Free The Last to Know by Wendy Corsi Staub Page B

finally asleep. He must be cutting a tooth , she thinks, stepping around the double baby stroller with the broken wheel Joel has been planning to fix for months now.
    Poor little Max. If it isn’t a tooth, something’s been making him cranky. Maybe he’s picking up on Tasha’s anxiety over Jane Kendall’s disappearance.
    He wept so pitifully when she put him into his crib that she couldn’t bear to leave him there to fall asleep on his own. Joel would probably say she was spoiling him, but she had taken him out and sat in the rocker by the window, rocking him for almost an hour. Even then, he seemed a little fussy.
    Finally, she gave him some Tylenol and put him back into the crib. He whimpered, but moments later he was silent, meaning either he finally wore himself out, or he really has been in pain from teething.
    Now she has only Victoria to contend with for the next hour or so.
    Victoria, and enough laundry to clothe an island nation.
    She sorts it by color on the concrete basement floor, then stuffs all the towels she can fit into the washer. There are still half a dozen left over. When was the last time she did laundry? How does she manage to let household tasks like this get away from her these days?
    There was a time when her every waking moment felt productive—when she sewed, wallpapered, and cooked dinners made from recipes in The Joy of Cooking . Now, she’s lucky if she has a minute to run into the bathroom and pee.
    She dumps a capful of detergent into the washing machine, closes the lid, and pulls the knob.
    Nothing happens.
    Frowning, she pushes in the knob, then pulls it out again.
    No accompanying sound of water pouring into the machine.
    She opens the lid. Peers inside. Closes it. Pushes and pulls the knob again.
    Nothing.
    She hears pattering footsteps overhead, and then a voice calls down from the kitchen.
    “Mommy?”
    “What’s the matter, Victoria?”
    “You said you would do my puzzle with me.”
    “I will. In a minute.”
    “What are you doing?” Victoria wants to know. Now she’s on the basement steps.
    “Get back up there, Victoria. You only have socks on, and it’s dirty down here.”
    “Well, when are you coming up to do my puzzle with me?”
    “As soon as I figure out why the washing machine won’t start.” Tasha jiggles the plug, making sure it’s firmly inserted into the wall socket. It is.
    Now what?
    Why can’t this have happened when Joel is home?
    Well, she can’t wait until he gets back tonight. Who knows when that will be?
    She considers calling him at the office to ask, then quickly dismisses the idea. He still hasn’t returned the message she left this morning. He doesn’t even know that Jane Kendall is missing.
    Well, when he calls back, she can tell him about that and about the broken washing machine.
    But in the meantime, she’ll have to check the booklet that came with the machine when they bought it. She keeps all that stuff in a drawer upstairs. With a sigh she goes up the steps, hoping the booklet will have one of those troubleshooting charts and an easily remedied explanation for why the washing machine refuses to work.
    Victoria is standing on the second step from the top. Her face is smeared with something brown.
    “What is that?” Tasha scoops her up and sets her on her feet in the kitchen. “What did you get into?”
    “Nothing,” Victoria says, swiping at her mouth with the sleeve of the white shirt she’s wearing under the pink overalls that are still spattered with dried juice stains from this morning.
    Great. More stuff to wash in the machine that doesn’t work.
    Tasha glances around, searching for the source of the mud-colored ooze her daughter is sporting. Her gaze falls on the fridge. The door is open. On the floor in front of it, a plastic bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup lies on its side, the contents pooled across the pale yellow linoleum.
    “Victoria! What did you do?”
    “You weren’t here, Mommy, and I was