Wes is alluding to the race thing, Hannah thinks. Hannah has no wish to pursue the subject for it is unpleasant to see Wes become excitable and impatient with her.

  “There hasn’t been a single Black child taken,” Wes says, as if reading Hannah’s mind, “has there? Eight white children.”

  Because Babysitter lives outside Detroit, Hannah thinks. One of us.

  TV news resumes, Wes unmutes the volume. Familiar film footage, Hannah is sure she has seen before. Stricken parents, photographs of young children, mostly boys, a girl, another girl—previous victims of the serial killer known as Babysitter. Hannah thinks how tragic it is, the parents of previous victims can have no rest, always the history of Babysitter is exhumed, seven small beautiful faces identified onscreen.

  As Wes stares frowning at the screen, Hannah glances at the sofa he’s sitting on, and at the carpet.

  She’d been careful. Working swiftly. Fastidious. Windex, paper towels. All stains removed. No trace.

  In the kitchen frantically scrubbing surfaces the ponytailed boy hadn’t even touched.

  This business I expedited today, it’s gonna be news …

  Excitement in the ponytailed boy’s face. Flushed coarse skin, hot to the touch.

  And now, TV news a few hours later. Coincidence?

  Balmoral Drive comes to mind like flashing neon—then fades, vanishes.

  Impossible to comprehend. No.

  As a moth struggling in a spiderweb has no idea how it has come to be trapped in the spiderweb. Scarcely a memory of its life before the spiderweb. No idea of a life apart from the spiderweb.

  Hannah knows: She should contact Far Hills police, as residents of the area have been urged to do if they have encountered anyone or anything “suspicious.”

  But what would she say to police?—how to find the words …

  She doesn’t know Mikey’s last name nor even if Mikey—Mike—is really his name. She doesn’t know where he lives or how to contact him. No idea how to contact Y.K. No idea how she could explain Y.K. or Mikey in her life if police questioned her. When police questioned her. For of course she would be questioned.

  Thinking how no one understands what it is to be questioned until you are confronted by questioners empowered by the state to demand the truth of you.

  A life that’s a tissue of lies loosely strung together, serviceable as a life until one day it isn’t.

  Hannah would rather kill herself than revive her association with the Far Hills police department. Where she is known, though her name has never been publicly released, as the (white) suburban woman (allegedly) raped by a Black man employed by the Far Hills Marriott.

  They’d never believed her, Hannah thinks. Not surprising, she’d never believed herself.

  And what shame—Y.K. The passport issued in New York City identified the man as Yaakel Benjamin Keinz yet the photograph in the passport didn’t appear to be the man Hannah knows, or knew, as Y.K.

  In a lurid slew of dreams, Hannah has dreamed of Y.K. Sloughing off such memories as a snake would slough off its old skin yet (surely) bits of skin, scales, stick to the tender flesh beneath.

  Numbly smiling to think—No access. No trace.

  She has passed through walls, she has eluded discovery like a time traveler. Wes knows nothing of her truest self.

  Her children, who adore Mommy. No idea who Mommy is, so they can adore her absolutely.

  Katya might have been taken from Hannah, as punishment. Yet was not. So much Hannah has risked, yet Hannah remains (brazenly) untouched.

  There is only one question: Of what am I capable?

  If ponytailed Mikey is in any way linked to Babysitter, the fact that Mikey appears to be in the hire of Y.K. suggests that Y.K. is linked to Babysitter, too.

  Impossible to comprehend. No.

  After the children are in bed Hannah returns to Wes downstairs in the TV room.

  Still watching WXYZ news but now the subject has shifted to rising tensions in the Middle East which doesn’t interest him nearly as much as local Babysitter news.

  Hannah had been disappointed this evening when Wes arrived home forty minutes late having had an “early dinner” with business associates at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, insisting he’d told Hannah about the engagement beforehand; he’d seemed to have totally forgotten that Hannah had planned their dinner together—romantic, candlelit, Tuscany wine, white summer dress with tight bodice and pleated skirt, amber beads around her neck, flowery scent of Chanel No. 5.

  He is repelled by me. The Black man, he imagines.

  Often, Wes speaks to Hannah without looking at her.

  Or, if looking at her, not meeting Hannah’s eyes.

  Wes has switched to another local news station. If he doesn’t hurry, the news hour will be over and late-night programming will begin.

  “… no one has satisfactorily explained why Babysitter released his eighth victim but not the other seven … One theory is that the abduction from Far Hills might not have been by Babysitter but by another person, a copycat … It is not uncommon, in such lurid crimes, that copycats begin to appear, attracted by the publicity.”

  A criminologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is speaking earnestly to an interviewer.

  “… another story is: Babysitter may be repenting. He’d tortured the poor boy it seems but decided not to kill him. That is … despite the tragedy … some cause for hope.”

  When an advertisement comes on, Wes mutes the TV.

  Saying, in disgust, “Christ! A sick pervert like that could never repent.”

  Hannah wishes that Wes would lose interest in this subject which has obsessed him for months. Not wanting to think that, for Wes, the humiliated husband of the humiliated wife, an obsession with Babysitter is preferable to an obsession with the humiliation.

  Still, it’s rare for Wes to care so deeply about anything beyond himself and his family.

  Wes is complaining that the police haven’t been searching hard enough in the right places to find Babysitter. Now they’re pinning everything on interviewing the Hayden boy—“But what I think is, if the abductor released him, it’s because the boy can’t identify him. He was blindfolded and gagged. Chances are he never saw who did it. Maybe he never even heard his voice …”

  Not intending to be contrary, really just to allow Wes to know that she is listening, she is engaged with what he has been saying, Hannah says carefully, “Maybe someone else released him. Maybe there are two people involved in the abductions.”

  Wes snorts in derision. “Well, I doubt that. It’s known that serial sex abusers are solitary people, they operate alone. Especially, a pervert like Babysitter would operate alone.”

  Pervert is a word Wes has uttered often recently, Hannah notes, with a particular relish.

  “If the Hayden boy is interviewed, he probably wouldn’t remember much, he’d be in a state of shock. He might even be mute. The brain’s way of dealing with trauma—shut down.”

  There is a pause. Hannah wonders if Wes is thinking—Like you. My wife. State of shock. Brain shut down.

  Hannah suggests that, since they are almost neighbors with the Haydens, she might contact Jill Hayden: “Just a note to say that we’re thinking of them, and are so sorry that such a thing has happened to their son, and if there’s anything we can do to help …”

  This notion, this comforting fantasy has drifted into Hannah’s head like a bit of silkweed fluff borne by the wind. The sort of neighborhood gesture you would expect in a movie of the 1940s: Claudette Colbert, Greer Garson, Jeanne Crain, the good-neighbor woman, wife of the good-neighbor husband Dana Andrews, Joel McCrea, James Stewart …

  But Wes isn’t so sure. Telling Hannah no, not a good idea.

  “Not much we can do. Better not to get involved.”

  “But—just to show support. Because I am a mother, like Jill Hayden. Because she might like to know that—someone is thinking of her …”

  Hannah’s voice trails off. No doubt, Wes is correct. So little that anyone else can do.

  “She isn’t a friend of yours, you’ve said. You’d never met her, you’ve said.”

  Wes speaks dismissively. Hannah sits silenced, rebuked.

  “Of course people are thinking of them. They’ve been in the news for days, it’s gone national. What good will it do them to be told that?”

  Wes has worked himself up to being exasperated with Hannah when she’d meant only well.

  He has never forgiven me. The rape.

  He is repelled by me. That is his secret.

  Impatiently Wes switches TV channels. But no—nothing.

  Saying, as if relenting, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to write to her—to them. Both Haydens.”

  Hannah is relieved. Wes will dismiss an idea of hers, then reconsider and rephrase it in such a way that it will seem that he is being generous to her, to see her point of view; if possible, he will improve upon it.

  “And sign my name, too. It will mean a little more, with both our signatures.”

  As in a romantic comedy Hannah laughs in delight. No acrimonious scene, in a Hollywood romance, is likely to end without a reconciliation: grumpy husband, relieved and forgiving wife.

  “Thank you, darling!”—making use of the occasion to kiss her furrowed-brow husband lightly on the lips as if there’d never been any doubt that the disagreement, like this turbulent day, would end with a kiss.

  That night in the dark, in their bed Hannah touches Wes, shyly. Flat of her hand against his back in a thin T-shirt yet still Wes shivers, Hannah’s hand is (evidently) chilly.

  He’d come upstairs an hour after Hannah, almost exactly. Having had enough of TV for the night.

  Hannah has had a sleeping pill—just one!—hoping that it will not fail to take effect, as a single pill sometimes does. So that, in the middle of the night, desperate for a few hours’ sleep Hannah will take a second pill which will knock her out as if with a mallet to the head and in the morning she will be groggy, underwater, scarcely aware of Wes rising, leaving the room, departing for the day.

  Wes is lying very still. If TV news of Babysitter has set his thoughts to a boil he gives no sign now.

  He’d undressed quietly, in his bathroom. To not disturb Hannah. Whether because he truly doesn’t want to disturb Hannah’s sleep or because he doesn’t want to speak with her, Hannah could not have said.

  Don’t hate me, try to love me. Desire me.

  Hannah tells Wes that she has missed him, that day. Disappointed about dinner but she must have misunderstood. She will plan for another time.

  (She hadn’t eaten the elaborate dinner she’d prepared for Wes, of course it remains in the refrigerator in a heavy casserole dish. No appetite for dining alone. Marriage is the promise—no more dining alone! Hannah wonders if the meal should be frozen promptly in the morning, for economy’s sake. For food proffered with love is the female body.)

  Daringly, as if impulsively Hannah slips an arm over her husband’s side. Presses against his impassive back, her breasts in a thin nylon nightgown, fatty-bunched, warm. Exquisite soft skin of her breasts, a woman’s breasts, so much softer and more vulnerable than skin elsewhere. Hannah shivers at the thought.

  How you know that you are alive. At least.

  Wes murmurs something inaudible. He is relieved, perhaps, that Hannah seems to have forgiven him. But he has not turned to her, as Hannah has hoped he would.

  She reaches for Wes’s hand, brings it to her breast. Belatedly he stirs to life, turns to her, she presses herself into his arms, kisses him, again shyly, light moth kisses, in apprehension of being rebuffed. And indeed, just perceptibly Wes is stiffening, like one who has just thought of something. Failing to kiss Hannah in turn, only just lightly, as in a greeting between friends.

  Another time Hannah says, “I missed you today.” Hearing her voice, the reproach in the voice, female hurt, disappointment. She does not intend this tone, that comes unbidden. “The children were at a playdate, Ismelda was out, I was alone and I—I thought of you …”

  “Did you!”—Wes murmurs, embarrassed.

  How flat, how trite. Indeed, embarrassing.

  Hannah wonders if it is true, what she has feared—her (white) husband loathes her, for having been “violated” by a (Black) man.

  Convinced that his (male) friends pity him, and talk of him behind his back. His fellow partners, his associates, and (even) his employees.

  Of course, Wes would deny this strenuously. Ridiculous!

  Hannah has taken Wes’s hand again, more assertively, and now Wes throws off her hand, irritated: “Don’t, Hannah! Please just don’t.”

  IV

  Mistletoe 1977

  Run, run! When you die it will be running.

  Feet sinking into sand soft-seeming but not soft.

  Bare feet sinking run run for your life.

  Looming behind you, to catch you around the ribs with his big-bear hands.

  Never any progress. Quicksand. Yet, always running.

  No choice but to run. Run for your life!

  Thick-piled carpet, high-heeled shoes sink into it like (quick)sand.

  Nape of your neck bare resting in the shallow groove, a very cold stainless steel utilitarian table.

  Bare skin the hue of snow at dusk, faint-blue-tinted.

  Are you aware of the drain beneath the table?—you do not (actually) see the drain.

  Are you aware of the glaring fluorescent tubing overhead?—you do not (actually) see the tubing in the vinyl-tiled drop ceiling.

  Dimly aware of the white-coated figure looming over you. Latex gloves gripping the sharp utilitarian instrument.

  Dimly aware of arterial-red color—(berries?)—above the double doors opening inward where someone has placed, perhaps prankishly, a sprig of mistletoe.

  It’s that season—mere weeks before Christmas.

  Somehow, time has accelerated. It is a riddle, how.

  So long you’d taken for granted that time is an infinite supply to be used as you wish, dipped into, measured by the calendar, the clock, and the watch, now you realize that time is the river rushing you along heedless of your wishes.

  When you die, such pranks will continue. Such jokes.

  Mistletoe in such a place! Pucker your mouth to be kissed.

  Joker Daddy in his stained white coat stoops for a kiss. Pike-mouth Joker Daddy whose kiss is a sting.

  Run running here.

  Refrigerated air, sharp odor of disinfectant.

  Fingers brushing your wrist. Closing about your wrist.

  Because your heart is broken, wanting only to heal your heart.

  Not wanting to end, only to heal.

  No way to solve the riddle except to pursue to the end.

  Which one of them was she?—on the cold stainless steel table.

  “I Am So Sorry”

  No words! She has tried.

  On embossed cream-colored stationery, deep-dark-blue ink, schoolgirl penmanship.

  I am so sorry about what happened to your son …

  I am so sorry about the terrible thing that happened …

  As your neighbor who would like to be your friend, I …

  I am so sorry that what happened to your family happened …

  It was a terrible …

  … thank God a happy ending.

  If there is anything I can do …

  We have not met but our children attend the same school …

  Picking up my children I believe I have seen your Robbie …

  (My son, Conor, will be in second grade; my daughter, Katya, is in preschool …)

  I think that I am just trying to say …

  … praying that your son is recovered.

  … praying that your son is recovering.

  … your family.

  Those terrible days and nights when your son was missing I could not sleep for thinking of you, hoping that you were brave as I could not be in such circumstances …

  Those days and nights praying for you though (I should confess!) I am not what you would call a believer …

  Oh I am sorry: I know you are (probably) trying to forget …

  Your son is so lucky to be alive! But you know that …

  Forgive me, am I making things worse?

  Forgive me, is this an intrusion?

  … we have friends in common, I think.

  Our husbands know each other, I think.

  If there is anything I can do please call me, my number is …

  Several times Hannah tries, each time Hannah fails.

  Cannot find the right words, magical words with which to address Jill Hayden.

  (Hannah addresses her pleas only to Jill Hayden. No intention of writing to both of the Haydens, nor of signing Wes’s name to her letter.)

  I am writing to ask if there is …

  … wishing that we had met before this terrible …

  … not sure what I am trying to say to you.

  … “there but for the grace of God go I.”

  Hannah tears up the many sheets of stationery. Furious at herself for wasting expensive stationery. Not only are the words inadequate, they are also insincere: Hannah didn’t pray for Robbie Hayden’s return, Hannah didn’t lie awake thinking of the Haydens except that, having difficulty sleeping, waking intermittently through the night, she might have thought of the Haydens less than a mile away sleepless in their vigil.

  Weeks later Wes will remember and ask if Hannah has written to Jill Hayden, and did she sign the letter with his name, too?—and Hannah assures him yes of course.

  “Well. Have you heard back yet?”

  Not yet, Hannah says. But she is sure that she will.

  Dry Heat, September

  He calls, he says he must see her.

  Quickly she tells him no.

  She is adamant, her heart is a brave clanging bell. All that is over—she is a different person now.