Page 67 of I Know She Was There

His family had never visited us, not even when we married. Tim explained they couldn’t afford the expenditures—airfare, hotel—to join us at city hall. He claimed he didn’t have enough money to fund their trip, as he’d surrendered all his cash on my engagement and wedding rings.

Feeling guilty about Tim lavishing money on me rather than his family, I didn’t protest when they stayed put. I’d dutifully spoken with them all on the eve of our wedding when Tim called them during a family gathering. I’d repeated the same lines, infused with the same cheer, with every family member whose voice boomed through the cell phone mouthpiece: both parents; his big brother, Ben; and two younger siblings, Jake and Todd. All congratulated us and expressed regret at not being able to attend our nuptials. I’d not spoken again with his parents until after Emmy was born, and I’d never again talked with his brothers.

I walked into the bathroom, catching a glimpse of my mottled face. I turned on the faucet and cupped the cool water in my hands, then bent over and splashed my face and pressed my fingers against my cheeks to dislodge the sweat and tears.

I reached behind me to snag a hand towel draped over the rack beside the shower, but my hand connected with nothing but the smooth metal towel bar.

Damn, out of towels.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done laundry. Water dripping in my eyes, I opened the linen closet door and slid my hands over the nearly empty towel shelf, my fingers connecting with a thin piece of terry cloth. I snatched it up and pressed the flimsy material to my face, freezing as my nose connected with Emmy’s smell, a combination of soap, milk, and fresh bread. I pulled it away from my face and stared, joy and sorrow engulfing me at the sight of the hooded baby bath towel balanced between my palms: white background and yellow ducklings with exaggerated, adorably cartoonish orange beaks.

Forgetting about my wet face, I hugged the towel close, as though it were Emmy herself, shoving away the pain lodged in my throat, thanking God for this gift. When Tim had cleared the house, he’d forgotten about the baby’s items in the bathroom.

Folding the towel and placing it carefully back on the shelf, I scanned the closet floor, searching for anything else of Emmy’s, but the tangled wad of used bath towels wedged between the lowest shelf and the floor obscured whatever else might have been residing there. I bent down, threw my arms around the stale-smelling bundle, and yanked, dislodging the compacted mass. Hefting it upward, I marched the overflowing pile to the washing machine in the basement. Not taking the precious minutes to run a cycle, I headed back to the bathroom and knelt in front of the narrow closet, looking for a tub toy or the oversized pink box of bubble bath. I reached into the dim corner and grasped a plastic bottle, pulling it out and holding it in front of my face.

Baby shampoo.

The lights in the room seemed to darken and my body swirled like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl amusement park ride. I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped the bottle, hearing the hollow echo of its flat plastic bottom hitting the tile floor. The memory came rushing in: that last day with my baby. Giving Emmy her bath.

Giving Emmy her bath?

I snapped my eyes open as realization washed over me like an acid rinse. Painful and clarifying.I never gave Emmy her bath. Tim did. Sometimes I’d dab at her soft skin with a baby washcloth while he balanced her in the tub, but I never trusted myself around water. The legacy of my dad’s drowning was such that I trembled violently near any amount larger than the contents of a teacup. The thought of submerging my precious infant into its unreliable depths would send me into convulsions. How could I have forgotten that, especially after Brandon’s plunge? And why did I specifically remember reaching into the water and pulling my baby out?

The memory spurred my body into motion, but for once I ignored the trembling. I began pacing, walking out to the living room and around my coffee table. There was something—something at the edge of my mind. I had to access it.Please, God, I prayed.Reveal it to me. I forced myself to recall my hands reaching into the water. How had Emmy gotten submerged? And why were my hands the only ones I could recall? Where were Tim’s?

I paused in the middle of the room, rubbing my temples like a swami tapping into a wellspring of spiritual insight. Slowly, the scene came to me. Tim ordering me to find the baby wash, the tear-free shampoo, as he leaned over the tub, Emmy balanced in his open palms.

I saw my hands rifling frantically through dozens of bottles and jars in the vanity compartment under the sink—moisturizers, petroleum jelly, shaving gel—unable to find the baby’s products.

“They aren’t here.”

“Of course they are,” Tim snapped. “Look harder. And look over here, in the towel cabinet.”

“Why would I put the shampoo in with the towels?”

I saw the back of his head shake. “Why do you do anything?”

I stuck my upper body into the cabinet under the sink, my eyes searching the corners. I spied a bottle of mouthwash and a new tube of toothpaste, but nothing else.

“I’m telling you her wash and shampoo aren’t here.”

His answer was a soft splash like a fish breaking the water’s surface and sliding back under. I leaned out of the vanity cabinet and looked at Tim, just turning back from the towel cabinet next to the tub, one hand still in the water. He looked alarmed.

Confused, I glanced into the tub, at the bubbles bobbing along the surface of the water. I leaned in and there she was, just beyond Tim’s outstretched hand. An encapsulated angel in the water. So peaceful. So still.

“NO!” I plunged forward, my hands instinctively scooping her up, water splashing everywhere. Emmy not moving.

“Caroline!” His voice boomed into my ear as he careened into me, his arms reaching out, snatching Emmy away. “How could you?”

The last thing I remembered was him running from me, our dripping baby limp in his arms.

I didn’t even bother trying to stop the seizures that overtook my body as I relived the horror of that day. Let them come, just like the truth had.Timhad left Emmy in the tub. He’d killed Emmy. Our baby girl.

And he’d blamed me.

CHAPTER34

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

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