Epilogue
Annabelle’s baptism day was on a Sunday in May, one of those breaks in the weather that leaned heavily toward summer and drove everyone to dig out their shorts and flip-flops and hope that fair weather was here to stay.
Soon after they got home from church, Chelsea changed her little girl out of the fancy white dress that all of Melanie’s babies had worn. These days Annabelle was a busy little baby with a social life that included rolling around, and creeping to explore new horizons.
“Was that white dress too confining for you?” Chelsea asked Annie as she pulled stretchy pants on over her big diaper butt. “Don’t be a slave to fashion anymore. Now you can go out and dig in the garden, right?” She picked Annie up to take her downstairs, and held her at her shoulder for a minute, charmed by the way Annie tangled her fingers in her hair. At seven months, Annabelle didn’t have total command of her hands, but she had recently begun raking them through Chelsea’s hair, a gesture that melted her heart.
In the backyard, everyone seemed relieved to be outside in the sunshine. The fence was lined by the white blossoms of pear trees on Louise’s side, and red, yellow, and orange tulips on this side. Leo and Chelsea had planted the bulbs while in nesting mode last fall, and Annie liked the vivid blooms so much she always headed that way when she was in the yard.
Leo, Jake, and Mel’s husband, Andrew, were manning the grill, but Leo couldn’t resist sneaking away for a minute to come tickle Annie and make her laugh.
He had a gift for that—the laughter and song. Sometimes Annie cooed along with his crazy songs. It was the cutest thing, hearing them sing together.
“There’s the guest of honor,” Emma called from the picnic table, where she sat sipping ice water under a picture hat.
“Love the hat.” Chelsea sat beside her sister, letting her squirming daughter put her feet on the ground. “It’s very Greta Garbo.”
“It’s old-fashioned sunscreen,” Emma said. “I’m trying to avoid the chemicals, just to be safe.”
“You’re so good.” Chelsea leaned toward her sister with a smile. “I was just thinking what a relief it is that Jake turned down that job in Chicago. We would have missed you guys so much.”
“Really. You can only do so much Skyping.”
Chelsea propped Annie up in her lap and discovered the clod of grass in her fist. “Are you helping Mommy weed again?” she teased, plucking the clump from her fingers. “This one’s a natural gardener, like Mom. I think we have some trips to the Botanical Garden in our future.”
“The foliage in autumn . . . and the lights at Christmastime!” Emma pressed a hand to her mouth. “We can go, the four of us. Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m going to be a mom soon. I’ve read all the books and taken classes, but I know I’ll still make mistakes.”
“We all do,” Chelsea said. “Remember how I had to have that designer changing table, and how I had everything set up just so before Annie was born? Take it from me, perfection does not go hand in hand with parenting. But you find your new normal. And you probably won’t be taking a trip to the dark side the way I did.”
Emma sighed. “I sure hope not. But if it happens, at least now we know what to do.”
“And I can hook you up with an awesome therapist,” Chelsea teased.
Just then Nora came running over. Sam trailed behind her toting his large dinosaur. “Aunt Chelsea, can I follow Annabelle around?”
“Sure. I think she’s raring to go.” Chelsea set her daughter down and watched as her niece followed alongside her. “Don’t let her take you over to the tulips. She likes to smash the flowers.”
“Oh, Annie.” Nora bent over to face Annie. “Have you been smashing the flowers?”
“Mash da fwawahs,” Sam said with an amused grin.
Chelsea smiled back at him. Whenever she was around Melanie’s kids, she wanted to have more. “Pretty funny, huh?”
“No mashing da fwawahs!” he announced as he followed the girls across the lawn.
“Guys, here’s the watermelon, all cut up.” Melanie came through the gate carrying a big bowl. “Come and get it before the gnats do.”
As neighbors and friends began to arrive, Chelsea went inside to feed Annie. She was settling into the couch when Grace Santos arrived with an adorable teenage boy.
“This is my son, Matthew,” Grace said.
Chelsea was impressed by the dark-eyed boy who shook her hand. “The guys are playing Nerf football out back,” she told him. “And there’s plenty of food and a cooler full of drinks.”
“Okay. Mom, can I have soda?”
“You can have one. I’ll be out in a few minutes,” Grace said as he headed out the side door.
“What a nice boy.”
“He’s a good kid. Though when I look back to when he was a baby, I think it’s a miracle that he and I are both still here. I suffered through some terrible visions, thinking of ways to end my pain. Back then, postpartum depression wasn’t on everyone’s radar. Some people still didn’t believe it was real. A lot of doctors weren’t aware of it.”
“Some doctors still aren’t aware of it. My doctor kept saying I just had the baby blues.” Chelsea shivered at the memory of those days. As if Annie could feel her discomfort, she squirmed in her arms. “I know, pumpkin. Bad memories all around.” She shifted the baby to the other breast.
“Annie seems to be thriving now,” Grace said.
“She’s doing well. We all are. After what we went through with Annie, Leo and I have gotten better at not sweating the details. I’m taking it one day at a time, getting help when I need it. And Leo—he was carrying this family for a long time. He’s glad to have me back in the land of the living. Sometimes I worry about the depression returning if we have another baby, and I really want Annie to have a sibling.”
“I think worry is every parent’s middle name.” Grace leaned back against the couch, looking more relaxed than Chelsea had ever seen her. “We worry about them when they’re little. We worry when they can leave the house on their own. I don’t know if the worry ever ends.”
“You’re such a Yoda.” When Grace laughed, Chelsea added, “Really, you’re so wise, Grace. You had faith in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I have to thank you for that. I think those first cops on the scene wanted to arrest me when Annabelle disappeared, and I was such a basket case, I probably would have incriminated myself, babbling on. But you knew what was going on. You knew I was in distress.”
“I just read people well.” Grace shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“Speaking of that, what’s the latest in the case?”
“They’re still in the exploratory phase, taking depositions, but the psychologist has been making some headway with Walker.”
Helen Janet Walker had been charged with kidnapping in the second degree, a crime with a sentence of up to twenty-five years in jail.
“Did you figure out which job came first—the baby nurse gig or the insurance rep?”
“It was Sounder Health Care. She worked for the company for five years, and during that time, she had a baby with her former husband, Kevin Walker. Janet was an examiner, approving insurance claims, when her baby died in his crib—SIDS, apparently. The psychologist learned that it became difficult for her to process claims for families with newborns. But after a while, she turned it around, thinking that, with all these people having babies, she was bound to find some couple who didn’t want theirs. When the opening came up for the New York area hotline rep, she jumped on it, knowing it would narrow her cases down to a specific area.”
“So calculating.”
“That’s the thing. She saw herself as a savior. She was only going to save a baby who wasn’t wanted.”
Chelsea looked down into Annie’s sleepy gaze. But you were wanted. You are wanted and loved.
“When the plan didn’t seem to be coming together fast enough, she thought of the baby nurse thing. She got the idea when she saw Helen Rosekind’s obituary in the news. Somehow she convinced the agency she was legit, and then she sent flyers to the families she had marked through Sounder Health Care.”
“Conniving and surprisingly smart,” Chelsea said. “She was probably a great employee for Sounder.”
“Yeah, they loved her . . . until this broke. Now the company is trying to build safeguards into the system so that no employee has total access to customer accounts.”
“Did you know the president of the company called us to apologize?” Chelsea had felt uncomfortable talking with him. “I told him that I just wanted my claims processed. After that they turned things around in forty-eight hours.”
“It shows you; it can be done.”
“What about the boyfriend?” Chelsea vaguely remembered a large, gangly man arguing with the police the day they’d found Annie. A truck driver, she’d heard.
“We dropped all charges against Ralph Amicci. It seems that Walker had him duped, too. That probably sounds crazy, but it happens sometimes in these cases, and it was easier for Walker to pull the wool over his eyes since he was away for extended periods of time, hauling loads cross-country. For nine months, he really believed she was pregnant, and once she had the baby, he was proud of her, thinking she was so brave to have that baby while he was gone and not complain one bit.”
Chelsea shook her head. “It’s scary to think of the Janet Walkers walking around on this planet.”
“The good news is, they’re in the minority,” Grace said.
She shifted the sleeping baby to her lap. “Well, I’m sorry that Janet Walker lost a child, but that woman is loony tunes to think she can replace him with someone else’s baby.”
“Your deposition was important to the case—yours and Leo’s. The DA will probably have you testify if it goes to court.”
“That would probably be good for me,” Chelsea said. “If nothing else, it might help more people understand what postpartum depression is really about.”
“Thank you.” Grace rose. “You and Leo, you guys are good people.”
Chelsea smiled. “Back at you. But I don’t think your partner liked me so much.”
“Yeah, well, he just doesn’t understand women. You coming out?”
“In a minute. Go, grab some food. Leo is very proud of his flank steak.” She watched Grace head out, then buttoned up her blouse, thinking how lucky they’d been to have Grace Santos working on Annie’s case.
Getting up from the couch with Annie in her arms required some abdominal strength now. “You’re getting big, sweetie.” She placed Annie in her bucket seat, strapped her in, and carried her over to the kitchen windowsill. From here, she had a clear view of the backyard.
Leo and Jake were doing another round on the grill. The kidnapping had bonded the two men who’d once just tolerated each other at family gatherings. Raquel Jarvis, now a good friend to Chelsea and Emma, had arrived with her family: her husband, a philosophical high school teacher; two exotic, dark-eyed boys who resembled their distant father; and three towheaded little ones who adored their older siblings.
Louise Pickler lingered near the gate with her dogs—three of them now. The two new corgis were her pride and joy; “They’re the same dogs the Queen of England has.” Louise had Mr. Kellog’s ear, probably telling him how she was applying to be on the Hoarders TV show.
Tina and James Wilkinson sat on the swing, obviously entertained by the younger ones, who were acting out some prehistoric battle scenario with Sam’s dinosaur action figures and Max’s Nerf gun. Matt Santos was playing monkey in the middle with some of the older kids. Grace sat down between Emma and Melanie, and the three of them laughed, their joy ringing through the neighborhood like a bright bell.
In a minute, Chelsea would carry her napping baby out to join them.
For now, she stroked the back of Annie’s hand, observing the baked beans dribbled on the counter, the mud tracks across the kitchen floor. The half-sliced onion left on the cutting board with a ghastly sharp knife. The dirty roasting pan and tongs in the kitchen sink.
What a mess.
But it was her family’s mess, haphazard and far from perfect. Things like that, human things, they were what made a house a home. A work in progress. A home for Leo and Chelsea and Annabelle Green.