He was closing the refrigerator door, a bottle of juice in his hand. “Sorry ’bout that.” He gave her an apologetic smile. The window spilled a sliver of light down his forehead, his cheek, his chin. It pooled in his left eye like honey. Turned his brown hair gold on the left side of his head. He was her family and he’d quickly become her closest friend. Now she wanted more than that.
She walked toward the refrigerator and stood in front of him.
“Adam?” she asked, and she hoped he understood the question she was posing without her having to explain.
He did. He set down the bottle of juice and rested his hands on her sides, his thumbs close to her breasts through the towel. He leaned his head down and she felt his lips on her neck. She drew her head back so that his lips would meet hers, and when they did, she felt the rush of heat between her legs. The point of no return. His fingers lightly grazed the tops of her breasts as he freed the towel, and it slipped down her body to the floor.
Two weeks, she thought. Maya’s only been gone two weeks.
She caught his hands in hers and pulled away, shaking her head in apology.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is so wrong, and it’s totally my fault. And I just…I can’t.”
He was slow to nod. He bent over, his hair brushing her thigh as he picked up the towel. “I know,” he said, as he wrapped it around her. “It’s okay.”
She tucked the loose ends of the towel above her breasts again, her fingers shaking. “I’m so…” She looked to the left. The right. Anywhere but into his eyes.
Images filled her mind: Cradling phantom babies. Kneeling next to the Maya look-alike lying in the school hallway. Spotting her parents on the bleachers. Squeezing her hands around Tristan’s delicate rib cage while she lost herself in Adam’s dark eyes. Recoiling from the stack of paperwork on Dorothea’s table.
“Bec?” Adam ran his hands down her arms. “You all right?”
She lifted her hands to her face and began to cry. “I’m so screwed up,” she said.
“Hey.” He pulled her close. “No you’re not.”
She pressed her fingers against her eyes. “I am,” she said. “I’m a mess.”
“Come on.” He led her over to the couch and she sat down, lowering her hand from her face to hold the towel tightly against her breasts. “You have a right to be a mess,” he said. “We both do.”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t.
“It’s not just Maya,” she said.
“Tell me what it is then.” He took one of her hands from where it clutched the towel and held it on his knee. “Tell me,” he said again.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Remember what you said about my family story?” she asked. “Maya’s and mine?”
“Yes.”
“How I’m…I don’t remember exactly what you said. Tough and wild. I sleep around. I—”
“I never said that.”
“You know that’s part of the story, though,” she said. “How I don’t want kids. How I’ll be the director of DIDA someday. Right? That’s all part of the story, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Well, lately, I feel…” She didn’t know how to put it into words. “Sometimes I feel like I’m anything but tough. Like I’m a total wimp. More like Maya than myself.”
“I don’t see that.” He looked solemn. “You are seriously the strongest woman I know.”
“Everyone has all these expectations of me, Adam! I have to jump out of planes. I have to fly off to God knows where at a moment’s notice. I have to take over DIDA. I—”
“You love all that stuff,” he interrupted.
“I do! But I feel locked into it all. It doesn’t feel like my choice anymore. I’m living the life everyone else expects me to live, when what I might really want…” She shook her head. “Maybe I do want kids. How would I know? I’ve never even allowed myself to think about it because kids don’t fit into the life I’m supposed to live. But ever since Maya’s miscarriage, all I can think about are babies and kids, and lately all I can think about is…I keep thinking about you.” She looked down at her bare knees. “I feel close to you, and that feels good and it’s terrible for something to feel good when Maya is gone.”
He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I know,” he said, and she could tell that this was one thing he did understand.
“I feel fragile right now, Adam. Where did the tough woman go? She’s gone. I’m like an eggshell, cracking into a million pieces.”
He smiled. “I like that image,” he said.
She pulled her hand away. “Well, I don’t!”
“I do.” He put his arm around her. “Come here and I’ll tell you why.” He reached for her, and she let him pull her closer to him on the couch.
“Why would you say that? Why do you like that image?” she asked.
“Because sometimes cracks in an eggshell just mean that a new chick is trying to be born.”
“Oh.” She went still in his arms, touched. He rubbed her back and she pressed her face to his shoulder. Then she smiled to herself, giving him a mock slap on his thigh. “Did you just call me a chick?”
He laughed. Leaning away, he smoothed his hand over her damp hair. Her cheeks. Her throat. He kissed her again and everything inside her began to melt. But she was stronger than she’d given herself credit for. She didn’t want to regret this moment.
She drew away from his arms and stood up. Taking his hand in hers, she leaned over to kiss his cheek.
“Thank you,” she said, and she walked toward the bathroom, knowing she’d made the right choice. This was not the time. Not today. Not yet.
Someday soon, though, it would be.
42
Maya
THERE WAS NO TIME TO THINK.
I held the basket close to my body on the narrow path that led to Lady Alice’s, Simmee’s words playing in my brain: He probly already left Lady Alice’s by now and is out huntin’. What would I do if I ran into him on this trail? What would I do? I walked as quickly and quietly as I could, listening for the sound of Tully’s hammer on Lady Alice’s roof, but that steady, reassuring tapping had ceased. I heard nothing other than my heart beating in my ears. The day was hot, but it had grown overcast and the forest was dark. The mosquitoes were out in force, and I worried about them feasting on the baby. He was so silent that I had to stop to be sure he was still breathing.
In the gloom, I was afraid I’d miss the first torn branch that would lead me off the path, but I finally spotted it. The long white scar on a slender tree trunk was almost impossible to miss. I only hoped that Tully would miss it as he approached it from the opposite direction.
It was a relief to be off the main path, where’d I’d been afraid of coming face-to-face with him, but the thick undergrowth offered me new fears. I saw, or at least I hoped I was seeing, where Simmee and I had clawed our way through the brambles. I scoured the forest for the next torn branch and found it as well, but after that, I felt turned around. Had I lost our trail? How long had we walked through the forest after the twine ran out? He kilt Jackson. My lungs burned. My breathing was so rapid and the air so thick, that I felt dizzy.
The crack of a rifle suddenly echoed through the woods and I dropped to my knees with a yelp as if I’d been shot. I wasn’t totally sure I hadn’t been. I stayed rooted to the ground for a moment, my fingers on the handle of the basket and my heart pounding hard against my ribs. How far away was he? The sound of the rifle could have been three yards from me or three miles. Either way, he was too close. I got to my feet and saw, almost directly in front of me, the end of the twine tied around a branch. I let out my breath in relief.
I untied the twine, not wanting Tully to stumble across it. Then I followed the trail Simmee had marked with it, gathering the twine in my left hand, and carrying the basket in my right. I nearly tiptoed through the brush, yet every step I took seemed
to snap a twig or rustle a leaf. I listened hard as I walked, but the only other sound I heard was my own rasping breathing.
Then the thing I’d been hoping would not happen, happened: the baby began to cry.
“Shh,” I whispered, moving on. Moving faster. “Shh, sweetie. Please.” But he continued to cry, louder and louder, oblivious to my mounting panic.
I stopped walking. Setting down the basket, I leaned over and swaddled the baby more tightly in the green blanket. I touched one of the many creases in his tiny neck, where he still bore traces of blood and vernix. His eyes, a beautiful slate-gray, opened, and he looked at me as if he could truly see me. For a moment, his crying stopped and I felt the connection between us, the thread that ran from his eyes to my heart.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered. I lifted the basket, grabbed the wadded end of the twine and began fighting my way through the brush once again.
“Hey!”
I jerked at the sound of Tully’s voice. It seemed to swim around me, coming from all directions at once.
“Who’s there?” he shouted.
Oh, God. I pictured him somewhere behind me, raising his rifle, getting me in his sights. The baby started crying again, and I whimpered as I ran, knowing that the cries would allow Tully to zero in on our location with ease. He can hear a rabbit munchin’ weeds a mile away.
I finally saw the dull sheen of the water through the trees ahead of me. I followed the twine, and the dingy white bow of the johnboat came into view, more exposed than I remembered it from only a few hours earlier. I looked at the secure knot Simmee had used to tie the bow of the boat to the sapling. I should have brought a knife, but it was too late for that now. I tore at the knot until my trembling fingertips bled, finally freeing the rope. I started in on the knot securing the stern, but then realized it would be safer to free the boat once the baby and I were in it.
Behind me, I heard a ripping, tearing sound. Branches breaking. Vines stripped from the ground by their roots. I pictured Tully’s long legs cutting easily through the undergrowth, his rifle slung over his shoulder as he followed the baby’s cries. It may as well have been a monster coming after me rather than a human being, for the panic I felt. A monster would be less frightening at that moment. I imagined Tully’s arms raising the rifle, taking aim.
Leaning over the bank, I set the basket on the floor of the boat, then climbed in next to it, trying to keep my balance. The rope extending from the stern was easier to unknot. Once I’d freed the boat, I expected it to slip into the open water where I could let the motor down, but the boat stayed rooted under the cantilevered ledge of earth and roots. God, please, please.
“Hey!” He was closer now, maybe close enough to see me. Certainly close enough to hear the baby’s cries.
Adrenaline filled every cell in my body. I pushed against the ledge with strength I didn’t know I had, and with a sudden jerk and a sickening tilt to the left, the boat broke free. I lowered the motor into place and yanked on the cord. Once, twice. It sputtered and sputtered again, but on the third try, it coughed to life. I quickly steered the boat away from shore just as Tully burst from the forest onto the bank.
“Hey!” he called. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“The baby’s very sick!” I shouted over the sound of the engine. “I’m taking him to the hospital. Get Lady Alice to check on Simmee!”
“Come back here!” he called, and I wondered if he’d heard what I said. “I want to see the baby! You have no fuckin’ right!” I waited for him to raise the rifle. I was ready to duck down in the boat. “Maya!” he shouted again. “Get your butt back here!”
I was terrified, but I also knew that I was the one with the boat. The one with the power. I opened the throttle all the way, anxious to get out of the range of his rifle. Anxious to get away. I could taste my freedom. Finally. I had a mess on my hands: a baby that wasn’t mine, a young woman who needed help. But at that moment, all I wanted was to find a way home to my husband and my sister and my life—although I knew it would not be the same life I’d left behind. Nothing would ever be the same.
I tore my gaze from Tully to the water in front of me. I knew the creek, still swollen and wide and rough, circled the island. Once I saw the dock, I would turn left to get to Ruskin. The nearest town, she’d told me. Just keep going left. Behind me, Tully still shouted, but I could no longer hear his words. Soon the bend of the creek put him and his rifle out of sight, and my breathing settled down. Even the baby picked up on the calm, lulled nearly to sleep by the raspy hum of the motor. “We’re safe,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the baby or myself. We’re safe, I thought, but is Simmee?
The boat. Tully had to wonder about the sudden appearance of his beloved johnboat. How could Simmee possibly explain its reappearance, on the other side of the island, and so coincidental to the birth of the baby? She was resourceful, I thought. She would find a way. She probably had it figured out already.
I steered the boat away from Last Run and within minutes, spotted the fork Simmee had told me about that day on the dock. Are you listening? It’s rude not to listen. I nearly smiled. She’d thought of everything. It hurt, though, to think of her alone in her house right now, her body a wounded mess from the birth, her spirit crushed by the loss of her baby. I couldn’t afford to think about it. There would be time later. Now, I only needed to follow the creek to the river and civilization. I felt like shouting with the joy of being free.
All of a sudden, I remembered the rope. I’d left it tied to the tree on the bank. Tully would see it. He would know. He might not figure out every single detail, but at the very least, he would know he’d been played for a fool. By Simmee. By me.
He kilt Jackson. He’ll kill me.
I pictured Tully studying the rope in his hand. Putting two and two together. I saw him, brimming over with a lethal mix of fury and humiliation, racing back to the house. Ahead of me, the scrubby trees that formed the fork in the creek came into view. I stared at the left fork, the water that would carry me home. A voice in my head cried out, You’re safe! Just go! But the voice was no match against the image in my mind of a defenseless girl and an enraged man. I looked away from the fork, away from escape, even before I turned the boat around.
Could I beat him to the house? I knew his anger would spur him quickly through the woods. I spotted the dock and steered toward it. Drawing the boat close to it, I shut off the engine. I tied the boat to a metal loop jutting from the dock, set the basket on the wooden platform and tried to climb out, my haste making me clumsy. I finally managed to boost myself onto the dock and, grabbing the basket, I ran up the path toward the house.
Simmee was curled in a fetal position on the three-legged chair in the living room, and she looked up, startled, when I raced into the room with the basket.
“No!” she wailed.
“You need to come with me!” I said. “Don’t speak. Trust me, Simmee. Hurry. The boat’s at the dock.”
She looked at me blankly, her mouth open. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, she reached for the basket.
I caught her hand, pulling her to her feet. “Tully’s on his way,” I said. “He saw me leave. He knows the boat was tied there.”
She darted a quick look toward the kitchen, her eyes wide with fear.
“Your baby needs you,” I said. “Come on.”
She came with me without a fight then. She was clearly in discomfort from the birth, but she moved quickly and wordlessly. I ran into the bedroom and grabbed one of the pillows for her to sit on and a couple of sanitary pads from the open box on the bed, and in a moment we were out the door. In another few minutes, we were on the dock. In the wood beneath my feet, I was certain I could feel Tully pounding the earth as he ran toward the house. I helped Simmee into the boat, handed her the basket and climbed in myself. Trembling from head to toe, I pushed the boat away from the dock.
Simmee reached into the basket and lifted her baby to her chest agai
n. She held him close, her eyes shut in quiet rapture, and I was the only one who saw Tully raise his rifle to his shoulder. I was the only one who heard the ping of the bullet against the side of the johnboat. With a ferocity I never knew I possessed, I opened the throttle wide and we shot above the surface of the water like a meteor across the sky.
43
Rebecca
CROUCHING BY THE SHELF OF ANTIBIOTICS IN THE PHARMACY, Rebecca searched for tetracycline to give the teenager she was treating. She was smiling to herself. She’d been smiling ever since leaving Adam and the trailer an hour earlier. She wasn’t sure exactly what the future held for them, but it seemed full of promise and that was all that mattered.
She found the bottle and was getting to her feet when her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID. A hospital in Fayetteville? She wondered if one of the patients she’d sent to the hospital that morning could have been taken all the way to Fayetteville. Setting down the bottle of antibiotics, she flipped her phone open.
“Dr. Ward,” she said.
“Becca!”
The phone fell from her fingers to the floor, landing with a horrific splintering sound. The National Guardsman who was stationed in the room to keep an eye on their drugs reached down to pick it up, but Rebecca had already dropped to the floor and was scrambling for the phone, praying it still worked.
“Are you all right?” the National Guardsman asked, but she barely heard him. Sitting on the floor, she lifted the phone to her ear. “Who is this?” she asked hesitantly. She didn’t know what to hope for.
“It’s Maya, Becca! I’m all right. Where are you?”
She couldn’t breathe. She felt as if a bull had rammed into her solar plexus. “Where am I?” she managed to say. She wrapped her arms around her legs, nearly curling into a ball on the floor as she clutched the phone to her ear.
The National Guardsman crouched next to her. “Doc?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Go get Adam. Hurry!” Then into the phone, “Oh, my God, Maya!” she said. “We thought you were dead! Where are you?” She remembered the hospital name on the caller ID. “Are you hurt? Have you been in the hospital all this time?”