As soon as Annabelle’s SUV turned the corner, Erik got on the phone. It was dark and I could barely see him, though I could hear him as he paced across our front walk. He spoke first to Gabe. “She fucking took them,” he said, his voice shaking. And then Eva got on the line—“I don’t think it’ll help, Eves,” I heard him say, and, “You couldn’t have known.” He paused at the steps where I was standing and said, “I’ll tell her.
“Eva said she’ll call in the morning,” he said flatly, snapping the phone shut. The air felt thick, saturated with water. Erik’s face was wrecked. Like he had aged ten years.
“Gabe’s phoning the lawyer?” I asked.
“Yup.” He wasn’t looking at me.
“Should we go inside?”
“You can.” And then the phone was ringing and he was hurrying down the drive and saying, “Mr. Dempsey? Thank you so much.” Watching him walk away, I felt lightheaded with the realization that I had cost him his children, cost us. How was it even possible that this was happening again? I felt so sick with shame there wasn’t room for anything else.
I kept my eyes on Erik at the end of the drive. The streetlamp cast just enough light for me to see his silhouette, his head bowed as he spoke. Except for the murmur of his voice, the neighborhood was uncharacteristically quiet: no cars passing, no music from the teenage boys across the street, nothing to interrupt the dark storyline of what had just happened.
He wasn’t on the phone long. I watched him trudge up the drive, pausing once to stare up at the cloud-filled sky, not a star in sight. At the porch he seemed surprised to see me still there.
Inside, everything was as we’d left it. A glass of water on the counter, dishes stacked in the open dishwasher, the thunk of ice falling through the icemaker. I stood there, rubbing my arms. Erik opened the refrigerator, full of food I’d bought for the kids: juice boxes and string cheese, almond milk for Spencer. The room smelled of pizza. “I’m meeting the lawyer—Andy—before work tomorrow.” He popped the top off another beer and took a long swallow.
I wet a cloth in the sink to wipe down the crumb-laden table, needing to do something. The house echoed with silence. “So does he think…did he say anything?”
“He doesn’t know enough to say anything. That’s why we’re meeting.” Anger curled the ends of his words. He leaned against the butcher block, eyes closed, holding his beer bottle against his forehead like a cold compress.
I felt stung by his anger. Was I not allowed to even ask about the lawyer? “Did you like him?” I ventured. I hated my voice, its willed cheerfulness.
“Did I like him?” He looked at me in bewilderment. “I just want my kids back, Claire.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
He nodded. “I just need it to be morning.” His voice sounded hollow. He downed his beer, set the empty on the counter, and opened the fridge for another.
“Are you sure you want to do that, Erik?” It was his fourth or fifth of the night.
“This,” he said, flicking the cap off the bottle, “is the only thing I’m sure of.” He paused, head bowed as if counting to ten. When he looked up, the anger was gone, but his eyes were such a wasteland, I almost wanted the anger back. “I love you, okay?” he said. “But I can’t…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got nothing left right now.” Another long draw of beer, and then, “I’m going to head on up. Can you take care of things down here?”
“Of course.”
He turned to go, and I asked, “Do you want me to pack you a lunch for tomorrow?” It was a dumb thing to say, but I wanted so badly to do something, anything, to help him.
“Lunch? I guess.” He said it in the same manner in which he would have responded to some homeless person asking for a buck, giving him a dollar partly out of compassion but mostly because he wanted the guy to leave him alone.
He left early to meet the lawyer. Overnight, it seemed the season had turned, fast-moving clouds racing across a leaden sky. Had the kids been with us, they would have needed sweaters.
After he was gone, I went up to my office to gather the articles on postpartum psychosis for Annabelle. I hadn’t mentioned it to Erik because he would have flat-out told me not to do this, but I knew once lawyers were involved, all communication would go through them, and it seemed crazy—as long as there was a chance to appeal to Annabelle one-on-one—not to try.
I knew her as a mother. It was that simple. I knew her as a mom in a way no one else did: not Erik, not Eva, not even Scott. And that bond felt sacred. It was sacred. I thought of Spencer’s birthday six weeks ago and how, when we started softly singing “Happy Birthday,” even that was too much, and he’d clapped his hands over his ears, shrieking, “Too loud! Too loud!” We had to sing in a whisper, and afterward, I’d watched Annabelle quietly leave the picnic table and go inside. I found her sitting on the glider out front, smoking.
“Why do I do this to him?” she sobbed. “He’s never going to fit in; he’s never going to be normal, and I keep trying to make him!”
I thought too of how we both indulged Spencer’s plan to “grow up and be a meteorologist/chef” and live in an RV in our driveways, one week at Annabelle’s house, one week at ours. “Exactly like now!” he would declare proudly, and Annabelle’s face would soften with love and despair, and she’d say, “That sounds perfect, doesn’t it, Claire?”
She was a great mom, the mom I wished I could have been to Lucy. I knew this in my bones. Which was why I couldn’t fathom any scenario where she thought cutting the kids off from us was okay, unless she truly believed they’d been in danger. And she only believed this, I told myself as I gathered the articles into a manila envelope to leave at her house, because she didn’t understand.