Chapter 4

Mark came home that night.

He set down his bag and turned on the television.

Everything looked normal.

As if the apartment weren't missing a crib.

As if our son hadn't disappeared out of it.

"Are you hungry?"

I stood in the kitchen doorway.

"I can make you something."

He looked at me.

"Your mother leaves and suddenly you're normal?"

I didn't answer.

I made two plates.

He ate on one side of the table.

I sat across from him.

Between us was the empty high chair.

"I want to see Noah."

His fork stopped.

"Your mother said you can see him when you're more stable."

"I only want to see him once."

"Nina."

He set the fork down.

"Can you give it two days? You've worn your mother out. Now you're starting on me. What exactly do you want?"

He reached into his bag and put a document beside his plate.

I looked down.

Divorce papers.

"What is this?"

"Read it."

I opened it.

He wanted sole custody.

I would waive any claim to marital assets.

His signature was already on the last page.

The date was three days earlier.

Before Noah had been taken away.

They'd planned all of it.

"Your mother thinks we should handle it cleanly while he's still small," Mark said, casually, reaching for his glass. "She says the way you are right now isn't good for him."

"She says that?"

"Yes. She doesn't think you're capable of raising him."

Not capable of being a mother.

The words went in one letter at a time.

"What about you?"

I looked at him.

"What do you think?"

He didn't answer.

He finished eating, carried his plate to the sink, and passed me on his way to the bedroom.

"Sign it. It's better for everyone."

Then the bedroom door closed.

I sat alone at the table.

The empty high chair faced me.

The papers lay open at my elbow.

The apartment was quiet enough that I could hear the refrigerator running.

I stood, and walked into the nursery.

The crib was gone, but a shallow scratch remained on the wall where the rail had rubbed.

A single tiny sock had been left behind in the drawer.

So small — barely longer than my thumb.

I closed my hand around it.

Then I opened my phone and went into Notes.

I typed a few lines.

Deleted them.

Typed again.

Deleted those too.

After a long time, I left only this:

"His vaccination record is in the second drawer of the nightstand. I circled shot next time in red.

"He needs someone to pat his back before he can fall asleep. Not too fast. About the rhythm of a heartbeat.

"Buy the formula in the green can. He's mildly lactose intolerant.

"He's afraid of thunder. Hold him tighter when it storms and cover his ears."

I looked at those lines for a long, long time, and then added one more.

"I'm sorry. I really tried."

I left the phone on the nursery windowsill.

The screen was still lit, and the light fell on the scratch in the wall.

I set the little sock beside it, folded neatly.

Then I left the apartment.

The air outside was warmer than the air inside had been.

The streetlights stretched my shadow long across the pavement.

The convenience store on the corner was still open.

The clerk was half asleep at the counter, and a stray cat was cleaning its paws by the door.

It looked up when I passed.

I crouched and touched its head.

It didn't move away.

It pushed against my fingers, then went back to what it was doing.

I stood up and kept walking.

The building behind our complex had a roof access door that had been broken for months.

The management company had posted notices three times.

Nobody ever came.

Wind poured down the stairwell, stronger on every landing.

I pushed the door open and the whole city lay out in front of me.

Across the street, on the seventh floor, one window glowed a warm yellow.

A woman was walking back and forth in front of it with a baby against her shoulder, rocking gently.

Getting him down for the night, probably.

I watched her for a long time.

The wind blew my hair across my face.

I didn't push it back.

I took off my canvas sneakers and set them side by side.

Then I took a receipt out of my pocket. The pen I'd picked up outside the convenience store was almost out of ink, so I pressed hard.

On the back I wrote one line.

"Seventeen pots of hydrangeas. I wanted to count every one of them out loud for him."

Across the street, the seventh-floor light went out.

She'd gotten him to sleep.

The wind was strong.

But I wasn't cold at all.

At seven the next morning, Frank Doyle came up to the roof for his routine check.

He opened the door and saw a pair of white sneakers first.

Set neatly side by side at the edge.

A receipt underneath them, one corner lifting in the wind.

He picked it up and read it.

His legs went out from under him.

His voice was shaking so badly he could barely get the words out.

"I need police — hurry — somebody's gone off the —"