THE BABY WAS CRYING. I stirred in my sleep, an automatic reflex; kicking away the covers, I rolled over, eyes still shut but breath held, hoping he would stop. Of course, he didn’t. Now he was crying out, calling my name—my real name, how odd! Not Mama, but Anne. “Anne—Anne—”
I was crying, too. I was calling out his name, calling “Charles, Charles!” I had never called him Charles before; it was always Charlie, or Little Lamb, or Baby Boy. The poor thing! He didn’t really know his name. So how would he come, if I kept calling it? Now I was running; it was dark and something kept hitting against the house, the wind howling about, filling my ears with its primal moan. I called, “Charles, Charles!” and I realized he wouldn’t know it was me, I realized he wouldn’t understand his own name, if he could even hear it in the storm. But I kept calling.
“Anne! Anne!” But why didn’t he call me Mama? How did he know my name? Was he already lost from me? Had a lifetime passed, and he was grown up now and I didn’t recognize him anymore? Him, this stranger shaking me, calling out my name?
“Anne!”
“Charles!”
My eyes flew open; it took me a moment to realize I was in bed. My husband was holding me by the shoulders, and I was struggling against him, because I had to go to the nursery—Charlie was crying. That was what had awakened me. Charlie’s cry.
“Is he up already?” I asked, bewildered. Why was Charles still wearing the clothes he’d worn yesterday?
“Anne.”
“Did Betty feed him?” I yawned, rubbing my eyes—astonished to feel tears on my cheeks. I looked at my wet fingers, and knew that even as I did so, I was still crying.
And then I remembered.
“Oh. Oh!” And the grief was real and raw, as if all that had happened the night before was happening all over again. I struggled to get up, to run to his room, but Charles pinned me down.
“Stop it! Let go of me!” I was shouting, and he looked uneasily toward the closed bedroom door, as if someone was standing just outside. “I mean it—let me go!” I actually kicked at my husband, allowing myself a tiny burst of triumph. It felt good, even for so childish a moment, to lash out at someone.
“Anne, hush. I woke you because there’s someone I want you to see.”
I stopped squirming instantly. I held myself perfectly still, allowing his words to penetrate first my mind, then my heart. Then I laughed, pure joy bubbling out of me; it had been a dream, after all!
“The baby? You found the baby? Oh, where is he?” I threw my arms about him. His body remained rigid; he plucked my arms from around his neck.
“No, no. Not the baby.” His eyes narrowed, as if I had somehow challenged his authority—no, his competence. “Pull yourself together, Anne. There’s a man outside I thought you should see—or, rather, he wanted to see you. He might have some information.”
“Oh.” I nodded, looking away; I couldn’t let him see my disappointment. “What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“You look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”
“No. We’ve been searching outside—although we couldn’t keep the reporters out, not at first, so quite a lot of evidence might be trampled over.”
“Did you find anything?”
“A ladder. Broken in pieces.”
I nodded, not really understanding. What did the pieces of a ladder mean?
“And some footprints, men’s footprints, on the ground beneath the—his—window. The press, of course, is having a field day. You’d better—well, I don’t know. You’ll find out anyway. If you want to read the newspapers, they’re in the kitchen. I would advise you not to. But get dressed now, please, for this gentleman.”
Charles joined whoever it was in the hall while I went through the motions; I splashed water on my face, ran a comb through my hair, and pulled on a housedress, only to find that I couldn’t get it all the way over my hips. I had to wear an ugly yellow-and-black checked maternity dress that I’d somehow thought to pack instead. The first one I’d worn for this pregnancy; I couldn’t help reflecting on the irony—that the new life I was carrying was making itself visible on this, of all days.
Then I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hall, wholly unprepared for the chaos outside. Men were running in and out of my son’s nursery. Even more were tramping mud all over the front hall carpets. There were tables set up in the hallway downstairs. As I hung over the upstairs railing and peered down through the open front door—shivering in the frigid air; had it stood open all night long?—I could see a small army of cars parked haphazardly, as if all had been driven in a great hurry and then urgently abandoned on the drive.
“Mrs. Lindbergh?”
I turned; a small man in a navy blue suit, his thin red hair plastered flat on his head, his eyes small and nervous, stood before me, holding his hat in his hands. He was barely taller than I was; next to my husband, he looked like a paper doll. He resembled an illustration in one of Charlie’s nursery books—a particularly sinister image of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with long, sharp, ratlike features. The only thing missing was the flute.
“Yes?”
“This is the man I was telling you about,” Charles exclaimed, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “Please, come into the bedroom.”
He ushered this man—this stranger!—into our bedroom. Our house was being turned into a headquarters for evil, just as Charles had said—but couldn’t I keep one room untouched? Unsullied by the dirt and filth that had blown in through that open nursery window?
“Please,” I said, turning my nose up, folding the corners of my mouth primly. I gestured for the man to sit on a footstool, while Charles and I sat, side by side, on our bed.
“Mrs. Lindbergh, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for seeing me. But I have information that I am certain you will want to hear.” The little man now crumpled his felt hat in his excitement; there was a gleam in his eyes that almost made his thin, watery face beautiful.
My heart began to pound, and I reached for Charles’s hand. “Yes?”
“Your child, he is safe.”
“How? How do you know?” Charles asked, gripping my hand tightly.
“He is safe because he is away from here.” The man rose and began to pace before us. “You do not know God, you worship at the feet of false idols. Man was not meant to fly, not meant to have wings. For God created him in His image, not the birds’. Your child has been taken from you as punishment. Whoever has him must have seen this, must have known this, and I feel it is my duty to make you aware of your sin, and to urge you to repent of your evil ways. If you do, surely God will see fit to return your child to you, but until then—”
Charles gripped the man by the arm; I thought he was going to throw him out the window. Instead he lifted him up, carried him—feet dangling—across the room, and shoved him out the door, shouting, “Get this idiot out of here!” before slamming the door shut.
I was trembling, sick; my skin was clammy, and I felt my stomach churn—or was it the baby kicking? Desperately, I wanted only to lie down and close my eyes—after first scrubbing every inch of this room, to rid it of that horrible stranger’s presence.
“That was a mistake,” Charles said, and I had an absurd urge to laugh. It was such an understatement. “I shouldn’t have brought him up to you, Anne—it was my fault. I feel, however, that we must take every person seriously. We can’t possibly know at this point who might or might not have information. That said, I should have interrogated him further. But he did insist—he insisted on seeing you, not me. I thought—well, I thought. I was wrong. Forgive me.”
“Oh, Charles, I don’t blame you!” Why was he being so distant and formal?
“No, Anne. I am responsible for that. I am responsible for you, especially now, in your condition. I can protect you, at least—” He turned away, and cleared his throat several times before walking to the window.
“Charles—” I moved toward him, aching to reassure him somehow, to remind him he was not alone in this. But before I could take another step, he turned to face me. “I arranged for your mother to come,” he said briskly. “I thought it best that she be here.”
“Oh.” I, too, was lost; lost once again in my own terror as I looked out the window and saw strange men tramping over some bulbs I had planted last fall. Tulips, I remembered. Dutch tulips, white. Charlie had helped me; he had carried the knobby tubers in a basket before dumping them all out and arranging them in little patterns, gurgling happily, calling them “bubs.”
“Have you heard from Elisabeth?” I asked Charles, dabbing at the tears on my cheek before turning around. “Dwight? Con?”
“The police have been alerted, and they’re safe,” he replied, and somehow we faced each other while never once meeting each other’s gaze.
“The police are talking to them?”
“I allowed it; I thought they might be of help. Anne, Colonel Schwarzkopf would like to talk to you when you’re ready. He would like to talk to the servants, as well. Betty, in particular.”
Betty! “How is she?” I asked, stricken with guilt—I’d forgotten all about her. I hadn’t seen her since last night—since she had run to her room, sobbing, after Charles called the police. She loved little Charlie so—oh, how could I have neglected her? She must be as frantic as I was. I must go to her at once.
“Of course, it’s absurd,” Charles continued, as if he hadn’t heard my question. “The staff, naturally, is above suspicion. I told Schwarzkopf that. He agrees but still needs to ask basic questions in order to establish some kind of timeline—I’ll be present, regardless. But I refuse to let him administer a polygraph test on any of them, or the family. That would be unnecessary. And the press might get wind of it, and inflate it, as usual.”
“Good,” I quietly agreed.
“I’ll send some breakfast up,” Charles said. “Try not to wear yourself out. The important thing is to remain hopeful. For the baby’s sake.”
“I know,” I said, and once more, I longed to reassure him, to be the strong one, for once. But I felt that if I were suddenly to move, to make any unexpected, careless gesture, I would fly apart. Molecules and cells and bones would fragment, splintering all about the room—Humpty Dumpty, indeed.
Oh, why could I not stop recalling nursery rhymes and fairy tales this morning? Everything reminded me of my child. Everything good, and everything bad.
Charles stood for a moment, his back to me. Then his shoulders finally squared, his head snapped up, and he strode out of the room without another word—that famous Lindbergh discipline on full display once more. My husband, the father of my child, vanished before my eyes. Now he was the hero we all needed; that he needed, most of all. It was as if I was seeing him again for the first time, in a newsreel.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I sang to myself, walking slowly back to my bed, carrying my hope and terror both, one fragile, the other already so stolidly familiar I couldn’t remember life before it, within my heart. Within my womb, as well; next to my unborn child, who would have to make room for them now, and for the rest of his life.
Could they put the Lindberghs together again?
WAITING. WAITING. WAITING.
That was all I could do. That was all that was expected of me.
The next day, we received a postcard postmarked from Newark, addressed to Chas. Linberg, Princeton, N.J. The scrawled message read, Baby safe, instructions later, act accordingly. It did not have the same three-hole signature as the initial letter, but the handwriting was similar enough for the police to take it seriously. Baby safe—I repeated the words to myself, my mantra, as another day passed with no further communication from the kidnappers. Although it brought masses of communication from everyone else in the world—phone calls, telegrams, letters. The Boy Scouts of America were on full alert, every member pledging to scour roads and paths across the country in search of my child. Women’s institutes and other organizations, too, volunteered; they went door to door, looking for him.
President Hoover—who had just lost reelection—offered the services of a new United States Bureau of Investigation, headed by a man named J. Edgar Hoover. Colonel Schwarzkopf turned him down, which I thought wise (even though Mr. Hoover insisted on setting up some kind of headquarters in town, where he gave interviews to anyone who would listen). But I couldn’t imagine how more well-intentioned men, milling about my house, knocking things over and looking grim, could help the situation.
The National Guard was called out. Our child’s photograph—the one that Charles had taken on his first birthday—appeared on the front page every single day, and every newspaper vowed to keep it there until he was found. Charlie was on the cover of Time magazine. Fliers were plastered on every telephone post in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Roadblocks were set up across three states as well. Anyone who looked remotely suspicious—although that description seemed to change by the minute—was pulled over, their vehicles searched.
For the second time in five years, the name Charles Lindbergh was on everybody’s lips. For the second time in five years, everyone prayed for him, as special church services were called throughout the land.
The same radio commentators who had broken the miraculous news of Charles’s 1927 landing now broke in every ten minutes with an urgent bulletin about the kidnapping of his son. No reporters were allowed on our property after that first horrific morning, but that didn’t stop them from writing as if they were. Every day, I insisted on reading what I had worn on my walk the day before (dresses I had never owned in my life), what I had thought, what I had eaten, if I had napped. I read columns and columns of purple prose praising my “Madonna-like patience” as I “awaited the safe return of my little Eaglet.”
Was I patient? I suppose I appeared that way, compliant in my stone jail, leaving only for short walks in the gray March weather, always shielded by a respectfully silent contingent of police. It was numbness, though, more than patience. I could not believe that this circus—people were selling photographs of my child as if they were souvenirs, right at the end of our driveway!—had anything to do with my precious baby. Or my husband. Or my life. So I removed myself, mentally. To participate fully would have endangered the child I was carrying—of that, I had no doubt. And I couldn’t bear to lose both of my children; I couldn’t bear to do that to Charles.
Who was trying, so valiantly, to remain in control of a situation that grew more fantastic and bizarre with every telegram, phone call, letter. Mediums offered to come hold séances, in order to determine if the baby was “in the spirit world.” Crazed zealots wanted to cast off the evil spirits in our home; one even managed to get past the security, and painted a strange symbol with a bucket of pig’s blood on our front door before she was taken away.
The most bewildering were the offers from other mothers to give me their children. How could any mother be willing to part with her child voluntarily? And the notion that my son could simply be replaced by another—I shook with rage at the thought. Yet we received dozens of such letters and telegrams.
Charles was trying to oversee everything; trying, in vain, to shelter me from the worst of it, constantly reassuring me that it was only a matter of time before he returned Charlie to me. He barely ate, fitfully slept. He spent most nights seated upright in a chair in our bedroom, watching me, as if he was terrified I might disappear, too. But when I was awake, he could hardly look me in the eye.
To Colonel Schwarzkopf, to the hordes of policemen, detectives, working on the case—to the world at large, holding its suspended breath—he remained the calm, cool aviator in total control. He allowed Schwarzkopf and his men to sort through the thousands of letters delivered three times a day by a special mail truck, to follow up the vaguest of anonymous tips, to continue to tramp about our property in search of clues. But he made it clear that he, and he alone, would communicate with the kidnappers, and I heard Colonel Schwarzkopf express his first doubts about Charles’s leadership the next night in the kitchen, when I padded downstairs to get a glass of warm milk.
“You can’t be serious?” I heard the colonel ask in his blunt way; I stopped just outside the doorway. “You’re really going it alone? Colonel Lindbergh, you have the entire police force of New Jersey and New York at your disposal.”
“I am perfectly serious. They need to trust me. That’s the only way we’ll get him home, don’t you see? Once I can establish that trust, I do not intend to betray it. I will make a statement declaring that no police will ever be involved in our communication, and that I alone will meet with them, no questions asked.”
“You’re a man of honor, aren’t you, Colonel?”
“Of course.”
“Well, whoever took your baby isn’t.” Schwarzkopf slammed outside, so furious that he didn’t see me standing in the hallway. Through a window, I watched as he kicked a stone, drew a deep breath, then took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, angry face raised to the moon.
Peering around the corner, I saw Charles slump down in his chair, hiding his face within his hands. I knew I mustn’t go to him; I couldn’t let him know I had seen him like this. He needed me to be hopeful; I needed him to be strong. These were the roles we had assigned each other.
But for the first time, I understood that they were just that—roles.
MOTHER ARRIVED ON SATURDAY; by then, my baby had slept somewhere else for four nights. Was he crying out for me? Or was he, so used to me being gone as I flew away with his father, already trusting his kidnappers? Could he be bestowing on them one of his sweet, serious smiles? My heart could not withstand such questions—but still they came, as relentless as that shutter that still beat itself against the house.
“I don’t know what to say to you!” Mother blurted the moment she saw me. “I have no idea what you’re going through. I can’t even imagine.”
So I found myself comforting her instead; I had just led her to the study when Charles burst into the room.
“Anne! Come. There’s another note.”
My heart started to thunder; I leaped to my feet and followed Charles into the kitchen. There, once again, an army of men stood round our table, gaping at a thin white note as if it might jump up and bite them.
We have warned you not to make anyding Public also notify the Police
.
I felt sick; I closed my eyes, but not in time to stifle an image of my child lying cold and still, sacrificed because we had done what any parents would do under the circumstances. But then I heard Charles, reading the rest of the letter out loud, say, “Don’t be afraid about the baby,” and my nausea disappeared. I opened my eyes and saw for myself the three-hole signature, just like the original.
“He says don’t be afraid!”
“Yes, he does. He also says he increased the ransom to seventy thousand.” Colonel Schwarzkopf picked up the note.
“But that’s wonderful, right? It means the baby is unharmed!” I scanned his face, desperate for confirmation.
“Yes, of course, it’s a positive thing,” Charles said, with such authority it banished the tiny, imperceptible fear worrying my heart. “Colonel, where was the letter postmarked?”
“Brooklyn. We’ve already brushed it for fingerprints, but there’s nothing to pull. It was in the mail, and probably touched by a hundred hands along the way. I suggest, then, that we post lookouts at every mailbox in the borough.”
“No.” Charles shook his head. “That will scare them off.”
“Colonel, we can do it in such a way no one would notice—”
“No.” Charles’s voice rose; it silenced Colonel Schwarzkopf. “I said no police. Didn’t you read the letter? I think we need to contact Spitale and Bitz.”
“I urge you to reconsider—”
“Spitale and Bitz,” my husband repeated, his voice a low growl.
Schwarzkopf pulled at his lower lip, glaring at my husband. Charles glared back.
“As you wish, Colonel Lindbergh,” Schwarzkopf muttered; he then looked at his men, nodded, and strode out of the kitchen. One by one, his men followed him—each mumbling, “Ma’am,” to me as they left.
Don’t be afraid about the baby. I knew that I would repeat that phrase, over and over, through this endless day.
“Charles, who are Spitale and Bitz?” They sounded like a vaudeville act to me. I sat down at the empty table. My kitchen was no longer a warm, inviting place; there were cigarette butts in saucers, stacks of empty coffee cups on the counter in an assortment of mismatched china patterns. Elsie must have had to send away for extras. Newspapers were piled in corners: “Lindbergh Baby Kidnapped!” “Little Lindy Vanishes!” “The Crime of the Century—Will Lucky Lindy’s Baby Ever Be Found?”
“Who are they? Why is the colonel so upset?” I asked my husband again.
“Anne, I ask you to trust me. These men have never been involved in a case like this. They may be well intentioned, but I don’t want this bungled. Do you?” Charles met my gaze warily. We were both on an uncharted trip to a land we never even saw as we flew so high, untouchable—or so we had once believed. And just as he had needed me to navigate his path before, he needed my trust now; without it, he might never find his way back to himself, the man who had never been lost, not even while crossing an ocean alone.
“So what do you plan next? What is your—our—next move?”
“Harry Guggenheim has been helping me come up with the money. I’ll have to wire him about this new sum. Anne, that is all I’m going to discuss with you at the moment. I don’t want you to know more.”
“Why? What possibly can be worse than what I already know?”
“There are some rather—unsavory characters that I’m dealing with. But they can be very helpful, even if I detest having them touch my son—even if I would prefer not to associate with their kind.”
“Kind? What do you mean?”
“Mobsters, Anne. Men like—Al Capone offered his services. There, now you know. And some New York men. They offered to act as go-betweens, instead of the police, and I believe that’s the best course. I prefer not to tell you more. You mustn’t worry. Your job is to remain hopeful.”
“You keep telling me this, but I do worry!” I was shaking with fury. “Of course I do—and so do you! But you won’t tell me, you won’t talk to me, and I don’t understand why. Charles, I was your crew! I was baptized in the Yangtze and let you push me off the top of a mountain in a glider—but now you think I’m too weak to understand or help? Too frail? Charlie is my son, too!” I pushed myself away from the table in disgust. “How can you imagine that I’d care whom you deal with? Deal with the devil himself if you have to! But stop thinking you can protect me from this. You can’t protect any of us anymore, so stop trying to.”
Charles winced, but I didn’t care.
“Don’t you see?” I asked hoarsely. “It’s already happened. Now we need to get him back. They’ll have to give him back to us, once we pay. Won’t they?”
“Of course they will.” Charles picked up the note and studied it again. “It’s simply a matter of communication and trust. Spitale—one of the New York men—is certain he knows who is responsible. I’ll respond through him—I’ll give him this letter as proof, and my reply. I don’t know why the colonel wants to make it into something else—like an army invasion! Does he really think he can post men all over Brooklyn and no one will notice?”
“You’re going to give this—character—this letter? The actual letter? But—that identifying mark, should you let anyone else see it?”
“Anne, as I said, it’s a matter of trust. I may not like these men, but there is a certain honor among thieves.”
“What does Colonel Schwarzkopf think about this? Are you going to tell him you’re releasing the letter?”
Charles’s face flushed. “I’m in charge, Anne. I’ve told you.”
“And I’m your wife, and Charlie’s mother. I’m telling you to run this by Colonel Schwarzkopf.”
Charles didn’t reply. His fury was different than mine; it was coiled, so tightly wound you might miss it until it sprang out, cutting deeply. I didn’t often see it. But I sensed it now, and while once it might have terrified me, today I had no fear to spare for my husband. Only for my son.
When finally Charles spoke, his words were measured, precise. “Anne, I believe I’ll include the baby’s diet with our response. Would you write it out now?”
“Yes, of course.”
I got to my feet, then I paused behind his chair. Leaning over, I kissed Charles on the cheek. He didn’t respond. As I pulled away, hurt, he put his hand on my cheek for a moment, drawing me close before releasing me.
Then he returned to his study of the note, as if he might see something in those crudely written letters that the rest of us could not.
I started up the stairs; Colonel Schwarzkopf was seated on the landing, his head in his hands. He looked up. And suddenly I knew what I must do.
“Colonel! You can’t stop him!” The colonel rose in alarm. “Listen to me. You can’t stop Charles in this. He must do this his way—he always has, and it’s always been the right way before. That’s what he can’t understand now—that he’s wrong, that this is too big for him. But please, I beg of you. Do whatever you have to do.”
“Behind his back?”
“If possible, yes, but Colonel, I am serious. I’ll answer to Charles. I’m not afraid, like the rest of you.”
“Are you saying—”
“Colonel, listen carefully. I’m saying my husband has no idea how to proceed, but he will never admit that. So I’m admitting it for him. I’m saying that I authorize you to do whatever you have to do. Interview the servants. Post men at mailboxes. He wants to release the latest letter to those New York men, and I believe that’s a terrible mistake. Just—do whatever you have to do to bring my boy back home.”
The colonel stared at me. Then he cocked his huge head—like a bulldog’s, square and jowly—toward Betty’s closed door at the end of the hall. Her light was on; it spilled out from beneath the door. When had I last seen her? I couldn’t remember. “Can I question Miss Gow again? Colonel Lindbergh said—”
“Ask her anything,” I instructed Colonel Schwarzkopf. “Give her the polygraph. Betty loves the baby, but maybe someone near her doesn’t. Ask her about Red. Then talk to Elsie and Ollie. Ask them anything. Anything you need to. All of the servants. Here and at Next Day Hill. Start with Violet Sharpe—she’s the one I spoke with on the phone that day. She knew we would be staying here.”
He studied me skeptically, perhaps looking for the hysterical mother. Then, to my surprise, he cupped his big hands around mine and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Lindbergh. I know this wasn’t easy for you.”
I let my breath out in a surprised laugh. Oh, men! How little they knew, after all. “No, Colonel, you’re wrong. This is my child we’re talking about. It was very easy.”
ONE WEEK PASSED. Eight days. Ten. Fourteen.
Two weeks since that terrible night. Two weeks with only one additional communication, increasing the ransom amount again.
The house had taken on a rhythm now, a busy, purposeful hum, although it was not even close to being back to normal; I couldn’t remember what normal felt like. The switchboard was still in the garage, ringing with tips and cranks and people hoping to hear my voice, or Charles’s. Our lawn was churned to mud. Colonel Schwarzkopf still showed up every morning, his men still camped out in droves, and I never knew at what hour I might be asked to leave my bedroom for yet another conference between detectives or policemen. Politicians drove up our drive simply to have their photographs taken on a broken ladder they’d found lying outside my child’s empty nursery.
Only the baby’s room remained untouched, after that first frenzied night of searching. A fine layer of dust had settled on every surface, undisturbed save for whenever I went inside. I did so once a day, at the time he would normally be put to bed. It was habit, it was routine—and I would not relinquish it. If I did, I was terrified that I’d never get a chance to resume it.
Surprisingly, I did not mind the chaos. The constant activity meant hope—all these people were working to bring my Charlie home because they believed there was a chance.
As the days dragged on, my surroundings grew more bizarre; cloistered in my new home, I was aware that, at the end of my driveway, people sold photographs of my missing son as souvenirs. Planes flew low overhead, full of eager onlookers. Sightseeing tours launched from a nearby airfield.
But nothing could have prepared me for the headline I saw one frigid afternoon, when a few late-season snowflakes fell halfheartedly outside my window. “Spurned Sister Suspected in Lindbergh Baby’s Disappearance. Why Hasn’t Miss Morrow Been to Comfort Mrs. Lindbergh?” And next to it was a jarring photograph of Elisabeth taken years ago; uncharacteristically, she was not smiling. Instead, the ink so smudged and dark, she looked almost malignant.
Oh, Elisabeth! How had she been dragged into my nightmare? All of a sudden the months fell away; I forgot the awkwardness between us, forgot how sick and frail she had been lately. I remembered, instead, the sister who had always been there to laugh with me, coax me, pull me into the bright sunlight constantly surrounding her, even when I insisted I was happier in the shadows. She was the one who urged me to try to stand up to Mother when I wanted to go to Vassar instead of Smith. She was the one who insisted, when I was ten and wanted to put lemon juice on my hair so that it would look more like hers, that brown hair was prettier than blond.
She was the one who was supposed to marry the hero, not me. I needed to tell her that I understood why she hadn’t, now.
I started toward the telephone in the front hall, but when confronted with its black, solid efficiency, I wavered; I couldn’t pick up the receiver. Fortunately, my mother chose that moment to bustle around a corner with a pile of blankets in her arms.
“Mother, I was thinking. Could you—do you think Elisabeth could come down? Is she strong enough for all this, do you think?”
“You saw the newspaper.” It wasn’t a question, and I realized I still was gripping it in my hand.
“Yes. But that’s not the reason, truly. I miss her, and I want her here with me. I need her.”
Mother put the blankets on a bench and sank down next to them. She rubbed her eyes until they were red, and the lines around them carved themselves even deeper into her skin. I realized suddenly how selfish I had been. So many people’s lives, not just mine—all tainted forever. Like the ripples on a pond when you toss a pebble in; the aftershocks kept moving farther and farther away from the center.
“Anne, I know something happened between you two. I’ve never asked what it is.”
I couldn’t reply. What on earth could I tell her?
“So I think you should call her yourself. Don’t you?”
“Oh, Mother, I—” But even as I protested, Mother had dialed the number and handed me the telephone receiver. “Next Day Hill,” a wary voice answered. Violet Sharpe’s.
“This is Anne—”
“Oh, mercy!” And with a strangled sob, she put me through to Elisabeth’s bedroom.
“Anne? Is there any news?” Elisabeth’s voice was panicked.
“No—no, nothing. I only wanted to—I want to ask you to come out here. To stay for a while. To stay with me, I mean. For a while.”
“Oh, Anne! My poor darling! Of course. I’ll come at once.”
“You don’t mind? After all this—”
“Anne, stop it.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too, dearest. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, as if Mother could hear, in those two words, the reason why we’d been estranged.
“Shhh,” my sister murmured into my ear. “Shhh. Now go lie down, Anne.”
“Stop telling me what to do,” I protested, just as stubbornly as when I was ten and she was twelve.
“Never!” As she hung up, she was laughing. And the years and distance between us disappeared.
Mother took the telephone and placed it back in the wall nook. “Sweetheart, you must get some rest. You look dreadful. Where’s Charles gone off to?”
I shook my head and rubbed the small of my back. “He wouldn’t tell me. He takes phone calls at all hours, he meets late at night with men he won’t let me see. He’s—he’s having a difficult time.”
Colonel Schwarzkopf, while still respectful, careful never to contradict Charles in public or in the press, no longer asked Charles for permission to proceed. The colonel conducted rigorous interviews with our household staff every day, and he no longer hid them from Charles. He seemed particularly interested in the staff of Next Day Hill; he was paying special attention to Violet Sharpe. Mother was very upset at the questioning; she felt protective of Violet, as the girl was so excitable and simple. I liked Violet; despite her occasional hysterics, she had always been sweet and loyal, given to happy tears whenever she received a present or a bonus or even an unexpected day off.
But I couldn’t forget that she was the one who had answered the phone when I called to have Betty come down to us that fateful Tuesday. Violet was the most logical person to have alerted someone to our change in plans. Charles was furious at having his authority and his judgment questioned. He never knew that I was the one responsible for it. I wouldn’t have denied it if he’d asked, but he never did. Perhaps he didn’t want to know.
His fury couldn’t disguise his despair, however. I pretended I didn’t see the smudge of exhaustion under his eyes, the way his clothes hung off him now, the exhausted blinking that overcame him at times.
This morning, Charles had mumbled something about a new lead before rushing off to meet another stranger. I nodded trustfully and, as I had every day since my child had gone missing, told my husband that I believed in him. Then I went into the cold, empty nursery and stared out the window as Charles started up the car and roared down the drive, all the policemen standing respectfully at attention.
At times like that, I missed believing in my husband almost more than I missed my child.
“You go upstairs,” Mother insisted again, taking the newspaper with that awful headline out of my hand. “Rest. Take care of that baby you’re carrying.”
I nodded. I was so weary of people telling me what to do. Yet I went upstairs, intending not to rest but to write. In these last weeks, I’d started writing poetry again. Dark poems, hopeless poems. Poems of loss and despair; sonnets of impending grief I prayed I would one day find and laugh at for their absurdity.
“Mrs. Lindbergh?”
I looked up, startled; Betty was standing outside my open door. Still in a denim nurse’s dress, a white apron around her waist. But I looked at her now through new eyes; our roles were finally as they should be. I was the mother. My loss, my grief, was so much more monumental than hers, and I felt, finally, older. Ancient, actually; every day my child was missing seemed to add years to my life so that I was surprised, when I saw my reflection, that I was not stoop-shouldered and arthritic. Surprised to find my hair still dark brown, and not turned white overnight.
Betty, on the other hand, seemed much younger; uncertain, finally, for the first time I’d known her. Uncertain of her role in a childless home; uncertain of her grief; how much to show, how much to hide. Uncertain of our loyalty, Charles’s and mine. And although I did not blame her, I could not look at her without anger and recrimination.
She had held him, been privileged to care for him, far more often than I had. For so much of his life, I’d been gone, and I resented her bitterly for it. But I was most angry at myself. For following Charles whenever he snapped his fingers at me; for abandoning my son, over and over and over.
“Mrs. Lindbergh, I must talk to you,” Betty whispered, shutting the door behind her. I motioned to a chair just by the window, and I took the one opposite. The woods that surrounded our house were still stripped, naked; spring seemed an eternity away. And I hoped it would remain so; I couldn’t bear to see the world come back to life if my child wasn’t with me to share it.
“What is it, Betty?”
She moved her chair closer to me and took my hand; startled, I drew back. She’d never touched me before; she, who had showered my baby with kisses and hugs, had never even shaken my hand.
“Please, please, forgive me, Mrs. Lindbergh!”
“Forgive you? Forgive you for what?”
“For not checking in on him enough that night. For not making sure the shutters closed. For—”
“For telling Red that we’d be here? For telling someone else?”
“No! No, I don’t think—you don’t believe Red is involved, do you? Or anyone else at Next Day Hill? Mrs. Lindbergh, of all people, you don’t believe—why, the colonel doesn’t believe any of us is involved! How can you?”
“Because I’m Charlie’s mother! Because I don’t know what to believe anymore! No one knew we stayed here at the house that night except you, and Elsie and Ollie, and the people at Next Day Hill. No one else knew! If anyone had been planning this, they would never have planned it for a Tuesday night, because we’d never been here on a Tuesday before!” Unleashing all my darkest suspicions, I lunged toward Betty. “But you knew. You told Red. Who else did you tell? Who?” Now I was shaking her, and she was crying, “No one, no one!” over and over again, but still I shook her, demanding an answer.
“Anne!”
Betty and I jumped apart; she whirled away from me, weeping; I spun toward the window as Charles charged into the room, a package in his hands.
“Anne!”
Still breathing raggedly, I clenched my fists, which still itched to lash out at someone—my fury, smothered for so long, was blazing. My husband ran toward me.
“Anne, you remember James Condon?”
“Ma’am,” Mr. Condon said with an absurd bow. “Mrs. Lindbergh, it is my privilege to greet you again.”
“Yes,” I said, as I retreated a few steps, my mind whirling, still reworking the conversation with Betty while now forced to absorb a stranger in my bedroom. And then I glared at Charles. What else was he going to put me through? How many crackpots was he going to bring me?
Last week, he’d presented to me a psychic, a woman clad in perfumed scarves and cheap jewelry, who grabbed my palm with her dirty hand and told me that it foretold a great joy sometime soon. The week before, he’d introduced me to a medium who proposed holding a séance in the baby’s room.
Condon was just the latest in a series of shysters and charlatans, an obsequious person who had gallantly (his own word) volunteered to serve as go-between between “the hero of our age” and the “odious kidnappers.” Last week Charles had brought him here to meet me, even allowed him to sleep in the nursery and take one of the baby’s toys with him, in case he had a chance to meet with the kidnappers in person.
“Anne, you remember, I told you this morning about a new lead. Condon here put an ad in the paper, and what do you think? They contacted him! He met with them!”
“It is my patriotic duty, madam.” Another bow. “I am just a citizen, a private citizen. The kidnappers, however, must feel my sincerity, for they did indeed meet with me.”
“Anne, sit down,” Charles said breathlessly. I’d never seen him so excited; his eyes were wide, his face flushed. “This is it, the break we’ve been looking for. The kidnappers did not want to speak with the mob, but for some reason they do want to communicate with this man.”
“How do we know it’s them? After—after your contact sold the ransom note?” Just as Schwarzkopf had feared, Charles’s underworld contact had sold the ransom note with the authentic signature to the newspapers. Now we received notes by the bushel with that odd three-hole signature. It was impossible to know which were real and which were not.
“Because there’s something else,” Charles said quietly. He placed the brown package in my lap, then reverently unwrapped it, revealing a piece of gray wool fabric. A gray Dr. Denton wool sleep suit. Size two.
I lifted the fabric to my face; eyes squeezed tight, I inhaled it, wanting desperately to smell the innocence of my child, the downy hair, the apple scent of his shampoo, the grease of the Vicks I rubbed on his chest that night. I so wanted to smell these things that for a moment I did—and then I knew it was only the desire of memory. This fabric did not smell like any of those things; it actually had very little scent at all. Only a faint whiff of damp, as if it had been freshly laundered.
But it had been so long; two weeks now. If Charlie had been disguised somehow, in different clothing, then they might have laundered his sleep suit—
I handed the fabric back to Charles and looked at Betty, hard.
“Is this his suit? What do you think? I need you to tell me the truth, Betty. Always.”
“I think it is! I really do, Mrs. Lindbergh! I think I recognize it!” Betty’s cheeks were scarlet as she reached out a tentative hand to stroke the fabric.
“Then it is it! We are on the right trail, at last!” Charles strode about, energized, nearly knocking over a lamp on the table. He crossed the room in one giant stride.
“Anne, this is it,” he said to me—only to me; it was as if there was no one present but us, now. He knelt, and smoothed the fabric in my lap, speaking softly, urgently. “Betty recognized this right away. And you did, too—I saw it in your face. I know you want to be absolutely sure, Anne. I know what a strain this has all been, and how confused you must be—and how hard it must be, now, to hope, after everything. But Condon here spoke with the man who gave us this. He said this had been planned for a year, that the baby was in good health, was being taken care of on a boat by two women. Two women! Think of that! He seemed very sure of himself, and he had this.” Charles grasped my hands tightly, as if he could transfer all his confidence to me.
I shook my head, still hesitant to believe. He was right. I was afraid to hope. Even though that’s all I had been told to do—the only job entrusted to me—deep in my heart, I hadn’t. But now—oh, Charles was so sure of himself! Finally, after weeks of dashing about, playing a desperate game of cloak and dagger, he looked like the old Charles. The clear-eyed boy. The best pilot he knew; the best there ever was.
“Will you—if Colonel Schwarzkopf can verify this—” I took the fabric once more, slowly claiming it, allowing its worn folds to soften my heart. Charles paled at my mention of Colonel Schwarzkopf, but I didn’t care. As much as I wanted to believe him, I needed to hear Colonel Schwarzkopf’s opinion even more. My heart beat fast, my face flushed, as if he’d discovered me in an indiscretion—but I did not flinch from his gaze.
“I understand. This has been such a strain. I understand.” And with those words, Charles allowed me to question his methods for the first time.
“It has been such a strain. For both of us. But if Colonel Schwarzkopf agrees, well, then—” I nodded, coaxing myself into giving in, finally, to the luxury of hope. “I do think this is the baby’s, it really does seem like it. I do! So—now what? We know they have him. Do we just give them the money, then? Is that how it’s done? And then we’ll get him back?” My heart began to beat faster and faster with every word until I jumped out of the chair and grasped Mr. Condon’s hand. “Oh, thank you—bless you!” And I could have kissed him, right then, but I didn’t. The odd little man did bow, once more, and wiped a tear from his eye.
My own eyes were dry, and I felt a sudden surge of energy, of optimism, race through my veins. For the first time in weeks, I was hungry. Ravenous! The child within me kicked, as if to remind me how starved he was, too, and I laughed out loud.
“We have so much to do,” I told my husband, who nodded indulgently as time sped up, calendar pages fell away, and I began to recognize the world again. “The house is a wreck! I don’t want him to come home and see it like this, do you?” Charles shook his head, but I hardly even paused to register it. I continued to pace about, my mind full of plans—blissful, ordinary plans, plans that other families were making, too, right at this very moment! “We’ll have to get him some spring clothes, you know. We haven’t had a chance to buy anything new. Do you think he’s grown very much? Babies do grow so fast at this age. Charles, Charles, do you think Charlie will remember us?”
“Of course, Anne,” my husband murmured, and suddenly I was aware that everyone in the room was staring at me as if they’d never seen me before. And I suppose they hadn’t; they hadn’t seen this happy, hopeful creature at all. Until now.
“I’m sorry, I rather lost my head,” I said sheepishly, but no one seemed to mind. “Please, go on and do what you have to do. Please—go!” I took Charles’s arm and propelled him out the door—to his great surprise, and to everyone else’s. “Go talk to Colonel Schwarzkopf—show him the fabric, and then arrange it all! This is what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? Go!”
Laughing, Charles allowed me to push him down the hall. Condon followed—again with an elaborate bow. Betty grabbed my hand, and the two of us embraced. Forgotten was the anger, the suspicion, the recrimination; now we were united in joy. Then she left, as well.
I went to my desk and began to make a list of everything we would need for the baby’s homecoming. Charles had taught me so well! I had not been such a great list maker before we met; now, I found, I could make them easily. All because of my husband—one more miracle he had wrought!
But before I began, I found myself writing one word. Just this one word, the word I had not allowed myself to write, to speak, until now—
Hope!