“Thank you, Henry,” Jonah said. “Thank you kindly. I do like jelly beans. ’Cept for the black ones. They taste real bad. Like somebody was playing a mean trick, slipping candy into the bag that doesn’t taste like candy should ’cause they thought it’d be funny or something. But I don’t think it’s funny.”
Henry smiled at the man and his earnest face. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”
“Aunt Helen says we can come by and visit soon,” Jonah said, in a voice that sounded like he’d been told he’d get two birthdays this year instead of one. “She says little Noah will be big enough for me to teach him to fish soon.”
Henry laughed. “Well, now, it’ll be a few years yet before we can do that, Jonah.”
The big man’s face fell at the prospect of a few years. To Jonah, that must have sounded pretty much the same as forever.
“But I can’t think of a better man for the job than you, when the time comes,” Henry said and watched the joy rise back up in Jonah’s face.
The affinity that Jonah had shown for the baby had been a surprise to them all. Even more so, the way little Noah seemed to return the fascination. He’d quieted his fussing when Jonah had held him in his big arms. They’d looked one another in the eye, sizing each other up, then Noah had given a wet gurgle and reached out his little fist toward Jonah’s face. Jonah had laughed, a sweet, soft sound for such a big man.
Henry had known he was witnessing something special.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ms. Watson had said in wonder. “If that don’t beat the band.”
“Is Eve feeling any better, Henry?” Jonah asked. “Only, Aunt Helen said she’d been poorly.”
The innocent question brought Henry up short.
“Ah, well. She has good days and bad,” Henry said faintly, his voice missing the amusement of a few moments before.
Brady’s brows were drawn together when he looked at Henry.
“It might be time for you to consider other options,” Brady said.
Henry bit back the retort that jumped immediately to his lips and tempered his frustration when he spoke again. Brady was only trying to help. “We have considered other options, Brady. If you think of any new ones, be sure to let me know, okay. We’re doing the best we can. I think the medicine Dr. Atkinson put her on might be helping.”
Brady only raised his eyebrows, then glanced away. Henry knew he wasn’t fooling him. He wasn’t fooling anybody. Not even himself.
“Why don’t we try back in the slough, Jonah,” Brady suggested, changing the subject.
“Some big old catfish back there,” Jonah agreed, missing the heaviness of the exchange entirely.
“That sounds all right to me.”
The conversation moved on, and Henry followed along as best he could, nodding and murmuring in all the right places, but the truth was, his mind was on Eve. His mind was always on Eve these days, when it wasn’t on baby Noah.
Other options, Henry thought. Like it’s that easy.
“Postpartum depression,” Alice had said to him worriedly. “It can get bad, Henry. Really ugly. There are medicines that can help, but considering Eve’s aversion to doctors, I don’t know how we’re going to make that work.”
And Alice was right. It was bad.
Eventually, Alice had called in another favor, and Dr. Atkinson had visited Eve at the house again.
She wouldn’t allow him to examine her, but she did manage not to start screaming and knocking things over the way she had at their first introduction.
Instead, the doctor had kept his distance across the room, and asked Eve gentle, probing questions. She wasn’t particularly forthcoming with her answers, often staring at the wall and not speaking at all, but that was apparently indicative enough to cause the doctor concern.
He spoke to Henry and Alice in the kitchen, and they elaborated on Eve’s downward spiral since the baby had been born.
“Obviously, it’s hard to say how much of her current state of mind is due to the shock of motherhood and how much can be traced to past trauma. Ultimately, though, I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. The mind is a tricky place to navigate, even for the best of us.”
Henry and Alice waited while the doctor tapped his pen against the table.
“I’m going to prescribe an antidepressant. Against my better judgment,” he added firmly. “Frankly, it’s questionable to give medications to someone without a more thorough examination. She needs to speak to a therapist. Someone who specializes in the kind of trauma recovery she clearly needs,” he chided. “But considering the circumstances, and her extreme phobia of doctors, well . . .” Dr. Atkinson sighed, looking deeply troubled. “I think it would be more irresponsible to leave her to deal with whatever she’s struggling with and not make an attempt to help.”
Alice breathed a sigh of relief.
“But,” the doctor went on firmly, “you’ll need to keep a close eye on her. This medication can have side effects, and if at any point you feel that Eve is a danger to either herself or anyone around her—particularly to her child—then you need to call for help immediately. I know you don’t want to consider the idea of institutionalizing—”
“No,” Henry interrupted firmly. “No, Doctor. Eve can’t be locked away. I can’t do that to her. I won’t.”
“I understand your distaste for the idea. I do,” he added when Henry seemed unconvinced. “I don’t think it’s the best course of action either. But I can’t in good conscience walk out of here without laying all the cards on the table. It’s a worst-case scenario, to be certain, but one that I think you need to bear in mind.”
The doctor’s words echoed through Henry’s mind. Most times, he was able to set them aside, but no matter how hard he tried, Henry couldn’t erase them completely.
There was something deeply wrong with Eve.
On the days she managed to get out of bed, it usually wasn’t until late into the evening, and she’d wander around the house like a visitor in a strange land. She barely ate. Henry often had to spoon food into her mouth, watching as she chewed and swallowed mechanically.
She’d stopped talking to him. She’d stopped everything. It was as if she’d learned for a while what it was like to live, then she’d forgotten it all with the birth of the baby. She’d retreated into a blank space somewhere in her mind where Henry couldn’t follow her.
But the most devastating thing to watch was the way she’d refused to bond with, refused to even acknowledge, the child she’d grown within her body.
Henry had chosen the name Noah. When he’d put it forward for Eve to consider, she’d only walked away. But he could no longer leave the baby without a name to call his own. So Noah he’d become. Noah Weston Martell.
Noah was doing well, in spite of things. Thank God for Alice and Camilla. Even young Mary.
But Eve. Except for the time just after he was born, when Henry had placed the little life she’d created in her arms, she refused to even hold him.
When he cried, she’d look up in surprise from wherever she’d been staring, like she’d forgotten he existed. Then she’d rise and wander silently out of the room, leaving the little one to be tended to by others. Others who loved him, it was true. But they weren’t his mother.
“Henry,” Brady said, pulling him back to the present. “Henry, did you hear me?”
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
Jonah had stopped maneuvering the boat through the water, and they were floating in a bend. It was a quiet and secluded spot. Henry imagined it had existed here, in its present state, waiting for them for a thousand years. That it would stay untouched and just as it was once they’d gone, for a thousand years more.
“I said there’s been a development. In your dad’s case.”
Brady was looking down at his hands, tying off his fishing line. Henry got the impression he was deliberately not meeting his eyes.
The words not my dad floated across Henry’s mind, a long-ago echo left over from a t
ime when the words had mattered to him.
“What does that mean? What kind of development?”
Brady focused on what he was doing and didn’t immediately respond. Henry tamped down his frustration at the man. Why had he brought it up if he wasn’t willing to talk about it?
“I thought you weren’t involved in that anymore?” Henry asked.
According to Brady, the state police had taken over the investigation into Livingston’s disappearance.
“I’m not. Not really,” Brady said, standing to cast his line in the water. “The state boys are in charge now. But this one sort of fell in my lap.”
Henry stared at Brady’s back. “What, exactly, fell in your lap?”
Brady sighed and looked at Henry over his shoulder. He set his fishing pole in the boat and reached down to pull a beer from the small cooler between them.
“It was Jimmy Blankenship’s boys,” he said. “Jimmy brought them in, dragging them by the ears. Apparently they came across something out here in the swamp. Months ago now. Something they thought they’d keep to themselves. The little shits. But when Jimmy found out, he hauled their asses down to the station.”
Henry could do nothing but stare. Jimmy Blankenship’s boys. He knew them, a little. Or knew of them. “Little shit” was an accurate description for them both. The Blankenships didn’t live far from there, maybe a few miles in the other direction. One of their favorite pastimes was to tease Jonah, taunting him in the way some boys did. Henry had run them off with a bug in their ear more than once.
“Brady. What the hell are you talking about?”
“They found something,” Brady said.
“Something? What something? Quit dancing around it, would you? Spit it out.”
“I didn’t want to say anything until the results came back from the lab, but word’s bound to get around town. They’ve been bragging about it.”
“Just say it!” Henry barked.
“A foot!” Brady shot back at him.
Henry’s breath caught, and he couldn’t help a glance toward Jonah, but the big man was happily ignoring them, content to dig through the bag of jelly beans, bypassing the black ones, his fishing pole held between his knees. He gave no indication that he was listening to anything they said.
Brady followed Henry’s gaze, then took a deep breath and continued in a calmer voice.
“They found a foot. Out in the swamp. Not far from here, actually.”
“Livingston’s?” Henry asked, his mind churning with the possibilities.
Brady shrugged. “Got to be. I mean, who else’s? The little psychopaths were keeping it in a jar, watching it decompose.”
Bile rose in Henry’s stomach.
“The working theory is the men running the trafficking operation killed him, then disposed of him out in the swamp. Let the gators take care of the rest. I’m sorry, Henry.”
He nodded, his head hanging low as he stared at the bottom of the boat. The boat Jonah had used to unwittingly do just what his brother had described.
It was his turn to avoid the other man’s eyes.
“It’s a crap thing to tell somebody, I know. But I thought you ought to know. In case you were, you know . . . holding out hope or something.”
Henry shook his head.
“No, it’s fine. Thank you for telling me, Brady,” Henry said in a low voice.
“Yeah,” Brady replied, clearing his throat. He seemed to be searching for something to say. “Livingston was a right old bastard, but I don’t guess anyone deserves to go like that.”
Henry heard the thump again of the hammer hitting his stepfather’s skull, saw his body spasm on the ground at his feet.
“No,” Henry said honestly. “Nobody deserves that.”
Jonah was whistling, out of tune. He popped a red jelly bean into his mouth, then picked up his pole.
“Guess Ol’ Brutal’d had his fill,” he said, watching his line where it disappeared into the murky dark-green abyss below.
Henry and Brady both turned to stare at him, but he took no notice.
“Mr. Doucet was a little man, but still. Must have been a fine meal for the big boy, all the same. Mr. Doucet wasn’t very nice, was he?”
Brady’s mouth fell open as he stared at his brother. Henry willed Jonah to say nothing more.
“No,” Henry whispered. “He wasn’t a very nice man at all, Jonah.”
Brady turned and met Henry’s wide eyes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the thoughts churning behind Brady’s face.
“I didn’t hear that,” he whispered to Henry. He moved in close and pointed a finger at Henry’s chest. “You didn’t hear that,” he said, tapping the finger into his chest. “Did you?”
Henry shook his head, shocked at the hardened flash of protectiveness he could hear in Brady’s voice.
“No. I didn’t hear a thing,” he said.
“Good,” Brady said.
He turned back to his pole just as Jonah got a bite on his line.
The moment passed, and Henry was glad to see the back of it. The three men spoke of other things. Over the course of the morning, they filled the second cooler with catfish, they drank a few beers, and above all else, they didn’t speak again of Livingston Doucet.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Some sense of being alone woke Henry in the night. He reached out a hand and felt Eve’s side of the bed, still warm from the heat of her body.
It wasn’t unusual these days for her to drag herself from bed only once the sun had long since gone down. Henry tried not to worry. He thought perhaps the solitude would do her good, help her find her way back to them, him and Noah. Or so he hoped.
Sometimes he followed her, just to set his mind at ease. She never wandered far, usually to the porch, or occasionally to the field. Several times, he’d found her sitting on the sofa in the living room in the dark, her eyes open and unblinking, staring at nothing. Nothing except the pictures in her mind.
She’d looked so lost. He longed to show her that she wasn’t alone, that he was there with her, and that he always would be. Words didn’t seem to sink in. He’d tried them all. So he simply held her hand and sat with her, waiting for the day when she’d emerge from the fog she was wandering in.
Alice had gone home for the night. Since Del died, she’d split her time between her own home and Henry’s, knowing that he and Eve needed all the support she was willing to give. Henry was grateful.
Camilla and Mary had moved in with Alice as well, at least for the time being, though they also spent a great deal of time with Henry, Eve, and the baby. But that night, the three of them were alone in the house.
Henry had slept restlessly, bothered by dark dreams that he was glad to wake from. He stood and looked into the crib that still sat at the foot of the bed, expecting to see the baby sleeping. He was surprised to find the tiny bed empty.
Perhaps Noah had cried in the night, hungry for his bottle. But Henry didn’t think so. He was a light sleeper on the best of days, and the last few months had conditioned him to wake at the slightest sound from the baby.
Henry held his breath. Noah must be with Eve. He certainly hadn’t climbed out of the crib on his own. He couldn’t even roll over yet.
On soft, silent feet, Henry made his way down the hallway, listening for sounds of life.
He stopped short in the entry to the living room, where he could make out the glow of lamplight falling across the floor. His mother’s old rocking chair was moving, slowly rocking back and forth, the ancient rhythm of mothers around the world.
Eve was holding her son, cradling him in her arms while he made gurgling noises and looked up into the eyes of his mother. She was speaking to him, softly. Henry couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t want to disturb her. This was the first time he’d ever seen her hold the child voluntarily. Perhaps the medication was working, tethering her to reality.
Stepping in their direction, Henry was pulled closer to the scene. A feeling of contentment
settled on him. This was why he’d done what he had. This was what he’d gone to unimaginable lengths to protect. Right here. A mother and a child, inextricably linked.
He raised his hand to place it on Eve’s shoulder but hesitated. Now that he’d drawn closer, he could make out the words she was speaking to her son.
“I love him, you know,” she was saying.
Noah was watching her face in fascination, enthralled by the movement of her lips.
“I do. At least, I think I do. I’ve never known what love was, but I think it’s this. A feeling that you’re so much a part of someone else that if that feeling went away, you’d wither and die like a plant with no water.”
Eve lifted a hand, and Noah grasped one of her fingers in his tiny, pudgy hands.
“And the really unbelievable part is that he loves me too. I don’t know why. I have nothing to give. I’m nobody, I was nothing before he found me and brought me to life. I’d be nothing again without him.”
The words she spoke cut Henry to the bone. Lovely though they were, she wasn’t nothing. He hadn’t given her life, only given her a chance to live it. The knowledge that she felt that way was unsettling and incredibly sad.
“And see, that’s the problem, little one,” Eve continued. “Because things have changed. Things are broken again. My heart is broken. I see the way he looks at you, the pure love in his eyes. But for me, it’s harder. You were made in pain and anger. You’re a baby now, but soon you’ll be a boy, then you’ll grow into a man. And there are no good men. None but Henry. You have his heart now, not me, but you were made by a monster, grown in a monster, and you’ll become a monster too.”
Henry went cold. His heart beat faster, and his breath caught in his throat. Did Eve truly believe that this innocent child was destined to be a monster?
“You’ll break his heart,” she continued gently. “As you’ve broken mine by being born. I can’t let that happen.”
Henry’s mind stalled as he watched Eve gently pull her finger from the baby’s grasp. She reached down at her side, where a throw pillow had been stuffed between her and the side of the rocking chair.
Without pause, she raised the pillow and placed it over her son’s open, smiling face.
The Unremembered Girl: A Novel Page 26
