The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,37
an unnerving announcement that stunned everyone into silence, and Austin lightened the moment by teasing her that the apartment was so thoroughly childproofed that he couldn’t get into a cupboard or a drawer.
“I call her the safety warden,” he said, and everyone laughed as he gave them humorous examples. A few minutes later, Seth, the youngest grandson, spilled his ginger ale, and Constance went out to the kitchen to get something to mop it up. She looked under the sink when she saw the cabinet open, with no child lock, and found all the household poisons and chemicals there, within easy reach for Jaime. There was no lock on the door at all, and she was stunned by how dangerous the products were, in sharp contrast to how careful Austin had just said Zoe was. There was always a strange contradiction between her theories about safety and the reality of Jaime getting hurt so frequently.
Connie grabbed a handful of kitchen towels and a sponge and went back to the living room to clean up the ginger ale her grandson had spilled. But what she had seen in the kitchen made her wonder just how childproof their home actually was, and how careful Zoe really was. It all sounded good, but what was the truth? If Jaime ever got in to the cabinet under their kitchen sink and ingested any of it, she’d be dead. And there was no gate on the kitchen door either to keep her out.
When Constance came back from leaving the wet towels in the kitchen, she saw Jaime winding the long strings from the balloons around her neck. Fiona was in the kitchen putting away the cake. And Zoe was deep in conversation with Cathy Clark about whether or not vaccines really caused autism, and how dangerous was it not to get children vaccinated at all, but then you couldn’t get them into a school. And could they really force you to vaccinate your child? Meanwhile, Jaime was continuing to wind the sturdy ribbons from the balloons round and round her neck, and Connie walked across the room and stopped her, and unwound them before she could strangle herself. No one had been watching her at all, until Austin saw his mother intervene, and walked over to thank her.
“She can get in to mischief faster than anyone I know,” he said, looking sheepish. “She put peas in her ears last week, and we had to take her to Cathy to get them out.” Cathy overheard him say it, and turned to Constance with a grin.
“Ah yes, the great pea caper. I had another patient who put them up his nose. Children can be very creative with food.” They laughed about it, but Constance didn’t think that peas could kill Jaime, ribbons wrapped around her neck and household bleach could. There was a strange dichotomy between what they said and what they did. It made Constance uneasy, and in a quiet moment when no one else was paying attention, Constance said something to Zoe about the toxic household products under the sink.
“I wasn’t snooping, I was looking for some cloths and a sponge to clean up the mess Seth made,” Constance said in a soft voice no one else could hear. “And I found all your really dangerous cleaning products there. You need to childproof the cabinet or put a lock on it, before Jaime gets in to it.” That would be a tragedy, not just another trip to the ER, they both knew.
“She has to learn what’s dangerous, and where she can’t go. It’s about respecting boundaries,” Zoe said, as Constance stared at her in disbelief. “I respect her intelligence. She has to know I trust her. We can’t lock everything up. She could fall into the toilet by accident, but she would have to choose to open those bottles. She knows she’s not supposed to do that, and she respects my rules on that.”
“I wouldn’t trust a two-year-old to make that choice,” Constance said firmly, feeling panic rise in her throat. What were they thinking, to trust a two-year-old to respect their rules and learn boundaries, with poisons within easy reach? She wondered if Austin was just as foolish as Zoe about it. She hoped not. They needed to empty that cabinet in the kitchen immediately. She wanted to do it herself, but she didn’t dare interfere in their home. She felt as though her granddaughter was living with a time bomb