Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 11: Now

I stare down into the crib for a few more minutes, to make sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing. Then, cautiously, I let out the air I've been holding in my lungs. It's just Thomas in there, tightly wrapped in a muslin swaddle, sleeping peacefully. When he whined earlier, causing Owen to look up from his work, it must have been in reaction to a dream. But that's long forgotten.

Except for the gentle rise and fall of his belly, Thomas does not move. He certainly does not laugh.

I almost laugh myself, now. What did I expect? How could such a low, rumbling voice have come from such a tiny body? It's just not possible.

At the same time, I am positive that I wasn't dreaming. Maybe I was sleepwalking the other night when I followed the voice into the woods, but I'm wide-awake now.

Thomas squirms; his face looks a bit flushed. The roaring fire is making the parlor feel like a sauna to me, so the baby must be even more uncomfortable, all wrapped up in the swaddle like that. I carefully untuck it from around his little body. His hands, suddenly free, flail outward for a moment before collapsing again onto his chest in tiny fists. I fold the swaddling blanket and place it on top of the quilt that covers the crib's railing.

Thomas sighs heavily. Suddenly, he could be anyone's baby. Looking down at him, I feel that I could be looking at an old colleague's Christmas card. Or at the stock photograph on the side of the cardboard box the crib arrived in.

I try to remember what it felt like to love him as my own – didn't that happen, once? – but there's nothing there.

I need to get out of here.

I return to the kitchen on wobbly legs. Owen is focused on his laptop and Diana folds laundry at the table. I pause in the doorway and the threshold creaks beneath me. Diana reacts by snapping her tongue behind her front teeth in a sharply disapproving tsk.

I remember the way she looked as she sat in that same chair, back in the early spring, right after Paul died.

She hasn't really recovered the way I expected her to. Yes, she's stopped dressing in black from head to toe, but her once-proud shoulders have stayed just a little slumped, and she's stopped twisting her long, silver hair into an elaborate up-do whenever she leaves the house. I guess once your husband kills himself, there's no point in keeping up appearances.

I sit rigidly on the edge of my chair and tug nervously on my left earlobe where my missing earring should be. It takes all of my willpower not to mention what I heard in the parlor to Diana and Owen – the man's sinister laughter coming from Thomas's crib. Both of them already think I'm losing my mind. I don't need to give them any more fodder for that theory.

But it's not like I have an alternative one. My mind must be playing tricks on me. It's either that, or something is gravely wrong with the baby.

I need to put that idea out of my head.

My eyes scan the room for something else to focus on, so I won't worry about the baby out loud to Owen and Diana. I grab one of Thomas's onesies from the laundry basket in front of Diana and fold it, adding it to her pile on the table. Then I pick up a clean burp cloth; it's that one with the baby elephants dancing alongside their joyful mothers. The material feels luxuriously soft between my fingers. I bring it to my nose and inhale the scent of Baby Detergent, which has really grown on me.

I start to fold the burp cloth but stop when I see what Diana is doing.

The onesie I just folded is in her hands. She has unfolded it and now, for some unfathomable reason, is redoing my work. She folds it slightly differently than I did, tucking the little sleeves in before creasing it along the waistline.