14

I handed the girl the satin fashion doll from the box of toys Chase had sold me. She eyed it dubiously. Turned it this way and that. Scrunched her mouth and nose into a grimace usually reserved for Limburger cheese. “Kinda frilly, ain’t it?” Jessie thumbed the one suspender still attached to her denim overalls and held the doll by the feet, head down. The doll’s stylish pink satin dress fell away to reveal long, plastic Caucasian legs.

Jess, a native of Haiti, blew out a gust of air. “Thanks.”

“You don’t like it,” I said.

One ratty blue tennis shoe standing on the other, carefully braided hair shining ebony rich in the overhead fluorescents, Jess shrugged. “I’m a tomgirl.”

“You mean tomboy,” I said.

“Tomgirl,” she repeated. The force of that second syllable said this was not the first time she’d had to defend her word. “I like boy stuff and gettin’ dirty, but I like makeup and boy bands too. Kinda a mix, ya know?”

I did. Jessie was new in town and I’d see her at Safari, a day here, a day there. She was pretty put together for a seven-year-old. Big heart for kids without much. And it had been clear from that first sighting that she preferred her own path. At the time, she was dismantling a broken space heater and puzzling over what would make it run again.

“Ta-dah!” I whipped my other hand from behind my back. In it was the little pirate ship, with Jolly Roger flying high.

The sudden light in Jessie’s eyes was breathtaking. She unceremoniously handed back the doll and cradled the ship against her Oshkosh-clad chest. “Does it float?”

“Would I be your first mate if it didn’t? Try it out in the sink.” She hugged my leg with a fierce grip before running to the wash station where we cleaned and disinfected gently used plastic toys for donation. She pulled a little stool from beneath the sink, hopped onto it, plugged the drain, and turned on the faucet. Her eyes widened when it grew deep enough to float the pirate marauder, which with pretend guns “blazing,” took immediate command of the surrounding sea. When a sippy cup with clown decal floated too near, the pirate vessel, thanks to Jess’s vigorous sound effects, blew it to smithereens.

“Let me show you something.” I reached into the sink and pressed a button on the side of the buccaneer. The sound of surprisingly loud cannon fire boomed from a speaker set into a watertight battery compartment on the poop deck.

“Cool!” Her smile exposed teeth as neat and white as pickets in a freshly painted fence. Following another pitched battle that sent a wayward sponge to the bottom of Davy Jones’s locker, Jess said, “They should make a doll of my mom. She’s so beautiful, I’d love it all the time.”

I had yet to meet her mother, but from how many times Jess referred to her in our two previous encounters, and now a third, I guessed she was a special lady in at least one little girl’s eyes.

“So when do I get to meet this gorgeous mother of yours?”

With a chorus of “Ahoys!” the girl let the water out of the sink. “I think she’s picking me up tonight instead of my dad,” Jess said. “You could meet her then. I think she’ll be in a movie someday. Not a comedy. More like an adventure.” She patted the ship dry with paper towels. “She’d make a great pirate princess.”

I didn’t doubt it. Hollywood liked to paint pirate princesses as ravishingly beautiful compared to their scurvy crews.

“Are you looking forward to school this fall?”

She brushed a hand over her face like an adult with too many bills. “I guess. I hope they can keep me stem-elated. I test kinda high and it’s hard to keep me interested. That’s what my mom says.”

I scratched my head until it hit me. “Ahh, you mean stimulated.” Jess nodded. “Well, don’t worry. They’ve got ways to figure all that out. Your teacher will help you.” Maybe I could volunteer a few hours a week at school and help you myself. “Where did you go to school before you moved to Seattle?”

“We lived in another country—“

Before Jess could finish her answer, Bill crossed my mind unbidden, head torn by bullets, crimson blood gushing from mortal wounds. Blood thick and sticky upon me, blood impossible to remove.

The room spun.

I stumbled and grabbed for a coat tree and held to it like a survivor clinging to shipwreck debris. I don’t know if for a split second I passed out, but I had the impression of being awakened by my own moaning.

“Mr. Carter?” Jessie put down the pirate ship, patted my leg, and looked up at me. Her expression belonged to an old soul. “Whatsa matter?” Her cheeks were jeweled with tears. “Mr. Carter?”

I couldn’t answer. Nausea welled at the back of my throat. Bill’s blood, Bill’s life, would not come off.

A swirling vortex tried to suck me from the coat tree. It tore at my clothes. Down its throat, down deep where it wanted to drag me, was an awful clot of mangled limbs and broken planks and cold steel weapons. Wild-eyed thugs waited at the bottom, playing death tunes on boom boxes made of seaweed, shells, and the bones of men.

Feet running. Hands reaching. The hard floor under my back. A jacket wadded beneath my head. Something damp across my forehead. The scent of aloe shampoo and something acrid in my nostrils. The coppery smell of blood.

Lots and lots of blood.