“BETTY, DO YOU THINK we ought to give him a bath tonight?”
“I don’t know. He’s still sniffling so, Mrs. Lindbergh. I think not.”
“You’re right, Betty, as usual.” I smiled at her, and she blushed, looking, for just a moment, like a young girl. Pretty, with red hair, a quick smile, Betty Gow normally exuded such authority in the nursery that I felt the difference in our ages acutely. I was only twenty-five to her twenty-nine. This always made me feel as if our roles should be reversed; that she should be the mother, and I the nursemaid. She simply knew so much more than did I.
“I suppose just change him and put him in a new sleep shirt?” I winced at the question mark in my voice. “I’ll be downstairs, seeing to dinner for the colonel. I’ll come up before you put him to bed. I wish we had brought more clothing with us this weekend, though. I’ll be happy once we’re all moved in.” I glanced around the airy nursery, freshly painted and papered; the only room of our new home that was completely furnished. So far we came down only on weekends, without Betty; playing family, I thought of it. Just the three of us, and I cared for the baby myself, almost as if it were a game. Knowing that I couldn’t do that much damage, for come Monday, Betty would be there to undo it.
But when Charlie woke up this past Monday sniffling and feverish, I’d decided to stay put until he was better. This morning, Tuesday, I’d rung up Next Day Hill and asked Betty to come out; I wasn’t feeling well myself. Taking care of a sick baby full-time was more work than I’d anticipated, and I felt my inexperience keenly. In short, I needed her help, especially since Charles had gone into the city as usual yesterday morning.
“Thank you so much for coming,” I told Betty again. “I hope you didn’t have any plans tonight?”
“Oh, Red and I were going to see a movie, but I called him and told him I couldn’t go, and he could either like it or lump it.” She winked at me, so assured; I had never been that assured of a man and even after being married for almost three years, I still wasn’t.
Standing there so competent, complete with my baby in her arms, Betty didn’t seem like a woman in love, and I fervently hoped she wasn’t. Her boyfriend, Red Johnson, was a nice enough man. But I relied too much on Betty; I didn’t want her to marry and leave me. Us.
“Was he—was he angry?” I hated to pry, but Betty and I had so little to talk about, usually. Other than the baby.
“Oh, he’ll get over it,” she replied tartly. “He knows our Charlie comes first.”
I smiled, even as I was in awe. I was the baby’s mother, and I couldn’t imagine saying that to Charles.
“Well, that’s good,” I said, suddenly shy; I’d pried too much. “I’d better go see about dinner.”
Betty nodded and brought little Charlie over to me for a quick kiss. His nose was crusty, and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. He didn’t act as if he were sick, however; he smiled up at me with a gay little wave before being borne off by Betty to be changed.
FIVE MONTHS HAD PASSED since Daddy died. Five months of sorrow on the surface, but pure contentment underneath as finally, after two years of delays caused by Charles’s meddling with first one architect, then another, our home outside of Hopewell, New Jersey—about sixty miles from Manhattan—was almost completed. With no plans for future flights on the horizon, I disregarded, once and for all, Mr. Watson’s parenting advice and gave myself over to the pure joy of being with my child. I smothered him with kisses and spent entire afternoons in the nursery, knitting or mending while he played contentedly at my feet, Betty bustling about in the background with her Scottish competence and humor. Spoiling him; I freely admitted it. I had to, while I could, for I was expecting another child. Soon little Charlie would have a sibling to contend with, and my attention would naturally be divided. So I showered him with it now.
Of course I missed my father. But with my own family to care for, I missed him less than I would have before; I understood that, and knew that he would have, too. So while I mourned him; mourned, once and for all, the end of the family I had thought I’d known as a child, I saw it as a natural progression. My father had died, and I was expecting a new life. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?
I wanted to worry about Mother, but she wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to be doing surprisingly well; she’d packed up the Washington townhouse with no regrets.
“It killed him,” she said bluntly, the day she moved back to Next Day Hill for good. “Washington. Politics. He hadn’t the heart for it, and he couldn’t say no.”
“What will you do?” I couldn’t imagine my mother’s future without my father, so seamlessly had they always worked together for the same common goal—his career. She had so much energy. So much determination. What on earth would she do with it now?
“Don’t worry about me,” she answered, quite mysteriously. “Worry about your husband instead.”
“Charles? Why would I worry about him? Of all the people in the world, Charles doesn’t need anyone to worry about him!”
“Things are changing—the world is changing. You’re changing. Even if you don’t know it yet.”
“How silly! I’m the same as ever—plain old Anne.” I laughed at my own reflection in a mirror, and patted my stomach. I hadn’t yet started to show, but soon, I knew, I would be a dumpling once again.
“No, you’re not. You’re a mother, not just a wife; the second one really makes you understand that. There’s a difference—and I’m not entirely sure your husband will ever understand. Mine didn’t.”
I looked at my mother—my surprisingly wise mother—in astonishment. Why hadn’t she been so honest and straightforward when I was growing up? Then, her inner life was hidden not only from the world but from her children. All I ever saw was the perfection of my mother’s marriage, the impossibly shiny surface that reflected my own doubts and fears back to me a hundredfold. Daddy alone was allowed to have his faults; he was loved, indulged for them, while my mother stood smilingly, soothingly, supportively by.
Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands? I’d gone from college to the cockpit without a chance to decide who I was on my own, but so far, I was only grateful to Charles for saving me from that decision, for giving me direction when I had none. Even so, I suspected there were parts of me Charles didn’t understand; depths to my character he had no interest in discovering. I wasn’t resentful; he was so busy. I was so busy. We were young. We still had time to appreciate each other; we still had time to develop the marriage I’d only imagined my parents had had.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
“Sorry? Whatever for?”
“Sorry for you, that Daddy died before he had a chance to know you like this—know you for yourself, not just his wife.”
“Oh, Anne.” Mother smiled, touching my cheek, ever so gently. “Don’t feel sorry for me. No one knows the truth behind a marriage except husband and wife. Especially not the children! We knew each other, darling. You can be sure of that. Like I said—don’t worry about me. Worry about your own marriage. We’re the caretakers, we women. Left on their own, men would let a marriage run itself out, like one of Charles’s old rusty airplane engines. It’s up to us to keep things going smoothly. And, my dear, life with Charles is never going to be easy. You have much more work ahead of you than I did.”
“How do I know I can manage it?”
“Because you can. Because you have to. Because you don’t have any other choice; no more choice than any wife. Now, hand me some of those towels to fold, will you?”
We busied ourselves with folding the towels and placing them in a basket, and I wanted to ask my mother, “At what cost? What did it cost you, all these years? What will it cost me?”
But I didn’t. She was right. Children didn’t need to know everything about their parents’ marriage. And my mother, for all her surprising attributes, was no fortune-teller.
“I do hope you won’t be lonely if we’re not here so much, now that the house is just about done,” I said instead.
“That’s the way it should be,” Mother said briskly. “Two captains of the same ship—it never works. You two need your own household, finally. And I still have Elisabeth and Dwight and Con, you know. My family still needs me, I should hope!”
“I know Elisabeth does.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No reason, just, you know—her health.”
“Well, doctors don’t always know what they’re talking about. Elisabeth will be fine. Perfectly fine.” Mother smiled, a bit too fiercely, and folded a towel with such vigor, I feared the crease might never come out.
I nodded and patted her hand—and was surprised when she clung to mine longer than was necessary. The shadow of losing her child was in my mother’s eyes; so frail, so fragile was Elisabeth these days, she didn’t seem a whole person anymore.
“We’re not quite out of your life yet,” I reminded my mother with a laugh. “We still don’t have all the furniture, and it’s easier to stay here during the week until we have a full staff. It is so nice here!” I admit, I rather thought of Next Day Hill as a luxurious hotel, a place where I could lounge around, have my meals brought to me, not worry about the details. I also knew my son was safest here, with all the guards, the dogs. The police in Englewood were almost our own private security detail. And, flattened with the nausea accompanying my new pregnancy, I enjoyed being cared for and pampered—instead of having to organize and run my own household.
“Well, of course you’re always welcome to stay, dear. I love having you! But do think about Charles. I don’t think he’s quite so content.”
“No, you’re right.” Charles was solicitous of my second pregnancy—although not quite so solicitous as he had been with the first—but it was true that with my father gone, he chafed a bit at what he called the “harem” of Next Day Hill.
“Take care of your marriage, Anne, like I said.” She laid the towel down on the stack and rose to go. I had to smile; she looked so Victorian at that moment in her sensible dress, old-fashioned hairstyle, watch pinned to her shirt. “Charles is not like Daddy.”
“I know,” I assured her with a rueful smile. “That’s the one thing you don’t need to tell me. I know.”
I WAVED GOOD NIGHT to my son and went downstairs to see to my husband’s meal, wishing my mother could observe me acting as the lady of the house. Even if it did seem just that—acting. Or playing. It didn’t seem real yet, that this house was actually mine, so used was I to the back cockpit of a plane.
But I did love it, our home on four hundred acres atop a rocky mountain outside of Hopewell, New Jersey. The reason we’d chosen this location was precisely because it was so challenging to find. Charles and I still sometimes got lost ourselves, driving out—even though the newspapers had “helpfully” printed a map of the location, complete with the names of the few marked roads. Still, we no longer feared people simply “dropping by,” as they did at Next Day Hill; our driveway alone was a mile long. Charles hoped we could give our children a taste of the carefree rural childhood he had known, unencumbered by security details and guards.
I paused for a moment in the entryway of our first real home together. It was a big house, although somehow cozy; a center hall with two perpendicular wings, one for the drawing room and study, the other for the kitchen and dining room. The staircase led up to five bedrooms and a nursery—I blushed when Charles insisted, saying that we would need them for our “dynasty.” The nursery was in the room adjacent to ours, although Charles had not liked this. I’d held my ground, and insisted.
Most of the house was papered and painted by now, although a few bedrooms remained unfinished. Not all the rooms had a full complement of rugs for the stone floors, some of the furniture was still delayed, and we’d hired only two people so far who lived here full-time—Elsie and Ollie Whateley, a middle-aged English couple.
Charles was due back from the city at any moment; while he wanted a chauffeur so that he wouldn’t waste even a minute of the day, for the time being, he was driving himself in his old roadster. We had a new Ford on order, although it hadn’t yet been delivered.
“Elsie?” I stepped into the kitchen; it was snug and bright, everything painted white, with the exception of the sunny yellow tiles for the backsplash. Tonight, with the March wind howling outside, it positively glowed with warmth and security.
“Yes, Mrs. Lindbergh?”
“I think we’ll eat in the dining room tonight, so can you please light a fire?”
“Yes, ma’am. When will Mr. Charles be back?”
“Any minute, I’d think.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Lindbergh.” Ollie popped his head into the kitchen. “Colonel Lindbergh called. He’ll be late tonight.”
“Well, keep dinner for as long as you can. I’ll wait for him.”
I started back upstairs, pausing halfway up; I heard thumping against the side of the house. “Ollie?”
“Yes’m?”
“Do you hear that?” Something banged against the house again.
“Oh. Must be a shutter that’s not fastened. Or maybe that flagpole bangin’. I’ll look at it first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you.” I continued upstairs to the nursery, papered with blue sailboats, a pattern that Charles had picked out. “What will we do if the next one’s a girl?” I’d teased him.
“It won’t be,” he’d growled, with a proud, masculine swagger, and I’d laughed.
Betty was on the floor, a needle in her mouth, a piece of flannel in her lap.
“The poor lamb spit up on his sleep shirt,” she explained, removing the needle. “I was afraid he’d ruin this new one with all that oil on his chest, so I made him an undershirt. I used an old flannel petticoat of mine.”
“Very clever.” I went over to the baby, who was standing in his crib clad only in his diaper.
“Mama!” Charlie crowed, reaching up to me. Then he coughed, a barking little cough that turned his face red.
“Poor little lamb!” I rummaged around in a cupboard until I found a jar of Vicks VapoRub; I was surprised that we had it, actually. I was forever leaving things behind while we juggled the two households. “Now Mama must rub some on his chest.”
“No—no!” He pushed my hand away with surprising strength, and I laughed, holding his sturdy little body down on the changing table and rubbing the greasy, camphor-smelling stuff all over his chest. Betty handed me the new shirt, and I pulled it over his head.
“There. All better.”
“Bettah,” he agreed, immediately compliant.
“Now we go night-night,” I cooed, as I bundled him into his new Dr. Denton sleep suit, gray wool.
“Nigh-nigh,” he agreed again, with a crooked, dimpled smile.
I carried him over to his crib, placed against the interior wall so that he had a lovely view out the windows. His room faced east, out of the back of the house, so the sun was the first thing he saw every morning.
“Go right to sleep, baby boy, and Papa will come in and kiss you when he gets home,” I promised. Charles sometimes spent more time in the nursery than I did; he delighted in lining up all the baby’s wooden soldiers, and then watching as little Charlie knocked them all down with a rubber ball—a military version of bowling. And this man who was so restless that not even the skies seemed big enough for him spent countless hours teaching his son the names of all the animals in his menagerie. The sight of the two heads bent together in such serious contemplation never failed to cause my heart to swell, as if to capture and contain them both.
Part of this paternal interest, though, still took the form of toughening up his son; once, Charles placed the playpen outside and left the baby out there for an hour, all alone. Fighting back tears, I watched the entire time, knowing I couldn’t rescue little Charlie as he first played, then tired, then wailed once he realized no one was there. He stumbled around the playpen, clinging to the rails and shaking them in his rage and fear, until finally he collapsed in a corner and fell asleep sucking his thumb for comfort. Only then would Charles let me rush outside and pick him up, tears still wet on his hot cheeks, his sweaty curls plastered to his head.
“It’s good for him,” my husband insisted, as he followed us upstairs to the nursery. “The sooner he learns to rely on himself, the better. You coddle him too much.”
I couldn’t speak. He honestly believed what he said. After all, he had been treated much the same way, he assured me—and look what he had accomplished!
How could I answer that? I couldn’t. I was sentimental, I was weak—I was a mother. And I no longer wondered why Charles’s own mother preferred to live her life away from her son; Evangeline lived in Detroit, and visited us only once a year. When little Charlie was born, she sent him a set of encyclopedias. She, obviously, had not coddled her son—and so she had his admiration, as well as the admiration of an entire country. What she didn’t have, as far as I could tell, was anybody’s love.
Would my son love me, when he was old enough to know what love meant? I smiled down at him as I covered him up with his quilt; I couldn’t resist touching that dimple in his chin. I wasn’t sure I knew what love meant, even at my age. Except for this—my child snuggling down to sleep, clutching my finger trustfully in one hand. He closed his eyes obediently and let out a soft, contented sigh.
I bent down to kiss his forehead, then carefully pulled my finger out of his moist grasp, and let Betty ease the metal thumb guards over his thumbs; Charles insisted we try to cure him from sucking them in this way. They looked like medieval torture devices to me, but they didn’t seem to bother the baby; they clamped to his sleeves, and the metal caps fit neatly over his thumbs. Betty turned off the overhead light, switching on a soft night-light, of which Charles did not approve. But he wasn’t home yet; wordlessly, the two of us agreed that it wouldn’t do the baby any harm if it was left on until then. There was a chill in the air, so I went to pull the shutters over the windows. But the ones at the corner window were warped. Maybe that’s what I’d heard, banging against the house.
Betty came to help, but even the two of us, leaning out the window and tugging with all our might, couldn’t shut them, so we left them open and closed the windows. Outside, I could see the low moving clouds, occasionally giving up a glimpse of the moon. We shut the door softly behind us, then paused in the hall. As always, when faced with a Betty who was not busy caring for my child, I didn’t quite know what to say to her.
“Well, I’ll wait downstairs for the colonel,” I said. “If the nursery gets stuffy, open one of the windows halfway.”
Betty nodded and retreated to her own room adjacent to the baby’s, while I went downstairs to the study, where Elsie had lit a fire. I sat down at my desk and pulled out my notes. I was trying to shape a narrative out of our trip to the Orient, at Charles’s urging.
“You’re the writer in the family,” he reminded me after we returned, and magazines began to clamor for articles about the trip. “I’m busy, and besides, you need to start writing something more substantial than your endless letters to your family. This is something you should do, Anne.”
So, as always when he urged me to do something, I was doing it. Or, rather, attempting to. Hazy with pregnancy, enjoying the cozy domesticity of my child and my husband and my new house, I was not making much progress. I was happy, I admit; happier than I had been for a long time.
I wasn’t so sure, however, about Charles.
Lately, he drove into the city more often than he flew, forced to preside over board meetings for TAT and Pan Am, gnashing his teeth as bureaucracy inevitably obliterated the pioneering romance of flight. He was also tinkering with an idea for a mechanized heart; with Elisabeth’s illness claiming her more and more each day, my husband had wondered why a damaged heart couldn’t simply be replaced, just like a damaged motor. To this end, he was working with a man named Alexis Carrel, a Frenchman, a Nobel Prize winner who, Charles claimed, was a genius. And my husband did not use this word often.
Lucky Lindy. He’d conquered the skies; now he was conquering medicine. Was there nothing Charles Lindbergh couldn’t master? I could only sit, one child in my womb, another mainly cared for by a more competent woman than myself, and marvel at him while I tried to stir myself to some kind of creativity, to master the written word, as my husband expected me to. And failing, failing, failing; more often than not, I found myself napping instead of writing, or reading, or simply walking outside, content to breathe deeply, admire my sturdy footprints in the muddy ground, and simply—be. Happy. Settled. Content. New words for me to ponder and explore, even as I knew that my husband derided such unimposing vocabulary.
Certainly, despite his accomplishments, his busy schedule, Charles was never content. The other morning, I happened to glimpse him as he left for work; he stood in front of the long mirror in the hallway of Next Day Hill, a slim, tense figure in his tweed suit. He stared at himself for the longest time, as if he didn’t quite recognize the ordinary businessman, carrying a briefcase instead of a parachute, staring back. And I felt uneasy watching him leave, wondering, for the first time, if today was the day he would decide to jump into a plane and fly away from me for good.
Sitting at my desk, I must have dozed off once again. I found myself startling to wakefulness by the sound of a car in the drive. Our terrier, Wahgoosh, who was snoring softly at my feet, did not move, however.
“That must be Charles,” I said, even before I was fully awake, to no one in particular. I shook my head, pinched my cheeks, and picked up my pen, trying to look alert and busy.
But Charles did not walk inside the house, so I must have heard something else, not a car. That wind, perhaps.
It was another twenty or so minutes before Charles finally arrived home. I heard him come into the kitchen from the garage; Betty and Elsie both said hello to him. I looked at the clock; it was nearly eight-thirty.
“Was the drive terrible?” I asked Charles, as he came into the living room.
“Not too bad. I’ll have to get used to it. An hour and a half, just about. Have you gotten a lot done today?”
I hastily turned over my pages, so he couldn’t see how little I’d accomplished. “A fair bit. The baby took a lot of my time, you know, until Betty came out.” Charles had been in the city for two days, working with Carrel; I hadn’t seen him since Sunday.
“How is he?”
“Better.” I followed Charles up the stairs to our bedroom, where he quickly washed up for dinner. Then we ate together in the dining room, chilly even with the gaily dancing fire. After dinner, I fought back my encroaching drowsiness as we sat, talking over our day; normally I cherished this ritual. But tonight, as I attempted to follow his discussion of his work on the mechanical heart, I couldn’t prevent my eyelids from drooping. Finally, with an understanding smile, Charles suggested I go to bed.
“I’m afraid I should,” I admitted, and we both went upstairs; Charles had a quick bath and then went downstairs to his study to work. I settled into a nice long bath with a book, trying to warm my chilly bones. Even with the most modern of furnaces, this house was drafty.
Wrapping myself up in a warm robe, I emerged from the bathroom with flushed skin, damp hair, so ready for bed I could already feel myself surrendering to the feathery, bottomless mattress. Just as I was turning down my covers, Betty burst into the room without knocking; she was breathless, as if she’d been running.
“Do you have the baby, Mrs. Lindbergh?”
“No. Maybe the colonel has him?” Without replying, she had wheeled and was out of the room and down the stairs. After a moment, during which I could only stand, strangely rooted to the floor as if my legs had forgotten how to move, Betty and Charles came running to me.
“Do you have the baby, Charles?” I asked, still puzzled. Why were we looking for little Charlie, at ten o’clock at night?
My husband pivoted and sprinted toward the nursery. I followed, and for a second I held my breath, remembering that the night-light was still on. But then I saw that all the lights were on; my baby’s room was filled with cheerful light that revealed an open window, a curtain flailing about in the wind—and an empty crib.
“Mr. Lindbergh, you’re not playing one of your jokes, are you?” Betty was wringing her hands.
Charles didn’t answer; with a grim look, he ran back to our bedroom.
“I came in to check on him like I always do, and it was cold,” Betty babbled. “So cold! I went to the crib, but he wasn’t there, and then I switched on the light and saw that the window was open. Where is he? Oh, where is he?”
Seeing her wild eyes, I began to tremble. Then Charles came back, a rifle in his hand—and my knees buckled. My baby was not where I had left him. For the first time in his life, I did not know where he was.
“Charlie, Charlie, where are you?” I shouted it, running to and fro, picking up the oddest things—a handkerchief, a book—as if he could somehow be hiding beneath them.
I tore through the upstairs, dimly aware that Charles and Betty, and now Ollie and Elsie, were doing the same thing; we were all running from room to room, meeting and bumping in the hall, and for a moment I had the strangest urge to laugh, for we resembled nothing more than characters in a Marx Brothers movie.
Then we swarmed downstairs, peeking under tables, inside cupboards, even looking up the chimney.
We moved upstairs again, to the nursery, where suddenly we all stopped just inside the door, simply staring, and I finally registered the open window, and what it could mean. And I saw, for the first time, the envelope—a small white envelope, the kind I might use for an invitation to lunch, or a thank-you note—on the windowsill.
“Charles!”
In a flash he was by my side; he saw what I was pointing to, and his jaw set in an awful way. He started to the sill, but then, with a visible effort, stopped himself.
“Call the police,” he barked, and Ollie dashed downstairs.
“The police? Open the envelope! See what it says, Charles—if it says where the baby is!” Oh, how could he not be ripping it open? I lunged past him to do it myself, but he grabbed me by both arms and held me back.
“No! Anne, no! We can’t—we have to wait for the police. This is—this is evidence. They have experts who can examine it for signs, even for fingerprints. We can’t touch it until they get here.”
“Evidence?” A horrible realization was trying to worm its way into my heart, my brain, although I fought against it, fought for one last precious moment of innocence. Reluctantly, I turned to face my husband; behind him I saw the small, sobbing outline of Betty; the plump, uncomprehending face of Elsie. I forced myself to meet Charles’s gaze; I found no shelter from my growing knowledge in his eyes—muddy with doubt and fear for the first time in our life together.
“Anne, they have taken our baby,” my husband told me, and I felt his grip on my shoulders, ready to catch me as I fell.
But I did not fall. I only nodded, and felt a coldness in my heart and an emptiness in my chest where my child’s head normally fit cozily, helplessly. Oh, so helplessly—Charlie was just a baby, he needed me, surely he was crying for me right now—
I ran to the open window, leaning out into the black, cold night with the wind howling, no stars, no moon, no comfort anywhere for my baby—
I called for him, over and over, until my throat felt like sandpaper, until my eyes were raw with tears, lashed by the cold wind.
And when I finally stopped, collapsing back into my husband’s arms, the only sound I heard was the thumping of that shutter, banging relentlessly against the house in reply.
EVERY LIGHT WAS ON; the radio was blaring in the kitchen; the phone never stopped ringing; strange men trooped mud all over my new house. I sat on a chair in the upstairs hallway. No one paid any attention to me as they all followed my husband from room to room, the tail to his comet.
When they emerged from the nursery, one man had the envelope in his cotton-gloved hand; he pinched it between thumb and forefinger as if it were a foul-smelling rodent. They all trooped into the kitchen; I heard a murmur, then a shout, then a murmur again.
Meanwhile more police, carrying flashlights, stormed inside the house, their muddy footprints smearing the others on my new carpets.
No one asked me about the events leading up to this; no one inquired of me if I had any idea what might have happened. As soon as the doorbell rang and the first police officer showed up, Charles was the one to whom they turned. And I willed myself to stay still, out of the way; these men had a job to do, and it was to find my baby. If I interfered, they might not be able to do that job.
So I sat on the chair, my hands clenched in my lap, my jaw so tense my teeth ached.
“Mrs. Lindbergh.” I looked up; Elsie was there. “Drink this tea. It’ll make you feel better.”
I shook my head. Why should I feel better? Why should I have any comfort, when my son was—
“You need to keep up your strength. Not only for the baby missing, but for the one you’re expecting.”
And for the first time, I remembered. I was carrying a child. I must keep him or her safe, for Charlie.
I pushed Elsie away, bolted out of my chair, and ran downstairs, grabbing a mackintosh from the hall closet. Pausing in the kitchen doorway, I saw a contingent of official-looking men huddled around the table. Most wore muddy brown police uniforms covered in trench coats. Charles was at the head of the table.
“Charles, I’m—”
All faces turned my way; all registered surprise at my presence.
“I thought I’d go outside and help—”
“Anne, come here.” It was a command, and so I obeyed; I walked to my husband, who gave his seat to me.
“Anne, the expert has brushed the envelope—”
“Brushed?”
“Examined it, collected evidence, but there was no fingerprint. We’ve just opened it—it’s a ransom note.”
I nodded. By now it had thoroughly registered that my child had not simply wandered off, or been misplaced like a pair of spectacles. Something far more terrible had happened. It was confirmed, and now we needed to meet whatever demands they had and get him back. And it all seemed so logical; a kind of blanketing calm came over me for the first time since Betty had burst into my bedroom—how long ago? I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was ten past midnight. Only about two hours ago. A lifetime ago.
Someone—the expert?—pushed a small white piece of paper toward me. I was afraid to touch it, afraid somehow to contaminate it so it couldn’t be used. Leaning forward, I read—
Dear Sir!
Have 50,000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills. After 2–4 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holds
.
Where there should have been a signature were two blue circles. They were joined together by a solid red mark, punched with three square holes.
“Charles! We told the police!” I jumped up, shaking with anger. “How could you? You see? What he says?” Why I assumed the kidnapper was male, I don’t know, except that I couldn’t imagine a woman stealing another woman’s child.
“Anne, of course we had to involve the police. The fingerprints, for example—they’re dusting the nursery now, so they can compare any strange fingerprints against ours.”
“But—the note says!”
“Anne.” And Charles gave me a look; a stern look I knew too well; the impatient look of the schoolteacher trying to teach me celestial navigation.
“Yes. Yes, of course. So, we’ll give him the money. Then we’ll get the baby back.” I sat down again.
There were glances over my head as if I couldn’t possibly understand. I intercepted one—from a man who was bigger, better dressed than the others. Not in a uniform but a tailored suit; still, he wore a shiny badge on his lapel and carried a gun in a holster across his barrel chest. His gaze, unlike the others’, was not furtive; it was steady, pitying, and therefore terrifying.
“It’s not usually so simple,” this man said, not bothering to elaborate. Then he tipped his head toward me. “Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, ma’am. Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police.”
There was something solidly steady about this stranger; he reminded me of a huge tree with deep, unfathomable roots, and his face was as craggy as bark, although he had a rather dashing salt-and-pepper mustache. His eyes were deep-set but alert, and he had a bulbous nose just like W. C. Fields. I found myself looking to him as the others began to discuss the note and all its implications.
“The thing to do is to search the perimeter again as soon as the sun comes up,” my husband said excitedly. “I should answer all calls—can you set up a switchboard in the garage, Colonel? We need some kind of headquarters, base of operations, like an airfield.”
No one contradicted him; everyone nodded eagerly. I looked around the table; all these policemen, Colonel Schwarzkopf included, were looking to Charles for answers. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
“Airfield?” I couldn’t help myself. Charles cleared his throat and continued—ignoring me without even a look.
“We must not release this note to anyone—I know newspapers. They will try to infiltrate the household, so we must be vigilant. But that sign—the two circles with the holes. That’s the key. It’s how we’ll authenticate any communication from the kidnappers.”
“Exactly,” Colonel Schwarzkopf said with a nod.
“Colonel, you will be in charge of your men. I’ll monitor everything from the house, including all communication, incoming and outgoing. Anne”—Charles finally favored me with a look—“you write up some kind of list of things the baby would need—his diet, his schedule—in case the kidnappers ask how to care for him.”
They all agreed with everything he said; every plan, every list—my husband was a great one with lists—every rule he laid down: If anyone called or showed up with information, Charles himself was to see that person, no matter what. All interviews with persons of interest were to be conducted in his presence. No lead was to be considered too small or too inconsequential. Every tip would be followed up on.
I was to stay upstairs, out of the way, and rest, and think positive thoughts—he actually said this, in front of everyone. “Anne, I know you. I know you worry, I know you fear. But you can’t, do you hear me? For the baby’s sake, you can’t give in to such emotions.”
“But, Charles—” I tried to push through the icy waters that were slowly swirling over me. “What do you know about—”
I stopped. I couldn’t. I couldn’t contradict him, I couldn’t question him—I saw it in the adoring eyes of every man in that room. Charles was a legend; I was the child’s hysterical mother. It was written on every face.
Charles, however, was not only the child’s father but the greatest hero of our age. He was also eager, energized, in a way he hadn’t been in such a long time—not since our flight to the Orient. He was champing at the bit to get on with it—to command this mission, the most significant mission in a life full of significant missions. If anyone was going to bring our son home, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it would be him. He was Colonel Lindbergh. The Lone Eagle. Lucky Lindy.
My heart plummeted; already I felt that my child was being forgotten in the eagerness to find, once more, in Charles Lindbergh the hero everyone needed in these dark, desperate times. No longer the boy who had crossed an ocean, now he was the man who would single-handedly rescue his son from evil kidnappers in the midst of a Depression.
“Anne.” Charles helped me up from my chair and bent down to my level. Now his eyes were clear and resolute—just as they had been the day I met him, and recognized him as the most perfect, capable man alive. His voice did not waver. Despite my inner turmoil, I drew strength from him, as I always had.
“Anne, they have taken our baby. But you have to trust me. I will bring him home to you.”
“Yes,” I said, marveling to hear my voice clear and strong—as strong as his. “Yes,” I repeated. “I know you will.”
It was a sacred, intimate moment, as if we were repeating our marriage vows. Only this time I wasn’t pledging my troth; I was pledging my baby’s life. We stood together, as close as we’d been since the trip to the Orient. And I gave my child over to my husband in front of these muddy state troopers, in this house so blazing with light it must be visible from five thousand feet up, in this darkness that whirled around outside, howling to come in once more, just as it had done already this endless day. Two hours—one lifetime—ago.
If I let the swirling blackness inside again, even masquerading as doubt, it would never leave; it would poison the two of us forever. At that moment, I was frantic to believe that we hadn’t already been ruined beyond recognition. So I nodded as Charles told me—so boyishly earnest, so heartbreakingly sure—that he would bring our son back home. And that there was absolutely no reason for me to worry.
I believed him, just as I always had, just as I always wanted to. Of course, I believed him; I was his crew. He was mine.
In that terrible hour, long past dusk, dawn an unimaginable miracle away, what other choice did I have?