He tightened his grip on her, but she would not, could not, look up at him.
“Our baby’s dead,” she said softly. “I’m carrying a dead baby.”
He held her then and waited for her to cry, but she had no more tears left to shed. She simply lay against him, silent and lost in her grief. He could see his reflection in the mirror on the wall behind her, and he closed his eyes so he would not have to look at himself.
Will led his wife to the bedroom and helped her to get between the sheets. The doctors at the clinic had given her some pills, and he made her take two.
“They wanted to induce it,” she said, as the drugs took hold. “They wanted to take our baby away, but I wouldn’t let them. I wanted to keep it for as long as I could.”
He nodded, but now he could not speak. His own tears began to fall. His wife reached up and wiped them away with her thumb.
He sat beside her until she fell asleep, then stared at the wall for two hours, her hand in his until slowly, carefully, he released it and let it fall to the sheets. She stirred slightly, but she did not wake.
He went downstairs and called the number that Epstein had given him when they first met. A woman answered sleepily, and when he asked for the rabbi, she told him that he was in bed.
“He had a long night,” she explained.
“I know,” he replied. “I was there. Wake him. Tell him it’s Will Parker.”
The woman clearly recognized the name. She put the phone down, and Will heard her walk away. Five minutes passed, and then he heard Epstein’s voice.
“Mr. Parker. I should have told you at the hospitaclass="underline" it’s not good for us to stay in contact this way.”
“I need to see you.”
“That’s not possible. What’s done is done. We must let the dead rest.”
“My wife is carrying a dead baby,” said Will. He almost vomited the words out.
“What?”
“You heard me. Our child is dead in the womb. They think the umbilical cord got wound around its throat somehow. It’s dead. They told her yesterday. They’re going to induce labor and remove it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Epstein.
“I don’t want your pity,” said Will. “I want my son.”
Epstein was silent. “What you’re suggesting isn’t-”
Will cut him off.
“Don’t tell me that! You make this happen. You go to your friend, Mr. Quiet in his nice suit, and you tell him what I want. Otherwise, I swear I’ll make so much noise that your ears will bleed.” Suddenly, the energy began to leach from his body. He wanted to crawl into bed and hold his wife, hold his wife and their dead child. “Look, you told me that the boy would have to be taken care of. I can take care of him. Hide him with me. Hide him in plain sight. Please.”
He heard Epstein sigh. “I will talk to our friends,” he said at last. “Give me the name of the doctor who is looking after your wife.”
Will did so. The number was in the address book beside the telephone.
“Where is your wife now?”
“She’s asleep upstairs. She took some pills.”
“I’ll call you in one hour,” said Epstein, and he hung up.
One hour and five minutes later, the phone rang. Will, who had been sitting on the floor beside it, picked it up before it had a chance to ring a second time.
“When your wife wakes up, Mr. Parker, you must tell her the truth,” said Epstein. “Ask her to forgive you, then tell her what you propose.”
Will did not sleep that night. Instead, he mourned for Caroline Carr, and when dawn broke he put his grief for her aside and prepared for what he felt certain would be the death of his marriage.
“He called me that morning,” said Jimmy. “He told me what he intended to do. He was prepared to gamble everything on the possibility of holding on to the boy: his career; his marriage; the happiness, even the sanity, of his wife.”
He was about to pour some more wine into his glass, then stopped.
“I can’t drink any more,” he said. “The wine looks like blood.” He pushed the bottle and the glass away. “We’re nearly done anyway, for now. I’ll finish this part, and then I have to sleep. We can talk again tomorrow. If you want, you can spend the night. There’s a guest room.”
I opened my mouth to object, but he raised his hand.
“Believe me, when I’ve finished tonight, you’ll have enough to think about. You’ll be grateful that I’ve stopped.”
He leaned forward, his hands cupped before him, and I saw that they were trembling.
“So your old man was waiting at your mother &rsquo R qmother &rs;s bedside when she woke…”
I think, sometimes, of what my father and mother endured that day. I wonder if there was a kind of madness to his actions, spurred on by his fear that he seemed destined to lose two children, one to death and the other to an anonymous existence surrounded by those who were not related by blood to him. He must have known, as he stood above my mother, debating whether to wake her or let her sleep on for a time, delaying the moment of confession, that it would sunder relations with her forever. He was about to inflict twin wounds upon her: the pain of his betrayal, and the perhaps greater agony of learning that he had succeeded in doing with another what she had failed to do for him. She was carrying a dead child in her womb, while her husband had, only hours before, looked upon his own son, born of a dead mother. He loved his wife, and she loved him, and he was now going to hurt her so badly that she would never fully recover.
He did not tell anyone of what transpired between them, not even Jimmy Gallagher. All I know is that my mother left him for a time and fled to Maine, a precursor to the more permanent flight that would occur after my father’s death, and a distant echo of my own actions after my wife and child were taken from me. She was not my birth mother, and I understand now the reasons for the distance there was between us, even unto her death, but we were more similar than either of us could have imagined. She took me north after the Pearl River killings, and her father, my beloved grandfather, became a guiding force in my life, but my mother also assumed a greater role as I came of age. I think, sometimes, that only after my father died did she truly find it in her heart to forgive him, and perhaps to forgive me the circumstances of my birth. Slowly, we drew closer to each other. She taught me the names of trees and plants and birds, for this was her place, this northern state, and although I did not fully appreciate then the knowledge that she was trying to impart, I think I understood the reasons for her wanting to communicate it to me. We were both grieving, but she would not allow me to be lost to it. And so each day we would walk together for a time, regardless of the weather, and sometimes we would talk, and sometimes we would not, but it was enough that we were together, and we were alive. During those years, I became hers, and now, every time I name to myself a tree, or a flower, or a tiny creeping thing, it is a small act of remembrance for her.
Elaine Parker called her husband after a week had passed, and they spoke for an hour. Will was granted unpaid leave, authorized, to the puzzlement of some at the precinct, by the deputy commissioner for legal affairs, Frank Mancuso. Will went north to join his wife, and when they returned to New York they did so with a child, and a tale of a difficult, premature birth. They named the boy Charlie, after his father’s uncle, Charles Edward Parker, who had died at Monte Cassino. The secret friends kept their distance, and it was many years before Will heard from any of them again. And when they did make contact, it was Epstein who was sent, Epstein who told him that the thing they had long feared was upon them once more.