A pause, then, followed by footsteps on the stairs—lots of them—which meant Maryanne was not returning alone.

Carl ran his hands over his face, around his mouth. Three days of stubble had made his chin rough. He was wearing a white undershirt, yellowed at the neck and armpits.

Then into the room came Maryanne, followed by Dick Shattuck, Bob Lewis, and Bob Alcott.

The three big men overtook the little low-ceilinged room. Carl, looking up at them from his bed, felt like a child.

“Carl, these men have something to tell you,” said Maryanne.

•   •   •

The police would be coming for him in the morning. His friends wanted to alert him before they did.

“We don’t believe you had anything to do with the boy’s disappearance,” said Dick Shattuck. “Want you to know that. That’s the reason we’re here, I guess.”

Carl put a hand to his chest.

“What should I do?”

He heard that it sounded pathetic.

“Run for the hills,” said Bob L. “These yahoos’ll hang you.”

“Bob,” said Shattuck, admonishingly.

“Sorry, Maryanne.”

“I don’t know, Carl,” said Shattuck, head lowered. “I wish there was something we could do.”

For a moment, there was silence in the room.

“They have no evidence,” said Bob Alcott. It was the first he’d spoken. He was a quiet man, a history teacher at the central school. “All their evidence is circumstantial. That won’t cut it in a court of law.”

Carl wasn’t certain what that meant, but it was the first thing he’d heard that brought him comfort.

•   •   •

They had a brief conversation, after the men had left, about whether he should, in fact, disappear. Maryanne was for it. Carl against. His chest was hurting more than ever; he had to consciously remind himself not to put his hand to it, because each time he did, Maryanne looked like she was going to cry.

Finally, at three in the morning, Maryanne put her arms around him, holding him like a child, and they both fell asleep that way.

At seven in the morning, the second knock came.

Alice

1950s | 1962 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

She wanted to love the new baby.

Over the course of a nearly unbearable labor, Alice chanted these words like a prayer: I will love the new baby. I will love the new baby.

Peter, of course, was nowhere. Other fathers waited in the waiting room, reading newspapers—but not her husband, who had a meeting he couldn’t miss. When the baby was born, he’d be driven over from the bank. The baby would be handed to him. And then he’d go back to work, and the baby would be taken to the nursery, and then, at last, Alice could sleep.

She pictured only this as she labored: the moment of rest.

I will love the new baby, thought Alice.

•   •   •

It hadn’t been like this with Bear. She knew she would love him from the moment she felt his first kick. She’d been eighteen years old then, married only a few months. She had nothing to do inside her new house, with Peter gone all day. The first fluttering motions of her baby felt to her like gifts.

After nearly ten months of carrying her son inside her like a pearl, she delivered him into the world, and he was no longer hers alone. As soon as Alice brought her son home, people began to take him from her.

First there was her own mother, who lifted the babe from her arms as soon as she walked in the door to the Albany house. Ordered Alice upstairs to wash her hair.

Next came the Van Laars, mainly Peter’s father, who inspected Bear as if inspecting livestock. He made pronouncements about the size of his head, the length of his legs. Both were deemed respectable. The baby was handed back.

Last came the two nurses—Peter’s idea. One for the day. One for the night.

Peter interviewed them in private, so she only met each of them on their first day of work. The day nurse, Francine, was a matron, gray-haired and thin, who worked with quiet efficiency and smiled frequently and tended as much to Alice as she did to Bear, especially in the months just after his birth. Alice liked her very much, actually, and told Peter so.

But the night nurse, Sharon, was different. She was red-haired, stout, not much older than Alice. Catholic, Alice thought: she lived at home with her parents still. She spoke often of being the oldest of ten, with a kind of pride in her voice that often turned to authority when Alice questioned anything she did.

The worst part was that Peter generally took her side.

“He’s cold,” said Alice, hearing Bear cry in the night. “She has him in those light pajamas. The house is so drafty.”

And Peter would say—“A lowered body temperature induces sleep.”

“He’s hungry,” said Alice. “He didn’t eat a good dinner.”

“If he starts eating at night he’ll only want more.”

Sharon stayed with them for several years at the start of Bear’s life, impervious to Alice’s disapproval of nearly every choice she made. She hummed cheerfully to herself as she took him up to bed, and Alice watched her go, longing to hold the soft small body of her son, clad in cotton; longing to feel that weight in her arms.

“Maybe,” she said once to Peter, “maybe I could put Bear to bed each night, and then Sharon could be the one to wake up with him, if he’s restless.”

Peter, who’d been reading, looked up in annoyance. “Honestly, Alice,” he said. “What are we paying her for? To sleep here? Sharon should be paying us,” he said. “Rent.”

The best parts of Alice’s day were the two hours between Sharon’s departure in the morning and Francine’s arrival, and the two hours at the end of the day, when they switched. During these four hours, with no one to watch or correct her, she played with him, or read to him, or lay with him on her bed, observing him. He was smart, Alice thought—most importantly, he was smart. He spoke early and he made observations about the world that shocked her with their clarity. He counted early. He sang in a sweet voice all the songs she taught him—Alice liked to sing—and repeated them sometimes for Peter, at Alice’s urging. Even Peter smiled, on these occasions.

When he cried, he was easy to console, said Sharon. Alice heard him overnight—she always did—but his cries were over quickly.

When Bear was two, though, and saying words, he suddenly began to cry for Alice in the night. Mamma, he began to say.

The first night he did this, Alice sat up straight in bed.

“What is it?” said Peter, sleepily.