All She Ever Wanted Part 21

"Maybe we should talk to those reporters." Chelsea spoke without turning away from the door. "I know we said we wouldn't, but if there's the tiniest chance it might help us find Annabelle . . ."

"But they have her photo. Detective Santos released it to the media hours ago. They've got their story. I don't know why they don't just leave us alone."

"A photograph isn't enough to grab viewers," she said. "And neither is an interview with Louise Pickler. They want to show viewers the crus.h.i.+ng truth." She went to the little table that was now covered with sheets of photos of Annie.

Chelsea picked up one photo and held it out to him. Annabee in her pink print romper. She had a giant cartoon grin, emphasized by the light in her stern eyes.

Leo wanted to reach into the photo and whisk their baby away. He'd been the one to make her smile that day in the studio. She'd come to trust him and now . . . now her eyes wouldn't be able to find him anywhere. Would she worry? Panic? He didn't know if babies were evolved enough to panic. His instincts said yes, and that crushed him.

He didn't want her to suffer any more than she had to.

"Go out there, Leo. Show them these. Let them know that our hearts will be broken until she's back with us."

"Come with me," he said.

She shook her head. "I feel so guilty. Even if I didn't do anything wrong, I know what people must be thinking. I can't face that right now."

He chose two photos of Annabelle-one spirited, one angelic-and headed out the door into the cold. The yard wasn't large, but it seemed to take an eternity to walk along the pavers to the sidewalk where the reporters waited.

He shot a glance back at the cape behind him. Their dream house.

Not anymore.

Chapter 28.

"It's like driving through a war zone," Emma said as Jake pulled to the side of Maple Lane to let a police vehicle pa.s.s. The street was clogged with police cars and television news vans and groups of people with nothing better to do than congregate on the street and try to get their face in the background of a thirty-second TV news spot.

Emma had seen more than her fair share of cops today. She and Jake had spent much of the past hour in the police precinct, where they'd been fingerprinted. The forensic squad had been able to lift a good number of prints from the house, and they needed to eliminate anyone who had been there in the past week. "When this is over, I'm swearing off cop shows for at least a year."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. But you don't have to mess with this. Are you sure you want to?" Jake asked. "I can drop you off at home and come back."

"I need to be here." Emma thought of the promise she'd made to her mother, who knew that Chelsea would reach her tipping point one day. "I need to make things right with Chelsea. Even if I just have a cup of tea with her while you guys go out searching, I think that will help."

"Just as long as you stay off your feet."

"I can do that."

"And what else did the doctor say?"

"Rest. Get plenty of sleep and avoid stress."

"And how are you supposed to do that last part with Annabelle missing?"

"Honey, sometimes you just have to have the serenity to accept the things you can't control."

"I'm not good at that serenity s.h.i.+t." He reached over and touched her knee. "Good thing I have you for that."

There was no place to park near the house, but Jake squeezed in between two cars at the end of the block.

"Might as well be parking in Manhattan," he muttered, putting his arm behind her back in that gentle way that husbands had with their pregnant wives.

Emma clutched the white paper bag from the pharmacy and leaned into her husband.

There was an odd mixture of excitement and boredom in the air as they pa.s.sed through the cl.u.s.ters of people on the street. Jake stepped right up to the cop at the wooden barrier and said something. The cop moved the wooden sawhorse, and they hurried up the path, escaping shouted questions.

The stroller still sat beside the side door, its little green elephants marching over the seat. The words of the elephant poem crossed her mind, along with the memory of walking her fingers over Annabelle's little tummy while she recited it.

"Take a breath," Jake said beside her.

She nodded, sucking in the cold air. The last thing she wanted to do was wax emotional in front of her sister.

The side door was open, and light and noise spilled out from the storm door. What were all these people doing in Chelsea's kitchen?

"What's going on?" she asked Jake.

"They're here to help search."

She stepped into the warmth of the kitchen, scanning the faces. Her brother-in-law Andrew stood by the door, and they hugged. Of course, Mel had to stay home with the kids, but it was good of Andrew to make the drive from central Jersey.

That's what family is for, he always said.

Emma recognized Sasha, Chelsea's former boss, as well as two other editors from the magazine. There were more than a dozen men and women, dark-skinned and light, Hispanic and Asian and black and mixed race. They shared a common goal: finding Annabelle.

Chelsea motioned her over and gave up her seat at the table. Emma shook her head, but Chelsea silently insisted, and with that gesture, the strain between them slid away.

Leo and one of the police officers were giving instructions on how they would break up into teams of two or three and cover designated areas.

"Since Annabelle Green is less than four months old, we are not really a search party," the cop told the group. "Your mission is primarily to build awareness and open channels of communication. We want people in the community to reach out to us right away if they see or hear anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes the most meaningless events prove to be major clues in solving a case."

With flashlights in hand, the people headed out the side door, leaving the two sisters behind.

"Do you want tea?" Chelsea offered. "The kettle is still hot."

When Emma started to get up, Chelsea waved her off.

"Sit. I need something to do and it's my turn to take care of you. Herbal or decaf?"

"Some chamomile would be great."

"I envy Leo getting out of this house." Chelsea set the steaming mug in front of Emma, then closed and locked the side door. "I wish there was something I could do . . . some activity that would bring us closer to finding Annie."

Facing the living room, Emma saw the empty ba.s.sinette and changing table. Someone had tidied up, stacking Annabelle's squishy blocks in her bucket seat. The room seemed lonely and neglected, like a flas.h.i.+ng VACANCY sign. She felt a new surge of regret over the way she had snapped at her sister earlier.

"I almost forgot." Emma handed over the paper bag she'd been clutching. "I come bearing gifts."

Chelsea opened the bag and held the brown plastic container close. "My new Nebula prescription. Thanks. Now I'll be extra happy." She put it on the counter. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Relieved. Still hoping that everything's okay with the baby." She had given Chelsea the doctor's good news over the phone, walking that tightrope between not wanting to boast and not wanting to withhold information from her sister and best friend.

"Do the doctors have any sense of what caused it?"

"They're just saying it was spotting, but I'm nervous about going back to school. With a high-risk pregnancy, working might be too much for me. Jake and I talked about it, and since money's not an issue, he wants me to give notice."

"Just quit? Can't you get medical leave?"

"I probably could, but that seems greedy when I have no intention of going back to work after the baby is born. The medical benefits from the firm are really good. So, yeah, I might just quit."

"Don't you think you'll miss it?" Chelsea dipped the tea bag in her own mug. "I feel like I made a mistake giving up my job, but there's no going back."

"I'll miss my students. But I'm excited about changing things up. We're both excited about the baby, and we're thinking of some other changes, too. Jake got an offer to move to the firm's office in Chicago."

"What? When did that happen?"

"A few days ago." With all that was going on, Emma hadn't been planning to spill the beans, but she never could keep a secret from her sister.

"And . . . is he going to accept? Are you guys moving to Chicago?"

Emma laced her hands around the warm mug. "We're actually talking about it. It might be fun to live in a different place. I've heard great things about Chicago, and it would be an adventure for the two of us-for our little family."

"Wow." Chelsea hung her head.

"I'm sorry, honey. This is the last thing you need to hear right now."

"No, don't try to coddle me. I've been so out of it, so stuck in the black hole; I might not have heard it if you'd told me two weeks ago. I just want to be happy for you, but I can't pull together happy right now."

"There'll be time for that later."

"Good, because you deserve an adventure, Emma. You've put up with so much c.r.a.p from me. I talked to Dr. Chin today, and she thinks that treatment will help me. I'm going to get better. I'm going to be a good mother for Annie. I really will."

The unspoken hope hung in the air: Annie's safe return.

Emma pushed her mug aside and reached for her sister's hand. "Honey, you already are a good mother. And with a little help, you're going to be a great one."

Chapter 29.

When Leo returned from combing the neighborhood, he didn't offer much of a report, and Chelsea didn't press him. She hadn't expected much from the "search party," but sometimes just the act of doing something constructive made more sense than sitting around deconstructing mistakes you've made.

When the last of the volunteers left, Chelsea showed Leo what she and Emma had accomplished while he was gone: Internet research on infant abduction.

"I don't know why we didn't look online this morning," she told Leo. "My mind was still so fuzzy."

But not anymore. For the first time in months, Chelsea felt alert and sharp. Trauma had brought the world into focus for her, and as she sat sorting through Internet facts with Leo, she couldn't get information fast enough.

The accounts were riveting.

One Christmas Eve, a woman who claimed to be visiting her sister in a maternity ward befriended a mother who had just given birth. The visitor convinced her that she would keep an eye on the woman's baby while she took a shower. She promptly made off with the infant.

More than half of the infant abduction cases took place right in the mother's hospital room. In so many instances, a woman pretending to be a nurse s.n.a.t.c.hed a baby from a hospital maternity ward and walked right out with it. Sometimes the baby was hidden in a purse or a gym bag; other times the woman just walked out with the baby in her arms, as if it were her own.

In one case the infant's grandmother abducted the baby from the hospital, convinced that her daughter was incapable of raising a child on her own. In another case, a woman solicited information from pregnant women, pretending to be looking for models for a maternity calendar.

Scrolling down on the computer, Leo read aloud the case of a new mom in Virginia who had narrowly missed having her child abducted by a woman posing as a hospital worker.

" 'Still tired from sleep-deprivation and delivery, new mom Marie Onish received a phone call in her hospital room saying that she had won a new mother luncheon. A few minutes later, Alice Butler appeared in her room with a bunch of balloons, saying that the lunch and free gifts were waiting for her in the hospital cafeteria. She was told to go downstairs, find the chair with the balloons on it, and she would be met by another hospital staffer. Onish was not suspicious when this staff person offered to watch her baby while she went downstairs to claim her prizes.' "

Leo paused. "Why would anyone go for that?"

But Chelsea understood the woman's confusion over who was who in the hospital. "When you're in a hospital, countless people come through your room-technicians, doctors, nurses, and aides. I remember being on painkillers and wondering what they were all doing in my room. I couldn't tell a doctor from an aide. Could you?"

"I remember your doctor, but I wasn't really paying attention to the staff. I was all about Annie."

"Exactly."

" 'When Onish got to the cafeteria,' " Leo continued reading, " 'she found a chair with a balloon attached, but no representative was there to greet her. She waited for a few minutes, then returned upstairs, where she found a jumble of staff personnel as well as police officers in the hall outside her room. The hospital's electronic security system had been triggered when Butler cut off the infant's ankle bracelet. Hospital staff found Butler headed down the hall with the baby, already dressed in street clothes. Butler was charged with felony abduction of a child.

" ' "I couldn't comprehend what was going on until the cop showed me my baby's ankle bracelet," Onish said. "That was when I started to cry." ' "

As Leo read on, Chelsea could see it all.

The empty steel-and-plastic cafeteria chair with balloons bobbing.

The strange clothes on the baby.

The towering charge nurse.

The ankle bracelet, snipped in a crisp cut.

But in this case, the thief had been caught before she got far.

"They caught her," Chelsea said aloud. "They snagged that deluded woman before she got too far. Why couldn't we be so lucky?"

"But they usually do catch abductors. It says here that most infants are safely recovered within a week."

"A week is a long time." Time had slowed. Moments stretched into painful memories and sickening plunges into guilt. "And what will happen to Annabelle while this stranger is taking care of her?"

"I know. It feels disgusting." Leo clicked to another screen. "In the profile, it says that most infant abductors prove themselves to be capable caretakers. Some of them even take childcare cla.s.ses."