An Accidental Life (6 page)

Rebecca thought of Peter, bound by his deadlines in court, so engrossed in each case. So dedicated to his work. What was possible for Jude would be impossible for Peter, no matter how much he wanted to be involved. “What if you didn’t have Jude?” she pressed. “Would you still be practicing law?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. But lots of women do.” Amalise clasped her hands and leaned her chin on her knuckles, still watching Rebecca. “And some don’t have a choice. And then, think of all the women with children in other jobs who have to work; and single mothers with no one at all to help. Some working shifts, sometimes two jobs at a time.” She dipped her chin and looked up at Rebecca. “So, what’s going on?”

“Oh, I was just wondering how you managed.” She smiled, feeling foolish. Peter had gotten it right—she did live in a gilded cage. “I’ve always thought I didn’t want children, because they’d interfere with my plans, my career.”

“Nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you and Peter want. That’s certainly a valid choice.”

Amalise turned the bottle sitting on the table before her, watching it. “I’ll admit something, Rebecca. I’ve curbed my ambitions some because of Luke. Like I said, we make choices. But I’m happy this way.” With a little smile, she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’ve finally managed to obtain some balance in my life.”

But, balance takes compromise, Rebecca mused, and she’d never been good at that. She’d learned early and well from Mama that no compromise, no sacrifice, would ever be enough . . . you just had to keep on plowing. Since those days, since Elise had died, she’d figured it out for herself. You had to win to be best, and whatever it was you were shooting for, you had to win it on your own and then learn how to keep it.

“Now you, on the other hand . . .” Amalise was saying. Amalise’s eyes sparkled as she pushed back her chair. She stood and picked up the empty bottle. “I fully expect that one day you will hold the office of managing partner of Mangen & Morris.”

With a stiff smile, Rebecca glanced at her watch. Suddenly she realized that she was late; the meeting in the conference room upstairs had started long ago. They continued chatting as they moved toward the elevator.

Rebecca pressed “Up,” and Amalise pressed “Down.” With relief, Rebecca realized that the nausea was still gone. Maybe this time it wouldn’t return. When Amalise’s elevator arrived and the door opened, as if sensing that something was still wrong, she turned and gave Rebecca a quick little hug before stepping on.

6

On Tuesday morning the jury was
empaneled. Peter gave his opening argument, and the defense offered theirs.

The testimony moved quickly. The State’s case was strong, the evidence clear and tangible. The jury seemed entranced. The missing witness showed, to Peter’s great surprise. The detective had dispatched a team to find him. Several other witnesses testified that they’d been present when the shooting took place and one identified the shooter. And, they all held to their stories even under cross-examination. Peter was elated. If things kept up this way, he anticipated resting the State’s case in a day or two.

So it was no surprise when the defendant’s attorney Johnny Wilcox wandered up to him at the beginning of the lunch recess and asked if they could talk. They used an empty witness room for the discussion. When at last they agreed and announced this to the court, the judge left the jury outside the courtroom while he went through the motions with the defendant and Wilcox confirming the deal, and the defendant’s understanding. The defendant was subdued, but Peter knew that twenty years without probation or parole wasn’t a bad deal for the State.

Afterward, Peter took the elevator up to his office, thinking that he would call Rebecca immediately and tell her they could pack. The trip this weekend was on. Striding through the outer area, feeling good, he said hello to Molly Brown, his secretary.

“Detective McAndrews left something on your desk,” she said.

“Thanks.” She handed him a slew of messages and he went into his office.

The large brown envelope was sitting on his desk. He hung his jacket on the coat rack in the corner, set the briefcase down on the floor beside his chair, and dropped the messages on the desk. Picking up the envelope, he saw that Mac had attached a note with
Hand Deliver
scrawled across the front in red.

Peter loosened his tie and took a seat. The package was labeled “Baby Chasson.” He unsealed the envelope and pulled out the paper and photographs inside, the autopsy photographs and preliminary report from Dr. Stephanie Kand on the infant found in the freezer last week. Photographs were taken all along the way through an autopsy. The forensic analysis would come later.

Baby Chasson. Just the tag evoked the picture of a healthy child, alert and alive. Peter’s good mood evaporated. With a feeling of dread he set the photographs aside and picked up the report.

The report was objective and thorough. The infant body, a male—as Glory Lynn Chasson had said—arrived at the coroner’s office in a clear plastic bag to preserve the evidence. The infant had been wrapped in a small blue towel inside the bag. In the report Dr. Kand had set forth her conclusions first, before the details: The decedent was 11.80 inches, crown to heel. Weight, one pound, eight ounces, or 680.4 grams. Probable gestation: 24 weeks. Time of death was uncertain, due to the fact that the time of birth was uncertain—but she estimated that the small body had been found approximately nineteen hours after birth, with a margin of error of one hour.

Cause of death was respiratory failure.

Peter picked up the photographs before reading on, bracing himself as he looked at each one, fighting off emotions and attempting to maintain some objectivity, some distance. Photographs of the small body after cleaning showed no obvious evidence of malformation that he could see. But his was a meaningless evaluation. When he’d gone through the stack, he set the pictures down and skimmed through the detailed autopsy report.

Stephanie Kand had concluded that Baby Chasson had breathed on his own for some time after birth, before he’d died, but as yet she hadn’t pinpointed exactly how long he’d survived. He hoped that she’d be able to come to a conclusion on the time in her forensic analysis. Peter leaned back in the chair when he’d finished reading, closing his eyes. What had happened in the time between birth and death, and how much time had passed? Mac had said Eileen Broussard refused to cooperate, at least so far. He wondered if Mac had been able to talk to the second nurse, Clara Sonsten, yet.

He placed the reports and photos on the desk, and then, clasping his hands on top of the desk, he looked at the walls before him. The sun outside was going down. Minutes passed, and then he read through the report again. In the gloaming, typewriters and telephones and voices faded, until, at last he was left alone in the silence, still turning the information over in his mind.

Glory Lynn Chasson’s baby boy had been born alive. That much of her story was corroborated by the autopsy. So, why hadn’t the infant been given medical assistance? It seemed clear to him that even if the clinic didn’t have the facilities on site, they could have called an ambulance to take the preemie to neonatal intensive care.

Why hadn’t the physician in charge, or one of the nurses, called for help?

Glory Lynn Chasson was entitled to answers to these questions. He sat there looking at nothing for a long time and thinking of those pictures. Suddenly he smashed his fist down on the desktop. And then he dropped his face into his hands.
Dear God,
he prayed.
Help me understand.

7

On Tuesday morning, excited about the
office move, Rebecca left home early, before Peter woke. When she walked through the doorway into her new office on the seventeenth floor of the Merchant Bank Building, she halted just inside and looked around. Three long windows across the outer wall let in sunlight. The bookcases she’d used in her old office were there on her left against the wall, stretching from the doorway, around the corner and ending two-thirds of the way toward the windows. She walked to the bookshelves and surveyed the rows of books. Sure enough, they were in the same order as in her old office.

She turned, inspecting the furniture placed in the corner, as she’d requested. There was a smooth cushioned beige sofa and two chairs. They weren’t exactly what she’d have selected had there been more time, but they matched the carpeting on the floor and she could jazz them up with colorful pillows. There were small square tables at each end of the sofa, and these tables were placed at an angle to the chairs. Someone had placed some of her Lucite transaction mementos on the two side tables and now they glittered, catching the sun. Each table held a lamp. And finally, a small, rectangular glass-topped coffee table was placed before the sofa, atop a pretty blue and white woven rug that tied everything together.

She stepped back, looking at the area as one would see it through a
Spin-it
camera lens. The lamps were too plain, she decided. They’d do for the interview tomorrow, but she’d probably replace them. She’d find some pretty antiques on Magazine Street, or down in the Quarter.

Then, she pressed her hands together, smiling. It was all just perfect for the interview.

Rebecca turned around, looking at the large desk on the other side of the room, facing the wall of books and the sofa and chairs. Walnut, as she’d requested. There was an elegant blue leather chair behind the desk now, the same shade of blue as in the rug. Behind the desk from wall to wall was a credenza, with cabinets underneath. The telephone was placed in the same spot as in her old office, near the chair behind the desk, along with her open calendar.

Walking quickly, she rounded the desk and sat in the chair, swiveling this way and that. Minutes passed as she stopped and gazed around in disbelief. She shook her head. The moving teams must have worked all night to get this done. The phone rang and she swiveled. Peter was right, she thought as she picked up the phone. She might be a bird in a gilded cage; but it was a very, very nice one.

Sydney was on the phone. The group in the conference room had an issue they’d like to discuss.

This had been a long day already, but the worst part of the day was just ahead.

Rebecca picked up her purse and, taking a deep breath, walked out to her secretary’s desk. She told Rose Marie that she was leaving and that she might not be back today. Just to take her calls and she’d return them in the morning. “Is everything set for the magazine people tomorrow?”

Rose Marie assured her that everything was ready.

St. Charles Avenue was not yet overtaken by traffic and she made it to Dr. Matlock’s office uptown with five minutes to spare. As she walked into the building where his office was located, the whole event seemed surreal. She’d made the appointment yesterday, but she’d banned it from her mind since. And now, here she was. She would get this over, and then move on with her life.

The examination had gone quickly. But now she had to wait. Dressed in the soft pink cotton gown the nurse had handed her, Rebecca sat at the end of the examination table, legs dangling, waiting for the doctor to return. The nurse—Alice Hamilton was her name—had said the lab test wouldn’t take too long. Alice reminded her of someone from an old movie in the 1940s, the years after the war. Mulling this over, she guessed the nurse’s age at sixty years old, or so. Her hairstyle fit that era, the old pin curls and finger-wavy hair just reaching her chin. And with the little white nurse’s cap, she could have been starring on the battlefields of France in a scene with Audie Murphy.

She liked this woman. Alice had helped her get through this ordeal.

The room was cold after the doctor and nurse had stepped out. She hugged herself, rubbing the gooseflesh on her arms, wondering if the chilly feeling was some kind of premonition. She’d been unable to read the doctor’s expression after the examination. She’d always prided herself on her ability to read faces, even under stress in negotiating sessions. But this. This was a kind of stress that she’d never had to face before. Usually, when she recognized tension, the tension rose from a situation over which she had some control.

But not now. She’d never felt so vulnerable to fate, so helpless, before.

She told herself to shake this off. Rebecca had always believed that worrying about something before it happened was a waste of time and energy, unless you could do something to prevent it. This in her mind was a universal dilemma: If nothing happens after all, you’ve worried for nothing.

Still. This time was different, she knew. Staring at the door she could almost see her perfectly ordered life coming apart. Cold fear radiated through her and she couldn’t bring herself—no, she didn’t want, did not want to name it. Because in the deepest part of her, Rebecca knew that if she was carrying a child, she had no answer. No plan, as Amalise had.

The fear turned to bitter impatience as Rebecca sat at the end of the examination table in the small room waiting for the verdict. The hands on the yellow clock on the wall pointed to numbers circling a happy face. But they seemed to have stopped. Four thirty-three and you’re stuck, the clock said. It seemed she’d been sitting here all day. Still hugging herself, she tore her eyes from the clock and looked about. The pale yellow walls—neutral for unknown gender, she supposed, were irritating. Such an optimistic color. The walls were covered with framed, glossy pictures of couples unlike her, unlike Peter.