MAXINE
The ambulance took less than five minutes to reach Faulkner Hospital, but to Maxine, it seemed like an eternity. She watched Vanessa the whole time, stroking her cheek, touching her hair, listening for any signs of lucidity, but Vanessa stayed unconscious. Behind her, Gavin’s breathing was strained as the paramedics tried to stop his bleeding.
At the hospital, Maxine got out of the way as they unloaded both gurneys. She lost track of Gavin as she followed the paramedics wheeling Vanessa through the bay, and into the building where someone slipped an oxygen mask over Vanessa’s face. Someone else checked her vitals. All of them looked prepubescent. A nurse stopped Maxine from continuing on to an elevator.
“They’re taking her to surgery,” the nurse said.
“She’s pregnant,” Maxine said. “Twelve weeks in.”
He nodded and made a note.
“Will she wake up?” Maxine asked. “Will she be able to speak?”
“It’s unlikely.”
“I need to be with her when she wakes,” Maxine said.
“If it works out,” the nurse said in a quiet, measured voice Maxine was sure he’d perfected on people much nicer than she was.
Still, Maxine held her tongue and let him get her coffee and lead her to a waiting room filled with long rows of empty chairs. She’d have to trust the doctors to do their jobs. To stop the bleeding. To extract the bullet. Maxine collapsed into one of the chairs. The nurse stood by quietly, and Maxine wondered what it must be like to take on such grief, all day and every day. What it must be like to see death as routine.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll sit here for a while.”
“Let us know if you need anything,” he said. “I’ll give you updates on your daughter when I have more information.”
Maxine was too numb to correct him, or to do anything but stare after him as he left, but she was thankful to be away from the house, away from the police, and away from Angela White in particular. If Angela had found her at this moment, if she’d poked in the right way, in a way that any detective would, in a way that Stan should have long ago, the whole truth would have come out in a torrent.
“Watch her,” Tucker had said. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
Maxine had tried. She’d given her life to watching over Vanessa, and it couldn’t come to this. It couldn’t possibly end with a bullet. With a few ill-spoken words.
She remembered sitting in the car with Hester, knowing that what waited for her inside Pinebank would somehow change her forever. She remembered being grateful to have a friend to greet her when she reemerged. “I’ll take you home after they boot me out,” she’d said, before dashing into the rain.
At the door, she almost retreated. But she found her resolve and stepped inside. Voices echoed from the back of the house as Fred and Adele tore around the corner, jumping up, resting their paws on Maxine’s knees in a way they were absolutely not supposed to do and in a way she was thrilled to see. She broke a treat in half, and made them sit, and then followed the voices. Right before she turned the corner, right before she faced what she had to face, she stopped, desperate to keep the before from forever becoming the after. Desperate to hold off her own future.
* * *
“Ma’am?”
It was the nurse. His face was long, the practiced mask of someone used to dealing with tragedy. But surely the doctor would be the one to deliver the worst news. And they couldn’t have news like that, not yet.
“I need you to sign some consent forms,” he said, thrusting a clipboard toward her.
Maxine held it on her lap, unsure what to do. Even the simplest tasks seemed insurmountable.
“I can explain the forms,” the nurse said a moment later. “Or give you some time to read them through.”
What did he want her to do? “Her husband’s in surgery,” she said.
“I know. That’s why you need to sign them. Next of kin.”
“I’m not her mother,” Maxine said, and it felt as if she’d torn her own heart out.
“Who are you then?”
“A friend. Her mother can’t be here.”
The nurse took the clipboards away. “We’ll need someone with authorization to sign these.”
An orderly pushed a bed through the halls carrying an older woman in a hospital gown. She’d taken her teeth out, and slept, her mouth agape, her gums bright and pink, her hollow cheeks sinking in around her face. All vanities forgotten.
“You’ll have to find someone else,” Maxine said to the nurse.
She closed her eyes and listened as the nurse shuffled away. The images from the night flooded through her again.
At Pinebank, she’d finally turned that corner, but it had taken a moment for the scene in front of her to make sense. The French doors were open to the storm, and Gavin stood on the threshold, rain lashing behind him, the drapes swirling in the wind. His hair was plastered to his scalp, and his white shirt clung to his skin. And he held a gun. A young man Maxine recognized from school crouched against the wall. Vanessa faced away from Maxine on the opposite side of the room. And Jennifer hovered between them. None of them noticed her, even as the dogs ran into the room and barked.
“What did you do?” Gavin said. “Why were the police looking for me?”
“I told you to lay low,” Vanessa said. “I told you I’d take care of it.”
Gavin swung the gun toward her. “You planned this. From the start.”
Vanessa’s eyes flashed with anger. “You’re the one with the plans,” she said. “Preying on those women. Those girls. Even me.”
“You didn’t complain,” Gavin said.
“He used our secrets,” Vanessa said, turning to her mother. “Your secrets. How the hell do you think he got into this house, into my bed? He used Rachel. He told me I was smart, that he could help me become someone. Then he told me I was beautiful but that I shouldn’t tell. That no one would understand. Then he asked about Rachel, about what happened that night. And the more he asked, the more I knew we had to keep it secret.”
Jennifer reached toward Vanessa. “I’ve watched you, in every way I could.”
“You’ve never been anything but a drunk.”
“Both of you shut up,” Gavin said, tightening his grip on the gun, his finger twitching at the trigger.
“Put that down,” Maxine heard herself say.
Gavin turned on her. “Saint Maxine,” he said.
“Nothing can be worth this,” she said. “Whatever you did tonight, we can work it out.”
“You have no idea who these people are,” Gavin said. “Or what they can do.”
“Shut up,” Vanessa said.
Maxine stepped toward him, reaching for the gun, her eyes focused on Gavin’s face, on his rage. Then everything slowed. The dogs ran from the room, their tails between their legs. Jennifer’s hands flew to her face. Across the room, Vanessa buckled over, clutching at her leg, red seeping around her palm.
It was only then that Maxine finally heard the gun blast. And the world sped up again.
Gavin took a step backward, staring at the gun in his own hand, as though he couldn’t believe he’d pulled the trigger himself. Then he cried out. The young man, the boy, had smashed a fireplace poker on Gavin’s arm. The gun fell to the floor, spinning across the rug.
Maxine found herself at Vanessa’s side, pressing a cloth against the wound as blood pooled beneath it. “It’s okay,” she said, as Vanessa struggled to stay awake.
Behind her, Gavin said, “There’s no way you’ll pin this on me.”
“Don’t move.”
Jennifer had the gun. She aimed it at Gavin. The boy cowered by the French doors. “Go,” she said to him, and he ran outside, into the storm.
“You treated Vanessa like those other girls,” Jennifer said. “Using her. Using what you thought you knew.”
“I know about that baby,” Gavin said. “The one who drowned. I know that someone killed her.”
This time there was no mistaking the gunfire as glass behind Gavin shattered. “What the hell?” he said.
Jennifer fired again. Red burst from Gavin’s chest. He looked down as though he couldn’t quite fathom what had happened, and then spun and fled into the darkness. Jennifer followed, pausing at the threshold as though daring herself to leap into the night. “Take care of her,” she said to Maxine, before diving forward and fading into the murky night.
* * *
Someone sat beside Maxine. Without having to look, she knew it was Tucker, that he’d mostly come for Vanessa, but that he’d come for her, too. She leaned against him, her eyes closed, and he wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head as they propped each other up. They looked like any couple in any waiting room, hoping for the best and dreading the worst. They looked like they belonged together.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“To a bar. I couldn’t face going home.”
Tucker never liked confrontation. Why would tonight have been different? But he’d have to face this news. “Jen shot Gavin,” Maxine said. “And she says she killed that girl, the one from school, Libby Thomas. Vanessa’s in surgery, and I’m sitting here hoping. That’s all I know.”
She folded into him. He kissed her again, and here, in this public moment, it felt right.