For the first time I realize that it’s my fault that Laurel is dead. I can’t say anything for a few moments. Ben Marcus lets me be quiet as if he knew what I was thinking. Then he says, gently, “But you did save Chloë—her Chloë.”
As he says it I realize that he believes me. I have to stop for a minute to keep myself from crying. “But I might not have,” I say at last. “And I can’t believe Laurel would have risked killing her.”
“Even if she thought she was somehow saving her from something worse?”
I consider that, remembering the woman who jumped from her window with her baby strapped to her chest because she thought it was better if he died than lived life broken. Would Laurel—perfectionist, high-strung Laurel—have done such a thing? Would I?
“I have to tell you something,” I say. “Right after Chloe was born I-I wasn’t doing so well. I took too many pills and wound up almost drowning in the bathtub. I would have drowned if Peter hadn’t found me. I don’t remember planning to kill myself, but that must have been what I was trying to do.”
“Or at least that’s what your husband says.”
“You don’t sound surprised,” I say. Does Ben Marcus think I’m so crazy that nothing is impossible?
“It was in the paper,” he says, pity on his face. He reaches into his pocket, takes out his phone, and taps in a few words, then hands the phone to me. My heart pounds at the sight of my face on the screen and I quickly scroll down past the photo to the headline: WESTCHESTER MOM SUICIDE. The print swims in front of me, random phrases surfacing like bloated fish rising to the top of toxic water . . . history of mental illness . . . treated for postpartum depression . . . previous suicide attempt . . .
I scroll back to the picture, hoping at least for proof that I am Daphne Marist. The picture is an unflattering one taken in my third trimester of pregnancy. My face is round and bloated, my hair growing out from an ill-advised pixie cut, my eyes squinting against the sun. Even after weeks in a mental hospital I think I look better now. For a minute I’m angry at Peter for choosing such an awful picture, but then I realize that’s the point; he gave the newspaper a picture that no one would connect with how I look now.
“I know this doesn’t look like me,” I say.
“Not much. And I couldn’t find any other pictures online. Not one for Facebook, eh?”
I laugh. “Peter said it was tacky and a lure for pedophiles so I took it down—Oh!” Our eyes meet.
“He was either planning this for a while or he’s just a controlling prick,” Ben Marcus says.
I should be glad he’s taking my side but hearing him call Peter that stings. It’s true that Peter was controlling but I’d always thought that was because his parents were so strict. But if he really has planned this, he’s not just controlling, he’s a monster. And what does that make me, a woman who married a monster? How could I have been so stupid? So spineless? Laurel was right. I was a doormat.
“Or both,” I say finally, looking into the narrowed eyes of the pregnant woman in the picture. She looks like such a stranger that for a dizzying moment it seems more likely that I am Laurel Hobbes than her.
“Daphne?” It’s the first time Ben Marcus has called me that, and it brings me to my senses. It brings me to myself.
“Yes?”
“Is there anyone who could identify you? Someone I can bring here?”
I try to think. Friends from college and library school appear in my mind, but I’d only been close to a few people and I’ve been out of touch with them for years. Peter had never been interested in socializing with my old friends.
I shake my head and a tear comes loose. “Laurel was the first real friend I’d made in years.” How did I end up like this? How did I end up so alone?
“What about the other women in the group?”
I try to imagine Alexa Hartshorn driving upstate to stare at a bedraggled woman in a mental institution. . . . “Esta,” I say. “The group leader. She’ll know I’m Daphne.”
“Okay,” Marcus says with a nod. “What’s her last name?”
For a moment I can’t remember, and it makes me doubt everything. Isn’t it more likely that Laurel would forget our group leader’s name than I would? But then I hear Laurel’s voice—for the first time since I read her journal and got angry at her.
Esta Greenberg, sweetie. And just for the record, I never forget a name.
“Greenberg,” I tell Ben.
He taps the name into a notes app on his phone. Then he turns the phone around and takes a picture of me. “To show Esta Greenberg,” he says. When he turns the phone back around so I can see the picture I wish he hadn’t. I don’t recognize the woman on the screen at all.
Laurel’s Journal, July 23, 20—
I’m worried about Chloë. Ever since that night at Daphne’s house she hasn’t seemed herself. She cries all night long. Simone says it’s just teething, but I’m afraid she might have caught something from Daphne’s Chloe. I made Stan get up last night and take us to the emergency room. They couldn’t find anything wrong with her, but what can you expect from a little podunk suburban hospital? I told Stan that we need to take her into the city to see a specialist. He told me I was projecting my fears about my own health onto our daughter and that he wasn’t going to let me turn her into a guinea pig. I told him I was glad to see he’d gotten a medical degree so now maybe he could get an actual job. He asked me what I thought
