“I’m just saying that we’re okay, that I haven’t been exposed to anything, and that we’re going to be just—”
“How can you say that? No one even knows what actual ‘exposure’ even is! It could be airborne. It could be in our drinking water, our food. We could both be breathing it in right now.”
“Relax,” he said.
“Don’t tell me to relax. We’ve got a little girl in there who we’ve pulled out of school, and now we can’t even get someone to tutor her because half the tutors are afraid to be around people, and the ones who are working are so overbooked we might as well send her right back to that goddamn school.”
“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake her.”
Kathy dragged her hands down her face. Her fingernails left reddish tracks against her otherwise pale skin. Her eyes were sober, her mouth a perfect slit. Kathy had never been much of a crier; when she got frightened or upset, she got angry.
“I’m terrified of going back to work,” she said.
“So quit.”
“Just like that?”
“Why not?”
“What about the money? The mortgage?”
She made more as a therapist at a state hospital than he did as an untenured instructor at the college. They had discussed her cutting back some hours in the past, particularly when Ellie was younger, but in the end they had always agreed that their budget was tight enough already. Now, however, he was willing to give in. If it gave her peace of mind, he would make it work.
“Let me worry about that,” he said. “We can make it work if we need to. And if you’re home, then our tutor problems are solved. You can home-school her.”
For some reason, Kathy found this deliciously funny. She barked laughter, but there was no humor in it. It left him cold.
“You’re the teacher in the family,” she said after her laughter subsided.
“Yeah, but you’ve got a Ph.D. You’ve attended more school than me.”
“Fair enough.”
He kissed the side of her face. Then he went back into the living room, still feeling cold. He shut the TV off and just sat there on the sofa, staring out the windows at the night sky. Nervous, he chewed at the inside of his cheek. It was too quiet with the TV off, so he turned it back on and flipped it to some sitcom. After a time, the kitchen light went out. Kathy leaned out of the doorway and said she was going to bed.
“Good night,” he said, and closed his eyes for a few seconds while fake laughter filtered through the TV. Outside, a light rain began to fall; he listened to it patter against the roof and sluice down the eaves. Soon enough, thunder announced its presence with a low, guttural growl that sounded like the banging of garage doors.
On his way to bed, he peeked in on Ellie. He was surprised—and a little startled—to find her silhouetted against the moonlit windowpane, staring out at the storm.
“Hey,” he said.
She spun around, similarly startled by the sound of his voice. “Oh,” she uttered, a squeaky half-sound. She leapt from the armchair and into bed.
“You should have been in bed already,” he said, coming over and pulling the blanket up to her shoulders. He wondered if she had heard them arguing earlier.
“It’s getting cold. They’ll freeze.”
“Who?”
“The eggs.”
He’d forgotten about them. That first discussion about the abandoned eggs had been back in August. He went to the window and peered out, though he couldn’t see the nest in the darkness.
“I’m not so sure it matters anymore, Little Spoon.”
“It matters,” she said.
It was less the substance of what she said than the tone in which she said it that caused him to pause and consider his daughter. It matters. It wasn’t the tone, the cadence, of a young girl playing or even declaring a statement of fact to her father. It was said as if he was a fool and blind to the reality of the things around him. Over time, David had grown accustomed to the premature adultness of his daughter, but this was something else. A conspiracy she was allowing him to glimpse, even if she couldn’t come right out and tell him what it was. She wanted him to see something and he was too damn ignorant to open his eyes.
“No more bird-watching,” he told her, kissing her nose.
“What birds?” she said. “The birds are all gone.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Good night, Dad.”
“Good night, Little Spoon.”
He left her room feeling like he had overlooked something.
Something important.
21
He awoke in the morning to find Ellie gone.
He sat up sharply, only to have a shock wave of burning pain radiate across the right side of his neck. The top flap of Ellie’s sleeping bag was flipped over. Her sneakers were gone.
“Ellie?” His voice echoed through the empty store. “Eleanor?”