He rushed to her, sank to his knees, put a hand on her back. “Baby,” he said. “Baby.”
She turned, flung her arms around his neck, let out a wail. Her gasping breath was hot and moist. He held her tight as if he could squeeze the trauma out of her little body, make everything normal again, make her feel safe.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” Her gasps were like spasms, hiccups. He held her even tighter. The copious flow of her tears pooled in the hollow of his neck. He could feel it soak his shirt.
Ten minutes later, when Marta had taken Julia inside, Nick spoke to Officer Manzi. He made no effort this time to contain his fury. “What the fuck are you guys going to do about this?” Nick thundered. “What the hell are you waiting for? These break-ins have been going on for months already, and you haven’t done a damned thing about it.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Manzi said blandly.
“You haven’t assigned a detective to the case, you haven’t done any investigation, you haven’t gone through the lists of laid-off Stratton employees. You’ve had months to stop this fucking madman. What are you waiting for? Does this lunatic have to murder one of my kids before you take it seriously?”
Manzi’s detachment-did Nick detect a smug sort of amusement, was that possible?-was infuriating. “Well, sir, as I said, you might want to think about upgrading your security-”
“My security? What about you guys? Isn’t this your goddamned job?”
“You said it yourself, sir-you laid off five thousand Stratton employees. That’s going to create more enemies than we can possibly protect you against. You should really upgrade your security system.”
“Yeah, and what are you going to do? How are you going to protect my family?”
“I’ll be honest with you, sir. Stalking cases are some of our hardest.”
“Meaning you pretty much can’t do shit, is that right?”
Manzi shrugged. “You said it. I didn’t.”
4
After the police left, Nick tried for a long while to console his daughter. He called to cancel her piano lesson, then sat with her, talking a bit, mostly hugging. When she seemed stable, Nick left her in Marta’s care and returned to the office for a largely unproductive afternoon.
By the time he returned home, Julia was asleep and Marta was in the family room, watching a movie about a baby who talks with Bruce Willis’s voice.
“Where’s Julia?” Nick asked.
“She’s asleep,” Marta said sadly. “She was okay by the time she went to bed. But she cried a lot, Nick.”
Nick shook his head. “That poor baby. This is going to be hardest on her, I think. Barney was Laura’s dog, really. To Julia, Barney…” He fell silent. “Is Lucas upstairs?”
“He called from a friend’s house, said they’re working on their history projects.”
“Yeah, right. Working on a nickel bag, more like it. Which friend?”
“I think Ziegler? Um, listen-Nick? I’m kind of nervous being alone in the house-after today, I mean.”
“I can’t blame you. You lock the doors and windows, right?”
“I did, but this crazy person…”
“I know. I’m going to have a new system put in right away so you can put on the alarm while you’re inside.” Stratton’s corporate security director had told Nick he’d drop by later, see what he could do. Anything for the boss. They’d gone too long with a rudimentary security system; it was time to put in something state-of-the-art, with cameras and motion detectors and all that. “You can go to sleep if you want.”
“I want to see the rest of this movie.”
“Sure.”
Nick went upstairs and down the hall to Julia’s bedroom, quietly opening the door and making his way through the darkness by memory. Enough moonlight filtered through the gaps in the curtains that, once his eyes adjusted, he could make out his daughter’s sleeping body. Julia slept under, and with, an assortment of favorite blankets, each of which she’d given names to, as well as a rotating selection of stuffed animals and Beanie Babies from her vast menagerie. Tonight she was clutching Winnie the Pooh, who’d been given to her when she was a few days old, now frayed and matted and stained.
Her choice of sleeping partner was a pretty reliable indicator of her mental state: Elmo when she was feeling sprightly; Curious George when she was feeling mischievous; her little Beanie Baby koala, Eucalyptus, when she wanted to nurture someone needier than herself. But Pooh always meant she was feeling especially fragile and in need of the ultimate comfort of her longest-serving pal. For several months after her mommy’s death, she slept with Pooh every night. Recently, she’d traded in Pooh for some of the other guys, which was a sign that she was starting to feel a little stronger.
Tonight, though, Pooh was back in her bed.
He touched her sweaty curls, breathed in the sweet baby-shampoo aroma mixed with the slightly sour smell of perspiration, and kissed her damp forehead. She murmured but did not stir.
A door opened and closed somewhere in the house, followed immediately by the thud of something being dropped to the floor. Nick was instantly alert. Heavy, bounding footsteps on the carpeted stairs told him it was Lucas.
Nick navigated a path through the minefield of books and toys and closed the door quietly behind him. The long hall was dark, but a stripe of yellow light glared through the crack under Lucas’s bedroom door.
Nick knocked, waited, then knocked again.
“Yeah?”
The depth and timbre of his son’s voice always startled him. That and the surly edge to it, in the last year. Nick opened the door and found Lucas lying back on his bed, boots still on, iPod earbuds in his ears.
“Where’ve you been?” Nick asked.
Lucas glanced at him, then found something in the middle distance that was more interesting. “Where’s Barney?”
Nick paused. “I asked you where you’ve been, Luke. It’s a school night.”
“Ziggy’s.”
“You didn’t ask me if you could go over there.”
“You weren’t around to ask.”
“If you want to go over to a friend’s house, you’ve got to clear it in advance with me or Marta.”
Lucas shrugged in tacit acknowledgment. His eyes were red and glassy, and now Nick was fairly certain he’d been getting high. This was an alarming new development, but he hadn’t yet confronted his son about it. He’d been putting it off simply because it was one more mountain to climb, a showdown that would require unwavering strength he didn’t have. There was so much going on at work, and there was Julia, who was frankly a hell of a lot easier to console, and then there was his own sadness, which sapped his ability to be a good and understanding dad.
He looked at Lucas, could hear the tinny, percussive hiss coming from the earphones. He wondered what kind of crappy music Lucas was listening to now. He caught a whiff of stale smoke in the room, which smelled like regular cigarettes, though he wasn’t sure.
There was a baffling disconnect between Lucas on the inside and Lucas on the outside. Externally, Lucas was a mature sixteen, a tall and handsome man. His almost feminine prettiness had taken on a sharp-featured masculinity. His eyebrows, above blue eyes with long lashes, were dark and thick. The Lucas inside, though, was five or six: petulant, easily wounded, expert at finding insult in the most unexpected places, capable of holding grudges to the end of time.
“You’re not smoking, are you?”
Lucas cast his father a look of withering contempt. “Ever hear of second-hand smoke? I was around people who were smoking.”