Margaret goes back inside the house.
Henry walks around Target. He looks at women’s hosiery. He touches the leggings. He picks at the fishnets on a pair of mannequin legs. He slips a finger in the lace diamonds and stretches it out until he can make it any shape he wants. He sits in the Target café and eats popcorn.
Stacey goes inside. She doesn’t realize the door is already unlocked. She is upset because she hadn’t just told the neighbor she couldn’t hear him over the leaf blower. She hates how she rarely speaks her mind. She wishes she had more confidence. She wishes she was funnier. She wishes she had some sort of rare disease that the medical community would name after her. She imagines the disease to be interesting but not painful. She goes into the bedroom and sees Margaret lying in the bed, dressed in her clothes, curled around the baby’s body. She thinks they look like a semi-colon.
Margaret looks up and sees Stacey staring. Margaret says nothing. She only pulls the baby closer. She is suddenly convinced Stacey will take the baby from her. She stands quickly with the baby at her chest and locks herself in the master bathroom.
Stacey decides to call the police. She dials 911. A woman with a Boston accent asks what her emergency is. Stacey is flustered. She doubts herself. She tells the woman her son had been playing with her phone and dialed by mistake. She hangs up. She presses her ear to the bathroom door. She listens to Margaret crying.
Margaret listens to Stacey breathing on the other side of the bathroom door.
Stacey asks Margaret to come out of the bathroom.
Margaret presses the strange weight of a dead child to her chest, then does.
Stacey and Margaret lie on the bed with the baby tucked between them.
Steven Wolf | 23