The Boy by Betty Jane Hegerat Page A

into thin air. Gives me the willies.”
    â€œKids,” Phyllis says. “I’ll bet you anything it’s just kids.” She laughs. “Quit buying fancy underwear and they’ll leave you alone. How about you, Louise? You had anything go missing?”
    Louise shakes her head. Why admit that it hadn’t occurred to her to hang clothes out to dry? Or that it’s unlikely anyone would have a prurient interest in her nursing bras or elastic-sprung cotton briefs. Although looking around the room, she doubts that any of these women are hiding Victoria’s Secrets.
    After the haul of baby gifts has been loaded into the car, they are barely into the car when the woman begins ranting again about clothesline raids. Louise tries to come up with rational possibilities that don’t involve perverted motives. She tries too, to avoid sounding like she’s fabricating a defense, but unease is growing in the soft pit of her belly, something dark filling the space so recently occupied by her son.
    The house is dark. No Danny. No Jake. Gifts safely deposited in the front hallway, her chauffeur’s headlights disappearing down the street, Louise stands alone in the silent house with the baby in her arms. On her way to the kitchen she flicks on every light switch she passes. There’s a note from Jake on the table. They’ve gone into the city to a movie. Back around midnight. It’s just ten thirty.
    Louise changes the baby, nurses him again, reflects on his angelic behaviour at the shower, then settles him into the bassinette beside the bed and crosses the hall to Dan’s room. She opens the door slowly, surprised as always by the bareness of the space. The weekend they moved into the house, Jake took Danny shopping for something to brighten the walls but the hockey posters are still in their tubes on his desk. The bookcase is empty, boxes stacked unopened in his closet. The bed is made, albeit a bit haphazardly with the quilt simply pulled up over the pillows, one corner dragging on the floor. Feeling guilty, intrusive, but determined to prove herself wrong, she methodically opens and closes drawers, pages her way through the shirts and sweaters hanging in his closet. She folds a pile of clean clothes that she handed Dan from the dryer earlier and leaves them in a tidy pile on the end of the bed, a sign that she’s been in his room. He deserves to know this. Tomorrow she’ll ask him if he noticed, if he minds. An opening to the discussion on privacy and mutual respect she’s been avoiding. Louise knows that Daniel snoops in their bedroom when he’s alone in the house. This is a discussion she won’t delegate to Jake. She wants a contract from Daniel. But she’s suspicious of her own motives; is she setting him up with a promise she knows he’ll breach?
    Before she leaves the room she straightens the quilt on the sad-looking bed. When she fluffs the pillows, her hand grazes a bit of cool fabric protruding from beneath. The nightgown under the pillow is satin, a watery lilac shade. Not sexy lingerie, but the expensive indulgence more likely of a woman in her forties than a young girl. The sort of gown that a husband might wrap for Christmas. That any wife in this town would be pleased to own.
    She buries the gown under the pillow, and tugs the quilt awry before she leaves the room.
    When Jake tiptoes into the bedroom just after midnight, Louise feigns sleep. This can wait until morning.
    In fact, she waits until after breakfast, when Danny has ridden off on his bike and Jake has finished his third cup of coffee.
    â€œI need to show you something,” she says. “But first I need to tell you about this problem around town. Someone’s stealing underwear off clotheslines.”
    He blinks at her, a smile tugging at his tired face. And then he throws his head back and laughs out loud. “That’s not news. Louise, every town with clotheslines has a