I leave my number and end the call feeling like I’ve already hit a dead end. I’m convinced I’ll never hear from her.
I clean up the lunch dishes and then go around the kitchen with a soapy sponge, cleaning the counters and trying to make myself useful. More than ever, I’m feeling vulnerable in my job. It’s like every day brings some new reason for Caroline to replace me. So I busy myself with tasks outside my job description. I sweep and mop up the floors, and wipe down the inside of the microwave. I open the toaster oven and empty the little tray of crumbs. I reach under the sink and fill the liquid soap dispensers, then stand on a chair and wipe the dust off the ceiling fan.
All these little chores make me feel better, but I’m not sure Caroline will notice. I decide I need a bigger and more ambitious project, something she could never miss. I move into the den and lie down on the sofa and I’m considering all my different options when I’m struck by the perfect idea: I will bring Teddy to the supermarket, we will buy a bunch of food, and we’ll prepare a surprise dinner for his parents. I’ll have the whole meal warming in the oven so it’s ready to eat as soon as they get home. I’ll even set the table so they won’t have to lift a finger. They can just enter the house, sit down with some delicious food, and be grateful that I’m part of their family.
But before I can actually act on this idea, before I can sit up and start a shopping list, I fall asleep.
I’m not sure how it happens. I’m not particularly tired. I only meant to rest my eyes for a minute. But the next thing I know, I’m dreaming about a place from my childhood, a tiny family-owned amusement park called Storybook Land. It was built in the 1950s to celebrate all the classic fairy tales and Mother Goose nursery rhymes. Kids could climb a giant beanstalk or visit the three little pigs or wave through a window to the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, a creaky animatronic puppet with a dead-eyed stare.
In my dream, I’m walking Teddy past the carousel and he’s incredibly excited and he pleads with me to hold all his pencils and crayons so he can start going on rides. He empties an entire box into my hands, more than I can possibly carry, and the pencils fall all around my feet. I try to stuff them into my pockets because there’s no way I can carry all of them. And by the time I’ve collected everything, Teddy is gone. I’ve lost him in the crowd. My dream has turned into a nightmare.
I start running through the park, shoving past the other parents, shouting Teddy’s name and searching all over. Storybook Land is full of five-year-old children and from the back they all look identical, any one of them could be Teddy, I can’t find him anywhere. I pull some parents aside and beg them to help me, please please help me, and they’re appalled. “But this is your responsibility,” they tell me. “Why would we help?”
I have no choice but to call the Maxwells. I don’t want to tell them what’s happened, but it’s an emergency. I take out my cell phone and I’m calling Caroline’s number when suddenly I see him! All the way across the park, sitting on the steps of Little Red Riding Hood’s cottage. I elbow my way through throngs of people, trying to move as fast as I can. But by the time I reach the cottage it’s not Teddy anymore. It’s my sister, Beth! She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt and faded jeans and checkered black-and-white Vans.
I run over and hug her and lift her off the ground. I can’t believe she’s here, she’s alive! I squeeze her so tight she starts laughing, and sunlight glints off her orthodontic braces. “I thought you were dead! I thought I killed you!”
“Don’t be a dork,” she says, and my dream is so realistic I can actually smell her. She smells like coconut and pineapple, like the pi?a colada bath bombs that she and her girlfriends used to buy at Lush, the overpriced soap shop at the King of Prussia Mall.
She explains the accident was just a big misunderstanding and all this time I’ve been blaming myself for nothing.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, Mal, for the one millionth time I am totally okay. Now can we ride the Balloon Bounce?”
“Yes, Beth, yes! Anything! Anything you want!”
But then Teddy is back, he’s pulling on my arm, he’s gently shaking me awake. I open my eyes and I’m lying on the sofa in the den and Teddy is holding out the iPad.
“It went dead again.”
I’m certain he’s mistaken. I just charged the iPad over lunch and the battery went to 100 percent. But as I sit up, I realize the light in the den is significantly darker; the sun has stopped streaming through the north-facing windows. The clock over the mantel says it’s 5:17 but that can’t be right, that’s impossible.