“Clearly,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. Did my father hate me, those times when he looked at me like he did? The time he looked at me, a plump and clumsy child in my heavy shoes, and said, “Every father hopes his daughter will be a butterfly”?
I offered what I could in the way of consolation: food, company, a bed. She wanted to hear more about my family history. I told her about my mother’s older sister, who held court in her big house for years and years, and how my mother always felt in her shadow. Then about my grandmother’s sister, who was addicted to laudanum. I told her every story I could think of. I didn’t mean for them all to be sad, but that is so much of what there is.
After she was settled, I still couldn’t sleep. And so I was awake when I heard Jennifer outside. I didn’t tell Zoe about her mother’s late-night visit. I think it’s best if she forgets she has a mother now.
This morning I fixed her eggs. I poured her orange juice. I walked her outside. “Call when you get home,” I said. “I want to know you got back safe.”
“I will. I promise.” She hugged me. “Thank you for trying to help me,” she said.
I said she was welcome and patted her on the back.
At the door of her car she paused. Her eyes were glistening. “Did my mother really call me?” she asked. “Because she said she didn’t. She said it was you.”
I didn’t have time to think about what was kinder, the lie or the truth. Even with time to think I still don’t know. “It wasn’t me,” I said.
Zoe nodded. She swallowed. “I really don’t know why I came here,” she said. “I don’t know what I want from her.” She looked at me like I might have answers, but I don’t. I have none.
He came in like all of them, on a stretcher. I saw right away that he had a chance to live—he wasn’t gut shot, he had all of his head. His hand was bandaged—it looked like a finger or two was missing—but the real trouble was his legs. He was a tall man, and I would have bet that after the surgeons got done he would be much shorter. He could wait, though. He could wait. He was moaning. He opened his eyes and saw me and in his gaze was the desperate pleading pain I’d grown used to. He said, “Please, nurse,” and automatically I soothed him. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll take good care of you.”
But then I took in his face. You see, he was the man. He was the one. I hadn’t realized it, so focused on his injuries, on whether he would live or die. He was the one who did that to my friend. To Kay. I’d known all along what he looked like, though I’d never known his name. Because I followed her, the night she went out with him. I followed her out of the tent a few minutes after she left, and though my intent had been to call her name, to stop her, to attempt reconciliation, just as I spotted her—no, no, I was about to lie. Why? Why always lie, until we are dead? I was about to say her date appeared and stopped me speaking. But the truth is once Kay was in earshot I had minutes to catch her—three, four, maybe five—and instead I followed without speaking, without her knowing I was there. I obeyed an impulse to go unnoticed. Maybe I wanted to get a look at her date. Maybe I wanted to see the life she lived without me. Because I was jealous, or because I was curious, or afraid, or, or, or. I don’t know why. I just know that’s what I did.
I saw him waiting for her. He had a pitiful bouquet clearly snatched from a roadside garden, and while I couldn’t hear him, I could see by his face that he’d made a joke about it but was also proud to have it on offer. I could see his face but not hers, so I’ve never known what she was thinking. That he was sweet? That his bouquet was charming? That she was happy to go on this date, after all? Or that he was too eager, too insistent, too something, something she already sensed. That she didn’t want to go with him, wanted to plead a headache and go back to the tent. But back in the tent there was me.
He held her down. I don’t know exactly what happened. She didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask. That was all she said: He held me down.
I killed him.
If he had been gut shot he might have bled out and died screaming, and that is what should have happened, that is what should have been. But it was only the legs! In all the chaos I had no trouble injecting the extra morphine unnoticed. It wasn’t even hard. I could have considered it sufficient punishment for him to live without his legs. But that would still have been living.
Learning to say, to mean, “only the legs”—how could you imagine that wouldn’t do something to a person?