I couldn't leave her like this. She was devastated. She needed me. "Mia. Open it, or I'm calling the locksmith back to remove it from the hinges. I mean it."
A moment later, there was the click of the lock turning. I pushed the door open.
Mia was on the tile floor, her back against the old cast iron tub, her knees up, arms wrapped tightly around them. Her whole body shook. The light overhead bleached her face, made her look colorless, half alive, half ghost.
"I didn't know. I didn't know she was still alive…" Her voice dissolved. She folded forward, forehead dropping to her knees. A raw, keening wail tore out of her.
Apollo stiffened in the doorway, his ears laid back. He whined in alarm, then lay down in the doorway with his snout resting on his paws, as if to protect us from whatever horrors lay outside the bathroom door. He didn't know the horror had already reached us.
I stepped over him into the cramped bathroom. The yellowed ceramic tile was cold beneath my feet. I knelt beside Mia. "Hey, honey. Hey."
I reached for her. She flinched, then collapsed into me all at once, like something inside had given way. "I didn't know. I swear, I didn't know she was—they said she was breathing, Mom. Crawling, trying to get help. Still alive. They said?—"
I held her tighter. She was too light. Too hot. "Listen to me. You didn't know. You couldn't have known."
"If I'd gone back… if I'd—if I'd checked, if I'd just—I left her there, Mom. I left her!"
"You didn't know she was down there. You didn't see her fall. You told them that. You told me."
Mia sagged against me. Her tears soaked the front of my T-shirt. Her breath came too fast, shallow and ragged.
I rocked her in my arms, like when she was three and convinced the monsters in the closet would open the door and eat her face. Back when Marcus and I could vanquish anything with a nightlight and a story.
Now the monsters were real. They were pretty girls with white teeth.
I held her because it was all I could do. I held her and listened to her weep. Her head was against my breastbone, great sobs wracking her body. I kissed the top of her head and stroked her back. Eventually, her sobs dwindled to hiccups.
She raised her head, swiped at her swollen, tear-dampened face with the back of her arm, and twisted to face me. "Am I going to jail?"
"You're not." I forced my voice to remain calm. "I won't let that happen."
It was a lie, and we both knew it. I couldn't protect her from this, just like I couldn't protect Marcus from a horrific act of random violence. The truth was, the world was pure chaos. We couldn't control any of it.
"Let's get you off the floor and upstairs. I'll bring you lunch in bed. How about tomato soup and grilled cheese, your favorite?"
"Okay." Her voice was hoarse, stricken.
I swallowed the knot in my throat. I got my feet under me and hauled her up. She was lighter, thinner than I remembered. She moved like she was underwater. Apollo stood, circling our legs in tight anxious loops.
We made it to her room. The curtains were mostly closed, but a small seam of sunlight poured through the crack. I crossed to the window and yanked the panels shut, covering the collection of sea glass and beach stones. The room dimmed.
"Lie down, honey. You need to rest."
Mia crawled onto the bed without protest. She didn't reach for her phone. Didn't ask for it. She curled onto her side, knees tucked up, clutching Flash the sloth to her chest. Marcus's red cap sat on the nightstand.
I sat on the edge of the mattress and tucked the blanket around her. "Try to sleep. Your brain needs a break."
Her eyes slid closed. Opened. Closed again. Her breathing evened a little. It wasn't rest, not really. More like her body shutting down to conserve power.
I watched her face, searching for something. A tell. A crack that would let me see the things she was still hiding from me.
All I saw was a kid who'd just learned that her best friend had spent hours dying alone in the dark.
I stood. My knees popped. I stepped to the door and eased it mostly shut. The hallway was too bright. The house hummed with its usual sounds: the fridge, the furnace, the faint ticking of the hallway clock.
I went downstairs on autopilot, barely conscious of even moving. Apollo followed. I made coffee because it was something to do. Like Mia, I had little appetite. I took a mug I didn't want and carried it out to the patio.
The lake threw the sun back at me in a thousand hard glints. The sky was a flat pitiless blue.
