“What?”
“He got you first. He got you and brought you down to the river. Do you remember?” Errol asks.
“No,” Necco says, frustrated. “Who got me? What happened? I don’t remember anything after being in the shed with you, seeing you holding the hammer.”
“Try,” Errol tells her. “You left the shed. Started running back to the house. And Mama was outside. Calling your name.”
Necco closes her eyes, and she’s back there just leaving the shed, afraid of Errol, sure that he lied, Daddy never would have told him to do such a thing. Her mama is on the front steps, calling, calling her name, her voice barely audible amid the pounding rain and roaring thunder. She can hear it so clearly now, Mama calling, “Eva!” and it’s like Mama is calling her back through time, back to that day four years ago. She can feel the raindrops pounding against her yellow slicker. The way her rubber boots slip on the soaked grass.
She’s crossing the yard, running toward her mother. Mama is screaming now, frantic, saying, “Look out! Run!” Suddenly, the wave hits her from behind, and at first, she thinks it’s Errol with his sledgehammer: a big hard thump right in the back that knocks her to the ground, takes the breath out of her. The wave lifts her in its arms, carries her to deeper, bone-chillingly cold water. It speaks, the wave, has a deep voice that says horrible things, calls her a little bitch. Tells her it’s time to die and won’t her daddy be sorry then.
“He tried to burn me alive,” the man said. “But you can’t kill me. See what happens when you try, Miles? See what you get?”
Mama is somewhere behind her, far off now, screaming, screeching.
The next thing she knows, she’s underwater, thrashing, swept away by the waves. The water has hands, fingers, arms that push her down. An arm reaches around her, grabs for her throat. But this is not water, she realizes, this is a human arm, with thick black hair.
And there, on the wrist, is a crudely done tattoo: a pair of dice, the two dots looking up at her like eyes.
She’s struggling. Fighting for breath, but water fills her mouth and nose and she’s choking, can’t get any air. She bobs to the surface for a second, gulps at the air, is pulled down again.
Die, a hoarse voice shouts in her ear.
Then there is only water, cold and black. She feels it flow into her mouth, fill her lungs. It tastes like rot and ruin, and fish and dirt. Iron and rust and the way the sidewalk smells after a summer rain. A child’s rain slicker. The skin of a frog. The bottom of a wishing well.
Down she goes.
Down.
Down.
Down.
The hands holding her release their grip, and she bobs to the surface to hear shouting; two men fighting.
“Eva!” her father screams.
“You did this to her,” the other man says. “You did this to her the moment you lit that match. It didn’t have to be this way.”
Her father reaches for her, but the man hits him hard, sends him under. Daddy’s in the water, too, sinking.
And now she’s released, being carried downstream, a bit of flotsam, bumping against rocks and logs, her own boat bobbing, and sinking, being churned like the laundry in Mama’s big machine.
“Eva!” her daddy screams, as he rises to the surface, but the other man has his hands around Dad’s throat, choking him, pulling him back underwater. They thrash and struggle before they both go under. The river is carrying her so fast that they’re soon out of sight. She’s on her side, then on her back, unable to see where she’s going, unable to right herself as the water churns. She is slammed into a big rock headfirst, the back of her skull hitting it and making a cracking sound that travels all the way through her body. She thinks of Humpty Dumpty, of his big old egg-head. She thinks heads are fragile things.
A hand reaches for her, pulls her out.
She turns, and she’s not in the churning black water of the river, but here, in her old house four years later and Errol is touching her arm, wrapping his fingers around it.
“Do you remember how you got out of the water?” Errol asks, tightening his grip, as if he could squeeze the truth from her. In his other hand, he still holds the gun.
“No,” she admits. “The next thing I knew, Mama was standing over me in the woods. She’d bandaged my head with a sheet, wrapped it round and round to stop the bleeding. She told me you and Daddy were dead. ‘It destroyed everything,’ she said. ‘The house, everything we had. It’s all gone. And now, we’ve got to go, too.’ ”
Necco thinks hard, tries to remember how she got out of the water. Maybe she washed up downstream, caught on a logjam, tangled up a beaver dam.
“It was just dumb luck that I survived,” Necco continues. “Mama always said the Great Mother saved me.”
Errol shakes his head. “It was me, Little E. I pulled you out. You’d hit your head hard, there was a lot of blood, but your eyes were open and you looked right at me. Don’t you remember at all?”
“You?” She blinks up at him. He’s shifting from foot to foot, swaying slightly, like he’s being rocked by waves, pulled along by some invisible current. The gun is still in his hand, but it’s pointed at the floor now.
“I saved you then just like I’m trying to save you now. I pulled you out of that river. Don’t you remember?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She doesn’t remember. Isn’t sure what to believe.
“I couldn’t save Daddy. He was swept away. Once I pulled you out, and brought you into the woods, I waited until I heard Mama coming toward us. Then I ran.”
“Why? Why leave us like that?”
“Because everything that happened that day…to you, to Daddy, it was all my fault.” He looks away.
“How?” Necco asks. “How was it your fault?”
He doesn’t answer.
“And why is it that you were never mentioned in any of the articles about our family?” Necco asks. “Or in Daddy’s obituary. It’s like you don’t exist at all. How can that be?”
He looks at her a long time. Sets the gun on the dresser, rubs his face. “Shit, Eva. There isn’t time for all this.”
And there really isn’t, because just then, the closet door bursts open and Theo comes barreling out, scooping up Necco’s blade and heading straight for Errol, knocking him to the floor and pushing the knife against his throat.
“Get the gun!” Theo shouts, and Necco moves. Necco grabs the gun, aims it at Errol, who is under Theo, the blade pushed so hard against his neck that she’s nicked the surface of his skin, a little trickle of blood running down.
“The gun isn’t loaded,” he says. “Jesus. Did you really think I was planning to shoot my own sister? Let me up, please. There’s still time. He’s not here yet.”
“He?” Theo says. “He who?”
Just then, there are footsteps in the hall. A man steps into the room. He’s dressed in a suit jacket, has slicked-back silver hair. And he’s carrying a gas can in one hand, a handgun in the other, the smell of fuel wafting in with him like a pungent and deadly cologne. And behind it, as though following him through the door, the smell of smoke, faint at first, but growing stronger by the second.
Necco recognizes the man immediately, though it’s impossible.
“Eva,” he says, his voice a low purr. “How lovely to see you again.”
Pru
“Hurry,” Pru urges, as if Fred needs encouragement. As if he wasn’t already breaking the speed limit.
She’s riding shotgun in his tidy little Honda—a strangely small car for such a large man—and they’re following the GPS directions to Necco’s house. It’s an area Pru doesn’t know well, out in the country, where the houses are far apart, and people have real yards. There are even a few farms here and there.
They’ve crossed the river and are racing down Elsworth Avenue. Mr. Marcelle takes a left on Willoughby Drive, says he knows a shortcut. Pru is thinking how clever he is. To know a shortcut way out here.
The voice on the
GPS unit scolds him, says, “Recalculating.”
Pru’s picking at her cuticles. She’s got red stains on her fingers from the snuff. She pulls down the visor in Mr. Marcelle’s car and sees what a mess she is: her hair in tangles, dirt on her face, red stains under her nose. She is ashamed, embarrassed that Mr. Marcelle is seeing her this way. But honestly, her worries over Necco and Theodora overshadow her own insecurities. They’ve got to find the girls. Fast. “Maybe we should call the police, have them meet us there.”
“No,” he tells her. “They’d just grab Eva and arrest her.”
“At least then she’d be safe,” Pru says, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “There are worse places than jail, I suppose.” The cage would keep her in, but would also keep those trying to do her harm out.
“Yes, but there are better places, too. And Eva doesn’t belong there. You and I both know that. Her only crime is being caught up in something much bigger than she is. She is the victim here.”
They turn in to the center of a small village and pass a butcher shop, a library, a little café where people are sitting at outdoor tables sipping lattes and eating pastries. Pru imagines herself and Mr. Marcelle there, having Saturday morning coffee together, sharing the newspaper, telling each other about their weeks.
They drive in silence for a few moments.
“Pru,” Mr. Marcelle says, twirling one end of his mustache. “I’m sorry about yesterday. How badly our conversation went. And most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t get to see your circus.”
She smiles. “When all this is over and the girls are safe, I’d love to show you the circus.”
He clears his throat. “Do you mind me asking what you were doing down there under the bridge with those women?”
There goes her happy vision of the two of them having coffee, sharing a little pitcher of cream, hands touching as they pass each other the butter for scones.
“They’re friends,” she says.
“They’re drug addicts.”
“It’s not like that,” Pru tells him.
“Well, please tell me then, what is it like? I want to understand.”
And how can she tell him? How can she begin to explain that for the first time in her entire life she feels she belongs somewhere, she feels she is part of something bigger than herself? How can she tell him about her vision, how the snuff showed her her true purpose? She is going to build a circus, an actual circus—not just a silly model hidden away in her living room, but a real spectacle that people will line up to see.
“Necco—Eva—introduced us to them last night. She said they would be able to see things we couldn’t, they’d know what we should do next.”
“And did they? Did they tell your future, Pru? Tell you what you wanted to hear?”
She shakes her head. “No. I saw my own future.”
He turns from the road, looks right at her for a second, his eyes questioning, concerned. She knows how she must seem now, disheveled, telltale red stains on her hands and face. The fat lady who’s gone round the bend.
“Mr. Marcelle,” she says. “Do you have a dream? A big dream?”
He thinks for a minute, twirling his mustache as he drives.
“Come on,” she encourages. “There must be something. Something deep in your heart. Something you might not have told anybody, maybe you haven’t even admitted it to yourself.”
He sighs, bites his lip. “I’d like a house. A real house with a yard. I want to build a big aviary. Someplace where the birds can really have space. I’d like to try raising cockatoos. Get a breeding pair.” He smiles, suddenly far away.
Pru smiles back at him. “That sounds really nice. And I believe you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
“I hope so,” he says.
“See, Mr. Marcelle, that’s the thing right there. We have to do more than hope. When we have a vision, we have to take steps. We have to make that vision real. Bring our dreams to life. I think that later today, you should go home and draw out plans for that aviary. Look at the real estate listings and see what sort of place would work best. Make an appointment at the bank to see what kind of mortgage you can get.”
“I don’t know, Pru. I—”
“You do know. And I do, too. You know what I learned from the Fire Eaters last night? That there is no someday. We spend so much of our lives waiting for someday, don’t we? There is only right now. Right here. This is our someday, Mr. Marcelle. We don’t want to wake up years down the road and see we missed our chance.”
“Okay,” he says, turning left on a narrow road that runs along the river. According to the GPS, they are only a minute away. “So what’s your dream?”
You, she thinks. My dream is you and me together.
This is not what she tells him with words, but for half an instant, when their eyes meet as they bump along the dirt road in Mr. Marcelle’s little Matchbox car, she’s thinking it so hard that she is sure he can read her thoughts.
“I’m going to make a circus. Not just a little toy circus like the one in my living room, but an actual, life-size circus with clowns, and fire eaters, and a big golden elephant. And I think, Mr. Marcelle, that there might just be room in my circus for a strongman. Are you interested?”
He turns, looks at her, smiling his dazzling smile. “Can the strongman do a show with trained birds?”
“Can he? He needs to! It’ll be a one-of-a-kind act. It’ll be perfect!”
She can see it now: her strongman in his striped outfit, mustache waxed and curled, bald head polished to a shine, and a flock of birds around him. She thinks of a stained-glass image she saw in a church once: St. Francis and the birds.
“This is it,” Mr. Marcelle says. The road up ahead dead-ends in a driveway. They can see two cars in the drive: Pru’s own dented, rusty Impala and an old black MG with the Virgin Mary on the dashboard.
“Whose car is that?” Pru asks. Mr. Marcelle stops his own car, puts it in reverse, and pulls back down the road, where they’re out of sight.
“The man with the dice tattoo,” he says.
Pru is out of the car before he can even turn it off.
“Pru,” Mr. Marcelle whisper-yells. “Wait! I have a plan.”
She stops, and he hands her his cell phone.
“I’m going to go in,” Mr. Marcelle says. “You’re going to stay here and watch and wait. If I’m not out in ten minutes, you use my phone to call 911 and get them out here. Okay?”
“No. I go with you,” she says.
“And if it’s a bad scene in there, what good does it do your friends? If you’re out here, you can help them. I’ll try first, and if I fail, you’re my backup. Got it?” He looks at her, his brown eyes huge and pleading. “Will you do that for me, Pru? Will you be my backup?”
Yes, she nods. Yes. She will be his backup. The fat lady and the strongman, an unbeatable team.
“Wait here,” he tells her. “Stay out of sight.”
He jogs down the road and driveway, past the two cars, toward the house. At the side of the house, he crouches, pushing his body against the wooden clapboards as he peeks in a window. Then he moves to the next, going window to window as he tries to get a sense of what’s going on before he walks inside. A clever man, Mr. Marcelle. At last, he disappears through a side door.
She tries to stick to the plan. She paces around his tiny car, clutching his phone and turning it on, even though doing so feels like a breach of his privacy. It opens right to a text message screen. James Marcelle asking, Where the fuck are U, Bro? I’m waiting. Then, in a minute, the phone chirps and Pru looks down to see another text from James: Looked up Edward Tanner. Holy shit! Guy apparently torched his father alive. Got sent to a home for f-ed up boys, then escaped. Never heard from again, no records of him as an adult. Is he our kid?
Then, a few seconds later, a new text. If he’s our guy, stay away from him. The dude is Dangerous! Stand down, Bro. Call me. Now! And remember, with all the BS you pulled, you’re off the
payroll!
Is it just the thought of a kid burning his father alive that brings the smell of smoke to mind? Pru sniffs at the air. No, that’s smoke. She definitely smells it. She turns and looks at the house, sees a curl of black come from a cracked window, the orange glow of flames flickering inside.
She looks down at the phone in her hand, quickly dials 911.
“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asks in a calm monotone.
“I need the police! And the fire department! Ambulances! I’m at the end of Birchwood Lane. Fire! Murderers! Hurry!” she says frantically. Then she clicks off and begins to run.
Theo
Theo stays where she is, straddling Necco’s supposed brother with the knife held against his throat. She’s relieved to finally be out of the stupid closet. She’d gone her whole life without being rushed to hide in a bedroom closet; now it’s been twice in one freaking week. Was this the universe’s idea of some Theo’s-in-the-closet joke? She is not amused.
The man holding a gun and a gas can smiles at her before looking at Errol.
“Looks like you’re in a world of hurt, son,” he says.
“Come any closer and I slit his throat,” Theo warns.
“Easy there, little lady,” he says. “If everyone cooperates, we can all walk out of here in one piece. And trust me, you don’t want to have anyone’s death on your conscience. It’s a real shitty way to go through life.”
The boy beneath her (and he is more of a boy than a man, really, Theo sees that now) flinches, all his muscles tighten. Suddenly, he looks like he might cry. Theo actually feels bad, takes the knife up so that it’s just hovering above his Adam’s apple.
“You know who I am?” the man with the gun asks Necco.
She nods. “I remember you from the photo on the mantel. You’re Uncle Lloyd.”
“Good girl,” he says.
“But…but you’re dead. You died in the fire at the garage.”
Jesus, Theo thinks. What’s next with these people? Floods that didn’t happen, grandparents and parents who turned out to have been murdered, a brother who doesn’t exist on paper, and now Uncle Lloyd has come back from the grave.
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