Vera claimed her hand and wouldn’t give it up. She smiled sadly at her granddaughter before speaking. “It could be you.”
“Me?” she said softly, touching her chest as if the continued beating of her heart stood in denial. “It could be me?”
“It’s not you,” Lynn said through her teeth, and moved toward Vera. “And damn you for saying such a thing to her.”
Stebbs yanked her back by the shoulder. “Easy now. Getting angry ain’t helping.”
“Neither is saying a bunch of bullshit,” Lynn spat.
“I wouldn’t think it, much less say it, if there weren’t a chance it was true,” Vera said. “She was with the sick and the well as much as Carter. She was with Maddy. I can’t condemn him without questioning her.”
Lynn struggled out of Stebbs’ grip and kicked the wall, but held her silence. Vera turned to Lucy.
“Sweetheart, has there been anything, any headache, fever, back pain? Anything at all out of the ordinary you can think of, before Maddy died?”
Lucy shook her head slowly, her mind poring over the hours and days before her friend’s death. “No . . . I . . . I don’t think so.”
Images of Maddy flickered through her brain—her friend in a painful coil under the bedspread, her dead body lying at the bottom of the pit. She took a ragged breath, and Adam’s tiny smile flooded her thoughts along with Carter’s slumped body at Vera’s table as he wept for his fate.
“Say it’s not me, Grandma,” she begged, clutching Vera’s hand so tightly her nails left crescent cuts that filled with blood. “Say I didn’t do it to them.”
Vera’s soft, cool hand trailed over her hair. “I can’t tell you for sure. I’m sorry.”
Lucy fell forward onto Vera, burying her head in her lap and sobbing as Carter had, with no hope and nothing left but pain. Vera clasped her arms around her granddaughter and cried as well.
“So what’s it mean?” Lynn asked Stebbs, her mouth a hard line.
“That’s what we’re here to talk about, kiddo.”
Lucy touched her throat as the shot of whiskey Lynn had given her burned down. She imagined it drowning out the virus that might be living in her veins, purifying her blood in a surge of alcohol. But it wasn’t that easy.
They had moved to the kitchen at Vera’s insistence. Her grandmother had washed Lucy’s face and put a cold rag across her swollen eyes, while Lynn and Stebbs had shared a glance and uncorked a bottle of whiskey for everyone. It was Lucy’s first taste of alcohol and she had sputtered, spraying droplets across the table that Vera wouldn’t allow Lynn to clean up.
“I won’t believe it’s her,” Lynn said again. “The boy admitted to having a headache the day before his sister got sick. It has to be him. I’ve been with Lucy as much as anyone, and I’m not sick.”
“It’s likely you’re right,” Vera conceded. “But there are other factors to consider.”
“Like what?” Lucy asked.
“When I brought Carter’s mom over to the cabin to break the news to her,” Stebbs said, “she went biblical—fell to the floor, gnashed her teeth . . . it was all Vera could do to keep her from harming her own self, which wasn’t exactly helpful.”
“Monica’s never been one for helpful,” Lynn said.
Stebbs shook his head. “Once we got her calmed down, we told her the boy would have to go. He took the news better than she did, I’ll say that. She broke down all over again, said she’d lost her daughter and now we was taking her son away. So Vera told her she could always go with him.”
“What’d she say?” Lucy asked.
“Exactly what you’d expect her to say,” Vera answered. “No.”
“She cut him loose?” Lynn asked.
“She’s not made of strong stuff,” Stebbs said. “Even if she had gone with him, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help to the boy.”
Lucy imagined poor Carter standing in a corner of Vera’s house, his mother rejecting him in favor of her own comfort. “Maybe she would’ve been,” Lucy agreed, “but now he’ll be alone.”
“What’s this got to do with us?” Lynn asked.
“When I explained to Monica why I suspected it was her son infecting the second wave of victims, she came to the same conclusion I had,” Vera said. “She knew you and Carter had been working together during the epidemic.”
“So she knows it could be Lucy,” Lynn said, guessing the end before Vera could come to it, “and she’s not likely to keep her mouth shut about it, with you two kicking her son out.”
Stebbs nodded. “Monica’s a coward, but not stupid.”
The warm spot the whiskey had formed in Lucy’s stomach had managed to calm her a little, and the exhaustion from hours of crying had lulled her into a stupor while the adults talked. But Lynn’s words brought a spike of cold fear bursting through the warmth.