Escape, if I can, or go to jail. Absolutely not marrying Garrett or testifying against OB.She glanced at her sister, her frustrating, inscrutable, beloved sister, and added:If you want to stay the course, you should. I don’t think they’ll want to make public what I was doing.
Ella nodded. Lydia’s expression offered no clue about her opinion.
Where is OB?she wrote.
He seems to know something happened—got into the house without Garrett noticing, Beatrix wrote.Garrett’s standing at the forest’s edge where he can see OB’s house, expecting him to come back.
Ella jumped to her feet and scrawled:I’ll work with Rosemarie to come up with something.
That left Beatrix alone with her sister. She bit her lip and wrote down what Garrett disclosed about the night the crane arm narrowly missed Lydia.
You were right, Beatrix concluded.I was wrong.
She looked up in time to see her sister’s tear-stained face before Lydia threw her arms around her, silent sobs making her body shudder.
“I’m sorry,” her sister whispered, “I’m sorry, I’msosorry.”
It didn’t sound like a simpleI’m sorry for what’s happened to you. More likeI’m sorry we fought. I’m sorry I saw Plan B as a risk but not your job. I’m sorry we might never see each other again.
“I love you,” Beatrix murmured.
Lydia drew back, took the notepad and wrote a single sentence:I can’t lose you.Beatrix was crying now, too, and she wondered whether going to jail—with the presumption of getting out again someday—would be the better option. If she ran, she could never see her sister again. Escape meant their shaky relationship wouldn’t be rebuilt.
“Bee …” Lydia pressed her hands to her eyes. “Sing me the song?”
Beatrix didn’t have to ask which one. She had sung it every night until her sister got too old for bedtime songs—and, it had seemed, for Beatrix.
She put her arm around Lydia, took a shuddering breath and sang:
Honeybee, honeybee, swimming in your flower sea
Sip from the blossoms like a sweet cup of tea
Honeybee, honeybee, working every hour bee
Oh, how grand! To fly so very free.
Honeybee, honeybee, thunder roars so near to thee
Storm winds blow you from your hive in yonder tree
Honeybee, honeybee, shrewd and strong you are though wee
Fly, dear one, fly—please come home to me.
A wretched performance. She thought of how Lydia would sing it back to her, substituting “sister Bee” for “honeybee,” and barely got the final words out. They sat in silence on their parents’ bed, her shoulder wet with Lydia’s tears, Lydia’s hair wet with hers.
It must have takenhim at least thirty minutes to get to Beatrix’s back yard, minutes that felt like hours. Would she be here? He stared at the kitchen door, debating whether knocking or just spelling it open and slipping in would be more conspicuous, and decided that with the tele-vision camera pointed away from the door, the best tactic was silence. He got in with only the slightest of noises.
The ground floor was empty—no one in the kitchen, dining room or sitting room. He crept upstairs and, hearttwisting, found all the second-floor bedroom doors ajar, no one there, either. Up to the third floor he went, anxiety mounting with each step, and there he found her—Beatrix, thankGod, curled up with Lydia, the two of them a picture of misery and sisterly love.
A notepad lay near them, full of writing in various hands. He looked at her explanation of what had happened and barely held in a curse at what Garrett had offered in exchange for her freedom. This room had only audio recorders, he knew, so he turned the page with care, trying not to startle them and make them assume the worst before he could explain himself. He wrote the simplest of messages:It’s Peter.
Kicking the side of the bed to get their attention, he held the notepad up. He watched Beatrix’s expression shift from alarm to relief and then suspicion. She plucked the paper out of what, from her perspective, was thin air and took up the pen.Who raised you?
A wise precaution.Nan, he wrote, and she nodded, apparently satisfied it was him and not Garrett. In a rushed scrawl, he added,Are you packed? No time to lose.
Beatrix took the notepad. He watched her write the words, but he still couldn’t believe what they said.
