After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

DECEMBER 2013

Julie sat on her new sleep sofa in her living room, which had grown smaller with the addition of her desk, smaller still with the broad sofa, and yet again smaller with the Christmas tree crowded into a corner. The scent of Douglas fir drifted through the room. She was wrapping presents in bright metallic paper. Jake was flying in from Wyoming and although they weren’t particularly close, each was the only family the other had since their parents had died in a plane crash three years ago, and it was Christmas. For Christmas you gathered family, even if half your heritage was Jewish. Jake, who would sleep on the extended sofa with his feet against the tree, was about to discover that he had one more family member than he thought.

She hadn’t told him earlier about her pregnancy because he was going to disapprove. Not of her getting pregnant, although he would undoubtedly consider that careless, but of her having and keeping the baby. Jake, deeply ambitious, had risen rapidly through the ranks of the U.S. Geological Survey. He was proud of both her career and his own, and he would frown at the year-long sabbatical she was taking to even have the baby, let alone the professional sacrifices that she knew perfectly well would follow. Julie did not intend to have her child raised by a succession of nannies, Even if she had had room for a nanny. She would make the transition from brilliant professor to brilliant consultant and work at home, perhaps teaching one course per semester as a sideline. Already she had feelers out for potential projects with various industries and government agencies.

She taped wrapping paper around a Bunny Mine, the current hot toy for toddlers. Her daughter, now a four-and-a-half-month fetus, wouldn’t be playing with a Bunny Mine for at least a year, but it would look cute on the shelves that Julie had put up in the nursery. The nursery was finished. The layette was complete. The childbirth classes began in January. It was all planned out, everything under control.

Julie had just begun to wrap a sweater for Jake when her cell rang. “Hello, Julie Kahn speaking.”

“This is Gordon.”

Her lips pursed. She hadn’t heard from him in nearly a month, since she’d given him her best stab at the revised data on the kidnappings. Since then she’d watched the Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine newspapers; no child had been reported as missing. Plenty of burglaries, of course—theft always picked up as Christmas approached—but without Gordon’s input, Julie had no way of knowing which ones fit the MO that the task force had been pursuing.

“Hello, Gordon,” she said neutrally, hoping this call wasn’t personal.

It wasn’t. He said, “I wanted you to know that the A-Dic pulled the plug on the task force. Each kidnapping has been assigned to a local Special Agent in Charge. The A-Dic just doesn’t believe a connective enterprise exists.”

“The mathematical pattern exists.”

“Maybe. No more kidnappings since Kara and Jennifer Carter. No store burglaries with that MO, either.”

“Before this there have been long stretches between incidents.”

He made a noise she recognized: the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Gordon was moving on. He was not a man to hold on to what he could not control.

She said, “The pattern exists, Gordon.”

Instead of agreeing or arguing, he said, “How are you?”

“Still pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Can I come see you?”

“No. You’re married, Gordon.”

“There were two of us in those motel rooms, Julie.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I take complete responsibility for my actions, and for this result. It doesn’t involve you.”

“Damn it, I’m the father!”

She drew a deep breath. “Only biologically. I don’t mean that to be nasty, Gordon. You have no room for us in your life, and anyway I don’t want that. I don’t think you do, either, not really. Please just leave me be.”

“If you need money—”

“I don’t. Bye, Gordon. I’m sorry about the task force, because I still think there’s something there.”

“But Julie—”

Gently she pressed the disconnect button on her cell.

Within her body, the baby moved, and she put her hand on her belly and watched the lights twinkle on and off on the little Christmas tree above the festive packages.