It was funny, Eliza thought, how many more pregnant women you notice when you yourself were sporting a belly that could get you arrested under suspicion of shoplifting watermelons. Everywhere she went, she took note of women with a more rounded form, a slight waddle to their walk, and that tell-tale hand on their lower back whenever they stopped to take a breather. It seemed like they were everywhere. Eliza had learned how to approximate how far along a woman was. A slight puffiness could be first trimester, or a recent birth, or even a need for a few extra hours at the gym. Taut roundness that most would describe as “cute” was second trimester. Large, distended bellies that seemed to defy gravity were third trimester, and that coupled with a look of sheer agony usually meant “due-any-day-now.”
Eliza always took note of the “due-any-day-now” women.
Eliza also learned that people seemed to love petting pregnant women. She was constantly on guard for people trying to reach out and pat her. Not only was it unnerving, but it also put her at risk for her secret slipping out. Her best defense, she realized, was to make sure that whenever she was hunting, she made sure to grab a cart to shield her belly. She would lean heavily on the handle, as if she could not bear to support her own weight and that of her belly, making it impossible for anyone to reach her abdomen.
Eliza went hunting a lot.
At first she went to high-end baby furniture stores, but she soon learned that the women who frequented them were the sort to have nice homes with security gates and alarms on their houses. People at discount stores were the wrong sort, largely uneducated and from shallow gene pools. After a while she settled on malls with stores that sold baby clothes exclusively, where the clientele tended to be middle class. She had to rotate through a few spots; she realized early on that the staff at those sorts of places tended to remember their customers, and Eliza did not want to be remembered. She’d dyed her hair a nondescript mouse-brown, and had made a point of wearing boring clothes. When she went, she would make purchases but avoid conversations about what she was having or what her nursery theme was. “I’m going to wait,” she’d reply to queries about gender, “and I don’t want to decorate the nursery until I know what we’re having. The baby will share our room at first, anyway.”
People always accepted that response.
Eliza had learned early on to not give an actual date when she was asked when she was due. “Not soon enough,” was a response that sufficed and avoided any awkwardness should she return to a hunting ground again. Once, she was recognized by a clerk. “Wow,” the girl had said. “I thought you were ready to go any day when I saw you three months ago!” Strangers had turned to stare. “Oh,” Eliza had said with a strained laugh, “twins’ll do that to you.”
Nobody ever saw that clerk again, and Eliza never returned to that mall.
The plan had taken years to develop. At first, Eliza intended on being in the right place at the right time: a woman would go into labor, and Eliza would offer to drive her to the hospital. She’d learned after about two years that that sort of thing only happened on made-for-TV movies. Her next plan was to make a friend, but she soon realized that the more visible she was in someone’s life, the more likely she would be suspected in the end. She finally settled on stalking, and had been hunting for a suitable candidate for almost a year now.
You couldn’t pick just anyone as the mother of your child.
Eliza finally settled on a set of criteria that had to be met: blonde hair, articulate, well-dressed, single. The woman had to be kind; anyone who did not return Eliza’s smiles was automatically out. So was any woman who did not also visit the bookstore on the way out of the mall. Eliza also watched the food courts to make sure that anyone she was considering seriously ate healthy foods and avoided the pretzel place where every item offered had at least half its calories from fat.
After all, if you’re hiding with a newborn, you want to make sure it’s a healthy one.
When Eliza finally found the perfect candidate, she was almost too surprised to act. She was standing in line behind her at the book store, and had said, “Oh, you’re going at it alone, too. I feel so much better knowing I’m not the only one.” She was a bit chatty, but in the next ten minutes, Eliza learned that Jenn had just finished her PhD, had lost her boyfriend shortly afterward, and taught yoga on the weekends. She lived alone in an apartment complex that she’d just moved in to three weeks ago.
It’s amazing, what people will tell strangers.
All it took was an offer of a ride home and Eliza had her quarry trapped. The deed itself was messier than Eliza had envisioned; she’d been practicing on feral cats, but a pregnant woman was much larger. She hadn’t anticipated the muscles being that thick. Eliza regretted that her initial plan hadn’t worked; it would have been so much better for the baby. After a half hour struggle, she broke through the final barrier and, with a gush of liquid, pulled free her child. She held him up and regarded him with joy for one perfect moment, and then dropped him in shock.
That’s when Eliza noticed the title of the book her victim had purchased: Down Syndrome: The First 18 Months.