Page 21 of The Wrong Family

Juno sat in the warm water until it turned cold, and then she filled it up with hot again. When she felt moderately better, she drained the water and clambered out of the tub. She was drying herself very slowly and very carefully when she heard the front door open. Her mouth opened, and she heard the whoosh of air she sucked in. Juno felt cold all over, then her face grew hot.

Red meat or fish, sparkling water or still, gold or platinum—those used to be her everyday options. Today, it was hiding under the bed or hiding in the closet.

She ran for Winnie and Nigel’s bed, a sizable four-poster. She’d planned for this, she was ready. Juno had a viable hiding spot in every room in the house in case something like this ever happened. And it was happening. She could hear fast steps on the stairs. As Juno dove to her stomach, she used her hands and knees to shimmy under the bed, an image of a salamander in her mind. She backed against the far wall and crouched into a ball, as small as she could make herself. She could see the digital clock blinking across the hall from Sam’s nightstand: 1:20. Her body remained silent, thanks to the oxy she’d taken from Nigel’s bottle. Her mind, however, was flicking around like a bad radio connection.

She knew it was Sam before his Vans came into view, knew by the sound of his footsteps.Doom, doom, doomlike he carried the weight of his angst in his feet.

But instead of turning into his own room, he abruptly turned into his parents’. Juno saw his Vans up close and personal. Her heart was beating so fast it ached in her chest. How would he react to finding the sweet old lady that he’d chatted with in the park hiding underneath his parents’ bed? God, if she had a heart attack under this bed, how long would it be before they found her congealing on their hardwood? He briefly stopped at the foot of the bed, then turned sharply and made his way to the dresser. Her breaths were shallow, but to her own ears it sounded like the beating of very large wings. A drawer opened. What was he looking for?

And then his phone rang, a little chirping noise she’d heard before.

“Yeah, I can’t find it.”

His voice so loud—so close. She closed her eyes, feeling light-headed.

“My dad has oxy, though…”

No, no, no, Juno thought. She needed that oxy. How many had she stashed away? Sam moved to the bathroom and she heard the medicine cabinet opening, the rattle of those precious, white pills—and then a minute later he was walking back out the door—faster, like he had somewhere to be. Thedoom, doom, doomwent back down the stairs, and then she heard him in the kitchen, the clink of glass and the slam of the front door.

Juno was momentarily stunned, too stunned to move. Had she seen that coming? No. Sam was not supposed to be like his parents; she believed very strongly that nature could overpower nurture and vice versa. He was becoming like them, she decided, crawling from her hiding space and stretching her back with a groan.

She looked toward the bathroom. Padding lightly across the floor, she saw the way she’d left things. Close to the tub, just near the medicine cabinet, was a small patch of wet floor. She pursed her lips at this and then moved her eyes slowly to Sam’s room. He was a teenage boy, and apparently he’d found the fast social connections a couple of oxy could get you; that didn’t mean he knew anything was amiss in his own home. She doubted he’d paused long enough to study the bathroom.

She wondered if he knew anything was amiss with his family—specifically, his own birth. She thought again of his blog:A wolf knows when it’s being raised by bears.But how much did he really know? She found herself wandering back into Winnie and Nigel’s bedroom. Or, as of late, Winnie’s bedroom.

She stood over Winnie’s nightstand, thinking. Remembering the cryptic, depressing journals she’d read, she found herself reaching a gnarled hand toward the handle. She’d been innocently looking for nail clippers when she’d found those journals; she hadn’t even been trying to snoop. But now she had other things on her mind, more sinister things.

And there it was, predictably, in the bottom drawer of her nightstand: a fireproof lockbox. Juno lifted it from the drawer and placed it on her lap. A little key was still attached to the metal hinge of the box, secured by a plastic loop. She had no problem sliding the flimsy key into its equally flimsy lock. If this was the Crouches’ way of protecting their documents…

The lock clicked over, and she opened the lid.

Inside were three stacks of documents, two of them wrapped together with rubber bands. Juno picked those up first, unwrapping them with renewed speed. The shadows outside were shifting, the light in the bedroom turning from yellow to orange as the sun dipped into the park. She studied the shadows on the bedroom wall for a moment and then turned back to her task. She was nervous.

Passports: hers and Nigel’s. Sam’s was not among them. Rewrapping the passports, Juno put them back as she found them and reached for the next, larger stack of documents. It was exactly what she’d been hoping to find—in a plastic sleeve were Winnie’s and Nigel’s birth certificates, Social Security cards, marriage license, and life insurance policies. Juno took everything out of the sleeve and then put everything back, one by one, just to make sure. There was no birth certificate for Sam, no Social Security card. That was odd. It was possible that Winnie kept it somewhere else, but Juno couldn’t imagine why. It was as if he simply didn’t have any documents. She knew she was jumping to conclusions, but what she’d been hoping to see was a birth certificate that would settle the matter and quiet the nagging voice in her head. She remembered Sam’s words that day in the park, the day he said he didn’t feel like he was their kid—“I looked for my birth certificate once. My mom said it was ruined in storage when all the things got covered in mold and they hadn’t gotten around to applying for another one.”

Juno had seen plenty of women come through her office who were just like Winnie. They were predictable in their order: Winnie wrote Samuel’s name in Sharpie on the labels of his clothes, she balanced his meals with the precision of a nutritionist, and his Halloween costumes had been handmade his entire life—there was an entire album of photos to prove it. This was not the type of mother who lost or forgot to apply for her child’s birth certificate; quite the contrary. Juno lifted her hand to the smooth patch of flesh behind her ear.

If Sam didn’t have medical records, he wouldn’t be allowed to attend public school. Right? Right.

Maybe Winnie knew Sam’s birth mother and had manipulated her into giving away her baby. To Juno, that would explain Nigel’s outburst. She was grasping, and a headache had eased its way into the back of her head and was moving toward her forehead in a crawl.

On to the last item in the box—it was rolled and wrapped with rubber bands like a fat joint. It took Juno a good three minutes to get them off, and it only occurred to her after that she wouldn’t be able to replicate the complicated wrapping system. “Is there method to this madness, Winnie?” she asked the room.

It was too late now…two envelopes unfolded in her hands, the paper crackling from age. It was like one of those Russian nesting dolls, she thought; things inside of things. That told her a little bit more about Winnie. She set the rubber bands aside and stared. Instead of licking the strip, Winnie had tucked the flap inside and then rolled the envelope up, binding it over and over. Juno had the feeling that she’d open it and there’d be nothing in the interior.Wouldn’t that be hilarious, she thought. But it wouldn’t be. Juno was already on edge, digging around where she shouldn’t be. And what did she care, anyway? Why was she digging around—these people were not her problem. Juno had come here to retire, to die. She told herself it was curiosity, crumbs left behind from her former trade, as she tented the opening of the envelope. It was empty aside from another rolled piece of paper, this one thin enough that at first Juno thought it was a hand-rolled cigarette. She had to use her fingernails to unroll it, being careful not to rip the paper. She spread it out on her knee and saw that there were two printouts, the writing so faded and grainy she could barely make out what they said without glasses. They looked to Juno like police reports. She’d seen a few in her line of work. The words were a series of blurred black lines. Sometimes she used Nigel’s reading glasses, which he kept in the side table next to his bed. Juno stood, padding lightly over to Nigel’s nightstand, and slid the drawer open. They were there next to a bottle half-full of cough syrup. She slipped the glasses on and reached for the syrup, screwing off the lid even as she eyed the abandoned papers where they lay on Winnie’s coverlet. She eyed them long and hard as she took a generous swig, the tomato red of the syrup coating the inside of her mouth like cool cherry blood. Licking her lips, she put the bottle back in the drawer and moved to Winnie’s side of the bed. The words on the papers were easier to see now. Juno held one of them in front of her face. Her tongue made a strange clicking sound as she read, the words becoming increasingly more disturbing. Juno realized she was clicking her tongue at Winnie. Finally, folding the papers neatly, she tucked them into her pocket. She stared once more into the envelope.

There, at the bottom corner was something…Something, Juno thought—but probably nothing. She turned the envelope, shook it a little, and into her hand floated the strangest thing.

A tiny piece of paper towel…no—cloth. It was old and scrunched up. It looked to Juno like there was embossing on it, like on a hankie her grandfather had kept in his breast pocket. She lifted it closer to her face, rolling it a little between her fingers. The yellow color, she realized, was blood, very faded old blood.

Juno dropped the scrap in disgust. Why would Winnie keep this tiny rag? And whose blood was it? She lowered herself very slowly to her knees to retrieve the square, bending all the way down to the rug to pluck it up. For a moment Juno wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get back up; her back seized at the same time her knees locked like two defunct wheels, Nigel’s syrup not yet coating her pain. She pushed through it, stumbling to her feet. Breathing like a winded rhino, she returned the scrap to the envelope. It could be anything, she supposed, depending on how weird Winnie truly was. Juno had once had a patient who collected his fingernail clippings in a mason jar. There was one more envelope, and this one felt heavier. Bracing herself, Juno wrinkled her nose as she tented it, hoping to see something else, but when she looked inside the second, there were not one, but six bloody pieces of cloth.

She’d never wanted to be rid of anything quite as badly. What exactly had Winnie’s mother been smoking when she was baking the twins? Hands moving quickly, she started to roll the envelopes back into the wad. Her knuckles locked painfully, but for once, she was too preoccupied to notice. Shaking her left hand to loosen some of the stiffness, she lifted her right hand—the one holding the envelopes—up to her face. Juno’s old eyes worked hard, probably so hard she’d have a headache later. But there it was: two envelopes and six bloody scraps. After she put the box back, she walked stiffly to the bathroom where she held her hands under scorching water.

Juno knew from a lifetime of training that she had to get inside the head of the person, burrow deep until she knew not only how they worked, butwhythey worked. Once she had that vital piece of information, the circuit board to that person’s brain opened up, allowing Juno to press the right buttons. Two envelopes: six bloody little scraps. Were they trophies? No, Winnie considered herself the trophy; she would never keep something dirty and soiled as a souvenir. They were keepsakes, like a lock of hair or a love letter. And judging by the way they were wrapped up, painful ones. And then the thought came, dragging out of Juno, snagging along the way. What if no one knew Sam’s mother had even been pregnant? What if Winnie was the only one who knew? Juno had been looking for a stolen baby, but perhaps the real truth lay in finding the mother. This thought settled over her like a mist, and she felt cold to her very bones.

16

WINNIE

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