He followed the arrow left. The nursery was on the left. He turned and looked through the window. There was a line of six newborns in those rolling acrylic cribs, all wearing a baby beanie and swaddled in a white blanket with pink and aqua stripes. The newborns were lined up as if for inspection. They’d all been immediately catalogued with an index card, either blue or pink, with name and time of birth.
Divided off from the nursery by more Plexiglas was the neonatal intensive care unit. There was only one parent with one child in there now. Lex sat in a rocking chair, but the chair didn’t move. He wore a yellow smock. He cupped his son’s head with his left hand, cradling the child on his right forearm. Tears lined his face. For a long moment, Myron just stood and watched him. Muse joined him.
“What the hell is going on here, Myron?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Do you have any idea what the media is going to be like on this?”
Like he cared. He started for the door. A nurse stopped him and made him wash his hands. Then she put a yellow surgical smock and matching mask on him. Myron pushed open the door with his back. Lex did not look up.
“Lex?”
“Not now.”
“I think we should talk.”
Lex finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. When he spoke now, his voice was soft. “I asked you to leave it alone, didn’t I?”
Silence. Later, Myron was sure, the words would sting. Later, when he settled down and tried to sleep, the guilt would reach into his chest and crush his heart like a Styrofoam cup. “I saw her tattoo,” Myron said. “It was in that post.”
He closed his eyes. “Suzze was the only woman I ever loved. And now she’s gone. I mean, forever. I will never see Suzze again. I will never hold her. This boy-your godson-will never know his mother.”
Myron said nothing. He felt a tremor start in his chest.
“We have to talk, Lex.”
“Not tonight.” His voice was surprisingly gentle now. “Tonight I just want to sit here and protect my son.”
“Protect him from what?”
He didn’t respond. Myron felt his phone buzz. He took a surreptitious glance and saw that the call was coming from his father. He stepped out of the room and put the phone to his ear. “Dad?”
“I heard about Suzze on the radio. Is it true?”
“Yes. I’m at the hospital now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. I’m kind of busy here…”
“When you’re done, do you think you could swing by the house?”
“Tonight?”
“If possible.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I just need to talk to you about something,” Dad said. “Don’t worry how late. I’ll be awake.”
18
Before leaving the hospital, Myron played lawyer and warned Loren Muse not to speak to his client Lex Ryder without legal counsel. She responded that he should be fruitful and multiply, but not in those exact words. Win and Esperanza arrived. Win filled him in on his prison encounter with Frank Ache. Myron wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Perhaps,” Win said, “we should meet with Herman Ache.”
“Perhaps,” Myron said, “we should meet with Gabriel Wire.” He turned to Esperanza. “Let’s also check on our favorite French teacher, see where Crush was at the time of Suzze’s death.”
“Okay,” Esperanza said.
“I can drive you home,” Win said.
But Myron shook him off. He needed the downtime. He needed to take a step back. Maybe Muse was right. Maybe it was a drug overdose. Last night, on that balcony overlooking Manhattan, all that talk about secrets, all that guilt about Kitty and the past-maybe it summoned up old demons. Maybe the answer would be as simple as that.
Myron got into his car and headed back to his home in Livingston. He called Dad to let him know that he was on his way. “Drive safely,” his father said. Myron hoped that maybe his father would offer up a clue about what they needed to discuss, but he didn’t. AM radio was already reporting the death of “former troubled tennis sensation Suzze T,” and Myron again wondered about the inept shortcutting of the media.
It was dark by the time Myron pulled up to his familiar abode. The light in the upstairs bedroom-the one he had shared with Brad when they were both very young-was on, and Myron looked up at it. He could see the outline of the long-faded Tot Finder sticker, something the Livingston Fire Department had handed out during the early Carter administration. The image on the sticker was dramatic, a brave fireman, his chin up, carrying a limp, long-haired child to safety. Now the room was a home office.
His car lights caught a For Sale sign on the Nussbaums’ front lawn. Myron had gone to high school with their son Steve, though everyone called him either “Nuss” or “Baum,” a friendly kid Myron really liked but for some reason never hung out with. The Nussbaums had been one of the original families, buying in when this farmland was originally turned into housing forty years ago. The Nussbaums loved it here. They loved to garden and putter and work on the gazebo in the backyard. They brought the Bolitars the extra tomatoes from their garden, and if you’ve never tried a Jersey tomato in August, you just don’t get it. Now even the Nussbaums were moving out.
Myron parked in the driveway. He saw movement in the window. Dad had probably been watching, the ever- present silent sentinel. When Myron was a teen, he had no curfew because, his father explained, he’d shown enough responsibility not to need one. Al Bolitar was a terrible sleeper, and Myron could not remember a time, no matter what hour he returned home, when his father was not up waiting for him. His father needed everything in place before he could close his eyes. Myron wondered whether it was still that way for him, and how his sleep had changed when his younger son ran off with Kitty and never returned.
He parked the car. Suzze was dead. He had never been big on denial, but he was still having trouble wrapping his brain around that one. She was about to start the next big chapter of her life-motherhood. He often imagined the day his own parents first came by this dwelling, his father struggling at the plant in Newark, his mom pregnant. He pictured El-Al, young, holding hands the way they always do, walking up the concrete path, gazing at this splitlevel and deciding, yes, this would be the place that would shelter their new family and hold their hopes and dreams. He wondered now, as they looked back, whether those dreams came true or whether there were regrets.
Soon Myron would be married too. Terese couldn’t have children. He knew that. He had spent his whole life wanting the American Dream family-the house, the picket fence, the two-car garage, the two-point-four kids, the barbecue in the back, the basketball hoop on the garage-in short, the life of the people here like the Nussbaums and the Browns and the Lyons and the Fonteras and the El-Al Bolitars. Apparently it was not meant to be.
Mom, blunt as she was, had made a good point about selling the house. You can’t hold on too tightly. He wanted Terese home, with him, where she belonged, because in the end, only your lover can make the world disappear, and yes, he knew how corny that sounded.
Myron trudged up the concrete walk, lost in this thought, and maybe that was why he didn’t sense the danger before it struck. Or maybe his attacker was good, patient, crouching in the dark, waiting until Myron was close enough or distracted enough to pounce.
First came the flash of light. Twenty years ago, Dad had installed motion-detector lights in the front of the house. This had been a big marvel to his parents, on par with the discovery of electricity or cable television. For weeks, El-Al had tested this new technology, trying to walk or even crawl deliberately, seeing whether they could fool the motion detector. Mom and Dad would approach from various angles, at various speeds, laughing heartily
