"Well," she says after a long moment, "that's not true. Going on after they're dead, Smoky--that doesn't mean you didn't love them. All it means is that they died and you didn't."
I file this profundity away for future thought; I can feel its merit.
"Funny, isn't it? I've always been able to hit what I want with a gun. It's always come naturally to me. I remember aiming at his head, and then he was so damn fast. I've never seen anyone move that fast. He yanked Alexa off the bed and made her take the bullet for him. She was looking right into my eyes when it happened." My face twists. "You know, he almost looked surprised. With everything he'd done, he still had this look on his face, like for just a moment he thought he'd gone too far. And then I shot him."
"Do you remember that part, Smoky?"
I frown. "What do you mean?"
Callie smiles. It's a sad smile. "You didn't just shoot him, honey-love. You filled him up with bullets. You emptied four clips into him, and you were about to reload when I stopped you."
And just like that, I am there and I do remember.
He'd raped me, cut on me. Matt was dead. I was coasting on waves of pain, surfing in and out of consciousness. Everything was slightly surreal. Like being a little bit drugged. Or the hungover feeling you can get when you take an afternoon nap that's just a half hour too long. There was a sense of urgency, I could feel it. But it was far away. I was feeling it through soft gauze. I'd have to wade through syrup to get to it.
Sands leaned forward, putting his face close to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheek. It was unnaturally hot. A flash of something sticky--I realized it was his spit, drying on my chest. I shivered once, a full-body shiver. A long, rolling shake.
"I'm going to undo your hands and feet now, sweet Smoky," he whispered in my ear. "I want you to touch my face before you die."
My eyes roll toward him, and then roll up into my head. I lose time. I coast back into awareness and feel him at my hands, loosening them. Coast back out, into the black. Surf in again, he's at my feet. Cowabunga. Light to shadow, shadow to light. I come to again, and he's next to me, spooned into my side. He's naked, and I can feel that he's hard. His left hand is fisted into my hair, bending my head back. The right is draped over my stomach, and I can feel the knife in it. That breath again, sour and hot.
"Time to go, sweet Smoky," Sands whispers. "I know you're tired. You just have one more thing to do before you sleep." His breathing quickens. His erection stirs at my side, poking into my hip. "Touch my face."
And he's right. I am tired. So damn tired. I just want to coast into the black, have it all be done and gone and over. I feel my hand coming up, to do this last thing he wants--and then it happens.
"MOMMY!" I hear Alexa scream. It is a scream of full-throated terror.
It's a backhanded, bone-rattling slap across my face.
"He told us Alexa was dead, Callie," I whisper in the hospital room.
"Said he killed her first. I heard her scream, and I realized that he'd lied to me, and I knew--I KNEW--he was going to see her next!" I clench my fist as I remember, and feel my body trembling in anger and terror, all over again.
It was as though someone had detonated a bomb inside me. I did not just come awake, I exploded. The dragon crawled up from inside my belly, and she roared, and roared, and roared.
I smashed Sands's face, felt his nose crunch under the heel of my hand. He grunted, and I was off the bed and heading for the nightstand where I kept my gun, but he was like an animal. Feral and oh-so-fast. No hesitation. He rolled onto the floor and was sprinting out the bedroom door. I heard his feet pounding on the hardwood floors of the hallway, heading toward Alexa.
And I began to scream. I felt like I was on fire. Everything was turning white hot, adrenaline was burning me up, and the intensity of it was excruciating. Time had changed. It hadn't slowed down, just the opposite. It sped up. Faster than thought.
I had my gun and was not so much running down the hallway as tele- porting down it, moving toward Alexa's room in flashes rather than steps. And I was fast, damn fast, because he was only just turning into her doorway, and then I was there too, and I saw her. On the bed, the gag he had placed around her mouth now loosened. Good girl, I remember thinking.
"MOMMY!" she screamed again, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, rivers of tears. And now I was the animal, no hesitation, raising my gun, aiming for his head . . .
Then horror. Horror, horror, horror, going on forever, never ending, hell on earth.
Then me, screaming. Screaming, screaming, screaming, going on forever, never ending, hell on earth. Me, shooting Sands, over and over and over, determined to shoot him till I was out of ammo, and then--
"Oh Jesus, Callie." Tears fill my eyes. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I'm so sorry."
She takes my hand, shakes her head once. "Don't worry about it, Smoky." She squeezes my hand, a fierce squeeze. It almost hurts. "I mean it. You weren't in your right mind."
Because I remember hearing Callie bust in through my front door, seeing her appear, weapon drawn. I remember her moving toward me with exaggerated caution, telling me to put down my gun. Me screaming at her. Her moving toward me. I knew she wanted to take it away from me, and I knew I just couldn't let her do that. I still needed to put it to my head, to shoot myself, to die. I deserved to die for killing my child. So I did the only thing that seemed to make sense to me. I pointed the gun at Callie, and I fired.
It's pure luck that the chamber was empty. Thinking of it now, I remember that she didn't even slow down, just kept moving toward me until she got close enough to take away the gun, which she tossed to one side. After that I don't remember very much at all.
"I could've killed you," I whisper.
"Naw." She smiles again. It's still a little bit sad, but some of the mischievous Callie shines through. "You were aiming at my leg."
"Callie." I say it as a reprimand, albeit a gentle one. "I remember." I hadn't been aiming at her leg. I'd been aiming at her heart. She leans forward and looks me right in the eyes. "Smoky, I trust you more than I trust anybody in this world. And that hasn't changed. I don't know what else to tell you. Except that I'll never talk about it with you again."
I close my eyes. "Who else knows?"
Silence. "Me. The team. AD Jones. Dr. Hillstead. That's it. Jones clamped down on it pretty hard."
Except that's not it, I think. They know. I can tell she has something else to say.
"What?"
"Well . . . you should know: Dr. Hillstead is the only person who knows about your reaction to finding out today. Aside from Jenny and the rest of the team."
"You didn't tell AD Jones?"
She shakes her head. "No."
"Why not?"
Callie lets go of my hand. She looks uneasy, a rare thing for her. She stands up and paces a little. "I'm afraid--we're afraid--if we do, then that's it. He'll decide you can never go back to work. Ever. We know you may decide that, anyway. But we wanted to leave the options open."
"Everyone agreed to this?"
She's hesitant. "Everyone but James. He says he wants to speak to you first."
I close my eyes. Right now, James is the last person I want to talk to. The very last.
I sigh. "Fine. Send him in. I don't know what I'm going to decide just yet, Callie. I do know this--I want to go home. I want to get Bonnie and go home, and try to figure this out. I need to get my head straight, once and for all, or I'm done. You guys can follow up on AFIS and the rest of it. I need to go home."
She looks down at the floor, then back up at me. "I understand. I'll get it all into motion."
She walks toward the door. Stops and turns back to me as she gets to it. "One thing you should think about, honey-love. You know guns better than anyone I've ever met. Maybe when you pointed your gun at me, you pulled the trigger because you knew it was empty." She winks, opens the door, and walks out.
"Maybe," I whisper to myself.
But I don't think so.
&
nbsp; I think I pulled the trigger because, at that moment, I wanted the whole world to die.
20
JAMES WALKS IN and closes the door behind him. He takes a seat in the chair next to my bed. He's silent, and I can't read him. Not that I ever could.
"Callie said you needed to talk to me before deciding whether or not you were going to rat me out to AD Jones."
He doesn't reply right away. He sits there, looking at me. It's exasperating.
"Well?"
He purses his lips. "Contrary to what you probably think, I don't have a problem with you coming back to full and active duty, Smoky. I don't. You're good at what we do, and competence is all I ask for."
"So?"
"What I do have a problem with is you being only halfway." He gestures at me lying on the hospital bed. "Like this. It makes you dangerous, because you're unreliable."
"Oh, please eat shit and die."
He ignores me. "It's true. Think about it. When you and I were in Annie King's apartment, I saw the old you. The competent one. So did everyone else. Callie and Alan started to defer to you again, to rely on you. Together we found evidence that would have been missed. But then all it took was a letter and you collapsed."
"Little more complicated than that, James."
He shrugs. "Not in the way that matters it's not. Either you are back all the way, or not at all. Because if you come back like this, you're a liability to us. And that leads to what I am willing to agree to."
"What?"
"That you either come back fixed, or you stay the fuck away. If you try to come back still screwed up, I'm going straight to AD Jones, and I'll just keep climbing until someone listens to me and puts you out to pasture."
The fury in me is white hot. "You are some arrogant prick."
He's unmoved. "This is the way it is, Smoky. I trust you. If you give me your word, then I know you'll keep it. That's what I want. Come back fixed, or don't come back at all. It's nonnegotiable."
I stare at him. I don't see judgment or pity.
He's really not asking much, I realize. What he's saying is reasonable. I hate him anyway.
"I give you my word. Now get the fuck out of here."
He gets up and leaves without looking back.
21
WE LEFT IN the early morning, and the flight back was a silent one. Bonnie sat next to me, holding my hand and staring off into the distance. Callie spoke once to let me know that two agents would be posted at my home until I said otherwise. I didn't think he would be back now that he'd tipped his hand, but I was more than happy to have the protection. She also told me that AFIS had come up empty. Oh, happy day.
I am boiling over inside, a big mess of harm and confusion lit by little starbursts of panic. It is not the emotion overwhelming me, it is the reality. The reality of Bonnie. I glance at her. She unsettles me even more, responds by turning her head to give me a full, frank look. She regards me for a moment, and then goes back to her stillness and that thousand-yard stare.
I clench a fist and close my eyes. Those little panic starbursts glitter and burst and crack.
Motherhood terrifies me. Because that's what we're talking about here, plain and simple. I am all she has, and there are many, many miles to go. Miles filled with school days, Christmas mornings, booster shots, eat your vegetables, learn to drive, home by ten, on and on and on. All the banalities, big and small and wonderful, that go into being responsible for another life. I used to have a system for this. The thing was, it wasn't just called motherhood. It was called parenthood. I had Matt. We bounced things off each other, argued about what was best for Alexa, loved her together. A large part of being a parent is a constant near certainty that you are screwing it up, and it is comforting to be able to spread the blame around. Bonnie has me. Just me. Screwup me, towing a freight train of baggage while she tows a freight train of horror and a future of . . . what?
Will she ever speak again? Will she have friends? Boyfriends? Will she be happy?
I realize as my panic builds that I know nothing about this little girl. I don't know if she's good in school. I don't know what TV shows she likes to watch, or what she expects to eat for breakfast in the morning. I know nothing.
The terror of it grows and grows, and I am babbling to myself inside and I just want to open the hatch on the side of the plane and jump out screaming into the open air, cackling and weeping and--
And there's Matt's voice again, inside my head. Soft and low and soothing.
Shhhh, babe. Relax. First things first, and you have the most important one out of the way already.
What's that? I whimper back to him in my mind.
I feel his smile. You've taken her on. She's yours. Whatever else happens, however hard it is, you've taken her on, and you'll never take that back. That's the First Rule of Mom, and you did it. The rest will fall into place. My heart clenches at this, and I want to gasp.
The First Rule of Mom . . .
Alexa had her problems; she wasn't a perfect child. She needed a lot of reassurance, sometimes, that she was loved. In those times, I would always tell her the same thing. I would cuddle her in my arms, and put my lips in her hair and whisper to her.
"You know what the First Rule of Mom is, honey?" I would say. She did, but she always answered the same way:
"What, Mommy? What's the First Rule of Mom?"
"That you're mine, and I'll never take that back. No matter what, no matter how hard things are, no matter if--"
"--the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, and the stars stop burning," she'd say, completing the ritual.
It was all I had to do, and she'd relax and be certain. My heart unclenches.
The First Rule of Mom.
I could start with that.
The starbursts stop glittering inside me.
For now.
We all get off the plane. I walk away without saying anything, Bonnie in tow.
The agents in question accompany us home, driving behind us the whole way. The air outside is chilly, just a little foggy. The freeway has only started getting busy, not quite up to speed yet, like a hill of sluggish ants waiting for the sun to warm them up. The inside of the car is quiet the whole way home. Bonnie isn't talking, and I am too busy thinking, feeling, fretting. Thinking a lot about Alexa. It had not occurred to me until yesterday how little I have thought about her since her death. She's been . . . vague. A blurred face in the distance. I realize now that she was the shadowy figure in my dream about Sands. The letter from Jack Jr., and remembering, has brought her crashing into focus. Now she is a vivid, blinding, painful beauty. Memories of her are a symphony turned up too loud. My ears hurt, but I can't stop listening. The symphony of motherhood, it's about loving with absolute abandon, loving without regard for self, loving with a near totality of being. It's about a passion that could outburn the sun with its brightness. About a depthless hope and a fierce, rending joy. God, I loved her. So much. More than I loved myself, more than I loved Matt.
I know why her face has been so blurred for me. Because a world without her, it is-- unbearable.
But here I am, bearing it. That breaks something inside me, something that will never heal. I'm glad.
Because I want this to hurt, forever.
*
*
*
When we get to the house twenty minutes later, the agents don't speak, just give me a nod. Letting me know they're on the job.
"Wait here a sec, honey," I tell Bonnie.
I walk over to the car. The window on the driver's side rolls down, and I smile as I recognize one of the agents. Dick Keenan. He had been a trainer at Quantico while I was going through the academy. Heading into his fifties, he decided he wanted to finish out on the "streets." He's a solid man, very old-school FBI, crew cut and all. He is also a practical joker and a marksman.
"How'd you get this detail, Dick?" I ask him.
He smiles. "AD Jones."
I nod. Of course. "Who's that with you
?"
The other agent is younger, younger than me. Brand-new and still excited about being an FBI agent. Looking forward to the prospect of sitting in a car doing nothing for days at a time.
"Hannibal Shantz," he says, sticking his hand out the window for me to shake.
"Hannibal, huh?" I grin.
He shrugs. He's one of those good-natured guys, I can tell. It's impossible to get under his skin, impossible not to like him.
"You up to speed on everything, Dick?"
His nod is terse. "You. The little girl. And, yeah, I know how she came to be with you."
"Good. Let me be clear on something: She's your principal. Understand? If it comes down to a choice between shadowing her or me, I want you to keep an eye on her."
"You got it."
"Thanks. Good to meet you, Hannibal."
I walk away, reassured. I see Bonnie waiting for me, with my house as a backdrop.
I had time in the car to wonder about why I stayed in that house. It had been an act of stubbornness. Now it might also be an act of stupidity. I realized that it's something basic to my nature. It is my home. If I were to relent, to give that up, then some part of me knew that I'd never be whole again. Here there be tygers, true. But I still wasn't leaving.
*
*
*
We're in the kitchen, and my next move comes to me without asking.
"You hungry, honey?" I ask Bonnie.
She looks up at me, nods.
I nod back, satisfied. The First Rule of Mom: Love. The Second Rule of Mom: Feed your offspring. "Let me see what we have."
She follows me as I open the refrigerator, peering in. Teach them to hunt, I think, and then I have to fight back a little hysterical bubble of laughter. Things don't look good in the fridge. There's a near-empty peanut butter jar and some milk that is putrefying past its expiration date.
"Sorry, babe. Looks like we'll have to do some shopping." I rub my eyes and sigh inside. God, I'm tired. But that's one of the truths of parenthood. Not a rule, really. More of a given natural law. They are yours, you are responsible for them. So too bad if you're tired, because, well--
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