The Nesting Dolls Read Online Free PDF

said. “She looked like Isobel.”
    Isobel’s blue eyes were troubled, but as always, she was precise. “Not the way I look now – the way I’ll probably look when I’m older.”
    Then, for the second time that night, the gym was plunged into darkness. This darkness didn’t inspire awe – simply confusion. There was a moment of stunned silence, some sputterings of nervous laughter, and then, obeying a response that had become second nature to us all, we reached for our cells. Within seconds, the gym was dotted with rectangles of light that darted through the gloom, fireflies for our electronic age.
    The baby began to cry and I reached down and took him from Zack. The child’s hair smelled of Baby’s Own soap.
    “This certainly complicates matters,” Zack said, and I could hear the edge in his voice.
    “They’ll get the power back,” I said. “We’ll just have to sit tight.”
    “Great advice,” he said. “Except while we’re sitting tight, that child’s mother is going to disappear without a trace.”

CHAPTER

2
    Fifteen minutes later, the school, and reportedly most of the city, was still without light. A spirit of cheerful anarchy had seized the crowd. Plunged into darkness in the company of friends and cellphones, the students, their voices shakily arrogant, split the silence with what Walt Whitman described as the barbaric yawps of the young. The adults were resigned. Blizzards and blackouts are part of a Saskatchewan winter. Everyone knows that, sooner or later, blizzards stop; power returns; streets are lit; traffic lights function – and life goes on.
    Enjoying the moment was a sensible option, but not for Zack and me. As we waited by the door through which the baby’s mother vanished, we were isolated by a growing fear and frustration. Zack was accustomed to deciding on an outcome and making it happen, but that afternoon, nothing was breaking his way. He couldn’t get either Delia or Noah on the phone and Police Inspector Debbie Haczkewicz’s private voicemail told him she would call when time permitted.
    The room was growing noticeably cooler. I zipped up the baby’s snowsuit, put his toque back on him, then wrappedhim in the blanket that had been in the baby seat. Swaddled and held close, he fell asleep on my shoulder.
    “One possibility, and it’s chilling, is postpartum psychosis.” Zack spoke softly as if to protect the child in my arms from hearing what he was about to say. “I had a client who heard voices telling her she had to kill her baby. She tried to get help, but everyone told her the ‘baby blues’ were common, and the feelings would pass. The voices became more and more insistent, so finally she threw her baby off the Albert Street Bridge.”
    My heart clenched. “What happened to the mother?”
    “She was arrested. Arrangements were made for her to undergo psychological assessment, and she was released. She walked out of court, drove home, and hanged herself.”
    “Do you think this baby’s mother is suicidal? When she gave the baby to Isobel, all she said was ‘I couldn’t do it.’ That might just mean she felt she couldn’t raise her son, so she was giving him to someone who could.”
    “Possibly,” Zack said, “but I don’t buy it. Mothers who abandon their newborns in the bathroom at Walmart or leave them in hospitals or fire stations are usually young and poor. When I was taking pictures of the girls I caught a glimpse of this boy’s mother. She wasn’t a kid, and she didn’t look poor.”
    The penny dropped. “Zack, take out your camera,” I said. “She’ll be in those pictures.”
    The first photo was a dud. With the breathtaking symbolism of the quotidian, the baby’s mother was heading through the door marked EXIT , her back to the camera. Zack scrolled to the previous picture. In this one the mother was handing the baby seat to Isobel. Her coat collar was turned up, and her dark hair had fallen over her face. Zack pushed the zoom button,