smile was the best gift of all. I watched her for signs of anxiety or trauma, but though she didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the Institute, she seemed to be amazingly fine. Soon after the Tooth Fairy left a dollar under her pillow, another tooth loosened. She ate well, played hard, and, except for some nightmares, slept soundly.
Michael stopped by Christmas Eve, dripping concern and prepared for a fight. I handed him the ring without comment. Baffled, speechless, he wrote me a check. I accepted it, but the fact was that I wanted him to have the ring. It mattered to him; to me it was just an object, pretty to look at, nothing more. As he left, Michael thanked me and asked, “You okay, Zoe? You don’t seem quite yourself.” Of course, he was right. I wasn’t quite myself, at least not the self he’d known.
Over the holidays, Nick spent more and more time with us. We talked about what had happened; he explained that after the trauma of Charlie’s death he’d wanted to protect us from the corralling of Phillip Woods. He swore that whatever had passed between him and Beverly Gardener had been purely professional. I neither believed nor disbelieved him. And I never mentioned my resemblance to his wife, never asked if he’d killed her. Beverly Gardener and Nick’s marriage were beyond my concern. I moved ahead tentatively, hour by hour, day by day, accepting that truth was elusive, indifferent to how it might be grasped, represented, or perceived.
When she could be moved, Beverly Gardener went off to a swank Palm Beach clinic to recover. From her hospital bed, she signed another book contract and had her agent arrange to syndicate her radio program nationwide. She was negotiating for a television show. When and if she came back to work, it would not be quietly.
Days passed into weeks. The pace of life picked up, began to feel almost normal. But not quite. There was still no sign of Phillip Woods, and I watched for him routinely, ready for him to spring out of a closet or from under the bed. Phillip Woods had become the bogeyman, haunting but elusive. Aside from that, loss weighed heavily—Charlie, all those poor women. Life was altered, would never be the same.
When Molly slept, I sometimes wandered the house, searching for signs, for some place or point to connect to. But I was unhinged. Not long ago, a woman had lived there with her daughter. A man had shared her bed. But that woman, like the nannies, had vanished. The child was still there, her books and flannel bunny Even the man had returned. The furnishings remained—her paintings, her purple sofa, even her cursed StairMaster. But these were props. Illusions. The place was a house full of tricks that made it seem that a real woman with a real life lived there.
I knew better. I didn’t feel real. Whatever defined me was external. From the outside, I was a friend, a mom, a neighbor, a therapist, an ex-wife, a lover. Inside, underneath, I was vacant. Blank. Who was I? Who was I to myself?
I had no idea. But whoever I was, I was my own companion as I walked in circles, centered in a homespun web. At times a howl, or something like it, swelled silently inside my belly, my chest. I didn’t know why or what kind of howl it was, only that it was my howl, something I could release or keep. Something real and known only to me. Something, maybe the only thing, I owned.
For days and weeks, recuperating, I paced the floors, walked from room to room, looking for something I couldn’t find. Nick was often there, sleeping on the sofa, resting in the chair, cooking forty different flavors of spaghetti. I made myself cups of decaf, felt the steam, inhaled it deeply. The howl was building, battling to burst from my lungs. No, I told myself. I would not let it go. Not yet. I would hold on to it and wait, letting it grow inside me. I swallowed cups of murky hot liquid, washed the howl back down, and looked out the window as if life were normal, as if I were calm.
Charlie’s empty house returned my gaze. His worried eyes peered forlornly from basement windows. I met his eyes but couldn’t comfort him. It would take time for Charlie’s spirit to find peace.
Nor would peace come easily to me. I