“And they go nuclear when the cocoons are breached,” Frank said.
“Right.” Garth laid out instruments on the coffee table: scalpel, trimmers, and, from the black case, a small microscope. “Let’s begin by taking your daughter’s pulse, shall we?”
Frank said that was fine.
Flickinger carefully lifted Nana’s encased wrist and held it for thirty seconds. Then he lowered it just as carefully. “Resting heart rate is slightly muffled by the cocooning material, but it’s in the normal range for a healthy girl her age. Now, Mr. Geary—”
“Frank.”
“Fine. What do we not know, Frank?”
The answer was obvious. “Why this is happening.”
“Why.” Flickinger clapped once. “That’s it. Everything in nature has a purpose. What is the purpose of this? What is the cocoon trying to do?” He picked up his trimmers and clicked the blades open and shut. “So let us interrogate.”
When she had no one else to talk to, Jeanette sometimes talked to herself—or rather, to an imagined listener who was sympathetic. Dr. Norcross had told her this was perfectly okay. It was articulation. Tonight that listener was Ree, who had to be imagined. Because Officer Lampley had killed her. Soon she might try to find where they’d put her, pay her respects, but right now just sitting in their cell was good enough. Right now it was all she needed.
“I’ll tell you what happened, Ree. Damian hurt his knee playing football, that’s what happened. Just a pickup game with some guys at the park. I wasn’t there. Damian told me no one even touched him—he just pushed off, going to rush the quarterback I guess, heard a pop, fell down in the grass, came up limping. ACL or an MCL, I always forget which, but you know, one of those. The part that cushions between the bones.”
Ree said Uh-huh.
“At that time we were doing okay, except for we didn’t have the health insurance. I had a thirty-hour-a-week job at a daycare center, and Damian had a regular off-the-books thing that paid unbelievable. Like, twenty an hour. Cash! He was working as sort of the sideman for this small-time contractor who did cabinetry for rich people in Charleston, politicians and CEOs and stuff. Big Coal guys. Damian did a lot of lifting and so on. We were doing great, especially for a couple of kids with nothing but high school diplomas. I was proud of myself.”
Ree said You had every right to be.
“We got the apartment and it was good, nice furniture and everything, nicer than anything I had when I was a kid. He bought this motorcycle almost brand new, and we leased a car for me to drive myself and our boy Bobby around in. We drove down to Disney. Did Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, hugged Goofy, the whole nine yards. I loaned my sister money to see a dermatologist. Gave my mother some money to get her roof fixed. But no health insurance. And Damian’s got this fucked-up knee. Surgery was the best option, but… We just should have bit the bullet and done it. Sold the motorcycle, let go of the car, tightened up for a year. That’s what I wanted to do then. I swear. But Damian didn’t want to. Refused. Hard to get around that. It was his knee, so I let it alone. Men, you know. Won’t stop and ask for directions, and won’t go to a doc until they’re just about dying.”
Ree said You got that right, girlfriend.
“ ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I’m going to stick it out.’ And I must admit we did have a party habit. We always partied. Like kids do. Ecstasy. Weed, obviously. Coke if someone had it. Damian had some downers hid away. Started taking them to keep his knee from hurting him too much. Self-medicating, Dr. Norcross calls it. And you know my headaches? My Blue Meanies?”
Ree said I sure do.
“Yeah. So one night I tell Damian my head’s killing me, and he gives me a pill. ‘Try one of these,’ he says. ‘See if it don’t sand the edge off.’ And that’s how I got hooked. Right through the bag. Easy as that. You know?”
Ree said I know.
The news became too much for Jared, so he switched to the Public Access channel, where an extremely enthusiastic craftswoman was giving a lesson on beading fringe. It had to be a pre-recording. If it wasn’t, if this was the craftswoman’s actual current mien, he wouldn’t have wanted to meet her on a normal day. “We are going to make something bea-utiful!” she cried, bouncing on a stool in front of a gray backdrop.
The craftswoman was his only companion. Molly had fallen asleep.
Around one he had ducked out to use the john. When he returned three minutes later she was passed out on the couch. Clutching the can of Mountain Dew he’d given her, her poor kid face already half-covered in webs.
Jared crashed out himself for a couple of hours in the leather armchair. His exhaustion had swamped his distress.
An acrid smell awakened him, drifting in through the screen doors, the sensory alert of a distant fire. He drew the glass doors shut and returned to the armchair. On the TV, the camera focused tight on the craftswoman’s hands as they wove a needle in and out, over and under.
It was 2:54 on Friday morning. A new day according to the clock, but it felt like the previous day wouldn’t be letting them go anytime soon, if ever.
Jared had ventured across the street to requisition Mrs. Ransom’s cell phone from her purse. He texted Mary on it now:
Hey, it’s Jared. You ok?
Yeah, but do you know if something is on fire?
Think so, but I don’t know what. How is your mother? How is your sister? How are you?
We’re all fine. Drinking coffee and baking brownies. Sunrise here we come!! How’s Molly?
Jared glanced at the girl on the couch. He’d draped her with a blanket. The covering on her head was round and white.
Great, he wrote. Chugging Mountain Dew. This is her granny’s phone I’m using.
Mary said she’d text him again soon. Jared returned his attention to the television. The craftswoman was inexhaustible, it seemed.
“Now I know this’ll upset some people, but I just do not care for glass. It scratches up. It’s my true conviction you can do just as well with plastic.” The camera went tight on a pink bead she held between her thumb and forefinger. “See, not even an expert eye’s likely to tell the difference.”
“Pretty good,” Jared said. He had never been one to talk to himself, but he had never been alone in his house with a white-swathed body while the woods burned, either. And there was no denying that little pink fucker looked like glass to his eye. “Pretty dang good, lady.”
“Jared? Who are you talking to?”
He hadn’t heard the front door open. He leaped to his feet, wobbled four or five steps on his aching knee, and threw himself in his father’s arms.
Clint and Jared stood, locked together between the kitchen and the living room. They both wept. Jared tried to explain to his father that he had only gone to pee, he couldn’t help it about Molly, and he felt awful, but dammit he was going to have to go sometime, and she seemed all right, he was sure she’d be okay, chattering away like she was and drinking her Mountain Dew. Everything wasn’t okay, but Clint said it was. He repeated it over and over, and father and son held tighter and tighter, as if by force of will they could make it so, and maybe—maybe—for a couple of seconds, they did.