Julia stepped back.
Ellie went to her sister, put an arm around her. Julia felt frail and too thin suddenly, like someone who has been hospitalized for a long time and had only recently gotten out of bed. Max came up, too; they bookended her. Without their steadying presence, Ellie thought her sister might collapse.
George got into his car and drove away. Dr. Correll followed.
For a few moments their tires crunched on the gravel driveway, their engines purred. Then there was no sound left, no trace of them.
Just the wind.
“She cried,” Julia whispered, her whole body trembling. “All the love I gave her … and in the end all I did was teach her to cry.”
Max pulled Julia into his arms and held her tightly. There was nothing more they could say.
Alice was gone.
She is in a car.
But it is not the kind of car she knows. This one is low—almost on the ground—and it darts around like a snake. The music is so loud it hurts her ears.
She opens her eyes slowly. She feels funny, kind of wobbly and sick and tired. Her stomach might throw everything out her mouth if she’s not careful. Wetting her dry lips, she looks around for Jewlee or LEllie.
They are not here.
She feels the panic start deep inside her and blossom out. The only thing that stops her from screaming is how tired she is. She can’t seem to make a big noise. (He can probably hear her heartbeat. It is so loud he will probably yell at her. She covers her heart with her hand to quiet the sound.)
“Jewlee?” she says to the man.
“She’s back in Rain Valley. We’re long gone. But you’re with me now, Brittany, and everything will be good.”
She doesn’t understand all his words. But she knows gone. Her eyes start watering. It hurts, this crying. She wipes the tears away, surprised a little that they are clear. They should be red as her blood; that’s how it feels. As if she has been poked with the sharp knife again and is bleeding. She remembers bleeding. “Jewlee Mommy gone. Alice bad girl.”
The man looks at her. He is frowning. She knows he will hit her now, but she doesn’t care. Jewlee can’t make it all better anymore.
Just thinking it makes her eyes water more. She starts howling, softly, though she knows there is no one to hear. She is too far from her place. Her howling grows louder, more desperate.
“Brittany?”
She says nothing. The only way to protect herself is in the quiet. She has no one to care for her anymore so she needs to be small and still.
She closes her eyes, lets the sleep come for her again. It is better to dream of Jewlee, to pretend. In her dreams she is a good girl and has a Jewlee Mommy to love her.
Sometime later—Julia had no idea when; she’d lost her grip on time—she sent Max downstairs and Ellie back to work. They’d both been smothering her all day, trying to offer a comfort that didn’t exist. Frankly, it took all her strength, every bit she had, to stay here and not scream until she was hoarse. She couldn’t let herself look at the people she loved—and who loved her. All of it just made her think of Alice.
She stared out the bedroom window at the empty yard.
Birds.
Come spring, those birds would come looking for Alice.…
Behind her the dogs chuffed softly to one another; they’d spent almost an hour looking for their girl. Now they were quiet, lying beside Alice’s bed, waiting for her return. Every now and then howls would fill the air.
Julia glanced down at her watch and thought about how long they’d been gone. A few hours, and already it felt like a lifetime.
It was five-thirty. They would be nearing the city now. The majestic green of Alice’s beloved forest would have given way to the gray of concrete. She would feel as alien there as any space traveler. Without her, the little girl would regress, retreat once more into her frightened and silent world. Her fear would be too big to handle.
“Please, God,” she whispered aloud, praying again for the first time in years, “take care of my girl. Don’t let her hurt herself.”
She turned away from the window … and saw the potted plants. Before Alice, those plants had been separate, placed as they’d been in various places throughout the house. Now they were the forest, the hiding place.
She knew she should stay where she was, keep her distance, but she couldn’t do it. She walked over to the plants, stroked their glossy green leaves. “You’ll miss her, too,” she said throatily, not caring that she was talking to plants. It didn’t matter now if she went a little crazy. She wasn’t Dr. Cates now. She was just an ordinary woman missing an extraordinary girl.
It was almost six now. They were probably on the floating bridge, crossing Lake Washington, nearing Mercer Island; Alice would see the snowcapped mountains in the distance and see where she’d come from. The air would smell different, too; of smog and cars and the tamed blue sound.