“I’m leaving,” she said.
She stepped down a single step and he reached for her arm, but she slunk away, down one more step. He inched slowly toward her, as if she were a bird he was afraid to startle.
He laughed a little. “Who said so?”
“Momma said I could leave.”
He frowned, his jaw working. He was missing a tooth on the side of his mouth, and it made his smile ghoulish. She’d never seen an adult with a missing tooth. Plenty of kids had big gaps in their smiles and that was normal. One of the doormen in her old building had a gold tooth. And she always stared at it when he smiled at her. Good Morning, Little Rose! he’d say when he saw her before school. Her name wasn’t Rose, but he made her wish it were.
“No, she didn’t,” he said.
“She said I couldn’t help her anymore,” she said. “She needs a new Penny.”
She moved down a few more steps, and he came slowly after her. His smile broadened. She could smell his scent, like grass and wood.
“Was Penny your daughter?” One more step.
“Shut up, girl,” he said. “Mind your business.” It sounded like “yer.”
“Did you hurt her?” she asked. “Like you hurt me.”
It wasn’t right what he had done, what he was still doing. Real Penny wanted him punished. The voices in the trees wanted that, too. He was a pain giver, someone who hurt and wasn’t sorry.
One more step down, the wood creaked loud and long. She was standing on her bad ankle, and the pain was so bad she was seeing those white stars again. The door stood open, a cold draft snaking up the stairs. She wobbled a little, knocking one of the picture frames from the wall. It fell and shattered on the stairs, littering the floor with broken glass.
“Did you touch her?” she said. “She told me you did. You weren’t a good daddy.”
His smile didn’t waver.
“She started a fire because she wanted to kill herself and you, and Momma for letting you hurt her. You’re a bad man,” she said. She took one more step down. “That’s how she died.”
Bobo’s wailing voice carried in from outside, sounding like the call of a dying animal. Just as Poppa lunged for her, she ran down the stairs. The old man lost his balance and came tumbling after her, crashing down with a series of grunts and then a hard landing. The walls rattled.
She burst through the door onto the porch. Bobo was moving up the road she needed to be on, staggering, his flashlight shining. As Poppa came roaring out the door, she ran back toward the barn, the opposite of the way she needed to go. She knew that there was a path that led back into the woods. She headed for that, her mind going blank with panic.
She ran and ran until she had to stop, a big stitch in her side, breathless, her leg screaming with pain. Sobbing, exhausted, she kept moving forward. Everything had gone quiet. No one was chasing her; the lights from the house behind her were no longer visible.
There was no way to know how long she walked, or why Poppa and Bobo didn’t come after her. Maybe Bobo told Poppa that Momma was hurt; maybe they went back to help her. She’d almost forgotten that it was snowing. It accumulated on the path, not much, just a dusting. She looked up and watched as all the zillion little crystal flakes fell. The next thing she knew she was on her knees, overcome. She bent down and started to cry.
One of the girls she’d known here had been the fastest girl in her school. But she wasn’t that girl. She was lost and afraid and she wanted to go home. She let herself rest on the cold, hard ground. Real Penny and Zoe weren’t afraid, she reminded herself. They wanted to go wherever it was they were going, to whatever was waiting after. Wherever it was, it had to be better than here. She heard the sound of her very own name whispered in the leaves around her. You are home, the voices said.
She let herself fall to her side. Even though it was cold, it felt good to rest. She was about to let her eyes close when she heard voices. Not the voices in the trees, or calls on the wind. But real voices. Men. Deep and rumbling. A conversation, people talking to each other.
“Up here, to the right.” It was real and solid.
“There’s no way to get a car up here.” Another voice, breathless with effort.
She looked up and saw off toward the end of the path, a strange flashing red-and-white light. She almost got up and ran in the other direction, then she realized what it was. The police. Using all her strength to pull herself to her feet, she started to run, opened her mouth to scream for help when she felt strong arms on her, a hard hand over her mouth. A white-hot flash of pain took her words away. Then, there was nothing.
TWENTY-SIX