When it was done and she was in the car, Elizabeth was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She hunched above the place she hurt. The road was black, and white lines flicked past, one after another and endless. She settled into the hurt, and into the hum of tires. “Should there be this much blood?”
Carrie looked sideways, and her face turned as white as the lines on the road. “I don’t know, Liz. Jesus.”
“But, your sister—”
“I wasn’t with my sister! Jenny Loflin took her. Shit, Liz! Shit! What did the doctor say?”
But Elizabeth couldn’t think of the doctor, not of his dead eyes or filthy room or the way he touched her. “Just get me home.”
Carrie drove fast to make it happen. She got Elizabeth to the house and onto the porch before something else broke inside and stained the porch like a flood.
“Jesus. Liz.”
But Elizabeth couldn’t speak, watching instead from the bottom of a lake. The water was clear and warm, but getting dark at the edges. She saw fear on her friend’s face, and black waters pushing in.
“What do I do, Liz? What?”
Elizabeth was on her back, everything warm around her. She tried to raise her hand, but couldn’t move at all. She watched her friend pound on the door, then turn and run and spray gravel with the car. The next thing she saw was her father’s face, then lights and movement, then nothing at all.
*
Elizabeth eased up on the gas, watching mile markers slide past as she played it out again: long days in the hospital, the silent months that followed. She blamed herself when the nights got long. For not wanting the baby, for the dead place inside her. How old would the child be had she kept it?
Sixteen, Elizabeth thought.
Two years older than Gideon. Two years younger than Channing.
She wondered if that meant something, if God indeed paid attention, and her father had been right all along. It was doubtful, but why else did she find these children? Why were the connections so immediate and unshakable?
“A psychologist would have a goddamn field day.”
The thought amused her because psychologists ranked about the same as preachers, which meant pretty low. What if she was wrong about that? If she’d gone for therapy as her mother wanted, then maybe she’d have finished college and married. Maybe she’d have a career in real estate or graphic design, live in New York or Paris, and have some fabulous life.
Forget it, she thought. She’d done good work as a cop. She’d made a difference and saved some lives. So what if the future was shapeless? There were other things and other places. She didn’t have to be a cop.
“Yeah, right.”
Those were her thoughts as she approached a creek with two boys fishing from the bridge. Her foot came off the pedal, and she moved past, parking beyond the bridge to watch. The smaller boy went into his cast, and for a moment everything hung in perfect balance: the rod all the way back, small arms flexed. He was nine, she guessed, his friend pointing at a deep-looking pool beside a willow tree and a slab of gray stone. The baited hook flicked out, landed perfectly. They nodded at each other, and she marveled that life could be so simple, even for a child. It gave her a moment’s peace, then the phone rang, and she answered.
It was Channing.
She was screaming.
*
Channing had stood on the porch and shaded her eyes as Elizabeth backed from the drive and accelerated down the street. The poor woman had been apologetic and calm, but Channing understood the sudden need to move and do and think wild thoughts. She felt the same thing when her mind went to the basement, like she could scream or rock in the dark or punch the walls until her fingers bled. Anything was better than stillness, and acting normal was the one impossible thing. Conversation. Eye contact. Anything could open the door.
She watched the street for another minute, then went inside and wandered the house, liking everything about it: the colors and the furniture, the comfortable clutter. A bookshelf covered an entire wall of the living room, and she walked its length, opening one book and then another, picking up photographs of Elizabeth and some small boy. In most of the pictures he was young—maybe two or three. In others he was older, shy looking and thin, and close at her side. He had troubled eyes and a pretty smile. She wondered who he was.