Do Not Become Alarmed(70)
Dianne drank her coffee and gave nothing away.
Nora took a deep breath. “So Penny got pissed off and jumped out of the train. It was so insanely stupid. But then it got her rescued. I’m afraid that Marcus and June are huddled somewhere being good, like I taught them. And they won’t take a chance and they would never do anything that dumb, and so they won’t be rescued, like Penny was. And it will be my fault.”
Dianne considered her for a long minute, then said, “They’ll be all right.”
Nora was bursting to say that there was no way of knowing that! Kids died and were hurt all the time! Instead she looked at her hands. If Dianne said something about God, about prayer, she didn’t know if she could trust herself to be tactful in response. “I do know Marcus will take care of his sister, if he can,” she said.
“Of course he will.”
“But what if he can’t?” Her voice cracked.
“He will. Those children are strong.”
Nora blew her nose in the paper napkins from her cafeteria tray. “I miss my kids so much,” she said, through snotty tears. “And I miss my mom.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Dianne said. “I know.”
Loud voices echoed down the hall, and Nora recognized Liv’s. She jumped up and ran toward the noise, with Dianne behind her. They found Liv outside Sebastian’s hospital room.
“Get the doctor!” her cousin was shouting at a nurse. “Do something!”
“What happened?” Nora asked.
Liv was frantic. “I can’t believe this. After all that. Oh, my God.”
A ponytailed doctor ran into the room, and Liv followed her. What had they done to sweet Sebastian? He was supposed to be all right.
Nora turned and walked blindly away, toward the exit. She needed to get some air. She rounded a corner and saw Detective Rivera walking toward her, raising her hand in greeting. Nora wheeled, afraid of the detective, and almost bumped into her mother-in-law behind her.
Dianne grabbed her by the shoulders. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
“I can’t.”
“I came to find you,” the detective said.
Nora stood still. She wouldn’t turn. She wouldn’t look. She felt a flush, a prickling of sweat all over her body.
“That woman is talking to you,” Dianne said.
“I can’t,” Nora whispered. “I can’t hear it.”
“We found them,” the detective said.
Nora saw bodies in her mind, and she started to shake.
“They walked into a police station,” the detective said. “They’re okay.”
Nora stared at her mother-in-law. “What did she say?”
“That they’re okay,” Dianne said.
Nora turned, finally, to face the detective. “What?”
“They’re okay.”
Nora felt like she was at the bottom of a pool, and the tall detective was standing on the side, trying to communicate. The words couldn’t make it down through the water. “How?” she heard herself ask. But that wasn’t the right question.
“They just walked into the station.”
“Where?” Nora mouthed. She couldn’t hear herself.
“They’re coming here. One of the officers is driving them, in a police car.”
“No!” Nora cried.
The detective looked confused.
Nora couldn’t find the words to explain that the car would crash, that cars kept crashing. She remembered the scene she’d been running from. She had the terrible thought that she had hurt Sebastian, by wanting her own children to be safe instead of Liv’s. She had wished it into being. The power of prayer. “Sebastian,” she whispered.
The detective frowned. “What happened?”
Nora was hit with a wave of vertigo so strong that the hallway spun. The floor moved to her left beneath her, the ceiling moved to her right. She tilted with the motion and put a hand out. Her mother-in-law caught one arm and the detective took the other.
The three of them staggered down the hallway to Sebastian’s room and found Raymond standing outside it. Nora managed to say, “Marcus and June. They’re coming here.”
“An officer is bringing them now,” Detective Rivera said. “But I’m worried about your wife.”
White lights flashed at the corners of Nora’s vision. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
They lowered her to a bench.
“Put your head between your knees,” Dianne said.
That just made it worse. Nora put her elbows on her knees and her hands over her eyes, willing the room to stop moving.
“They gave him too much insulin,” she heard Raymond say.
She tried to breathe. Sebastian was in a hospital with his parents, where he was supposed to be safe, and they were going to kill him. And Marcus and June were in a car with a cop and they would never make it here alive. And she—she was not responding well, she was becoming yet another patient, she needed to get her shit together. But instead everything whited out and she slid off the bench to the floor.
50.
ISABEL WAS FAIRLY sure that the Jesus woman who’d picked them up on the road hadn’t recognized them as the kids from the ship. She’d dropped the five of them off at a church shelter where they got bad soup and dry clothes. Noemi was so feverish that Isabel had to dress her. But Isabel was able to ditch her bloody shirt and the bikini bottoms, and now wore a secondhand T-shirt with a rainbow decal.