The Switch

2

The baby had just fallen asleep on his mother’s nipple.

Will Abbott lifted little Travis slowly from Jen’s breast and carried him carefully, gingerly, across the darkened room toward the crib as if he were transporting a hand grenade with the pin out. It could go off at any second.

Because little Travis, six weeks old, hardly ever seemed to sleep. A few hours here and there, never more than that. And when he didn’t sleep, his parents didn’t sleep.

Travis had just had his last feeding for the day, or at least until he woke up at two in the morning desperately hungry again. Right now he was the angel baby, flying through the clouds, making tiny fussing sounds in his sleep. At two in the morning, or maybe three, he would awake, ravenous and loud and beyond comforting.

Jen always got up and fed him, since the baby wanted her, not him. And because Will had to go to work in the morning. Will could roll over and put a pillow over his head and fall back asleep while Jen nursed him. It was colossally unfair. Will, who worked on Capitol Hill as chief of staff to a senator, had the easier job. But it was also the job that paid the rent on their Stanton Park apartment.

Will was always tired, always sleep deprived, since the baby was born. He’d taken a month-long paternity leave — most chiefs didn’t get that — during which he tried to take the baby as much as possible so Jen could catch up on sleep. But Travis always wanted his mother. Will tried putting the baby in his car seat and driving around, but that didn’t quiet him down.

Jen’s mom thought that Travis might have colic, but their pediatrician said “colic” was just an old-fashioned term for an inconsolable baby without any other obvious problem. It was probably abdominal pain, but he wasn’t sure. He might just be a fussy baby. He was hungry a lot, but he wouldn’t take a bottle, so they couldn’t augment his feeding.

The room was filled with the whooshing of the white-noise generator in the corner near the baby’s crib. The white-noise machine was Jen’s idea. She thought it would mask traffic noise from the street.

Anything to keep the baby asleep a little longer.

Will walked back to the bed, avoiding the floorboard that always squeaked. When he reached the bed, his BlackBerry rang. His work phone. He kept it beside the bed, in its charger, because it rarely rang past nine at night. And if it did, it was the boss, which meant it was important.

As soon as the ringtone sounded — he’d forgotten to put it on vibrate mode — Travis awoke and started to squall. From the number readout he saw it was the boss. It had to be something urgent. Otherwise, she’d just text.

“Hi, Susan,” he said.

“Will, listen, I screwed up.”

An ominous start. The boss was never self-critical, never self-blaming. She had a big ego and a maddeningly serene confidence.

“Okay,” he said, switching into I-can-handle-anything Mr.-Fix-it mode.

“I grabbed the wrong laptop.”

“I don’t—”

“At the airport. I grabbed someone else’s laptop. In the security line. And someone got mine.”

“Okay. You flew American, right? I’ll call their lost and found at National. Whoever took it probably brought it back—”

“This was in LA.”

The baby was wailing now, so Will went out into the hall, one hand over his free ear.

“No problem, I’ll call—”

“Did I wake you? You’re not thinking clearly. The security line at LAX, Will. That means it could be anyone, on any flight, who took my laptop. Any of a thousand people. And” — she sighed heavily — “and you know damn well we can’t call law enforcement.”

For a moment he didn’t know what she was talking about, and then it came to him. “Oh.”

Icy tendrils gripped the pit of his stomach. “Oh my God. It’s — it’s password protected, right? I mean, no one can get onto your laptop without your password. Right?”

There was a long silence. Over the phone, Will could hear the distant clamor of airport announcements on speakers. He was about to repeat the question when she said dully, “Yes, it’s password protected.”

“Great. We don’t have to worry about it, then.” The icy tendrils began to melt away. In the background he heard loud babble, people talking loudly, close to her.

“No,” she said. “We have to assume the worst. We have to worry about everything as long as that computer is out there.”

“Well, maybe whoever took it realized it wasn’t hers and brought it to the lost and found at LAX.”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “How early can you get in tomorrow morning?”

“How early do you need me?”

Little Travis let loose with an ear-shattering, gut-churning yowl. Will glanced at his watch. Ten minutes after ten. Putting the baby down might take another half an hour, and he knew it would be his job, not Jen’s. If he was lucky, he’d get three and a half hours of sleep before the inevitable two A.M. awakening, and then another two or three fitful hours. Five or six broken hours of sleep, he calculated, before what was probably going to be a long and arduous day.

“Will, are you off the phone?” Jen called, voice taut with annoyance. That meant diaper duty.

“See you tomorrow,” he said into the phone, then hit the red button to end the call. “Yep, I’m coming.”