Pretty Baby

Three narrators, each unreliable in different ways, tell the story of what happens when a Chicago woman's compassion for a homeless teenager spirals into obsession, deceit, and psychological crisis.

Heidi Wood works at a nonprofit literacy center in Chicago and lives in a Lincoln Park condo with her husband, Chris, an investment banker who works seventy-hour weeks, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Zoe. On a rainy April morning, Heidi notices a teenage girl on the Fullerton Station train platform, clutching an infant and a vintage leather suitcase. The girl wears torn jeans and a thin army-green coat and appears no older than sixteen. Heidi boards her train without approaching, but the image haunts her.

Over the following days, the girl reappears at the station and at the Chicago Public Library, where Heidi sees her reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to her sleeping baby. When Heidi finally encounters the girl beneath the train tracks, begging for change, she offers to buy her dinner. The girl refuses, but Heidi gives away her raincoat to protect the baby and tells the girl she will be waiting at a nearby diner. The girl shows up. She reveals her name as Willow, says the baby is called Ruby, and claims to be eighteen, though Heidi doubts it. Heidi notices a healing bruise above Willow's eye and signs of severe malnutrition. Willow refuses all offers of shelter, takes Heidi's business card and twenty dollars, and disappears.

When Willow calls the next morning, frantic because Ruby has been crying all night, Heidi rushes to meet her. She discovers Ruby has a fever, buys infant acetaminophen, and learns that Willow has nowhere else to go. Heidi brings Willow and the baby home. Chris is horrified, arguing they could be harboring a runaway, but Heidi overrides his objections. While bathing Ruby, she discovers the baby's severe diaper rash. While doing Willow's laundry, she finds blood spatters on an undershirt. Willow claims the blood is from a nosebleed, and Heidi throws the shirt away without telling Chris.

Interspersed with the present-day narrative are chapters in which Willow is interrogated by Louise Flores, an assistant state's attorney. These scenes, set after all events have concluded, reveal that Willow's real name is Claire Dalloway. She grew up outside Ogallala, Nebraska. Her mother, Holly, dreamed of visiting Chicago's Magnificent Mile. When Claire was eight, both parents died in a car accident. Claire and her two-year-old sister, Lily, were sent to a group home. Lily was adopted by the Zeeger family in Fort Collins, Colorado, and renamed Rose. Claire was placed with Joseph and Miriam Abrahamson, distant relatives of her father, outside Omaha.

Joseph, a religion professor, used biblical threats to control Claire and began sexually abusing her within a month of her arrival, threatening to harm Lily if she told anyone. He kept Claire out of school, forbade her from leaving the house, and forged reports for the caseworker. Miriam, Joseph's wife, had what Flores identifies as catatonic schizophrenia and rarely left her bedroom. Claire's sole ally was Matthew, Joseph's older biological son, who secretly brought her library books and whispered random facts outside her door at night. As Claire reached her teens, Matthew began taking her outside for the first time in years. Claire fell in love with him, and they began a secret relationship marked by tenderness that contrasted sharply with Joseph's abuse.

When Joseph discovered them together, he and his other son, Isaac, beat Matthew severely. Matthew escaped, and Joseph locked Claire in her bedroom, where the abuse continued. Eventually Matthew broke into the house, killed both Joseph and Miriam, and pushed Claire out the door with money, a packed suitcase, and a photograph of her mother, telling her to run.

Claire took a Greyhound bus, stopping in Ogallala to visit her parents' graves before continuing to Fort Collins. Watching the Zeegers' house at night, she saw Lily living well but seemingly upset by the arrival of the Zeegers' biological daughter, a baby named Calla. Convinced Calla had displaced Lily, Claire entered through an unlocked door and took the baby from her cradle. On the bus to Chicago, she met a girl also fleeing abuse who was truly named Willow Greer. They swapped identities, exchanging clothes and dyeing each other's hair. The real Willow Greer vanished at a Nebraska bus stop. Claire chose Chicago because of her mother's dream.

In the present-day narrative, Willow settles uneasily into the Wood household. Chris enlists Martin Miller, an old college friend who works as a private investigator, to identify the girl and arranges to collect her fingerprints. Zoe reacts with hostility. Heidi stays home from work for days, growing consumed by the baby. She rocks Ruby for hours, competes with Willow to hold her, and begins speaking about the child as though Ruby is her own. Heidi's fixation is rooted in deep grief: Years earlier, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer while pregnant with her second child, a baby she privately named Juliet. She was persuaded to abort the pregnancy to undergo a radical hysterectomy, and she never fully recovered from the loss of Juliet, her fertility, and later, her father.

Chris travels on business to New York and Denver. In Denver, Cassidy Knudsen, an attractive young colleague Heidi resents, visits Chris's hotel room and tries to seduce him. Chris refuses and reaffirms his love for Heidi. However, a colleague had given Chris a condom as a crude joke, and Chris pocketed it without thinking. When Heidi finds the condom in his pants while doing laundry, she interprets it as proof of an affair. In retaliatory rage, she goes next door to seduce Graham, a single freelance writer who has been a close friend and neighbor for years. Graham begins to comply, but Heidi believes she hears the baby crying and rushes back to find Ruby sound asleep. She sweeps the baby up and calls herself "Mommy."

Heidi accuses Willow of stealing her deceased father's gold wedding band and chain. Willow denies the theft, but Heidi brandishes a Swiss Army knife, orders her to leave, and threatens to call the police. When Willow reaches for the baby, Heidi blocks her, insisting the child is safer in her care. Willow whispers goodbye to Ruby and walks out into the rain. Heidi watches her go and regards the baby as "all mine" (47). In her deteriorating state, Heidi drugs Zoe with Ambien to keep her asleep at night, stops going to work, and begins calling the baby Juliet. She has fragmentary memories suggesting she may have discarded the ring and chain herself.

Chris receives a call from Martin Miller: "Willow Greer" is Claire Dalloway, wanted for questioning in the Abrahamson deaths and the kidnapping of infant Calla Zeeger. He flies home and finds Heidi topless on the sofa, pressing the screaming baby to her bare chest. Heidi insists the baby is Juliet and, when Chris reaches for the child, grabs the Swiss Army knife. Chris knocks it away, but Heidi seizes the baby and locks herself in the bedroom. Chris calls 911.

Heidi is hospitalized, restrained, and sedated. Her narration becomes fragmented, mixing hallucinations with reality. Chris visits and tells her that Zoe needs her, that he needs her. In one unreliable memory, Heidi recalls being found on a fire escape, about to lose her balance, suggesting she may have contemplated jumping with the baby.

Claire is found by police on Michigan Avenue, staring through the window of a Prada store her mother had dreamed of visiting. She is placed in juvenile detention, where she falsely confesses to killing both Joseph and Miriam to protect Matthew, knowing that as a minor she faces lesser consequences. Fingerprints on the murder weapon do not match hers, however, undermining her confession. The Zeegers decline to press kidnapping charges. Claire is placed in a group home, where she begins counseling and sees Lily twice a year in supervised visits. She acknowledges that Heidi was kind but "a little bit confused" (379). Matthew is never found, but Claire periodically receives unsigned notes containing random facts, a continuation of their childhood ritual, suggesting he is alive and thinking of her.