THE NIGHT IS COLD. I can see my breath—human steam disappearing into the night. I wait for Lyndee to wake, blinking languidly at the space on the floor where I’ve laid her. I have no sense of urgency, no need to move, and fidget, and do. I’m content to wait. My thoughts are delicate, forming frail arguments of why I shouldn’t be doing this, then breaking apart in the firmness of my resolve. So, I watch Lyndee, I watch my breath, I wait. In the early hours she stirs, mumbling something under her breath and rolling onto her back. Despite her impending death, I’ve brought a blanket and spread it across her body. In her sleep she pulls it tighter around herself. I shift on my stool, sighing deeply. It was easy—so easy. She fell right to the floor, the rag pressed to her nose.
Lyndee awakes disoriented. She sits up, struggling against the ropes I’ve tied around her ankles and wrists. Slowly she takes in her surroundings. Her hair is sticking straight up on one side. I wait, perched on the stool, my hands folded in my lap. I imagine I look like a schoolgirl gone wrong, straight-backed and intense, a can of gasoline between my boots. When she sees me, she doesn’t look surprised. Not even a little. It feels right, like this is all supposed to be—her and me here, in a shed with a can of gasoline.
“I’m Sean,” I say cheerfully. She flinches.
I open her backpack, the zipper loud even among the singing of the night creatures. From it I pull Bambi, Nevaeh’s pink bear. I hold it up to Lyndee. “I was on the bus with Nevaeh the day she went missing. This was in her backpack.” Lyndee’s eyes travel from the bear back to my face. Her expression reveals nothing, though her hands appear to clutch the blanket a little tighter.
“She disappeared with her backpack. Except she didn’t really disappear, did she? She was with you.”
Lyndee at first shakes her head, her eyes zoned in on the bear. But, when I say, “You killed Nevaeh.” She becomes defensive, her face contorting as she tries to form an argument. She sees the gas can, and something changes in her movements.
“It was an axedent,” she says, scrambling backward until her shoulders hit the wall. One of her breasts has slipped from her shirt; it hangs limply over the floral material. I sold her that shirt at the Rag, I think. When Nevaeh was still alive. She came with her mother, and hung out with me at the register, counting the pennies in the “extra jar” while Lyndee shopped. I can see the beads of sweat on Lyndee’s brow, brewing slowly then slipping down the side of her face. She reeks of sweat and fear, but not regret. If I smelled a hint of it on her, I might think twice about what I’m about to do. But Lyndee is a narcissist. She’s convinced herself that killing and burning her daughter’s body was an accident.
“You could have sent her to live with her grandmother.”
“I know, I know. Don’t do this, please. Let me go. I’ll turn myself in to the police. Is that what you want? I ain’t got no problem with you.” She’s holding up her hands as if she can ward me off with her dirt-stained palms. Her nail polish is blue, painted perfectly like she took the time to get it right. This makes me angrier, that she could be so meticulous with her nail polish, caring that there is no overlap onto her fingers, that there are enough coats to make it smooth and thick. All for Sean. Caring about fingernails while she cared so little for her girl.
I ease up, relax my shoulders, and readjust my face to pretend I’m thinking about it.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
She’s cowering on the floor. I can see the whites of her eyes as she claws at the dirt.
“My boyfriend,” she says. “He didn’t want no kids. He wanted to move to Portland, he’s got family there and a better job waiting. I told him Nevaeh was a good girl, but she didn’t like him. Always used to make trouble for me by saying stuff to him. When I told her we was leaving, she said she wasn’t going, she wasn’t moving away from her granny. Her daddy wasn’t paying me nothing either,” she finishes, as if this justifies everything.
“How did she die?” My voice is neutral, my face impassive. I am afraid that if I show emotion, she won’t tell me what happened, but I need to know what they did to Nevaeh.
I expect her to answer me, but she turns her face away.
“It was him, wasn’t it?”
She nods, her jaw clenched. “We went to pick her up, caught her on her granny’s street. She wouldn’t get in the car…”
I think of Nevaeh. I’d never seen her be defiant, never seen her disrespectful.
“Steve got out to grab her,” Lyndee says. “He was … rough. She screamed real loud and tried to run. We had to drive off real fast.”
I have to close my eyes, the scene playing out graphically in my mind. A little girl’s terror, her need to run to her grandmother who gave her a sense of love and permanence. Her mother’s boyfriend, always resentful, always watching, wishing she weren’t there. Nevaeh knowing and living with the fact that her mother chose someone else over her daily. Sent her away as often as possible to salvage her relationship with a man who couldn’t tolerate her child.
“What then?” I say, impatient for the story to be over. I want to know how she died, so I can bring Lyndee Anthony to justice.
“He gave her some juice, to calm her down. Didn’t tell me there was sleeping pills in there until after. He was just gonna make her sleep ‘til we got to Portland. We went back to the house to get some things before Tom got home from work. Tom owns the house, he’s Steve’s friend. We wanted to be out before the morning so we didn’t have to pay rent. We owed a couple months, you know. We packed up the car with our shit. Before we left I looked back at her. She looked funny. When I reached back and felt her neck, she was cold. And she wasn’t breathing.” She lets out a pitiful sob. “I ain’t meant for her to die!” Her story is wobbling from “he” to “I,” and I wonder how much of her account is truth. How much of it was her plan, and how much of it was Steve’s?
“Why didn’t you take her to the hospital? There could have been time to save her. She could have been in a coma!”
Lyndee’s eyes shift from side to side, trying to find an adequate excuse, or perhaps a way out of the shed. She is trying, I realize, to answer me in the way she thinks I want.
“It was too late,” she says. “There was no heartbeat.” I know that’s not true by the look on her face. Nevaeh’s heartbeat may have been barely discernible, but there was still time to get her to a hospital.