THIRTY-TWO

(INSTANT Replay: Cindy hears a noise, like distant thunder, and realizes it is the sound of an approaching train. She pleads with her neighbor. “Please, Faith. Don’t do anything foolish. Things will get better. Honestly, they will.”

“You promise?” Faith asks imploringly.

“I promise.”

Faith takes a long, deep breath, her shoulders relaxing. “Okay,” she says, collapsing into Cindy’s arms.

“Thank God.” Cindy clings tightly to the other woman, begins maneuvering her through the crowd toward the exit. They are almost at the stairs.

“Oh,” Faith says, stopping abruptly, as if she’s forgotten something.

“What is it?”

“Could you hold Kyle a minute?”)

Cindy sat on one of the sofas in her living room, staring at the far wall, trying to keep her gaze from drifting to the window, to keep the awful events of the morning from reflecting across the dark panes of glass. But all it took was one flicker of the midnight moon peeking through the clouds, and suddenly she was back on the northbound platform of the St. Clair subway station at the beginning of the early-morning rush hour, her arms gripping the shoulders of her seemingly acquiescent neighbor, and one second they were walking peacefully toward the exit, the crisis miraculously averted, and the next second, Faith was pushing her baby into Cindy’s arms, then bolting from her side and throwing herself in front of the speeding train. Cindy heard the awful thud of flesh against metal, the sickening squeal of brakes, the horrified screams of onlookers.

And then chaos.

(Chaos: People running in all directions. Passengers locked inside the subway cars, banging on the doors to be let out. The smell of vomit. The ashen-faced conductor, his forehead pressed against the glass of a side window, yelling into his radio transmitter. Sirens wailing somewhere above their heads. Paramedics and police arriving. The police demanding information. Someone pointing at Cindy, sitting on the dirty floor, her back against the dull yellow tiles, her feet stretched out in front of her, like a lifeless rag doll, cradling the now sleeping baby in her arms and staring blankly into space.

“Can you tell us what happened?” a policeman asks, kneeling down in front of Cindy, forcing his massive shoulders into her line of vision. “You knew this woman?”

Cindy stares at the young man, whose face refuses to register beyond the deep brown of his eyes. “She’s my neighbor,” an unfamiliar voice responds from what seems like a great distance away.

“Can you tell us her name?”

“Faith Sellick. Faith,” Cindy repeats, the irony of the name imploding against her lungs, the strange voice floating to the ceiling, like a moth to light. “Is she dead?”

Silence.

Silly question, Cindy thinks, as the officer’s eyes close in confirmation.

“Is there someone we can notify?”

“Her husband.” The voice supplies the officer with the necessary information. Cindy watches him jot it down in his notepad. How many times has she seen that lately? Too many times. Way too many. “This is Kyle,” the voice continues. “Faith’s baby.”

“We’ll need you to tell us exactly what happened here.” The officer signals to a colleague for help. “Can you do that?”

The two uniformed officers take hold of Cindy’s elbows, help her up, although the ground feels less than steady beneath her feet, as if she is standing on a moving sidewalk. Cindy clings tightly to Kyle, resisting attempts to take him from her.

“Are you going to be all right?” the policeman with the brown eyes asks, although his words are garbled, as if someone is playing them at the wrong speed.

Cindy nods, walking slowly between the two officers as they guide her toward the exit.

“We’ll need your name,” the police officer is saying as Cindy’s attention is diverted by a sudden movement on the subway track.

“Cindy,” the unfamiliar voice answers, and for an instant Cindy wishes this person would stop talking, let her answer for herself. “Cindy Carver.”

“Cindy Carver?” the second officer repeats, stopping in almost the exact spot as Faith stopped only moments before. “The mother of that missing girl?”

And then Cindy sees the paramedics carefully lifting Faith’s hopelessly twisted body onto a stretcher, and notices a torn fragment of Faith’s blue cotton dress lying across the tracks. She turns back, sees bits of human flesh dripping from the blood-soaked front window of the train.

“Are you Julia Carver’s mother?” the first officer is asking, staring at Cindy with his puppy dog brown eyes.

A persistent buzz fills Cindy’s ears, almost blocking out his words. Are . . . Julia Carver’s mother? Are you . . . Carver’s mother? Are you Julia . . . ‘s mother?

And then the unfamiliar voice once again assumes control. “Excuse me,” it says calmly as Cindy hands Kyle to the policeman with the puppy dog eyes, in much the same way Faith earlier handed him over to her. “I think I’m going to faint.” And then Cindy feels her knees bend, her hips sway, her eyes roll back in her head, everything happening in slow motion, as her body begins folding in on itself, like a collapsible chair. I’m getting rather good at this, she thinks as she falls toward the hard tile.

“She saved that baby, you know,” someone says, as strange arms reach out to block her fall. “She should get a medal. She’s a hero.”

I’m a hero, Cindy thinks, and might have laughed but for the darkness that envelopes her.)

“So, according to the eleven o’clock news, I’m a hero,” Cindy said now, watching Neil walk toward her with a freshly brewed cup of tea. He was wearing khaki pants and a beige shirt, and Cindy thought he was the most welcome sight she’d ever seen. On either side of her sat her mother and sister. Leigh stood up as Neil approached, moved to the other sofa, scooted in beside Heather, Meg, and Trish.

“Not feeling very heroic?” Neil sat down beside her, stroked the back of Cindy’s neck as she gingerly sipped her tea, Elvis keeping close watch on everyone from the floor.

Cindy smiled at the handsome man who’d rushed to her side when she’d regained consciousness and phoned him from the subway station. “I feel like such a fraud.”

“How are you a fraud?” Meg asked.

“Because I didn’t do anything.”

“You saved a baby’s life,” Trish reminded her.

“Faith saved him, not me.”

“It’s only because of you that they’re not both dead,” Cindy’s mother said.

Cindy shook her head. “This whole thing is my fault.”

“How can it possibly be your fault?”

“Because I’m the one who drove her over the edge,” Cindy said, the words she’d been trying to swallow all day spilling from her mouth in a sudden rush. “Literally. I did everything but push her over the side of that platform myself.”

“Cindy . . .”

“I’m the one who rubbed her nose in her husband’s affair with Julia. I’m the one who called the police, who had her hauled off to the station for questioning when she was so tired she could barely stand up. I knew how fragile she was, I knew, but that didn’t stop me from flinging all sorts of ridiculous accusations in her face, even after the police warned me to back off, even after they ordered me to stop interfering with their investigation. And now look what’s happened. . .”

“Cindy . . .” her mother said.

“Please don’t tell me it’s not my fault.”

“Do you really think you have that kind of power?” Heather asked, using the same words her mother had used the night before.

Cindy smiled sadly, holding open her arms as her daughter slid into them.

“Thanks for being here,” she said, kissing the top of Heather’s head. “All of you.”

“Where else would we be?” everyone answered, almost in unison.

Heather had been waiting for her when Neil brought her home from the subway. Her mother and sister, who’d been at the dressmaker’s, rushed over as soon as they heard the news, as had Meg and Trish several hours ago. Only Tom hadn’t bothered to call. Probably halfway to Muskoka when the reports were first broadcast.

Normally, subway suicides went unreported in the media, lest it encourage others to take similar action. But Cindy’s presence at the scene had changed everything. The fact that Julia Carver’s mother had been instrumental in saving another woman’s child from certain death had been the lead story on every newscast on every radio and television station in the city, and the fact that the victim was Cindy’s next-door neighbor had only added to the intrigue. Reporters had been calling or knocking on her door since early this afternoon, theorizing about a possible connection between Julia’s disappearance and her neighbor’s suicide. The story was sure to make tomorrow’s headlines, Cindy understood, sighing audibly, especially once the press got wind of Ryan’s affair with her daughter, as surely they would.

“Are you okay?” Neil asked.

“I should have realized what was happening sooner.”

“Then she might have jumped sooner, taken Kyle with her.”

Cindy looked toward the front door. “Is the house still surrounded?”

“I thought I saw someone from CITY-TV lurking in the bushes about an hour ago, but I think he finally gave up and went home.”

“What about you?” Cindy asked reluctantly. “Shouldn’t you be heading home? It’s almost midnight. Your son . . .”

“I can stay a little longer.”

The phone rang. Everyone looked toward the sound. No one made a move to get up.

“You want me to answer that?” Meg asked.

Cindy shook her head. “Let voice-mail take it.”

After four rings, the phone went silent. Two minutes later, it rang again. And again, two minutes after that.

“Persistent little devil,” Trish said.

“Maybe it’s important,” Leigh added.

“It isn’t.” How many crank calls had she received already today? Between the reporters and the kooks, her phone had been ringing almost constantly, although it had tapered off in the last several hours. At one point, things had gotten so disruptive—the phone ringing, cameramen banging their equipment against the windows, the dog barking each time someone came to the door—Cindy had briefly considered grabbing Neil and taking refuge in a hotel. But she knew her mother and sister would insist on coming along, as would Heather, Meg, and Trish, and the thought of all of them crowded into a small hotel room had been enough to put the kibosh on that idea.

Cindy pushed herself off the sofa and shuffled into the kitchen, where she checked her voice-mail for messages. “Nothing,” she informed their eager faces upon her return. “Whoever it was didn’t leave a message.”

“Next time it rings, I’ll answer it,” her mother said.

“Why don’t you go upstairs to bed?” Neil suggested.

“I don’t think I could sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see . . .” Even when I don’t close them, she thought, as once again, Faith materialized to hurl herself in front of an oncoming train. Cindy heard the helpless squeal of brakes, the gut-wrenching thud of cold steel against warm flesh, saw the torn sliver of baby-blue cotton clinging to the coal-black of the subway tracks, Faith’s blood splattered across the front window of the car, like mud, burning its way into the glass, like acid rain, branding itself into her soul.

“I may have a few of those pills left,” Neil whispered underneath his breath.

“Really? What kind of pills are those?” Leigh asked. “Because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.”

“Have you heard anything from Detective Bartolli?” Trish asked.

Cindy grimaced, remembering how angry Detectives Bartolli and Gill had been upon hearing the news of Faith’s suicide and Cindy’s presence at the scene, how Detective Bartolli had gone so far as to threaten to arrest her if there were any further incidents. “Listen, you guys, you don’t have to stay. Really.”

“Do you want us to leave?” Meg asked.

“No,” Cindy admitted. “I want you to stay forever.”

“Okay,” they all said, and Cindy smiled.

They sat together for another hour, exchanging idle chatter, hugs, and sighs, until Norma Appleton announced she could no longer keep her eyes open, and she and Leigh went upstairs to bed, as did Heather ten minutes after that. Meg and Trish reluctantly said goodbye several minutes later, both promising to call the next day.

“Your turn,” Cindy told Neil, standing by the open front door.

“You’re sure?”

“Only if you promise to come back tomorrow.”

“How’s breakfast? I’ll bring bagels.”

“If memory serves, my family loves your bagels.”

Neil smiled. “Maybe I’ll bring Max. He likes bagels too.”

“I’d like that.”

Neil leaned over, kissed Cindy tenderly on the lips. “See you in the morning.”

Cindy watched him drive off before retreating back inside the house. She was about to close the door when she stopped, stepped back onto the landing, her eyes staring through the darkness toward several cars parked at the far end of the street. How long had they been there? And were they empty or was someone sitting inside them? Cindy squinted, trying to differentiate between flesh and shadow. More reporters? she wondered. The police?

Probably no one.

Cindy locked the door and headed upstairs for bed, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling she was being watched.