Grace

by T. Greenwood

  At about ten o’clock, Billy came out of the room, followed by Trevor.

  “What’s going on?” Kurt asked.

  “He’s going home. For tonight anyway. He’s got an alibi that’s been corroborated by his art teacher.”

  “What?”

  “He was with his art teacher when the explosion went off. They’re still trying to determine if the bombs were detonated remotely or not. But they can’t hold him here until they come up with some concrete evidence that he’s the one who planted the explosives. They’ve got some footage of a kid with a hockey mask and a duffel bag entering the school over the Thanksgiving break, so they’re going to do another search of the house. But right now, they’ve got nothing but a whole bunch of suspicions. And suspicions aren’t enough to keep a minor in custody. Not with me as his lawyer anyway.”

  “What about Gracy?” Kurt asked.

  “God, Kurt, I don’t know. But at least the lab results for the blood found in the woods matches it to him. He and Gracy are different blood types. He cut his hand. There’s nothing but circumstantial evidence linking Trevor to her disappearance.”

  Kurt felt his entire body go limp, as if someone shut off the supply of electricity that had been coursing through his body for months now. He nearly collapsed. Maybe Trevor hadn’t done this. Maybe it was all some terrible mistake. But the simple, horrific fact remained that Gracy was gone. His baby girl.

  Billy reached for Kurt’s arm, as if to keep him from falling. “They want him back here in the morning for more questioning. If you can just drop me at that motel we drove by, we can meet back here tomorrow.”

  “You can stay with us,” Kurt said.

  “That’s okay,” Billy said, shaking his head. “I plan to work through the night. And as crazy as it sounds, you need to try to go home and get some sleep. They’ve got people out looking for Gracy, there’s an Amber Alert in place. They’re going to find her, and we’re going to clear up all of this stuff with Trevor. I promise.”

  Kurt’s eyes stung, his stomach was empty, but he couldn’t even think of eating. He tried to imagine Elsbeth at home, wondered what on earth she would be doing all alone in the house.

  Trevor stood behind Billy, shoulders slumped, head hung to his chest.

  “Come on, then,” he said, and they all went outside to the truck.

  When Elsbeth’s cell phone rang, she didn’t recognize the number and assumed it was Kurt calling from the police station. He’d been on his phone so much, it was probably dead. The girl’s voice on the other end of the line was soft. Tentative. She couldn’t hear her at first, and thought maybe it was just a wrong number.

  “Your daughter is here at the Walgreens,” she said.

  “What?”

  “She’s fine. She’s waiting for you.”

  “Who is this?” she asked, feeling her heart pounding in her temples and shoulders and chest.

  The girl hung up without answering, and Elsbeth was out the door without even bothering to grab her coat or purse.

  As she raced into town, she repeated the words again and again in her head. The Walgreens? Why on earth would she be at the Walgreens? And then the realization struck her in the chest like a bullet.

  That girl. The one with the baby. Or without the baby. That teenaged girl who had confronted her, the only other person in the world who knew her secret. She thought of all the things she had stolen: the little trinkets that had accumulated, the box of stolen treasures like some terrible shrine. The evidence. The proof that she was nothing but a thief. She thought then about the photos that had appeared in the mailbox. That girl had stolen them, and then she’d stolen her daughter. In the parking lot that day, she had threatened to call the police, to have her arrested for shoplifting, but then instead she’d taken from her the only thing in the world she really cared about. Was this some kind of twisted lesson? And who was she to cast her moral judgment on Elsbeth? She was no different than her, just another girl who got pregnant at seventeen. Whose girlhood was stolen. They were the same. God, they were exactly the same.

  She didn’t bother turning off the engine when she got to the Walgreens. She simply threw the car door open and ran down the slippery walkway to the doors. They opened and she rushed into the store screaming, “Gracy? Gracy?”

  Gracy was sitting on the counter at the front of the store, playing with some sort of little doll, legs dangling off the edge.

  “Baby!” she said rushing to her and scooping her up in her arms.

  The boy at the register said, “You her mom?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “She’s safe. It’s okay. I hope you don’t mind I gave her a candy bar.”

  “Hi, Mumma,” Grace said, and Elsbeth buried her face in her daughter’s hair. Elsbeth pulled back and studied her for any evidence that she had been harmed.

  “Did she hurt you?” she whispered into her hair.

  “No,” Gracy shook her head. She shrugged and smiled. “She was nice. She took me to McDonald’s.”

  Elsbeth lifted her off the counter.

  “Maybe you should give me some ID or something?” the kid asked. “I probably shouldn’t just let her go with anybody.”

  Elsbeth shook her head in disbelief and then instinctively reached to her hip where her purse usually hung. “I don’t have my purse,” she said. “Jesus Christ. This is my kid. Look at her. Isn’t that ID enough?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” the kid said. “I actually think I’ve seen you all in here together before. It’s cool.”

  Gracy clung to Elsbeth’s neck as they made their way back to the car.

  “I missed you, Gracy Bear,” she said, tears coming down now, hot and fast. It was snowing again, and Gracy’s hair was speckled with snowflakes.

  “I missed you too, Mumma.”

  Kurt did not speak to Trevor after they dropped Billy off at the motel. Trevor stared out the window, and he focused on the road. He was afraid to ask him the simplest question. He was afraid to know the answer. How had this happened? He racked his brain. He thought about Pop, that garbage heap of a house. How he’d been so consumed with saving Pop that he couldn’t save his own son. His own marriage. Bile rose in his throat as he thought about the condoms he’d found, about Elsbeth cheating. His own pride had kept him from noticing that his son was clearly changing, transforming into someone capable of the unthinkable. Kurt hadn’t managed to protect him from those kids, and so he’d taken matters into his own hands. Kurt hadn’t even managed to protect his own daughter. He was a failure. A complete failure.

  All he wanted was to go to Elsbeth, to comfort her. To be comforted by her. He knew if he couldn’t do this, if she wouldn’t do this, he was as good as dead. But when they got to the house, Elsbeth’s car wasn’t there, and a new panic set in.

  “Go to your room,” he said to Trevor, and he wordlessly obeyed, disappearing silently down the hallway.

  The lights were on in the kitchen. There was even a hot pot of coffee still on. Elsbeth’s coat was slung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and her purse was on the table. What the fuck? Where the hell was she? Did she run off with that asshole? Maybe he was the one who had Gracy. Maybe that had been the plan all along. Make it look like she’d been kidnapped, and then swoop in and steal his wife. Had this dick decided to steal not only his wife, but his entire life?

  He took her purse and pulled it opened, the magnetic snap popping. He tipped it upside down and dumped its contents onto the table. A compact, a hairbrush. He rifled through her wallet, looking at the receipts, looking for anything. Coins spilled on the table and rolled onto the floor. A ratty paperback, a pack of gum, a flier for an after-school art program. A bundle of photo envelopes from Walgreens. He tore the first envelope open and spilled the pictures on the table. Trevor’s pictures. The junkyard, Pop and his model airplanes. The woods. The green, green canopy that in all these years had not changed. His heart panged. He flipped through the pictures, laying them down on the table
like a dealer. Hoping that the bigger picture they made might show him something.

  And then there was Gracy. Gracy in bed. Gracy asleep. Gracy standing half-naked in the woods, leaning against a tree, one leg up, her lips parted. He felt his stomach turn. Gracy sleeping. Gracy in the water. Gracy’s bare legs, her nipple exposed. He squeezed his eyes shut and the images of Gracy blurred with those strange sepia pictures of other little girls. Gracy’s tights, strung up like a prize. And the blood, the blood on the mattress that the cops hadn’t seen. They hadn’t tested that blood to make sure it didn’t belong to his little girl.

  It was like someone had flicked the breaker on again, and the next thing he knew his entire body was electrified as he tore down the hallway to his bedroom, where he rifled through his drawer looking for the ammunition. In the living room, he unlocked the gun cabinet, and then he went to Trevor’s room and threw open the door.

  “Get up!” he said.

  Trevor was lying face-down on his bed. He turned his head to face him. His pale cheeks were streaked with tears, red tracks, like blood in newly fallen snow.

  “I said get the fuck up.”

  He shoved him down the hallway to the mudroom. He motioned for him to put the boots on, and Trevor obeyed, sobbing as he tied his laces.

  And then Kurt said, “Outside. Now.”

  If Trevor had his camera, this is the way the world would look through his viewfinder: crystalline and blue. As the clouds parted, even as the snow kept falling, the hushed light of the moon was gentle. The whole world was numb and quiet and cold. Everything sparkled. It was beautiful; it was terrible.

  He could hear his father’s labored breath behind him as they marched from the house out past the shed to the field behind the house. The snow was getting deeper and deeper; Trevor felt himself sinking into the cold. Like quicksand, sucking him in.

  He turned to look at his father. This photo of his father would be nothing but shadows and wild eyes. He was terrified. They were both terrified.

  “Daddy,” he said, the words like icy slivers in his mouth.

  They kept moving forward until they were at the top of the hill. From up there you could see the entire valley below them. Only a few lights twinkled now. It made him think of the little Christmas village that his mother set out on the mantel every Christmas. Just a tiny little make-believe place. If he had his camera, this picture would be of a snow globe, a father and son trapped inside.

  “Daddy, please don’t,” he said again, feeling as though his body was turning inside out. When he spoke, his words burned his throat.

  His father was aiming the gun at him now, and he realized that this might be the end. Any moment now, he would be gone. Just a memory. Maybe he deserved this, though. Maybe, without him, the world would be a better place. He knew he was a mistake. He’d known that every day of his life. He had been nothing to them but trouble and pain.

  “What did you do to Gracy?” his father asked through his teeth.

  Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tight and conjured the pictures, the good ones he’d made. Gracy, sweet Gracy. He squeezed his eyes so hard, trying to rid his mind of the image of himself in her bed, his penis thick and hard against her back. The thrill of his skin against her nightgown and that awful, awful release.

  “Did you touch her?” he asked.

  Trevor was crying hard now; it was hard to stay upright. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I love her.”

  He watched his father’s body convulse. It looked like he’d been struck by lightning. Shaken.

  “Where is she?” he hissed. “Where did you take her?”

  Trevor shook his head. “I didn’t ...”

  “Where is she?” he screamed now, his voice echoing in that hollow air.

  “Stop!” The voice came from behind his father, but it was disembodied. Just an owl’s hoot, the mournful cry of a dove. “Kurt, no!”

  His father lowered his gun and turned as his mother came up over the hill. She was holding Gracy in her arms, running and stumbling as she made her way to them. “Don’t hurt him. God, don’t hurt him. What is wrong with you? He’s our son.”

  “Mama,” Trevor said as she ran to him. And then her free arm was around him. And her tears were warm as they pressed against his cheek, and her lips were warm as they kissed his away.

  Elsbeth left Kurt standing alone in the field. She clung to both children as they struggled through the falling snow back to the house. He watched as their three bodies slowly merged into one dark form that disappeared into the distance. Kurt blinked the snow out of his eyes. His vision was blurred; he struggled to focus through the icy crystals.

  The gun was cold at his side now. Without gloves, his hands had grown numb. His entire body stilled, breathless, as the snow continued to fall. He closed his eyes, concentrated on the bone-numbing cold, on the blistering splinters of ice that kept falling.

  He thought about the gun. Also perfectly still.

  He dropped to his knees and looked up into the sky, letting the shards of ice fall into his eyes. He wondered how long it would take until the snow buried him alive. He opened his mouth and let it fill his throat. Would it asphyxiate him? Would he choke? He pictured himself frozen in supplication to this unforgiving sky. Would this be his demise? Would this be the way it all came to an end?

  He peeled off his coat, tore his hat off, clutched the gun. He imagined the cold barrel in his mouth. The metallic clank of it against his teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut, the tears freezing before they fell.

  And then he remembered this:

  Winter. He was twelve years old. He and Billy had taken their metal flying saucers up the steep hill near their house. They had bread bags tied around their feet inside their boots to keep their socks extra dry. It was snowing. Cold. For hours they dragged their sleds up the hill and then raced down. Crashing into rocks and roots, their muscles spent, their backsides bruised. The sky was the color of faded dungarees. Starless, moonless. Still.

  Kurt sent Billy down the hill one last time with a push, listening to his voice trilling in the quiet night. And he sat down, exhausted, in the soft snow, lay back and let it press all around him, filling his ears, touching his neck. He closed his eyes and listened to its crunch, its hush.

  “That was wicked fun!” Billy said, his voice breaking through the silence, his boots crunching the icy snow. “Get up,” Billy said. “Kurt, get up! Let’s go again!”

  Spring. Waking up in the soft pink glow of morning in Elsbeth’s childhood bed, her skin hot and soft against his. Outside, the calling out of birds, the close click-clack sound of the train. Underneath them, the rumble and hum. He’d pressed his hand against her stomach, cupping it with his large palm, amazed. She stirred, arching her back in a stretch. He buried his face in her hair, let the darkness swallow him. Sun on his exposed shoulder, the chill of spring and the cold lilac smell of possibility. Clean white sheets. “Get up,” Elsbeth whispered, turning to face him, her breath across his cheek. “You need to get up before my mom wakes up.”

  Summer. Trevor took his hand and led him through a labyrinth of raspberry brambles that pricked and scratched their bare legs. Kurt watched the back of his head as he led him through the summer foliage, the green so brilliant it almost hurt his eyes. Like looking into the sun. Like looking into cold white snow.

  “Where are we going?” Kurt asked, but Trevor didn’t answer.

  Suddenly they came to the place where the brush gave way to an open field, littered with wildflowers. It was sunset, and the sky looked as though it were melting.

  Trevor turned to Kurt, smiling sadly. “Sometimes, I lie down here and I don’t want to ever get up,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  Trevor nodded and lay down in the grass.

  Kurt lay next to him, dandelions gone to seed sighing next to him, exhaling in quiet puffs. And they stayed this way, studying the sky as dusk surrendered to evening.

  “Time to go,” he said Trevor. “I
t’s beautiful. But we have to get up.”

  And Trevor had nodded and reached for his hand.

  Fall. “Get up, Daddy,” Gracy said, leaping onto the couch where Kurt had fallen asleep with the TV still on. His entire body so tired from work, so exhausted he felt like an old man. Like someone at the end of his life.

  He’d willed his eyes open. Her hair was messy, and her cheeks bright pink and smudged with dirt. She’d been outside playing all morning, trying to make summer last.

  “I made something for you, but you have to get up!”

  And so despite his body’s defiance, its desire, every inch of him wanting nothing but sleep, release, he’d taken her hand and she’d pulled him through the house and out the door to the front yard. The driveway was buried under a blanket of leaves. The trees were barren without them. On the brown grass she’d lined up six silver pie tins, each filled with mud. It was cold out, and their breath was like smoke in the air.

  “I made these for you. Let’s pretend it’s your birthday. And my birthday.”

  He had looked at her then in her old coat and frayed scarf and felt something he didn’t have words for. Something so powerful it felt almost dangerous. And so, fighting back tears, he’d nodded and said, “Thank you. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

  Now Kurt opened his eyes, listened to the silence. The snow had stopped falling finally, and around him the entire world glistened. He was alone, and he knew the house was empty now, but still he got up. He got up and pulled his coat and hat back on. He got up and grabbed his shotgun. He got up and started the long trek back home.

  GRACE

  Kurt pulls his truck up next to the curb at the airport and turns on his hazards. The sun has come out, but the snow remains. The combination is almost blinding, the whiteness making that place behind his eyes throb in time with the blinking lights.

  “You got everything?” he asks Billy.