Meredith

MEREDITH

11 YEARS BEFORE

March

Dinner is in the oven. With classes to teach in the afternoon, I got a late start. Josh comes home from work with Delilah and Leo in tow, having picked them up from Charlotte’s on the way home.

“How’d everything go with the kids?” I ask. What I really mean is how did everything go with Leo. Delilah would have been fine, because she’s always fine when she’s away from us. She’s playful and unreserved, always able to find a friend. But I want to know how Leo was when Josh picked him up. Had he stopped crying after I left? Of course he had. Charlotte would have called and told me if he hadn’t, wouldn’t she? I would have canceled my classes, gone back and picked him up. It would have broken my heart for him to cry at Charlotte’s all day.

“Everything was fine,” Josh says. He’s nonchalant about it. I have the disadvantage of dropping Leo off. Of seeing him cry. Of having to push him into another woman’s arms for comfort. Josh gets to be the one to pick him up and bring him home.

“What were they doing when you got there?” I ask.

“Playing outside,” he says. This week is springlike: sunny, warm. Winter has left us, though maybe not for good.

“How long until dinner will be ready?” he asks.

“About thirty minutes,” I tell him, asking how the pitch went today. It went well, Josh says, grinning from ear to ear. They landed the client.

“I meant to call,” he says, “but the afternoon got away from me. There was a lot of celebrating.” I imagine they cracked open a bottle of champagne after the deal was finalized. I can see how thrilled Josh is, and I’m thrilled for him as a result.

“It’s fine,” I say. I go to him, feeling terrible that I didn’t think to do something more special for him tonight, knowing when he left this morning that this deal was nearly a sure thing. I should have made his favorite dinner. I should have called the sitter and made reservations for Josh and me at the steakhouse in town. Instead, I’m making a rather prosaic baked chicken recipe that feels suddenly inadequate for Josh’s good news. “I’m just so happy for you,” I say.

“Happy for us,” says Josh, still grinning.

“We’ll have some champagne with dinner,” I say.

“Sounds perfect.”

He excuses himself to go upstairs and change.

While waiting for the chicken to bake, I run a bath. Delilah goes first. She’s in a mood. “Stupid Lily Morris,” she says, pouting. “I hate her.” Delilah plops herself down into the warm water. She does it with such ferocity the water splashes outside the tub.

“What did she do?” I ask.

“She’s trying to steal my friend. She’s a thief, Mommy. A friend thief.”

“Oh, honey,” I say, my heart breaking for her. I wish I could tell her that in five, in ten years from now, none of this will matter. That when she’s sixteen, she won’t even remember this little disappointment. But I don’t want to trivialize her pain. Words like that are of little comfort to a sad six-year-old. “I’m sorry she upset you. Friendships can be hard.” I ask, “Do you think you could all be friends?”

“Lily Morris doesn’t like me,” she complains.

“She doesn’t know you, that’s all. She’d love you if she got to know you. How could she not?” I ask, smiling at her. “Maybe we could invite both Piper and Lily over for a playdate,” I say. I tell her that we could make cookies, do a craft. I don’t know when we’d find the time to do that. But Delilah likes that idea. It settles her. It gives her something to look forward to. We’ll find the time. We’ll make the time.

Leo is up next. With Leo naked in the tub, I see the bruise on his bottom. It’s about the size of a baseball.

“What happened?” I gasp. I run a finger over it and he winces. It hurts to touch. The bruise is red. It’s fresh. The area around it is swollen. It hasn’t had a chance to turn purple. This bruise happened today.

“Did you bump into something?” I ask Leo. He stares in reply. He says nothing. Either he doesn’t know, or he won’t say. “Do you remember, Leo, how this happened?” I ask again. This time he shakes his head.

Leo asks for his bath toys. I get them for him. But this time when he lines his whale and fish up on the edge of the tub, they don’t gracefully swan dive into the water as they usually do. Instead, they kick one another into the tub. It’s aggressive. Mean. The much bigger whale uses its big blue fin to firmly kick the tiny, unsuspecting red fish into the water. The fish falls, becomes submerged. But only for a moment. It floats back to the surface.

Leo grabs the fish. He sets it back on the edge of the tub. It happens all over again.

“Leo,” I say. My voice is more firm. “Did someone do this to you?” I ask, pointing for a third time to the bruise.

Leo doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he lifts a finger to his lips, says, “Shh.”

Suddenly my heart is in my throat. Did someone do this to him and tell him not to tell?

After I get him out of the bath, I call Charlotte. Charlotte should have told Josh at pickup if something happened to Leo. I ask Josh. She didn’t. He goes to see the bruise for himself.

Charlotte answers on the third ring.

“Hi, Meredith,” she says. Her voice is singsong. Charlotte is older than me. She was a teacher once. She taught at an alternative school in town. It’s what they call an “in lieu of expulsion” program. Kids that would otherwise be expelled from their current schools get transferred there. Burnout is high. Charlotte didn’t last long before she started her own in-home day care.

I tell Charlotte why I’m calling. I say what I saw in the bath. I ask, “Did Leo fall at your house? Did he get hurt? Do you know?”

“Let me think,” she says. Charlotte watches a number of kids. They range in age from eighteen months to twelve years. The older kids, like Delilah, are in school most of the day. But at three o’clock, Charlotte and the others walk to pick them up. Then her number of charges doubles. It’s organized chaos whenever I’m there.

“No,” Charlotte says after a short hiatus. “I don’t remember anything happening to Leo. I didn’t see anything happen. Leo didn’t tell me if he got hurt.” There’s a pause. She asks, “Is that what he said, Meredith, that he fell at my house?”

“No,” I tell her, “he didn’t say that. But I was just wondering, since he hasn’t been home all day, and he didn’t have the bruise this morning.” I don’t mean for it to sound accusatory.

“I’d like to think Leo would have told me if he was hurt,” Charlotte says. “We could have put some ice on it.”

The way that she says it touches a raw nerve. She’s blaming Leo. Maybe not for what happened, but for not coming to her for help.

That said, I don’t want to make more out of this than there is. He is a kid. Kids bump and bruise themselves all the time. Besides, Leo is the shrinking violet type. He would never have gone to Charlotte for comfort. That’s outside his comfort zone. The only way Charlotte would have known is if Delilah saw it happen and told.

Charlotte came recommended from nearly everyone in the neighborhood who has kids. She’s a patient, loving, grandmotherly type, though she isn’t a grandmother because she never had kids of her own. People that we know called her a godsend, an angel. The best. It doesn’t get better than that.

I say, “I know you would have, Charlotte. I’ll talk to Leo, make sure he knows he can tell you if he ever gets hurt at your house again.”

I do talk to Leo, but it only settles me somewhat. Because the realization that harm can come to one of my kids when I’m not there to protect them still terrifies me.