The Couple Next Door

“Should I get a lawyer?” Marco asks.

“That’s entirely up to you,” the detective says.

? ? ?

Detective Rasbach heads back to his own office to think. If this was a fake kidnapping, staged by Marco, he has clearly fallen in with some real criminals who’ve taken advantage of him. Rasbach can almost feel sorry for him. He certainly feels sorry for his distraught wife. If Marco did set this up, and has been duped, his baby is probably now dead, the money is gone, and the police suspect him of kidnapping. How he’s holding it together at all is a mystery.

But the detective is troubled. There’s the babysitter, a problem that’s been niggling at him. And there’s this commonsense question: Why would someone who could probably get money easily enough just by asking risk it all with something as stupid, as fraught with risk, as a kidnapping?

And there’s that disturbing information about Anne, about her propensity for violence, that has recently come to light. The more he gets involved in this case, the more complicated it seems. Rasbach has to know the truth.

It’s time to question Anne’s parents.

And he will talk to Anne herself again in the morning.

Rasbach will figure it out. The truth is there. It’s always there. It simply needs to be uncovered.

? ? ?

Anne and Marco are at home, alone. The house is empty but for the two of them and their horror and grief and dark imaginings. It would be hard to say who of the two is more damaged. Both are haunted by not knowing what has happened to their baby. They each hope desperately that she’s still alive, but there is so little to sustain that hope. Each tries to pretend for the other. And Marco has additional reasons to pretend.

Anne doesn’t know why she doesn’t blame Marco more than she does. When it first happened, when their baby was taken, she blamed him in her heart, because he was the one who persuaded her to leave Cora at home alone. If they had taken the baby next door with them, none of this ever would have happened. She’s told herself that if Cora didn’t come home unharmed, she would never forgive him.

Yet here they are. She doesn’t know why she clings to him, but she does. Perhaps because she has nothing else to cling to. She can’t even tell if she loves him anymore. She will never forgive him for Cynthia either.

Perhaps she clings to him because no one else can share or understand her pain. Or perhaps because he, at least, believes her. He knows she didn’t kill their baby. Even her mother suspected her until the onesie arrived in the mail. She’s sure of it.

They go to bed and lie awake for a long time. Finally Marco gives in to a troubled sleep. But Anne is too agitated for sleep to come. Eventually she gets out of bed, goes downstairs, and roams the house, growing increasingly restless.

She begins combing the house, but she doesn’t know what she’s looking for and gets more and more upset. She is moving and thinking faster and faster. She’s looking for something that incriminates her unfaithful husband, but she is also looking for her baby. She feels lines blurring.

Her thoughts speed up and become less rational; her mind makes fantastic leaps. It’s not that things don’t make sense to her when she’s like this—sometimes they make more sense. They make sense the way dreams do. It’s only when the dream is over that you see how odd it all was, how it actually didn’t make sense at all.

She hasn’t found any letters, or any e-mails from Cynthia on Marco’s laptop, or strange women’s underwear in the house. She hasn’t found any receipts for hotel rooms or hidden matchbooks from bars. She’s found some worrying financial information, but that doesn’t interest her right now. She wants to know what’s going on between Marco and Cynthia and what that has to do with Cora’s disappearance. Did Cynthia take Cora?

The more Anne turns this over in her mind in her frenzied state, the more it seems to make sense to her. Cynthia dislikes children. Cynthia is the kind of person who would harm a child. She is cold. And she doesn’t like Anne anymore. She wants to hurt her. Cynthia wants to take Anne’s husband and her child away and see what that does to her, because she can.

Eventually Anne works herself into an exhausted stupor and falls asleep on the sofa in the living room.

? ? ?

The next morning, early, she wakes and showers before Marco realizes she’s spent the night on the sofa. She pulls on black leggings and a tunic as if in a trance, filled with dread.

She feels paralyzed when she thinks of the police, of being interrogated by Rasbach again. He has no idea where their baby is, but he seems to think that they do. He asked her yesterday, after taking Marco’s statement, to come in this morning. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t know why he wants to talk to her again. What’s to be gained from going through the same things over and over?

From his place in the bed, propped up against the pillows, Marco watches her getting dressed, his face expressionless.

“Do I have to go?” she asks him. She would avoid it if she could. She doesn’t know what her rights are. Should she refuse?

“I don’t think you have to,” Marco says. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time we spoke to a lawyer.”

“But that will look bad,” Anne says worriedly. “Won’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Marco says tonelessly. “We look bad already.”

She approaches the bed, looks down at him. Seeing him like this, so plainly wretched, would break her heart if it weren’t broken already. “Maybe I should speak to my parents. They could get us a good lawyer. Although it seems ridiculous to think we even need one.”

“It might be a good idea,” Marco says uneasily. “Like I told you last night, Rasbach still seems to suspect us. He seems to believe we staged the whole thing.”

“How can he think that now—after yesterday?” Anne asks, her voice becoming agitated. “Why would he? Just because there was a car going down the lane at the same time you checked on Cora?”

“That seems to be the gist of it.”

“I’ll go in,” Anne says finally. “He wants me there for ten o’clock.”

Marco nods tiredly. “I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to,” Anne says, without conviction. “I could call my mother.”

“Of course I’ll come. You can’t face that mob out there alone. Let me put some clothes on, and I’ll take you,” Marco says, getting out of bed.

Anne watches him walk to his dresser in his boxers. How much thinner he looks—she can see the outline of his ribs. She is grateful that he’s coming to the station with her. She doesn’t want to call her mother, and she doesn’t think she can do this on her own. Also, she thinks it’s important that she and Marco be seen together, to appear united.

There are more reporters outside their house again now after yesterday’s fiasco. Anne and Marco have to fight them off to get to their cab—the police have the Audi for the time being—and there are no police officers here to help them. Finally they make it to the taxi on the street. Once inside the car, Anne quickly locks the doors. She feels trapped—all those jabbering faces crowding in on them through the windows. She recoils but stares back at them. Marco swears under his breath.

Anne looks silently out the window as the mob falls away. She can’t understand how the reporters can be so cruel. Are none of them parents? Can they not imagine, for one moment, what it’s like not knowing where your baby is? To lie awake at night missing your child, seeing her little body, still, dead, behind your closed eyelids?