Half an hour later, I’m sitting with my parents in the living room, and the cops have taken away an envelope of white powder to be analyzed.
“Almost certainly not anthrax,” Rich Bowerbank tells us. “Obviously, we can’t take any chances, but I can tell you that out of many hundreds of similar threats to abortion clinics, none have contained actual anthrax.”
“This isn’t a clinic though,” Mom says. “It’s our house.”
She is sitting on the couch beside me, her face calm, her back as straight as a dancer’s. All that yoga. I straighten my own spine and lift my chin in an effort to look less like a curled-up ball of fear. “Which means someone knows where we live,” I say. My voice is shaky. I clear my throat. “Do you think it’s the same person as last time?”
He shakes his head. “Highly unlikely. I’ll double-check, but I’m pretty sure he’s still getting three meals a day at taxpayers’ expense.”
“He’s still in jail?” I ask.
Rich nods. “Could be linked, I suppose. We’ll look at every possibility.” He leans toward me. “You know how seriously we take this, right?”
I nod. I do know. And Rich is a good guy. He investigated the threats at the hospital and the fake bomb at our house, and he’s the one who helped bring in the guy responsible for it all. He’s got daughters—twin girls, a year behind me at school—and I know he cares about our safety. And he gets it too: unlike a lot of people, he understands why my parents don’t give up, even after my dad’s not-quite-a-stroke.
The crazy thing is, my dad was actually just about to retire before this all started up the last time. He had high blood pressure and some other health stuff going on, and he thought less stress might be a good thing. But then all three of the doctors who did abortions at the hospital—my parents and Jennifer Lee—started getting death threats, and someone threw a brick through Jennifer Lee’s dining-room window with a note attached: NEXT TIME IT’LL BE A BULLET.
Jennifer has a paraplegic husband and two little kids. She decided she couldn’t risk it. Now she delivers babies, does some routine surgeries—but no more abortions.
So if my dad had retired too, it’d only be my mom left. And it’s not just the hospital clinic here in town either. Both of them also do clinic hours each month in several smaller rural hospitals, because otherwise abortion wouldn’t be available there. Sure, if you can afford to travel, you can go to a city to get an abortion. But if you’re poor and live out in the sticks and don’t have a car, or you have a houseful of kids to look after, or you’re a sixteen-year-old whose parents don’t have your back, you’re screwed.
And since abortion is legal and the anti-choice people haven’t had much luck getting that changed, they’re going after the doctors. Trying to stop abortions by making doctors too scared to do them.
My parents don’t like being bullied. I think all the threats have just made them even more committed to their work.
My dad sighs and leans back in his chair. “Rich, assuming the anthrax turns out to be baking soda, what’s our next step here? Obviously, we can change our phone number, but knowing that someone has our address… I’m not sure what more we can do.”
They start discussing security systems and cameras, all of which we already have.
I excuse myself and clean up the dinner table, tossing the congealing pasta into
a container and sticking it in the fridge. Then I head up to my room to call Leah.
My bedroom is my favorite place in our house. I repainted it myself last year, two walls white and two walls lime green. It’s got a wood floor, and the rug is a dark cherry color. My parents bought me matching bedding—dark red with big geometric shapes in the exact same green as the walls. Show-jumping ribbons hang from a picture rail, and my dresser is covered with trophies. When I first invited Leah over, I was worried she’d think it was bragging to have them all out, but she totally understood. “Well, they’re not really yours, right?” she said, when I started apologizing. “They’re yours and Buddy’s.”
I have photos of Buddy all over the wall—Buddy jumping, Buddy rolling in the mud, Buddy looking out over his stall door, the white star on his forehead with a trail like a comet. I’ve had Buddy since I was eleven, and for the last six years he’s been my best friend. No matter what else has been going on in my life, Buddy’s been there for me.
I look at the screen saver on my computer: a photo of Leah and me, both sitting bareback on Buddy as he grazes. The late-afternoon sun is shining with that golden, glowing kind of light, and the late-fall trees are bare of leaves. Buddy’s coat is gleaming red chestnut, and Leah’s face is turned toward the camera in an open-mouthed laugh. Jake took the photo on my phone, because I asked him to. I wanted to capture the moment, though he didn’t know why. It was three months ago, end of November. Just a few minutes after Leah’s and my first kiss.
I sit cross-legged on my bed, call Leah and tell her about everything that’s just happened.
“Holy crap,” she says.
If I wasn’t so stressed, I’d laugh. Leah never swears. Not that “crap” is really swearing, but Leah’s the kind of girl who actually says things like “shoot” and “darn it.” It’s adorable. Dorky but adorable.
“I mean, you only just left here,” she says. “All I’ve done is eat dinner and start my math homework, and you’ve been through all that? It must have been so scary.”
She knows all about the fake bomb and the brick through Jennifer’s window and everything. She knows about my nightmares. “What did you have for dinner?” I say.
“What did I have for dinner? Are you serious?”
“Yes. Just…just tell me something normal, okay? Distract me.”
“Oh, Franny.” She is quiet for a few seconds. “Okay. I finished cleaning the tack, and Jake finished his lesson with Brandy, and Mom came home from work with a carload of groceries. Jake and I helped her make dinner. Mashed potatoes, pork chops, broccoli…”
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Do you want to come over here?” she says.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I picture their cozy living room, Leah’s mom, Diane, marking her students’ homework at the table, Jake in his room practicing his guitar or maybe playing a computer game, the horse barn visible from the window. “But it might be weird tonight, you know?”
“You mean not talking about it? With my mom there?”
“Yeah.” I chew on my bottom lip. “Acting like everything is normal. When all I can think about…” My chest is tight, and my eyes sting with tears. I rub the back of my hand across them. “I just…what if…I mean…” I start crying for real. What if someone kills my parents? What if some nut with a gun walks into the hospital and starts shooting? I can’t bring myself to say the words, but the images in my head are vivid and bloody and oh so real. My dad in his hospital greens, sprawled in the hallway with bullet holes blossoming like poppies across his chest. My mom, trying to shield a patient with her body as a stranger pulls a gun from his bag and points it at her head, and there’s a loud bang and she’s falling…
“Franny. FRANNY!”
“I’m here,” I choke out.
“I’m coming over,” she says. “On my way.”
I hang up and feel a warm rush of relief at the thought of being with her. And then, almost before I’ve even had time to form the thought, a wave of dread slams into me with the force of a tsunami.
If my house is a target, could being with me put Leah in danger?