“I’m sure you’ll make them quite fancy indeed.”
After her nails are sloppily but exuberantly painted the terrible fuchsia, Brooklyn wants to watch some show about tiny, colorful horses. Patricia fixes herself a cup of tea while Brooklyn hunts through the TV’s onscreen guide to find it. They settle in on the couch, and the child just naturally fits herself against Patricia’s side, and Patricia just naturally puts an arm around her. This change in her—all these deep thoughts and kind instincts—she’s not sure whether it’s the shock, the exhaustion, the oxycodone, or the fact that when Patty broke out back at the urgent care, she left the door wide open for all sorts of thoughts and feelings that Patricia has kept bottled up for years. But she doesn’t mind it. Which, again, is probably thanks to the oxycodone.
It’s just so pleasant not to hurt for a little while. It makes her…nicer.
Even though everything is wrong, it’s actually not that bad.
“Mommy!” Brooklyn shouts.
“I’m Nana,” Patricia says absentmindedly as she sips her tea. “Mommy will be back soon.”
“No, Nana. That’s Mommy.”
Patricia perks up, glances around the house, wondering what she’s missed. “What’s Mommy?”
Brooklyn bounces on the couch, jarring Patricia’s leg with her excitement. If she was all exclamation points before, now she’s multiple exclamation points.
“Mommy is on TV!”
Patricia looks at the television, trying to understand what Brooklyn is talking about. There’s a commercial for some sort of odd new pro wrestling, but instead of large men with greasy hair, there are all sorts of people cavorting across the screen in a brightly lit ring. One man looks like a ghost, a handsome one looks like a banker—if Chelsea was smart, she would’ve married a man like that, Patricia can’t stop herself from thinking—another woman looks like a hula girl.
And then there’s a close-up of a blond woman screaming, her blue eyes lined in black and piercing, and Patricia feels as if someone has grabbed her heart and squeezed it out of a fist like those tomatoes Rosa used to put in her famous spaghetti sauce.
The woman on the screen—Florida Woman, by name—looks an awful lot like Chelsea.
“I don’t think that’s your mother,” Patricia says, rubbing Brooklyn’s shoulder as consolation.
“Yes it is,” Brooklyn says, no exclamation points, completely adamant and certain as only a child can be, her hands in fists and her little brow drawn stubbornly down. The scar on her forehead shines like a pink star.
“Your mother doesn’t know how to wrestle,” Patricia gently reminds her. “And I don’t think she’s the sort who would want to be in the spotlight.”
A memory brushes up against Patricia’s certainty, though—Chelsea in some strange costume with a half mask and tuxedo, Chelsea telling her about a play she can’t attend because she’s on the schedule to work at the diner, Chelsea asking to borrow pantyhose for a choir event because all hers had runs in them—and Patricia turning her down, stating that if she won’t take care of her own things, she can’t be expected to care about someone else’s.
“That’s. My. Mommy.”
Brooklyn says it like a bull about to charge, like a bomb about to blow. Patricia doesn’t think the Violence can be triggered by actual rage, but she doesn’t really know.
“I guess you’re right, then,” she says.
“We have to go find her. This is why she didn’t come get me.”
Patricia doesn’t have the heart to tell her—well, everything. How a simple request and too much pride has landed everyone out of reach. How she wishes she hadn’t turned Chelsea away, hadn’t struck her name from the list at the neighborhood gate. She’d wanted to teach her daughter a lesson, a little humility. Instead, she drove her away and…to this.
When Brooklyn is safely asleep on the couch, Patricia limps to her laptop and does several searches.
She learns that yes, scientists do believe that emotions, especially rage, can play into sparking Violence storms. And Brooklyn is right—her daughter has gotten herself oddly wrapped up in some big, dangerous TV stunt.
Patricia stares at the shiny images of Florida Woman, screaming her rage at the camera.
That’s how Patty used to feel inside, too.
It’s like looking in a mirror that shows what’s really there.
Good for her, Patricia thinks. Good for her.
45.
David may be out of jail, clean and well dressed with a good haircut again, but his entire life is still a goddamn mess. He thought he would come home to find his wife desperate and scared and suffering, ready to get back in his good graces, but the house is empty. He has no idea where his family is, he hasn’t heard from Huntley in days, and he’s fucking furious.
The tracker on Ella’s car is still pinging in the same garage, but he’s driven by that house multiple times and even got out to bang on the door and peek in the curtains, to no avail. It’s locked up tight and doesn’t seem lived in at all. When he called the police to file a missing persons report on his daughter, he went into an endless phone chain system in which a cheerful woman repeatedly told him he would receive help but he never did. He still can’t get into Patricia’s neighborhood despite approaching various guards with threats, promises, and bribes.
And Huntley needs to fucking call him back.
He feels like an idiot, sitting around with nothing to do.
Well, except go to work, because you can’t make money without money. All the other guys at the office already have their vaccines, and David tells them he has his, too, and never wears a shirt that would allow that part of his arm to show. Brian said he would set it up, but then again, Brian said his recent investments were a sure bet. Even with David’s emergency cash and savings, he has nowhere near enough to pay for it, but he’s been tested by the county twice and is staying away from mosquitoes, so he should be fine.
And even if he isn’t—shit, not like anyone’s doing anything about it. His wife—the murderer—is still on the loose, and literally no one cares. There hasn’t even been a follow-up news story. It was just five minutes of entertainment, only interesting and different from the other thousand murders that day because of the bloody Yeti cup and the old guy covered in cow shit, and because Chelsea is a hot little blond piece instead of some methed-up guy with no teeth.