Her mother squeezed harder and spoke in the same guarded whisper. “I’ll talk to him.”
“He won’t change his mind.”
“I’ll try. I promise. Just be patient.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.”
Elizabeth pushed away because her own decision was so suddenly hard inside her she feared her mother might feel it.
“Elizabeth, wait…”
But, she didn’t. She pounded the stairs, went to her room, and squeezed her legs together until lights were off in the house. When the time came, she went through the window and onto the roof, then down the great oak that had shaded her room since before she could speak.
A friend with a car waited at the end of the drive. Her name was Carrie, and she knew the place. “Are you sure about this?”
“Just drive.”
The doctor was slick skinned and Lithuanian and unlicensed. He lived in a trailer at the bad end of a bad trailer park and wore his hair long and parted in the middle. His front tooth was gold, the rest of them as shiny and brown as old honey. “You are the preacher’s daughter, yes?”
His eyes moved up and down, gold tooth flashing as he pushed a damp cigarette into the center of a narrow smile.
“It’s okay,” Carrie said. “He’s legit.”
“Yes, yes. I helped your sister. Pretty girl.”
Elizabeth felt a cold ache between her legs. She looked at Carrie, but the doctor had his fingers on her arm. “Come.” He moved her toward the back of the trailer. “I have clean sheets, washed hands…”
When it was done and she was in the car, Elizabeth was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She hunched above the place she hurt. The road was black, and white lines flicked past, one after another and endless. She settled into the hurt, and into the hum of tires. “Should there be this much blood?”
Carrie looked sideways, and her face turned as white as the lines on the road. “I don’t know, Liz. Jesus.”
“But, your sister-”
“I wasn’t with my sister! Jenny Loflin took her. Shit, Liz! Shit! What did the doctor say?”
But Elizabeth couldn’t think of the doctor, not of his dead eyes or filthy room or the way he touched her. “Just get me home.”
Carrie drove fast to make it happen. She got Elizabeth to the house and onto the porch before something else broke inside and stained the porch like a flood.
“Jesus. Liz.”
But Elizabeth couldn’t speak, watching instead from the bottom of a lake. The water was clear and warm, but getting dark at the edges. She saw fear on her friend’s face, and black waters pushing in.
“What do I do, Liz? What?”
Elizabeth was on her back, everything warm around her. She tried to raise her hand, but couldn’t move at all. She watched her friend pound on the door, then turn and run and spray gravel with the car. The next thing she saw was her father’s face, then lights and movement, then nothing at all.
Elizabeth eased up on the gas, watching mile markers slide past as she played it out again: long days in the hospital, the silent months that followed. She blamed herself when the nights got long. For not wanting the baby, for the dead place inside her. How old would the child be had she kept it?
Sixteen, Elizabeth thought.
Two years older than Gideon. Two years younger than Channing.
She wondered if that meant something, if God indeed paid attention, and her father had been right all along. It was doubtful, but why else did she find these children? Why were the connections so immediate and unshakable?
“A psychologist would have a goddamn field day.”
The thought amused her because psychologists ranked about the same as preachers, which meant pretty low. What if she was wrong about that? If she’d gone for therapy as her mother wanted, then maybe she’d have finished college and married. Maybe she’d have a career in real estate or graphic design, live in New York or Paris, and have some fabulous life.
Forget it, she thought. She’d done good work as a cop. She’d made a difference and saved some lives. So what if the future was shapeless? There were other things and other places. She didn’t have to be a cop.
“Yeah, right.”
Those were her thoughts as she approached a creek with two boys fishing from the bridge. Her foot came off the pedal, and she moved past, parking beyond the bridge to watch. The smaller boy went into his cast, and for a moment everything hung in perfect balance: the rod all the way back, small arms flexed. He was nine, she guessed, his friend pointing at a deep-looking pool beside a willow tree and a slab of gray stone. The baited hook flicked out, landed perfectly. They nodded at each other, and she marveled that life could be so simple, even for a child. It gave her a moment’s peace, then the phone rang, and she answered.
It was Channing.
She was screaming.
Channing had stood on the porch and shaded her eyes as Elizabeth backed from the drive and accelerated down the street. The poor woman had been apologetic and calm, but Channing understood the sudden need to move and do and think wild thoughts. She felt the same thing when her mind went to the basement, like she could scream or rock in the dark or punch the walls until her fingers bled. Anything was better than stillness, and acting normal was the one impossible thing. Conversation. Eye contact. Anything could open the door.
She watched the street for another minute, then went inside and wandered the house, liking everything about it: the colors and the furniture, the comfortable clutter. A bookshelf covered an entire wall of the living room, and she walked its length, opening one book and then another, picking up photographs of Elizabeth and some small boy. In most of the pictures he was young-maybe two or three. In others he was older, shy looking and thin, and close at her side. He had troubled eyes and a pretty smile. She wondered who he was.
Turning from the photographs, Channing locked the door, poured a glass of vodka from a bottle in the freezer, and made her way to the bathroom at the end of the hall. She locked that door, too, and wondered if she’d ever relax behind a door that wasn’t bolted. Even here and safe, she felt as if her clothes were too thin and certain muscles had forgotten how to unclench. The vodka helped, so she took a sip, started the bath, and then lifted the glass again. She made the water very hot and waited for steam to rise before undressing in a careful, controlled manner. It wasn’t that she hurt-the stitches, the bite marks-but that she feared her eyes might betray her, that they’d find the mirror by mistake and linger on the bruises and dark thread and the tight, pink crescents his teeth had left. She wasn’t ready for that.
Sinking into the bath, though, she thought of what Elizabeth stood for, of her patience and strength and will. Maybe it was the vodka, or something more. Whatever the case, Channing climbed from the tub before the water cooled. She kept her eyes up this time and confronted the mirror with a steadiness she thought she’d lost. She started with wet hair and the water on her skin, then looked at the bruises and marks and the ribs that showed too plainly. But it wasn’t enough to simply look. She needed to see, and that’s what she tried to do, to see not just the person she’d been or was, but the woman she wished to be.
That woman looked a lot like Liz.