Stumbling through the dark, Judy closed the bathroom door and turned on the light, confirming the warm wetness between her legs in bright blooms of red. Crying out, she fell, bruising her knees on the cold marble. But physical pain could not penetrate her panicked race down the frozen trails of her heart; despair circled like a bird of prey.

“Judy!” David knocked on the bathroom door even though they’d been married for more than five years. “What is it?”

He knew what it was. How could he not know? Why did she have to say it? Flinging open the door, she stood in the glaring light and let his eyes feast on the screaming red stains on her pajama bottoms. His face reflected her misery, and as the anger subsided, she knew that words were no longer necessary. “I lost the baby,” she said anyway.

David wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Oh baby,” he whispered, and despite herself, Judy wept.

Judy and David Forman were the perfect couple with the perfect life—at least that’s what others thought. They had wealth, a huge house on the North Shore of Long Island, and an important position in the community, but their desperate struggle to have children drained their good fortune of all virtue.

Their resources were spent on doctors, operations, and medications. The fine house became a battleground where Judy daily fought her womb, and there was no social position or political advantage that could make it submit to her will.

They had expected easy success to follow their decision to have a baby, but after four years and as many miscarriages Judy had lost all faith. The first baby had died during the fourth month, and the second was gone before the end of the first trimester. Afterward, she’d given up, stopped charting her fertile times and no longer reported them to her doctors.

“What’s the point?” she cried. “I can’t bear to lose any more babies!”

But her problem was not infertility, and it wasn’t long before she was pregnant for the third time. The first trimester passed without incident and she was halfway through the second before she began to believe that she might succeed. During the fifth month, as life began to tickle her insides, her hopes soared.

Judy opened the door to the nursery again for the first time since she’d begun losing babies. Like her, the beautifully decorated room was waiting for the small soul growing beneath her breast to give it meaning. Sitting in the rocking chair holding a teddy bear in the crook of her arm with a protective hand over her belly, she whispered words of love and devotion.

A week later, that child died as well, and Judy lay weeping in her hospital bed, her uterus contracting painfully as it expelled its contents. She wondered if such a tiny spark of life could have felt any pain while dying.

The fourth pregnancy was anticlimactic. She didn’t expect the baby to live, and yet against all reason, by the fifth month, when she’d begun to feel the first flutters of life inside her, hope had been reborn. When this baby died as each of the others had, she swore never to try again.

Despite all that luck and birthright had showered on her, Judy knew she was being tested or punished in some way. God had turned his back, and her prayers, like letters stamped “return to sender,” were neither opened nor answered.

However, after years of struggle, her wish for a child finally came true. He wasn’t a child of her body; he had none of her genes. But as she accepted the three-day-old infant from the social worker and looked into his steady blue gaze, her doubts dissolved. She knew in an instant that he was her love. For the rest of her life, to the ends of time, he was her dreamed-of baby boy, an angel sent to earth to belong to her.

Danny was only two when Judy first began to worry that her life might not be as perfect as she’d imagined. It was a bright spring day and she and her son darted in and out of the pools of light dappling the landscaping. “I’m gonna get you!” she cried.

Danny shrieked with toddler glee and pushed his pudgy legs to cover more distance. Looking backward he saw his mother gaining on him and scrambled off the walk. Judy grabbed him before he could disappear behind the stand of pine trees, and tossed him up in the air.

Catching him and swinging him around, his face was so close to hers and his joy so real that she imagined she could see his cries of delight tangibly winging through the air. Gathering them in along with the smell of pine, honeysuckle, and baby sweat, she arranged them like flowers in the vase of her imagination: a keepsake for future enjoyment.

They both laughed as she held him under the arms and spun him up in the air. “My little bird. My little angel bird.” He turned his face to hers and looked into her eyes; she drew him closer, and his sweet mouth pressed softly against her lips.

“I ‘uf oo, mama,” he murmured. “I ‘uf oo.”

“I’ve heard that throwing babies in the air like that can cause brain damage.” David’s sardonic voice coming from the porch was a quick, guilt-inspiring thrust into her heart. It said: see me; pay attention to me. And Judy was nothing if not compliant. Setting Danny on his feet, she turned toward David with a big, welcoming smile.

“Well I didn’t throw him very high,” she laughed. “Come and play, David!”

“Come on, Judy. Don’t we pay out a fortune in child care just so we can spend time together on the weekends?”

Danny was pulling on her hand. “Lil bir, mama! Lil bir!”

Swinging him up to her hip, she moved closer to the porch. “Don’t you want to play with your son?”

David smiled, taking the baby from her and looking him over. “He’s not exactly a chip off the old block, is he? With black hair and blue eyes?”

Judy kissed her husband on the cheek and ruffled his light brown curls. “Looks don’t matter. The important thing is that we’re a family. That we’re together. That we love each other.”

With his free arm, David snapped his fingers in the air and caught the au pair’s eye. Then he pulled Judy closer. “That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?”

Judy nodded. “All I ever wanted was to be a great wife and mother.”

So as the girl took the baby, she smiled and let David pull her inside where they could enjoy their time together.

David’s inability to bond with their son was the first sign of trouble. The second came from Danny himself on a quiet day in autumn when the leaves settled golden on the ground.

A miracle had happened to the Formans during the preceding nine months. God had finally opened one of their letters pleading for a healthy pregnancy, and had answered, albeit a little late, with an emphatic affirmative.

Now you give me a baby? Judy thought as her eighth month came to an end. Now, when I’ve already got one? Not that she was complaining. She was thrilled to bear her daughter, Nettie, and was pleased at the timing. Danny was four when his sister was born, old enough to take an interest without being jealous.

So when Judy went inside to check on the baby, it being the au pair’s day off, she saw no problem in leaving Danny outside playing in the leaves. He was a big boy, and he seemed perfectly content. It would only take a minute.

Danny looked around at the empty yard and suddenly missed his mother tremendously. Where had she gone? One minute she was watching him kick the autumn leaves into piles and the next she had vanished. He remembered her saying something, but he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Mommy?” he called out. “You hiding?”

There was no answer. Only the wind soughing through the branches of the trees, dropping more leaves onto the ground and whipping others into swirls of color. Danny’s little soul thrilled with fear. Where was she? Running to the house, he banged on the door. “Mommy! Mommy! Where are you?”

Upstairs, Judy was changing the baby’s diaper. The one Nettie had been wearing was soaked through. Quickly, she pulled off the wet pink jumper with its flowers and fairies and replaced it with a fresh one. The wet sheet would have to wait until later. Picking up the baby, she headed down the hall toward the stairs.

Outside, Danny’s anxiety had grown logarithmically and in just a few minutes had gone from “where’s mommy?” to seeing goblins peeking out from behind the trees, and hearing a potential tornado in the voice of the wind. The pungent smell of his own fear frightened him, and he pounded harder and harder on the glass of the porch door. “Mommy! Mommy!” he screamed. “Mommy! Let me in!”

When the glass shattered he kept pounding, kept pounding as the broken shards tore into his baby flesh, kept pounding as ribbons of skin and blood circled his dimpled arms, kept pounding until his mother finally opened the inner door and screamed.

Mirror Mirror will soon be available from Llumina Press

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