“Dad! Dad!” screamed Nell, out of the chair, kneeling on the floor.
Cap was falling backward; he was losing his grip on the Sig, but why? He looked at his hand and tried to squeeze the grip and the trigger and actually thought, Why can’t you hold on to it? And then he felt the side of his head wet and cold and saw the blood, his blood, sprayed onto the old uneven panels of the wooden floor and realized he’d been hit.
Linsom ran, shoved Cap out of the way, against the back wall of the hallway, and then he kept going, slowed and disoriented by the shot in his shoulder, hurtling down the stairs.
Cap struggled to stand, and then Nell came to him and held his face in her hands.
“It’s just your ear, Dad—he just got your ear, that’s all,” she said.
As soon as she said it, Cap felt the blood surge to his ear, the whole thing humming like a harp.
“Come on,” she said, putting the Sig firmly into Cap’s hand. “We have to stop him.”
Nell threaded her arms through his and pulled him up to stand, and once he locked his legs he felt like he could walk, step-by-step, and they headed for the stairs, slow and then fast. Cap heard one siren at first and then another and another, stacked on top of one another like a symphony.
“Are you okay?” Cap said, the words muted in his ears.
“I’m fine,” said Nell. “Don’t worry.”
They watched Linsom stagger out the front door, and Cap almost fell down the last three stairs, but Nell held him up. They made it to the door and then the porch, and they saw Linsom on the lawn. And there was Em, getting out of his car with his gun drawn, aimed at Linsom, as the sirens grew louder and closer.
“Drop your weapon! Hands in the air!” shouted Em, advancing across the lawn.
Linsom didn’t react, perhaps didn’t hear him. Four cruisers and two unmarked cars came from both the cross streets, lights spinning and sirens shrieking.
“Drop your weapon, hands in the air!” Em yelled again.
Linsom raised his gun, and Em fired. Linsom stumbled back, hand on his side, dropped the gun, fell backward. Cap watched his eyes blinking once, twice. Then stop.
Nell pushed her face into Cap’s shirt. He hugged her with one arm and set the Sig on the railing, caught Em’s eye and pointed at him. You. Em pointed back, his face filled with a roiling energy. No, you.
Cars and vans kept coming. The street filled with every cop in town, newsmen and their cameras, and one ambulance.
—
Baby powder.
The overwhelming perfume of it. Vega had no emotional response to baby powder but knew other people did. It reminded them of babies. These same people talked about babies’ cheeks and thighs and their respective degrees of thickness, how these were marks of a healthy baby. The smell reminded them of this—fat little bodies rolling around in the artificial dust of baby powder, healthy and not sick. Safe.
The wine cellar was not a big room, five by fifteen, the long wall consisting of a floor-to-ceiling rack for the red next to a refrigerator for the white. Both were empty. The air was moist, a small black humidifier whirring quietly next to the door. Pucks mounted across the ceiling cast faint spotlights.
Then, in the corner, a toddler’s bed—Vega recognized the size. She remembered visiting her brother a few years back, seeing her three-year-old niece in one just like it.
But on this one lay Kylie Brandt, too big for it, curled up on top of the blankets in a white nightgown. She was either dead or sleeping.
Vega approached the bed and leaned down. The light was dim, but she saw it—the rise and fall of Kylie’s chest.
Her mouth was open half an inch. Her breath was stale, but her skin smelled sweet and floral.
“Kylie,” said Vega, not too loudly.
She didn’t move or wake up.
“Kylie.”
Still she slept. Wasn’t it Sleeping Beauty, Vega tried to remember, where the whole kingdom falls asleep with her? All of them drugged, frozen where they stood, the bakers kneading dough, the cobblers hammering shoes, everyone. Not Denville, thought Vega. All of us are fucking wide-awake forever.
She placed her hand on Kylie’s arm and said once more, “Kylie.”
As soon as Vega touched her, she woke up with a sharp intake of air and jumped like a flea to the farthest corner of the bed. Her face looked like it did in the pictures, like the video in the ice cream shop, but was also now transformed into a strange sculpture that was not her, full of fear and drugs and trauma, stoned but aware.
“It’s okay,” said Vega, regretting it instantly, knowing that was exactly what Press and Lindsay Linsom told her. “Your mom, Jamie, sent me here to get you.”
Kylie shook her head.
“She’s dead. Mr. Linsom says she’s dead. Her and Bailey,” said Kylie quickly, her voice raw, the information by now rote.
Vega bit her cheeks, so paralyzed by anger she had to remind herself to speak.
“They lied. Your mom and Bailey are fine. They’re waiting for you.”
She watched Kylie take this in, her eyes rushing around the room and back to Vega’s.
“If you come with me, I’ll take you to them,” said Vega.
Kylie shook her head violently now and cried, “No, no, no, no!”
She began to sob, but it was different from other sobbing Vega had witnessed, because Kylie made no effort to cover her contorting face as the tears came out, making noises like she was suffocating.
Vega was reticent to touch her again but had to bring her out somehow.
“Kylie, Kylie, listen. Just listen,” she said.
Kylie quieted to a long whimper.
“I’m here to protect you. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
“But Mrs. Linsom said…” Kylie began, then stopped.
“What did she say?” said Vega. “Tell me.”
“She said I was helping Cole. That he was gonna get Cole if I wasn’t here.”
Vega stood up straight now.
“He’s not going to get Cole. Or you. Or anyone.”
“But he has a gun,” Kylie cried.
Vega pulled back her jacket.
“So do I.”
Kylie stopped crying then and just blinked, a tremor still in her lungs as she breathed in and out.
“Let’s go,” said Vega.
She backed up to give the girl some room. Kylie straightened out her legs; now Vega could see how ridiculously small the toddler bed was for her. She was almost two sizes too long for it. Then she stood up and wobbled, uneasy on her feet. Vega held her by the shoulders.
“Okay?” she said. “Can you walk?”
Kylie nodded. She was only a few inches shorter than Vega. The white nightgown was too small also, the empire waist across Kylie’s chest, the hem above her knees. Vega thought it was probably one of Cole’s.
Kylie looked toward the open door, uncertain. Vega went to it, nodded. Kylie came to her, slowly, learning to walk. Together they stepped outside the wine cellar to the foot of the stairs. They both looked up, toward the rectangle of light at the top.