Nighttime Is My Time

'Stand up. After you have visited the bathroom, I will permit you to sit in the chair and eat.'

With tentative, unsteady steps, Laura obeyed. The night light in the bathroom made it possible for her to see the taps on the sink and turn them on. With a hurried gesture she splashed water on her face and hands and smoothed back her hair. If I can only stay alive, she thought. They've got to be looking for me. Please God, let them be looking for me.

The handle of the bathroom door turned. 'Laura, it's time.'

Time! Was he going to kill her now? God… please…

The door opened. The Owl pointed to the chair beside the dresser. Silently, Laura shuffled over to it and sat down.

'Go ahead,' he urged. 'Start to eat.' He picked up the flashlight and directed the light on her neck so that he could watch her expression without blinding her. He was pleased to see that she was crying again.

'Laura, you're so afraid, aren't you? And I bet you're wondering how I knew that you ridiculed me. Let me tell you a story. Twenty years ago this weekend a bunch of us were home from our different colleges and got together one night. There was a party. Now, as you know, I was never part of the crowd, of the inner circle. Far from it, in fact. But for some reason I was invited to that party, and you were there. Lovely Laura. That night you were sitting on the lap of your latest conquest, Dick Gormley, our erstwhile baseball star. I was eating my heart out, Laura, that's how much of a crush I still had on you.

'Alison was at the party, of course. Quite drunk. She came over to me. I never liked her. Frankly, I was afraid of that tongue of hers- razor-sharp when she turned it on you. She reminded me that early in senior year I had had the temerity to ask you to go on a date. 'You…' she said with a sneer and laughed. The owl asking Laura out.' And then Alison demonstrated for me how you mimicked me when we were in the second-grade school play. 'I am annnnnn… ow… owwwlll… and… and… I… live… in… a… a…' '

'Laura, your imitation of me must have been superb. Alison assured me that the girls at your lunch table screamed with laughter every time they thought of it. And then you reminded them that I had been dopey enough to wet my pants onstage before I ran off. You even told them that.'

Laura had been taking bites of the sandwich. Now he watched as she dropped it onto her lap. 'I'm sorry…'

'Laura, you still don't understand that you have lived twenty years too long. Let me tell you about it. The night of that party, I was drunk, too. I was so drunk that I forgot you had moved. I came here that night to kill you. I knew where your family kept the extra key under that fake rabbit in the backyard. The new people kept it there, too. I came into this house and up to this room. I saw the flow of hair on the pillow and thought it was you. Laura, I made a mistake when I stabbed Karen Sommers. I was killing you, Laura. I was killing you!

'The next morning I woke up vaguely remembering that I'd been here. Then I found out what had happened and realized that I was famous.' The Owl's voice became rushed with excitement at the memory. 'I didn't know Karen Sommers. No one even dreamed of connecting me to her, but that mistake liberated me. That morning I understood that I have the power of life and death. And I've been exercising it ever since. Ever since, Laura. Women all over the country.'

He stood up. Laura's eyes were wide with fear; her mouth hung open; the sandwich lay in her lap. He leaned toward her. 'Now I have to go, but think about me, Laura. Think how lucky you have been to have enjoyed a bonus twenty years of life.'

In savagely quick movements, he tied her hands, taped her mouth, pulled her up from the chair, pushed her back on the bed, and fastened the long rope over her body.

'It began in this room, and it will end in this room, Laura,' he said. 'The final stage of the plan is about to unfold. Try to guess what it might be.'

He was gone. Outside the moon was rising, and from the bed Laura could see the faint outline of the cell phone on top of the dresser.

49

At six-thirty Jean was in her hotel room when she finally received the call she'd been hoping would come. It was from Peggy Kimball, the nurse who had been in Dr. Connors' office when she was his patient. 'That's a pretty urgent message, you left, Ms. Sheridan,' Kimball said briskly. 'What's going on?'

'Peggy, we met twenty years ago. I was a patient of Dr. Connors, and he arranged a private adoption for my baby. I need to talk to you about it.'

For a long moment Peggy Kimball did not say anything. Jean could hear the voices of children in the background. 'I'm sorry, Ms. Sheridan,' Kimball said, a note of finality in her voice. 'I simply cannot discuss the adoptions Dr. Connors handled. If you want to begin to trace your child, there are legal ways of going about it.'

Jean could sense that Kimball was about to break the connection. 'I've already been in touch with Sam Deegan, an investigator from the district attorney's office,' she said hurriedly. 'I have received three communications that can only be construed as threats to my daughter. Her adoptive parents have got to be warned to watch out for her. Please, Peggy. You were so kind to me then. Help me now, I beg you.'

She was interrupted by Peggy Kimball's alarmed shout: 'Tommy, I warn you. Don't throw that dish!'

Jean heard the sound of glass breaking.

'Oh, my God,' Peggy Kimball said with a sigh. 'Look, Ms. Sheridan, I'm baby-sitting my grandkids. I can't talk now.'

'Peggy, can I meet you tomorrow? I'll show you the faxes I've received threatening my daughter. You can check on me. I'm a dean and professor of history at Georgetown. I'll give you the number of the president of the college. I'll give you Sam Deegan's number.'

'Tommy, Betsy, don't go near that glass! Wait a minute… by any chance are you the Jean Sheridan who wrote the book about Abigail Adams?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake! I loved it. I know all about you. I saw you on the Today show with Katie Couric. You two could be sisters. Will you still be at the Glen-Ridge tomorrow morning?'

'Yes, I will.'

'I work in neonatal at the hospital. The Glen-Ridge is on the way there. I don't think I'll be any help to you, but do you want to have a cup of coffee around ten?'

'I would love to,' Jean said. 'Peggy, thank you, thank you.'

'I'll call you from the lobby,' Peggy Kimball said hurriedly, then her voice became alarmed. 'Betsy, I warn you. Don't pull Tommy's hair! Oh, my God! Sorry, Jean, it's becoming a free-for-all here. See you tomorrow.'

Jean replaced the receiver slowly. That sounds like mayhem, she thought, but in a crazy way, I envy Peggy Kimball. I envy her the normal problems of normal people. People who mind their grandkids and have to clean up messy babies and spilled food and broken dishes. People who can see and touch their daughters and tell them to drive carefully and be home by midnight.

She had been sitting at the desk of her room in the hotel when Kimball phoned. Scattered in front of her were the lists she had been trying to compile, mostly the names of people in the nursing home who had befriended her and also the professors at the University of Chicago where she had spent all her spare time taking extracurricular courses.

Now she massaged her temples, hoping to rub away the beginnings of a headache. In an hour, at seven-thirty, at Sam's request, they would be having dinner together in a private dining room on the hotel's mezzanine floor. The guests included the honorees, Gordon and Carter and Robby and Mark and me, Jean thought, and, of course, Jack, the chairman of the godforsaken reunion. What is Sam hoping to accomplish by getting all of us together again?

She realized that unburdening herself to Mark had been a mixed blessing. There was astonishment in his eyes when he said, 'You mean that on graduation day at age eighteen, when you were tripping up to the stage to accept the History medal and a scholarship to Bryn Mawr, you were aware that you were expecting a baby and that the