I nosed for the bottom of the hill and the tires were steady beneath us on the packed snow. The pines and the peaks were dark behind us and the wind was as loud as heaving thunder.
I drove straight to the ER. The hospital is off Highway 31, and the closer we got the more I realized that I was going to have to leave Jenna on her own. That I would have to drop her off and walk away. It was either that or risk all kinds of craziness with the police and social services. I could hear the questions now. What were you doing in the farmhouse in the first place, Percy? And why did you think your mother was there? What, exactly, was the nature of the relationship between your mother and Shelton Potter? And why didn’t you call for help upon finding the baby?
I was worried the police would pull me on account of the windshield, but the only vehicle I saw on the highway was a city plow and they didn’t pay me any mind.
When I got to the hospital I parked in the far back corner of the lot. I stepped quickly from the truck and did not look down at Jenna. I kept my eyes straight ahead, just like I’d done when we passed Arrow McGraw burning out in the snow. I told myself I was only doing what had to be done. I told myself leaving her was the right thing to do, even as I felt my bottom lip start to quiver.
I set the papoose down just inside the front, sliding doors of the ER entrance. I hit the emergency call button, took one step away from Jenna, and then another. I walked backward until I finally turned and ran into the cluster of vehicles toward the front of the lot. I kneeled down by the rear fender of a van and watched as a nurse ran into the entryway, scooped Jenna in her arms, and then stepped outside to see who’d left her.
Finally, Jenna cried. I felt myself lean toward her, but I did not go back to offer her comfort. I never explained what was happening or said good-bye or that I was sorry that it had to be this way. I just watched the nurse whisk her back inside and felt my heart finally give out and go all to pieces.
I staggered to my feet but held my tears. I knew it was not yet time for me to cry. I was still a mile from our house on Clark Street and the storm was not yet through. I flipped my hoodie up and stepped into the wind. I fisted my hands at my side and I walked.
Chapter Eighteen
Shelton went to the window and watched Percy and the baby run for the truck. He watched them climb in the cab, then saw the headlights hit the clearing and draw back down the trail.
He was glad he’d given Jenna to the girl. It had been the right thing, but Shelton wasn’t so foolish as to think it was enough. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. What Shelton had done wrong couldn’t ever be made right and even the thought of trying exhausted him.
He went for the shotgun in the doorway, then propped the stock in the corner of the room. He leaned over the barrel and wriggled down so that the shot would enter the heart and not leave him as long to suffer.
He reached for the trigger and steadied his stance, balanced the weight on the balls of his feet, and imagined falling into the blast, accepting it without a hesitation or flinch, simply breathing it into his heart so as not to obstruct its passage with doubt or some spasm of muscle, some instinctual, cellular defense against his release.
He breathed in, then out. He closed his eyes and when he fired the load it was not an instrument of justice or redemption, was not an act of self-hatred or of martyrdom, but was only the truth expelled through a smooth-bore barrel, all buckshot and perspicuity.
Shelton heard his blood splatter the walls like a burst of rain on a tin roof, then dropped off the barrel and fell forward. But he was not dead yet. There were still a few remaining thumps of his heart, a breath or two before his last and summative thought, his bitter and tragic final realization.
And it was only this: that so few had ever glimpsed the deepest and most beautiful intentions of his heart.
Chapter Nineteen
I don’t know how many days I slept through after everything went down in the north hills. I slept and when I woke I would lay there on the couch, staring out at nothing.
I ate a couple pieces of bread, smoked the few cigarettes I found lying around the house, but mostly kept myself curled up on the couch—clutching Carletta’s blanket to my chest as if I were a child.
I had the shades drawn and the days passed in a bit of dim light against the curtains before the night would go black and the cycle reset. And I swear I might have stayed there on the couch until I starved had I not come to and found Deputy Granger sitting in the recliner, hunched over his cell. I sat up startled.
“It’s alive,” he said, and smiled.
Granger was a friend of my sister’s from high school and he was all right for a cop. Whenever I saw him around town he’d say hello and start talking about whatever pictures Starr had posted on Facebook. Which didn’t mean I liked him barging in the house or sitting in the living room like he was some sort of governor.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“We need to talk,” he said, and cut his phone off.