For nine nights my husband’s mother did the last check on my daughter, and for nine nights my puppy tried to break the nursery door down the second she came out. “She’s jealous, honey. Shut her in the garage before she wakes the street,” Francesca said. So on night ten I hid a camera in that room instead.
Emery was eleven weeks old, and those four hours after the check were the only sleep I got.
“Raven, AGAIN?” I said as the pup slammed her whole body into the door.
Five minutes earlier the house had been quiet, and Francesca had come out of that room with her robe tied tight.
“Out like a light,” she said.
Raven didn’t buy it.
She barked and barked and dug at the gap under the door until the boards hummed under my socks.
Something in my gut turned over.
Diego worked nights in Toledo, so it was me, his mother on the pullout, and a dog who went crazy every time that woman left Emery’s room.
I’d called it jealousy for a week. Jealous dogs don’t shake.
She was warning me about that room.
My friend Chandra had dropped off the cheap camera she used to spy on her cats. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “Plug it in anyway.”
So I clipped it to the bookshelf, laid Emery down, and watched the app from bed.
Fifteen minutes. Twenty-five. Forty. Just a gray crib and the turtle night-light.
Raven finally flopped across my feet, and my eyes closed.
Then she came off the mattress like something had bitten her.
I grabbed the phone.
At first the screen showed only Francesca, standing over the crib in her robe, still as a coat rack.
Then she opened the door and stepped aside to let somebody in.
A MAN.
Only a dark shape at first. Tall, thick through the shoulders, heading STRAIGHT FOR THE CRIB.
I stopped feeling my hands.
I ran down the hall in my socks with the police on the line, the dog ahead of me, a woman’s voice asking for my address.
I shoved the nursery door open and stopped dead, because I knew exactly WHO HE WAS.
The turtle night-light
It was Thomas Merritt. Diego’s father.
He had his hands out over the crib rail. Big hands, gray hair buzzed short at the back, a tan canvas work coat I had seen exactly once, eleven weeks ago, in a hospital parking lot.
Behind him the side door to the driveway stood wide open, and the October air came in low across the carpet. The turtle threw its little green stars up onto his coat.
Raven went past my knees and hit his boot with her whole chest.
“Get her off me,” he said. “Fran. Get the dog.”
Francesca stood by the changing table with the key ring still in her fingers. “Shoshana. Honey. It’s only Tom.”
I went around him to the crib and picked Emery up, blanket and all. She was warm and heavy and asleep, and her mouth kept working on nothing.
“Ma’am?” the woman on the phone said. “Ma’am, are you with the man now? Do you know him?”
“He’s my husband’s father,” I said.
“Tell her it’s fine,” Francesca said. “Tell her you got scared and made a mistake.”
Thomas still hadn’t lowered his hands. They stayed out in front of him in the shape of a baby, and he looked down at them like he’d forgotten how to put them away.
The dispatcher said, “Ma’am, is he allowed to be in your house?”
The spare key ring
The first and only time I’d met Thomas, I was in a wheelchair with a hospital bracelet on, and Emery was four hours old.
He came up to the maternity floor with a teddy bear still in its plastic and a bag of cherry cough drops sticking out of his coat pocket. He didn’t get past the nurses’ station. Diego walked him to the elevator, then all the way down to the parking lot, and I sat at the window of room 4B and saw the two of them stand by a red Silverado with a bungee cord holding the tailgate shut.
Diego came back up twenty minutes later and sat on the end of my bed.
He told me the story he’d only ever told me in pieces. He was nine. His dad picked him up from a ball game at the VFW and drove him home after six beers, sucking cherry Halls the whole way so his breath wouldn’t give him away, and put the truck through the Pratts’ mailbox and into their maple. Diego has the scar on his chin from the dashboard.
“He doesn’t hold her,” Diego said. “Not once. Not at Christmas, not in a picture, not if he’s sober ten years.”
Francesca was sitting in the corner chair. She’d driven up that morning with a casserole nobody could eat in a hospital.
“Of course, sweetheart,” she said. “I haven’t said two words to that man since 2009.”
Six weeks later Diego took the night shift at the distribution center in Toledo, because it paid four dollars more an hour and we had a baby now. And his mother offered to come stay.
She came with two suitcases and a car seat base still in the box. “For the Pontiac,” she said. “For when I take her to the park.” She doesn’t drive after dark, her eyes are bad, so the Pontiac sat in our driveway every night and never moved.
The nursery used to be the den. It’s the one room in the house with its own door to the outside, a side door onto the driveway, and the week we brought Emery home Diego put a new deadbolt on it and a chain. On Francesca’s first night I gave her our spare ring. Front door, side door, mailbox. “In case,” I said.
She was good. I’ll say that. She folded the onesies by color. She made a lasagna on Sunday that lasted us to Thursday. She took the eleven o’clock check so I could sleep until the three o’clock feed, and every night she came out of that room and said the same thing.
“Out like a light. Don’t you open that door, now. You’ll wake her, and then nobody sleeps.”
Small things went wrong, the way they do with a newborn. On day four one of Emery’s yellow socks with the ducks on it disappeared, and I tore the laundry apart for it. On day five a black spot of oil showed up on the driveway, right beside the Pontiac, where nobody parks. Every morning after that Raven went straight to it, put her nose down, and sneezed.
“Neighbor’s boy turns his car around in there,” Francesca said.
So that was the house. Me on four hours. A dog I’d decided was jealous. A mother-in-law with a key to every door.
Past Thomas’s shoulder now, the red Silverado sat in the driveway on the oil spot, parking lights on.
Twelve minutes
“No,” I said into the phone. “He’s not allowed.”
“Okay. I have officers on the way, ma’am, about twelve minutes out. Is the baby with you?”
“She’s on me.”
“Good. Stay on the line with me.”
Francesca came across the room with her hands up, palms out, the way you’d come at a horse. “Shoshana, listen to me. Listen. He comes to look at her. That’s all it is. He stands right there by the crib for twenty minutes, he doesn’t even pick her up, and then he goes home. He’s her grandfather.”
“Diego said no.”
“Diego was nine years old.” She was right in front of me now. I could smell her face cream. “Boys remember things bigger than they were. Tom has been going to meetings. He’s a different man. You don’t know him.”
“I know he’s in my house at one in the morning.”
“Because of the dog!” She pointed at Raven, who had backed Thomas into the corner by the dresser and was making a sound I’d never heard out of her, low and steady, with her lips off her teeth. “That animal won’t let anybody near this room. If you’d just put her in the garage like I told you, none of this would have happened.”
Thomas said, “Fran.”
“No, I’m talking. She should hear it. A man wants to see his only grandbaby and he has to sneak in a side door like a thief.”
My phone buzzed against my ear. A text, over the top of the call. Chandra. I’d sent her one word from the hallway, HELP, before I ever hit the nursery door.
What’s happening. I’m putting my shoes on.
I thumbed back, His dad. MIL let him in.
The answer came in about four seconds. Do NOT let her talk you out of the cops. I’m coming. 10 min.
Francesca saw me typing. “Who is that? Is that Diego? Don’t you call him at work, Shoshana. They’ll write him up. He’s on the floor until six.”
I hadn’t called Diego. I didn’t know what I’d say. Your mother has had your father in our baby’s room. I couldn’t make my thumbs do it.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I looked at Thomas and said, “Leave. Right now. Out the way you came in.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and I didn’t know it yet.
He nodded. He seemed almost glad. He stepped wide around Raven and went for the side door, pulling a key fob out of his coat pocket, and at the doorway he stopped and turned around to Francesca, like a man remembering his wallet.
“Fran,” he said. “Your base is still buckled in my back seat.”
The Silverado
Francesca said, “Tom.”
That was all she said. Just his name, sharp.
I went past her. I went out the side door in my socks with Emery on my shoulder and the phone still on, and the driveway was so cold it went straight up through my feet. Raven came with me, pressed against my leg.
“Ma’am, where are you going?” the dispatcher said. “Ma’am, I need you to stay inside.”
“I’m in my driveway,” I said.
The Silverado’s engine was off, but the hood was ticking. I put my free hand flat on it. Warm. He hadn’t been parked there long. He’d driven here tonight.
The back window had a dome light on a door switch, and when I pulled the rear door open, the cab lit up.
Behind the passenger seat was the car seat base from the box. Francesca’s base. For the Pontiac. For the park. It was strapped in tight with the seat belt, the level bubble sitting right in the green, the way you only get it if you’ve done it more than once. A rear-facing infant seat was clicked into it, a gray one I had never seen in my life, with a receipt from a Meijer still taped to the handle.
On the floor mat under it was a little yellow sock with ducks on it.
I said, “That’s her sock.”
Thomas had come out behind me. He stood by the tailgate with the fob in his hand. “She kicks them off,” he said. “She always kicks that one off.”
Always.
Raven had her nose down on the running board, then on the floor of the cab, then on the sock. She sneezed. She sneezed again.
The driver’s door was unlocked. I opened it. The cab smelled like cherry cough drops so strong it was almost candy, and under that, something else. In the cup holder was a pint bottle with about a third left in it, and a cough drop wrapper stuck to the side of the glass.
“I don’t drink when she’s in the truck,” Thomas said. “I want you to know that. I’ve never once had a drink with her in the truck.”
“Ma’am?” said the phone. “Ma’am, is there a weapon? Talk to me.”
“No,” I said. “There’s a car seat.”
Folded on the passenger seat was a gas receipt from the Speedway out on the highway. I picked it up and held it under the dome light, because I needed to see the time printed on it.
12:51 a.m. Last night’s date.
Night four
Francesca was in the side doorway when I came back up the driveway, holding her robe shut at the throat.
“It’s not what you think,” she said. “Honey, it’s not. She doesn’t sleep for anybody but him. You know how she is at eleven, how she screams. He takes her around the block and she goes right down. You’ve been getting four hours. Where do you think those four hours came from?”
She had her phone out. She was holding it toward me, screen up, unlocked.
“Look. Read it. He’s careful. Every night he tells me. You’ll see.”
I took it. I had Emery on one arm, and Chandra’s app still open on my own phone in my robe pocket, and now Francesca’s phone in my hand. Her thread with Thomas was right on top. His contact said T and nothing else.
I scrolled up. Then I kept scrolling.
It went back nine nights. Every night looked the same. I read it standing in the side doorway with the cold on my back.
11:02 Here.
11:04 Side door.
11:06 Got her.
11:09 Out like a light, she’s taking it to bed now.
11:40 Loop to the river. She’s out.
12:58 Back. Come get her.
Every night. Got her at 11:06. Francesca came out of that room at 11:10 and told me Emery was asleep, and told me not to open the door, and Raven threw herself at it because there was nothing in that crib. There was a turtle night-light and an empty fitted sheet. My daughter was in a red Silverado on the river road with a man who’d put his son through a maple tree.
And I’d been in bed.
Tonight’s thread was different. Running late. 12:45 maybe. Crew ran over. So tonight Francesca had laid her down for real, and waited, and gone back in at a quarter to one to hand her over. And I’d had a camera on the shelf.
I scrolled back up to night four. There was a longer one from Thomas.
That dog’s gonna get us caught. Put her in the garage before she wakes the street.
And under it, Francesca: I’ll handle the girl.
I looked up. Francesca was watching my face, still smiling a little, still sure it was going to go her way.
Out on the road, blue lights came around the corner.
Officer Cheung
There were two of them. The one who did the talking was a woman about my age with her hair in a hard bun, and her name tag said CHEUNG.
She took one look at us, me in socks with a baby, an older woman in a robe, a man by a truck, and said, “Okay. Who called?”
“I did,” I said.
Francesca said, “This is a family thing. I’m so sorry you had to come out here. My daughter-in-law has a newborn and she hasn’t slept and she had a scare. This is my husband. My ex-husband. He’s the baby’s grandfather. He came by to drop something off.”
“At one in the morning,” Cheung said.
“He works late. Shoshana knew he was coming. We talked about it. She’s upset with my son, they’ve been fighting about the hours, and she’s taking it out on Tom. Honestly. Look at her.”
I didn’t say anything. I held out Francesca’s phone.
Cheung took it. She read for a long time. She scrolled the way I had, up and up, and the other officer walked over to the truck and put his flashlight in the open driver’s door and left it there.
“Sir,” he said. “Whose bottle?”
Thomas didn’t answer him.
“Sir, have you had anything to drink tonight?”
“Two,” Thomas said. “After my shift. Hours ago.”
“Did you drive here?”
“I live in Maumee. How else would I get here?”
Francesca’s voice went up a full step. “He didn’t drink with the baby. He never drank with the baby. I made him promise. Tom, tell them you never…”
“Ma’am,” Cheung said. “Please stop.”
“I will not stop. This is my granddaughter.” She came off the step at me, and Raven stood up off my feet, and Francesca stopped. “You think a boy gets to decide that? You think my son gets to decide who’s her family? He was nine. I was married to that man for twenty-six years. I never stopped seeing him, not one year, not since 2009, not ever. Diego doesn’t know that and he never needed to. Tom is the one who held this family up. He paid for half that wedding you had. Did you know that? No. Because I told Diego it came from my savings.”
She was crying now, and it made her angrier.
“She’d have screamed all night. You’d have been up all night. I gave you four hours. I gave you nine nights of sleep, and this is what you do with it. You put a camera on me in my own grandbaby’s room.”
Cheung handed the phone to her partner and said, “Mrs. Merritt, I need you to go sit inside at the kitchen table. Right now.”
They did the tests on Thomas in the light from the cruiser. He did them standing on the oil spot, and he failed the one with his heel to his toe on the third step. The partner put him in the back of the cruiser. Before the door shut, he looked at the house, at the side door, at me with Emery, and he didn’t say anything at all.
A car door slammed out by the mailbox. Chandra, in her husband’s sweatpants and a winter coat, running.
She took one look and held her arms out for Emery, and I didn’t give her up. She didn’t ask twice. She stood next to me instead and held the back of my robe.
I called Diego from the driveway. He answered on the second ring, which meant he’d stepped off the floor, which meant he’d seen my name at one in the morning and known.
“Your dad was here,” I said. “Your mom’s been letting him take her out in his truck. Nine nights. The police are here.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “Is she okay.”
“She’s on me.”
“I’m coming,” he said. “Forty minutes.”
I went back in through the side door. Francesca was at the kitchen table with Cheung standing over her. The key ring was on the counter by the coffee maker, where she always set it. I picked it up. I worked the side-door key off with my thumbnail, and then the front door key, and put them both in my robe pocket. I left her the one for the mailbox.
The first Tuesday in December
Diego switched to days the week after. Four dollars less an hour, and he’s in the car at six-fifteen.
The Pontiac is gone from the driveway. He drove it back to his mother’s himself, the next Saturday, with her suitcases in the trunk and the car seat base still in its box on the back seat, and he took the bus home. He doesn’t say her name. When the phone rings with her number, he turns it face down on the counter and lets it go.
There’s a new deadbolt on the side door. One key. It lives on Diego’s ring.
The oil spot is still on the driveway. Raven walks right past it now.
At eleven on a Tuesday, I’m the one who does the last check. Emery is four months old and she still screams at eleven, and some nights I stand in that room for an hour with her on my shoulder, bouncing on my heels, and I get two hours of sleep instead of four.
Tonight she goes down at 11:20. I lay her in the crib with both yellow socks on. The turtle throws its stars on the ceiling.
Raven is lying in the hall with her chin on the threshold, watching me, not making a sound.
I step out and leave the door open a hand’s width, and she gets up and goes in and lies down under the crib.
If this one got to you, give your dog an extra minute at the door tonight, and listen when she won’t let something go.
For more family secrets and high-stakes home drama, read about the notary who appeared in a bridal suite, a grandmother abandoned at a memory ward, and the paper a husband kept hidden in his work jacket.
