Here She Lies

baby, I had no one to compare her with, but everything I could find in books or on the Internet about developmental stages said she was too young to start walking and then, as likely as not, contradicted itself with examples of babies walking as early as nine months. Early walker, late talker, they said, and vice versa. Lexy exulted in herphysical competence and I was proud of her, proud and tired, as I followed her in and out of rooms.
    In early September, Julie was arrested in Rome, Italy, and extradition proceedings were begun. I experienced her downfall from a passionate distance. I couldn’t quite purge her from my system and even now, after everything, her capture pained me, though I told no one of my deepest feelings, not even Bobby. I thought of her (and felt her and saw her) sitting in a jail cell in Italy. Italy. Of course. It was where our parents had taken us for the most memorable summer of our lives, when our family was still whole.
    By mid-October, as the first brushstrokes of autumn touched our yard with a golden-hued palette of impending changes, Lexy was walking like a champ, I was spending less and less time chasing paperwork — and I discovered I was pregnant. Everything started coming into focus as we made our plans: Bobby would retire in the spring with a full pension and we would move to Northern California, where our new baby would be born. Eventually I would go back to work, preferably starting a private practice, and he would stay home with the children.
    But then, as October blended into the nauseated days of early winter (whoever called it morning sickness had never been pregnant — it lasted all day!), things changed. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans, or so the saying goes, omitting the equally true: and so are unexpected endings.
    It was a Saturday morning. We had finished breakfast and I was lying on the couch, staving off the latesturge to vomit, with Lexy playing on the living room floor and Bobby upstairs fixing a gimpy hinge on the bathroom door. I could hear the squeaky push-and-pull of the door as he tested it and I could hear Lexy’s sweet babble as she played. And then, suddenly — or it seemed sudden to me — the house was terribly quiet. I had closed my eyes for just a minute. When I opened them, Lexy was gone and I realized with horror that I had actually fallen asleep. I got up and started looking, calling her name:
    “Lexy! Baby! Where are you?”
    The quiet persisted, that awful quiet when you know something’s wrong. I started to run through the house.
    “Bobby! Where’s Lexy? Did you see her?”
    There was no answer, no sound, just the expanding sensation of a quiet that was wrong.
    Through the living room window I saw Bobby standing on the front lawn, talking with our next-door neighbor. The front door was closed and I could see that Lexy wasn’t with him.
    “Lexy?” I called. “Lexy!”
    Then, then, I noticed that the basement door was open. We always kept this door locked — it was a dank cave of a basement, completely unfinished, where Bobby had set up his makeshift carpentry workshop. Just half an hour ago he had gone down for a screwdriver. He must have forgotten to lock the door behind him. I raced down the rickety wooden steps into the dark.
    “Lexy?”
    There was a sound of truncated movement, a quick scramble like a frightened mouse.
    “Honey? Mommy’s here!”
    Two high, shallow windows that had probably never been washed let in a bit of murky light, and as my eyes adjusted, I was able to see her. She was sitting on the floor, in a corner, under a porcelain utility sink. The whites of her eyes shone at me, and she blinked.
    “Baby! What are you doing down here?”
    On my way to her, I pulled the chain of an overhead lightbulb and the grungy basement came into better focus. It really was a pit in here. And the smell! The sour, lifeless smell of old dust and settled-in grime.
    I crouched down to kiss Lexy and she tightened her lips. When I realized she was holding something in her mouth, the panic instantly returned. What nasty, treacherous basement thing had she been about to swallow?
    “Give it to Mommy, Lexy. Let go.” I pried a finger between her lips to release her jaw and get out whatever she was trying to hide. Sweeping my finger over her tongue, I felt it: cold, round, flat, metal. A coin. She struggled against me as if she wanted to swallow it. When I managed to pry it free, I saw that it was a gunked-up