The Changeling: A Novel

The novel flashes back to the previous day, following Emma as she returns to work. She sees a message from Apollo with photos of Brian sleeping in a basement. Emma asks why he is sleeping there. On her way to work, she misses Brian so much that she starts to cry.

At the library, Emma shares photos of Brian with her coworkers, who offer advice on parenthood. Emma gets another set of photos, this time showing Apollo and Brian out on a driveway. Emma wonders why Apollo placed Brian on the ground. Later, she wonders who took their picture. She tries to look at the photo again, but it has vanished from her phone.

Apollo and Brian meet Patrice at a computer shop. Brian soils his diaper, scaring off the other patrons. Patrice is appreciative since this expedites his purchases. Apollo suggests that Patrice should try parenthood, then regrets saying it, though Patrice doesn’t mind. Later, as they peruse the bookshelves of The Strand, Patrice apologizes about leaving the previous estate sale before Apollo returned from the basement. Apollo says he didn’t find anything valuable at the sale.

Apollo and Brian return home to find that Emma has installed blackout curtains all over the apartment. Although they had agreed to start sleep training later, Emma couldn’t pass up on what an online message board claimed were the best quality curtains in town. Apollo asks how much they were, and Emma retorts by asking why he had placed Brian on the ground. Apollo wonders how Emma knew that. When she tries to tell him about the photos, they look through her phone and find that they have once again disappeared. Emma is upset that Apollo doesn’t believe her.

Later, Apollo reassures her by promising to have someone install a door for Brian’s room. Brian falls asleep in the kitchen. Emma and Apollo retire to their room. While they are all asleep, Emma’s phone receives a new message.

Lillian comes to babysit Brian while Apollo and Emma go out on a date night. Apollo is pleased by the sight of his mother and son together, and he takes pictures of them.

Apollo and Emma go to see a movie, but they leave halfway through for dinner. They end up at a pizza place near the restaurant where they had their first date. They squeeze in a water taxi tour down the East River before going home; Emma is happy.

That night, Apollo has his childhood nightmare of the man who pulls off his featureless face to reveal that he is his father. Apollo jolts out of his dream, remembering he is no longer a young boy.

Six months after baby Brian’s birth, Kim visits Emma for a checkup. She is shocked by the state of her sister, whom she hasn’t heard from in a week. Emma is on edge, and she says she has stopped looking at her phone; she also says that Apollo has stopped sleeping out of fear of his recurring nightmare. Kim tries to suggest sleeping medication, but Emma disregards her. Kim cannot see Brian because he is out with Apollo.

Kim follows Emma to a building, where Emma looks for someone who she has heard of on the message boards. When Emma specifies that she was sent by Cal, a woman gives Emma a tote bag with chains and a bike lock.

Kim tries to placate her younger sister by telling her the story of something that had happened to them in 1988. Emma knows the story—it is about the day that their house burned down and killed their parents.

Kim promises to tell the truth this time: She says their mother had allowed them to skip school, which angered their father. Kim and Emma spent most of the day watching television, but sometime after lunch, while they were sleeping, their father came to rescue them because the house was on fire. They learned that their mother had started the fire. Their mother then grabbed Emma, wanting her daughters to die with her so they wouldn’t have to live as orphans. Their parents had been arguing when the young Emma urged her mother to release her. Their mother obeyed, allowing their father to evacuate them. He then returned into the house to die with their mother.

Kim explains that she never intended to tell Emma the truth, but she reconsidered because Emma’s exhaustion mirrors the look on their mother’s face the day she died. Emma confesses that she isn’t sure that Brian is her son. Kim understands the psychology behind what she is saying and tries to console her. Emma explains that she wanted to get chains to secure their fire escape, which is attached to Brian’s room. Kim promises that she will get Apollo to install them.

On Kim’s suggestion, Emma starts taking antidepressants. Apollo, on the other hand, feels anxious about how long his book appraisal is taking. He allays his anxieties by taking more photos of Brian for Facebook.

One morning, Emma reveals that she has made an appointment for Brian to be baptized that same day. Emma wants to get Brian baptized because the message boards she reads had suggested turning to religion as a solution. Emma doesn’t feel like she and Apollo can talk about what is happening to her. She has been getting more photos of Brian and Apollo from the unknown photographer, and the latest one was sent with the caption, “GOT HIM.” The only thing that upsets Apollo, however, is the way Emma keeps referring to Brian as “the child.” Apollo accuses Emma of being the problem. Emma leaves the house in anger, without her keys, and Apollo locks the door after her. Later, Apollo reassures Brian, saying, “No matter what happens […] you’re coming with me” (119).

That night, Apollo wakes up chained to the steam pipe in the apartment; he struggles to come back to his senses, likely because he has been drugged. He notices a claw hammer and a carving knife nearby, and rat poison scattered all over the floor. He hears incessant screaming, and slowly realizes that the noise is actually coming from a whistling kettle on the stove.

Apollo is distraught and calls for Emma and Brian, worried about them. He remembers that he locked Emma out of the house and thinks that only he and Brian must face whatever is happening. Then, he hears someone coming out of Brian’s room, and he watches in fear and anticipation as he struggles uselessly against his bonds. He can hear Brian wailing loudly in his room. To his shock, he sees that the person is Emma. Apollo cannot get Emma’s attention—she seems to be in a trance. She picks up the kettle full of boiling water, holding it on her palm, not seeming to feel the hot metal sear her skin.

Apollo acknowledges that he has been too hard on Emma before pleading with her to release him so he can check on Brian. In response, Emma takes the claw hammer from the counter and hits him hard in the face with it. Through the intense pain, Apollo begs her not to hurt his baby. Emma continues to walk with the kettle toward Brian’s room, and right before Apollo passes out, he hears her say, “It’s not a baby” (128).

The novel jumps forward three months to show that Apollo has recovered from his injuries after extensive surgery. He has been incarcerated on Rikers Island after holding Emma’s coworkers at gunpoint to find out where she went. Two months into his incarceration, Apollo is granted an early release. He dreads having to return to his apartment, which he hasn’t entered since Brian died.

Apollo returns to the park where he used to take Brian. The New Dads cautiously acknowledge him, but they ask him to leave—they know about his incarceration and his violent behaviors. Apollo is upset, and when they tell him that they are just being good fathers, Apollo declares that was all he wanted to be, as well.

While waiting to meet with his parole officer, Apollo falls asleep in the laundry room of his apartment building since he doesn’t want to go inside his apartment. Fabian, the building’s superintendent, wakes him up. He tells Apollo that he is lucky he didn’t spend more time in prison, and Apollo explains that his mother got him a good lawyer. Fabian was the one who rescued Apollo after Brian died. He explains that he had checked in on them because of the smell that was coming from Apollo’s apartment. He describes how he’d found Apollo and Brian: Fabian was convinced that Apollo was dead because he was injured so badly, and then he’d gone into the room and found the baby. Fabian is disturbed when he recalls the sight of the dead baby, and he tells Apollo that he prays for baby Brian in church every week.

Per his parole requirements, Apollo joins a therapy group that calls themselves the Survivors. Apollo talks about the lack of closure around Brian’s death. His grief caused him to take Emma’s coworkers hostage. He says that if he had found Emma, he would have killed her before dying by suicide.

Apollo feels guilty about what he had shared with the Survivors. When he finally enters his apartment, he notices reminders of the morning Brian died, such as the claw hammer and a police sign sealing off Brian’s room. Apollo showers, and then he pulls off the comforter from his bed and takes it to the living room, where he sleeps.

Apollo visits Patrice and Patrice’s partner, Dana, at their apartment. Apollo expresses his surprise that they live in a basement, considering Patrice’s fear of basements. However, after Apollo realizes that Dana knows nothing about this, Apollo pretends that he meant that Patrice is afraid of commitment, instead.

Apollo gives Patrice his rare copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Patrice immediately recognizes its value, but Apollo explains that he no longer needs the money to look after his family. Patrice affirms their friendship by recalling the time Apollo had invited him to an estate sale instead of asking him about his military service. Patrice cautions Apollo against dying by suicide, threatening to destroy the book if he does. He comforts Apollo, telling him to wait until they learn how much money Patrice can fetch for the book.

Apollo goes home to find someone in the kitchen. He initially thinks that Emma has returned, but it is only Lillian. Dana had called her to check up on Apollo. Lillian urges Apollo to visit Brian’s grave with her. Apollo says he isn’t ready to go. Lillian tries to console him with stories about her migration from Uganda, but Apollo has already heard them. Lillian goes to sleep in his room. Apollo appreciates Patrice and Dana’s concern for him.

Apollo reenters Brian’s room for the first time, inspecting the broken window that Emma used to escape. Considering that Apollo had locked her out after their fight, her entry method remains a mystery. Apollo remembers the moment Brian had been born and how it had bonded the three of them in a manner reminiscent of a fairy tale.

Lillian finds Apollo in Brian’s room and prompts him to clean it up. Apollo picks up his old copy of Outside Over There, which he had never read to Brian. Apollo remembers echoing the words from his dream to Brian. He tells Lillian that his old dream returned after Brian was born, which prompts Lillian to say that she has something important to tell him.

Though Apollo doesn’t want to listen, Lillian explains that when he was four, she was working at a law firm where an attorney named Charles Blackwood became attracted to her. Despite his many advances, Lillian rejected Charles, claiming that she already had a boyfriend. He retaliated by forcing her to work on weekends. One weekend, Lillian couldn’t arrange childcare for Apollo so she left him home by himself; she was relieved to find that Apollo had managed to take care of himself until she returned. Lillian continued working weekends until Apollo started to complain about his nightmares, claiming that his father had come to get him but had left him behind, instead. 

Lillian then explains that Apollo’s dream was, in fact, a memory. Brian West had actually come to the apartment. She came home one afternoon and was shocked to see him there with Apollo, so she sent him away. Apollo is upset, asking why she did that and why she wanted to leave his father. Lillian explains that she was disappointed with Brian, especially after he lost his job and would not help even with household tasks. Apollo expresses his resentment toward Lillian for choosing to leave his father; he says his father’s absence caused his self-hatred and left him stumbling through fatherhood. Lillian is upset and decides to leave, giving Apollo the address to Brian’s cemetery.

Apollo goes to the church where Brian would have been baptized. He approaches the parish priest, Father Hagen, who immediately recalls Emma’s appointment. Father Hagen had asked the Survivors to meet at his church that day so that he could express his condolences.

During the meeting, Apollo discusses his relationship to Outside Over There. The Survivors comment on how scary the book sounds. Just then, Apollo gets a text from Patrice saying he has found a buyer for the To Kill a Mockingbird book. Somehow, Patrice knows he is at church, causing Apollo to wonder if the buyer is there at the meeting.

A woman shares that she had seen a photograph of her daughter on her laptop. She is unsure who had taken the photo. Father Hagen tries to dismiss the event as a coincidence, but the woman goes on, detailing her horror over the idea that someone was watching her daughter. She adds that when she would try to show the photos to her husband, they would disappear. So, she printed one as evidence as soon as she had got it. However, the more the woman looked at the photo, the more she understood that it wasn’t her daughter in the photo. She expressed this idea to her husband, who told her to take her medication. Instead, she reached out to a group she refers to as “the mothers” or “wise ones.” A person named Cal was helping her with how to save her daughter.

This story upsets Apollo and he declares that the woman is about to kill her baby. The woman cries, saying, “It’s not a baby” (176).

A newcomer at the Survivors’ meeting follows Apollo and introduces himself as William Wheeler, the man interested in buying the Mockingbird book. They decide to get coffee together and walk past the church, where medics and police officers are escorting the woman away from the building.

William sheepishly reveals that To Kill a Mockingbird is one of his favorite books. Apollo assures him that many book collectors aren’t actually readers. He shares how he had come across the book and his previous intentions for selling it. William shares photos of his family with Apollo, but he accidentally reveals that he had taken a video of the woman at the meeting talking about her daughter’s photos. He offers to delete it, but Apollo listens closely to what the woman had said. Apollo and William try to figure out who the woman had been referring to by “Cal” and the “wise ones.” William looks the phrase up online and traces it to a book about witches.