There.
There she was. The girl with the antlers. She smiled out at Eve with her crooked teeth and her round cheeks with freckles and her six-prong antlers and her brown curls with strands of blond. “Yes,” Eve said out loud.
Malcolm sank into his chair. “Tell me about her.”
Eve pictured the antlered girl in her vision. She’d reached out her hand for the flowers … Eve shook her head. She didn’t know the girl’s name or where she was from or why she was there or why she was in Eve’s mind …
But Eve knew one thing.
“She’s dead,” Eve said.
Several doctors scurried in, took Eve’s temperature, took her blood pressure, and took a blood sample. Aunt Nicki fielded phone calls. Malcolm typed furiously on his computer. Other marshals shuttled papers in and out of the office. A bulletin board was pulled into the office, and a photo of the antlered girl was pinned to it, along with a collection of numbers.
Eve didn’t move from the leather chair.
She didn’t look at any of them. She continued to stare at the face of the antlered girl. She felt as if the office were tilting and rocking around her. She’s real, Eve thought.
“She liked flowers,” Eve said out loud, suddenly certain. The girl had had them in her room, daisies and peonies and flowers that Eve couldn’t name shoved into vases and cups and jars on the dresser, bookshelf, and windowsill. She’d braided them around her antlers and worn dresses with patterns that mimicked vines and leaves.
The typing paused. “What else?” Malcolm asked.
Eve shook her head. Her fingers traced the shape of the girl’s antlers. Six prongs. Exactly like in her vision. Exactly like in her memory. Eve pictured her with flowers … and on a hill. Yes, Eve thought. I remember a hill. The girl had been silhouetted, blue sky behind her, as if she’d been waiting … and then she’d run down the opposite side of the hill, disappearing from sight, her antlers the last bit of her to vanish behind the rocks and grasses. “There was a hill. But I don’t know where. And I don’t know why she was there or why I was there. Why do I remember her? Who was she?”
“Keep trying,” Malcolm said.
“You said they were cut into pieces. Was she?”
Aunt Nicki let out a sharp hiss. “Malcolm!”
Malcolm didn’t respond to Aunt Nicki. “You have to remember on your own,” he said to Eve. “Your testimony won’t carry weight if the jury thinks we fed you false memories. Forget what I said, okay?”
Her hands started to shake hard. Carefully, she laid the tablet on her lap, and she folded her hands together. “You think I saw … that?”
“We can’t lead the witness.”
“That isn’t a yes,” Aunt Nicki put in. “Keep it together, girl.”
Hand still trembling, Eve picked up the tablet again. This girl. She’d been someone’s daughter, sister, friend, niece, cousin. She’d had a name … but the knowledge of that name slipped away from Eve as if it were a minnow in a stream, bright and shiny in the sun but flashing by so fast that it was only a glimmer, then gone.
“Malcolm …,” Aunt Nicki began.
Malcolm cut her off. “It was necessary.”
“It wasn’t in your report,” Aunt Nicki said.
“It doesn’t change the result. Agent Gallo, do I have your support? You know what Lou’s reaction to this morning will be.”
Aunt Nicki was silent.
Eve’s eyes flickered up. Aunt Nicki was rubbing her face as if she were tired. Her shoulders sagged, and she looked older than Eve had ever thought she was. “Yes,” Aunt Nicki said. “She cares, you know. About the boy. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Eve looked down at the tablet. The antlered girl continued to smile, forever cheerful. Staring into her warm eyes, Eve heard the door open and slam, and then a voice speak. Lou’s voice. She felt her muscles squeeze into fists at the sound of his voice. “Anything else?” Lou demanded. Eve didn’t look up. She kept her eyes glued to the face of the antlered girl.
She didn’t hear Malcolm’s response, but he must have shaken his head because Lou said, “Damn it. This proves we were right! You were right! If we could—”
“Patience,” Malcolm said. “She’s come so far.”
“She has a boyfriend,” Aunt Nicki put in. “And she’s adjusted to the library. She’s been helping me around the house as well.”
Lou snorted. “Fantastic. She’s a real prodigy. Next, you’ll have her composing symphonies and writing sonnets. It’s not what we need.”
Still without looking up, Eve said, “You could tell me what you need.”
She heard their surprise—a rustle of their clothes as they turned toward her or toward each other. She knew Malcolm’s startled expression without having to see it.
“See, even she agrees,” Lou said. “You are too damn cautious!”
“You push too far, too fast, you’ll break her,” Malcolm said.
Eve raised her head to look at Malcolm. Just Malcolm. She didn’t want to look at Lou. “I’m already broken,” she said. “And this girl is already dead.”
Malcolm’s mouth thinned. She knew that expression too. It crossed his face before he exploded—it was the moment before the backdraft. But he held in the firestorm. “You don’t know what’s best for you. I do. And you need a return to normalcy.”
“Agent Harrington—” Lou began.
Malcolm slapped the bulletin board, the one with the photo of the antlered girl on it, and raised his voice, the first time that Eve had ever heard him do so to Lou. “This is progress! I have … she has made progress! So let us continue! My way!”
Lou was silent for a moment. “Very well. For now.”
“Good,” Malcolm said in his usual calm, measured tone. His chest was heaving as if he’d sprinted a marathon. “We’re done here. For now.” He took the tablet from Eve. Hand on her elbow, he hauled Eve to her feet. Her knees felt solid, and she didn’t shake, to her surprise. To Aunt Nicki, Malcolm said, “Call Patti Langley. Let her know we’re incoming.” To Lou, he said, “Short-term results don’t justify jeopardizing the long-term goals.”
“I said ‘very well,’” Lou said, his voice still mild. “But if the situation changes, if he starts again … I will have no choice but to accelerate matters.”
“Understood,” Malcolm said.
He pulled Eve past the bulletin board. Dragging her feet on the carpet, she slowed to look at it. The board was vast, nearly the size of the office wall, and the photo of the antlered girl was tiny within the expanse of empty cork. Two dates were under her photo—today’s date and five years’ prior—plus a reference number and a case number.
The photo looked lonely on the huge bulletin board. She wondered … No, she thought. Don’t wonder. Don’t think. She let Malcolm lead her out of the office. Numbly, she walked through the halls. Other conversations—bits of phone calls, briefings, meetings—swirled around her in a meaningless mélange of noise. She barely saw the people who brushed past her.
Ahead, two marshals escorted a boy into an interrogation room.
That looked like … “Zach?” She rushed forward as the door to the interrogation room shut. Malcolm’s hand clamped on her shoulder, stopping her. The door was closed, and the shades were drawn.
Spinning around, Eve faced Malcolm. “I saw Zach!” She thought of the phone call that Aunt Nicki had made to Lou. She’d assumed that had helped Zach, but what if it had made things worse?