At eleven o’clock, the screaming finally stopped.
It had started as a whimper, faint but steady. With each shaky breath it strengthened, growing more shrill by the minute, culminating in a desperate spate of primal pleas that defied the bounds of language, that barely sounded human.
Tonight, like every night, Allison Leahy could only cringe at the cries of her four-month-old daughter. That the pediatrician declared it “normal” didn’t make it any softer on the ears. Something had to be bothering her baby, though Allison had the distinct and helpless feeling that little Emily would probably reach puberty by the time Mommy figured it out.
She did have a few theories—fears, actually, that tormented her in flashes of panic. It could be serious, a psychological sign that Emily was rejecting her adopted mother. Maybe it was one of those dreaded syndromes, the lasting legacy of an unknown teenage mother on a prenatal diet of vodka and cigarettes. Or was the problem just Allison? It was entirely possible her friends were right: It was crazy for a thirty-nine-year-old career woman to adopt a newborn when there was no father on the horizon.
Fortunately, her paranoia usually melted at the mere sight of that little face—the turned-up nose and perfect little mouth that prompted people to say she looked just like her mother. Not her biological mother. Her real mother. Allison relished the resemblance, even if it was mere coincidence.
“You asleep, pretty baby?” she whispered hopefully.
Emily slumped in her car seat, multiple chins on her chest. The silence was a clear “affirmative.”
Allison switched off the clothes dryer. She couldn’t recall where she’d picked up the helpful tip, but perching an infant in a car seat atop a warm, vibrating dryer was like mechanical Sominex. She bundled her baby in her arms and headed across the kitchen. They paused before the portable television that rested on the Corian countertop. Anthony Hopkins was happily thanking the academy for his Best Actor award. Emily’s sleepy eyes popped open, as if she were somehow taken by the Hollywood magic.
Allison smiled and continued down the hall, speaking in a soft, gooey mommy voice as they entered the nursery. “That’ll be you someday, sweetheart. Maybe by then even all those silly old men out in Hollywood will realize they don’t give separate awards for ‘best boy director’ and ‘best girl director,’ so they don’t need ‘best actress’ and best actor,’ either. You’ll be Emily Leahy, best actor. Better than all the boys and all the girls. Because you’re just the best. Yes,” she gushed, “that’s what you are: duh best!”
She laid her little fourteen-pound prize atop the pink cotton sheets in the crib, thankful that her chronic inability to keep her convictions to herself hadn’t in this instance rendered ninety minutes of standing over the dryer completely futile. Emily was sound asleep. Maybe she was getting used to a mother who wasn’t afraid to air her views. She’d better, thought Allison.
Allison had been raised during the Eisenhower era in a small town north of Chicago, where at age nine she was kicked out of the Catholic school for fattening the lip of an old nun who’d said her mother was going to hell because she was divorced. She completed her education in public schools, graduating second in her class at the University of Illinois College of Law, class of ’76. In just two years she gained national recognition as counsel for the Consumer Safety Defense Fund. Eleven infants thought to have died from sudden infant death syndrome were actually the victims of knock-off teddy bears stuffed with old rags that still bore the remnants of an odorless but highly toxic cleaning solvent. Allison paved the way for the government to bring slam-dunk criminal charges against the top executives who had approved the cost-cutting scheme. Her tenacity had caught the eye of the United States Attorney, who promptly hired her. In six years she’d never lost a case. After a four-year stint in Washington as the youngest-ever chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, she came home to Chicago and entered the world of real politics. At age thirty-six she won the hotly contested race for Cook County State Attorney, with 60 percent of the vote. The female half of the electorate had clearly responded to her message that women were too often the victims of violent crime. Even her own pollsters, however, weren’t sure whether male voters had been moved by the issues or by what her sexist opponent called the “Princess