Allgood’s gaze pinned hers. “See, I had a cellmate once and he didn’t like the close proximity of prison life. He came up with a plan—a timetable, I guess you’d call it—for our shared usage.”
Liz frowned, and Allgood barked another terrible, wheezy laugh.
“Now you’re getting it, huh?” Croupy laughter again. “I learned to piss on somebody else’s schedule. Eat that way, too. That’s what my life has been like for the past twenty years—”
The minute hand on the clock sprang forward.
Allgood shoved his way into the bathroom. When he’d finished, he reemerged, speaking as if they’d never been interrupted.
“I can’t have a normal conversation,” he said. “Certainly not with a lady. If you say you’re thirsty, I don’t know what to do till it hits me ten minutes later. I’ve lost all that.”
“I’m sorry,” Liz began.
“But I deserve it,” Allgood said. “I killed him.”
The words struck the room bluntly.
“You thought it was the right thing to do,” Liz replied. Why had she come here? What good was it going to do to rehash the long-ago event that had destroyed two lives, three, more if you included what Liz and Reid and Ally were experiencing now? The torrent of destruction seemed uncountable, unending. “I understand. Marjorie Brackman in Paul’s department told me the condition Michael was in.”
“You understand nothing,” Allgood replied, each word a separate charge.
Liz recoiled.
The coach looked over his shoulder. “It’s too damn quiet in here.” He walked at his hesitant pace to the TV and radio, flicking both on. Music soared and outraged cries burst forth. “Another thing I’ll never get back. Peace and quiet. Peace and quiet aren’t peaceful to me anymore. They’re scary as hell. It only got quiet when someone was just about to kill somebody.”
His words called to mind her images of prison, its stale breath and closed-in spaces.
“This visit is over, Mrs. Daniels.”
Liz didn’t respond.
“No manners, remember? Another of the things I lost? So you can bet I’ll ignore the social niceties. Get out of my house.”
Liz turned around to face him, speaking deliberately. “What don’t I understand?”
He answered in kind, stony and low. “I asked you to go. Now I’m telling you.” When Liz didn’t respond, he went on, his control draining. “Get out of my house!”
Liz tried to speak over the shrill rise of his voice. “Mr. Allgood—”
“It’s my house! Mine! Get out!”
Each harsh cry struck her, like the caw of a bird. “Mr. Allgood, please! My children are missing. If there’s something I’m not understanding that could help—”
Something in the coach’s face sheared off, like a glacier calving. He swiveled, a pirouetting reminder of the football player he must once have been himself, and even from behind, Liz could tell that he was crying.
“I did what I thought was right. I gave all I could for that boy.” His shoulders shook, vibrating up and down like a jackhammer. “And I served the time. It’s enough already. Enough!”
The coach’s tears—combined with regret in his voice for the young life he’d snuffed out—accomplished what all his anger and bitterness couldn’t do.
They forced Liz to leave.
THE BIRTH
Madeline knew she was in labor as soon as she woke up. In hindsight, she’d been experiencing contractions all night, waking to wriggle around on her side, even more unable to get comfortable than usual, faintly sickened by the water her mother brought in when she checked her at four-thirty in the morning.
At dawn Madeline threw up.
But she didn’t say anything to her mother.
It wasn’t that she thought she could keep this from her; she just wanted a little breathing room first.
There wasn’t room for any breath.
Sweat poured down her back as if she were taking a shower. Madeline tried to climb back into bed, but she didn’t make it.
She pitched forward, holding on to the side of the mattress as if it were a life raft.
Her mother appeared in the doorway, a tall and looming form.
“Oh, my gracious,” she said. “It’s time, isn’t it?”
Cara was dressed for the day, makeup on—just enough to smooth out the worn edges, never to adorn—and hair combed.
“It’s time,” Cara said again. The alien tremor in her voice, striking enough that Madeline had heard it through the surf pounding in her ears, was gone. “We’ll stay home for as long as possible. No reason to let those nurses have at you.”
A pain took hold of Madeline’s whole body and wrenched it. She sucked in a breath, then hurled herself onto the bed.
Her mother strode over. “I would’ve helped you.” She drew the sheet up, frowning when Madeline kicked it back, emitting a guttural grunt.
“Nuh …” Madeline tried again. “N-nothing on me—”
Cara cut her off with a knife blade of words. “There’s no cause to speak like that.” She pulled the sheet up again, tucking it around Madeline’s body.
“Nuh!” Madeline sounded like an animal. “N-no sheet!” She tried to curl, tried to straighten, anything to take away this pain, and a slimy gush of water spewed out, as if her body were unleashing a storm.
Cara mopped it up briskly, raising Madeline’s bottom and sliding a towel underneath.
Madeline screamed.
“There, there,” her mother said, the most calming phrase Madeline had ever heard her utter. “It won’t be long now.”
The hours, days, weeks—Madeline no longer had a concept of time—passed in a blur of agony. At one point, scuttling like some kind of bug, a stricken, lowly creature, she made it to her computer and hunched over the screen. Madeline didn’t have time to scan the recent posts; another pain was building. They were sparse now anyway. Everything was ready.
She typed two words in a thread started weeks ago: ITS TIME
Her mother appeared behind her. “What are you doing up?”
Madeline wouldn’t have thought she could move—she was being ringed around from behind by some enormous creature—but she jumped back from her mother.
“I’ve been timing your cries,” Cara said matter-of-factly. “We’d better go.”
Madeline managed to close the window on the computer screen just before she was taken up into King Kong’s fist again and shaken back and forth.
The recovery room was bathed in late afternoon sunshine, honeyed hues of peach and amber. Madeline lay against more pillows than she could remember ever seeing in one place, her baby wrapped in a blanket like a shrimp.
A girl.
Madeline gazed down at the tiny face. She had never seen anything so sweet in her life as those slowly blinking eyes—her baby could blink!—and miniature rosebud mouth.
“Hello, Dorothea,” Madeline murmured. It was a pleasing, old-fashioned name. Cara would approve. Her mother hadn’t been allowed into the labor room—kept out by the doctor when Madeline uttered one long endless, “Noooooo!”—but she would be back any second. For now though Madeline intended to hold on to this precious time with her baby. “Hello.”
“Hello,” someone said from the entry to the room.
It wasn’t her mother.
The woman was dressed in jeans, and a knapsack made a hump on her back. She wore the kind of boots Cara deemed ridiculous, designed for trailblazing and other sport. And she regarded Madeline with an expression that was shrewd and assessing and very, very kind.
“Hi, Mommie’s Dearest,” she said. “I’m Magpie.”
The baby slept on. Magpie told Madeline to hurry. She had watched until the last nurse left Madeline’s room after supervising a feeding, which would give them the longest stretch of time in terms of hospital procedure and the baby’s own needs. But it wouldn’t be much, Magpie said, laying the baby on the bed—Don’t worry, she can’t go anywhere—and helping Madeline into a s
hirt and a pair of maternity pants that bagged.
Magpie was all business, issuing instructions as she rolled the baby back and forth on the bed. Madeline was about to stop her—Dorothea’s tiny arms were going to snap off—when she saw that the baby was dressed.
“You’re going to be stopped,” Magpie said. “They’ll need to see that the baby’s bracelet matches yours. Just show them your wrist, then say you want to step outside for some air. They shouldn’t have a problem with that.”
Had Magpie done this before? Not for the first time she wondered about the people who were going to save her and her baby. Did Magpie have a Cara in her life, too? Is that why Dr. Shelley had known where to send her?
Magpie laid the baby in Madeline’s arms. “I’m in the north lot, right outside this wing. Wait for me by the doors. I’ll be driving a blue Sentry.”
It all went according to plan, as if the PEW participants were actually able to structure whole worlds, as their conversation topics made it sound.
Madeline gave the charge nurse the explanation about wanting some air, and was told it was wonderful that she was already up and about.
“Usually our moms are down for the count. How’s your pain?”
Madeline was too adrenaline-charged to feel much of anything. Her life was about to begin, same as Dottie’s had today.
She emerged from a pair of sliding glass doors into the gloaming twilight. The air was a cool bath on her face. She glanced down at Dottie, who was unaware of the enormous turn her life had just taken, sleeping placidly in Madeline’s arms.
A Sentry pulled into the no-parking lane in front of the hospital.
Someone else came walking up from the lot.
Her mother. Carrying an enormous bouquet of balloons, and wearing an expression of total bewilderment.
Madeline’s heart started gonging. She suddenly felt the effects of all she had been through today. Only Dottie kept her upright, the need to maintain her hold on this tiny life. A cramp—nothing like the ones that had delivered Dottie into the world, but still harsh and grasping—tightened her belly and Madeline sucked in a breath.
“Madeline?” her mother called. Cara was trying to close the gap between them, but the balloons blocked her sight for a moment. “What on earth are you doing?”
Madeline looked over her shoulder at the car that had come to convey her away. Which didn’t turn out to be a very good idea because her mother noticed it, too.
Madeline stared down at the pink shell of cap upon Dottie’s head. There was a pink balloon in the bunch her mother carried so awkwardly. They looked as foreign in her hand as a strand of pearls on a hawk.
Magpie appeared beside Madeline.
“Is that your mother?” She spoke calmly, but the last word was uttered as if it tasted foul.
Cara’s face changed. It wasn’t confused anymore, but alarmed, with a trace of fury beneath. Her fist opened and the balloons escaped her grasp. They drifted upward, out of reach.
Madeline twisted around.
Magpie was holding out a knife, its blade wicked-looking, long, as she snatched quick peeks over her shoulder at the hospital.
“Get into the car,” Magpie said, still in that level tone. “On my side. Don’t let them see that you’re taking the baby. Hold her in your lap for now. And hurry—they come out to check car seats.”
Madeline only got half of what Magpie was saying, but she followed the instructions as best she could, thinking fast enough to leave the driver’s-side door open while she got herself and the baby over the gear shift and wedged them both into the passenger seat.
Magpie was still aiming the knife at Cara, who had begun to stride forward anyway.
“Help!” Cara cried shrilly. “Help! Police! She’s taking my daughter!”
A blue-suited security guard stepped through the hospital doors. “Ma’am,” he called. “If you’re leaving the hospital grounds, I have to check that your car seat is installed properly.”
Madeline looked down at Dottie in her lap. It took her a moment to register the widening stain of blood on the upholstery. And then she became aware of the pain, as if she were the one being stabbed.
She looked through the window at the sky. The balloons were dots against the blue expanse. Soon it would be as if they’d never been there at all.
Magpie reached for the door handle at the same moment as Cara did. Madeline saw the blade of the knife whicker down. Cara leapt back faster than Madeline had ever seen her move. Then Magpie was in the car, slamming the door shut. The security guard jogged forward.
Cara intercepted him, gesticulating wildly, her mouth contorted.
Magpie gunned the gas and the car hurtled out of the lot.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Liz dialed Tim as she drove home, leaving a message at the station, and getting voicemail on his cell. She spoke into the phone on her lap, looking up suddenly and wrenching the wheel when her car swerved toward a steep bank of coneflowers.
“Tim. It’s Liz. I need your help looking into a crime that would’ve taken place more than twenty years ago. Manslaughter, I’m guessing, but I could be wrong. The victim was Michael Brady.”
She pressed down on the gas, in a hurry to search online for back issues of the Albany Times Union and the Wedeskyull Daily Record.
The first thing she learned was that Allgood had been convicted of first degree murder. His lawyer argued that it was a mercy killing, and thus should be considered manslaughter, but there had been a couple of vigilante cases that year—in one, barely a month before, a domestic violence victim had shot her boyfriend sixteen times—so both the prosecutor and judge were taking a strong stance. Even given Allgood’s lack of malicious intent, a sentence of twenty years was imposed.
Liz peered at the blur of skewed typesetting on the screen. A blog had also come up in her search, which included Allgood’s case amongst other travesties of justice. Liz clicked on it, skimming the piece before scrolling to the comments.
No just outcome was possible in Christopher Allgood’s trial, said one in a long string. Because there was no crime except the caprice of life.
Something in the voice contained a tinny echo, and Liz scrolled over it to read the user profile. The commenter called himself Professor. Too much of a coincidence; that had to be Paul. It was as if he had spoken from wherever he might be right now, arched a beckoning finger. The smugness with which he spoke about Coach Allgood’s murder of Michael Brady. The comment read with the same detached tone Paul used to analyze the bloated uses of corn.
Liz was rigid with fatigue. This day had been abominably long. She wondered why Tim hadn’t called back. Liz pressed a button on the keyboard and watched the screen fade to black. She trudged downstairs, blinking away afterimages of the powering-down computer. Liz curled herself into a shivering ball on the couch, pulled down an afghan, and prayed for sleep to take her.
A song was playing, lilting, light. Liz didn’t want to open her eyes because that would force her to leave behind the place she had come to. Her children were there. She heard their voices, high and sweet. Behind her eyelids, the sun had risen and all was yellow, and bright.
And then she opened her eyes and it really was daytime. Somehow she’d slept a whole night away. And a song was indeed playing. It came from her phone.
Liz sat up stiffly on the couch. Her back felt like iron. She twisted and heard a series of small pops. The notion of standing up seemed too taxing, so she settled for leaning over and cocking her ear to hear where the chiming notes came from.
Her phone was buried somewhere in her bag. Liz pawed around amongst items for it—her wallet, a notepad, some kind of sticky toy. She slid her finger across the screen, the call about to go to voicemail, and didn’t take notice of the number.
Tim. It had to be. Or maybe Jill.
“Hello?” Her voice was croaky. She coughed to try and clear it. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mommy!”
A thousand impulses crossed Liz’s mind
at once, like fissures across ice. Some practical, some far-fetched, out of movies or TV shows or the news. Identify the number, find a way to record the call, triangulate the signal. In the end she did none of those things, unwilling to move the phone so much as an inch away from her face in order to look at the screen. What if she accidentally hit the Back button and lost the call? Liz kept the device pressed snugly to her ear, just as she’d been wanting to hold her children for almost two long, lonely weeks. And she remembered to subdue her voice, make it sound normal.
“Ally,” she murmured. “Hi, sweetie. Where are you?”
There was silence, and Liz thought she had lost her daughter, despite her warring switchboard of thoughts.
But then Ally spoke, her voice so piping and clear that Liz began to cry.
“On vacation,” she said. “I thought you were going on vacation, too. I thought you were coming.”
“I know, sweetie,” Liz said, feeling her way. There were stones here, and if she tripped, she might never get this chance again. She stood up and began making her way toward the landline, still focused fiercely on Ally. “I’m just—trying to get there. Get back there. You mean that you’re still on Grandpa’s farm?”
Would Ally even know whom she meant by Grandpa? Liz supposed she’d have to, if they had spent this much time together. If Matthew had lied to her that baldly and brazenly. Like father, like son.
Liz ground her teeth, willing the right response to come. The pause went on longer this time, every second harrowing. But it gave Liz enough time to hit the Talk button on their landline and dial 911.
She set the cordless down on a table. Wedeskyull had gotten full-fledged emergency services last year when its longtime chief was forced to resign. Now 911 calls were no longer routed through to the station, but went to a service, and if the person who had placed the call didn’t answer when the dispatcher picked up, then the police were obliged to send a car to check on the situation. That was about as far as Liz could envision. She had no idea what the cop who came would do; she only knew that she needed help.
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