Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,34

when Rowan was a newborn; stuffed toys and sweaters and a beautiful green and blue coat for when she could sit up. Burrows and his wife gave Sheila and Webster a snazzy stroller that came apart and seemed to be able to do everything except cook dinner.

With Rowan in his arms, Webster rubbed noses with her and told her she was a pain in the ass. He walked her all over the apartment showing her the lights. He did and redid the same five-piece puzzle with her a hundred times while she smacked her mouth in surprise whenever she made it come out right. He imagined that Rowan, at nine months, must have found the backyard a vast and exciting territory. In the summer, Webster’s mother brought over fresh vegetables that Sheila cooked, put in the blender, and then froze in ice cube trays. When she fed Rowan each lunch and dinner in her high chair, she defrosted a cube, warmed it up, and spooned it into Rowan’s mouth, employing the same airplane trick Webster assumed every parent used.

Webster found himself using the word love all the time and indiscriminately. He felt he’d stumbled into a life that he was meant to live, though he couldn’t have described it before he met Sheila.

Sheila, with her gradually slimming silhouette, seemed to experience life as her baby did, first living within a cocoon that stretched the sixteen feet from bed to couch to sink, then expanding into a car for drives to Nana’s with the baby and then for errands at the supermarket, Rowan behind her in the car seat.

One late afternoon in August, Webster arrived home to find Sheila and Rowan asleep on the grass in the backyard. He hadn’t wanted to wake them and so had pulled up a chair next to them and watched. A warm breeze blew over the three of them, keeping the mosquitoes away.

He wondered what had happened. Sheila and Rowan were sitting together and had just decided to have a nap? What a funny picture they made, the two females with the same shade of glossy brown hair, one tiny head tucked beneath another. Were they breathing in sync? Webster wished he had his camera with him, but he didn’t dare move to get it. He could hear the bustle of customers out in front of the ice-cream shop. A perfect day for a cone. The yard had privacy when the leaves were on the trees. The patch of land that Sheila and Rowan slept on had the most grass.

Rowan woke first, which then woke Sheila. Sheila brushed the grass off each of them. “Hi,” she said dreamily. She stood with the baby in her arms, and Webster stood with them.

“I suppose I should get dinner going,” Sheila said. Webster stopped her with a kiss.

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s just go around front and get ice-cream cones.”

Sheila didn’t protest as he thought she might. Usually she made sure that Rowan ate only healthful food. This time, however, she smiled.

“You have wonderful ideas, Mr. Webster, you know that?”

He picked up Rowan, who was still wiping the sleep out of her eye. “What do you say, ice cream for supper?”

She nodded her head and laid it against his shoulder.

Webster knew he was the happiest he had ever been.

It was SIDS, the infant dead for hours when Webster and Burrows got to the house, a small cottage at the edge of the creek that paralleled 42. It was built to be a summer place only, and at first Webster wondered if the mother was a tourist. The home had no insulation. The mother insisted to the 911 dispatcher that the baby was still breathing.

Blankets and stuffed animals littered the crib. No one knew for sure what caused the senseless and heartbreaking death. Webster felt only sadness and disgust.

He reached for the brachial pulse in the arm. He wondered at what point the mother had last looked at her baby and for how long she’d been avoiding reality. Burrows began CPR, even though both medics knew the child was dead. For the sake of the survivors, they had to do everything they could.

Webster glanced around the tiny living room, the crib next to the sofa. He always tried to get a picture of the life inside the house when they made a call. A one-bedroom, baby in the living room. The infant was maybe ten weeks old.

Burrows called in to Dispatch to tell them they needed a police