Of course Kellen said, “It’s gonna be okay.” He didn’t want me to be scared, but Mama was dead. Not Sad Mama or Good Mama or Scary Mama ever again. Just Dead Mama. And Donal was missing. And Kellen was in handcuffs.
The cops took us to the hospital, where I saw Mr. Cutcheon in the parking lot. He waved at me, but Aunt Brenda wouldn’t let me go to him. The hospital smelled like disinfectant and sadness, like when Mama and Donal had their wreck. In a white room with a maze of blue curtains, a nurse said, “How’s she doing? We’re going to have a private exam room for her in a few minutes. Are you her mother?”
“I’m her aunt. Her mother—” Aunt Brenda couldn’t say it. Dead Mama. Always. That was how death worked. Dead Grandma. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the smell of Grandma’s house. I wanted to smell something nice that wasn’t sadness. I pulled my shirt up over my nose. It smelled like Kellen’s sweat. Safe.
Aunt Brenda dragged me into a room with a black table covered in paper.
“Why don’t I take the other girls down to the visitor’s lobby? The candy stripers have magazines and stuff,” another nurse said.
Leslie and Amy looked scared, and their eyes were red from crying. Dead Aunt Val for always, too.
Then Aunt Brenda and the nurse and I were alone in the little room.
“Sweetie, why don’t you let your aunt help you change into this gown, okay?”
It was one of those blue hospital things with strings and no back. Aunt Brenda pulled on my T-shirt, trying to take it off, but I twisted her wrist until she let go.
“Ma’am, does she understand? Have you told her anything?” the nurse said.
“I didn’t know what to tell her. Is it like a pelvic exam?”
“Yeah, like when you have your pap smear. Has she had one before?”
“I don’t think so. She’s only thirteen.”
“Oh, sweetie. Oh, I’m so sorry,” the nurse said.
I hated hearing them talk about me like I was broken. Mama was dead, but I was fine. I knew what “rape” meant and that wasn’t what Kellen had done.
“You know, ma’am, we might give her a sedative. To calm her down.”
“That’s a good idea. She’s pretty nervous about people touching her,” Aunt Brenda said.
I wasn’t going to take any sedative. No pills. No needles. They weren’t going to put anything into me.
“I’ll go get that and maybe while I’m gone you can help her change into the gown.”
The nurse opened the door, and that was all I needed. I dodged around Aunt Brenda, ducked past the nurse, and into the hallway. I was free.
Where to go was the hard part. Not to the shop or Kellen’s house, where the cops might catch me. At the Lutheran Church, a carnival had been set up in the parking lot, which was crowded with people. The air smelled like funnel cakes, heavy and greasy.
No one even noticed me when I sat down in one of the tents, where people were playing bingo. I stayed there all afternoon and into the evening, going from tent to tent. When it started to get dark, a woman came up to me and said, “Are your parents here? Do you need a ride home?”
I shook my head and forced myself to smile and wave as I walked away. The police were still at the shop, but at Kellen’s house, they had gone. The front door and the back door were closed with yellow tape, but the window to the laundry room was open. Balancing on a trash can, I popped out the screen, and crawled inside. The cops had made a mess, dumping things out of drawers.
After I put everything away, I took a shower. All day in the heat had made me sweaty, and I felt sticky between my legs. Wrapping up in a towel, I took my dirty clothes into the laundry room and put them in the hamper. In the dryer were clean clothes, mine and Kellen’s mixed together. I put on a pair of my panties and one of his T-shirts that I liked to sleep in.
When I opened the freezer, I was hoping for ice cream sandwiches, but I found something better. Thirty-one little foam cups of ice cream. On top of each plastic lid, Kellen had written a letter in black marker. Setting them out on the table, I moved them around until I solved the puzzle: HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAVY! I LOVE YOU!
He’d drawn lopsided hearts on the other four cups.
I opened the first one and took a bite. Chocolate with cherries in it.
5
AMY
After Wavy ran away from the hospital, we walked to the police station. Mom asked one of the deputies about our car, but he shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about that, but I expect the DEA will impound everything on the property.”
“The DEA?” Mom said.
“It’s crazy up there. I went out to help with roadblocks and it’s knee-deep in feds.”
“Because of the murders?”
“What? No. Mrs. Newling—there’s—your brother-in-law has a meth lab up there about the size of a—it’s big.”
Mom made all the right noises of shock, but I don’t think it surprised her. After all, she knew what he’d done in the past. Did she really think he was ranching?