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.”“I’ll see you in a bit.”“Okay, great.Thanks, that would be great.”There are feet on the stairs, and Chloe hangs up as Casey barges through the doorway.“Hey! I forgot to tell you my great idea for the domestic program.”“What?”“Chosen Child restructure.No more mom-and-pop rinky-dink agency.I’m thinking revamping the domestic program so we have one caseworker for families and another one for birth moms, like Catholic Charities does.Ken said they’re thinking about hiring someone else for China, so I’d come up and do the birth moms, and you could do the families, or either way, whatever.I don’t care.”Chloe feels like she has been punched.“We’d be in totally regular communication, but I could put my desk over here.” She points to a space by the window.“I was just talking to Judith, and she thinks it’s brilliant.Won’t it be great? I can move my stuff up today.” With that, Casey leaves.Chloe rereads Dan’s e-mail.He wants her there, he’s “nothing without her.” She rereads the e-mail again.It’s enough.She grabs her purse and her day planner and phone, stops in the doorway, and looks around.She picks up her album, the one she bought last summer, filled with photos of smiling parents and newborns, Chloe a lonely bookend to the blissful cluster.She runs down the wooden staircase, two at a time, and straight into Judith’s office.“I quit.” The calm in Chloe’s voice surprises her.Where her hands clutch the leather of her small purse, sweat is forming.Judith stands up, her face purple, and slams the glass-paned door to her sunroom office, which does nothing but muffle her yelling for everyone in the international office.Over Judith’s heaving shoulders when she stops to take a breath, Chloe can see Casey, Kenneth, and Maria glancing at her, a mixed bag of expressions on their faces.From her office in the entry, Beverly has to stand and lean over the desk to get a good look.“You have to give me two weeks!” Judith roars.Chloe shakes her head but says nothing, afraid what will happen if she opens her mouth.Soon, with no fuel for Judith’s fire, it burns into frosty fury.Judith opens the door for Chloe, gestures that she should leave.“I hope you know how many people you are letting down right now,” she hisses.“Worst of all, you are letting yourself down, Chloe.”Go to Maui, Paul Nova had said….43Saint ValentinePAULWyeth has been missing for sixteen days, which makes today February 14.To Paul, this means nothing.He only noticed it when the secretaries were oohing over each other’s giant arrangements that perfumed the front office in that sharp tang of roses, reminding Paul of his mother’s Tea Rose that she spritzed on the back of her nyloned knees before Sunday church.It means Haberman was out to lunch with his wife when Paul checked in at noon, and heading out to pick up his girlfriend for dinner when Paul calls him a second time a few minutes ago.“Nothing to report,” he had said.“Couple of calls on the hotline that I chased down and debunked.” He didn’t add, as he used to, “You wouldn’t believe how many crazies there are out there.” Because yesterday Paul had snapped at him that yes, his son was snatched by one of them, and so he actually would believe that.Paul is sitting in traffic on the Sunset Highway, and every car he inches past seems to have a well-dressed couple in it.He wonders how many of these are parents, and who is home watching their children.He wants to jump out, pound on their rain-spattered windows, and scream, “Go home! Hold your children!” Who’s the crazy now?At home, the house is quiet, late-afternoon light shining through the kitchen window, a blue glow of television in the living room.It is par for the course, third night in a row, since Francie McAdoo left them with her baby for the afternoon, and that night, Magnus’s girlfriend, Genai, called from Los Angeles to tell him she was pregnant but doubted it was his.There is a bag of groceries sitting on the kitchen counter, two empty wine bottles on the floor by the back door to go out to recycling—well, at least they’re being civic-minded, Paul thinks.At least they’re not junking up our landfills.On the counter, a bloody steak is defrosting, and the water is running over a colander of Bibb lettuce.Paul shuts it off, pulls open the grocery bag.A heart-shaped Whitman’s sampler of chocolates and three dirty baking potatoes roll around in the bottom next to a cellophaned box of herbal tea.Paul pulls it out: “Mother’s Milk—for promoting lactation.” Christ.In the living room, he finds Eva and her brother in a familiar scene.Magnus is in the glider, his head thrown back, mouth open; Eva curled on the couch, her arm stretched out to rest on the coffee table where a third bottle of red sits, two empty, stained glasses both within reach.The five o’clock news is on, there’s the NO NEWS status under the photo of Wyeth, the footage of Paul and Eva and Haberman from two weeks ago.Magnus’s eyes fly open, try to focus, when Paul shuts off the TV, crosses to flip on the lamp by the stairs.“You’re back early.” Magnus’s voice is as thick and garbled as a stroke patient’s.Paul ignores him, goes to his wife, and bends, sliding an arm under her neck, not caring when his watch strap snags on her hair.He gets the other under her bent knees and, lifting with his legs, not his back, as he learned moving shipments in the warehouse, hefts her into his arms [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]