Rafe returned quickly with a new hospital gown and a blanket, which he wrapped around me. Though I was still feigning unconsciousness, he spoke to me as he unbolted my chain, scooped me in his arms, and angled me up the stairs.
“I’m going to take you to a friend of mine. He’ll make it all better. You’ll be fine. In just no time at all. Like nothing ever happened. It’s going to be fine. Maisie, I’ve got you. You’ll see.”
In answer, I squeezed my rag harder, my blood dripping down my arm onto Rafe’s jacket.
“Go get the cot!” he yelled to Coulton. “We’ll strap her to it, strap her in the van.” While Coulton did, Rafe carried me outside to where a cargo van, the same one I had seen in Coeurs Crossing, sat waiting. I inhaled my first fresh air in months. The action quickly set me coughing: the van was still running, exhaust fugging from its tail.
“She’s moving!” said Rafe. “Thank God.”
The inside of the van was clean and quiet. My cot was secured to several ropes against the walls, and I was strapped in with a belt, tightened so that I would not jostle. After conferring, they decided that Rafe would be the one to drive me, while Coulton stayed to clean my mess and any sign of my captivity, on the chance Rafe’s doctor friend could not be trusted.
Then we were off. I counted the van’s turns, unsure of how far we’d be going, afraid to put my plan in action too soon and have it all come to naught. After we’d been driving smoothly for a bit on what I thought to be a highway, I wiggled my good arm out from its strap, and with all of the strength I could summon, I banged on the side of the van.
“Maisie?” Rafe turned briefly, twice, to see me.
“Rafe,” I moaned. “Rafe, the straps are too tight. My hand, Rafe, I think it might . . .”
“Thank God you’re up, I’m going to get you to—”
“Please, the straps . . .” I let my voice trail off, needing him to think me even weaker and more tired than I was. “Can we please?”
Rafe pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the van, and came around to the back door. A burst of energy shot through me, nerves and anticipation combatting my pain. I let out a moan of desperation, at first calculated and then all too real as the immensity of what I was about to do finally hit me.
I felt Rafe’s weight as he climbed into the van, could smell his aftershave and sweat as he knelt over me. “Let’s see here . . .” His breath was hot. “Where does it—” Rafe began, but before he could finish, my hand darted out to brush his neck.
He keeled forward and I tried to squirm away, but there was nowhere to go. His corpse fell over me, his eyes open wide, moving, glassy, toward my own. Fighting a scream, I bit down on my lower lip. Rafe’s chin touched my jawline. He twitched, was still, twitched again.
It was as if Rafe knew, in his constant resurrection, what was happening. His hand grasped my throat, choking me, tightening, it seemed, as his life flowed and ebbed. I coughed. I couldn’t breathe.
And then, as failure flashed through me, I found one last burst of strength. With a roar, I thrust my bony knee into his groin, then bit down hard on the arm, which had jerked from my neck to my jaw in surprise. I tasted blood through the canvas of his jumpsuit. Taking advantage of the distraction caused by this fresh pain, I pressed my hand to his neck, rolling him off me.
And then Rafe was finished, fully dead, his body slumped across the floor.
I knew I had to move quickly. I undid my straps and relieved Rafe of his jacket, which was thankfully long enough to fall just past my knees. I took the sheet that I’d been lying on, stiff with dried blood, and draped it over Rafe’s body. I was about to jump out of the van, onto the gravel of the road that we’d been traveling, but could not resist a last look at my captor. I turned back. One of Rafe’s shoes was visible, not quite covered by the sheet, a glob of chewing gum stuck between the treads of the sole. The adrenaline propelling me fell away. I sank to my knees in the back of the van.
As a little girl I’d tripped and fallen in the dirt and a rock had lodged itself in my shin. I was on the back terrace. I stood and went inside, certain I was fine. Perhaps I felt a trickle of wet against my calf, and thought it was water. It was not until Mrs. Blott gasped and told me to move off the carpet that I looked down to see the injury, the black stone under the skin, the rivulets of blood. I screamed, and it was as if my scream unleashed the pain I’d been holding at bay. I still remembered it, the glance, the rock, the onslaught. I stood and took several, shaky steps toward Rafe’s body.
I could close my eyes, I knew, succumb to lack of sleep and blood loss, put this moment away as if it had been a dream. Keep walking—as I might have on that carpet, ignoring Mrs. Blott’s shock—and laugh and say that what I could not see couldn’t hurt me. If I did not dwell on the damage, I could ignore it. Only acknowledgment would break the wall that blockaded my pain. I might feel Rafe just as a twinge in stormy weather, a phantom passing through my thoughts before sleep.
But I had killed him. I had killed him on purpose. It hardly mattered what Rafe had done: he was a man who had been living, and now wasn’t. All life, despite the workings of the consciousness it harbored, had its own intrinsic value: Rafe’s heart pumped on oblivious to its master’s intentions, its beat a force of beauty. Peter had not raised me with religion, but he’d taught me that much. I owed Rafe’s life my memory, I owed it my pain. I stretched my bandaged arm back, the gesture futile, as Rafe was too far away for me to touch him, as I knew I could not touch him even if he had been closer. Whatever slight scab had begun to form on my arm ripped free, and two careful drops of blood fell onto the floor. I pulled myself away, tripping out of the van, my arm bleeding freely, and blinked out at the limp countryside, the hazy sheet of summer sky.
SOMEHOW, I FOUND a phone booth. Somehow, I found the proper change in the pocket of Rafe’s stolen jacket. Aware of the strange glances I was getting from the few people who passed me, I quickly dialed the first number that came into my mind, catching myself just before I pressed the final digit, saving myself a wasted call. Mrs. Blott would not be home to answer, Abingdon the cat was not home to mew suspiciously at the old-fashioned wall telephone that rang in her kitchen.
There was only one phone number, other than my own, I’d committed to memory. I’d seen it taped to the refrigerator, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, for four days at Urizon. I’d seen it written in black marker on a little girl’s lone glove.
I MADE THE call and then sat on the curb beside the phone booth to wait. I was half naked and shaking, covered in blood, passing in and out of consciousness. A woman knelt next to me, offering help, and I waved her off, my words incomprehensible. Matthew pulled up just as I heard the first murmur of police sirens.
I slumped into the front seat, no mind to the mess I brought with me, the cool plastic a relief against my bare legs.
“Where is he?” Matthew growled.
I shook my head, unable to keep my eyes open.
“Rafe will pay for this, I promise.” Matthew slammed the door shut and we sped off, away from the blinking lights, the gathering crowd. “I’ll make him pay.”
Before I fell asleep, I whispered, “Rafe is gone.”
Part
V
Symmetry and Balance