Callie
I focus on chewing the end of the toothpick, make it like Damien says, that the toothpick is all that exists, and after a while I manage to calm down. But when the toothpick snaps and sirens fills the air, the snow making my body wet and cold, I can’t stop my mind from darting ahead into the future: a future in which Alice is dead, or in the hands of the man who put the flower in my hair over a year and a half ago, put the flower in the hair of rodent Callie, scared Callie. That Callie had nothing to live for except survival. Me, I have so much to live for, and somebody has her.
Damien helps me to my feet and leads me to the car. Gertrude sits forward, dabbing at her bruised eye, panting, looking half-crazed with her silver hair in disarray. Damien lays me down on the passenger seat.
“Find her,” I say, but it’s more like I hear myself say it. Everything is hazy; the torture in my mind is more real than everything out here, in the cold. “Find our daughter, Damien. Our daughter needs you. I should’ve told you.” Tears threaten to break me again. I swallow them back. “I should’ve told you. I know that. I know. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I was scared and now—I am a terrible mother. What sort of mother leaves her daughter to fend for herself? She could be dead, Damien. Our daughter could be dead.”
“Ogre has her. She’s not dead. If he wanted to kill her, he would’ve burnt the house down like he did the warehouse.”
“Ogre . . .” I can’t fight the tears at that, can’t hold them back any longer. They explode from me. Damien tries to put another toothpick in my hand. In a voice wracked with sobs, I scream: “Get that fucking thing out of my face and go save our daughter!” I smack the toothpick away. It lands in the snow.
In my head, I see Alice, tiny, vulnerable, in Ogre’s too-big hands, and I remember when Mom would read to me from Of Mice and Men, Lennie and the rabbits and the puppies, Lennie snapping the too-small-things’ necks with his too-big hands. And I think about how Ogre is just the same, and how he could easily do the same to Alice with his too-big hands. Yes, he wouldn’t even have to try. He would just squeeze his massive fingers a little too tightly—and—and—
I begin rocking back and forth, hardly knowing what I’m saying, delirious, terrified, desperate for Alice to be in my arms.
“Our daughter is gone and you need to save her. Please, please, please, Damien, please. I am sorry I didn’t tell you. I am sorry. I am. I am. I am very sorry. But save her. Save her, Damien. Please save her. Please save her. Save her. Save her. Save her.”
“Quiet,” Damien says, and there’s an edge to his voice which reaches me. Looking up through bleary eyes, I see his face harden, take on a business aspect, a killer’s aspect. “Gertrude, ma’am, do you have anything faster than this old rust bucket?”
“There’s a sedan in the garage,” she says, voice weak, as though on the verge of sleep.
“Alright. I’m taking it.”
“The keys are—”
“Won’t need the keys. Callie, I need to get out of here before the ambulance arrives. When you give your police report, tell them about Ogre, ’cause if they find him, good. But don’t tell them about me. I don’t need their hasslin’ when I’m about my business.”
He makes to stand, and then reaches out and touches my face. His hands are rough and cold, but they remind me of last night, which already seems like an age ago. Did we really just have sex and laugh and talk like there were no troubles in the world? Did we really just hold each other and open ourselves to each other? How could we be so naïve?
“Stay strong, Callie.” He kisses me on the forehead, and then stands up.
I hear him breaking into the garage, and then smashing the sedan’s window. But I barely hear it over the sound of Mom in my head, reading the same passage from Of Mice and Men over and over on a loop: “‘I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead—because they was so little.’” I shiver, the image too much for me to handle.
Damien has to save her, he has to. I don’t think I’d ever forgive him if he didn’t. And even if I know that isn’t fair, it doesn’t matter. It isn’t fair that my daughter is gone, either, that one of his men has taken her, that it was one of his men who put that flower in my hair to begin with and turned my life down this road.
Damien drives the sedan out of the driveway, and a minute later the ambulance pulls in.