Sean did not reply but stood there, staring at her shoes and crossed ankles. Thinking back, he was nearly certain. Lucas had stopped, frozen in time. She needed a second to position herself to make the catch, and everything on the playground ceased—swings locked in flight, a kicked ball as still as the sun, everyone a statue, and in that instant freed in time as everyone else was trapped, Norah moved so that her arm was already through the space between the bars, her other hand wrapped around a pole, her feet crooked to brace for the impact, and he saw it all, his friends poised to resume gesture, speech, act. Blink and begin again, the lucky catch, the wonder, and in the aftermath, imaginations straining against the mechanics of an illusion. When the rabbit is pulled from the empty hat, the crowd is certain it must have been there all along. But where? How does a magician deceive our senses, trick all reason? He nodded once without looking up at Mrs. Patterson's inquiring face.
Her questions asked and answered, his teacher sent him on his way. He shuffled home like an old man searching along the path, mumbling, trying to remember what he had intended to say. When he cut through the Quinns’ backyard, he dared not look up at the windows, afraid of his own sense of shame should her face appear in the panes, and when he unlocked the front door to his empty home, he felt certain he had done something wrong.
8
The mark on her face deepened from burgundy to plum, then blackened in a broad stripe tinged at the edges with a jaundice yellow. Ice first, a slab of raw steak, and then fresh air did nothing to deter the magnificent progression of hues, and Norah admired the bruise at every chance, looking at her face in the chrome toaster, the teakettle, the darkened windows, and the bathroom mirror, and she touched it often, pressing her fingertips against her cheekbone until she winced.
Margaret, too, cringed when she first saw the contusion, and lifted her hand to her own face to touch the skin stretched across the bone and assure herself the empathetic pain was real. The child's version of the playground event downplayed her own valor, briefly mentioning a boy who tripped and the collision with the cold iron bar, but Margaret, upset by the injury, paid slight heed to the particulars of her story. The first phone call came before dinner, Mrs. Ford to say thank you, requesting to speak directly to her granddaughter, and Norah wanting nothing more than to be off the phone. During dinner, another mother, Mrs. Tilghman, who wanted to know what really happened during recess, but she was dismissed with the promise to call back when they were not in the middle of a meal. Mrs. Bellagio called. Mrs. Mansur. Sharon Hopper to check on her friend. Intimations of some miraculous heroism accompanied every voice, but Norah would have none of it. “I don't know what they are talking about. You would have done the same in my shoes. If a body fell from the sky, wouldn't you hold out your arms to save it? Even if it meant a risk that you might be hurt? Suppose it was someone you love most in the world? What would you do to save her?”
“Anything.”
“Lay down your life? Mine?”
“Child, do not say such things.”
Long after they had both gone to bed, Margaret woke in agony. A bolus of pain knotted her shoulder, and she sat up, remembering her dream of Erica falling, falling like a star, and she chased the brightness with a butterfly net, well aware of the futility of her efforts. The image left her cranky and restless, so she went downstairs to hunt for a Valium stashed in her husband's study. Shortly after Paul had died, she thought to convert his office into a sewing room or a solarium but satisfied the urge by organizing his papers and pills, confirming and arranging his secrets, and allowing the rest of the room to remain as he had left it. The filing cabinets, the cherry desk, and his diplomas on the wall needed to be dusted now and again, but she ignored everything except his medical bag. There she stored her own medicines along with his stethoscope, a handful of ancient tongue depressors, an otoscope, and a small rubber hammer. She lit a lamp against the darkness and sorted through the prescription bottles, searching the labels for the friendly comfort. From the big chair, leather creaked, and she thought she saw the silk leaves of the artificial ficus stir in an imagined draft and a figure, hat in hand, pass between her and the light. She was startled by his tempered appearance. He was losing stark edges, fading in patches, as if she could no longer hold him in her vision.
“What do you think she meant by asking that ridiculous question? Sacrifice your own life, surely, but what of hers?”
“You scared me. She is an unusual, sensitive child. But not tonight, I'm tired and I have a headache.”
The chimera spoke in an insistent tone. “There is a reason Norah came here to you.”
For a moment, she considered engaging him further, but he was already weakening like a fading signal. “Let me go to bed,” she said. “I just need a little sleep. I'm going to turn off the light, and you'll disappear.”
In the blank darkness among her late husband's effects, a voice whispered. “Never forget, she isn't yours.”
9
“Who is Mary Gavin?” Diane asked. “This is my daughter, Erica Quinn. She lives here in Madrid with her daughter, Norah. The girl pointed me right to this spot.”
Maya spoke slowly, carefully. “I don't know any Erica, and I don't know any child named Norah. If that's your daughter in the photograph, she's a dead ringer for Mary.”