by Rene Denfeld
Now Wesley looked at Sarah, moony-eyed in the kitchen corner. There was something about her that was different. A beacon of light shone from the top of her head and pierced all the floors and the roof above, shooting straight into the sky.
He shook his head, scraped the plate. When he looked in the mirror in the hallway closet and put on his courtroom suit, there was no reflection he could discern. That was the most terrifying idea of all: that it had all been for nothing.
“These taste too sweet,” he complained. He looked at the bag of sugar on the counter. “Did you put something in them when I went to piss?”
Sarah looked at him, her eyes blank.
“Stupid.” He shook his head again, finished the meal.
The cramps started a few minutes later.
The deadbolts turned. Sarah gestured at Celia. It was time to go.
Wesley was crawling across the kitchen, trying to reach the water. Foam covered his lips. His fingers were wet from making himself vomit, and Celia saw the trail of regurgitated food he was sliding through. They didn’t have much time.
Passing, Sarah stepped in his waste, felt it against her toes. He looked up, gasping. She limped past, cringing with fear. His hands grabbed at her twisted ankle as she hobbled by. She reached beyond the empty rat poison box hidden behind the cold gray dishwater tub and found a butter knife.
Hurry, said the butterflies. Celia ran down the basement stairs and Sarah limped, following. Celia tried pulling off the board with her bare fingers. It was too tight. Celia turned to Sarah, her face a white blotch of terror.
Above them, in the kitchen, they could hear Wesley. A gushing sound like water pouring. More vomiting. A crash of metal on the floor. The gun box.
Sarah passed her the dull knife. Celia put it between the board and window and pulled as hard as she could, crying with effort. The wood complained as the nails began to lift. One nail, two, three—
Then a sound on the steps behind them.
Wesley was coming.
Chapter 43
Naomi was in the library. She could feel Celia in every room. The marble staircase, without her eager steps racing to the bookshelves. The reading room, where the empty chair mocked Naomi.
“She talked about a house,” Naomi told the elderly librarian. Behind her was a new flyer, this one for Celia. Naomi had added the school photo she and Jerome had gotten from Mrs. Wilkerson. Celia looked impossibly young in the picture.
The librarian frowned. Naomi felt she was forgetting something.
“She didn’t say anything to me,” the librarian said. “I only ever talked to her about books.”
“You were kind to her.”
“Well, why not?” The voice was peevish, full of guilt. The feeling was stronger. Yes, Naomi was forgetting something.
“It can’t be your fault,” Naomi told her.
“Why shouldn’t it be? Why can’t it be all our faults?”
Naomi turned, ready to leave. She looked up at the marble staircase and remembered her first glimpse of Celia, coming down the stairs, holding a thick book in her hand. The cover was dull blue, the edges of the pages silvered. It was a place Celia hid inside. A place where she confided her secrets. A place she filled with sketches.
She turned back.
“Do you still have Celia’s favorite book back there?”
The librarian reached under the counter and handed it over.
Sitting down at one of the tables, Naomi opened the book. Scraps of paper fluttered out. Naomi saw drawings of butterflies but also faces and places. She opened one and saw herself. She was smiling in the sketch, her head surrounded with butterflies.
Tucked in the middle of the book was a piece of paper folded tight and tucked between two color plates. Naomi unfolded it. Thick pencil had been applied carefully.
It was a map.
Downtown, the careful script read, and at the heart of the map was the industrial area near skid row. In the middle was a house, with Xs over the windows and a gate over the door. Under the house Celia had written Here.
Celia had oriented it with the one landmark anyone would understand: River.
Naomi spun the map. North, you are here. South, you are leaving now. Grabbing the paper, running out the door, panic under your once soft feet, healed and now strong.
She didn’t bother going for her car. She ran.
The empty streets became the fields Naomi ran once in escape, now in pursuit. She was turning around in the past, running backwards to what she had feared and lost. She felt the air fill her chest. She felt the strength in her legs.
Deep in the industrial district, Naomi knew she was getting close. She had not seen anyone for blocks. She paused, opened the map, and oriented herself.
The house rose out of the gray landscape like a foul toadstool. The sky above was slate, the sun frightened behind darkening clouds. The windows were all boarded-up, and the door covered with locks. The only window that looked even faintly breachable was at the basement level. A sliver of light showed at the side of the boards. The light was warm and golden. Naomi instinctually recognized the lamplight of her captivity. No electricity, she thought.
From inside, a dim scream. Naomi knew that voice.
Celia.
Without hesitating, Naomi ran up next to the house and, rolling down on the dank soil, in one smooth motion drew her knees back and kicked hard. Glass shattered, a board crumpled, and chunks flew as her feet busted in.
She heard a cry of alarm, and then she was flipping on her belly and dropping in, sightless, before she could even see the ground, before anyone had time to react. She could feel the cool air around, felt her eyes open and her feet willing to find the floor.
She went in with only what she knew: her hands, her heart, her wild fists.
Landing on the dirt floor, Naomi saw, instantly, Celia, shrinking with terror. A defunct oil heater. Sour dirt and the deep, hopeless smell of death.
Wesley Thurman, his silver hair somehow dimmer inside, was holding a gun. He was wearing dirty trousers and an untucked shirt, soaking wet at the chest. He looked completely different from the man she had seen in the fussy suit, as if he had shed a skin and become his own truth. Naomi recognized this Wesley. He looked at her with the vicious temperament of a dog that has only learned to bite. All the hollowness of evil. The sadness.
Cowering in front of Wesley was a young woman. She had brown hair, like Naomi. A wide face, unmarked with time. The sun had never shone on it. The moon only knew it in eclipse. Two wide hazel eyes.
Her sister. This was Sarah. Her sister was in front of her. Naomi saw her bare toes in the bloodstained dirt. She saw a bent ankle.
Sarah tilted her head and stared at Naomi.
Naomi suddenly saw the two of them in a room with the puppy wallpaper. Naomi tucking her baby sister into a crib as the branches traced the window. Singing her the lullabies their mother had sung, songs only a big sister could know. The creak of a step behind them, and a young man coming into the room holding a cloth in his hand.
Wesley pointed the gun at Naomi.
Celia opened her mouth to give warning. Her hands rose, as if to protect Naomi.
But Naomi stood frozen. She saw herself running, forever running, across a night field, the sickness in her that she was leaving her sister behind, that her life had grown so terrible she could knowingly make this sacrifice.
She had known. She had known all along.
“I am so sorry,” Naomi said, gutted with pain.
Celia cried in alarm as Wesley shot Naomi.
* * *
Celia yelled. It was a guttural cry, a howl of a childhood lost. Naomi was still standing, a look of white surprise in her face, her hand holding her hip, looking down at a bloom of blood.
Wesley held the gun, hot in his hand. It had been so long since he had fired it. The feeling brought back memories better left unexamined. His dad, looking up from the freshly built trapdoor, the smile on his face as hollow as a fly landing
on a sill. He remembered all the times he could have chosen a different path, ended up different—and yet he didn’t.
A person came flying at him. He was expecting Celia and could have easily batted her away. But what stunned him was that it was Naomi. She simply ran towards him, bloody hand coming off her hip. In a split second she had reached for the gun with both hands, pried it hard from his fingers. She yanked the gun away as if he were the child, and she swung back and struck him with it quickly, with force, across his eyes. It was hard enough to break his nose and split his forehead, blinding him with blood, and she followed with an immediate punch to his stomach. It felt like her hard fist had touched the inside of his spine, and he doubled over in pain. A dim part of him registered that this was the first time in his life anyone had ever struck him. Naomi knew body blows could take a man down. It was more painful than he could have imagined.
It was all happening too quickly. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Wesley fell to his knees, tried to get back up, only to receive a heart-stopping kick under the ribs that sent him sprawling in the soiled dirt. Another hard kick rocked his head back so far he felt his jaw break. With a decisive stomp Naomi landed on his right wrist, breaking it and causing him to scream in pain.
In agony Wesley rolled over, clutching his broken wrist, and he was looking through skeins of blood at the child he had once stolen. Naomi looked down at him. She lifted the gun. She was shaking, not from fear but from rage. The desire to hurt him came from a place so deep she felt it in her teeth. It was the healthiest thing she had ever felt.
“Naomi?” It was Celia.
From above came new noises. The front door was being battered in. The future entered the room.
Jerome dropped in the broken basement window, and in moments was gently taking the gun from Naomi, sliding on the safety, examining the wound at her hip. Winfield came rushing down the stairs to cuff Wesley, who was clutching his wrist in agony. Others were arriving, wrapping Celia in an insulated blanket.
Naomi was left alone, staring at her sister. The men pulled back.
Sarah was trying to make her mouth work, but it had been too long. Instead long sounds came out, as twisted as old cloth.
“You’re going to be okay,” Naomi told her sister, tears filling her mouth. All of her felt like one big cry. “I’ll see to that.”
Chapter 44
“I don’t believe in revenge. But maybe I already had it.”
This is what Naomi told Diane, who asked Naomi what she did believe in, only to be told prevention. Yet she knew that she had to go into the courtroom and speak the truth.
She walked through the polished courtroom doors, following the deputy. At tables were the district attorney—his forehead cried for mercy under the glare of lights—and a tired-looking public defender, willing to defend even this, his worst nightmare of a client, and Naomi understood that, too. We all deserve to know there is an outside. Even Wesley, sitting next to his public defender, a cast on his wrist.
Naomi strode to the front, and the deputy held the swinging gate to the witness box. The judge kept his eyes averted from the defendant, lest his contempt influence the jury.
Naomi met the jurors’ eyes as she took the stand. She sat, tucked her one and only court skirt under her with her palms, straightened her back, and looked them right in the eye. Middle-aged schoolteacher, she guessed. Mechanic. That one, with the nicotine hands? Retired. The angry-looking young man would be the hard one.
The oath. Naomi raised her hand. Her eyes were on the court clerk, but her warmth was for the jury. This parcel of humanity would decide what would happen to Wesley. The media would soon move on, but what was left behind had been so profound. The murdered street girls had all been identified. The unidentified migrant children in the graveyard had been exhumed, and a task force was at work locating their long-ago families. Teddy had been convicted for the sexual assault of Alyssa and was now serving time in prison. Alyssa was being adopted by her foster family—they had promised that Celia could visit as often as she wanted. Celia’s mother . . . well, that was a longer story, and one that was not going to end soon.
And Celia? Naomi and Jerome were her new foster parents, and Celia lived in a room they had made for her in the attic. The walls were covered with her butterfly drawings. It had not been easy. Celia, left on her own so long, had almost feral characteristics. She hoarded food; she came and went as she pleased. The one way Naomi had discovered to get her to mind was the promise of a trip to the boxing gym. The fighters there called her Lil’ Diablo.
But there was a lot of good all the same. Jerome had never smiled as much as when he saw Naomi and Celia together, walking home from the neighborhood library. Naomi had signed Celia up for the local school, where she was slowly making friends. Her favorite class was art, and at home she liked cooking with Diane. Naomi had gone back to working missing child cases, and Jerome was building his own caseload—he was on the trail of a horrifying number of missing native women.
Even Rich had a home. He had gone to live at the horse track, where he had a little room above the stables. He was being trained by the Mexican man to work with the horses. He seemed happy, Celia had told Naomi.
Sometimes at night Naomi woke from sleep thinking, We could have stopped it. She hoped it was true, cordoned in the witness box, giving her small, careful answers to the jury. Yes, I was held captive by Wesley Thurman. Yes, I became an investigator to find missing children like myself.
And Celia.
Of all the events in her life this reverberated more than any. The green eyes, the willingness to fight. The courage. The joy in butterflies.
“Excuse me?” Just for a moment, she had faltered, and the district attorney repeated the question.
“I asked you, when you entered that home, who else did you find, held captive all these years?”
Naomi turned to the jury and let them see the pain in her eyes. “It was my sister.”
* * *
Now Naomi was one of the people parking outside the state hospital, carrying a small plastic bag of quarters. As long as it takes, she had told the civil commitment board in a courthouse meeting. Her sister deserved the chance to heal. To discover her own reality, the path of a life that is chosen.
Perhaps for a magical reason, Sarah always waited at the same table. Naomi helped her feed quarters into the machine to get her a package of soft ginger cookies—Sarah loved sweets and couldn’t get enough. After much dental surgery her mouth was healing, as was her ankle, broken and reset. Her mind would take longer. Holding an arm out, Naomi led Sarah outside. Sarah could now handle up to an hour of fresh air. She no longer cried out in pain from the touch of grass or the kiss of rain.
PTSD, the doctor had said. Dissociative disorder. Names like pillows trapped in trees. All Naomi saw was Sarah. Beloved, beautiful Sarah.
Sometimes Celia came with her. The psychiatrist said this would be healing to both of them. Naomi had her doubts. She didn’t like the intimate looks they exchanged, as if sharing a secret past. Maybe it was jealousy. Naomi’s own memories had stopped coming back. She was coming to terms with the fact they might never return, and that was okay. She didn’t need to remember, Diane kept telling her.
Naomi led her sister to a plastic chair on a small patio outside. Sarah carefully lowered herself into the chair, turning around several times to make sure she got it right. Chairs were new to her. So was television. People. The sky. And noise from airplanes—the entire world seemed one earth-splitting scream—and tastes and smells. The smells of the world nauseated and delighted her in turn. She slept a lot. Sometimes the nurses found her in the hall closet, nestled under the coatrack.
Sarah smiled at Naomi. This was one reality she could trust. Big Sister had come back to her, just like she had promised. She had brought all their friends.
They sat in silence. They even sat the same way, legs open, shoulders back. Overhead fall clouds passed. The same trees that had budded were now shedding their
leaves, getting ready for sleep. Rest here, Sarah. When you wake, you will be better.
Sarah’s face was shifting, eyes awake and then vacant. “Whatever you want to tell me,” Naomi had told her, “I will listen. There is nothing you can say that is wrong. I love you.”
Sarah held her left arm out and opened her palm. She often did this when Naomi visited. Their eyes met, and Naomi smiled at her. Sarah turned to her own palm and her lips moved. She was telling her, or it, something, and this time Naomi could read a bit of her lips.
Sister, she was saying. Back.
* * *
The train rocked as it crossed the green hills, crowned with gold where the sun touched. To the north was a great river, and to the west even greater forests. This entire land was as old as time and as new as the dawn. Celia looked out the train window. In her mind her hands were pressed to the glass, like the child she once was but never had been.
“It’s okay,” Naomi had told her. “Grieve. Be all of you at once.”
Naomi rode next to her, her body gently rocking with the train, her eyes closed. A peace had come over her. Celia could feel it. Jerome knew it. Everyone who was around her felt it, even the nice detective who had come to Celia’s welcome-home party.
A distant bell, a hooting. This was the world, too.
Naomi opened her eyes. The train slowed, and Celia and Naomi got off at a small, deserted station. They walked over a green hill to where a tall building stood alone, its windows recessed against the light.
Naomi stopped at the door, but Celia rushed forward.
She ran into the middle of a large room that rose to skylights of polished glass. The air was thick and warm with plants, with a smell that said forever.
