Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  She stared up at the ceiling of the van. She had no thoughts in her mind. She was too exhausted. Her body felt numb, but in a different way from before. She wasn’t being shot at or fretting about Danberry’s interrogation or mourning Martin or worrying that they would all get caught. She was looking at her future and realizing that she was never going to get out of this. Even if every facet of Nick’s plan worked, even if they managed to escape to Switzerland, Jane was always going to be living inside of a cartwheel.

  Nick’s breathing started to slow. She could feel his body relax. Jane thought to slide out from his grasp, but she hadn’t the strength. Her eyelids began to flutter. She could almost taste every beat of her heart. She let herself give in to it, falling asleep for what she thought was just a moment, but they both woke up when Paula stopped at a gas station just inside the Nevada state line.

  They were the only customers. The attendant inside barely glanced up from the television when they all climbed out of the van.

  “Snacks?” Paula asked. No one answered, so she loped off to the store with her hands stuck into the pockets of the brown jacket.

  Andrew worked the gas pump. He closed his eyes and leaned against the van as the tank started to fill.

  Nick didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t clap together his hands and try to rally the troops. He walked a few yards away from them. His hands were in his back pockets. He stared out at the road. Jane watched him look up at the sky, then out at the vast, brown landscape.

  Everyone was subdued. Jane couldn’t tell if it was from shellshock or debilitating fatigue. There was an almost tangible feel among them that they had reached a point of no return. The giddy high they had foolishly experienced when they’d talked about being on the lam from the law, as if they were gangsters in a James Cagney movie, had been eviscerated by reality.

  Nick was the only one who could reliably pull them out of free fall. Jane had seen it happen so many times before. Nick could walk into a room and instantly make everything better. She had witnessed it this morning at the shed. Andrew and Jane were quarreling with Paula, who was about to kill them all, then Nick had somehow turned them all into a single, working group again. Everyone looked to him for his strength, his surety of purpose.

  His charisma.

  Nick turned away from the road. His eyes skipped over Jane as he walked toward the bathrooms on the side of the building. His shoulders were slumped. His feet dragged across the asphalt. Her heart broke at the sight of him. Jane had only seen him like this a handful of times before, so stuck in a fugue of depression that he could barely lift his head.

  It was her fault.

  She had doubted him, the one betrayal that Nick could not abide. He was a man, not an all-seeing god. Yes, what had happened in the shed was terrible, but they were still alive. Nick had made that happen. He had designed drills and made sketches to map out their escape. He had insisted they practice until their arms and legs felt weak. To keep them safe. To keep them on track. To keep their spirits up and their minds focused and their hearts motivated. No one else had the ability to do all of those things.

  And no one, especially Jane, had stopped to think what a toll these responsibilities were taking on him.

  She followed Nick’s path to the men’s bathroom. She didn’t think about what she would find when she pushed open the door, but she felt sick with her own complicity when she saw Nick.

  His hands were braced on the sink. His head was bent. When he looked up at Jane, tears were streaming from his eyes.

  “I’ll be out in a minute.” He turned away, grabbing a handful of paper towels. “Maybe you could help Penny with—”

  Jane wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face to his back.

  He laughed, but only at himself. “I seem to be falling apart.”

  Jane squeezed him as tight as she dared.

  His chest heaved as he took a shuddered breath. His arms covered hers. He shifted his weight into her and Jane held him up because that was what she did best.

  “I love you,” she told him, kissing the back of his neck.

  He misread her intentions. “Afraid I’m not up for any hijinks, my Jinx, but it means the world to me that you’re offering.”

  She loved him even more for trying to sound like his old, confident self. She made him turn around. She put her hands on his shoulders the same way he always did with everyone else. She put her mouth to his ear the same way he only did with her. She said the three words that mattered most to him, not I love you, but—

  “I’m with you.”

  Nick blinked, then he laughed, embarrassed by his obvious swell of emotion. “Really?”

  “Really.” Jane kissed him on the lips, and inexplicably, everything felt right. His arms around her. His heart beating against hers. Even standing in the filthy men’s room felt right.

  “My love,” she said. Over and over again. “My only love.”

  Andrew was fast asleep in the passenger’s seat when they got back to the van. Paula was too wired to do anything but keep driving. Nick helped Jane into the back. He did the same thing as before, wrapping his arms and legs around her as they lay on the futon. This time, Jane curled into him. Instead of closing her eyes to sleep, she started talking—mundane nonsense at first, like the feeling of joy the first time she had nailed a performance, or the excitement of a standing ovation. She wasn’t bragging. She was giving Nick context because nothing compared to the absolute elation Jane had experienced the first time Nick had kissed her, the first time they had made love, the first time she’d realized that he belonged to her.

  Because Nick did belong to her, just as surely as Jane belonged to him.

  She told him how her heart had floated up like a hot-air balloon when she’d first seen him roughhousing with Andrew in the front hall. How her spirits had soared when Nick had walked into the kitchen, kissed her, then backed away like a thief. Then she told Nick how much she had ached for him in Berlin. How she had missed the taste of his mouth. How nothing she did could chase away the longing she’d had for his touch.

  Then they were in Wyoming, then Nebraska, then Utah, then finally Illinois.

  Over the twenty-eight remaining hours it took to drive to the outskirts of Chicago, Jane spent almost every waking moment telling Nick how much she loved him.

  She was a yo-yo. She was Patricia Hearst. She had drunk the Kool-Aid. She was taking orders from her neighbor’s dog.

  Jane did not care if she was in a cult or if Nick was Donald DeFreeze. Actually, she no longer cared about the plan. Her part was over, anyway. The other cell members were on the frontlines now. Of course, she still felt outraged by the atrocities committed by her father and older brother. She mourned Laura and Robert Juneau’s loss. She felt bad for what had happened to Quarter and Alexandra Maplecroft in the shed. But Jane did not really have to believe in what they were doing or why.

  All she had to do was believe in Nick.

  “Turn left up here,” Paula said. She was kneeling behind the driver’s seat. She put her hand on Jane’s shoulder, which was alarming because Paula never touched except to hurt. “Look for a driveway on the right. It’s kind of hidden in the trees.”

  Jane saw the driveway a few yards later. She put on the turn signal even though the van was the only vehicle for miles.

  Paula punched Jane’s arm. “Dumb bitch.”

  Jane listened to her disappear into the back of the van. Paula’s mood had lifted because Nick’s mood had lifted. The same had happened with Andrew. The effect was magical. The moment they had seen Nick’s easy grin, any feelings of worry or doubt had vanished.

  Jane had made that happen.

  “Jinx?” Andrew stirred in the passenger’s seat as the tires bumped onto the gravel driveway.

  “We’re here.” Jane let out a slow sigh of relief as they cleared the stand of trees. The farm was just as she had pictured it from Andrew’s coded letters. Cows grazed in the pasture. A huge, red barn loomed over a quaint, on
e-story house that was painted a matching color. Daisies were planted in the yard. There was a small patch of grass and a white picket fence. This was the sort of happy place you could raise a child.

  Jane rested her hand on her stomach.

  “Okay?” Andrew asked.

  She looked at her brother. The sleep had done him no good. Improbably, he looked worse than before. “Should I be worried?”

  “Absolutely not.” His smile was unconvincing. He told her, “We’ll be able to rest here. To be safe.”

  “I know,” Jane said, but she would not feel safe until Nick returned from New York.

  The front tire hit a rut in the gravel drive. Jane winced as tree limbs lashed the side of the van. She almost said a prayer of thanks when she finally parked beside two cars in front of the barn.

  “Hello, Chicago!” Nick called as he slid open the side door. He jumped to the ground. He stretched his arms and arched his back, his face looking up at the sky. “My God, it’s good to be out of that tin box.”

  “No shit.” Paula groaned as she tried to stretch. She was only a few years older than Nick, but rage had curled her body in on itself.

  Jane sighed again as her feet touched solid ground. The air was sharp, the temperature considerably lower than what they had left in California. She rubbed her arms to warm them as she looked out at the horizon. The sun hung heavy over the treetops. She guessed it was around four o’clock in the afternoon. She didn’t know what day it was, where they were exactly, or what was going to happen next, but she was so relieved to be out of the van that she could’ve cried.

  “Stay here.” Paula stomped toward the house. Her boots kicked up a cloud of dust. She had taken off her fingerless gloves, wiped the black charcoal from under her eyes. The back of her hair corkscrewed into a cowlick. The hem of her shift was filthy. Like the rest of them, she had slashes of blood on her clothes.

  Jane looked past her to the farmhouse. She wasn’t going to think about the blood anymore. She was either with Nick or she wasn’t.

  All or none; the Queller way.

  The front door opened. A small woman stood with a shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders. Beside her, a tall man with long hair and an elaborate, handlebar mustache held a shotgun in his hands. He saw Paula, but did not lower the gun until she placed a penny in the palm of the woman’s open hand.

  This was Nick’s idea. Penny, nickel, quarter, dime—each representing a cell, each cell using the coins as a way of indicating to each other that it was safe to talk. Nick delighted in the play on their name, the Army of the Changing World. He’d made them all dress in black, even down to their underwear, and stand in a line like soldiers as he placed a coin in each of their hands to designate their code names.

  The jackass didn’t know the word ‘symbiotic,’ so he made up the word ‘symbionese.’

  Jane gritted her teeth as she banished Danberry’s words from her mind.

  She had made her choice.

  “I don’t know about you, troops, but I’m starving.” Nick looped his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “Andy, what about you? Is it feed a cold and starve a fever, or the other way around?”

  “I think it’s give them both whisky and sleep in a real bed.” Andrew trudged toward the house, Nick beside him. They were both noticeably exhausted, but Nick’s energy was carrying them through, just as it always did.

  Jane did not follow them toward the house. She wanted to stretch her legs and look at the farm. The thought of a moment alone in the silence appealed to her. She had grown up in the city. The Hillsborough house was too close to the airport to be called the country. While other girls Jane’s age learned horseback riding and attended Girl Scout retreats, she was sitting in front of her piano for five and six hours at a time, trying to sharpen the fine motor movements of her fingers.

  Her hand, as always, found its way to her stomach.

  Would her daughter play the piano?

  Jane wondered how she was so certain that the child was a girl. She wanted to name her something wonderful, not plain Jane or silly Jinx or the cartoony Janey that Nick sometimes called her. She wanted to give the girl all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses. To make sure that she did not pass on that sleeping ball of fear to her precious child.

  She stopped at the wooden fence. Two white horses were grazing in the field. She smiled as they nuzzled each other.

  Andrew and Jane would be here for at least a week, maybe more. When Nick got back from New York, they would lie low for another week before crossing into Canada. Switzerland was their dream, but what would it feel like to raise her baby on a farm like this one? To walk her to the end of the driveway and wait for the school bus? Hide Easter eggs in bales of hay? Take the horses out into the field and lay a picnic—Jane, her baby, and Nick.

  Next time, Nick told her the last time. We’ll keep it next time.

  “Hello.” The thin woman with the shawl called to Jane. She was making her way past the barn. “I’m sorry to bother you. They’re asking for you. Tucker can move the van into the barn. Spinner and Wyman are already inside.”

  Jane gave a solemn nod. The lieutenants in each cell had all been assigned code names from past Secretaries of the United States Treasury. When Nick had first told Jane the idea, she had struggled not to laugh. Now, she could see that the cloak and dagger had been for a reason. The identities of the Stanford cell had died with Quarter.

  “Oh,” the woman had stopped in her tracks, her mouth rounded in surprise.

  Jane was just as shocked to see the familiar face. They had never met before, but she knew Clara Bellamy from magazines and newspapers and posters outside the State Theater at Lincoln Center. She was a prima ballerina, one of Balanchine’s last shining stars, until a debilitating knee injury had forced her into retirement.

  “Well now.” Clara resumed walking toward Jane with a grin on her face. “You must be Dollar Bill.”

  Another necessary part of spycraft. She told Clara, “We decided calling me ‘DB’ is easier than Dollar Bill. Penny thinks it stands for ‘Dumb Bitch.’”

  “That’s Penny for you.” Clara had easily picked up on Paula’s prickliness. “Nice to meet you, DB. They call me Selden.”

  Jane shook the woman’s hand. Then she laughed to let her know she recognized that the two of them meeting on a secluded farm outside of Chicago was wild.

  “It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?” Clara looped her arm through Jane’s as they slowly headed toward the farmhouse. There was a slight limp to her walk. “I saw you at Carnegie three years ago. Brought me to tears. Mozart’s Concerto Number 24 in C Minor, I believe.”

  Jane felt her lips curve into a smile. She loved it when people really loved music.

  Clara said, “That green dress was amazing.”

  “I thought the shoes were going to kill me.”

  She smiled in commiseration. “I remember it was right after Horowitz’s Japan concert. To see a man who’s so accomplished fail so spectacularly—you must’ve been on pins and needles when you walked onto that stage.”

  “I wasn’t.” Jane was surprised by her own honesty, but someone like Clara Bellamy would understand. “Every note I played came with this sense of déjà vu, as if I had already played it perfectly.”

  “A fait accompli.” Clara nodded her understanding. “I lived for those moments. They never happened often enough. Makes you understand drug addicts, doesn’t it?” She had stopped walking. “That was your last classical performance, wasn’t it? Why did you give it up?”

  Jane was too ashamed to answer. Clara Bellamy had stopped dancing because she had no choice. She wouldn’t understand choosing to walk away.

  Clara offered, “Pechenikov put it around that you lacked ambition. They always say that about women, but that can’t be the truth. I saw your face when you performed. You weren’t just playing the music. You were the music.”

  Jane looked past Clara’s shoulder to the house. She had wanted to keep her spirits up
for Nick, but the reminder of her lost performing life brought back her tears. She had loved playing classical, then she had loved the energy of jazz, then she’d had to find a way to love being alone inside a studio with no feedback from anyone but the chain-smoking man on the other side of the soundproofed glass.

  “Jane?”

  She shook her head, dismissing her grief as a foolish luxury. As usual, she told a version of the truth that the listener could relate to. “I used to think my father was proud of me when I played. Then one day, I realized that everything I did, every award and gig and newspaper or magazine story reflected well on him. That’s what he got out of it. Not admiration for me, but admiration for himself.”

  Clara nodded her understanding. “I had a mother like that. But you won’t give it up for long.” Without warning, she pressed her palm to Jane’s round belly. “You’ll want to play for her.”

  Jane felt a narrowing in her throat. “How did—”

  “Your face.” She stroked Jane’s cheek. “It’s so much fuller than in your photos. And you have this bump in your belly, of course. You’re carrying high, which is why I assumed it was a girl. Nick must be—”

  “You can’t tell him.” Jane’s hand flew to her mouth as if she could claw back the desperation in her tone. “He doesn’t know yet. I need to find the right time.”

  Clara seemed surprised, but she nodded. “I get it. What you guys are going through, it’s not easy. You want some space around it before you tell him.”

  Jane forced a change in subject. “How did you get involved with the group?”

  “Edwin—” Clara laughed, then corrected herself. “Tucker, I mean. He met Paula while they were both at Stanford. He was in law school. She was in poly-sci. Had a bit of a fling, I expect. But he’s mine now.”

  Jane tried to hide her surprise. She couldn’t see Paula as a student, let alone having a fling. “He’s handling any legal issues that come up?”

  “That’s right. Nick is lucky to have him. Tucker dealt with some nasty contract problems for me when my knee blew out. We kind of hit it off. I’ve always been a sucker for a man with interesting facial hair. Anyway, Paula introduced Tucker to Nick, I mean, Nickel. Tucker introduced Nickel to me, and, well, you know how it is when you meet Nick. You believe every word that comes out of his mouth. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to sell me a used car.”