talk.”

“I know.” Neal took another sip of the lousy instant coffee, wishing he had spiked it with a shot or two of whiskey.

Annie watched him for a moment, then apparently decided maybe it wasn’t such a far-fetched notion after all.

“What did she say?” Annie said, with hushed excitement. “What words, exactly?”

Neal let out a laugh, but it sputtered to an uncertain halt. “I love you.”

Annie’s face went slack. “‘I love you?’”

“Yeah.”

Annie let out a cackle that sent chills up Neal’s spine. She looked down at Natasha. “Did ooo tell Daddy that ooo wuv him?”

The baby looked back up at her mother with a vacant expression.

Neal took another sip of his coffee and stared at the floor. He felt like a fool. Over the past few months, he had grown quite accustomed to the feeling.

Cradling Natasha in one arm, Annie open the formula she had bought and began to heat it on the stove. “You need to stop daydreaming, Neal, and get your mind back on your work.” There was a nasty undertone in her voice, one he had not known before they had gotten married. Or had been forced to get married. Neal certainly would not have married Annie under his own free will.

Neal got up and dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink, glancing one last time at Natasha’s little face.

For an instant, their eyes locked. Then, the baby gazed past Neal and flailed her arms around.

“Guhhh,” she gurgled at the ceiling.

As Neal walked out of the kitchen, he vowed to forget what had happened that morning, or what he thought had happened. And he might have, had he not taken that one last glance at Natasha.

When he saw the look on her face during that fleeting instant, his heart had jumped into his throat.

It seemed to be a look of hate.

* * *

Neal pulled his aging Toyota into the parking lot of Snell’s Flowers and sat for a moment with the engine running, savoring his last few moments of freedom. By his watch, it was only 7:57. That meant he still had three precious minutes left before he had to succumb to another long day of ass kissing. He had worked at Snell’s for less than two weeks, but it already seemed like months. He despised every second of it. Here he was, almost a degreed chemist, spending all his time behind the wheel of a white Chevy van with the words “SNELL’S FLOWERS—LET US MAKE SOMEONE’S DAY FOR YOU!” cheerily printed across it. He delivered roses and chrysanthemums and jonquils to people all over the city, happy people who had not taken a wrong turn in their lives, like he had. If Neal had just pulled out of Annie just a millisecond earlier—just one lousy, goddamn millisecond—everything would be different now. Annie wouldn’t have gotten pregnant, Neal wouldn’t have felt obligated to marry her, and she wouldn’t have had the baby. And instead of driving a damn flower truck all over the city, he would be completing the last year of his college degree. After that, medical school.

But, of course, Neal hadn’t pulled out of Annie in time. He had hesitated a fraction of a second to enjoy a little extra pleasure...and boom! His entire world had been turned upside down. Annihilated. One fleeting moment of extra pleasure in exchange for a lifetime of success and happiness.

It just wasn’t fair.

Neal dragged himself out of his car and, just as he locked the door, old man Snell rolled into the parking lot in his big blue Cadillac. He gave Neal a fatherly kind of nod as he glided the huge vehicle into the reserved parking space next to the front door. Two crimson pom-poms were visible in the car’s back window. Buford Snell had been some kind of football hero back when he’d attended University of Georgia. Based on his age and values, Neal figured it must have been back at the time football players wore knee socks, striped shirts, and those thin little leather helmets that looked like bathing caps.

“Early bird catches the worm,” Snell said approvingly as he got out of his car. Neal cringed. Snell and the rest of the his “fambly”—his condescending mother, known as “Grammy,” his matronly sister, his loud-mouthed brother-in-law, all his bratty nieces and nephews—disgusted Neal. However, the feeling was not mutual. Neal was well-liked by all the Snells. This wasn’t surprising, considering the caliber of most of the other delivery boys. Even though the old man claimed to want to hire college students for these jobs, “to hep ‘em out,” most of the other drivers were pathetically poor, inner-city blacks. The reason, Neal had soon discovered, was that Snell refused to pay anyone with a last name different from his own a salary above minimum wage. Most college students just weren’t that desperate.

As a result, most of the drivers were the type who stopped between deliveries to smoke dope, have “quickies” with their girlfriends, and god only knew what else. The entire clan, particularly Grammy, was amazed by Neal’s speed and efficiency. In fact, the first few days his promptness in returning to the shop made Grammy so suspicious that she called a few people on his list to make sure that Neal had actually made the deliveries. Ordinarily, this would have irritated Neal, but it only amused him. He was glad the other delivery boys had a good time while they worked and were taking full advantage of the obnoxious—and oddly naïve—Snell family.

Neal followed old man Snell into the center of the shop, the sickly-sweet aroma of flowers at once making him nauseous. He approached Grammy and started to say good morning, but hesitated when he saw the sour look on her face.

Grammy glanced at Mildred, Snell’s aging wife, and looked back at Neal. “Where’d you go yesterday when you were supposed to be deliverin’ the bouquet to Miz Foster?”

Neal looked from one Snell face to the other. “Why? Is something wrong?”

Grammy glanced at her daughter-in-law again, giving her an I-told-you-so look. “You might say that. She never got ‘em.”

“Well, I delivered them,” Neal said defensively. “I left them on the porch, by the front door.”

“Why’d you go and do that fool thing?” Grammy snapped.

“Because that’s what the order slip said to do.”

“No, sir, it did not. Mr. Foster never wants his wife’s flowers left outside his house—he’s real particular about that.”

“I don’t mean to contradict you,” Neal said carefully, “but I’m almost sure the delivery slip said to leave them on the porch.”

“We’ll just see about that,” Grammy said. She began to shuffle through the mountain of delivery slips from the day before. “You can’t just deliver ‘em any way you please, sonny—you got to look at the slip.”

Mildred gave Neal a doubtful glance and resumed work on a bouquet.

“What’s the problem?” old man Snell said, stepping up behind Neal.

Wonderful, Neal thought, glancing over her shoulder. Not only had the screw-up come to the attention of the old man, but all the other Snells in the shop seemed to be listening.

“Arggh,” Grammy groaned, waving a wiry arm at Neal as if he was a troublesome schoolboy. “Miz Foster called up in a tizzy this morning ‘cause her flowers didn’t get delivered.”

Neal started to say something in his own defense, but then thought the better of it. He would wait until Grammy located the evidence. He was almost certain that the box on the slip that said IF NOT HOME, LEAVE OUTSIDE DOOR was checked with one of Grammy’s precise little X’s, but after what had happened earlier with his baby daughter that morning, Neal wasn’t completely sure of anything.

“The Fosters are one of our best customers, son,” the old man said.

“I know,” Neal said.

“I went to school with Dan Foster—he was one of my fraternity brothers. He’s one of the most successful lawyers in town.”

Neal only nodded. He had heard this at least three times the day before. The whole family seemed to pride themselves on how many people—important people—they knew in the Atlanta area. Neal found this a bit ironic, because he had a hard time imagining anyone in high society having much respect for the Snells, especially the old man. Neal rated himself at least twenty rungs above Buford Snell in terms of intelligence, integrity, and overall class. Regardless of Neal’s current dilemma, he was certain that he would be in charge of something a lot more significant than a flower shop when he was sixty years old.

“Here it is!” Grammy said victoriously, holding the delivery slip in the air. But when the old woman squinted at the yellow piece of paper through her glasses, her expression went flat. “Well...I’ll be. I could have sworn I...”

The old woman glanced at Mildred, miffed, and then a broad, toothy grin broke across her leathery face. She beamed at Neal as if he were her own son. “You were just as right as you could be. I’m so proud of you!”

Neal forced a smile. They were amazed that he actually had the brains and reliability of a ten year old. What do you expect? he wanted to say. I’m not a moron—I can read English.

Old man Snell placed a warm hand on Neal’s shoulder. “That’s good work, son.” He winked at Grammy, clearly pleased that his latest U of G hire had proved to be so remarkable.

Neal began to load up the van with his morning deliveries, only vaguely aware of the meaningless chatter of Grammy and Mildred and the other Snells while he worked. He had to get another job, a real job, as soon as possible. He not only needed to make some decent money, he needed to be around some halfway intelligent people. And as soon as he found a better position and accumulated a little cash, he would start knocking off some night classes and finish his chemistry degree. Maybe he could still swing medical school, if he could stabilize life with Annie and the baby.

But as he drove to his first delivery, his optimism faded. He was still troubled by what had happened with Natasha that morning.

I love you, he thought.

He remembered the long, heated battles he and Annie had over what to do about her unexpected pregnancy, with Neal arguing adamantly for an abortion. It was hardly an ideal solution to the problem, but to him, it was the only one that made any sense. Neither one of them were prepared to start a family. In Neal’s mind, it was better for him to finish all his education and get his medical career started before they had any children.

But Annie wouldn’t have it. Once she found out she was pregnant, she seemed hell-bent on giving birth to the child and keeping it, no matter what the price. She had finally told Neal that she would have the baby and raise it herself, and he could just do whatever he pleased. And, if not for his own history, he might have done just that. When Neal was 12, his older sister, Rhonda, had gotten pregnant, and he had spent his entire teenage years listening to what a “selfish prick” the father of the baby had been, some slick insurance salesman who disappeared as soon as Rhonda had missed her first period.

How could Neal do the same thing to Annie?

The answer was, he could not, and live with himself. If his family hadn’t known about the situation, he might have gotten away with it, but he had made the mistake of consulting his mother about the matter. “You need to do the right thing, Neal,” she had told him, and it was quite clear what she had meant by this. When he had turned to his father, whom he hadn’t seen more than a half dozen times since elementary school, the advice Neal got was, “Do whatever the hell you want, boy. But if you’re gonna screw up your life by getting married, you’re on your own.” That meant that he would no longer help Neal with his college tuition.

In the end, against all Neal’s better judgment and his deepest wishes for his own life and his future, he had finally married Annie. No fancy wedding, no honeymoon, not even any wedding rings—he couldn’t afford them. Just a little ceremony downtown at the Justice of the Peace. Afterwards, Neal went back to his dorm room and slept by himself, since they didn’t even have their own apartment then. He figured that he could make it all work, somehow.

But he had obviously been wrong.

He regretted that extra millisecond of pleasure more than he had ever regretted anything in his life.

“I love you,” Neal muttered, as he pulled the Snell van into the parking lot of his first delivery. “I doubt it, Natasha. I doubt it very much.”

CHAPTER 2

A little after eleven, in between two of his deliveries, Neal stopped at a bookstore to see if he could ease his mind about the incident with Natasha. No matter what Annie said, Neal still couldn’t believe he had imagined it.

He found a pretty young clerk working at the front desk. He asked her where the baby books were located.

“This way,” the girl said, with a knowing smile. As Neal followed her across the store, Neal puzzled over this. But by the time they reached the Family and Parenthood Section, he understood.

“The pregnancy books are right here,” the girl told him, with another little smile.

“I already have a baby,” Neal said irritably. “I just need to look something up.”

“Whatever,” she said, and briskly walked away.

“Stupid,” Neal mumbled, more to himself that to her. Why was he so embarrassed about having a kid? He was young, but so were a lot of fathers. But maybe he wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe he was just angry about it. Still angry.

He picked up a book called You and Your Newborn and flipped through the glossary, scanning for any entries that might point him to information about speech development. Annie had a whole library of similar books at home, but Neal had hardly glanced at any of them. He and Annie had completely different opinions about the basic nature of children and their process of evolving into adults. Annie was of the “blank slate” school of thinking—she regarded babies as nothing more than human computers, born ready and waiting to be programmed by their parents and by society, with no prior personality or ability to think or act on their own. As a result, she had an almost paranoid attitude about every little interaction she had with Natasha, afraid that the slightest “mistake” would screw up the poor kid for life.

In contrast, Neal believed that children come into the world already possessing a certain level of mind and spirit, with their personalities at least partially formed, and therefore are much more self-sufficient—and self-directed—than many people thought these days. His own mother had convinced him of this fact. Neal and his older brother, Kevin, were total opposites. Neal was quiet, intellectual, and somewhat introverted, whereas Kevin was rambunctious, outgoing, and barely made it through a two-year college. Their mother had always said this difference was evident long before either of them were born. Neal barely moved inside his mother’s womb, while Kevin kicked so violently that, at times, she was afraid he might do some internal damage.

Neal finally located a section in the book on speech development. He read it carefully. Most babies, it said, begin to “vocalize” between 8 and 10 months, and usually after 12 to 14 months begin to form “meaningful word combinations.” The book went on to say, in a very reassuring tone, that many children begin speech much later than this, and that such tardiness is not a reflection of a lack of intelligence, potential for success, or any other measure. Some children simply begin the speech process later than others.

Neal picked up a few other books and read essentially the same thing in them. He soon realized that he would not find the information he was truly after. It was clear that all of these books were written to pacify the Annies of the world, mothers and fathers who were worrying about when their babies “should” start talking and then what to do to correct a tardiness problem. None of the books addressed the subject of unusually early speech. And why should they? Most parents would be delighted at this development. Instead of consulting their baby books or their pediatricians, they would rush out to brag to all their friends.

Neal sighed and picked up the first book again, rereading the beginning of the passage on speech. Most children begin vocalizing at 8 to 10 months and putting together meaningful word combinations at 12 to 14 months.

“Eight to ten months,” Neal murmured.

His kid had already put together a “meaningful word combination” at five months.

What the hell did that mean?

Neal put the book back on the shelf, contemplating this question as he walked out of the store. He finally decided it could only mean two things. Either he had imagined the entire incident with Natasha, in which case he probably needed to make another trip to the bookstore, but this time to the Self Help section. Or, it meant that his theory about children coming into the world with a certain level of mind and spirit was much more accurate than he thought.

* * *

Mother and daughter were lying side by side in bed, sleeping peacefully. Annie drifted in and out of consciousness, relishing the quiet, but still disturbed by what had happened that morning with Neal. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be funny. A five-month old baby saying “I love you!” How ridiculous!

Annie raised her head and peered at Natasha’s little face. “It’s just silly, isn’t it thweetie?” She barely whispered the words, not daring to wake the child. Annie had read that it wasn’t good to interrupt an infant’s normal sleeping pattern, that it might cause insomnia or other sleeping disorders later in life.

Annie gave a quiet sigh and lay her head back down on her pillow, staring blankly out the window. A part of her wanted to believe what Neal had told her. She supposed that was normal, that every mother probably wanted to think of her baby as extraordinary or gifted. But she just couldn’t believe that Natasha had spoken. The very idea of it was ludicrous! It was only Neal’s over-active imagination, fueled by his guilt over his own attitude and behavior towards Natasha. That was the sad part. It was clear from the very beginning that Neal hated Natasha and blamed everything on her—his decision to get married (what do you expect when you get someone pregnant!), having to quit school (temporarily, so he could get a job and work for a living a support his family, like most people!), and being cut off from his father (no great loss!). The thought that he imagined Natasha telling him that she loved him was...well, just pathetic.

Annie wasn’t much of an intellectual, but she had an intuitive sense of psychology, even Neal admitted that. She had learned a lot from reading magazine articles. There was one article, called Projecting Our Hidden Selves, that had stuck in her mind, mainly because it made her think of Neal so many times while she was reading it. Today, after he had left for work, the gist of it had come back to her. The article had explained that when a strong part of your personality was repressed, it would grow more and more powerful until it forced you to look it right in the face. Annie didn’t fully understand it as she was reading it. But now, it seemed crystal clear to her. And she was certain that the process it described was exactly what had been happening to Neal.

Somewhere hidden deep down inside of him, there was another Neal, a Neal who was vulnerable and caring and loving, a Neal who desperately needed her and Natasha just as much as they needed him. She had glimpsed that part of him only a few times, mostly at the beginning of their relationship (how could she have fallen in love with him otherwise?), but now it had almost disappeared, buried somewhere inside him. And now, that hidden part of him had gained such strength that it had projected itself onto Natasha, making him believe that the little infant had actually told him that she loved him!

Annie started to feel sick. She sat upright in the bed, afraid she might throw up. The room seemed to spin around and around.

This wasn’t a marriage...it was a nightmare.

Annie touched her hand to her queasy stomach. She needed some Pepto-Bismal. Natasha was still sleeping peacefully, so Annie quietly got up out of the bed. She paused at the door and gazed at her lovely child again, then looked up at the telephone. It was only inches away from Natasha’s head, on the night stand, but the receiver was still off the hook, so it couldn’t ring and wake her up.

Satisfied that all was in order, Annie padded through the living room and into the kitchen. She took a swig of the pink stomach settler out of the bottle. It had become her breakfast of choice during the first few weeks of her pregnancy, when she developed morning sickness and didn’t want Shellie, her nosy roommate at that time, to know about it.

Annie wiped her mouth and put the bottle back in the cupboard. In a matter of minutes, her stomach had stopped gurgling. Then he realized she was hungry. She opened the refrigerator door. There was a half-full carton of chocolate milk on the middle shelf. Annie eyed it with such lust it felt almost sexual. What had happened to her willpower?

She glanced down at her flabby figure, hidden underneath her tattered yellow housecoat. Her appearance now was disgusting, she knew. It was no wonder that Neal didn’t seem interested in having sex with her anymore. Her breasts were shriveled and sad-looking, from constantly nursing Natasha. But they had never been very big. This not only made her feel unattractive as a woman, it made her feel inadequate as a mother. They were so small she had to use store-bought formula as supplement most of the time.

Before she had gotten pregnant, though, she had felt comfortable with her body—she was in almost perfect shape. She had even won second place at a “best suntan” contest at the Buckhead Beach Club. In fact, if she hadn’t participated in that fateful contest, she and Neal probably wouldn’t have met. Neal had approached her afterwards and made some small talk, obviously trying to pick her up. One thing led to another, and she’d ended up spending the night with him. This was something that she had never done before, sleeping with someone so quickly, but with Neal, everything just “clicked.” Until she had found out she was pregnant, at least.

Annie stood in front of the open refrigerator for several minutes, trying to control herself, but finally grabbed the carton of chocolate milk and took a few hungry gulps. As soon as she took the carton away from her lips, she was angry with herself.

She plopped down on one of the squeaky dinette chairs. As she did this, she noticed that her hind quarters seemed to cover a little more of the seat than it had a month ago. Annie had always been a little pear-shaped, a fact Neal seemed to like (he used to say he liked her “bubble butt”). But now, she looked a little like her mother. No, that wasn’t true—Annie couldn’t insult her mother like that. Her mother looked better than she did. At 48!

But what could Annie, or anyone, expect? Now she was living her life for her baby daughter, not for herself. She had no time for nightly workouts or Weight Watchers or spending any time making herself “beautiful.” The most important thing in her life was Natasha—her precious baby was all that mattered. She wanted to make sure that her daughter grew up in a healthy environment and didn’t get messed up like so many other kids she had known. And like she’d been messed up herself.

Annie glanced down at the chocolate milk carton in her hand. There was no doubt in her mind that her weight problems were her mother’s fault. Who wouldn’t have problems with obesity, growing up in a house like that! Her mother drank chocolate milk like it was water, packed the kitchen full of potato chips and cookies and crackers and all kinds of other fattening (but oh so tasty!) goodies. She honestly didn’t know how her mom managed to keep her weight halfway under control eating like that all those years.

Unable to resist the urge, Annie finished off the last of the chocolate milk. Maybe she had weight problems, but Natasha wouldn’t. She would be careful not to set such a bad example for her own daughter.

When she got up and opened the cabinet under the sink to throw the empty carton away, she gasped.

A little brown mouse had darted past her and then disappeared under the refrigerator.

“Damn!” Annie hissed, clutching the empty milk carton to her racing heart.

She glanced uneasily around the tiny kitchen, her skin tingling. What a poor excuse for a home! She had called the apartment manager twice already about the mice, but the lazy woman hadn’t done a thing about it. Neal had bought some little boxes of rat poison at the grocery store and left them out under the sink and behind the refrigerator, but they didn’t seem to do any good. Living in these conditions was just plain unacceptable. She would call the manager again as soon as Natasha woke up. And she would give the lady a piece of her mind!

Annie sat back down in the dinette chair, shaking. Through the doorway to the living room she could see her broken up reflection—her fat reflection—in the tile mirrors some previous tenant had glued to the wall in a vain attempt to make the tiny apartment look bigger. The tiles were supposed to look fancy—they had fake gold veins running through them to give a marble-like effect—but she thought they just looked cheap. Like everything else in the depressing place.

Annie crossed her arms on the little dinette table and set her head between them, the way she used to back in high school.

And she began to weep.

CHAPTER 3

Neal returned to the flower shop just after one o’clock to pick up his afternoon orders. Grammy was still out to lunch, but she had left his stack of delivery slips on her desk. On top was a pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT telephone message sheet, as usual. Annie called him at least once each day to tell him what to buy at the grocery store on the way home. It always humiliated him to receive such messages at work—he would never be comfortable with this “young husband” routine.

Neal didn’t bother to read the message, quickly shoving it and the rest of the stack of paper into his jacket pocket. As he began to load the van with the deliveries, Mildred appeared at her desk and gave him an odd little smile, as if they shared some juicy secret.

What was that all about? Neal thought, as he carried his next load of flowers out to the van. He glanced down at his shirt, then his pants, wondering if maybe his fly was open.

Then he remembered the pink message slip.

Maybe it hadn’t been from Annie after all. But who else could be calling him at Snell’s Flowers? He hadn’t worked there long enough to give anyone but Annie the phone number.

He dug the pink paper out of his jacket pocket. His eyes were immediately drawn down to the MESSAGE portion of the note.

As he read the words that were written there, his eyes widened.

I love you.

Neal looked back up at the FROM line.

Baby Natasha, it said, in Grammy’s precise little script.

“Holy Christ,” he said, half-choking on the words. All at once, his legs felt rubbery.

“You allright, son?” a deep voice said from behind him. It sounded far away. Neal teetered, dropping the entire stack of delivery slips on the pavement.

Old man Snell watched closely as Neal scrambled to collect the slips before the wind got hold of them. Neal snatched up the pink one and pushed it into the middle of the stack.

“I thought you were going to keel over there for a second,” Snell said, with a casual chuckle. But when Neal looked up at him, he could see that the big man looked genuinely concerned, and suspicious.

“I lost my balance, that’s all.” Neal shoved the stack of papers back into the pocket of his jacket, then managed a relaxed laugh and patted his stomach. “I guess I ate a little too much at lunch.”

“That’ll do it sometimes,” Snell said, but his pale blue eyes told Neal he didn’t believe the excuse.

Neal turned back to the van, but Snell remained behind him.

“You aren’t on any kind of...medication, are you son?”

“No sir,” Neal said quickly, turning to face him again.

“You know it would be very dangerous for you to operate a ve-hi-cle like this under the influence of any kind of drug.”

“I know. I’m not on drugs.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to say you were,” Snell said, though he seemed glad that Neal had been so direct. “I just thought you might be takin’ anti-histamines or somethin’ like that.” He paused. “See, I’m an ex-athlete, and I know somethin’ about this sort of thing...”

“I’m not taking any kind of drugs, prescription or otherwise.”

“Well, that’s good, son. Drugs don’t do a man a bit of good. Not one bit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Snell gave one of his fatherly nods. He eyed Neal for another short moment, then walked back into the shop.

Neal finished loading up the van as quickly as he could, avoiding eye contact with anyone. He became more and more angry. By the time he finished and drove the van away, it took all his self-control not to screech the tires at every turn. That goddamn Annie! Her stupid joke had almost cost him his job! Not to mention making him look like an idiot, having his little girl calling him at work, leaving gooey messages. Thank God they didn’t know much about his family—he had only told the old man that he was married and had a child, nothing more specific than that. If they knew Natasha was a five-month old infant, Annie’s little joke would have blown up in her face. He was sure that the Snell’s weren’t the type of people who would approve of telephone pranks, especially coming from an employee’s wife.

Boy, Neal would let Annie have it when he got home!

* * *

Annie sat up with a start. She was still sitting at the dinette table, a small puddle of drool where her head had been resting. She reached up and touched her forehead—it was slick with sweat.

The dream she had been having came rushing back at her. She was working in some huge, futuristic factory, and there had been some kind of emergency (a radiation leak?) and everyone was in a panic. An alarm was blaring throughout the massive complex, but she couldn’t escape—thousands of faceless male workers (was she the only female?) were jamming up all the exits, not pushing or shoving, but just pressing hard against each other, so hard that she couldn’t breathe.

Now that she was awake, she could still hear the alarm in her mind.

She turned her head towards the bedroom, realizing that the sound might not have just been in her head—she knew it well. It was the raucous beep-beep-beep tone that the telephone makes after you’ve left it off the hook for a couple of minutes.

She rushed into the bedroom to check on Natasha.

To her relief, she found her daughter alive and well. The baby was staring up at mobile above her crib, her tiny fingers slowly wiggling back and forth, as if she was trying to grasp the plastic, multicolored fish that were slowly circling above her head.

“Is my baby o-tay?” Annie said, scooping Natasha up in her arms. She was wracked with guilt over falling asleep and neglecting her child. That was how crib death happened!

Natasha just grinned back at Annie, completely unaware of any danger, past, present or future. A rivulet of spittle ran down her chin and onto the orange baby jumper that Annie’s mother had given her, with Natasha’s name embroidered across it.

Annie kissed the child’s little forehead, then glanced at the telephone. It was, of course, still off the hook, just the way she had left it.

Cradling the baby in one arm, Annie picked up the receiver and listened. It was completely dead, just like it always was after the beep-beep-beep noise stopped. The sound must have just been in her dream, only—she had been leaving the phone off the hook almost every day since Natasha was born, and it had never made that raucous beep-beep-beep noise twice. It only did that for a minute or two after she took it off the hook, and then became silent. Like it was now.

Annie placed the receiver back in its cradle and carried the baby into the kitchen. When she saw the time, she gasped. It was almost one o’clock! She thought she had only been asleep for a couple of minutes, and it had been almost an hour.

As she prepared lunch, she decided that her unconscious mind had created the sound, as well as the dream surrounding it, to wake her up so she could go check on Natasha. Some part of her knew she had slept too long and decided to get her attention, and with a sound that she associated with the baby.

Wasn’t the human mind interesting?

* * *

It was almost 6:15 when Neal got home from work—it took him over an hour to drive what should have been a half hour commute, maximum, from the flower shop in Buckhead to the apartment on Roswell Road. The Atlanta rush hour traffic was appalling, and fighting his way through it, after spending an entire day on the road, always worsened his mood.

When he came in the front door, he found Annie sitting on the couch, reading some women’s magazine, and, as always, munching on potato chips and drinking chocolate milk. Natasha was asleep, sitting beside Annie in her baby seat.

Neal slammed the door shut behind him. “What you did today was very, very stupid, Annie.”

The baby’s eyes opened. She immediately started crying.

“Neal!” Annie hissed. “Why did you have to slam the door? You woke her up!”

Annie quickly set the potato chips and chocolate milk down beside the couch, out of Natasha’s sight, and then picked up the wailing baby. “There, there sweetie...shhh...everything’s o-tay.”

Natasha was soon quiet, looking up at Neal, her eyes locked on his face.

“I don’t appreciate it, Annie,” Neal said. “I don’t appreciate it one damn bit!”

Natasha made some gurgling sounds, but Neal ignored her.

“What in the world are you talking about, Neal?”

“As if you don’t know,” Neal laughed. “You’re on my fucking back all the time about getting a good job, and then you do something that could get me fired!”

“Don’t use language like that around Natasha.”

Neal motioned angrily to the baby. “She can’t understand a damn thing I say.”

Natasha made another gurgling noise.

Neal slung his jacket and the afternoon paper into one of the easy chairs. The paper slid off the plastic covering and onto the floor, which only made Neal more furious. Annie didn’t want to remove the protective plastic from the shoddy furniture they rented, afraid the company wouldn’t take it back later, when she and Neal had enough money to buy their own furniture. That was a laugh! Neal was certain that all of the rented junk would be worn out—plastic and all—long before then.

“She can too understand,” Annie said. “Babies can understand a lot of things, even from inside the womb. My books say so.”

“Your books,” Neal said sulkily. “You wouldn’t know how to wipe Natasha’s butt without those damn books.”

Annie’s face turned pink. “What’s the matter with you? I didn’t do anything!”

“Oh, no, you didn’t do anything. Just called me at work and left an idiotic message that nearly got me fired.”

“I didn’t call you at work today. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you did.”

“I did not!”

“Well, then I suppose she left the message,” Neal said, motioning to Natasha.

Annie glanced at the baby, then looked back at Neal. “What on earth are you talking about? What message?”

“‘I love you,’” Neal said sarcastically. “Signed, Baby Natasha. Cute, Annie. Very cute.”

“Baby Natasha?” Annie laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” Neal said firmly, but he was beginning to feel off balance. “It’s not funny, Annie. It almost cost me my job.”

Annie opened her mouth to say something, but shut it and just stared at him. There was a sad look in her eyes.

“What?” Neal said.

“I’m worried about you.”

He let out a short, nervous laugh. “What do you think, I’m imagining it?”

Annie broke eye contact with him. “Five month old babies can’t talk, Neal. I looked in my books today and— “

“Your goddamn books don’t mean a thing! Can’t you ever think for yourself?”

“Shhh! You’re scaring her!”

Natasha had stopped moving and was looking at Neal with her strange, reptilian eyes, her mouth half open. The expression on her face seemed to be a combination of confusion, fear, and curiosity. Annie hugged her against her shoulder, turning the baby’s face away from him.

Neal said, “You act like that damn baby is made of china. She’s not going to break into a million pieces just because somebody raises their voice.”

“You’re not just raising your voice, Neal. You’re yelling.”

“Well, so what if I am! People have been yelling for millions of years, and I haven’t ever heard of a baby dying from it.”

“Maybe not dying, but getting messed up from it later.”

Neal looked at Annie for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m getting a beer.”

“Good. Maybe it’ll calm you down.”

“I am calm,” Neal said over his shoulder. He opened the refrigerator and tore a can of beer from a half-used six pack. “I’m surprised you don’t keep the beer in a paper bag, so Natasha can’t see it. No telling what it might do to her later on.”

“What?” Annie called.

“Nothing,” Neal muttered. He popped the top and guzzled a few cold swallows, then noticed a bent up fork that was lying beside the sink. He picked it up and shook his head. She couldn’t even load the goddamn dishwasher right! At least half of the cheap silverware they had bought at Wal-Mart had fallen down to the bottom of it and been bent all to hell by the spray rotor. But that didn’t matter, not to Annie. If it wasn’t directly connected to Natasha in some way, it was of no importance.

Neal took another swig of beer and sat down in one of the dinette chairs. When he did so, it gave another one of its annoying squeaks—he only weighed 170 pounds, but it would barely support him. All the furniture in the apartment was nothing but cheap rubbish, rented at exorbitant prices from one of those companies that prey on young people who have no cash or credit. The only decent thing in the place was Neal’s trophy case, which was in the bedroom. He had moved it down from Louisville, from his mother’s house, over the summer. He hadn’t known exactly why he had wanted to bring it back to Atlanta with him—maybe it just reminded him of the “good old days” back in high school, when he played tennis and golf and basketball every afternoon, before he was so burdened with adult responsibilities.

But even that little project had met with disaster. He had first put the trophy case in the living room, but then decided it would look better in the bedroom, because it didn’t really go very well with all the plastic-covered furniture. While he was sliding it across the floor, one of the trophies—his favorite trophy—had fallen off and broken.

It was a first prize award he won in a tennis championship his junior year in high school. On top was a man who was swinging his racquet overhead, as if leaping to serve the ball. The end of the racquet had snapped off when the heavy trophy had slammed into the hardwood floor. Neal had been furious, blaming it on the baby, who was crying so loudly that he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. Later, he felt guilty. He knew it was his own fault for not taking all the trophies out of the case again before he moved it. Annie had actually told him to do this, but he hadn’t listened to her. He tried in vain to glue the trophy back together.

Neal sighed and gulped down some more of his beer. He supposed none of that mattered. Playing sports and winning trophies were now a thing of the past.

Annie appeared at the kitchen doorway, the baby in her arms.

“Who gave you the message at work?”

“The old lady. Grammy.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“She didn’t say anything. It was a message slip.”

“Oh. Well, what did it say?”

“I already told you, Annie.”

“‘I love you. From Baby Natasha?’”

“Yeah,” Neal said, taking another swallow of beer.

“Where is it?”

Neal reached for his shirt pocket, but then remembered he had thrown it away. “I don’t have it anymore.”

Annie looked skeptical. “Uh-huh.”

Neal felt his blood pressure rising. “I tore the damn thing up and threw it away, Annie! I didn’t want to leave it laying around for somebody else to see—it was bad enough as it was.”

Annie nodded, but the skeptical look was still there. “Maybe one of the people you work with did it, as a joke.”

“Why in the world would they do that? I haven’t told anyone else about what happened this morning. You’re the only person who knows.” Neal glared at his wife for a few seconds. “That means, wifey dearest, that it had to be you.”

“Or you.”

Neal did not speak for a moment. “What do you mean by that?”

“I think you know what I mean, Neal.” Annie retrieved the baby seat, put Natasha in it, and began to prepare dinner.

Neal went into the living room, so angry he was shaking. He picked up the paper off the floor and began to scour the classified ads for a new job. This was a nightly ritual—this and driving to the library to use the Internet to search the online job listings, as they could no longer afford such “luxuries” as an online connection or even cable TV. Or even a cell phone! At the beginning of the summer, when school had ended, he thought he might be able to find a position in which he could use his knowledge of chemistry—maybe an opening for a lab technician or analyst. But he had nearly given up hope. No one wanted to hire a chemist who “almost” had a college degree. The market was saturated with plenty of qualified applicants.

After his routine perusal, he chucked the paper into the chair beside him. This time, it did not slide off the plastic covering.

“Nothing new?” Annie said from the kitchen door.

“No,” Neal said softly. He gazed at the baby, who he could see through the doorway, sitting in her baby seat. She seemed to be gazing back at him.

Neal could hear a skillet sizzling and popping on the stove. From the aroma, he knew Annie was making fried chicken, his favorite meal. She knew how to prepare it exactly the way he liked it, crisp but without much grease. At least she could cook halfway well.

“Is the delivery job really that bad?” Annie said.

“Well...no. I guess not. At least I don’t have to be around those Snell bozos very much. I spend ninety percent of my time on the road. But it’s minimum wage, Annie. We can’t live on that.”

“I know,” she said. Neal hoped she might feel guilty, but if she did, her face didn’t show it. She refused to consider the idea of working again herself until Natasha was old enough to go to school. Neal actually admired Annie’s resolve to devote all her time and attention to the baby—he didn’t think that leaving infants in day care centers, with total strangers, was a good idea. But he didn’t think it was smart to raise kids in substandard conditions, either. And what about money for Natasha’s education? Where would that come from? Out of the sky? But Neal had grown tired of that discussion, and he knew Annie had, too. Whenever they got into it, he always ended up feeling like the “selfish prick” insurance salesman who had knocked up his sister.

“I have to find something that pays more,” he said. “And something that’s more mentally stimulating. If I don’t, I’m going to go fu—I mean, I’m going to go stir crazy.”

At that instant, Natasha let out a “gaaaaa-oooooh” that was loud enough to drown out the sizzling and popping of the chicken. Neal and Annie both laughed.

Annie picked Natasha up out of her baby seat and brought her back to the doorway.

“What did you tay, honey?” Annie said, tickling her chin. “Tay tometing for Mommy and Daddy.”

Natasha smiled and worked her mouth, but no sound came out.

Annie looked at Neal sympathetically. “Don’t you think you might have just imagined that she said ‘I love you’? That sounded a lot like it a minute ago.”

“I didn’t imagine it,” Neal said defensively. “She said it loud and clear, all three words: I—love—you.”

Annie nodded, but Neal could tell she no more believed him than if he had told her that Natasha had played duplicate bridge with him that afternoon.

Neal saw a flicker of light behind Annie, and he smelled something burning. “Annie, I think your chicken’s on fire.”

“Oh!” she said, rushing back into the kitchen.

Neal got up from the couch and followed her. Annie quickly set Natasha down in her baby seat, then reached for the handle of the flaming skillet.

“Don’t!” Neal said. He took a dishtowel off the counter and moved the skillet over to the sink.

While Annie tried to save the chicken, Neal went over to Natasha. The little baby looked up at him and slowly kicked her feet, like she was riding a tiny bicycle. Neal didn’t touch her very much, but now, he had an impulse to grab her bare foot. Which he did. The tiny foot felt strange in his hand, hot and clammy, like the paw of some furry animal.

Natasha’s eyes remained fixed on Neal’s face. He watched her for a long moment, feeling a little uneasy. He relaxed a little and smiled at her.

Her mouth opened.

At first, Neal thought she was going to speak to him again. Instead, some yellowish goo bubbled out and ran down her chin.

Neal backed away. “Annie, Natasha’s—”

Annie turned around, saw what was happening, and scooped Natasha up into her arms. She picked up a dishtowel and cleaned the baby’s face with it.

Natasha’s tiny brown eyes remained with Neal’s, her expression oddly distant.

He took another step back from her, wondering if the yellowish goo had been served up especially for him.

CHAPTER 4

Neal awoke sometime in the middle of the night, his bladder full. This had always been a normal occurrence for him, but now, he was drinking a beer (well, sometimes two or three beers) every night, and he was waking up more often.

He peered in the direction of the night stand to check the time. As always, Annie had left the telephone off the hook, and the receiver was blocking the view of the alarm clock. But Neal was sure it could not have been past 2:00 am. The baby woke up every night around that time to be nursed, and Neal had never managed to sleep through the clamorous process.

He lay there for a couple of minutes, debating about whether to get up and go to the toilet or try to ignore the dull ache in his groin and go back to sleep. He finally opted for the latter. But as soon as he closed his eyes, he became aware of the room’s unusual quiet. Normally, he could hear both Annie and the baby breathing. At this particular moment, however, he could only hear the far-away sound of traffic on Roswell Road.

Neal rolled over in Annie’s direction and listened more carefully. She was facing the other way and he still could not hear her, or the baby, breathing.

He moved his head closer to Annie’s.

At last, he heard the slow, gentle sound of inhalation and exhalation. His wife was a heavy sleeper—sometimes when the baby woke up for her nightly feeding, Neal would literally have to shake Annie awake. He thought it a bit odd for a mother so concerned about her child’s well being to allow herself to fall into such a deeply unconscious state.

Neal sat up in the bed and peered across the room, at Natasha’s crib. It was positioned at an angle between the window and Neal’s trophy case, an arrangement that gave Annie the easiest access to it in the dark, and also minimized the chances of Neal slamming into it during his nightly treks to the bathroom. Neal could barely make out the crib’s shadowy form in the darkness. He strained his ears and listened for any sound that might be coming from it, breathing or otherwise.

But there was not a peep.

Now, he was starting to worry about crib death.

Neal quietly slipped out of bed. As he stepped onto the cool hardwood floor, the room appeared to teeter slightly—the effects of the three beers he had drunk before dinner hadn’t quite worn off.

He paused briefly to steady himself, then took a step towards the crib.

When his right foot came down, a hot streak of pain had shot up through the sole—it felt like he had stepped on an ice pick.

Neal screamed.

He lost his balance, falling away from the crib and landing on the floor, on Annie’s side of the bed. He slammed against the hardwood with such force that the entire room shook, the glass in the trophy case rattling. His left shoulder took the brunt of the impact. For a precious instant, there was only numbness, but then a wave of pain rose and crested through his shoulder that was so intense he thought he might pass out.

“Shit!” he gasped.

Annie turned on the lamp beside the bed. The baby started crying.

“What happened?” she said, in a panicky screech, one reserved for baby-related emergencies.

“My foot,” Neal grunted.

He was still on the floor, writhing around in pain, alternating between gasping and struggling to see what had impaled him. Whatever it was, it was still lodged in his foot. As Neal squirmed, the heavy, offending object banged and scraped across the floor.

“Oh my God!” Annie gasped.

Neal rolled over onto his side, onto his good shoulder, and stared at his left foot. His tennis trophy was dangling from it, the one that had broken when he had moved the trophy case into the bedroom. The top of the trophy—the sharp, jagged end of the broken-off tennis racquet—was buried deep in his flesh, imbedded in the tendons.

“Shit!” Neal yelled again. But this time, he could hear cold fear in his voice. In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see the minute details of the tennis trophy’s sheared off racquet—the crook about halfway down the shaft, the jagged spirals of metal that fanned out from the end, the little patches of rust...

“Get it out of me!” Neal shouted, over the incessant wailing of the baby.

Annie leaped down onto the floor, a terror-stricken look on her face. She reached for the trophy but couldn’t seem to decide how or where to take hold of it.

“Jesus!” Neal said in frantic frustration, shoving himself upright on the floor. Another wave of pain crested in his shoulder. Bright red blood ran down the trophy’s side and dripped steadily onto the floor. He started to grab the base of the trophy with his hand, then changed his mind and pressed on it with his good foot, holding its heavy base against hardwood.

Neal closed his eyes and braced himself.

In one quick but agonizing motion, he yanked his foot away from the metal object, letting out a grunt that sounded more animal than human. He passed out for a few seconds. What he saw when he opened his eyes, he would never forget. His foot flung out a thick spray of blood that splashed across Annie’s ashen face. She looked like someone in a horror film who had just witnessed a slashing.

But the image just beyond her was far more disturbing. Over the top rail of the crib, two dark eyes were watching him. He could see the top of Natasha’s fuzzy head and her two tiny, paw-like hands gripping the wooden rail. The eyes seemed completely vacant, yet there was a feeling that they conveyed in that fleeting moment that Neal could only interpret as...satisfaction.

Neal screamed, screamed like he never had before in his life.

Annie clasped her hands to her cheeks, smearing her face crimson, unaware that Neal’s blood had splashed across it. She stared at his foot, her eyes wide with horror. There was a puffy, gaping hole in its sole, about the size of a dime. Blood was spurting out of it, forming a puddle on the floor.

“Ambulance!” Annie blurted. “We have to call an ambulance!”

She leaped up from the bed and took a step towards the night stand. Instead of the hardwood, she stepped on Neal’s left hand and cried “Ow!” (something that Neal would later remember and find darkly amusing) and began fumbling with the telephone. But at that moment, Neal barely heard or saw any of this—he was still in shock. He looked back over at the crib, but Natasha had disappeared—her head and hands were no longer visible.

“What’s wrong with this damn thing!” Annie said frantically. She was punching 9-1-1 into the telephone over and over again, the receiver to her ear.

Neal finally came to his senses. “It’s dead, Annie. You left it off the hook. You have to hang up and wait until...oh, never mind!”

“What?” she said, rattled.

“Just hang up, Annie. I don’t need an ambulance. I’m not dying.”

Annie hesitated, staring down at his bleeding foot—it was still gushing blood. “But you have to go to a hospital!”

“Maybe I do, but you’re not going to get anybody on that phone until you hang up for a minute and get a dial tone.”

Annie lowered the receiver, but did not hang up. She was still staring at Neal’s foot. For a second, he thought she would throw up.

“Get me a towel, for God’s sake.”

“You need to wash it out,” she said, glancing at the blood-drenched trophy. It was lying on its side, a few feet away from Neal, between him and the crib.

“I know, but I don’t want to get blood all over everything.”

“But—”

“Just do it, Annie!”

She started to hang up the phone, then just dropped the receiver on the floor and trotted into the bathroom. This time, she was careful not to step on Neal’s hand.

He eased himself across the floor, to the bed, and propped his back up against it. As he did this, he did not take his eyes off the crib. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the baby as possible.

Annie came back into the room carrying a frayed navy blue bath towel that his mother had given him for his dorm room at college. Neal started to take it from her but she pushed his hand away. She wiped up the blood on the floor, then carefully took hold of Neal’s ankle. After patting the sole of his foot dry, she began to wrap the towel around and around the wound.

Neal stared past her, at the bloody tennis trophy. “How did it get on the floor?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Neal said, raising his voice.

“No, I don’t. I didn’t do it—don’t try to blame it on me.”

“I know you didn’t do it,” Neal said. His eyes focused on the crib. “That goddam baby did it.”

Annie gasped. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Annie stared at him. “You’re crazy.” She finished wrapping the towel around his foot and tucked the end in neatly.

Neal felt himself becoming more and more angry. “I just saw that baby—your baby—looking over the top of the crib like she was glad I hurt myself.”

Annie looked at Neal as if she couldn’t decide whether to feel sorry for him or to be afraid. She stood up and went over to the crib. Neal sat up straighter as Annie leaned over the wooden contraption. His heart started to pound. Neal wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see Natasha’s face again.

“How’s my wittle baby?” Annie cooed softly, picking Natasha up. The child’s eyes were shut (thank God) and she was asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep. But Neal noticed something else that made him lean forward even more.

“Look!” he said, pointing at Natasha. “There’s blood on her forehead.”

Annie inspected the baby’s face, then wet one finger and wiped the red droplets away.

“See! I told you. That proves it, Annie.”

She put Natasha over her shoulder again and turned towards Neal. “It proves what?”

“That she...put...the trophy over there.” Neal pointed towards a spot on the floor where he thought the trophy had been when he stepped on it. He had hesitated over the word “put” because he couldn’t envision how Natasha could have actually done it.

Annie sadly shook her head. “You’re in shock, Neal.” She kissed Natasha’s sleeping face and set the baby gently back in her crib.

“I am not in shock,” Neal said, glaring at his wife. “I know exactly what happened.”

“I do, too,” Annie said.

“What do you mean?” Neal said, though he thought he knew what she was going to say. He grimaced as another wave of pain welled up in his foot.

“You left your stupid trophy on the floor and stepped on it.”

“I did not!”

“Yes you did. And now you’re trying to blame it on a little baby, the same way you did when you accidentally broke the stupid trophy moving the case in here. “

“I’m not ‘trying’ to blame it on her, Annie. I know she— “

“Shhh! You’re going to wake her up again.”

Neal was breathing hard, so angry he nearly forgot about his throbbing foot. He struggled to hold his voice in a whisper. “You think I left that trophy in the middle of the floor? I haven’t touched that trophy since the day it broke.”

“That’s a lie, Neal.”

Neal was taken aback by this. “Excuse me?”

“You tried to glue it back together a couple of weeks ago. Remember?”

Neal was so mad he tried to push himself up off the floor.

“What are you going to do, Neal? Shove me into the wall again?”

He became very still. Even though more than a year had passed since then, Annie just couldn’t leave it alone. He hadn’t shoved her—he had grabbed her arm to stop her from hitting him, and then she’d lost her balance! What did she expect, anyway, acting so self-righteous? It was just after they had gotten into the biggest argument ever about her pregnancy, when Neal had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted her to have an abortion. She had become so angry she’d started to take a swing at him, and when he grabbed her arm to stop her, she slipped and fell against the wall, bumping her shoulder, but it was nothing serious.

“I didn’t shove you ‘against’ anything, Annie.”

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t, and you know it.”

Annie glared at Neal, her eyes watery.

“Anybody else probably would have shoved you, the way you acted that night. You think I’m so terrible for wanting an abortion, but...” Neal motioned around the room. “...is this how you want your kid to grow up? Living in a dump, with a father who’s a college dropout?”

“You don’t care about our child, Neal—all you care about is yourself. You can finish your degree as soon as Natasha’s old enough to go to kindergarten and I can start working again. A few years won’t make any difference.”

Neal rolled his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“You don’t know what’s important in life, Neal.” Annie started to say something else, then gave a long sigh. “I refuse to argue about this anymore—there’s no point in it. But you never should have shoved me, Neal. Never. There’s no excuse for it. You could have killed our child.”

“Our child is alive and well, in case you hadn’t noticed. You ‘could’ have burned the whole apartment building down today with your cooking accident, but that didn’t happen, did it? A million terrible things ‘could’ happen every day, but they don’t.” Neal over looked at the crib. “Not usually, anyway.”

Annie glanced at the crib, then shook her head as if she could no longer deal with him. “You’re losing it, Neal, if you think Natasha could actually climb out of her crib and put that trophy on the floor.”

“That baby is responsible,” Neal said firmly, though now he was beginning to question his grasp of reality. He groped for some sort of proof. “Look, how do you explain that blood on her forehead? You saw it. You wiped it away.”

Annie motioned to the wall. “There’s blood all over everything. Your foot slung it all over the room.” She sadly shook her head again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation. I think after we take you to a regular hospital, we should take you to another kind of hosp—”

“Screw you,” Neal spat. He looked away.

Neither Neal or Annie spoke for a couple of minutes.

Annie finally broke the silence. “You have to wash out your foot.”

Neal didn’t respond. He stared at the makeshift bandage—the towel made his foot look like it had swollen up as big as a cantaloupe.

“You could get an infection,” Annie went on. “That trophy’s not clean, and—”

“Shut up, Annie,” Neal said flatly.

Annie was quiet only for a few seconds. “I’m sorry your hurt yourself, Neal, but I don’t see why you’re acting like such a baby about it.”

“I’m not acting like a baby.”

Natasha started to cry.

Annie gave another weary sigh and went over to the crib. She picked up Natasha and patted her on the back, rocking her from side to side. “There, there thweetie. Go back to sleep.”

Neal glared at both of them. Natasha continued to cry, her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t a hungry cry—even Neal had learned to recognize that particular sound. It was a cry of irritation, of disturbance. At that moment, Neal realized how much a baby—all babies—could affect what went on around them. Their crying almost always caused some kind of reaction in the environment, even if their mothers weren’t around.

As Natasha started to quiet down, Annie said, “Neal, you have to wash out your foot. Then I’ll take you to the emergency room.”

Neal watched her for a moment, then pushed himself up off the floor and limped into the bathroom.

* * *

“Well, Mr. Becker, I have some good news. No foreign matter appears to be left in the wound.”

The young doctor was holding some x-rays in his hand. He had just come back into the curtained-off section of the emergency room where Neal had been sitting the past two hours, mostly alone. The nurses had made Annie and the baby stay in the waiting room, which was just fine with Neal.

“Let’s have another look at it,” the doctor said. He gingerly took hold of Neal’s ankle and raised it, inspecting the hole again. The man was no more than thirty years old, probably an intern. But he seemed to know what he was doing.

“All things considered,” the doctor said, after a moment of peering and gentle squeezing, “it’s a pretty clean wound. No need for any stitches—you’ll just have to keep it bandaged up for a while.” He let Neal’s foot back down. “What do you do? Work or go to school?”

Neal hesitated. “I’m in the flower business.”

“Uh-huh. But what do you do, exactly?”

“Well...I’m the delivery manager. I schedule all the, you know, deliveries that have to be made.”

“Uh-huh,” the doctor said again. His facial expression told Neal that he knew it was a lie, but that he didn’t really care. “The reason I’m asking is that you’ll need to stay off your foot for a few days. There’s already considerable swelling, and I have a feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

Neal only nodded, sorry that he had lied. But the thought of telling this young and successful doctor that he was nothing but a lowly flower delivery boy was too much for his ego to bear. Some day he would be a doctor—or something equally impressive—too.

“So, it won’t be a problem?” the doctor said.

Neal was so lost in his own thoughts he had forgotten the flow of the conversation. “What won’t be a problem?”

“Staying off your foot.”

A typical day of driving the Snell delivery van flashed through Neal’s mind—all the trips in and out of high rise apartment buildings, up and down stairs, across huge parking lots...

“It won’t be a problem,” Neal lied.

“Good.” The doctor began to explain how to clean the wound, change the bandage, and so on, but Neal only half-listened. He was worrying about how he would get through the next few days without the Snells discovering that he was practically disabled. If they knew, they wouldn’t let him drive the van—he would have to take time off without pay. If he tried to take sick time so soon after being hired, he would probably lose his job. Of course, losing the job at Snell’s wouldn’t be anything to cry over, but at least he got paid. And God knew he and Annie needed the money.

“Also,” the doctor said, after he had finished explaining the procedures, “I should warn you, there is a good chance you could develop an infection.”

“Infection?” Neal said, suddenly attentive again.

“Yes. Puncture wounds like this are particularly infection-prone. We don’t know what kind of foreign matter might have been on the end of that trophy you stepped on, bacteria or whatever. You’ve had a recent tetanus shot, so I’m not worried about that. But you could develop some other infection. If your foot really starts to swell or turns red or feels hot to the touch, you need to come back and we’ll put you on some antibiotics. Also, if you see any red streaks moving up your leg, you need to come back here immediately. That would indicate a very serious infection.”

Neal nodded, feeling a little uneasy, and looked down at his foot. It was already so swollen if felt like he had a golf ball sown into the bottom of it.

“Can’t you just give me some antibiotics right now, so an infection won’t even have a chance to get started?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I can give you something for the pain, though.” The doctor pulled a prescription pad out of his white jacket and started writing. “Take a couple of these every four hours, as long as you need them.”

“Thanks,” Neal said, taking the slip of paper. “But...”

“But what?”

In Neal’s mind, he could still clearly see the sharp, rusty metal that had punctured his foot. “I still think I better take some antibiotics right now, before any infection even has a chance to start. Don’t you?”

The young physician smiled. “Sorry, but that’s not how we practice medicine these days. We don’t give antibiotics until the symptoms of the infection appear and are diagnosed. Unless, of course, the patient is particularly susceptible to infection, for some reason.” He picked up Neal’s chart and looked it over. “You didn’t list anything of that nature.”

“No,” Neal said. “I’m healthy. As far as I know, anyway.” He remembered snide remark Annie had started to make about taking him to “another” kind of hospital.

“Good,” the doctor said. “Then I’m sure you won’t have a problem.”

CHAPTER 5

It was almost dawn when the fledgling Family Becker got home from the hospital. Annie went to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Natasha had been asleep when Neal came out of the emergency room and (to his relief) had stayed that way ever since. Now, she was in her crib, and Neal could hear her breathing little, hoarse baby-breaths.

He lay there on his back until just before six a.m., his throbbing foot propped up on a pillow to minimize swelling, as the doctor had instructed. Neal thought it was all in vain, however. He was convinced that the wound was teeming with bacteria and it was only a matter of time before symptoms of infection appeared and he returned to the emergency room. A part of him told him that he was being a hypochondriac, but another part of him seemed certain about it.

As he lay there, a phrase the doctor had said popped into his mind:

We don’t know what kind of foreign matter may have been on the end of that trophy you stepped on...

Neal sat up in the bed and gazed at the tennis trophy. He could see it clearly now in the dawn light, sitting on the top shelf of his trophy case, where he had put it before Annie had taken him to the hospital. Before they had left, he had glanced at the end of it to see if anything more had broken off, but he hadn’t really paid that much attention to its cleanliness.

Neal quietly got up and, with considerable difficulty, limped across the room to the trophy case. When he passed the crib, he fought the urge to look at Natasha, afraid he would see those black eyes again. But he could not help himself.

He was relieved to see that she was still fast asleep, her eyes shut, but her tiny hands clenched to her chest, in the fetal position. Just a little, harmless baby. It was hard to believe that he—a grown, 21 year old man— was actually afraid of her.

Careful not to make a sound, Neal picked up the tennis trophy and limped into the kitchen, using various pieces of the rental furniture to support himself. His left shoulder ached almost as much as his foot—every time he moved his left arm, he winced. Neal hadn’t even mentioned this to anyone at the hospital. But he was certain it was nothing but a bad bruise.

His foot, however, was another matter.

When he finally reached the kitchen, he went over to the sink and turned on the florescent light fixture mounted directly above it. He held the trophy under the bright white light and examined the broken tennis shaft very closely. It was caked with dried blood now, so it was hard to tell how clean it was before it had ripped through the bottom of his foot.

He scraped off a little bit of the blood. It was a deep maroon color and chipped off the metal in tiny little chunks. Neal turned the trophy one way, then another, to try and get a better look at it. As he did this, he noticed something new. The racket shaft was hollow—this he had noticed before, when he had tried to glue it back together. But now, something was plugging up the end. Some kind of “foreign matter.” He thought it was probably a piece of himself, a bit of tendon or gristle or maybe just skin. But it didn’t look like skin or gristle. It looked like dirt, like dried mud.

Neal frowned, his upper lip curling in repulsion, as he scraped at it with his fingernail. But this wouldn’t work. He needed something small and sharp to insert into the hole in the shaft...

He opened the cupboard and retrieved a toothpick from a little cardboard box, then held the trophy under the light again and scraped some of the brown stuff out.

That was when he noticed the smell.

Neal held the toothpick up to his nose. His upper lip curling again, he inhaled. He recoiled, staring at the little brown-smeared sliver of wood.

It was shit.

And not just any shit.

It was baby shit.

Neal dropped the toothpick in the sink, his throat bone-dry. He reeled for a moment, trying to convince himself that it might have just been blood or something else, but there was no question about it. He knew that odor very well, that almost-sweet fragrance a baby’s stool will emit for the first few months, when the child is consuming almost nothing but milk. Annie had (not surprisingly) made a special trip to the pediatrician about it, afraid that the smell signaled some kind of disorder.

“What are you doing?” Annie said, from behind him.

Neal was so shocked he dropped the trophy into the stainless-steel sink. When the heavy object made contact with the metal, it created a reverberating boom! that was so loud it made Neal’s ears ring.

Natasha started crying—she was cradled in Annie’s arms.

“I was just trying to find a way to fix...” Neal’s voice faded before he had finished his lie. He stared at the crying baby, fear rising in him like a rudely awakened animal. His daughter, that little...creature...wanted him hurt. Maybe even dead.

He remembered a documentary he had seen on TV about some natives in Africa who smeared human feces on the end of their spears and arrows to ensure that their victims—in this case, enemy tribes—developed serious infections if they were not mortally wounded. Natasha had undoubtedly employed the same principle here.

“What’s the matter with you?” Annie said. She was still staring at him, her eyes filled with fear. “You look...strange.”

Neal realized that he probably looked insane, his back pressed against the sink, staring at his baby daughter as if she were the Antichrist. But he couldn’t help himself.

He was terrified.

Neal pointed a shaking finger at Natasha. “That...that thing is trying to kill me!”

“What?” Annie said. She let out a short laugh, but then her eyes became wide with fear. She took a step backwards, through the doorway, and held the baby defensively. “You’re losing your mind.”

“Oh, am I?” Neal picked up the trophy and thrust it towards her. “She smeared her shit all over the end of this thing to make sure I got an infection!”

Annie’s eyes became even wider.

“Smell it, if you don’t believe me! Smell it, Annie!”

She stared at Neal for a second, then turned and carried Natasha into the bedroom, and shut the door. Neal heard the lock click.

She was afraid of him…

Neal stumbled over to the dinette table and fell into one of the chairs. “Holy Christ,” he said in a hush. “What am I doing? What am I thinking?” Suddenly, he felt cold and started shivering. He really was losing his grip on reality.

She’s your daughter Neal, your own flesh and blood. You’re imagining this whole thing because you feel so guilty about wanting her aborted. You have a mental complex that’s so huge and twisted you actually believe Natasha wants to get even with you, wants to make you pay for almost ending her embryonic life and keeping her out of this world.

Annie’s absolutely right. You need to see a shrink, buddy. And fast.

Neal swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure of which he was more afraid—going stir crazy or that his baby daughter was actually trying to do him in.

He remained slumped in his chair for another half hour, as the early-morning light gradually filled the room. He could hear Natasha’s muffled crying for a few minutes, but then the sound stopped in an abrupt way, accompanied by some coughing, which told Neal that Annie was nursing her. Finally, the alarm clock went off. He decided he had no choice but to try and pull himself together and get ready for work.

* * *

By noon that day, Neal was certain that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the Interstate. “TRAFFIC BOUND FOR HELL—EXIT ONLY,” the sign must have said.

He sat outside a hi-rise office building in Sandy Springs, trying to work up enough courage to struggle his way out of the van and carry the order of roses he was supposed to deliver into the lobby. He had stopped at a drugstore on his way to work and picked up his pain killers, but they didn’t seem to help much. He had taken six already, two more than he should have, but they only dulled the throbbing in his foot. The pills also seemed to have the unpleasant side-effect of making him nauseous. And the doctor had been right about the swelling getting worse before it got better. Now, the skin on the sole of his foot was stretched so tightly it felt like the whole appendage was about to burst. The only positive thing was that his shoulder was staring to feel better—at least the pain killers seemed to work on that part of his body.

He had worn a pair of old, faded sneakers to work, the only shoes that were halfway bearable to wear under the circumstances. This had allowed him to hide his injury from the Snells, though just barely.

Neal glanced at the office building again, dreading the seemingly vast distance that separated him from the lobby. He started to open the door, then shut it again. No, he had to rest for another couple of minutes. He decided to take another look at his foot.

He grunted and carefully removed his right sneaker, then slipped off his sock. The top of his foot looked a bit red to him, particularly around the bandage. It also felt “hot to the touch,” as the doctor had said.

He pulled up the bottom of his pants and inspected his ankle and calf, but he didn’t see any red streaks. Yet, his instincts told him that his foot was well into the process of becoming infected. But how could he know for sure? It seemed to him that it might be hot and red just from walking around on it all morning. Plus, didn’t it take longer to get an infection?

Neal wished he had asked the doctor how long it would take for the symptoms to appear. Then again, he would have sounded like a hypochondriac. But hadn’t the doctor said that it was “likely” that an infection would develop? Well, no, he didn’t say “likely.” He said there was a “chance” that an infection could devel—

“Hey, pal,” somebody said, tapping on his window.

It was a heavyset black man with a mustache. A security guard.

Neal rolled down the window.

“You’re gonna have to move. This is a fire zone. No parking or standing.”

“I have to make a delivery.” Neal realized that the man was staring at his foot, which he had propped up on the lower part of the dashboard. He quickly moved it down to the gas pedal.

“What happened?” the guard asked.

“Nothing,” Neal said. “Just sprained my foot a little bit yesterday. Playing tennis.”

“Looks pretty bad.”

Neal just shrugged. He hoped the guy would just leave him alone.

“If you’re gonna make a delivery,” the guard said, “then get on with it. The police will give you a ticket if they see you parked here.”

Neal nodded.

The guard eyed Neal for another couple of seconds, then walked off.

Neal watched him, wondering how the truth—or what he perceived to be the truth—would have sounded.

What happened to your foot?

Oh, my five-month old daughter set a trap for me and screwed me up pretty good.

A trap? What the hell are you talking about?

Well, she’s pissed off because I almost made my wife abort her, and now she’s trying to get even. She’s pretty advanced, too, for a five-month old kid. She can already talk, move things around the room. And she’s shrewd as hell. Left a broken tennis trophy of mine out in the middle of the floor, so I’d step on it when I got up to go to the bathroom. Smeared her own feces all over it, too, just to make sure an infection would develop.

Uh-huh, the guard would say, glancing around, wondering if a real policeman was around to take this nut away and lock him up somewhere, in some nice, quiet place with soft, padded walls...

Neal closed his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. Maybe this infection (if he indeed had an infection) was a good thing—it would keep his mind occupied and off the unpleasant subject of how it had come about. The rational part of himself simply could not accept the thoughts he was having about Natasha—they were obviously the thoughts of a lunatic. Hell, maybe Annie was right. Maybe it was just some kind of out-of-control guilt complex that had taken over. Maybe he had completely imagined that Natasha had spoken to him, and the telephone message (he sure wished he hadn’t thrown the message slip away). And maybe he had sleepwalked and put the trophy out in the middle of the floor himself. Who could say? There were probably lots of other rational explanations he hadn’t considered.

The guard was standing in front of the building’s entrance, eyeing him again.

Neal quickly put his sneaker back on, leaving the laces untied as he had before (not that he could tie them even if he wanted too—his foot was just too swollen), and got out of the van. He stepped onto the pavement with the utmost care, but a twinge of pain shot through his left foot and lurched all the way up his leg to his testicles. Grimacing, he limped his way around to the back of the van. As he opened the double doors, a wave of nausea rolled over him that was so debilitating he thought he might pass out right there in the parking lot. But after a few long seconds, it subsided.

He finally got the box of roses out of the van and headed into the building. Luckily, the office where the flowers were to be delivered was located on the lobby level, only a short distance from the front door.

When he came back out to the parking lot, the guard approached him.

“This is none of my business, pal, but you don’t look so good.”

“Oh?” Neal made an effort to walk without limping, even though the pain was almost unbearable. “What do you mean?”

The guard laughed. “You look like death warmed-over. You’re white as a sheet.”

Neal touched his face self-consciously, then opened the door of his van.

“You better see a doctor. I don’t think you should be driving.”

“I already saw a doctor,” Neal said, slamming his door shut. “Why don’t you mind your own damn business?”

The guard shook his head. Neal glanced at his own face in the rearview mirror and noticed that his forehead was beaded with sweat. His skin seemed colorless. Yeah, he did look like “death warmed-over.” That was a good description.

But he had to keep working.

Avoiding any more eye contact with the guard, he revved up the van’s engine and pulled away.

* * *

Cradling a sleeping Natasha in one arm, Annie picked up the telephone and punched in the same long distance number that she had called at least 20 times that day. On her first few attempts to reach her mother, she was almost relieved there was no answer. They hadn’t spoken in months, since Annie had, in so many words, told her mom to butt out of her life.

“Mrs.” Paula Crawford still lived in Chattanooga and had been dating a guy named Doug for the past sixth months or so. Annie didn’t care much for Doug—he was a kind of a dimwitted truck mechanic who only seemed interested watching football and wrestling on TV. But he was “hard-working,” and “very loyal,” to use her mother’s words. Annie supposed that if Doug made her mother happy, that was all that mattered. She just wished her mom had the same attitude about Neal.

But the breakdown in the mother-daughter relationship wasn’t Annie’s fault—she was sure a lot of girls would have done the same in her situation. Didn’t her mother realize what a double-bind she created for her daughter? She hadn’t wanted Annie to marry Neal, but she hadn’t wanted Annie to be an unwed mother, either. What choices did that leave? Have an abortion, or give the baby up for adoption. That was it. Annie would never do either of those things, and she knew her mother wouldn’t have, either, had she been in Annie’s shoes. But she offered Annie no solution to the dilemma. “It’s not my problem, Annie,” is all she would say. “You’ll have to make this decision yourself.”

The worst thing about all this was her mother’s hypocrisy. The prim-and-proper “Mrs.” Paula Crawford couldn’t bear the thought of having a daughter who was an unwed mother, worried about what all her friends and everybody else in Chattanooga would say about it behind her back. Yet, “Mrs.” Paula Crawford wasn’t even married anymore—Annie’s father had left them when Annie was eight years old—but Paula had no problem sleeping with whomever she pleased. Before Doug it was Charlie, and before Charlie it was Wallace, and before him...well, Annie had lost track of them all. But for her daughter to have a baby without being married... no, we couldn’t have that, could we!

But now, Annie regretted cutting off communications with her mother. She didn’t think she could tolerate another night with Neal, and there was nowhere else she could go. Having an infant to care for, she couldn’t just drop in on a friend and spend the night. Not that she had many friends in Atlanta, anyway—she had only moved there a few months before she met Neal. She had grown up in Chattanooga, and most of her childhood friends had moved away. She hadn’t made any real friends since she had moved to Atlanta, just a few other single girls she had met at the dance clubs. She had painfully discovered that when you get married and have a baby, all your single friends slowly but inevitably distance themselves from you. Shellie, her old roommate, hadn’t even called once since Annie had married Neal.

Her mother’s phone rang and rang and rang. Just before Annie hung up, somebody answered.

When Annie heard that old familiar voice, the voice of Mother, the voice of the prim-and-proper “Mrs.” Paula Crawford, her vocal cords seem to freeze solid. She hadn’t expected an answer this time, either, and she didn’t know how to begin.

“Hello?” Paula repeated in an annoyed tone, as if she thought it was a prank call.

“Mama?” The word just sort of squeaked out of Annie’s mouth. And though she hadn’t intended it, her voice sounded very childlike.

“Annie! Is something wrong?”

“No,” Annie said, struggling to compose herself. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Oh.” Her mother’s tone immediately shifted from concern to I’m still angry and hurt.

There was an awkward silence.

“Listen, Momma...I...I don’t know what to do...I’m scared.”

“Annie, what on earth is the matter? I thought you said nothing was wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, really. Not yet, anyway.” Annie paused, not knowing how to continue. “It’s Neal, Momma. He...well, I think he’s going crazy or something.”

There was another long silence. Annie had a feeling her mother was fighting the impulse to say “I told you so.” But instead, she said, “Why don’t you just tell me exactly what happened, honey? You’re about to give me another ulcer.”

Annie stalled for a moment, not knowing how much detail to provide. If she was completely open about everything that had taken place, her mother’s already low opinion of Neal would plummet to rock bottom. On the other hand, if she glossed things over too much, it would make Annie sound like a “complainer,” something her mother detested, especially in a wife.

Annie opted for a compromise. “Neal thinks Natasha hates him. Every little negative thing she does, he blows out of proportion.” Annie tried to laugh lightheartedly. “He thinks Natasha’s out to get him.”

“Out to get him?”

Annie glanced down at her sleeping baby, feeling silly now for even calling. But she was still afraid. Very afraid.

She bit her lip, then launched headlong into a detailed account of everything that had taken place. “Yesterday, Neal was convinced that Natasha had started talking to him...”

When she finished, there was another long silence.

“Annie, a five-month old baby can’t even sit up by itself, let alone t—”

“I know, Mamma.” Annie was fighting tears. “What am I going to do? I don’t have anyplace to go.”

“Doug and I were just getting ready to drive down there.”

“Down where?”

“To Atlanta. Doug got tickets to the Braves game this weekend.”

A prick of sadness touched Annie’s heart. Her mother had been planning a trip to Atlanta and hadn’t even called. But after their big fight and what Annie had told her (“Get the hell out of my life and stay out!” were Annie’s exact words), what did she expect?

“I don’t want to mess up your trip...” Annie said, hoping her mother might volunteer to cancel it and stay home.

“I really can’t back out now, honey. Not this late. Doug went to a lot of trouble to get the tickets.”

“Well,” Annie said, “I guess I’ll have to find someplace else to stay, if things get much worse.”

There was a long silence. “Annie, you can come home anytime you want, you know that.”

Annie hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was get underneath her mother’s thumb again. That was the reason she had moved away from Chattanooga in the first place. And she certainly didn’t want to look like a failure in her mother’s eyes—when she married Neal, Paula had predicted that the marriage wouldn’t last a month, that Annie would come running home to Chattanooga with her tail between her legs.

Annie said, “I just might need to come home for a couple of days, you know, until this gets straightened out.”

“A couple of days, whatever you want. Just stay as long as you need to.”

Annie felt a little better. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. You’re my daughter, honey. You can always come home whenever you need to.” She paused, then added. “Your room is just like you left it.”

Annie felt tears coming. “Thanks, Momma.”

“Do you still have your key?”

Annie wiped her eyes, composing herself. “Yeah, I still have it. When will you and Doug be back?”

“Sunday night, or Monday. When are you coming?”

“I’m not sure. I was thinking about coming tonight.”

“I’ll call you and check on you, then.”

“You don’t have to do that, Momma. I’ll be fine.”

After they hung up, Annie wasted no time in preparing to leave. Telling her mother she was “thinking” of going to Chattanooga tonight was just to save herself some face—she had no intention of being within a 100 mile radius of Atlanta when Neal got home.

CHAPTER 6

After Neal made his last afternoon delivery, he drove the empty van back to the flower shop, as he always did. He wished he could have taken the van home and driven it back to the shop the next morning, but of course that was out of the question. There was absolutely no way he would be able to hide his condition from the Snell’s now. His was no longer able to walk without an obvious limp, and every now and then he had severe bouts of chills and shook from head to toe. At the very least, he would have to go inside the shop and give Grammy the delivery receipts and the keys to the van. And sometimes they made him make another last-minute delivery or two, if the runs weren’t too far away.

Neal agonized over all this as he drove towards the shop, trying to think of some solution. But of course, there was none.

However, it turned out that all his worrying was for naught.

When he limped back into the flower shop, the look on both Grammy’s and Mildred’s faces told him that the jig was up.

“Daddy!” Grammy squealed over her shoulder. “Neal’s back!”

Neal’s heart sank. “Daddy” was what all the Snells called the old man, even Grammy, his mother. The two old women looked back down at their work, pretending to be absorbed in it, the way people do when they’re about to witness something deliciously unpleasant.

Neal heard old man Snell’s heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, from the main office. He sauntered into the open area where Grammy and Mildred worked. His pale blue eyes looked Neal up and down. Then, he simply cocked his head towards his office.

“Uh-oh,” Neal muttered under his breath. He followed the old man down the hallway, no longer bothering to try and hide his limp. When they entered the office, Snell motioned to a decrepit black Naugahide chair opposite his desk, the same chair where Neal had sat when Snell had interviewed him for the job a little less than two weeks ago. Neal carefully lowered himself into it.

Snell sat there a moment, eyeing Neal suspiciously. Neal glanced away, at the rows and rows of ancient-looking football trophies that lined the bookshelves.

Snell finally leaned forward and inspected Neal’s foot. Even through the sneaker, it looked enormous.

“Why didn’t you tell us you hurt yourself, son? You could have just taken the day off.”

“I...well, it wasn’t really too bad this morning.”

“Looks pretty bad now, though.”

Neal sat up a little more in the chair and tried to appear confident—he didn’t want to lose the job, no matter how bad it was. “I need the money. I was afraid if I tried to take time off so soon, you might fire me.”

“I can understand that,” Snell said, slowly nodding his beefy head. “But what I can’t understand it your disregard for other people, me and my fambly included. You might screw up and run somebody over.” He looked past Neal, as if imagining some grisly accident, and then shuddered. “You hit a pedestrian, I might lose everything.” Glancing towards his open door, he lowered his voice. “You know how these nigras are now. They all got lawyers and an axe to grind, and the damn goven’ment backs ‘em up.”

Neal nodded politely, but shuddered on the inside. Snell was the type of ignorant redneck with whom Neal could never have imagined having an extended conversation, much less having for an employer. But what troubled Neal even more at this particular moment was how the old man had found out about his foot. He was almost certain no one at the shop had noticed anything wrong when he had loaded up the truck in the morning. Grammy and Mildred had been gorging themselves on coffee and donuts and hadn’t paid him any attention.

“I got a call this afternoon from a security guard on your delivery route,” the old man said, as if he had read Neal’s thoughts. “Said you didn’t look fit to walk, let alone drive a van.”

“Oh,” was all Neal could manage. That nosy bastard, he thought, remembering the guard. Why couldn’t he have just minded his own business?

“He also said he thought you were on drugs.”

Neal sat up even straighter. “I’m not on drugs.”

Snell gave another slow nod, then glanced down at Neal’s foot again.

“What exactly happened to it, anyway?”

“Nothing—I just sprained it last night.”

“Doing what?”

Neal shrugged. “Fell when I got up to go to the bathroom.”

“That’s mighty interestin,’” the old man said.

Neal became even more tense. “Why do you say that?” Surely Annie hadn’t called and told him about—

“Security guard said you did it playin’ tennis.”

“Oh.” Neal felt his face turning red, partly from embarrassment, but partly from anger. What kind of conversation had the two assholes had, anyway? Had they discussed the color of his socks, too? Neal wondered if the old man knew the guard was black. He doubted it. They wouldn’t have been so chummy, otherwise.

“So which is it?” Snell said, with a sneer.

“I don’t see what business it is of yours.”

“The physical condition of my drivers is my bidness.” He paused, clasping his hands behind his head. “Besides, bein’ an ex-athlete an all, I might even be able to hep out.”

Neal sighed, fighting the effects of all the pain killers he had taken. It was difficult to think clearly. “Look, I hurt it a little bit after work, playing tennis. Then when I got up last night to use the bathroom, I turned my ankle, and really messed it up. Okay?”

Snell looked Neal over as if he were trying to decide whether to believe him or not. “Go to the doctor?”

“Yes sir,” Neal said.

“Which one?”

“I don’t know—my wife took me to the emergency room last night.”

“Get it x-rayed?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Nothin’ broken?”

“No sir.”

“Good man,” Snell said, smiling. It appeared to Neal that he believed the story.

“Doctor give you any pain killers?”

This caught Neal by surprise.

The old man’s pale blue eyes remained fixed on Neal’s face, waiting for an answer.

“No,” Neal said.

“Well, I have to tell you, bein’ an ex-athlete and all, that really surprises me. They almost always give pain killers for sprains, especially one that’s swole up like that.”

“Well, they didn’t give me any.”

“Uh-huh.” Snell brought one thick finger to his lips, looking Neal up and down. “Would you mind emptying your pockets on the table?”

Neal was so stunned he could not speak for a few seconds. “You bet I’d mind.” He let out a nervous laugh. “What is this, a concentration camp?”

Snell chuckled. “Wish it was sometimes, son.” The smile vanished. “You gonna empty your pockets or not?”

The pain killers were in Neal’s right-hand pocket. Now, the little prescription bottle felt the size of a pickle-barrel. He wondered if Snell could see it bulging through his jeans.

Neal said, “You don’t have the right to search me.”

“No. But I have the right to fire your smart ass.”

“Go ahead,” Neal said indignantly. He struggled his way out of the chair and onto his feet.

“Now, don’t get all worked up over this,” Snell said.

Neal had already taken a step towards the door, his hand on the doorjamb for support. He paused and looked back at Snell.

“Don’t pay me no mind,” the old man said, with another chuckle. “I get a little carried away sometimes. Just go on home and take care of that leg. Get some rest, and if you feel up to it, come on back to work in the morning.”

Neal nodded, but he had no intention of working another second for Snell. He was sure the only reason the old man had backed off was because he didn’t have a replacement delivery boy lined up. But that wouldn’t take long—there were plenty of people in Atlanta desperate enough to put up with Snell’s bullshit.

Neal walked out the door, managing to take the first few steps without limping.

And he didn’t look back.

* * *

Annie had everything packed up and loaded into her car by a quarter to five. It had taken her a lot longer than she had anticipated—she kept thinking of “one more thing” Natasha might need, and she ended up taking almost all the baby provisions that were in the apartment. The only item that was in short supply was disposable diapers. There was just one left, but she had just changed Natasha, so she could make it to Chattanooga and then buy some more there. She didn’t want to spend any more time in Atlanta than necessary.

When she was finally satisfied she had everything she needed, she went back inside the apartment to get Natasha and to leave Neal a note. The baby was already strapped into her car seat, ready and waiting on the couch, wearing the orange jumper that Annie’s mother had made for her. Annie had put it on Natasha that morning, knowing that she would be going home. It was too bad her mother wasn’t going to be there and see Natasha in it—it was awfully cute on her. Her mother had embroidered Natasha’s name across the front.

Annie searched around the kitchen for something to write on. She finally decided to use a napkin. Just after she scribbled Neal’s name across the top, she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, the pen poised above the paper. She watched the door as the footsteps came closer. “Please don’t be Neal. Please don’t be Neal.”

The footsteps stopped in front of the door. Annie waited breathlessly for the jingling sound of Neal’s keys.

Instead, there was a loud knock.

Annie opened her mouth. For a second, nothing came out. “Who is it?”

“Building maintenance. Here to take care of the rodent problem.”

“Oh,” Annie said, relieved. She almost laughed. Now that she was leaving, the manager had finally decided to do something about the mice.

“Can you come back later?” Annie paused, then added, “In an hour or so?” She took satisfaction in knowing that Neal would be home then—maybe the man would fill the apartment with noxious fumes and it would smell awful. Maybe an entire army of dying mice would come crawling out of the woodwork—that would serve Neal right.

“I’ll be back later,” the man said, sounding a little miffed. Annie sat still as she listened to him walk away.

She scribbled off the rest of her short and not-quite-truthful note to Neal, promising herself that she would call him when she got to Chattanooga and explain in more detail. As bad a husband and father as he was, he at least deserved that much.

* * *

Neal’s few moments of self-righteous supremacy at Snell’s Flowers were short-lived. When Mildred handed him his final paycheck—the first and only Snell paycheck he would ever receive—Neal at first thought she had made a clerical error. The amount was quite a bit less than he expected. When he questioned her about this, she went over the math with him and he realized, with quite a shock, that he was being paid less than minimum wage. A dollar an hour less, to be exact.

He stormed back into old man Snell’s office, or at least pushed his way in as forcefully as a man can do with a bad foot and an aching shoulder.

“What is this crap?” Neal said, tossing the check on the old man’s desk.

Snell merely glanced it. “What’s the problem now, son?”

“You’re trying to pay me less than minimum wage, that’s what.”

“So?”

Neal was almost beside himself with anger. “It’s illegal!”

“No,” Snell said smugly. “Not for part-time employees, it’s not.”

Neal was confused. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not a part-time employee—I worked forty hours a week.”

“No, sir, you did not. Look at the paycheck. You worked thirty-five hours a week, like all the other delivery boys. Seven hours a day, five days a week. Eight to four, with one hour off for lunch.”

Neal picked up the check and stared at it.

“And, in this Great State of Georgia, you don’t have to pay a part-time employee minimum wage.” He gave another smug smile.

“You...why didn’t you tell me you paid less than minimum wage?”

“Don’t recall you askin’.”

Neal could not believe what the old man was trying to pull. He hadn’t asked how much the job paid, because he assumed it was minimum wage...but now that he thought about it, the ad he saw in the paper had said DRIVERS WANTED—PART & FULL TIME.

“Look,” Neal said, “I worked eight hours a day, or even more. You gave me more deliveries at four-thirty. Five o’clock, sometimes. I didn’t get back here until almost six on some days.”

“Well, we gave you a little extra work only because you were a tad slow with your deliveries. Which is only natural, you bein’ new and all.”

“What? That’s not true! I made my deliveries faster than any of the other...” Neal’s voice trailed off—there was no point in arguing with Snell. The sneaky son-of-a-bitch would just have another snappy comeback for whatever Neal said.

Neal turned to leave, but hesitated—he couldn’t resist telling Snell one more thing. He looked the old man straight in the eye and became acutely aware of their age difference, the wrinkles on Snell’s face, the balding head, the pot-belly. Neal lost his nerve for a few seconds, but then decided that he had tell Jimmy Snell what he really thought of him, no matter what.

With his voice quavering a bit, Neal finally got it out.

“You’re a selfish prick.”

This was the worst insult Neal could conjure up, but Snell did not seem to be in the least phased by it. “No, son, I’m just a bidnessman, tryin’ to do the best I can for mysef and my fambly. If you don’t like workin’ for us, why, there’s somebody else who will.”

Neal snickered. “I can see how much you want to ‘hep out’ your fellow Georgia Tech students.”

This touched a nerve in the old man. “Now you listen to me for a minute, you smart-mouthed college boy. You don’t have a damn clue ‘bout how hard it is to make a profit these days. I try to hep out students like you much as I can, but you got to realize there’s...well, other economic forces at work here.” Snell lowered his voice, cocking his head towards the loading door. “Those nigra-boys are just happy as clams workin’ for less than minimum wage.”

This had been the last straw—Neal turned around and walked out, fighting an almost overpowering urge to tear up the check and throw it in the old man’s face. But he couldn’t do that—he and Annie needed the money too much.

Now, Neal sat in his car, parked in front of his apartment building, staring down at the miserable pittance of a paycheck in his hand, wondering how he was going to explain it all to Annie. She was probably furious about everything that had happened already.

Neal gobbled down another couple of pain killers and swallowed them dry. He wanted to dope himself into a stupor.

After staring into space another ten minutes, he finally mustered up the courage to drag himself out of the car and into the building. When he entered the apartment, he was relieved to discover that Annie and Natasha weren’t home. He then realized that he hadn’t noticed Annie’s car out in the parking lot. Annie was almost always home when he came back from work.

When he went into the kitchen, he saw a napkin taped to the refrigerator. There was writing on it, but he couldn’t read it—his vision seemed blurry. It must have been because of the pain killers. Everything seemed to be going in and out of focus.

He tore the napkin free and held it close to his face, squinting at Annie’s uneven handwriting.

Neal, gone to the grocery. Hope your foot is better—Annie.

Neal stared dully at the note, leaning against the refrigerator. After a moment, he hobbled his way into the bedroom and lay down.

He soon fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

CHAPTER 7

Just as Annie was approaching the entry ramp to I-75, she decided to buy some more diapers before she left Atlanta. Her nose told her that Natasha already needed another change, and she didn’t want to take any chances.

She considered trying to find a drugstore so she could buy one of the brands she liked, but decided against it—they were all too crowded this time of day. Plus, she would have to unstrap Natasha and take her inside the store with her. Unlike some mothers, Annie refused to leave her baby alone in the car, unless she could see Natasha every second.

Annie decided to go to a mini-market instead. They usually only had Pampers, she knew, but that would just have to do for the moment. She could stock up tomorrow when she and Natasha were safely in Chattanooga. The best thing about mini-markets was that Annie could leave Natasha strapped in her car seat and just run inside and be back in less than a minute, keeping an eye on the baby the whole time. Whoever came up with the idea of a mini-market was a genius, Annie mused.

Annie followed the creeping flow of traffic along Windy Hill Road and across I-75. She spotted a mini-market on the right-hand side, just past the exit ramp. Good. There was a traffic light there, too. It would be easy to get back out of the parking lot and onto the Interstate.

She searched for a parking place near the door. Unfortunately, the lot was packed full of rush-hour customers. In fact, there weren’t any parking spaces available at all, near the door or otherwise.

Annie had no choice but to wait until someone moved. She put the car in park and looked at Natasha. “Can ooo help Mommy find a parking space?”

Natasha smiled back and wiggled her arms.

“Sure you taaaan,” Annie said, patting the baby’s fuzzy blonde head.

Annie saw an aging red-haired woman emerge from the storefront. She walked over to a shiny blue sedan that was parked only two spaces away from the front door.

“Perfect,” Annie said, waiting impatiently as the woman unlocked her car door. Annie put her own car in reverse and backed up a little bit, giving the woman plenty of room to pull out. The parking lot was at a steep incline away from the front door, and it made things a little awkward.

Annie smiled at Natasha again, waiting.

But after about thirty seconds, the blue sedan still had not moved. Annie leaned forward and squinted through the windshield. In the dim dusk light, she could barely see the woman’s head through the sedan’s tinted windows. The head didn’t appear to be moving.

“Come on, lady,” Annie moaned.

“Daaaaaa,” Natasha added.

Annie laughed. “I don’t think she’s going anywhere, honey. Not before you start high school, anyway.”

Annie put her own car back in drive and inched forward, eyeing two handicapped spaces that were directly in front of the store’s entrance. She had already learned her lesson about parking in those. The year before, she had gotten a $150 fine for parking in one at Lenox Mall. But this wasn’t Lenox Mall, and she would only be in the store a second or two.

“Mommy shouldn’t do this,” she said as she pulled into the nearer handicapped space, “but Mommy is going to do it anyway.” She put the car in park and turned to Natasha. “Now you just sit right here and be good while I buy you some more diapers.”

Natasha smiled again. Annie touched her little nose playfully. “No loud music or smoking until Mommy comes back, o-taaay?”

Natasha stuck one finger in her mouth and looked out the window.

“O-tay,” Annie answered for her.

Before Annie got out of the car, she pressed the emergency brake as far down as it would go, to the floorboard. The lights were still on, but that was okay—it was safer.

Annie went inside and searched for the diapers, keeping a sharp eye on Natasha through the store’s large plate glass windows. When she found them (they only had Pampers, of course), she picked up two packages and quickly headed for the cash register, snatching up a few candy bars along the way. There were four people in line, two mud-caked men in yellow hard-hats; in front of them, a boy of no more than ten; and in front of him, a bald-headed man who was buying two six-packs of beer. The man had just set the two six-packs on the counter when he noticed Annie holding the Pampers.

Annie gave him a friendly I’m in a big hurry look, hoping that he would notice what she was buying. She had discovered that many people, particularly men, were sympathetic to young mothers.

This particular man took the cue. “Would you like to go ahead of me, young lady?”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind...”

“Not at all.” The man slid his six-pack over to one side of the counter to make room for her.

Annie glanced at the men in the hard-hats, who were giving the man dirty looks, and smiled apologetically. She set the Pampers and candy down on the counter and looked outside. From this angle, she could make out the silhouette of Natasha’s little head against the car’s rear window.

A gum-popping teenage clerk rung up Annie’s purchase. “That’s eight forty-two.”

Annie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. As she did this, she accidentally dragged out a big clump of change along with it. The coins scattered all over the floor. Before she had left the apartment, she had gathered up all the loose change she could find and filled her pockets with it.

Annie felt stupid and clumsy. She handed the girl the twenty and squatted down to the floor to pick up all the money. The little boy behind her in line dropped to his knees to help her.

When Annie finally stood up, the clerk was waiting with her change from the twenty, looking annoyed.

“Sorry about that,” Annie said, taking the change and stuffing it in her jeans. She glanced back out the front window.

Natasha was gone.

It took a moment for this information to register in Annie’s brain. Then, she realized that it wasn’t just Natasha that was missing—the whole car was gone.

For a half-second, Annie was completely frozen, unable to come to grips with the data that was being fed from her eyeballs to her visual cortex, thinking that maybe she was looking out the wrong window or that her eyes were playing tricks on her. But it was the same window she had just looked out a moment earlier, and her eyes were just fine.

Her child—her baby—had disappeared!

“Natasha!” Annie broke into a sprint, flying towards the front door.

After a few strides, she could see her car. It was backing out of the parking space. No, it wasn’t backing out, it was rolling out by itself—there was no one in the driver’s seat.

“Oh my God!” she gasped, as she burst through the front door. She could still see the silhouette of Natasha’s head against the car’s rear window. The front wheels weren’t straight, so the car was rolling at an angle, picking up speed, headed towards the street.

In a split second, Annie estimated the trajectory and knew there was a good chance the car would make it out of the entrance to the parking lot and into the heavy rush hour traffic. She shot like a bullet across the pavement, fueled by blind protective maternal energy, towards the right side of the runaway vehicle. She would throw the door open, jump inside, and jam her foot on the emergency brake (hadn’t she already put on the emergency brake?) before the car could roll out into the street.

During the next few seconds, the world seemed to slow down like a frame-by-frame sports replay. Each moment infinitely short and infinitely long at the same time. There seemed to be minutes, hours, even days to reflect on her whole life—her childhood, her high school days, her first period, her first job, her pregnancy, the endless fights with Neal about having an abortion, even Neal’s paranoia about Natasha during the past few days. Yet, during those fleeting flashbacks, the car seemed to be inevitably hurtling towards the traffic.

As she streaked across the parking lot, she was unaware of any physical sensations. She had one and only one goal: to save the life of her child. Every cell in her body was relegated to accomplishing it, as if her body was on some kind of automatic pilot, with no conscious direction on her part.

But after sprinting full-speed for few more seconds, she began to slow down. At first it was only a slight hesitation, but after two or more of her long, frantic strides, she made a decision to change her course. The front end of her car was swinging around towards a pickup truck that was parked near the entrance to the street. The front of her car would make solid contact with the back of the pickup truck. And if Annie didn’t alter her course appreciably, she would be caught between the two vehicles on impact.

But her motherly instincts overtook her reason. She continued on her previous course, resuming maximum speed. After two more strides, she had caught up with the front bumper of her own car; after another stride, she was in between her car and the truck, with the front end of her car approaching fast.

Now there was only a couple of feet between the two vehicles.

Annie’s hand flew out towards the handle of the door on her car, even though she was too far away to actually reach it.

At that instant, she caught another glimpse of Natasha, smiling at her mother with childish glee, waving her hands in the air at whatever imaginary things babies wave their hands, perhaps thinking that this was all some kind of fun game that Mommy had made up to amuse her.

That was when Annie went down.

The front of her car slammed against her left hip. A split-second later, both she and her car smashed into the side of the truck. Although she felt like she was flying gracefully through space, Annie was in fact spinning wildly, like a rag doll discarded by an angry toddler. She was only dimly aware of her own bones cracking.

The next second or so was filled with the smells, textures, and tastes of tire rubber and concrete.

And then...blackness.

* * *

Neal awoke in the bed with a start.

He sat up, gazing out into the darkness. His mind felt like mush. What time was it? What day was it?

His foot was throbbing...and his shoulder...

Neal remembered the note on the refrigerator, then peered over at the door to the living room. It was open, but the entire apartment was dark.

Where the hell were his wife and daughter?

Gritting his teeth in pain, Neal eased himself out of bed and fumbled around in the blackness until he found the light switch. His foot throbbed as if about to explode.

“Annie?” he called out into the living room, thinking maybe she and Natasha were asleep on the couch. But he could see that they weren’t there.

Neal sighed miserably. His mind was still a little fuzzy from the pain killers, but most of the effects had worn off. He turned around and peered across the room, at the night stand. The clock said 11:38.

“Damn,” he muttered, holding his hand to his dully-aching head. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long.

Then noticed something else—the phone was off the hook.

Maybe something had happened to Annie and Natasha. With the phone off the hook, nobody could get through...

Feeling a groggy sort of panic, Neal limped back across the room and clumsily placed the receiver back in its cradle. As he did this, he noticed something else...things were missing from the room. All of Natasha’s toys were gone. The fish-mobile above her crib, some pictures of Natasha that were on the dresser, Annie’s small library of baby books...

Maybe someone had broken in...

Annie left you a note, Neal. Remember? She went to the grocery store.

The phone rang.

Neal turned and stared at it, confused. With an unexplainable sense of dread, he slowly reached for the receiver.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Neal limped through the main entrance of the Sandy Springs hospital, almost unaware of the pain in his foot, and asked where intensive care was located.

“Sixth floor,” a nurse told him.

Neal limped down the long hallway in a semi-daze, feeling as if he were still dreaming. The bright fluorescent lights and white uniforms and wheelchairs and medicinal smells made him only think of catastrophe and death. Why hadn’t he noticed that the phone was off the hook before he had fallen asleep? The hospital had been trying to call him since six o’clock, when the ambulance had arrived at the emergency room.

He stepped onto the elevator and punched the “6” button, then leaned against the panel to give his foot a rest. At least Natasha was all right, that much he knew. But they would only say that Annie was in a “guarded” condition and that he should come to the hospital right away. The doctor in charge of her would give him more details, they said.

When the elevator doors finally opened, Neal limped out onto the sixth floor, now painfully aware of his own injury. He nearly bumped into an attendant who was pulling an IV cart down the hall.

“My wife’s in here somewhere,” Neal said, “and I don’t know which—”

“Nurse’s station,” the man said sharply. He continued on his way, the IV rattling behind him.

Neal limped down hallway and stopped in front of a desk where three nurses were sitting, one talking on the phone and the other two fussing with file folders.

“I need to know where my wife is,” Neal said. “And my baby daughter.”

One of the file-folder shufflers looked up at him. “The name?”

“Becker,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice even. “Ann Crawford Becker.”

The nurse glanced at a piece of paper in front of her. “Your wife’s in 623. Your daughter...” The nurse ran her finger down the list. “Are you sure she’s in intensive care?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with her. At least that’s what somebody told me on the pho—”

“Your daughter’s fine,” the nurse on the phone said, covering the mouthpiece. “She’s in the nursery, on the fourth floor. Carla, call down there and have someone bring her up here.” She looked back at Neal and motioned down the hallway. “Room 623 is down at the first corner.”

Neal nodded. Now, all three of the nurses were looking at him. No, they weren’t looking at him, they were gawking at him.

“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Becker?” the nurse named Carla asked.

“I’m fine.” Neal wiped his forehead self-consciously. He had been sweating like racehorse ever since he had awoken from his long nap. “Where’s the room?”

The nurses exchanged glances with each other.

“Right down that way,” the nurse on the phone repeated, “at the first corner.”

“Thanks.”

Neal turned and began to limp down the hallway, aware of the three sets of eyes on his back. When he reached Room 623, he peered through the doorway and swallowed hard. Someone was under an oxygen tent. There was so much gauze around the person’s head it looked like it might have belonged to a mummy. The eyes were the only part of the face that were visible.

They were both shut—and blackened.

Neal hobbled into the room, aware of the soft hissing and beeping of the machines that surrounded whoever was laying in the bed. With a sinking feeling, Neal admitted to himself that it had to be Annie—there was no one else in the room.

Neal approached his wife with trepidation. She was as motionless as a corpse. He slowly reached out and took her cold fingers in his hand.

“Are you Mr. Becker?”

Neal turned partially around—a pudgy nurse had just glided into the room.

“Yes,” Neal said blankly.

“We’re glad to see you. I’ll go find the doctor who’s—”

“I’m right here,” a male voice said. A middle-aged man came through the door, tall and wearing a pair of teardrop-shaped glasses.

“I’m Dr. Rayson,” he said, offering Neal his hand.

Neal let go of Annie’s fingers and shook Rayson’s hand.

“Your baby’s just fine.”

“Where is she?” Neal said, then remembered that one of the nurses had already told him.

“Down in pediatrics, in the nursery. Somebody’s on the way up here with her right now. After we looked her over in the ER, we sent her up there to make sure she was okay, but there wasn’t much doubt about it. The car was only traveling about ten miles an hour, backwards, and your daughter was strapped into her car seat. The impact was negligible.”

“Backwards?” Neal said, glancing back at Annie’s unconscious face. “What happened, anyway? Is she going to be all right?”

The doctor avoided the second question. “Apparently, your wife was buying something in a store, a mini-market on Windy Hill Road, I think it was, and she left your daughter in the car. It either slipped out of park by itself, or your wife forgot to put it in park. I don’t think the police know for sure.”

Neal shook his head slowly. “She would never forget to put it in park, not with Natasha in the car.”

The doctor nodded, but the doubt on his face was obvious.

“She wouldn’t forget,” Neal said defensively. “She was—I mean, is—a fanatic about taking care of that baby.” Neal was appalled that he had accidentally spoken of Annie in the past tense, as if she were already...

Neal glanced at Annie and then looked back at Dr. Rayson. “What happened to my wife? I don’t understand. Is she going to be all right?”

The doctor and nurse exchanged glances.

“It’s hard to say at this point,” Rayson said. “It’s always touch-and-go in cases like this. She sustained a severe concussion, but there don’t seem to be any serious problems associated with it at this point. With a little luck, she ought to come around in a few hours. Of course, she won’t be back on her feet again for a while.” The doctor picked up her chart and read from it. “Three broken ribs, a fractured hip, a broken wrist, and various other contusions.”

Neal winced. “But...I still don’t understand what happened to her. I thought you said she was inside the store.”

“She ran out and tried to stop the car from rolling backwards. According to the police, she got caught between it and another vehicle, a pick-up truck, I think it was, when she was trying to get the door open.”

The visual image this description conjured up in Neal’s mind made his head start spinning. Next, the room started spinning.

“Hey,” he heard the doctor say, as if from a long tunnel.

Neal felt a strong set of hands supporting him. A moment later, he found himself sitting in a chair next to Annie’s bed.

“You almost passed out on me, friend,” the doctor said.

Neal looked up at him. “What?”

The doctor was peering at his foot. “What happened here?”

“Nothing, really. I...stepped on something, that’s all.”

Dr. Rayson looked puzzled.

“Something sharp,” Neal added.

“Let me have a look at it.” Rayson squatted in front of him, but Neal hardly noticed. He was preoccupied with how Annie’s car had come out of gear. And what about the emergency brake? There was no way Neal could believe that Annie could forget to put the car in park, let alone forget to put on the emergency brake. Not with the baby in the car. No way.

“Are you sure no one jumped into the car and tried to steal it?” Neal asked, as Rayson carefully removed Neal’s sock.

“I’m pretty sure. We wondered the same thing. But there were several witnesses at the store—the car just started rolling on its own.”

“On its own,” Neal mumbled. If Annie didn’t leave the car out of park and the emergency brake off, and nobody had tried to steal it, then the car had just magically started moving on its own...

Or...

“Here she is!”

A slender, brown-haired nurse had just entered the room, carrying Natasha in her arms. An orderly was on her heels, lugging the car seat with him. He set it on the floor, at the foot of the bed, and sauntered back out of the room.

“You’ve got a serious infection, friend,” the doctor said.

Neal looked back down at his foot. Dr. Rayson gently turned it sideways, so Neal had a better view. “Those red streaks on your ankle...it’s not a good sign.”

“Oh, shit,” Neal muttered.

“Yeah,” the doctor said sympathetically. “Are you on any antibiotics?”

“No.” Neal glanced at Natasha, who was still in the nurse’s arms. She was wearing the orange jumper that Annie’s mother had made. Her little eyes were open, staring at him. There seemed to be a smile on her face.

“You need to be put on something immediately,” Rayson said, “before this infection gets any worse.” He motioned to the pudgy nurse. “Get a wheelchair and take Mr. Becker down to ER.” The doctor turned back to Neal. “They’ll fix you up down there, and then you can take your daughter home.”

“Who...me?” Neal said.

The doctor and the nurses exchanged glances.

“Yes, you. You are the baby’s father, aren’t you?”

Neal looked at Natasha, at the smile on her little face. “Yeah, but...”

They were all watching Neal with interest, waiting for him to continue..

“I...I mean, my foot. How can I take care of her with an infected foot?”

The doctor sighed. “You’re not dying, Mr. Becker. After you’re on antibiotics, you just need to stay off your feet as much as possible, keep your right leg elevated. But you can certainly stand up long enough to heat formula and change diapers.”

Neal groped for some other excuse. The last thing he wanted was to be left alone with Natasha.

The nurse who was holding the baby said, in a soft voice, “Is there anyone who can help you out? Your mother, sister, somebody?”

There was a page over the intercom for what sounded like “Dr. Rayson.”

The doctor glanced in the direction of the hallway, then looked back at Neal. “Well? Is there?”

Neal did a quick inventory of anyone who might be able take Annie off his hands. But he drew a blank. Neal’s own mother was out of the question—he couldn’t ask her to come all the way from Louisville. And his sister lived in Detroit. Except for Annie’s mother, that was it.

Dr. Rayson turned impatiently to the nurse who was holding Natasha. “Did you get a hold of the grandmother yet?”

“No, doctor, she’s still not answering.” The slender, soft-spoken woman had moved a little closer and Neal could read her name tag—SUSAN MATLOW, it said.

“Well, keep trying to call her.”

Neal wasn’t surprised they couldn’t reach Annie’s mother. She was never home, always running around with one of her boyfriends.

The doctor looked at Neal. “You don’t have any idea where your mother-in-law might be, do you?”

Neal shook his head, though he was distracted by Natasha. The baby was watching him intently. The smile on her face seemed to be widening.

“Can’t she just stay here for a few days?” Neal blurted. He looked pleadingly from one face to another.

Susan gave Dr. Rayson a hopeful glance. She seemed to have already formed an attachment to the baby.

“I’m afraid not,” Rayson told Neal. “Your daughter’s in perfectly good health. It’s against the rules, not to mention the fact that we’re completely full as it is.”

“It will just be for a couple of days,” Neal said, panicking, “maybe just one day. Just until you can find Annie’s mother.”

Susan said, “We do have enough room in the nursery at the moment, doctor.”

Rayson whirled around to her. “Dammit, Susan, you know better than that! This isn’t a day care center, it’s a hospital.”

“Sorry, doctor.”

There was another page for him over the intercom. A second later, an out-of-breath nurse poked her head in the door. “Doctor Rayson, you’re needed in 604, stat!”

“Allright, allright.” Rayson stood up and spoke quickly to Neal, as if irritated by the entire situation. “You’re just going to have to wing it, Mr. Becker. We’ll look after your baby while you go downstairs and have your foot treated, but after that, you’re going to have to take her home.” He paused and looked at Annie, then turned back to Neal. “There’s no point in you staying here—we’ll call you as soon as your wife comes around.”

Neal stared at Natasha, fear coiling up inside him like a dark, slick snake. She wiggled her legs and arms happily, as if she was looking forward to being all alone with Daddy.

Dr. Rayson took two steps towards the door, but turned back to Neal.

“You do know how to take care of a baby, don’t you?”

The eyes of all the medical personnel focused on Neal’s face.

“Well, sure,” Neal said, trying to hide his uncertainty. “Of course I know how.”

CHAPTER 8

It took Neal a good ten minutes to strap the baby seat into the passenger seat of his car. He and Annie and Natasha hadn’t been on many happy little family outings together, and he didn’t have much experience with the device. He was glad that the orderly who had wheeled Natasha and him out to the car had gone back inside the building and wasn’t watching the struggle.

During this lengthy process, Neal avoided looking at Natasha’s face. She had fallen asleep, but he had a gnawing fear that her eyes would pop open and she would say...well, he didn’t know what she might say. The thought of her speaking at all terrified him.

When he finally finished strapping her in, he went around to the back of the car and tossed the two crutches the nurse in the emergency room had given him into the trunk, along with his unused right sneaker. The nurse had done a good job bandaging up his foot, but there was now no way he could put his sneaker on. It didn’t matter—he could drive just as well shoeless.

It was a depressing night, a cold drizzle falling from the sky. His battle with Natasha’s car seat had gotten him breathing hard, and this had made all the windows to fog up. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment, waiting for the defroster to clear the moisture enough so that he could see through the windshield.

He would not look at Natasha. Instead, he tried to concentrate on the things he would have to do in order to care for the baby until they could track down Annie’s mother. Surely the unpleasant woman would come home tomorrow. Unless she was out for the whole weekend with Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was that she was currently banging. Paula Crawford was trash, as far as Neal was concerned. She cared more about her own sexual escapades than she did about her daughter and granddaughter.

When Neal and Annie had decided to get married, Annie had invited her mother to come down to Atlanta—less than a two hour drive—to celebrate. But Paula had refused because Charlie (the guy she was banging before Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was) was coming through town and she wanted to “see” him. And this was already after she was dating the new guy!

Neal wondered what Paula would say when she found out her daughter was hospitalized, laying in intensive care, battered and unconscious. Do you think she’ll stay unconscious until Monday? One of my old boyfriends is coming into town this weekend, and I already have plans...

Trash, absolute trash. Of course, Neal knew it was a two-way street—Paula didn’t care too much for him, either. Still, that was no excuse for her attitude towards her daughter, and her granddaughter. If Paula had ever come down to Atlanta, Neal would have been more than happy to live somewhere else for the duration of her visit—they wouldn’t have even had to see each other. But, no, she was too damn busy running around with her boyfriends to help out. She hadn’t even seen Natasha since the day she was born!

The only thing Paula Crawford had done for her new granddaughter was make that ridiculous orange jumper Natasha was wearing now. Big black letters that were embroidered across the front boldly announced:

BABY

NATASHA

It arrived in the mail two weeks after the baby was born, after she finally had a name. Giving the child a name had been such a source of contention between Neal and Annie that “Jane Crawford-Becker” had simply been entered on the birth certificate. They both agreed to officially change it later. Because Annie was so sure her child would be “special,” she insisted on a unique name. Boy, had the names ever been unique! Her first choice was Amethyst, followed by Raziel and Zealanda.

Neal couldn’t stand any of them. Having suffered his way through grade school with the quintessentially nerdish “Rupert” as his middle name, he was against choosing anything that might cause his baby daughter any distress. He was in favor of a simple name, like Susan or Diane or, yes—even Jane.

But Annie wouldn’t hear of it, not for her baby.

Finally, one evening Neal had a brilliant idea.

“Let’s let our little daughter choose her own name,” he’d suggested. They were sitting in the living room on the plastic covered couch. Annie was holding the baby in her arms.

Neal’s young wife frowned at him. “You want to run that by me again?”

“I’m serious.” He jumped up and retrieved the tome of baby names that Annie had nearly worn out during the past six months, ever since she’d found out the baby was a girl.

“Give her to me—you take the book.”

Annie looked at him like he was nuts, but carefully handed Neal the infant.

“Now start flipping back and forth through the girls’ names. The first time she makes any type of sound, stop on that page.”

Annie immediately understood and began steadily flipping through the book. The baby kicked its feet and turned its little head, almost as if she understood what they were doing, too. But a long time passed—she was completely silent.

“Ga!” she said suddenly.

Annie stopped flipping. “She’s in the N’s.”

Neal leaned forward, looking. “Now start running your finger up and down the names, very smoothly, back and forth, back and forth. Yeah. Next sound she makes, that’s her name. Agreed?”

Annie looked skeptical. “Well...maybe...” She kept running her finger up and down the two open pages, looking at her little girl. “What’s your name, tweety? Can you pick your name for Mommy and Daddy?”

Neal leaned forward, looking at the names. “God, I hope she doesn’t choose Nefertitti.” The book listed every name known to mankind, and a lot that sounded completely made up.

“Geeh!” the baby finally said.

Neal leaned forward to see where Annie’s finger had stopped.

“Natasha!” they both said together.

“Hey, I kind of like that,” Neal said.

Annie frowned again, but he could tell she wasn’t completely against it. “Natasha... that’s not bad, I guess. But it sounds too Russian, don’t you think?”

“No. Lots of Americans are named Natasha these days. It’s a little exotic, but not too over-the-top.”

Annie took the baby back and peered closely at her tiny face. “Are you Natasha?”

“Gah!” Natasha said, drool running out of the side of her mouth.

That last “gah” sealed it.

A week later, they’d received the jumper that Annie’s mother had supposedly made for her granddaughter. He never had liked the ugly thing. Neal soon discovered a tiny a MADE IN CHINA tag on the inside. All the lazy woman had done was embroider Natasha’s name across the front. And she probably hadn’t even done that herself.

In any case, whenever the baby was wearing the hideous garment, he thought she looked ridiculous. She reminded Neal of a mean little wrestler, the wild-and-crazy types you saw on the Saturday morning TV programs.

Ladies and gentlemen, in this corner, hailing from Atlanta Georgia, and weighing in at a solid fifteen pounds, our defending ‘enfant terrible’...BABY NATASHA!

Neal’s thoughts came back to the present...he realized he’d just been sitting in the hospital parking lot for about five minutes, staring out the windows at nothing...the defroster had cleared the fog off the glass. It must have been the pain killers. He finally got the nerve to glance over at Natasha.

Asleep in the baby seat, with her arms outstretched, her head down, the flabby baby-flesh under her chin bunching together like a fat old man’s...she actually looked like a little wrestler, exhausted, in between rounds, waiting for her manager to douse her with water.

Neal shook his head and downed a few more pain killers, popping them into his mouth like gum drops. He backed the car out of the parking space and began to make his way out of the lot, to the street. He felt another strong urge to glance at Natasha, but fought it.

Concentrate, Neal, concentrate. She’s just a little harmless, sleeping baby. Why are you so afraid her?

Neal gave a reassuring nod to himself, feeling a little better. He decided to go over all the supplies he would need. Yes, that was a good idea—make a mental list of things he would need in order to take care of Natasha. That would keep his mind occupied.

1. Formula.

That was the most important thing. Annie had plenty of it at home—she had bought a half-dozen cans the day before, so that wasn’t a problem.

2. Diapers.

He was sure there were some diapers around the apartment, too, though Natasha seemed to go through them at the same rate that he went through the pages of the classifieds. But he would manage.

What else did Natasha need?

Neal struggled to think, desperately trying to concentrate...to avoid looking at the baby...

She was looking at him, though.

He could feel it.

No, it’s your imagination, Neal. She’s asleep. Concentrate, buddy, concentrate. Don’t lose your grip on reality again!

Neal underwent this internal struggle for the next few minutes, until he approached Roswell Road. He managed to keep himself under control. He could not and would not look at Natasha.

She’s looking at me, he thought, as he turned the corner. I know she’s looking at me...

Neal slowly turned his head just a little bit to the right, his gaze focusing first on the radio...then the glove compartment... the passenger door handle...

She’s looking at you, Neal. She’s watching you...

When Neal could stand it no longer and finally looked over at her face, he jumped so violently that the car swerved to the left.

Natasha was looking at him, all right! Her eyes were open wide, her fuzzy little head turned in his direction, both her eyes blacker than the drizzly night. But that wasn’t what frightened him so much.

Her toothless, infantile mouth was twisted into a grin.

Neal tried to get the car under control, but it had already started skidding.

Then, to Neal’s absolute horror, Natasha spoke.

“Feeeeeeed meeeeeee!” she cried, in a high-pitched, scratchy voice. It sounded almost like that of an elderly woman, like Grammy Snell.

Neal screamed.

A second later, a horn was blaring in his ears. He realized that he was about to smash into a car that was in the left-hand lane.

Neal swerved his own car over to the right. This caused the back end to begin fishtailing, first to the left, then back around to the right...

“Feeeeeed meeeee, Neeeeeal! Feeeeeed meeeee!”

Hearing his name come out of the tiny, hideous mouth pushed Neal completely over the edge. He closed his eyes, no longer concerned with whom or what his car collided.

After another wide fishtail, the car began to skid sideways across the slick pavement. Neal was only dimly aware of the blaring horns of other cars, headlights in his face, and still more blaring horns, a SPEED LIMIT 40 sign that seemed to sweep within inches of his left-hand rear view mirror, and—

The car shuddered to a halt.

It took Neal only a fraction of a second to realize that it had somehow—miraculously—come to a stop on the shoulder of the road, positioned at a right angle to the traffic, without hitting anything.

He flung his door open and jumped out, shrinking back from the car, staring at Natasha.

She was still staring at him, her black eyes seeming even darker than before.

“Feeeeed meeee!” she shrieked.

“Holy mother of God!” Neal yelled.

Several cars slowed down almost to a stop, the drivers staring at him as they rolled past. One shouted something, but Neal was oblivious to all but the screaming monster inside his own car. He was standing smack in the middle of the right-hand lane of traffic. He didn’t know what to do.

“Get out of the road, you dumb-ass!” somebody else yelled. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Neal turned around, only dimly aware of the pain in his left foot, squinting into the headlights of the oncoming cars, disoriented. He blinked once, then saw more lights. And blue flashes coming from somewhere.

He staggered backwards, looking across the street, then behind him, stumbling. He now saw that the blue flashes were coming from a police car—it was making a U-turn.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered. The sight of the law enforcement vehicle and its strobe lights had jolted him back to reality. He quickly got his bearings and hobbled back over to the driver’s door of his car.

The police cruiser rolled up and stopped.

There were two officers inside—a white male, at the wheel, and a black female in the passenger seat. The male officer opened the door and got out.

He approached Neal with professional caution, one hand resting on his gun.

“What’s going on here?”

Neal hesitated. “I lost control of my car.”

“No kidding.” Keeping a safe distance from Neal, the officer peered into the car with a flashlight. “Is that your child?”

“Yes,” Neal said.

“Don’t you know children are supposed to be strapped into the back seat?”

“Oh.” Neal vaguely remembered this rule. Annie always strapped Natasha in the back seat when the three of them went out, but Neal thought that was only because Annie sat in the passenger seat. “I guess I forgot.”

The cop shook his head and shined the flashlight on Natasha again. Working up his nerve, Neal looked inside the car, too. But all he saw was a normal-looking five month old baby girl, drooling and fidgeting in her car seat.

The cop pointed the flashlight in Neal’s face. “You had anything to drink tonight?”

“No.” Neal made a conscious effort to stand up straight on his throbbing foot. “I’m on my way home from the hospital.”

The cop shined the light on Neal’s shoeless foot.

“Not for that.” Neal hoped to invoke the policeman’s sympathy. “My wife was in a car accident tonight. She’s in intensive care.”

The cop remained stone-faced. He motioned to Neal’s car. “You’re lucky you aren’t in intensive care yourself, mister.” He paused, looking at Neal more closely. “How exactly did you lose control of your vehicle?”

“My daughter...she scared the hell out of me.”

The cop shined his light back into the car, at Natasha. She turned her head towards the light. “Gaaaaaa,” she said, kicking her feet a few times.

“Yeah, she’s really scary,” the cop said. “I can see why you nearly caused a ten-car pileup.”

“I didn’t mean...” Neal ran his trembling hand through his drizzle-soaked hair. “What I meant was, she screamed and I thought something was wrong with her. When I looked over to see if she was all right, I drifted into the other lane, then I over-corrected, and...” Neal shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m pretty upset about my wife.”

“Upset is no excuse. You need to be more careful. If you’re that upset, you shouldn’t be driving in the first place.”

“I know.”

“And you need to strap your daughter into the back seat, according to the law.”

“Yes sir.”

The cop opened his mouth as if to continue his lecture, but apparently changed his mind. “May I see your driver’s license, please?”

“Sure,” Neal said, pulling out his wallet. He handed the license to the policeman and then glanced at all the cars that were slowly rolling by, and at the people in them who were gawking at him.

The cop shined his light on Neal’s license and studied it. “Mr. Becker, how about moving your care over to the shoulder of the road, so it’s not blocking traffic. And strap your daughter into the back seat, where she belongs.”

“Okay.” Neal hesitated briefly, not wanting to get back into the car with Natasha. The cop did not take his eyes off Neal—his square-jawed face showed a kind of suspicious curiosity.

Neal reluctantly climbed back inside his car, started the engine, and moved it over the shoulder of the road, aligning it with the traffic. He was aware of Natasha’s steady breathing, but he would not allow himself even to look in her direction. Avoiding her eyes, he picked up her car seat and moved it into the back, his hands shaking so violently the buckle chattered a little bit as he secured her. He wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a blessing to have her in the back seat—he wouldn’t have to look at her face, but God knows what she might do behind his back.

He quickly shut the door and walked back around to the driver’s side of the car.

“Please wait inside your car, sir,” the female cop told him from the window of the patrol car.

“I really need some air,” Neal said, “if you don’t mind.”

The policewoman eyed him momentarily, then said something to the other officer, who was now sitting beside her in the police car. They talked for a few long minutes—Neal could hear the police radio crackling, a dispatcher giving them information. He thought he heard the word “hospital.”

The policeman finally got back out of the patrol car.

“The address on your license isn’t correct,” he told Neal.

“No. I just moved a few months ago.”

The cop motioned down the street with his flashlight. “You live right down the road here, then.”

“That’s right.”

“You realize I could cite you for reckless driving, don’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“And for not having your child properly secured in the back seat.”

“Yes, of course.”

He glanced down at Neal’s bandaged foot again. “And for not wearing your shoes. Technically, you can’t drive barefoot.”

Neal nodded.

The cop sighed. “Well...since you’ve had a rough day, I’m gonna give you a break.” He paused, and for the first time, his rugged face softened. “I heard about your wife earlier today—one of my buddies was on the scene. Pretty messy. How’s she doin’?”

“Not too good,” Neal said.

The policeman nodded sympathetically. “Well, you got to be more careful. This is no time for recklessness, Mr. Becker. Your child needs you more than ever right now.”

“Yes sir,” Neal said, trying to appear grateful. Getting a measly traffic ticket was the least of his worries. In fact, he almost wished they would arrest him.

The cop handed Neal back his license. For an instant, Neal considered taking a swing at him. Then they would have to arrest him and he’d be in jail for a couple of days at least, and Natasha wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

But Neal just got back into his car, aware of both officers watching. He gave them an appreciative wave as he pulled away, then glanced over his shoulder at Natasha. He wasn’t afraid of her anymore—he was too pissed off at her to be afraid. But at the moment, there wasn’t much to fear. She was still behaving the same way she had in front of the cop, playing the role of the innocent child, kicking her legs around and making cute little baby noises.

Neal was actually glad that he had almost had an accident and gotten pulled over—it had shaken him back into reality. What was so scary about her, anyway? Of course, the policeman didn’t know she was only five months old and could already talk. But so what if the damn baby could talk? What harm could it do? Let her say whatever she wanted.

Sticks and stones may break my bones...

Neal focused his eyes on the road ahead of him and told himself that no matter what Natasha said, he wasn’t going to let her get under his skin.

(End of Book 1 – to be continued)

To purchase Book 2 (and conclusion) of Baby Talk, please go to my website at www.mikewellsbooks.com

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Mike Wells

Content

Wells Mike Baby Talk