Four
New York, 2002
At sixteen Naomi Carson lived a life Naomi Bowes could never have imagined. She had a pretty room in a lovely old brownstone in a city full of color and movement. Seth and Harry spoiled her with a generous allowance, shopping trips, tickets to concerts, and most of all with trust that gave her freedom.
She did her best to earn the indulgences. She studied hard, got exceptional grades—with an eye focused on Providence College in Rhode Island and a degree in photography.
They’d given her a little point-and-shoot Fuji for her first Christmas in New York, and her love affair began. Her interest blossomed, her skill improved—and netted her a serious Nikon for her sixteenth birthday.
With it, she’d joined the yearbook committee and newspaper at her high school as official photographer, and racked up experience and an impressive portfolio she hoped to use to get into the college of her choice.
She’d worked hard to lose her accent, wanting more than anything to be just like the other girls, to have nothing left of those first twelve years. Hints of it could slip through, but by the time she’d started high school, the slips were rare.
She had friends, dated now and again, though unlike most of her contemporaries she didn’t want a steady boyfriend. Too much drama, from what she’d observed.
And while she liked kissing—if the boy was any good at it—she wasn’t ready to be touched. Thought maybe she never would be.
She had let Mark Ryder touch her breast—she’d finally grown some, but accepted that they were never going to amount to much. She’d wanted to see what it felt like, but instead of making her excited, it just made her nervous and uncomfortable.
Mark hadn’t been happy that was all she let him do—and not much of that. Naomi figured that was his damage and ignored him when he accused her of being a tease, being frigid, being a freak.
At sixteen she hit five-ten—most of it leg—and was willow slim and pretty enough that boys wanted to touch her breasts. She’d let her hair grow to shoulder length, mostly so she could tie it back when she took pictures.
When she won a photography competition, Seth rewarded her with a trip to the salon for highlights and lowlights in her dark blonde hair.
Mason hit a growth spurt around twelve and was first-string center of his school’s basketball team.
Sometimes it irritated her to know that her little brother was smarter than she was. Sometimes it made her proud. Either way, he was whip-smart, good-looking, and affable. So he enjoyed the attention and admiration of the girls who fluttered around him, and he had a core circle of guys to hang with.
Days could go by without her giving Pine Meadows and all that had happened there a thought. For days she was just a regular teenager, worrying about her grades, her wardrobe, listening to music, meeting friends for pizza.
She kept in touch with Ashley, mostly through email. Ashley had never gone back to Morgantown and lost a whole year before she’d transferred to Penn State.
When she’d graduated, Naomi sent her a card and a framed photo she’d taken herself of a cherry tree full of pink blooms and promise.
On her twenty-first birthday, in the first spring of the new century, Ashley gave herself a gift. She took the train to New York to spend a whole day with Naomi.
Whenever she looked back at that day, Naomi remembered her own nerves—what should she wear, what should she say—and the speechless pleasure of seeing Ashley waiting, as promised, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
So pretty, Naomi thought, with long, long blonde hair dancing in the crazy spring breeze. All the nerves, the sudden shyness, vanished the instant Ashley saw her, rushed to her, arms wide.
“You’re so tall! You’re taller than me. Half of everybody is, but I— Naomi.” She held tight, swayed back and forth, back and forth.
“You came. It’s the most special birthday there is, and you came here.”
“I’m having the most special birthday there is because of you. I wanted to spend it with you. I wanted to meet you here, even though it’s awesome corny, because I wanted to say that everything I can see from here is because of you. And I wanted to give you this.”
Ashley took a small wrapped box out of her purse.
“But it’s your birthday. I have a present for you.”
“Let’s save mine for later—over lunch maybe. I really want you to have this now, and here, high in the sky. You brought me out of the ground, Naomi, and now we’re standing high in the sky. Open it, okay?”
Overwhelmed, Naomi opened the box and stared at the pendant. Three thin silver chains held an oval with a purple iris suspended in its center.
“It’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful.”
“I have to say it was my mom’s idea. She said how flowers have meanings. This one, the iris, it has a couple of them. One of the meanings is valor, and another is friendship. You qualify for both. I hope you like it.”
“I do. I love it. Ashley—”
“Let’s not cry. I want to cry, too, but let’s not cry today. Let’s put the necklace on, and then you have to show me some of the city. I’ve never been to New York.”
“Okay. Okay.” It was as hard, she learned, to hold back happy tears as tears of misery. “Where do you want to go first? It’s your special day.”
“I’m a girl. I want to go shopping!” Ashley laughed as she helped Naomi fasten the necklace. “And I want to go someplace where I can have a glass of champagne at lunch. I’m legal!”
“I love you,” Naomi blurted out, then flushed. “That sounds weird, I—”
“No, no, it doesn’t. We’ve got something between us nobody else does. We’re the only ones who really understand what it took for both of us to get right here, right now. I love you back. We’re going to be friends forever.”
The therapist—she had gone back for nearly a year after her mother hit one of those deep dips—asked Naomi how she felt when she saw Ashley; Naomi said it made her remember the light.
Her mother worked as a waitress in Harry’s restaurant. She did all right—except when she didn’t. Her mother sometimes went into the dark, and forgot to remember the light. But she had a job, and when she went into the dark, Harry held the job for her.
Her doctor called it depression, but Naomi knew that as bad as depression could be, the dark times were worse.
In the dark times her mother took too many pills. Once when she’d taken too many she’d had to go to the hospital. She’d taken the too many pills right after Simon Vance’s book came out, and there were big ads for it all over the city.
He’d titled it Blood in the Ground: The Legacy of Thomas David Bowes, and all the bookstores had big displays. Vance, a serious man with a polished, academic style, hyped it all over the talk shows, did in-depth interviews in magazines and newspapers. In those interviews, on those talk shows, Naomi’s name came up as often as her father’s.
That tie, that blood and bloody tie, brought back the nightmares.
Whenever Naomi saw those ads, those displays, she knew a terrible part of her life beat inside them.
It made her afraid, and it made her ashamed.
So she understood her mother’s fear, her mother’s shame, and trod carefully.
But when her mother remembered the light, things were good, even simple. Her favorite picture was one she’d taken of her mother dancing with her uncle, at a party in the summer. The light had been good, inside and out, and her mother had looked so pretty laughing into her brother’s face. She’d given it to Susan, along with one she’d taken with a timer of her mother, her brother, and herself sitting on the patio of the brownstone in the springtime.
When the dark came back, and her mother needed to stay in bed with the curtains shut tight, Naomi would take her food on a tray. She’d know how deep the dark was if she saw those pictures lying facedown, as if her mother couldn’t bear the sight of her own happiness.
Still, weeks would go by—sometimes even months—when everything seemed as normal as normal could be. When it was all about studying or fretting over a test; bickering with Mason, who could be the bane of her existence; or wondering what she should wear to a movie date.
She was at the movies—not on a date, but with a big group of friends (and Mason with a group of his) getting ready to see Spider-Man. She had popcorn and an orange soda and settled down to enjoy the previews when the houselights dimmed.
Her friend Jamie immediately started making out with her boyfriend of the moment, but Naomi ignored them—and the smacking noises Mason’s group made in the row behind her.
She loved movies, and truth be told she liked movies like Spider-Man and The Lord of the Rings more than the love stories her girlfriends sighed over.
She liked movies where people had to do something, overcome something. Even if it meant getting bitten by a radioactive spider to do and overcome.
The screen filled with the point of view of someone driving a truck. She knew about point of view from studying photography. A man’s point of view, she noted—one wearing a wedding ring.
She liked noticing the details.
Then others began to catch her eye—catch her by the throat.
She knew those roads. She knew that truck. When he veered off into the woods, bumping over a rough trail, she felt that crushing weight in her chest.
Scenes flashed—the root cellar, the photographs, a woman bound on the mattress, eyes full of terror.
She couldn’t breathe.
Flash to a house near the edge of the woods. And it was their house. God, God, their house. A long-legged girl, thin with long hair, looking out the window on a hot, storm-waiting night.
Quick splice to the family in church—father, mother, gangly girl, little boy. And the next of the girl reaching for the lock on a rough wood door.
She couldn’t watch. The popcorn fell out of her hand, spilled everywhere; the soda landed with a wet slap as she jumped up. Her friends called out:
Hey, watch it!
What the hell, Naomi!
But she was bolting for the doors.
She heard the announcer blare behind her.
A story of depravity. A story of courage. Daughter of Evil. Coming November.
Her knees buckled as she stumbled into the lobby. She fell on all fours while the room spun and her chest burned.
She heard Mason’s voice, miles away, as he shook her.
“Get up. Come on, Naomi, you have to get up.”
He pulled her up and half dragged, half carried her out into the hot, heavy air of September, the too-bright lights of Times Square.
“Look at me. Look at me.”
He was nearly as tall as she was, and he had their father’s eyes. A deep golden brown. They held both worry and shock.
“Can’t breathe.”
“Yes, you can. You are. Just take it slow.”
“It was—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say it here. Anybody asks, you got sick. You felt sick, and we went home. Let’s walk. Come on.”
She managed two shaky steps, then had to stop, brace her hands on her knees and lean over, afraid she would be sick. But the queasiness passed, the dizziness eased.
“Did you know? Did you?”
He took her hand in a firm grip, pulled her down Broadway. “I knew they were making it. I didn’t know they’d finished everything or that they’d show the damn preview during Spider-Man.”
“That was our house.”
“They filmed a lot of it on location.”
“How do you know?”
“I look stuff up sometimes. I just thought it would take longer to get out, but it’s already getting, you know, buzz from the critics and online.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He stopped, shot her a cool look of disdain only a sibling can manage. “Because you don’t want to hear it. Nobody talks about it, nobody tells me anything. So I look shit up for myself. I read Simon Vance’s book.”
Now she felt hot and sick all over again. “We have to put it behind us. It’s been four years.”
“Have you? Have you put it behind you?”
“Yes. Most of the time. A lot of the time.”
“Mama hasn’t. Remember when she said she was going for a weekend with that friend of hers? To some spa deal? She didn’t. She took the bus and went to see him, in prison.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged, then pulled her inside a coffee shop, wound through to a table. “She’s done it before. When the rest of us went to Hilton Head for a week, and she said she had a stomach virus? She went to see him then, too. I found the bus tickets in her purse, both those times, and one other.”
“You went through her purse?”
“That’s right.” He didn’t miss a beat. “Two Cokes, please,” he said with remarkable ease to the waitress. “And I go through her room, so that’s how I know she’s been writing to him. She has letters from him that come to a P.O. box.”
“You can’t disrespect her privacy,” Naomi began, then covered her face with her hands. “Why is she doing this?”
“She’s submissive and dependent—he’s dominated her the whole time. It’s like emotional abuse and battering.”
“Where do you get that?”
“I look shit up, like I said. He’s a psychopath, for Christ’s sake, Nome. You should know. And he’s a narcissist. That’s why he gives the cops another name and location every couple years. Another victim, and where he buried her. It keeps him in the news, keeps getting him attention. He’s a liar and he manipulates Mama. He twists her up because he can. Remember when she OD’d?”
“Don’t say it like that, Mason.”
“It’s what happened. Thanks.” He sent the waitress a quick smile when she set their drinks down. “He’d talked her into giving more interviews to Vance—the writer. I don’t know how he got in touch with her right off, but he talked her into that, and when the book came out, she couldn’t handle it.”
“He knows where we are.”
“I don’t know, but he sure as hell knows we’re in New York.” Then Mason shrugged. “He doesn’t care about us, and never did. Mama’s his target.”
“He cared about you.”
“I don’t think so. Do you think I wanted a buzz cut every freaking month? If he made it to one of my Little League games I could feel his eyes on my back when I came up to bat. I knew if I struck out, fouled out, he’d give me that sneer—that I’m raising a pussy sneer.”
“But . . .”
“He watched me for signs of ‘Carson blood.’ That’s how he put it. When I was eight he told me if I ever showed any fag tendencies, he’d beat the fag out of me.”
Shocked, she grabbed Mason’s hand. “You never told me.”
“Some shit you don’t tell your sister. At least when you’re eight. He scared the crap out of me—you, too. We just got used to being scared of him, like that was normal.”
“Yes.” She let it out on a shaky breath. “Yes, what kind of mood will he be in? Will he be in a good mood? Everything circled around him. I’ve gotten some of that out of therapy. I just didn’t know you felt that, too.”
“Same house, same father.”
“I thought . . . I thought it was different for you because he wanted a son. It was so clear he wanted a son more than a daughter. More than me.”
“He wanted himself, and I wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Naomi murmured.
“For what?”
“I was jealous because I thought he loved you more. And it’s horrible to think that, feel that, because he’s . . .”
“A psychopath, a sexual sadist, a serial killer.”
Each almost-flippant term made Naomi wince.
“He’s all that, Nome. But he’s still our father. That’s just fact. So forget it. I guess I was jealous some, because he let you be more. You were Mama’s deal; I was his. Anyway. Mama talked to the movie people, too. He pushed her into it, just kept asking and making it like it was the best thing for us—you and me.”
They kept their hands linked, leaned toward each other over the table now. “Why would he want it?”
“The attention, the fame. He’s right up there with Bundy, Dahmer, Ramirez. Serial killers, Naomi. Pay attention.”
“I don’t want to pay attention. Why do they want to make a movie about him? Why do people want to see it?”
“It’s as much about you as him. Maybe more.” He turned his hand over, gripped hers harder. “The title’s you, not him. How many eleven-year-old kids stop a serial killer?”
“I don’t want—”
“True or false? He’d have killed Ashley if you hadn’t gotten her out.”
Saying nothing, she reached for the pendant Ashley had given her on top of the world. Nodded.
“And when he’d finished with her, he’d have gotten another. Who knows how many he’d have killed.
“I look like him a little.”
“No, you don’t! Your eyes are the same color. That’s all.”
“I look like him some.”
“You’re not like him.”
“No, I’m not like him.” And the determination, the bright intelligence in those eyes spoke as truly as the words. “I’m never going to be like him. Don’t you be like Mama. Don’t let him twist you up. He tried to do that to us all our lives, just like with her. It’s praise and punish. It’s how they get you to do what they want, how they train you.”
She understood it, or some of it. And yet. “He never hit us.”
“He’d take things away—promise something, then if we didn’t do something just the way he said, he’d say how we couldn’t go or couldn’t have. Then he’d show up with presents, remember? He put up the basketball hoop for me, brought you that American Girl doll. I got that brand-new catcher’s mitt, you got that little heart locket. Stuff like that. Then if we did anything even a little out of line, he’d take what he’d given us away. Or we couldn’t go to a party we’d been counting on, or the movies.”
“He said we were going to Kings Dominion, and we were so excited. I didn’t get my room picked up all the way, so he said we weren’t going because I didn’t respect what I had. You were so mad at me.”
“I was seven. I didn’t get it wasn’t you. He didn’t want me to get it wasn’t you. Maybe we’d give Mama a little sass when he wasn’t around because we knew she wouldn’t tell him, but we never bucked him. Never. We lived by his moods, just like you said, and that’s how he liked it.”
She’d never left so much as a pair of socks out of place in her room after that, she remembered. Yes, he’d trained her.
“What are you reading to come up with all this?”
“A lot of books in the library on psychiatry and psychology. A lot of stuff online, too. I’m going to study and be a psychiatrist.”
From her vast advantage of twenty-three months, she smiled a little. “I thought you were going to be a pro basketball player.”
“It’s what Seth and Harry, and Mama, need to hear now. And I like basketball. I’ll play my ass off if it helps me get into Harvard.”
“Harvard? Are you serious?”
“They don’t have scholarships, but they have like incentive programs. I’m going to get into Harvard, study medicine, get my degree. And maybe I’ll use it to get into the FBI, into behavior analysis.”
“God, Mason, you’re fourteen.”
“You were three years younger when you saved a life.” He leaned forward, those golden brown eyes intense. “I’m never going to be like him. I’m going to be somebody who helps stop people like him, who learns to understand so they can. You stopped him, Naomi. But he’s not the only one.”
“If you do all that, you’ll never put it behind you.”
“You put something behind you, Nome, it’s got its eyes on your back. I’d rather keep it in front of me, so I can see where it’s going.”
—
It scared her, what he’d said, and more the coolheaded logic behind it. He was her baby brother, often a pain in her butt, regularly goofy, and a slave to Marvel comics.
And he not only had aspirations, he had lofty ones he spoke of as if he’d already checked them off a list.
He’d spied on their mother. Naomi could admit to watching her mother—and closely. Living with Susan was like carrying around something delicate. You watched every step so you didn’t stumble, drop the delicate so it shattered.
She could admit to herself, and now to Mason, a huge sense of disappointment with their mother. Mixed in with the sincere effort to make some sort of a life had been lies and deception. And over a man who’d taken lives, ruined others.
Was it love that drove her? Naomi wondered.
If it was, she didn’t want any part of it.
She’d try sex, because whatever the books and songs and movies said, she knew one didn’t have to walk arm in arm with the other. She considered the best way to go about it, knew there was no way she’d discuss birth control with her mother. And as much as she loved Seth and Harry, such a conversation would be mortifying.
So the next time she went to the doctor, she’d ask. Then when she decided to have sex, she’d be prepared.
Maybe Mason was right, and if she put it, or tried to put it, all behind her, it meant the whole ugly business could rush up to nip at her heels anytime it wanted.
Like with the movie.
So as fall came to New York, she set it aside. She didn’t like the idea of keeping it straight in front of her—couldn’t you just trip over it then? But setting aside seemed like a good compromise.
And for right now her mother got out of bed every day, got dressed, went to work. Naomi kept busy with school, her yearbook and school paper assignments, and considering which boy it made the most sense to have sex with when the time came.
But she made it a point to get her uncle alone and speak to him about the movie.
“It’s coming out in just a few weeks now.”
“Honey, I know. Harry and I planned to talk to you and Mason about it.”
“But not Mama?”
“I’ll talk with her. I hate having to. She’s doing so well right now. But the movie doesn’t change anything. Your lives are here now. That part of your lives is over.”
“Not for her. You need to talk with Mason.”
“Why?”
“You need to talk with him. It’s his to tell.”
Naomi didn’t know what her uncle said to her mother, but after a couple of dark days, Susan came out again.
She took Naomi shopping for a new dress for homecoming, insisted on making a day of it. A rare thing.
“Anything looks good on you, honey, you’re so tall and slim, but don’t you want something with some color?”
Naomi turned in the dressing room, checked front and back on the short black dress with its cinched waist and square-necked bodice.
“I’ll be taking pictures more than dancing. The black’s better for that than the pink.”
“You ought to have a date,” Susan insisted. “Why aren’t you going out with that nice boy anymore? Mark.”
“Oh.” Naomi just shrugged. Her mother wasn’t the type you told a boy hadn’t been satisfied just touching your breast. “He’s all right, but I didn’t want a date for homecoming.”
“Well, when I was your age, having a date for homecoming was the most important thing in the world. So maybe you’re smarter than I was. But I just love the pink, and it has that sparkle on the skirt.”
“I don’t know if I’m a sparkle-pink girl.”
“Every girl deserves some sparkle pink. You want the black, that’s fine. Gosh, you’re so grown-up it takes my breath. But we’re getting the pink, too.”
“Mama, you can’t buy both.”
“I can. You can wear the black since you’ll be taking pictures, and save the pink for something special. I haven’t given you and Mason enough special.”
“Sure you have.”
“Not nearly enough, but I’m going to. We’re going to buy those dresses, and have a fancy lunch. Then we’re going to hunt up the perfect accessories.”
Naomi laughed, happy to see some sparkle—not on the pink but in her mother’s eyes. “My camera’s my accessory.”
“Not this time. You’d probably be better off with Seth and Harry there, but we’ll find just the right things. Shoes and a bag, and earrings. I know you wanted to go shopping with your girlfriends today, but—”
“Mama, I love doing this with you.”
“It all went so fast. I see that now. It seemed so slow, and some days—and nights—lasted forever. But I see now, looking at you, so grown-up, how fast it all went. I wasn’t with you.”
No, no, the sparkle was dying out. “You always were.”
“No.” Susan laid her hands on Naomi’s cheeks. “I wasn’t. I’m really going to try to be. I . . . I’m sorry about the movie.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you back.”
“I’m going to take the pink dress out to the saleslady, have her get started. You go on and change, then we’ll have lunch.”
They bought the dresses, and shoes, and a pretty bag that sparkled—and made her mother smile again. At Naomi’s urging Susan bought herself a red sweater and suede boots. They came home flushed and exhausted, modeled everything all over again.
When Naomi dropped into bed that night, she thought she’d had the best day of her life.
October turned brisk, and the light Naomi loved best slanted gold over the burnished trees of the parks.
To please her mother she wore the pink instead of the black to homecoming, and though it wasn’t a date, she asked Anson Chaffins, a friend—and the editor of the school paper—to pick her up.
And saw the glimmer of tears in her mother’s eyes from joy instead of sorrow when she and Anson dutifully posed for pictures before she could get out of the house.
On Halloween Susan dressed up as a flapper, coordinating with Seth and Harry in their zoot suits to hand out candy to the ghosts, goblins, princesses, and Jedi knights. As it was the first time Susan had dressed up for the holiday, Naomi browbeat Mason into spending part of the evening at home instead of out with his friends doing God knew what.
“It’s like she’s turned a corner, and she’s really moving forward now.”
Mason, who’d made himself into a vampire hobo, shrugged. “I hope you’re right.”
Naomi gave him an elbow in the ribs. “Try to be happy because I am right.”
But she wasn’t.
—
The third week of January, in a quick cold snap that blew in some thin snow, she rushed home at lunch. Anson came with her.
“You didn’t have to come,” she said as she dug out her keys.
“Hey, any excuse to get out of school for a half hour.”
Anson Chaffins was a senior, gawky and on the geeky side, but he was, to Naomi’s mind, a good editor and a really good writer. Plus, he’d done her a favor at homecoming.
He’d put what she thought of as half-assed, clumsy moves on her that night, but hadn’t pushed anything.
As a result, they got along just fine.
She let him in, turned to the alarm pad to key in the code.
“I’ll go up, get my camera bag. Which I’d have had with me if you’d told me you wanted shots of the drama club rehearsing.”
“Maybe I forgot so we could get out for thirty.” He grinned at her, shoved up his dark-framed glasses. He shoved them up constantly, as if his eagle-beak nose served as their sliding board.
Behind them his eyes were pale, quiet blue.
He glanced around. “Maybe you’ve got like a Coke or whatever. No point leaving empty-handed.”
“Sure, we’ve always got Cokes. Do you remember where the kitchen is?”
“Yeah. This house is totally cool. You want a Coke while I’m at it?”
“Grab two.” She yanked off her gloves, stuffed them in the pocket of her coat.
He gave her that half-smirking grin, the one that curled the side of his mouth. “Maybe you got chips?”
She rolled her eyes, plucked off her cap. “Probably. Get whatever. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time—we got twenty-five left on our pass. Hey! This yours?”
He walked up to a black-and-white photo study of an old man dozing on a park bench with a floppy-eared mutt curled beside him.
“Yeah. I gave it to Harry for his birthday a couple weeks ago. And he put it up right in the foyer.”
“Excelente work, Carson.”
“Thanks, Chaffins.”
Amused—he called everyone by their last name, insisted everyone use his—she started upstairs.
It surprised her to see Kong sitting outside her mother’s bedroom door. His habit was to wait in Mason’s room, or, in better weather, belly out through the dog door to sun on the patio—or do what he had to do in the corner designated for it.
“Hey, boy.” She gave him a quick rub as she passed, glanced back when he whined. “No time. Just passing through.”
But he whined again, scratched at her mother’s door. And Naomi felt something flutter and drop in her belly.
“Is Mama home?” Had the good stretch come to a dip?
Her mother should be at work, with Harry and Seth. There was, she knew, a party of twenty-two coming in for a retirement lunch, so it was all hands on deck.
Naomi eased the door open, saw that the curtains had been drawn closed—a bad sign. And saw in the dim light her mother lying on top of the bed.
“Mama.”
She wore the red sweater they’d bought on their shopping spree rather than her white work shirt and black vest.
Kong jumped on the bed—something he was only allowed to do in Mason’s room—licked her mother’s hand, and whimpered.
Her mother lay so still.
“Mama,” Naomi said again, and switched on the bedside lamp.
So still, so pale—and her eyes weren’t quite shut.
“Mama. Mama.” Naomi gripped Susan’s shoulder, shook. Took her hand, found it cold. “Mama! Wake up. Wake up!”
The pills were right there, there by the lamp. No, not the pills, the bottle. The empty bottle.
“Wake up!” Gripping her mother’s hands, she pulled. Susan’s head lolled, fell forward. “Stop it. Stop it.” She tried to get her arms around Susan, pull her off the bed.
On her feet, on her feet, make her walk.
“Hey, Carson, what the hell are you shouting about? You need to chill— What . . .”
“Call an ambulance. Call nine-one-one. Hurry, hurry.”
He stood frozen for a moment, staring as Susan’s limp body fell back on the bed, and her eyelids opened like shades to show the staring eyes behind them. “Wow. Is that your mom?”
“Call nine-one-one.” Naomi laid an ear to her mother’s heart, then began to press on it. “She’s not breathing. Tell them to hurry. Tell them she took Elavil. Overdosed on Elavil.”
Staring, he fumbled out his phone, punching in 911 with one hand, shoving up his glasses with the other, while Naomi did CPR, puffing out her breath as she worked.
“Yeah, yeah, we need an ambulance. She overdosed on Eldervil.”
“Elavil!”
“Sorry, Elavil. Crap, Carson, I don’t know the address.”
She called it out while tears ran down her cheeks, mixed with sweat.
“Mama, Mama, please!”
“No, she’s not awake, she’s not moving. Her daughter’s doing CPR. I-I-I don’t know. Maybe, um, like forty.”
“She’s thirty-seven.” Naomi shouted it. “Just hurry.”
“They’re coming.” Anson dropped down beside her, hesitated, then patted Naomi’s shoulder. “She—the operator—she said they were on the way. They’re coming.”
He swallowed, moistened his lips, then touched his fingers to Susan’s hand.
It felt . . . soft and cold. Soft like he could push his fingers through it. Cold like it had lain outside in the winter air.
“Um, oh jeez, Carson. Ah, man, look, hey.” He kept one hand on Susan’s, put his other on Naomi’s shoulder again. “She’s cold, man. I think . . . I think she’s dead.”
“No, no, no, no.” Naomi laid her mouth on her mother’s, blew in her breath, willed her to breathe back.
But there was nothing there. Like the pictures of the women in her father’s cellar, there was nothing left in the eyes but death.
She sat back. She didn’t weep, not yet, but smoothed back her mother’s hair. There was no weight pressing on her chest, no churning in her belly. There was, as in her mother’s eyes, nothing.
She remembered the feeling—the same as when she’d swum through the air toward the sheriff’s office on that hot summer dawn.
In shock, she thought. She was in shock. And her mother was dead.
She heard the bell, got slowly to her feet. “I need to go let them in. Don’t leave her alone.”
“Okay. I’ll, um . . . Okay.”
She walked out—sort of like sleepwalking to Anson’s eyes. He looked back at the dead woman.
They wouldn’t get back to school in thirty.