And Then There Were Four

  “I’m not sure. She’d be working at home if it was an ordinary day. I mean, I assume she’s still home but I won’t know until we call and she answers the house phone.” I pause. “Wait. She won’t answer an unknown number!”

  “Maybe she will,” Caleb says calmly. “You’re missing. She’ll think it might be you. If she doesn’t answer, though, we should try going in.”

  I scoot along in silence for half a block. “Where do you think they’ve been getting together? You can’t exactly plot death at a restaurant.”

  “My father’s office?”

  “But shouldn’t it all be top secret?”

  He shrugs. “My father conducts group therapy all the time.”

  I steal another quick glance at him. “I keep thinking, my mother has had plenty of chances to kill me all my life. All she had to do was give me an insulin overdose. She could have claimed it was an accident. Why do things this way?”

  “Are you asking me, or yourself?”

  “Both. The thing is, my mother is not stupid and this is stupid. Also, she’s not really a group person. She doesn’t have any friends, even. She doesn’t hang out with people. She doesn’t like other people.”

  “My father can be very persuasive,” Caleb says.

  I say, “Well, he’s a famous doctor. She’d like that. Maybe she never would have thought of it on her own.”

  I halt my scooter. My building is ahead.

  Home.

  Chapter 47. Caleb

  Saralinda’s building is fine, but let’s just say your father would look around and smile patronizingly. As far as you’re concerned, the best part is that there is no doorman, which makes it easy for you and the girls to take up temporary residence in the laundry room off the lobby.

  “Showtime.” Evangeline sits on a dryer and calls Saralinda’s mother’s landline. All of you crowd around. You hold your breath as the line rings once. Twice. Three times.

  “Hello?” Saralinda’s mother’s voice is flat and cautious.

  “Ursula?” Evangeline says efficiently. “This is Carrie Macdonald from the Chaplin Center for Adoption. How are you this morning?”

  “Oh! Hello. Fine. I’m fine.” Still cautious, but decidedly less cold.

  “I understand you normally work with Hannah Joplin, but she’s out sick today.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope it’s nothing serious?”

  “No, thanks, just a cold. But I’m covering for Hannah and it turns out we need you to sign some paperwork, and we need it today, so that you can have your first meeting with Tori as scheduled. We’d hate to have to delay that. But of course we can delay the meeting if signing today isn’t convenient for you?”

  You eye Evangeline approvingly and she smirks back as Ursula responds, all warm syrup.

  “Of course! No problem. Just email it to me, and I’ll return it right away!”

  Evangeline hesitates for a second. “Sorry, we can’t do that. You have to sign the papers in our office. There has to be a, um, witness.”

  “What do you mean? Notarized?”

  Your alarmed eyes meet Kenyon’s and Saralinda’s but Evangeline sails on smoothly. “Yes. That’s correct. We need your signature notarized. The thing is, Hannah is the one who knows all the details, not me. Sorry. All I know is that we need you to come in this morning and do it. So, can you? It’s the fastest and easiest way.”

  Ursula pauses. “I guess I can.”

  Relief whooshes through your chest.

  “Excellent. Can you come now? Before lunch? Because I have afternoon appointments.”

  “Yes. Now, what was your name again?”

  Evangeline’s eyes widen. She says, “See you soon,” and disconnects.

  The four of you, together, exhale an enormous amount of air.

  “You sounded good,” Saralinda says.

  “But I forgot my name.” Evangeline hits the side of her head.

  “Carrie Macdonald,” Kenyon says.

  “Which is the name of my lawyer. I mean, my father’s lawyer. My mind went blank for a second.” Evangeline slides down from the dryer and leans against it. Absently, she wipes sweat from her forehead.

  You say, “You did great. All we need to do now is wait and see if she leaves.”

  In the next few minutes, there is activity in the lobby, just not the activity you want. You peer out the half-closed laundry room door as a man in running clothes stretches and an old lady with a walker gets mail from her mailbox. Saralinda murmurs, “That’s Ms. Pfeiffer. She’s nice. She told me once she knew Gloria Steinem.”

  “Who’s Gloria Steinem?” you ask.

  All three of them glare at you.

  “A really important feminist,” Saralinda says. “Of historical importance.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Saralinda pauses. “Okay, so I had to look her up too. My mother laughed. She said she had failed in her maternal duty.” Abruptly, she blinks, closes her eyes tightly, and puts up a hand to cover them.

  “SL? What is it?” asks Kenyon.

  Saralinda looks up, suspiciously bright-eyed, and sighs. “It’s just—that day. Her and me. We sat in the kitchen and my mother told me about Gloria Steinem, and I pretended to listen more than I was listening, if you know what I mean, and my mom kind of caught me and—and she laughed and hugged me. She said when I was older, I would understand.” She pauses. “There were so many good times. It’s just hard to believe what’s happening now. Part of me . . . I can’t help wondering if it’s my fault.”

  Your stomach twists. Your fists clench. You want to shout at her, No! No, this is what being manipulated is like—you doubt yourself rather than your parent. At which point your brain stutters to a stop. When it restarts, your thoughts have shifted abruptly. Was Saralinda right about what she said at Johanna’s about you as a little kid? Were you being deceived and manipulated all along? If you could write down all the times when you thought Mr. Hyde did something, and logically work out where your father was, each time . . . what would that look like?

  Evangeline says to Saralinda, “I get what you’re feeling. Nobody is an evil supervillain all the time. Listen, I even had a couple good moments with Spencer.” She shrugs uncomfortably. “Which I sort of stomped on, to be honest.”

  “You?” Kenyon says, and Evangeline laughs.

  Then Kenyon says seriously, “But I hope you’re not saying that Spencer’s right to go after you because of that?”

  “God, no.”

  “Just checking.”

  The two of them make protracted eye contact. You look away, at Saralinda. “How are you? How’s your blood sugar?”

  She squirms. “Oh. I can hold out.”

  There is silence. You keep watching the lobby. Nobody comes. Evangeline boosts herself up on the dryer again. “It’s so hot in here,” she mutters. “What’s taking your mother so long, SL?”

  You’re not hot.

  Saralinda says, “My mom was probably in her pajamas when you called. Now she’ll be standing in her closet trying to decide what to wear that will impress the people at the adoption agency—”

  Kenyon interrupts. “Wait, is that her?”

  Looking straight ahead, Ursula de la Flor strides out of the elevator, through the lobby, and out the main door.

  A minute later, you and the girls are in the elevator heading up. You encounter no neighbors to recognize Saralinda or look twice at the friends accompanying her. It’s great luck—even, you can’t help thinking, unbelievable luck. But you’ll take it.

  It turns out that Saralinda keeps an apartment key inside her cane. She works a tiny mechanism located under the handle that swivels a piece of wood near the top of the cane.

  “A secret compartment!” Kenyon says. “Sweet!”

  Saralinda gives her cane a pat. “You can’t spot the lin
es when it’s closed.”

  “Is it a handmade cane?” asks Kenyon.

  “Yes. Although I superglued the crystal ball-thing on it by myself.” Saralinda ducks her head as if she’s embarrassed. “I was younger then.”

  “It’s very cool,” says Kenyon. “Very you.”

  “Well, I do still like it, but it’s sort of, you know . . .” Saralinda uses the key, and then you’re all inside the apartment with the door shut. Inside, where the insulin is.

  There’s a windowless combination kitchen and sitting area. Beyond it are two closed doors. One of them is extra wide like a hospital room door, and made of a visibly heavy, thick wood. Evangeline sinks down onto one of the kitchen chairs.

  Saralinda doesn’t run for her insulin. Instead, she waves at the closed doors like a tour guide. “So this used to be a one-bedroom. The living room got renovated so we could each have a bedroom.” She focuses on the kitchen counters. “What a mess!” She moves as if to toss Chinese food containers into the trash.

  “Leave them alone!” you bark. “Insulin.”

  She grins at you over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” You start to say something and she stops you. “Okay, I’m going.” She goes through the extra-wide bedroom door.

  You follow. You pass through her bedroom, not noticing anything except that it is a bedroom, and lean up against the doorframe of her bathroom. It’s all antiseptic white tile and stainless steel, fitted with a walk-in shower, a toilet seat with arms, and grab bars on every available wall. It’s as if Saralinda’s mother wanted her daughter to be in a wheelchair.

  Saralinda stands before the sink with her testing stuff. She doesn’t acknowledge your presence behind her as she deposits a drop of blood on her meter, but when the result is ready, she meets your eyes in the mirror and says, “315, which is high, but no problem.” She takes a vial and draws the insulin up carefully into the syringe. However, instead of injecting herself as you expected, she meets your eyes in the mirror again. There’s a new look on her face, half-scared, half-determined.

  “Would you help?” She touches her left arm. It is covered by her hoodie. “We alternate where we do the shots. I’m supposed to do it in the back of my arm this time, which I can’t reach easily by myself.”

  You think briefly of Evangeline and Kenyon. Why not ask them? But she didn’t ask them.

  “Okay,” you say.

  Saralinda shrugs off her hoodie. There’s a defiant note in her voice. “You inject directly into the back of the arm. You have to sort of pinch the skin to hold it firm and steady. You don’t have to worry about finding a vein. It’s pretty easy unless you hit, um, scar tissue.”

  Her whole body tenses as you step close to take her upper arm in your hands—

  Which is when you really see. Her arm where she expects you to inject her is badly scarred from previous injections. Years of injections. A lifetime of injections. Beneath your fingertips, the skin isn’t soft to the touch; the scar tissue beneath is palpable.

  Instinctively, gently, you touch it.

  She says, “My legs are like that too.”

  You search the mirror for her face, but all she lets you see is the top of her head.

  “My stomach too. It’s like a war zone.” Her voice goes higher, thinner. “Some people scar more than others. Maybe I’m worse than other people. I don’t know any other diabetics.” She pauses. “Or junkies.”

  You say nothing.

  “That was a joke.” Finally, her eyes meet yours in the mirror.

  You say, “Your sense of humor isn’t nearly as good as you think it is.”

  “No?”

  If laughter was what she needed now, you’d give it to her by the bucket. But she needs something else. She believes that her body is ugly. Ugly! When what it truly is, is perfect. Perfectly her.

  But you have no idea how to tell her that. You don’t know what to say to her, but you do know how to reassure her. You know it with the certainty of millions of years of human genetic encoding.

  Only you are forbidden to do it. You forbid yourself.

  You say, “Show me what to do.”

  She puts her hand on top of yours. Her fingers move, miming. “I need one shot of fast-acting insulin, and then another of slow.”

  She breathes.

  You breathe.

  You poise the needle. You push the syringe. When it goes in, you are the one who winces. “Did I hurt you?”

  She shakes her head. She prepares the second shot.

  You do that one too.

  Then you put the syringe down and turn toward her, and she turns toward you.

  You ask a question without any words.

  For answer, slowly, experimentally, she leans in.

  Suddenly you don’t care that you’ve forbidden yourself. You reach to cradle her head, threading your fingers through her blunt shorn awkward haircut. Her face is so sweet. She turns her face up just so—you lean down to her—

  When from the kitchen, Kenyon cries out, “Evangeline! Are you okay?”

  Chapter 48. Saralinda

  Caleb’s hand is warm on my back and his arm is strong around my waist and his eyes are dark and wanting and his mouth is an inch from mine and his breath is on my lips and as for me I am one great big yes (and also to be honest a little bit at last)—

  Then Kenyon screams Evangeline! Caleb jerks away from me and me from him and our faces whip in the direction of the kitchen and then Caleb races away with me and Georgia right behind him.

  Evangeline sits at the kitchen table with her head resting on her arms.

  “She almost fell,” Kenyon tells us. “She staggered. If I hadn’t caught her—”

  “I’m okay,” Evangeline says irritably. She raises her face which is pale and sweaty. “I got faint for a minute. I already feel better.”

  Kenyon narrows her eyes.

  “You sure?” I say.

  “Yes. Stop fussing.”

  The other three of us look at one another and then Caleb looks directly at me and I blush.

  “Shouldn’t you eat?” he says romantically, not.

  Food.

  Oh.

  The fact is all the hunger I felt before has dissolved into wanting to kiss and be kissed, but practically speaking food is not about hunger it is about blood sugar regulation so I must force food in unfortunately.

  Except nothing seems truly unfortunate at this moment.

  I smile at Caleb though he doesn’t smile back, he has his unreadable expression on again. “Sure,” I say, and warm up my food from the restaurant (I specifically calculated the insulin so I could have the potatoes, thank you) and sit at the table opposite Evangeline, which means I’m using my mother’s chair which I have never sat in before—but I won’t think of her.

  “Our plan,” Evangeline says. “We need to get started. Our online videos or whatever. We can start planning right here while Saralinda eats.” She sits up slowly and wipes sweat from her face with a paper napkin.

  Kenyon kneels next to Evangeline and touches her cheek gently. “Are you better?”

  “Yes, only a little nauseous. If you guys will get started? Saralinda, may I—”

  I point. “Use my bathroom.”

  “Thanks.” Evangeline walks carefully but steadily into my bedroom.

  Caleb says, “So we do a short video here and now, quick and dirty, and just post it.”

  “We can use my tablet to record it,” I say. I toss my take-out container and quickly retrieve the tablet from my bedroom, glancing at the closed bathroom door as I do. Back in the kitchen I set up the tablet and its camera reflects me and my hair (about which the less said the better).

  “Come sit by me,” I say to Kenyon and Caleb.

  “I can’t just start talking,” says Kenyon. “I thought we were going to write script
s!”

  “No time,” I say. “Just tell the truth. Say what’s going on.” I pause. “Caleb, what if you start? Say something about your father?”

  Caleb hesitates and then squats beside me. I can’t resist bumping into him hoping he will bump me back, but he is like a piece of wood. Still I catch Kenyon’s raised eyebrow and I smirk at her which pleasantly shocks me, I’ve never smirked before in my life. Kenyon grins crookedly back, I look away and blush, oh I hope this is real it is real for me but what about him? Anyway Caleb and I are now side by side in the camera eye and we do not look too bad together if you make allowances for my demented hair and Caleb’s expression.

  I start the recording.

  Caleb clenches his teeth which is not attractive.

  I blink compulsively, ditto.

  Out of camera range, Kenyon turns toward my open bedroom door.

  “Hello,” I say to the camera.

  “Hello,” Caleb repeats. Grimly he adds, “I’m Caleb Colchester. My father is”—he chokes it out—“Dr. Caleb Colchester. I’m here with my friend Saralinda de la Flor.”

  I wave at the camera in a friendly way which instead looks dorky, maybe we will have time to edit.

  Caleb grits on. “And also my friend Kenyon, uh, Martha McKenyon. We go to Rockland Academy.”

  I beckon at Kenyon, who is paying half attention. She ducks her face into camera range and then out. “I need to check on Evangeline,” she says, and sprints away.

  Caleb and I look at each other. I open my mouth to ask if we should stop but he continues talking to the camera.

  “So we’re in fear of our lives. It’s our families trying to kill us. Our parents or our parental substitutes. This includes my father, Dr. Caleb Colchester. There are four of us. The other one is Evangeline Song. Fuck. I am not being coherent, Saralinda.”

  “At least we’re recording,” I say, and add for clarity, “There used to be five of us. Our friend Antoine Dubois is already dead.”

  Caleb says, “They want the rest of us dead too. For various reasons. Like, with me—oh, Christ, stop. Stop.”

  He buries his face in his hands. “We’ll try again in a minute.”