Pax looked down at the white-scarf girls. They ranged in age from perhaps fifteen years old to twenty. None of them stood much taller than Rainy and Sandra; any one of them could snap his arm.
“Which one of you?” Pax asked. “Which one of you killed her?”
They returned his gaze with eyes like black stones. He realized that he couldn’t read their faces as he had the reverend’s. These girls were opaque to him, inscrutable as fish.
“No takers?” Pax asked.
Tommy Shields had noticed him. A beta girl was touching his arm, pointing back at Pax. Tommy began to jog toward him.
Pax walked down the steps, and the white-scarf girls moved out of his way and fell in behind him. Tommy was running now, yelling for them to hold him. Pax strode toward him.
A young charlie couple got out of their car halfway between them. They looked at Tommy, then at Paxton. “What are you doing here, man?” the charlie man said. Pax had seen him at a few of Rhonda’s paydays. He was dark haired and blockish, the girl round and pale: Mr. Square and Miss Circle, escaping together.
“Where are they?” Tommy said. “Where are the girls?”
The distance closed to a few feet-and Pax launched himself at the man. Tommy threw up his arms, but Pax tackled him and they both went down, tumbling across the sharp gravel. They clawed at each other, kicking and throwing elbows and spitting like children throwing a tantrum. Ridiculous, Pax thought, even as he surrendered to the emotion of it. Tommy hated him, he hated Tommy-it was so simple. A feedback loop of empathy.
Pax lost track of whose limbs were whose. They rolled, smacked against the wheel of a pickup. People around them shouted.
Someone gripped him by the leg and dragged him backward. Hands peeled Pax and Tommy from each other and hauled them upright. The charlie man held Paxton, and an argo had fastened a long arm around Tommy. Pax, chest heaving, tasted blood in his mouth and smiled like a madman. Tommy bled too, but not badly. All that scrabbling and they’d only scratched each other.
“Y’all fight like girls,” said the charlie holding him.
“He knows where they are,” Tommy said. “Sandra and Rainy. He’s trying to hide them so that they can’t go with us.”
The argo looked at him. “Is that so?” he said in his low voice. They were surrounded by betas-white-scarf girls, young children, a smattering of males-and the charlies and argos who’d driven here for the start of the exodus.
“The girls are safe,” Pax said.
“You can’t protect them,” Tommy said. “You can’t even take care of them! What are you going to do with a girl in Sandra’s condition? What would you do to her?”
Paxton stopped struggling. “What are you talking about?”
The reverend appeared between them. “Stop it. Both of you.” She was dressed now in a skirt and long blouse. She turned to a pair of older beta women. “Sandra and Rainy are at Jo’s house. Please take some people with you to go pick them up.”
The charlie boy released his grip; Paxton was no longer fighting him anyway. The reverend watched his face, waiting to see if he finally understood.
He’d been so blind. The way Sandra had been covering herself with the blanket, the way that for all the time he’d known her she’d worn nothing but loose dresses to Rainy’s tomboy clothes. The way she’d hugged him so carefully last night, touching only shoulders and arms. She couldn’t have been as far along as the reverend, but she’d carefully concealed her shape from him. Rainy and Sandra had conspired to hide it.
So blind.
They didn’t try to stop him from leaving. He walked between the rows of trailers, across the field. When he reached the tree line he looked back and saw Tommy’s Bronco and another car rolling out the front gate. There was no way he could beat them to Jo’s house, no way he could warn the girls. He wasn’t sure that he would’ve warned them if he could. Tommy was right: Their clade could protect them, and he couldn’t.
He walked into the shadow of the trees and started up the mountain.
The vintage was already dissipating from his bloodstream. A few months ago a dose of the size he’d taken would have knocked him unconscious. In August, a single taste of it had put him on the ground and left him gawking as if God were going to reach down and shake hands.
After fifteen minutes he reached the clearing. Sunlight splintered through the trees.
The bench was empty. Jo was long gone, evaporated with the vintage.
He walked across the long grass, then stopped. A figure stepped out of the trees ahead of him.
He took a step back. “There are people looking for you,” he said.
“We heard the cars coming up the drive,” Rainy said. “We ran.” Sandra stepped out of the trees behind her, the blanket still around her shoulders.
Sandra glanced at Rainy nervously.
“You really are pregnant?” Pax asked.
“We wanted to tell you,” Sandra said.
Rainy said, “We kept thinking you’d notice.”
Sandra let the blanket slip to the ground. The bulge beneath her dress was hardly noticeable, but then she ran a hand down her front, smoothing out the fabric, showing the swell of her belly.
“I’m only a few months along,” she said. “But I can feel her growing, every day. There may even be twins. Oh Paxton, my daughters are going to be the first children of the new generation. Do you want to feel them?”
Sandra took a step forward and he jerked back. Rainy watched him, her arms at her sides. He’d seen her use those arms to haul herself through the trees like a chimp, or carry him like a child. They could cinch shut a windpipe like a noose.
He said, “The pills weren’t for your mother.” He already knew the answer. He’d known it as soon as he heard that Sandra was pregnant. As soon as the reverend had looked at him, he’d understood what had happened that night-in this very spot.
“No,” Rainy said.
“The night she found out-”
“She was going to kill the baby,” Rainy said. “Sandra’s daughter. Her own granddaughter.” She shook her head. “I just couldn’t understand a person who would do that. Someone had to stop her.”
“But Rainy, she was your mother.”
“I know who she was.”
“Jesus, Rainy…”
“Don’t look at her like that!” Sandra said. Pax had never heard her speak so sharply. The girl stepped between Paxton and her sister. “You don’t know how torn up she’s been. She doesn’t feel good about what she had to do. But you said last night that sometimes good people have to do bad things.”
“You were awake,” Pax said.
“Mom wasn’t going to stop,” Sandra said. “You know how she was. Once she’d made up her mind, she wouldn’t quit. We couldn’t go to the Co-op, not with Hooke helping her. Rainy did what she had to do. She was protecting me. Protecting us.”
“Sandra, I know how it must feel to-”
“No you don’t,” Sandra said. “You’re not a beta. You don’t get to judge.”
They heard voices calling up the mountain. High tenors-beta voices. Rainy tensed as if she were about to run.
“They’re not going to harm you or your baby,” Pax said. “That’s the last thing they’d do.” He nodded toward the voices. “Tommy will protect you. And the reverend-that’s over now. I don’t think she understood who the pills were for.”
Rainy looked down the slope, then at Paxton. “We wanted you to know,” she said. “We wanted you to understand. Then maybe-”
“Maybe we could stay with you,” Sandra said. “You do kinda need us, Paxton.”
The voices grew louder. “You should go,” Pax said. “You’re worrying them.”
Sandra rushed to him. She threw her arms around him, pressed her belly into his. He tried to step away, but she hugged him harder. Finally he touched the top of her smooth head.