She has no ambivalence toward me. I see that now, as she jumps down from the bench of the booth and runs into my arms. I hold her tight. I kiss her forehead, the way I kissed Nicole moments before.
I don’t know what I feel. I don’t think I will know for a long time.
I walk to the booth. Everyone stands to greet me warmly. Roger is grateful because I found his daughter and saved her life. Chief Watkins is grateful because I didn’t leave him to die like a dog in the street. I could have taken his car and driven us away from there. But I stayed, and now they say that he lived because I stopped the bleeding.
I stopped the bleeding. That is something, I suppose.
Somehow I do not feel worthy of their gratitude.
We sit down, tears in all of our eyes, as we talk of the resolutions that have occurred. Alice has started school with other children and she is doing nicely. She is ahead in every level and that is something that those twisted people gave her.
Still, I wonder what remains.
“How have you been?” I ask.
Alice has Happy Face. “Great!” she says. “I love my new school and my new friends. And it turns out I don’t have any allergies, except to cats, but I can have dogs. And I can go outside anytime I want.”
I smile. “That’s wonderful news.”
We are all so happy for this little girl who is doing so well.
This little girl who made me drink milk but then set me free.
This little girl who watched her mother shoot the man who raised her, then felt her press that same gun into her head.
This little girl who has now lied for her.
That little girl.
We eat French fries and drink soda. The social worker leads us in a productive discussion about life and moving forward. She told me when I agreed to come that it was important for Alice to see that I was all right. That I was living a normal life now. That Ineeded to be a role model since we shared a similar experience in that house, even if I was only there for two weeks.
“I started working again,” I say. This is true. I have started tutoring students in science and I hope I can eventually go back to teaching.
“And my son is almost done with his junior year. I can’t believe how fast time flies!”
It has killed us to keep him at that school. It is that school that links us to this town. It was Evan’s choice to stay.
But when we go, we take the long way. And each time I see him, I remind him that nothing he could ever do would make me leave him. Not ever. Because he is enough. He is more than enough. He is everything. He and Nicole.
I will never speak of that moment in the storm, when my legs carried me away from them. When I walked away.
I am here now. We are here now.
We.That is a word I have been using more lately. John and I drive together when we bring Evan to school. He’s been taking days off from work to come with me. He doesn’t want to lose me again. How strange that it took this horrific experience for him to know this, and for me to believe it.
I feel it more every day since I was saved—my love for John tiptoeing across that invisible line. It has not been a watershed. But it is no longer impossible. I feel it. He feels it.
He doesn’t close his eyes until I am lying next to him in our bed. And, sometimes, I will curl up close beside him.
And Nicole—the changes in her have been more pronounced. She will start college next fall. She has been coming with me to my grief support sessions. Yes, she mocks everyone the second we leave, the things they say and even the way they say them, always in a neutral tone. She calls them emotional robots. She says it makesher want to scream out into the room that they are allfull of shit. Maybe she’s right. But she still comes. And sometimes we have dinner after.
Sometimes we talk about the woods in Hastings. Sometimes we talk about what she should study next year, or what classes I might teach. Sometimes we even laugh, though tears often follow.
I don’t mind her tears. I don’t mind my own.
Do I owe this to Jared Reyes? To the horrible things he did to our family? He took me, yes. But he took me to care for a child who was not even his own. He took me to care for her when her own mother left without a second thought. A mother who put a gun to her head. I see them sometimes before I can catch them—images of Reyes and Alice. The way he carried her through the rain. The way he made her laugh. The way she looked at him like any child looks at a parent who loves her.
And then I feel his body pinning me to the kitchen floor. His strong hands dragging me to the dark room. His hot breath in my face when he tells me about Nicole. He was going to kill me and take her.
