“That was only eighteen,” Angel says. “You said you have nineteen siblings.”
“Oh,” I say. I lean back against the cinder-block wall, and in my mind sort my siblings by their mothers. Donna Jo with stocky limbs and wide fingers, Vivienne who gave her black eyes and hair to her children, Mabel who was only seventeen when she married my father. And my mother. We weren’t supposed to know our true mothers, but all of her children could easily be picked out by their pale hair and cornflower eyes. I was the only one who looked like I didn’t belong to her.
“Virtue,” I say finally. “I forgot Virtue. She has the strangest eyes I’d ever seen, such a pale blue they are almost white. We thought she was dead when she was born. There were a lot of babies like that. She took a minute to pull in any breath, and when she finally did, she didn’t cry or make a sound. Just stared straight ahead.” I recall the image of my mother, leaned over Virtue’s blue-red body lying between my mother’s feet on the packed earth floor, her knees up and shrouded in the cloth of birthing.
“She never did learn to talk,” I say.
“They didn’t take her to a doctor?” Angel asks.
“My mother asked, but . . .” I trail off. “My father wouldn’t hear of it. He said we made that choice, long ago.”
My eyes stray to the spot where the doctor sat a couple days ago. A square foot of grated metal flooring. Whenever I think about him, about the truth that he came here for, I can’t arrange my thoughts properly. Everybody’s better off without the Prophet around. Why can’t he see that?
“What’s wrong?” Angel asks, looking down at me.
“That FBI agent,” I say. “I’m just wondering when he’ll come back.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and he won’t,” she says. “Those guys, they’re great at intimidation, not great with the follow-through.”
“No, he’ll come back. He’s looking for who killed the Prophet. There’s an investigation. They think he was murdered.”
Angel props herself up on her elbow. “And what’s this guy think you’re gonna tell him?”
“Who killed him.”
Her eerie pale eyes, like the petals of a flax flower, regard me. “Will you?”
I shake my head. All at once, bile rises in my throat. I run to the toilet and throw up a couple heaves of acidy amber liquid. I press my forehead against the cold steel of the toilet rim and sense Angel crouching beside me, though she doesn’t touch me.
“I remember the moment he died,” I whisper.
Angel crouches still, a black shadow on my periphery. “Did you kill him?” she asks flatly.
I grip my eyes closed. Something soft and delicate inside me tears at her question. Because I wonder the same thing. Did I really? Is he dead because of me?
“Hey,” Angel says. “Don’t you dare.”
I turn toward her, my forehead wrinkling.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” she says. “That guy deserved everything he got.”
“No one deserves to die.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course people deserve to die. When you make life unbearable for other people, you deserve to be taken out. That’s all there is to it.”
“I’m afraid,” I say.
“Do they have a confession? Have you admitted anything?”
“No.”
“Good,” she says. “Don’t say a word to him. There ain’t no reasoning with cops. Not with detectives, or lawyers, or judges neither. They see what they want. And what they want’s an easy target. The crazy girl who’s been messed up her whole life’s the easiest target of them all. Why do you think I’m here? Why do you think any of us is here? He’ll send you away for life if you give him the chance.”
I nod slowly, feeling like I’m getting my bearings again.
“You fought back. There ain’t no shame in that,” she says, quiet. And, even quieter, “Don’t let them do to you what they’ve done to me.”
Chapter 13
Dr. Wilson returns a few days later, his notebook wedged beneath his elbow, his square teeth smiling like he’s actually happy to be sitting inside my metal cell.
“Tell me about Jude Leland.”
I grip my tongue between my molars. “How do you know about Jude?”
“You gave a statement to the police, remember? After your surgery.”
I frown, trying to recall my days in the hospital. “There was a detective.”
“He wrote of a boy you mentioned, Jude, and I did a little digging, interviewed some of the wives who are in protective care. They told me how you came to the Community with a boy the night of the fire. He’s totally off the grid. No birth certificate, no social security number, not even any medical records.”
“He was born in the woods.”
He nods. “So, the last time you saw Jude was the night of the fire?”