She wipes her filthy hands off on the jacket she finds on the passenger seat, then opens the glove box, checks the center console, reaches under the driver’s seat. She finds three hundred dollars, more quarters than anyone needs in this day and age, and a stubby, evil-looking black gun in a Velcro holster. In the spare area behind the seats, there’s a tackle box full of lures, weights, line, and, yes, zip ties, plus a knife. There’s also a microfiber cloth and a bottle of Armor All, and as much as she hates doing it, she sprays her hands and cleans them off as best she can, knowing that anyone who sees all that blood will call the cops for sure. She also finds the truck’s manual and oil change records, but that’s not nearly as useful. And there, clipped to the dashboard, the old man’s phone.
Chelsea goes inside the store and uses his money to buy baby wipes, a bottle of Gatorade, and some candy to make her body stop freaking out, and then searches the phone’s map app for the nearest fairground. It’s fifteen minutes away. She sticks the phone in a cup holder and starts driving.
She won’t let herself think of Jeanie now. Sweet, earnest Jeanie, who was just trying to find a job and help a friend.
If anyone knows what the Violence can do, it’s Jeanie.
They were so careful not to ask too many questions about the disease they share. This whole drive, not one word. But Chelsea knows two important things about Jeanie. One is that she is utterly devoted to her wheelchair-bound mother, for whom she remodeled the downstairs master bedroom of her house. The other is that she hasn’t mentioned her mother a single time.
In a better world, she would go back and do the right thing for Jeanie.
In a better world, neither she nor Jeanie would be here in the first place.
But this is a new world, and the Violence has made her a different kind of person, and she’s not going to let an accidental murder stop her from getting her girls back.
The only way out is through.
She scoots the seat up and drives it like she stole it.
Because she did.
21.
Ella isn’t sure how it’s possible, but Nana is being even more of a witch than usual. Whatever Grandpa Randall said to her really messed her up. When Brooklyn asked her to watch the dive she’d been practicing, Nana literally said, “No. I have more important things to do. No one wants to watch children play.”
Who does that? Who says that to a little kid? Brooklyn almost cried, but Ella was able to distract her by showing her how to do a mermaid flip.
They’re out of the pool now. Nana told her to find something for Brooklyn to watch on the patio TV while they dry off, but Brooklyn is starving, and Ella just knows that if she goes inside and asks for food, Nana is going to be terrible to her.
Nana has always been terrible to her—at least since she’s been old enough to have opinions. She didn’t have many warm, fuzzy moments with her grandmother after the age of seven, but she definitely remembers when Nana told her she was too “husky” for ballet and that time when she skinned her knee and Nana called her a hopeless whiner.
“Do you think Nana has any cookies?” Brooklyn asks, and Ella is annoyed at both her sister and her grandmother for making her be in the middle.
“I’ll find out,” she says, handing Brooklyn the remote control.
The moment she steps inside, Nana looks up from the kitchen island with murder in her eyes. She’s leaning over her expensive laptop, and she snaps it shut and stands.
“I believe you were given an order,” she says.
“Brooklyn is hungry.”
“It’s not mealtime. In this house, we eat only at mealtimes.” Nana raises an eyebrow and looks Ella up and down.
Ella’s temper flares, but she breathes through her nose. Losing your shit with Nana doesn’t work. You have to go for logic. “It’s not for me. She’s little. She needs a snack.”
They briefly have a staring contest, and Ella does not look away. For herself she might, but not for Brooklyn. She adds, “She’s going to cry if her blood sugar goes down.”
“Is she a whiner, too?”
“She’s five.”
Nana sighs and waves a hand at the pantry. “A light snack. That’s all.”
Ella opens the pantry and finds a strange array of foods. There are no Goldfish, no Oreos, no gummy snacks. She takes a box of water crackers and hopes they’re just normal crackers.
“Thanks.”
Nana’s fingernails tap on the counter, one-two-three-four. “You’re welcome.”
She might as well have said, Are we done?
Ella takes the crackers to Brooklyn, who definitely whines about them. They’re too dry, they don’t taste like anything, she can’t swallow, she’s thirsty. When Brookie is acting like she’s choking, Ella doesn’t have a choice. She goes back inside, and Nana is gone, thank goodness. She brings a plastic glass of orange juice out, and Brookie mindlessly consumes her snack and watches a show on Nick Jr. while Ella scrolls through Instagram. Even though her feed is trimmed to calming art and funny memes, she tortures herself by checking out her friends’ profiles. Olivia is on a whale-watching cruise in Alaska, and Sophie is visiting relatives in Canada, and Ella’s heart constricts at how nice that must be. Maybe their parents suck, but at least they’re somewhere else, somewhere not here. At least they’re with their shitty parents. Her phone buzzes with a new email from Hayden, but she’s not in the mood to read it.
“When is Mommy coming back?” Brookie asks during a commercial.
Ella isn’t sure what to say. Brooklyn is the kind of kid who needs to know what’s going to happen when, and nothing about this situation is something that can be penciled in on the calendar.
“Whenever she can. She has to go do some work first.”
At least Brooklyn doesn’t ask when Daddy is coming back. Ella can’t blame her for that. She doesn’t want her father to come back, and she knows Brooklyn is starting to think of him like some kind of god or monster, something big and uncertain and magical—in the bad way. Something to be charmed or feared as necessary.
“And Nana is going to take us to Ice World?”
“Iceland. Supposedly.”
“I’ve never been on an airplane.”
“I have. You’ll like it. They have a rolling cart with cookies and sodas, and you’re above the clouds where the sky is always blue.”
Brooklyn sips her juice and kicks her feet. “I want to go to Ice World now. Are Anna and Elsa there?”
The show comes back on before Ella has to stumble over an answer, and Brooklyn returns to being mesmerized. Ella is bored out of her mind, so she might as well read whatever Hayden’s written.
Hey, it begins, because that’s how they all begin. Like they could be for anyone and just so happened to land in Ella’s inbox.
It’s more rambling crap about how terrible his life in the facility is, how much work he has to do, and how hard it is to care for little kids. You know, like the work Ella has to do all the time, and like most people have to do. If he’s trying to make her pity him or even like him, he is definitely doing the opposite.
Only at the end does he say something interesting: He got tested, and he doesn’t have the Violence.
No shit, Ella thinks. Of course he doesn’t have it.