As soon as I’d received the call that Stevie had been found and was being rushed to the hospital in critical condition, I called our doctor, who’s a very close family friend. When I finally found the ICU, he was already waiting for me.
“Laura,” he said, his brow knit with distress as he opened his arms to me.
“Jim.” I collapsed into his embrace.
“She’s a little beaten up, but I expect she’s going to survive.”
His reassurance disemboweled me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she wouldn’t survive.
“I want to see her right now,” I’d demanded, as tears rained from my eyes in a torrential downpour of confusion and rage. The other people in the corridor were gaping at me, but for once I didn’t care. Nothing mattered except Stevie.
“Let’s go,” he said soberly, placing his hand on the small of my back to guide me forward. “I just want you to be prepared that it’s not good.”
I nodded. Not good, I could handle, as long as she was still alive and breathing on her own.
“There’s no…” I choked on the words. “Brain damage.”
“It’s too soon to tell. One step at a time.” He steered me toward her room and then stopped outside it. “I’ll be right here. Don’t say anything that could excite her.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged. I would have agreed to just about anything to see her.
Once the door had closed behind me and the contextual noise of the hospital had faded, I rushed to Stevie’s side and took her hand in mine. It was so cold, too cold, like an ice pack pressed against my skin. I stared at her for minutes. As Canfield said, she put up a hell of a fight, and she looked it. Her eyes were sunken and swollen all at once. Most of the left side of her face was blue and yellow from bruising, and there was a large, deep scratch that ran down her right cheek, from her temple to her mouth. Still, no matter how battered she was, Stevie was so beautiful. Like a wounded cherub.
I later found out that her attacker, a man, they presumed, had physically abused her, given her a shot of something in her arm to sedate her, and then restrained her. Like a scene from one of my early books, the police had found a thick piece of duct tape across her mouth and her wrists and ankles tied to a chair with rope. He’d created a cliché out of my daughter. That, I did not appreciate.
I opened my eyes. The cat had wandered off, but she’d left the piece of Stevie’s blanket behind. Smart girl.
The house phone rang then. I knew who it was. The only person who has this number. I stood up and walked into the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello.”
“You’re awake. Good. How are you feeling?”
“Same as usual.”
“I’m at the market. Chicken or steak for dinner?”
“I don’t care.” My taste buds are in hibernation.
“Chicken or steak?” She ignored me, as only she can.
“Pasta.”
“Laura.”
“Fine, chicken. Happy?”
“I was kind of in the mood for steak.” She laughed. I didn’t. “That was a joke.”
“I know.”
“I’ll see you when I get home.”
We hung up and, instead of going back to the rocking chair where I spend most of my time waiting for the inspiration to write again, I decided to search for the cat.
“Orange, where are you?” I called, as if she’d respond. I wasn’t in the mood to be creative with her name. I crept around the house, glancing over my shoulder at each turn.
Even though I feel pretty safe here, one can never be too vigilant. I finally have the isolation and privacy I’ve long desired, but it means nothing.
Do I miss my old life? Yes. I may have been anxious at the attention, but writing books gave me purpose. It was my escape. I pine for that feeling when suddenly I know my characters better than my real friends. And I loved my readers. I’ve always been a people pleaser, ever since my mother died and my father married Patricia. My sole mission became keeping my stepmother around so that my father could finally be happy. I got straight As on my report cards. I never drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes. I was a model child. An easy teenager. And the most ambitious student—male or female—in my graduating class at Princeton. Patricia adored me. She treated me like I was her own daughter; she still does.
Orange appeared from behind the sofa and darted out the back door.
She left me without warning, and I can’t even run after her.
10 BREE
I pulled into the parking lot of Wilton High, checked my purse for the recorder I’d purchased online, and made my way toward the entrance. Pressing the button on the intercom, I waited. Before all the terrorist attacks and school shootings, they’d left the front door open, but—sadly—those days are long gone and unlikely to return. We live in a climate of fear now, and these subtle reminders don’t let us forget it.
“Please announce yourself,” a gruff voice barked through the speaker.
“Bree Bennett, Chloe Bennett’s mom. Well, actually, I’m here—” The buzzer sounded before I could finish.
I walked down the corridor, glancing at the tenth graders’ artwork on the walls and passing kids whose faces looked familiar but whom I couldn’t identify by name. At some point, Chloe was in a class or on a sports team with most of them. Either that, or I’d seen them at the diner in town.
Once I’d reached the main office and signed myself in, I explained to the secretary that I wasn’t there as Chloe’s mom, but instead to interview the cafeteria staff on the nutritional value of school lunches for the Fairfield Chronicle. She didn’t seem terribly impressed, unlike “Sunshine Sandy,” who greeted me in the kitchen with a merry grin. Sandy is a hefty woman with ruddy cheeks and a belly laugh that could lift anyone’s mood, hence her nickname.
“Hi there! Mrs. Bennett, I assume?” Sandy strode over to the table where I’d set up my recorder and notepad.
When I worked at ABC News, mini cassette tapes logged my conversations; now it’s all digital. It was a small learning curve for someone technically challenged like myself, but I caught on pretty quickly and also practiced, just to be safe.
“Please, call me Bree.” I motioned to the seat beside me.
“Will do!” Sandy smiled animatedly and lowered herself onto one of the plastic chairs.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” I began. “I’ve already done a lot of research, so it shouldn’t take too long. I just need a couple of solid quotes to add color.”
“Sure, no prob! I’m an open book.”
“Great.” I started recording. “In reading about this topic online, it became clear to me that there’s a serious link between the food that’s being served in schools and childhood obesity. Can you comment on that?”
Sandy’s pupils dilated. “You’re absolutely right. My students love what I cook up, but it’s definitely not good for them, healthwise, I mean.”
“Can you give me some examples?”
“What do I make, ya mean?”
I nodded without saying anything. Fewer words to transcribe.