I was consumed by her premonition. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think much about how she pulled Emmett out of his stroller, whispering in Portuguese, which she wasn’t supposed to do because Misha insisted on English only. She kissed the top of his head, lingering on the reddish-blond curls. He snuggled into her neck, still dozing. She could have easily slipped him back into the stroller, but she pulled him close, her gaze on the river. She slowly pushed the stroller with one hand, the other tight around Emmett, who clung to her.
I wanted to hug her goodbye, but silence remained between us.
Perhaps we both sensed the other was about to bleed.
I stared at where she’d been looking during our conversation, but then the first of what would be hours of cramps seized me.
After the first cramp passed, my shaking hand fell to the stone bench in relief and touched something. I looked down to see Belina’s yellow day planner.
I didn’t forget. I didn’t have a chance to remember.
I stare down at my hands, steady now, ready to find the truth. I flip open the rectangular cover and see she wrote her name. My fingers trace each loop and letter of Belina Cabrala and back again. She took it with her everywhere, scribbling a few words at a time. She said she made notes for Alec and Misha, but that never really made sense to me, knowing them as I do.
I turn to the first page. It’s from eighteen months ago and begins with AM for Alec Mathers and MM for Misha Mathers:
Nanny Day 1
Monday: AM sleeps until noon. Leaves to get coffee and watches TV. MM gave me a quick tour, shared E’s schedule, and was gone all day.
Tuesday: AM doesn’t get dressed until noon. Says he’s going out. MM is gone to spin class. I don’t see her or AM until 7:00 p.m. when I leave.
The journal continues like that for one month. Then something changes.
Monday: E finally eats peas with his lunch, add more butter and less cheese. AM responsive to my idea. Takes the meeting with CF. Need to meet CF at CCH to talk after.
It seems as if Belina set up that meeting between Alec and this new name, CF. I scan through more of the usual until the following month.
Monday: Alec takes us out on his boat. E is so happy. Alec offers me coffee with whiskey. He shaved and took my suggestion on new shoes. Said something about young boyfriends. I assure him I don’t have one. Showed E how to cast a fishing line. He’s never looked so handsome.
I notice there is no more AM but Alec. Something has changed. Maybe a lot, maybe a little.
I flip to the last entry, the day she was murdered. It’s a to-do list.
Friday: Transfer $. Library with E. Tell Alec. Find Devon. Meet with & CF at SP.
I freeze at —an A with a circle—being at the meeting at SP (Swan Point, I assume, where she was killed). Could be her new code for Alec? Is he lying that he has no idea what happened to her? That he was drunk at a bar when she was killed?
“Tell Alec” as well as could mean they are two separate people.
Perhaps this person and CF were there, and even if they didn’t do it, they are witnesses.
I have to find them.
The pain in my breasts shifts from uncomfortable to excruciating. I take the planner with me to the glider in the corner of the living room. I quickly unbutton my shirt, sliding out of it and into the sports bra–like pump that allows me to be hands free.
A good mother wouldn’t have to stop to pump but could just nurse.
A good baby, right with the Lord, would be able to nurse.
As I click the button for the pump to begin, I picture Belina’s body by the river. My breathing, hot and angry, speeds up with the sound and pressure of the pump, faster and faster.
She wrote Find Devon. She met me at the cemetery but didn’t tell me anything. She left me only her planner, filled with small clues about her life from the past eighteen months when she worked for Alec. She needed my help, even if she couldn’t ask, then or now.
What help could you be?
I haven’t been any help so far. But she sought me out the day of this meeting, likely knowing there was real danger. She left me evidence that could clear Alec and find the real killers.
You’ll never be able to do it.
Belina brought me into the center of this investigation. I will prove that one of her last choices was the right one.
Chapter 6
Ester’s cry freezes my confidence, and I hiss, “Damn it,” because I’m only halfway done pumping. I gently unscrew the milk bottles from the pump and twist the yellow lids on top with the steadiness of someone defusing a bomb.
You wasted time on Belina’s planner, and now your baby will starve.
I get out of the pumping bra and snap the buttons on my shirt. There’s still an ache in my left breast, but I can’t handle the crying, so sharp and loud despite being a floor away. I take the stairs two at a time. First, I move her black-and-white-patterned bouncer from the nursery to my office and then rush to my bedroom, where she’s wailing in the bassinet. I take a deep fortifying breath and begin bouncing her. Up and down the hallway, I hum “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” fourteen times before we’re both calm.
In my office, I strap her into the bouncer and spin the little mobile she likes to watch. I adjust the mirror that hangs over her sweet face so she can see what I see. Her father’s black hair. My green eyes. The nose that’s less prominent than mine and perfect.
You’re the only one who sees her that way.
She’s the worst thing that ever happened to your husband.
She’s a stain on his family name.
A name you don’t deserve.
I leave her to stare at the mobile and do a full turn in my office. I stop in front of the gigantic dry-erase board on the wall across from my desk. Half is dedicated to sleeping solutions, and the other half is labeled Anderson Indictment. My obsessiveness nicely complemented my most recent specialty as a lawyer: working with accountants to identify and prosecute fraud. Teaming up with CPAs, the tax people, I pored through data about the businesses my clients were suing. The Anderson case was my last one before I took time off in my first trimester because I’d started spotting. The doctor wasn’t worried, but Jack and I were.
You gave up that job because you were bored with the right side of the law.
It’s true I wanted to focus my time investigating motherhood. I began with books, reading nearly every one in our local library, then continued to online forums, mom blogs, and Pinterest pages. Thanks to Belina’s friendship, I received the most valuable resource: firsthand observation. I spent hours in the company of parents, grandparents, and nannies at tot lots, story times, library trips, and music classes.
Little good that did.
Such an investigation may sound obsessive, but that’s how I’m wired. When I was building fraud cases, I had to find the right information to fit the legal strategy. I needed CPAs as a sort of Rosetta Stone to translate the math into English. Then I’d put that into legal terms to support the case. My specialty was digging deep into the psychology of a business.
I had great success with a simple three-pronged approach called the Fraud Triangle. That’s how I managed the Anderson case. I took each possible suspect and dug up the answers to three key questions: was there pressure to commit a crime, motivation to do it, and rationalization of how to live with it?
To some people it must have seemed boring poring over numbers, bank accounts, and tax history. Maybe a credit card statement or two. But it wasn’t to me. I saw it as a language, and while I don’t consider myself Saint Jerome, turning the Bible Latin, there were a few times I almost brought the courtroom to Jesus.