Dirty Red (Love Me With Lies) (5 page)

Before I can utter a word, she says: “Wow, that’s a new one."

“She was premature,” I lie. “She’s older than she looks.”

“I’m Dieter,” she says
, holding out her hand. I take it and shake.

“Would you like a tour of Sunny Side?”

I want to say “Hell no,” but I nod politely, and Dieter leads me through a set of double doors that she opens with a key card.

The place is dingy,
even Dieter must see that. Every room has its own unique pee smell, ranging from — Oh my God — to a subtle piney/pee combo. Dieter is either immune to the smell, or she’s choosing to ignore it. I can barely contain my gag. She highlights the student/caregiver ratio, which is six to one and points gaily to a classroom of singing four year olds who all have snot dribbling from their noses.

Sharing is caring
.

“Our playground equipment is brand new, but of course your little one won’t need that for a while.” She opens a door marked “
Teenies” and steps inside.

Immediately, I am greeted with multiple infant voices all braying like little baby donkeys. It is quite unnerving, and almost instantly
, Estella wakes up and joins the donkey chorus. I swing her car seat back and forth, and surprisingly, her crying tapers off until she’s quiet again. It is clean. I’ll give Dieter that. There are six cribs pushed against the walls. Each one has a crocheted Muppet hanging over it.

“We just said goodbye to one of our babies,” Dieter tells me. “So we have room for little
— ”

“Estella,” I smile.

“This is Miss Misty,” she says, introducing me to the caregiver. I smile at another dumpy girl, shake another hand with chipped nail polish.

In the end, I decide to leave
Estella there for a test run. Dieter suggests it. “Just for a few hours to see how you feel — ” she says. I wonder if it’s normal — leaving your baby with strangers to
see how you feel
. I could slice myself open with a knife and I wouldn’t feel a thing. I nod.

“I’ve never left her with anyone,” I say. It is the truth
… mostly.

Dieter nods sympathetically. “We will take good care of her. I’ll just need you to fill out some paperwork in the front.”

I hand the car seat to Miss Misty and make a show of kissing Estella’s forehead, and then I run to the car to fetch the diaper bag that a good mother would have carried in with her.

Thirty minutes later
, I am finally free — free of the insufferable belly, free of the noisy baby … free, free, free. Just then my phone rings. I collect it from the passenger seat where I’d tossed it earlier and see that Caleb is calling me. I smile despite myself. To this day, when Caleb calls I get butterflies in my stomach. I am about to answer it when I realize that he is probably calling to ask about Estella. I bite my lip and send him to voicemail. I can’t ever tell him what I just did. He’d probably jump onto the first flight available and storm into Miami clutching divorce papers. Maybe he’d even get
her
to draw them up for him. I know that I am being unreasonable and that he hasn’t spoken to her since my trial ended over a year and a half ago, but thoughts of that raven haired witch plague me every day. I push thoughts of my trial and my attorney to the back of my mind to rehash later.

I am determined to enjoy my baby-free time. I stop at home to change out of my jeans and put on something chic. I choose white linen pants and a Gucci blouse from my shopping trip, and I slip into a pair of kitten heels. By the tim
e I am back in the car and halfway to the restaurant, I realize that I forgot my phone on the kitchen counter.

I meet
Katine and a few of our friends for sushi and sake. When I walk into the restaurant, they all clamor around me like I’ve been gone for a year. I air kiss each of them, and we sit down to order. Either Katine has warned them not to ask me about the baby, or they don’t care because none of them breathes a word about her. Part of me is relieved because had I been called upon to discuss my feelings as a new mother, I would have burst into tears … though there is a slight annoyance there, as well. Even if Estella has been made a no-no topic, they could at least ask how I am feeling.

I let it slide. I drink four of those mini glasses of sake and then order wine.

Katine raises her glass to me. “To having you back!” she bellows, and we all take a drink.

I feel fantastic. I am officially back, though it has been a tough decade. In my sake-induced haze, I vow to make my thirties the best years of my life. By thr
ee o’clock, lunch is over and we are all sloshed, but not ready to head home.

“So,”
Katine whispers to me as we eventually exit the restaurant. “Where’s the kid?”

“Daycare.” I giggle and cover my mouth with my hand.

Katine winks at me conspiratorially. It had been her idea after all.

“Does Caleb know?” she asks.

I look at her like the dumb blonde that she is. “Seriously, Katine? Would I be wearing this if Caleb knew that his little precious was in a stranger’s care?” I wiggle my wedding band at her.

She widens her eyes and puckers her lips like she doesn’t believe me. “Come on. Caleb would never leave you, I mean
, he had his chance with that Olivia girl and — “ She slaps her hand over her mouth and looks at me like she’s said too much.

I stop dead in my tracks, ready to slap her. The bitch. How dare she bring her up!

I am breathless, full of sake and anger when I say: “Caleb never ever considered leaving me. She was nothing. Don’t you go telling people those lies, Katine.”

I know my face is red. I can feel it burning under the resent
ment. Katine’s eyebrows unhinge. They dip down, giving the impression that she’s genuinely sorry.

“I
... I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I know this pretty, blonde devi
l too well to buy into her Emmy-worthy apologies. I give her a disdainful look, and she smiles at me with saccharine sweetness.

“I just meant that he loves you. Not even that hot little piece of ass could take him from you.”

Now I am seething. It is one thing to mention that trash’s name, but to give credence to her obvious good looks crosses the girlfriend/loyalty line.

“Leah, wait,” she calls after me as I storm off. I don’t wait to hear her excuse
— her favorite one being that she is from Russia and doesn’t always understand the right way to communicate since English is her second language. I have heard them all before, and I know my slithering best friend. She likes to sugarcoat slurs, slander and underhanded insults.
You are so courageous to wear that skirt, I’d be afraid my cellulite would show.
Katine is bulimic and doesn’t have a stitch of cellulite. So, obviously she was referring to mine.  

Katine Reinlaskz is as fun as a monkey at the zoo, but cross her and she’ll rip you to shreds. Our relationship, which has existed since middle school, has been a vicious tug of war to possess things greater than the other. My first car cost sixty thousand, hers cost eighty. My sweet sixteen had three hundred guests — hers had four. I won with Caleb, though. Katine has been divorced twice. The first was a Vegas wedding, which lasted approximately twenty-four hours before it was annulled, and the second was to a fifty-year-old oil tycoon that ended up being a complete miser after they were already married. She drips jealousy when it comes to Caleb — handsome, rich, gentlemanly, sexy Caleb. Every girl's dream and I got him. I use every opportunity to flaunt my major life triumph, but ever since that trouble with Olivia, Katine’s envy has been replaced with smugness. She even had the gall to tell me once that she admired Olivia’s gumption.

I take short, choppy steps to my car, being careful not to fall in my heels, and slide into the driver’s seat. The clock on the dash says it's six o’clock. I am in no position to drive, but I don’t even have my cell phone to call someone to pick me up. And who would I call
, anyway? My friends are all similarly drunk and the ones who aren’t here would raise their eyebrows and gossip if they caught me like this.

Suddenly, I remember Estella.

“Shit,” I slam my hand against the steering wheel. I was supposed to pick her up at five, and I have no way of calling the daycare. I start the car and reverse out of the spot without looking. I hear a car horn and then the jarring crunch of metal. I don’t even need to look to know that it’s bad. I jump unsteadily out of the driver’s seat and make my way to the rear of the car. An old Ford is folded around the bumper of my Range Rover. It looks almost comical. I suppress the urge to laugh, and then I have to suppress the urge to cry because I see the flickering blue and red lights of a police car approaching us. The driver is an older man. His wife sits in the passenger side of the car, clutching her neck. I roll my eyes and cross my arms over my chest, waiting for the inevitable ambulance siren that signifies sue-happy opportunists.

I lean down so I can see the old hag. “Really?” I say through the window. “Your neck hurts?”

Sure enough, an ambulance follows the patrol car into the parking lot. The medics jump from the cab and race to the Ford. I don’t get to see what happens next because a mean looking officer is approaching me, and I know I have seconds to get it together and act sober.

“Ma’am,” he says over dark lenses. “Do you realize you backed into them without even looking? I watched the whole thing happen.”

Really? I was surprised he could see anything through his Blade wannabe sunglasses.

I smile innocently. “I know. I was in a panic. I have to pick my baby up from the babysitter,” I lie, “and I am running late...”

I bite my lip because it usually excites men when I do it.

He considers me for a minute, and I pray he won’t smell the liquor on my breath. I watch his eyes drift to my backseat where the base of Estella’s car seat sits.

“I’m going to need to see your license and registration,” he says finally.

This is standard procedure
— so far, so good. We go through the accident process that I am all too familiar with. I see the old lady being loaded into the ambulance, and I watch as they drive away with the lights flashing. Her husband, callously enough, stays behind to take care of matters.

“Damn fakers,” I whisper under my breath.

The officer shoots me a half smile, but it is enough to tell that he is on my side. I sidle up to him and inquire when I will be able to leave to get my daughter.

“It was so hard to leave her,” I tell him. “I had a business dinner.” He nods like he understands.

“We’re issuing you a ticket — seeing that it was your fault,” he says. “After that you are free to leave.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. The tow truck comes and cranks apart the vehicles. The damage to my Range Rover is minimal compared to the Ford, which is practically folded in half. I am told that the Bernhard’s insurance will be contacting mine, and I am fairly certain that they will be hiring a lawyer in the next few days as well.

I pull out of my spot; relieved that the Rover is driving the same as it was when I pulled in. Aside from a dented bumper and some minor scratches, my pricey car came out unscathed. But, better yet, I came out unscathed. I could have been arrested and issued a DUI. Thanks to some great acting and a smitten cop, I am getting away with minor costs.

I feel almost sober as I
drive carefully toward Sunny Side Up daycare. When I pull into the parking lot, it is empty. I glance at the clock on the dash nervously. It reads seven ten. Someone must have stayed late with her. They will probably be angry, but surely after I explain what happened with the phone and the accident, they will understand. I push the buzzer on the door before I notice that it is completely dark inside. Pressing my hands to the glass, I peer in. Empty. Locked up; shut down. I panic. It’s the type of panic I felt when I learned that I might go to prison for pharmaceutical fraud. The panic I felt as I stood in front of the judge expecting to hear the “Guilty” verdict that would give me twenty years in state prison. It is purely selfish panic. The — ohmyword Caleb is going to divorce me for losing his daughter — panic. I have been a mother for less than two weeks, and I have already lost my baby. That’s the shit that gets you on Nancy Grace. I hate that blonde bitch.

Pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, I contemplate my options. I could call the police. I mean, what is the policy on parents that fail to pick up their children from daycare? Do they send them to social services? Does the owner take them home? I struggle to remember the director’s name
— Dieter. Did she even give me her last name? Either way, I need to get to a phone and fast.

I drive home like I
am the Fast and the Furious — and careen my car into the driveway. My urgency is audible as I run through the door, not bothering to close it, and head for the kitchen counter where I left my phone. It’s not there. My head swims. I was so sure that’s where I’d left it. I am going to have a killer hangover tomorrow.
Think!
For the first time, I regret not having a landline.
Who needs a landline anymore?
I remember saying to Caleb right before we got rid of it. I spin around to head for the stairs, and my heart seizes in surprise.