We went back to the Scar.
There were endless reports to write. There was the initial offense report on Emma Bradley's murder, the chain of custody reports for the body, and a whole slew of forms that would follow Emma Bradley's body to the autopsy. Then we had to transcribe the witness statements we'd taken with our audio recorders. After that, we had to create a file on the Department's Case Management system, where we summarized all the initial leads we'd worked. Finally, we had to write a report explaining the damage to the car we'd been driving.
“Where do you want to pick up tomorrow?” Chunk asked me, after the last of the paperwork was done and we were walking out to the parking lot. It was almost nine o'clock, and night had settled over the Texas Hill Country. A hot breeze rustled the crowns of the nearby oaks and cedars, and the freeway that ran next to the Scar was silent, a dark ribbon stretching off into the hills.
“First thing we need to do is talk to Ken Wade. We'll call the office. Maybe go by his house if he doesn't show. If we can't find him…” I shrugged. I didn't need to say the rest.
“Yeah,” Chunk agreed. “I don't want to think about where that would lead us.”
We reached my car, a five year old Chevy Malibu with a ding in the driver's side door. The hinges creaked when I opened it. A short ways off, at the edge of the parking lot, a cactus wren shook its head and hopped along the top wire of a barbed wire fence. They don't usually come out at night.
“I don't care what Treanor says, Chunk. I got a bad feeling about Wade.”
He rubbed a massive palm across the back of his neck. He was as tired as I was.
I said, “Maybe after we check on Wade, we can try to find that van they were in.”
“You mean go into the GZ?”
“Yeah.”
“You're just full of great ideas, aren't you?”
“Chunk, don't you think it's the only way to follow up on the leads we've got. We might even get lucky and find that journal Myers was telling us about.”
“I gave up on luck a long time ago, Lily.”
I made it home, finally.
Billy, my husband, and I lived with our daughter Connie on two acres north of town, about a mile from the containment wall that circled San Antonio and insured we obeyed the quarantine.
It was good land, quiet, densely wooded with oaks and pecans. In the mornings we'd see white tail deer running across the lawn and fog rising up from Vespers Creek, which ran deep and slow along the eastern edge of our property. As I pulled into our driveway, I could just see the dark outline of the cypress trees along its banks.
Inside, the house was dark and quiet. Connie's toys were all over the living room floor, and Billy had left a sweaty shirt and dirty socks on the arm of the couch again.
“Billy? Connie?” I called out, picking up the shirt and socks and throwing them in the hamper.
“Billy?”
I went to the back door and looked out towards Billy's work shed, trying hard not to notice the coffins, most of which were only half-finished and unpainted. Billy had been a contractor before H2N2 hit San Antonio, but like everybody else, he'd been forced to adjust to the new circumstances. He started bringing in a pretty good chunk of change making coffins for those who could afford to bury their dead in private graveyards. It disturbed me when he first started doing it, and it still did as I looked out over the backyard, calling out their names.
The battery-powered light in Billy's shed was on. The batteries were a costly item down at the distribution center, but necessary to run his woodworking tools.
I opened the screen door and stepped out to the porch. I could hear Connie laughing and it hitched me up inside. It had become a rare sound by the end of that summer.
“Connie?” I yelled out. “Billy?”
The laughing stopped. A moment went by.
“Mommy!” Connie yelled from inside the wood shed, and then she was sprinting out of it, bounding over the coffins, her delighted shrieks of “Mommy! Mommy!” the most wonderful sound I'd ever heard.
She was running for me. Her soft brown hair billowed out behind her. It was getting long now that we'd finally relented and let her grow it out like her best friend Emily. Her complexion was light, her facial features delicate, a girly girl. I loved her eyes, wide open and intelligent. Seeing her run and laugh filled me with a profound sadness that things couldn't be this way all the time.
Only then did I realize that she wasn't wearing her surgical mask. My face went hard. I could feel it set. A switch turned on in my head and the next minute I was yelling, screaming at her to put her mask back on. “God damn it! Put it back on now!” I couldn't stop myself from yelling. It wasn't anger. It was a black cloud of frustration and fear and sadness building behind my eyes.
She stopped in the yard. She looked up at me from the foot of the steps that led up to the porch.
She didn't answer me.
Her face melted into sadness and her eyes clouded over with disappointment. Not anger, or defiance, or even dismissive nonchalance, but simple, gut-wrenching disappointment that tore my heart in two.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, my heart was beating fast, and I felt sick.
“Connie, please. Put on your mask.”
She sighed, hung her head. She mounted the stairs and walked past me without a word.
“Connie?” I said, my voice shaking. I watched her as she opened the screen door and went inside.
She let the door slam behind her.
“Honey?” I said, but she couldn't, wouldn't, hear me.
When I turned back to the yard Billy was standing there. Billy, at 6 ft 3 in, was a big man. His shoulders were wide, though his powerful arms hung limply at his sides. His brown hair was short, but full and shiny, the same as Connie's. His face was round and sad.
He wasn't wearing his mask either.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“She's not wearing her mask, Billy. And neither are you.”
“Yeah,” he said defensively. “So, what's the big deal? We're not in public. It's just us.”
My mouth fell open into an O. “How can you ask me that? How can you stand there and tell me it's no big deal when you know what I look at all damn day? How can you be that thick-headed, Billy?”
He started to argue, but evidently thought better of it. Instead he said nothing at all.
“Please, Billy. I count on you. I wish things weren't the way they are, but I need you to promise me you'll make her wear her mask when I'm not around. I need that reassurance. Please.”
He nodded. Our eyes met. I loved those eyes. My whole world was in those eyes.
“Okay,” he said.
I felt like my life was a ship running aground, like I was unconsciously destroying the relationships that I needed to sustain me.
“Thank you,” I told him, and went back inside.
Connie was wearing her favorite pair of pajamas-a purple silken shirt and pants with little birds all over them. Thanks to Connie, I knew the birds were starlings. Connie knew the name of every bird she saw.
From the hallway, I watched her climb into bed and pull the covers up to her chin. I couldn't believe how much she'd grown. My baby.
Her favorite book was a collection of Frog and Toad stories. It was on the table next to her bed. I went into her room and picked up the book.
“Would you like Mommy to read you a story?” I asked her, getting down on my knees next to her bed.
“No,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“Are you sure?”
“I want Daddy to do it,” she said.
“Connie, honey, Daddy's cleaning the kitchen.”
She raised her voice, each word a stab in my heart. “I want Daddy to do it!”
“Connie,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice.
But she wasn't listening. She turned her face to the wall and at that moment I ceased to exist.
The living room was lit by candlelight.
I'd got my yoga mat out. The copy of Vogue that Chunk was making fun of earlier and an issue of In Shape magazine were both open on the floor in front of me. Every night I did a mix of the yoga routines in those two magazines to clear my head, but after the mess I made of putting Connie to bed, I could tell it wasn't going to work for me that night.
I tried anyway. I spread my legs and bent forward at the waist, putting my hands on the floor as far out in front of me as I could. Then I slowly moved my hands towards my feet in a sweeping arc motion.
Between my legs as I stretched down, I could see Billy in the kitchen, scrounging for something to eat. I noticed he was getting a little pudgy. It was from the MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), I figured, that he always bought at the food distribution center. Those things have got 3000 calories per package, and he'd eat two, sometimes three a day. His favorite was the chicken alfredo. He said it tasted good hot or cold, but I couldn't eat it. Too salty for my tastes.
He came out to the living room, eating a granola bar.
“Looking good from here,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, but without enthusiasm.
I got down on my back, right knee bent, left leg pointed out straight, about 6 in off the carpet. I raised and lowered my left leg for 25 reps, then switched to my right leg.
The magazine said it would make my thighs and abs look the girl in the picture.
When I was finished, breathing hard, Billy asked, “Have you given any more thought to her party?”
He meant Connie's party. Her sixth birthday was coming up in five days, and it was scaring the ever loving crap out of me.
Little girls should have birthday parties. It's only fair. I wanted Connie to have one. I really did. But everyday I went back to that damn mud pit, the Scar, and when I saw the bodies tumbling in on top of each other, and the horrible smell hovering over the grave pits like some beast out of the Book of Revelations, I felt like I had to tell her no.
“I'm scared, Billy. I'm so damned scared of what could happen.”
He smiled. “I know you are, babe. I know. But I honestly think it'll be okay. We can do this.”
“Are you sure? Billy, are you really? I need you to tell me you believe that.”
“I do,” he said. His eyes were filled with light. “I do.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
Then a thought shamed me. We didn't have any gifts to give her. Even though we were doing better than most, we had very little. Just enough to buy staple groceries and run the air conditioner during the 105 degree days. I was spending so much time away from home during those days that I didn't even know what my daughter was into anymore. She used to be all about birds, every kind of bird, and even though she still wore the pajamas, I didn't know if birds were still cool.
“Is it still birds?” I asked.
Billy smiled and nodded.
“I wish we could get her something bird-related. I don't know. A book maybe?”
“I've got something to show you,” Billy said, and crossed the room to the bookshelf, where he took down a few books and carefully removed what looked like a cigar box he'd hidden back there.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Something I've been working on,” he said, “out in the shed, while Connie's in here reading.”
He pulled out a bird and handed it to me. It was hand carved from oak wood, polished smooth, painted with exacting and loving detail. It was a blue jay, a perfect likeness, right down to the wrinkles on its claws.
I took it in my hands delicately, like it was made of glass.
I could feel a tear threatening to break loose.
“Her favorite right now is the gray barn owl. I've already got one of those made too, but it's too big to put in the box. I have it out in the shed. I'm gonna start on a nest for it tomorrow.”
I looked up at him, and the tear fell.
“Hey,” he said, kneeling next to me, taking my face in his hands. “Hey, it's all right. We're all right.”
I closed my eyes and lost myself in his hands. Such wonderful hands.
“I love you so much, Billy. God, so much.”
“I love you too, Lily. Always.”