CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

27-APR

Grace wrote the nanny a check when she returned home from the third day of depositions. She had found her nanny, Julieta, through a volunteer-run shelter that helped immigrant women find work. Julieta was close to the same age as Grace, with two children of her own and a moderate grasp on the English language—not that Grace could judge, seeing as how she spoke no Spanish at all. Grace felt her usual twinge of guilt when she wrote out the sum she owed for the week. Women like Grace were supposed to want more time to mother, and women like Julieta wanted more money, also to mother. The relationship should have felt more symbiotic than it did.

With Julieta gone and Liam not back from work, the house was quiet. Emma Kate lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling fan, while she kicked her legs. The television was off because Grace had made sure Julieta signed something Grace’s friends referred to as a “nanny contract.” Apparently it was an absolute necessity unless you wanted your nanny to melt your baby’s formative brain with television waves or shove Oreos into their toothless mouths while you were at work. Grace had four Nest cameras set up throughout the house that cost $199 apiece and a monthly subscription that allowed her to rewind the day’s tape to make sure that Julieta wasn’t pinching her daughter or kissing her on the mouth. She never checked. For what it was worth, she did believe that Julieta was meeting all of their agreed-upon requirements: playing classical music for at least fifteen minutes a day, reading two books before each naptime, never microwaving breast milk, speaking Spanish, sterilizing bottles, scheduling two hours of tummy time, and holding up black-and-white images for her baby to stare at.

Grace still felt like a terrible mom.

She sank into the sofa and turned on the TV straight away. Emma Kate tilted her head, her eyes staring up at the flashing images, while Grace mentally quoted the message from Dr. Tanaka’s pamphlet: No screen time before two!

If asked about it, she would lie.

What if we miss our old life? Liam had asked when she was four months pregnant. The sweet freedom of taking walks around the neighborhood after dark was the thing Grace didn’t know she would long for afterward. What if I love my job as much as I love my baby? she should have asked back.

For a few minutes, Grace sat glassy-eyed in front of a Friends rerun that she could quote by heart, reminding herself how, in a few months, when Emma Kate was just a little older, she’d stop doing this. Bobby pins dug into the back of her skull as she relaxed her head into the couch cushions and kicked her bare feet onto the leather ottoman that she’d recently purchased from Pottery Barn for a thousand dollars.

This reminded her: she still needed to set up Emma Kate’s college fund.

A commercial came on at twice the volume, technically a regulatory violation that Grace thought deserved a lot more enforcement than Dodd-Frank. She muted it and crawled on her knees to where Emma Kate was sticking her tongue out and drooling. If there was one thing that Grace reliably loved about her daughter, it was her breath—inexplicably sweet. She pressed her nose to Emma Kate’s face and her daughter pushed her feet in the air and smiled.

Emma Kate looked like Liam. Everyone said so. Grace had read in one of her prenatal books that it was an evolutionary adaptation, meant to reassure the father that the child was his, so she had decided not to take it personally.

Rug fibers were already collecting on Grace’s black dress. If she’d been wearing pants, she would have already changed by now. Emma Kate seemed to be having a burst of unexpected energy and she was scooting along her back and then crossing one leg over the other. Her tiny face wrinkled in concentration, her mouth puckered into the size and shape of a single Cheerio.

“You’ve got it,” Grace found herself saying. She watched her baby kick and wrestle, trying to make her body do what she wanted it to do. How hard it must be to have so little control. Grace gripped the threads of carpet, realized that she was resisting helping Emma Kate not because she didn’t want to but because she was rooting for this moment of tiny triumph for the little person beside her.

Emma Kate squirmed. Her onesie bunched. And then, in slow motion, Emma Kate flipped onto her stomach and Grace clapped. Unintentionally. She was applauding Emma Kate, who looked disproportionately pleased with herself, and then—because, why not—Grace lifted Emma Kate and spun her around shouting, “You did it! You did it! You are the champion!” in that whispery baby voice that she’d previously believed was only mildly less obnoxious than when moms spoke to their children in syrupy tones at a decibel level designed specifically to invite eavesdropping: Oh, no, Timmy, decorations are to enjoy with your eyes not with your hands!

Grace pressed her hand to her baby’s in a miniature high five and—she didn’t want to jinx it, but she thought that the two of them had possibly shared what some might call (not Grace, Christ) a “moment.”

Without feeling guilty, she turned the volume back up on Friends and relaxed into the sofa again, this time with Emma Kate’s chin on her shoulder.

The doorbell rang. Grace bounced her baby as she padded still barefoot over to the door and slid open the lock. On the other side, Detectives Martin and Diaz stood, wearing matching slack faces, as though those were also department-issued.

If you think of anything else, give us a call, Detective Martin had said.

Well Grace had thought of something. She had thought and thought and thought.

Detective Martin blinked. A shimmery blue powder coated her eyelids. Brown hair burst like cotton candy out of the back of her head. “You said you remembered something that could be relevant, Mrs. Stanton?”

 

Transcript of Interview of Grace Stanton Part I (B)

27-APR

APPEARANCES:

Detective Malika Martin

Detective Oscar Diaz

PROCEEDINGS

DET. MARTIN:	Mrs. Stanton, you called us because you remembered something that may be relevant to Ames Garrett’s death. Can you repeat for the record what you told us?
MRS. STANTON:	Right before the time Ames died, Katherine came into my office to tell me that Ames wanted to talk to her.
DET. MARTIN:	Do you know what Mr. Garrett wanted to speak with her about?
MRS. STANTON:	Not exactly, no. But she implied that it was related to a falling out the two of them had recently when, as I understand it, she rejected his advances.
DET. MARTIN:	You’re aware that Katherine contends that no such advances were ever made.
MRS. STANTON:	She’s lying.
DET. MARTIN:	You believe she’s not telling the truth and that Ames Garrett made sexual advances to her.
MRS. STANTON:	I believe she’s lying to one of us. Either she wasn’t telling the truth to us back then or she isn’t telling the truth to you now. Which do you believe is more likely? Especially given that Ames was helping to pay for her hotel room at The Prescott. Did she tell you that? Not only that, but I saw a Prescott key in his wallet. I’m not sure if it would have still been there when he … when he died. But still. It was there.
DET. MARTIN:	Why didn’t you mention this bit of information in our initial conversation?
MRS. STANTON:	I didn’t remember until later. There was a lot happening. I hadn’t collected my thoughts. I did share it with my lawyer. Recently. The part, at least, about Ames paying for Katherine’s hotel.
DET. MARTIN:	So the timing has nothing to do with the fact that, since our initial meeting, Katherine sided with your employer, Truviv, and is providing witness testimony in direct opposition to your and your colleagues’ claims?
MRS. STANTON:	No, of course not.
DET. MARTIN:	Grace, do you smoke?