Lena leaned her head into her hand, trying to close her eyes for just a minute of rest. She had been sitting in a chair outside Julia Matthews’s room for over an hour, and the last few days were finally catching up with her. She was tired and about to start her period. Despite this, her pants were loose on her hips from not eating. When she snapped her paddle holster on over her belt this morning, it was loose against her hip. As the day wore on, it started to rub, chafing her side.
Lena knew she needed to eat, needed to get back to living her life instead of just dragging along through every day like she was living on borrowed time. For now, she could not imagine doing that. She didn’t want to get up in the morning and go for a run, like she had every morning for the last fifteen years. She did not want to go down to the Krispy Kreme and get coffee with Frank and the other detectives. She did not want to go to pack her lunch or go out to dinner. Every time she looked at food, she felt sick. All she could think was that Sibyl would never eat again. Lena was walking around while Sibyl was dead. Lena was breathing while Sibyl was not. Nothing made sense. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Lena took a deep breath and let it go, looking up and down the hallway. Julia Matthews was the only patient in the hospital today, which made Lena’s job easy. Except for a nurse who had been floated down on loan from Augusta, it was just Lena and Julia on this floor.
She stood, trying to walk some sense into her brain. She was feeling punch-drunk, and Lena could not think of anything to fight this other than to remain in motion. Her body ached from restless sleep, and she was still unable to get the image of Sibyl in the morgue out of her mind. Part of Lena was glad that there was another victim, though. Part of Lena wanted to go into Julia Matthews’s room and shake her, to beg her to speak, to tell them who had done this to her, who had killed Sibyl, but Lena knew this would get them nowhere.
The few times Lena had gone into the room to check on the girl, she had been silent, not answering even the most innocuous questions from Lena. Did she want another pillow? Was there anyone she wanted Lena to call for her?
Thirsty, the girl had pointed to the pitcher on the hospital table rather than ask for water. Her eyes still had a haunted look about them, too, caused by the fact that the drug was still in her system. Her pupils were wide open, and she had the look of someone who was blind—blind like Sibyl had been. Only Julia Matthews would recover from this. Julia Matthews would see again. She would get better. She would go back to school and make friends, maybe meet a husband one day and have kids. Memories of what had happened would always be in the back of Julia Matthews’s mind, but at least she would have a life. At least she would have a future. Lena knew that part of her resented Matthews for this. Lena knew, too, that she would trade Julia Matthews’s life for Sibyl’s on a second’s notice.
The elevator dinged open, and Lena put her hand to her gun without thinking. Jeffrey and Nick Shelton walked into the hallway, followed by Frank and a skinny-looking kid who looked like he had just come from his high school graduation. She dropped her hand, walking to meet them, thinking she’d be damned if all those men were going to go into the small hospital room containing a woman who had just been raped. Especially Opie.
“How’s she doing?” Jeffrey asked.
Lena skipped the question. “You’re not all going in there, are you?”
The look on Jeffrey’s face said he had planned just this.
“She’s still not talking,” Lena said, trying to help him save face. “She hasn’t said anything.”
“Maybe just you and I should go in,” he finally decided. “Sorry, Mark.”
The young man did not seem to mind. “Hey, I’m just glad this got me out of the office for a day.”
Lena thought it was pretty shitty of him to say this within walking distance of a woman who had arguably been to hell and back, but Jeffrey caught her arm before she could say anything. He led her up the hallway, talking as they walked.
“She’s stable?” he asked. “Her medical condition?”
“Yeah.”
Jeffrey stopped at the door to the room, his hand on the handle but not opening it. “How about you? You’re doing okay?”
“Sure.”
“I have a feeling her parents are going to want to move her to Augusta. How do you feel about going with her?”
Lena’s first impulse was to protest, but she nodded an uncharacteristic acquiescence. It might do her some good to get out of town. Hank would be going back to Reece in a day or two. Maybe she would feel differently when she had the house back to herself.
“I’ll let you start,” Jeffrey said. “If she looks like she’ll be more comfortable with just you, then I’ll step out.”
“Right,” Lena said, knowing this was standard procedure. Generally, the last thing a woman who had been raped wanted to do was talk to a man about it. As the only female detective on the squad, this job had fallen to Lena a couple of times before. She had even gone to Macon once to help interview a young girl there who had been brutally beaten and raped by her next-door neighbor. Still, even though Lena had been at the hospital all day with Julia, something about actually talking to the girl, interviewing her, made Lena feel sick to her stomach. It was too close to home.
“You ready?” Jeffrey asked, his hand on the door.
“Yeah.”
Jeffrey opened the door, letting Lena go in ahead of him. Julia Matthews was asleep, but she woke at the noise. Lena didn’t imagine the young girl would have a good night’s sleep for a long while, if ever.
“Want some water?” Lena asked, walking to the far side of the bed, picking up the pitcher. She filled the girl’s glass, then turned the straw so she could drink.
Jeffrey stood with his back close to the door, obviously wanting to give the young girl space. He said, “I’m Chief Tolliver, Julia. Do you remember me from this morning?”
She gave a slow nod.
“You’ve ingested a drug called belladonna. Do you know what that is?”
She shook her head side to side.
“It causes you to lose your voice sometimes. Do you think you can speak?”
The girl opened her mouth, and a scratchy sound came out. She moved her lips, obviously trying to form words.
Jeffrey gave an encouraging smile. “Want to try to tell me your name?”
She opened her mouth again, her voice raspy and small. “Julia.”
“Good,” Jeffrey said. “This is Lena Adams. You know her, right?”
Julia nodded, her eyes finding Lena.
“She’s going to ask you some questions, okay?”
Lena tried not to hide her surprise. She wasn’t sure she could tell Julia Matthews the time of day, let alone question the young woman. Lena fell back on her training, starting with what she knew.
“Julia?” Lena pulled a chair up to the young woman’s bed. “We need to know if you can tell us anything about what was done to you.”
Julia closed her eyes. Her lips quivered, but she did not answer.
“Did you know him, sweetie?”
She shook her head.
“Was it someone from one of your classes? Had you seen him around school?”
Julia’s eyes closed. Tears came a few seconds later. She finally said, “No.”
Lena put her hand on the girl’s arm. It was thin and frail, much as Sibyl’s had seemed in the morgue. She tried not to think about her sister when she said, “Let’s talk about his hair. Can you tell me what color it was?”
Again she shook her head.
“Any tattoos or marks that might help us identify him?”
“No.”
Lena said, “I know this is hard, honey, but we have to find out what happened. We need to get this guy off the street so he can’t hurt anyone else.”
Julia kept her eyes closed. The room was intolerably quiet, so much so that Lena felt the urge to do something loud. The silence was making her nervous for some reason.
Without warning, Julia finally spoke. Her voice was husky. “He tricked me.”
Lena pressed her lips together, letting the girl have her time.
“He tricked me,” Julia repeated, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter. “I was at the library.”
Lena thought about Ryan Gordon. Her heart thumped in her chest. Had she been wrong about him? Was he capable of doing something like this? Maybe Julia had escaped while he was in jail.
“I had a test,” Julia continued, “and I stayed late to study.” Her breathing became labored at the memory.
“Let’s take some deep breaths,” Lena said, then she breathed in and out, in and out, with Julia. “That’s good, honey. Just keep calm.”
She started to cry in earnest now. “Ryan was there,” she said.
Lena allowed herself to look at Jeffrey. He was focused on Matthews, his brow furrowed. She could almost read his thoughts.
“At the library?” Lena asked, trying not to sound too pushy.
Julia nodded, then reached out for her glass of water.
“Here,” Lena said, helping her lean up so that she could drink.
The girl took several swallows, then let her head drop back down. She stared out the window again, her mind obviously taking time to recover. Lena tried not to tap her foot. She wanted to reach over the bed and force the girl to talk. She could not understand how Julia Matthews could be so passive in her interrogation. If Lena were in that bed, she would be spitting out every detail she had. Lena would be pushing whoever would listen to find the man who did this. Her hands would be itching to rip his heart out of his chest. How Julia Matthews could just lie there, she did not know.
Lena counted to twenty, forcing herself to give the woman some time. She had counted in the Ryan Gordon interview; it was an old trick of hers and the only way she could make herself at least appear patient. When she reached fifty, Lena asked, “Ryan was there?”
Julia nodded.
“In the library?”
She nodded again.
Lena reached over, putting her hand on Julia’s arm again. She would have held her hand if it had not been wrapped in tight bandages. She kept her tone even, putting in just a little bit of pressure, as she said, “You saw Ryan at the library. Then what happened?”
Julia responded to the pressure. “We talked a little while, then I had to go back to the dorm.”
“Were you mad at him?”
Julia’s eyes found Lena’s. Something passed between them, an unvoiced message. Lena knew then that Ryan had some kind of control over Julia, but that she wanted to break it. Lena also knew that as much of a bastard as Ryan Gordon was, he had not been the man to do this to his girlfriend.
Lena asked, “Did you argue?”
“We kind of made up, though.”
“Kind of, but not really?” Lena clarified, sensing what had happened in the library that night. She could see Ryan Gordon trying to push Julia into making some kind of commitment to him. She could also see that Julia’s eyes had finally been opened as to what kind of person her ex-boyfriend was. Julia had finally seen him for what he was. But someone else more evil than Ryan Gordon could ever hope to be had been waiting for her.
Lena asked, “So you left the library, then what?”
“There was a man,” she said. “On the way to the dorm.”
“Which way did you walk?”
“The back way, around the agri-building.”
“By the lake?”
She shook her head. “The other side.”
Lena waited for her to continue.
“I ran into him, and he dropped his books, and I dropped mine.” Her voice trailed off, but her breathing became loud in the small room. She was nearly panting.
“Did you see his face then?”
“I don’t remember. He gave me a shot.”
Lena felt her eyebrows furrow. “Like a shot with a syringe?”
“I felt it. I didn’t see it.”
“Where did you feel it?”
She put her hand to her left hip.
“He was behind you when you felt it?” Lena asked, thinking this would make the killer left-handed, just like Sibyl’s attacker.
“Yeah.”
“So he took you then?” Lena asked. “He ran into you, then you felt the shot, then he took you somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“In his car?”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “The next thing I knew, I was in a basement.” She put her hands over her face, crying in earnest. Her body started to shake with grief.
“It’s okay,” Lena said, putting her hand over the other woman’s. “Do you want to stop now? You’re in charge of this.”
The room was quiet again but for Julia’s breathing. When she did speak again, her voice was a hoarse, almost imperceptible whisper. “He raped me.”
Lena felt a lump in her throat. She knew this already, of course, but the way Julia said the word stripped Lena of every defense she had. Lena felt raw and exposed. She did not want Jeffrey in the room. For some reason, he seemed to sense this. When she looked up at him, he nodded toward the door. Lena mouthed a yes, and he left without a sound.
“Do you know what happened next?” Lena asked.
Julia moved her head, trying to find Jeffrey.
“He’s gone,” Lena said, giving her voice an assured tone that she did not feel. “It’s just us, Julia. It’s just you and me, and we’ve got all day if you need it. All week, all year.” She paused, lest the girl take that as encouragement to stop the interview. “Just keep in mind that the sooner we get the details, the sooner we can stop him. You don’t want him to do this to another girl, do you?”
She took the question hard, as Lena expected she would. Lena knew she had to be a little tough or the girl would simply shut up, keeping the details to herself.
Julia sobbed, the noise filling the room, ringing in Lena’s ears.
Julia said, “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
“Me, either,” Lena answered. “You have to tell me what he did to you.” She paused, then, “Did you see his face at any time?”
“No,” she answered. “I mean, I did, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t make the connection. It was so dark all the time. There was no light at all.”
“Are you sure it was a basement?”
“It smelled,” she said. “Musty, and I could hear water dripping.”
“Water?” Lena asked. “Like dripping from a faucet, or maybe from the lake?”
“A faucet,” Julia said. “More like a faucet. It sounded…” She closed her eyes, and for a few seconds she seemed to let herself go back to that place. “Like a metallic clinking.” She mimicked the sound, “Clink, clink, clink, over and over. It never stopped.” She put her hands over her ears, as if to stop the noise.
“Let’s go back to the college,” Lena said. “You felt the shot in your hip, then what? Do you know what kind of car he was driving?”
Julia shook her head again in an exaggerated sweep left to right. “I don’t remember. I was picking up my books, and then the next thing I knew, I was, I was…” Her voice trailed off.
“In the basement?” Lena provided. “Do you remember anything about where you were?”
“It was dark.”
“You couldn’t make anything out?”
“I couldn’t open my eyes. They wouldn’t open.” Her voice so soft that Lena had to strain to hear. “I was flying.”
“Flying?”
“I kept floating up, like I was on water. I could hear the waves from the ocean.”
Lena took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Did he have you on your back?”
Julia’s face crumpled at this, and she shook with sobs.
“Honey,” Lena prompted. “Was he white? Black? Could you tell?”
She shook her head again. “I couldn’t open my eyes. He talked to me. His voice.” Her lips were trembling, and her face had turned an alarming shade of red. The tears came in earnest now, marking a continual stream down her face. “He said he loved me.” She gasped for air as the panic took hold. “He kept kissing me. His tongue—” She stopped, sobbing.
Lena took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. She was pushing too hard. Lena counted to a slow one hundred, then said, “The holes in your hands. We know he put something in your hands and feet.”
Julia looked at the bandages, as if seeing them for the first time. “Yes,” she said. “I woke up, and my hands were nailed down. I could see the nail go through, but it didn’t hurt.”
“You were on the floor?”
“I think so. I felt”—she seemed to look for a word—“I felt suspended. I was flying. How did he make me fly? Was I flying?”
Lena cleared her throat. “No,” she answered. Then began, “Julia, can you think of anybody new in your life, maybe someone on campus or in town, who was making you uncomfortable? Maybe you felt like you were being watched?”
“I’m still being watched,” she said, looking out the window.
“I’m watching you,” Lena said, turning the girl’s face back toward her. “I’m watching you, Julia. Nobody is going to hurt you again. Do you understand that? Nobody.”
“I don’t feel safe,” she said, her face crumpling as she started to cry again. “He can see me. I know he can see me.”
“It’s just you and me here,” Lena assured her. When she spoke, it was like talking to Sibyl, assuring Sibyl that she would be taken care of. “When you go to Augusta, I’ll be with you. I’m not going to let you out of my sight. Do you understand that?”
Julia seemed to be more frightened despite Lena’s words. Her voice was raspy when she asked, “Why am I going to Augusta?”
“I don’t know that for sure,” Lena answered, reaching for the water pitcher. “Don’t worry about that right now.”
“Who’s going to send me to Augusta?” Julia asked, her lips trembling.
“Drink some more water,” Lena told her, holding the cup up to her lips. “Your parents are going to be here soon. Don’t worry about anything but taking care of yourself and getting better.”
The girl choked, and water spilled down her neck and onto the bed. Her eyes opened wide in panic. “Why are you moving me?” she asked. “What’s going to happen?”
“We won’t move you if you don’t want,” Lena said. “I’ll talk to your parents.”
“My parents?”
“They should be here soon,” Lena assured her. “It’s okay.”
“Do they know?” Julia asked, her voice raised. “Did you tell them what happened to me?”
“I don’t know,” Lena answered. “I’m not sure if they know any of the details.”
“You can’t tell my daddy,” the girl sobbed. “Nobody can tell my father, okay? He can’t know what happened.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Lena said. “Julia, your dad’s not going to blame you for this.”
Julia was quiet. After a while, she looked back out the window, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Lena soothed, taking a tissue out of the box on the table. She reached over the girl, blotting the water off the pillow. The last thing this girl needed to think about was how her father would react to what had happened to her. Lena had worked with rape victims before. She knew how the blame worked. Very seldom did a victim blame anyone but herself.
There was a strange noise Lena found vaguely familiar. Too late she realized it was her gun.
“Move away,” Julia whispered. She held the gun awkwardly in her bandaged hands. It tilted toward Lena, then back toward Julia as she tried to get a better grip on the weapon. Lena looked toward the door, thinking to call for Jeffrey, but Julia warned her, “Don’t.”
Lena held her hands out to her sides, but did not back up. She knew the safety was on, but also knew it would take a matter of seconds for the girl to switch it off.
Lena said, “Give me the gun.”
“You don’t understand,” the girl said, tears welling into her eyes. “You don’t understand what he did to me, how he—” She stopped, choking on a sob. She did not have a good grip on the gun, but the barrel was pointed toward Lena and her finger was on the trigger. Lena felt a cold sweat overcome her, and she honestly could not recall if the safety was on or off. What she did know was that a round was already chambered. Once the safety was off, a tap on the trigger would fire the weapon.
Lena tried to keep her voice calm. “What, sweetheart? What don’t I understand?”
Julia tilted the gun back toward her own head. She fumbled, almost dropping it, before letting the barrel rest on her chin.
“Don’t do that,” Lena begged. “Please give me the gun. There’s a bullet in the chamber.”
“I know about guns.”
“Julia, please,” Lena said, knowing she needed to keep the girl talking. “Listen to me.”
A slight smile came to her lips. “My daddy used to take me hunting with him. He used to let me help him clean the rifles.”
“Julia—”
“When I was there.” She choked back a sob. “When I was with him.”
“The man? The man who abducted you?”
“You don’t know what he did,” she said, her voice tight in her throat. “The things he did to me. I can’t tell you.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lena said. She wanted to move forward, but there was a look to Julia Matthews’s eyes that kept her rooted to the floor. Charging the girl was not an option.
Lena said, “I won’t let him hurt you again, Julia. I promise.”
“You don’t understand,” the girl sobbed, sliding the gun up to the cleft of her chin. She could barely grip the weapon, but Lena knew this wouldn’t matter at such a close range.
“Honey, please don’t,” Lena said, her eyes going to the door. Jeffrey was on the other side, maybe she could alert him somehow without letting Julia know.
“Don’t,” Julia said, as if reading Lena’s mind.
“You don’t have to do this,” Lena said. She tried to make her voice firmer, but the truth was Lena had only read about this kind of situation in procedural manuals. She had never talked someone out of suicide.
Julia said, “The way he touched me. The way he kissed me.” Her voice broke. “You just don’t know.”
“What?” Lena asked, slowly moving her hand toward the gun. “What don’t I know?”
“He—” She stopped, a guttural sound coming from her throat. “He made love to me.”
“He—”
“He made love to me,” she repeated, a whisper that echoed in the room. “Do you know what that means?” she asked. “He kept saying he didn’t want to hurt me. He wanted to make love to me. He did.”
Lena felt her mouth open, but there was nothing she could say. She couldn’t be hearing what she thought she was hearing. “What are you saying?” she asked, aware of the sharpness in her tone. “What do you mean?”
“He made love to me,” Julia repeated. “The way he touched me.”
Lena shook her head, as if to rid this from her mind. She could not keep the incredulity out of her tone when she asked, “Are you saying you enjoyed it?”
A snapping sound came as Julia disengaged the safety. Lena felt too stunned to move but somehow managed to reach Julia seconds before the girl pulled the trigger. Lena looked down in time to see Julia Matthews’s head explode beneath her.
* * *
The water from the shower came like needles against Lena’s skin. She was aware of the burning, but it was not uncomfortable. She was numb to all sensations, numb from the inside out. Her knees gave, and Lena let herself slide down into the tub. She pulled her knees to her chest, closing her eyes as the water beat down on her breasts and face. She bent her head forward, feeling like a rag doll. The water pummeled the top of her head, bruised the back of her neck, but she did not care. Her body did not belong to her anymore. She was empty. She could not think of one thing that had meaning in her life, not her job, not Jeffrey, not Hank Norton, and certainly not herself.
Julia Matthews was dead, just like Sibyl. Lena had failed them both.
The water started to run cold, the spray pricking against her skin. Lena turned off the shower and dried herself with a towel, feeling as if she was just going through the motions. Her body still felt dirty despite the fact that this was her second shower in the last five hours. There was a strange taste in her mouth, too. Lena wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if something had gone into her mouth when Julia had pulled the trigger.
She shuddered thinking about this.
“Lee?” Hank called from outside the bathroom door.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Lena answered, putting paste on her toothbrush. She looked at herself in the mirror as she tried to scrub the taste out of her mouth. The resemblance to Sibyl was gone today. There was nothing left of her sister.
Lena went down to the kitchen in her robe and bedroom slippers. Outside the kitchen door, she put her hand to the wall, feeling light-headed and sick to her stomach. She was forcing her body to move, otherwise she would go to sleep and never wake up. Her body ached to give in to that, ached to cut off, but Lena knew that as soon as her head hit the pillow she would be wide awake, her mind playing back the sight of Julia Matthews just before she killed herself. The girl had been looking at Lena when she pulled the trigger. Their eyes had locked, and Lena did not need to see the gun to know that death was on the younger woman’s mind.
Hank was at the kitchen table, drinking a Coke. He stood when she entered the room. Lena felt a flush of shame and couldn’t look him in the eye. She had been strong in the car as Frank drove her back to the house. She had not said a word to her partner, or commented on the fact that despite her efforts to clean herself at the hospital, she had gray matter and blood sticking to her like hot wax. There were pieces of bone in her breast pocket, and she could feel blood dripping down her face and neck, even though she had wiped it all off at the hospital. It was not until she had the front door closed behind her that Lena let herself go. That Hank had been there, that she had let him hold her in his arms while she sobbed, was something that still brought a sense of shame to her. She did not know herself anymore. She did not know who this weak person was.
Lena glanced out the window, noting, “It’s dark out.”
“You slept awhile,” Hank said, going to the stove. “You want some tea?”
“Yeah,” Lena said, though she had not slept at all. Closing her eyes only brought her closer to what had happened. If she never slept again, Lena would be fine.
“Your boss called to check on you,” Hank said.
“Oh,” Lena answered, sitting at the table, her leg tucked underneath her. She wondered what was going through Jeffrey’s mind. He had been out in the hallway, waiting for Lena to call him in, when the gun went off. Lena remembered the expression of absolute shock on his face when he burst through the doorway. Lena had stood there, still leaning over Julia, flesh and bone dripping from her chest and face. Jeffrey had forced her out of this position, patting his hands down Lena’s body, checking to make sure she had not been shot in the process.
Lena had stood mute while he did this, unable to take her eyes off what was left of Julia Matthews’s face. The young girl had put the gun under her chin, blowing out the back of her head. The wall behind and over the bed was splattered. A bullet hole was three feet down from the ceiling. Jeffrey had forced Lena to stay in that room, drilling her for every bit of information she had gotten from Julia Matthews, questioning every detail of Lena’s narrative as Lena stood there, her lip trembling uncontrollably, unable to follow the words coming out of her own mouth.
Lena put her head in her hands. She listened as Hank filled the kettle, heard the click as the electric starter on the gas stove kicked in.
Hank sat in front of her, his hands crossed in front of him. “You okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her own voice sounding far away. The gun had gone off close to her ear. The ringing had stopped a while ago, but sounds still came like a dull ache.
“You know what I was thinking?” Hank asked, sitting back in his chair. “Remember that time you fell off the front porch?”
Lena stared at him, not understanding where he was going with this. “Yeah?”
“Well.” He shrugged, smiling for some reason. “Sibyl pushed you.”
Lena wasn’t sure she had heard him right. “What?”
He assured Lena, “She pushed you. I saw her.”
“She pushed me off the porch?” Lena shook her head. “She was trying to keep me from falling.”
“She was blind, Lee, how did she know you were falling?”
Lena’s mouth worked. He had a point. “I had to get sixteen stitches in my leg.”
“I know.”
“She pushed me?” Lena questioned, her voice raised a few octaves. “Why did she push me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was just kidding.” Hank chuckled. “You let out such a holler I thought the neighbors were gonna come.”
“I doubt the neighbors would’ve come if they’d heard a twenty-one-gun salute,” Lena commented. Hank Norton’s neighbors had learned early on to expect all kinds of commotion coming from his house night and day.
“Remember that time at the beach?” Hank began.
Lena stared at him, trying to figure out why he was bringing this up. “What time?”
“When you couldn’t find your kickboard?”
“The red one?” Lena asked. Then, “Don’t tell me, she pushed it off the balcony.”
He chuckled. “Nope. She lost it in the pool.”
“How can you lose a kickboard in the pool?”
He waved this off. “I guess some kid took it. The point was, it was yours. You told her not to take it and she did, and she lost it.”
Despite herself, Lena felt some of the weight on her shoulders lifting. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
Again, he gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about her this morning. Remember that shirt she used to wear? The one with the green stripes?”
Lena nodded.
“She still had it.”
“No,” Lena said, surprised. They had fought over that shirt during high school until Hank had settled it with a coin toss. “Why did she keep it?”
“It was hers,” Hank said.
Lena stared at her uncle, not sure what to say.
He stood up, taking a mug from the cabinet. “You want some time to yourself, or do you want me around?”
Lena considered his question. She needed to be alone, to get some sense of herself back, and she could not do that around Hank of all people. “Are you going back to Reece?”
“I thought I’d stay at Nan’s tonight and help her sort through some things.”
Lena felt a slight panic. “She’s not throwing things away, is she?”
“No, of course not. She’s just going through things, getting her clothes together.” Hank leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. “She shouldn’t have to do that alone.”
Lena stared at her hands. There was something under her fingernails. She couldn’t tell if it was dirt or blood. She put her finger in her mouth, using her bottom teeth to clean it.
Hank watched this. He said, “You could come by later if you felt like it.”
Lena shook her head, biting the nail. She would tear it off to the quick before she let the blood stay there. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow,” she lied.
“But if you change your mind?”
“Maybe,” she mumbled around her finger. She tasted blood, surprised to see that it was her own. The cuticle had come away on the nail. A bright red dot radiated from the spot.
Hank stood, staring, then grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. They had been through this kind of thing before, though admittedly never on this scale. It was an old, familiar dance, and they both knew the moves. Hank took one step forward, Lena took two steps back. Now wasn’t the time to change any of this.
He said, “You can call me if you need me. You know that, right?”
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, pressing her lips together. She was going to cry again, and Lena thought that a part of her would die if she broke down in front of Hank again.
He seemed to sense this because he put his hand on her shoulder, then kissed the top of her head.
Lena kept her head down, waiting for the click as the front door closed. She gave a long sigh as Hank’s car backed out of the driveway.
The kettle was steaming, but the whistle had not started yet. Lena did not particularly like tea, but she rummaged around in the cabinets anyway, looking for the bags. She found a box of Tummy Mint just as a knock came at the back door.
She expected to see Hank, so Lena was surprised when she opened the door.
“Oh, hi,” she said, rubbing her ear as a shrill noise came. She realized the teakettle was whistling and said, “Hold on a second.”
She was turning off the burner when she felt a presence behind her, then a sharp sting came to her left thigh.