“No.”
“His mother’s en route to the hospital. Two shots in the back, fuck me. Foster’s looking for the boy now. He didn’t know they were here until our paramedics found Lisa.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Can’t say if she’ll make it. Here he comes.”
Essie saw the man rushing through the shell-shocked crowd. Compact build, brown, close-cropped hair. His body jerked, sagged, then shifted direction as he ran toward his son.
In Reed’s arms, Brady let out a squeal. “Daddy!”
Michael grabbed his son from Reed, folded him in, ran kisses over his head, his face. “Brady, thank God, thank God. Are you hurt? Did anybody hurt you?”
“Mommy fell down, and I couldn’t find her. Reed found me and he said we had to be real quiet and wait for the good guys. I was real quiet like he said, even when he put me in the cupboard.”
Michael’s eyes swirled with tears when they met Reed’s. “You’re Reed?”
“Yes, sir.”
Michael shot out a hand, gripped Reed’s. “I’m never going to be able to thank you. I’ve got things to say to you, but—” He broke off as his mind cleared enough to notice the blood on Reed’s pants and shoes. “You’re hurt.”
“No. I don’t think … It’s not mine. It’s not…” Words dried up.
“Okay. Okay, Reed. Listen, I’ve got to get Brady out of here. Do you need help?”
“I have to find Chaz. I don’t know if he’s okay. I have to find him.”
“Hold on.”
Michael shifted Brady on his hip, pulled out his radio.
“I want Mommy.”
“Okay, pal, but we’re going to help Reed out.”
While Michael talked into the radio, Reed looked around. So many lights, everything bright and blurring. So much noise. Talking, shouting, crying. He saw a man, moaning, bleeding, on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. A woman wearing one shoe and with a slow trickle of blood sliding down the side of her face limped in circles, calling for Judy, until somebody in a uniform led her away.
A girl with a long brown ponytail sat on a curb talking to a police officer. She just kept shaking her head, and her eyes—like a tiger color—glinted in the whirling, swirling lights.
He saw television vans and more bright lights behind the yellow police tape. People were crowded behind the tape, some of them calling out names.
It struck him, suddenly and hard: Some of the names they called would never answer again.
He started to shake from the inside out. Gut, bowels, heart. His ears started to buzz, his vision blurred.
“Hey, Reed, how about you sit down a minute? I’m going to find out about your friend.”
“No, I need to—” He saw Chaz, coming out with a group of people, with cops moving them along. “Jesus. Jesus. Chaz!”
He shouted it, like one of the people behind the police tape, and sprinted.
*
On the curb, Simone waited to feel her legs again. To feel everything again. Her body had gone numb, like someone had given her a full-body shot of novocaine.
“Your mom and sister are okay.”
She heard Officer McVee’s words, tried to feel them. “Where are they? Where are they?”
“They’re going to bring them out soon. Your mom has some minor injuries. Minor, Simone. She’s fine. They got inside one of the shops, got to safety. Your mom got some cuts from flying glass, and hit her head. But she’s fine, okay?”
All Simone could do was shake her head. “Mom hit her head.”
“But she’s going to be fine. They got to safety, and they’re coming out soon.”
“Mi, Tish.”
She knew, she knew by the way Officer McVee put an arm around her shoulders. She couldn’t feel it, not really, just the weight.
The weight.
“Mi’s on her way to the hospital. They’re going to take good care of her, do everything they can.”
“Mi. He shot her?” Her voice spiked, stabbing her own ears. “He shot her?”
“She’s going to the hospital, and they’re waiting to take care of her.”
“I had to pee. I wasn’t there. I had to pee. Tish was there. Where’s Tish?”
“We have to wait until everyone’s out, and everyone’s accounted for.”
Simone kept shaking her head. “No, no, no. They were sitting together. I had to pee. He shot Mi. He shot her. Tish. Sitting together.”
She looked at Essie, and knew. And knowing caused her to feel again. To feel everything.
*
Reed caught Chaz in a bear hug, felt at least some of the world was right again. They stood gripping each other in front of the girl with the long brown ponytail and tiger eyes.
When she let out a wordless, keening wail, Reed dropped his head onto Chaz’s shoulder.
Inside the wail, he knew, was a name that would never answer again.
*
They couldn’t make her go home. Everything was jumbled and tangled together, but she knew she sat in a hospital waiting room on a hard plastic chair. She had a Coke in her hands.
Her sister and their father sat with her. Natalie curled against Dad, but Simone didn’t want to be held or touched.
She didn’t know how long they’d waited. A long time? Five minutes?
Other people waited, too.
She heard numbers, different numbers.
Three shooters. Eighty-six injured. Sometimes the number of injured went up, sometimes down.
Thirty-six dead. Fifty-eight.
Numbers changing, always changing.
Tish was dead. That wouldn’t change.
They had to wait in the hard chairs while somebody picked glass out of her mother’s head, and treated the cuts on her face.
She had an image of that face in her head, all those little nicks, and the face pale, pale, pale under the makeup. Her mother’s blond hair—always perfect—bloody and tangled.
They’d brought her out on one of those rolling stretcher things with Natalie clinging to her hand and crying.
Natalie didn’t get hurt because Mom had shoved her into the shop, and Mom had fallen. Natalie pulled and dragged her inside, and behind a display counter of summer tanks and tees.
Natalie was brave. Simone would tell her she was brave when she could speak again.
But now they had to get the glass out of her mother’s head, and examine her because she’d hit her head, too, and it had knocked her out for a couple minutes.
Concussion.
She knew Natalie wanted to go home because Dad kept telling her that Mom was going to be fine, and she’d be coming out soon, and they’d go home.
But Simone wouldn’t go, and they couldn’t make her.
Tish was dead, Mi was in surgery, and they couldn’t make her.
She kept the Coke can in both hands so her father wouldn’t take her hand again. She didn’t want anyone to hold her hand or cuddle her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
She just needed to wait on the hard plastic chair.
The doctor came out first, and her father surged to his feet.
Dad is so tall, Simone thought vaguely, so tall and handsome. He still wore his business suit and tie because he’d just come home from a business dinner, turned on the news.
Then he’d rushed straight out to drive to the mall.
The doctor gave her father some instructions. Minor concussion, some stitches.
When her mother came out, Simone got shakily to her feet. Until that moment she hadn’t understood she’d been afraid her mother really wasn’t okay.
Her mother would be like Mi, or worse, like Tish.
But her mother came into the waiting room. She had those weird bandages in a couple places on her face, but she didn’t look pale, pale, pale the way she had. The way Simone imagined dead people looked.
Natalie leaped up, flung her arms around their mother.
“There’s my brave girl,” Tulip murmured. “My brave girls,” she said, reaching out for Simone.
And finally Simone wanted to be touched, wanted to hold and to be held. She wrapped her arms around her mother with Natalie between.
“I’m okay, a bump on the head. Let’s take our girls home, Ward.”
Simone heard the tears in her mother’s voice, clung tighter for one more moment. And closed her eyes when her father wrapped his arms around the three of them.
“I’ll go get the car.”
Simone pulled back. “I’m not going. I’m not going home now.”