‘Yes.’ He is weak with relief – she realises this now. She has let go of her delusion. ‘You have been alone.’ Riley has been through a lot but she has always been smart. She will figure it out. ‘You’re as game as a pebble,’ Marc says, absent-minded.
Riley bursts into laughter. ‘Do the accent.’
‘What …’ But it comes hurtling back. Marc covers his mouth with his hands. He hadn’t known it was still lurking in the depths of his mind after all these years. It’s one of Cousin’s phrases, borrowed from some show onMasterpiece Theatre.
‘What a plonker,’ Marc says in cockney. Riley laughs and Marc does too and then they can’t stop. ‘He’s all dead now,’ Marc says. ‘Innit?’ They’re breathless, helpless. ‘Innit?’ Marc keeps saying.
At about the same moment they both remember that Cousin really did die and how. Riley and Marc look at one another.
‘Thank you,’ Marc says to Riley. ‘I’ve never said that. Thank you for getting us out of there, away from him.’
Riley shrugs. ‘It’s not a choice. You know that by now, I guess. Family.’
The next night Marc has dinner with Silvie on the paediatric ward. Afterwards he goes up to the fourth floor to say goodnight to Riley.One day, he thinks,everyone will be out of hospital. One day.
As Marc approaches he sees that there are two nurses outside Riley’s room. Their heads are dipped together, touching. They talk in low urgent tones. His heart begins to thump hard. He is braced, has been for years, for bad news. He strides towards them.
‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Whatever it is.’
Riley’s window is swung wide. There had been a stopper on it to prevent it opening fully but that is dismantled and on the floor. Marc kicks the silver cylinder and it rolls under the bed. Night air comes in. Autumn is here, there is decay and leaf mould in the air. Marc leans out and feels the pull of the thirty-foot drop below.
‘But how did she get out?’ Marc asks.
The two nurses burst into talk, theories and explanation. There has been someone on reception all evening, this is a closed ward – she would have been noticed, leaving …
‘So she got down this way?’ Marc asks. The open window yawns black night. The nurses look at him in silence. ‘Maybe she flew,’ he says.
They laugh, dutiful and nervous.
Marc doesn’t wonder where Riley went. Some part of him always knew that she could never survive outside Nowhere.
23Marc
The late afternoon is low and golden, giving way to desert twilight. Marc sits in his wooden chair, waiting for the first stars. The world is an expanse in all directions, bare and beaten by the sun.
Silvie makes shapes in the sand with her toe and hums. She’s learning clarinet and the same flat notes constantly fill the house.
It has been good for them, the desert. They came out here after Silvie’s surgery then Marc stayed. The desert is as different as you can get to mountains. Though Marc’s heart still stutters when he hears thunder.
Silvie stays with Marc during the school semester. She goes to Claude for Easter, for the summer, for Christmas. When she’s away Marc feels her absence like a deep cut.
‘Chips,’ Kimble says, curt, emerging from the house. She tosses the bowl lightly onto the table. Corn chips leap out onto the sand. ‘And beer.’ She puts the can in Marc’s hand. ‘And root beer.’ She kisses Silvie’s head. ‘You better eat your dinner, you rotten little potato.’
Silvie nods hard.
‘We’re going out,’ Kimble says to Marc. ‘Margot wants to drink.’ Margot and Kimble come to stay sometimes.
Marc gives Kimble the sign for cool, a circular rotation of the wrist. She gives it back and goes.
He sees it in his dreams sometimes – the lightning-bleached moment when the crocodile came from the water. Other things have been surfacing lately too. His mother. Oliver, Cousin, Riley.
My child is not dead, Marc reminds himself, looking at the desert sky.Kimble is not dead. I am not dead.He feels a deep grateful shock for these things at various times of day. Sometimes Marc catches his reflection in a store window or in the mirror while shaving and thinks with a start,still here.
Silvie taps Marc’s forehead with a firm staccato finger. ‘Can I have a popsicle?’
He squints up at her. ‘After dinner. After the stars.’
Marc and Silvie used to watch the stars come out together most nights. They do it less often these days – she is growing up.
