Denise looked up at the ceiling, her head spinning. Things were rolling too fast now, fragments falling around her like bits of glass. The blue and white lights of the police car flashing in the window. The car she’d called too late, because he had been gone for hours, he’d never made it to Oscar’s house.
She lay flat on the bed, fingering her pills in her pocket. She liked the feel of them, soft and crumbly around the edges. Friendly. She put another one in her mouth, it was dry and bitter, but another bitter pill was nothing to her.
She pulled them out of her pocket and looked at them.
Twelve little friends, winking at her, calling out her name.
Twenty-Seven
Janie came in from the cornfields and sat down at the kitchen table next to Anderson. She put her head in her hands and tried to quiet the rush in her mind. Anderson was speaking to someone very slowly on the phone. She wondered how he could stay so composed when Noah was lost. But Noah wasn’t his child, after all. This was a stranger; a researcher. Like Noah, this particular panic belonged to her alone.
He tried to steady her with his eyes. She avoided him, inspecting Denise’s kitchen. The window overlooking the birdbath and the cornfields. The framed picture of peaches over the stove. The rooster clock, with its loud tick. She didn’t like to think about the suffering that had gone on in this room.
Anderson hung up the phone. “Police are coming.”
“Good.” Her voice was raw from shouting. “Did you—”
“I checked the house.”
“What about Mrs. Crawford?”
“Resting, but the child wasn’t there.”
“And the teenager?”
“Looking.”
“Did you look in the basement?”
“And the attic. We’ll look again soon. We’ll find him,” Anderson said. He looked exhausted, but also focused and awake. He was one of those people, she thought bitterly, who came to life in adversity. She had hoped she might be one of those people, too, but right now she didn’t think so.
“I should drive around the neighborhood,” Janie said. She stood up. “Give me the keys.”
“Take a moment,” Anderson said.
“I’m fine.”
“One moment.”
“No!”
“You can help more if you’re calm.”
She sat down again at the table. Her knees were shaking.
“How did this happen? How did I let this happen? He’s four years old!”
“So he can’t go far.”
“Can’t he?” She turned to Anderson. “I never should have come here. I never should have taken part in your crazy experiment. What the hell was I thinking?”
“You were trying to help Noah.”
“Well, it was a mistake.”
“Look at me.” His eyes were clear. “We’ll find Noah.”
Noah. The word caused an avalanche of longing. What she wouldn’t give to have him in her arms again. His plump limbs and soft head. She’d never understood people calling their children delicious, but she got it now, she wanted to find him so she could eat him up, inhale him right back into her body so she would never lose him again.
Anderson stood up and poured her a glass of water.
“Here. Drink.”
She took the glass of water and gulped it down.
“What if he has an asthma attack while he’s out there? What if the man who took Tommy is still out there?”
Anderson filled the glass again and handed it to her and she drank it down.
“Now take a breath.”
“But—”
“Take a breath.”
She took a breath. The clock in Denise’s kitchen kept on ticking; it hadn’t stopped ticking all these years.
“I’m all right now. I can drive.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He handed her the keys.
“Be careful, Janie.”
“Okay.” She clutched the keys in her hands and stood. At the kitchen door, she looked back at Anderson. He had filled a glass of water for himself as well and was sitting at the table, looking at it. He looked tired.
He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. She felt sorry she’d been harsh with him before.
“How did you do it?” she said quietly.
“Do what?”
“Lose someone? How did you bear it?”
“You take a breath,” he said. He took a sip of water. “Then you take another.”
She stood there, the keys rattling in her hand.
The doorbell rang.
Anderson looked up. “The police are here.”