Here and Gone(45)

Audra hit the off button with her fist, skinning her knuckles.

‘Goddamn them,’ she said.

Anger flared in her, hot and bright. They’d all but said she’d killed her children and dumped them in the desert somewhere. No mention of what she’d told Mitchell. No one questioned Whiteside’s story. The anger turned to cold fear as she realized what the whole country must be thinking. That she was a monster. She had never bothered much with social media, Facebook, Twitter, all of that, but she could only imagine what they’d be saying there. They’d be ripping her to pieces.

Audra went to the corner of the room, pressed herself into it, her head in her hands. She wrapped her fingers around her skull, trying to contain it all. The crushing weight of it on her shoulders, snaking around her chest.

‘Keep it together,’ she told herself. ‘They want you to break.’

From here, she could see the yard below the window, the weathered fence beyond that. And on the other side, standing on something to get a better vantage point, a young man with a video camera looking right back at her.

‘Jesus,’ Audra said. She crossed to the window, pulled down the blind.

She flopped onto the bed, pulled her knees up to her chest, folded her arms around them.

Lying in the semidarkness, she remembered a hospital room far from here. A room where she had woken with a grinding behind her eyes. Confusion and fear. A doctor had explained to her that she’d taken an overdose. The nanny had found her on her bedroom floor, he said, half naked, barely conscious. Audra would probably have died otherwise. The paramedics had pumped her stomach and shot her full of adrenalin.

Patrick had visited her later that night, stayed for only a few minutes. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ he asked.

Another visitor came by the following day. She wore a plain gray dress with a crucifix around her neck. Her name was Sister Hannah Cicero, and she asked why Audra had taken so many pills, why she had taken them with neat vodka? Audra told her she couldn’t remember.

‘Did you overdose on purpose?’ Sister Hannah asked. ‘Did you try to kill yourself?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Audra said.

And she wondered: Had she? Had she finally reached the point where dying seemed a better choice than living? She knew that the last months had been dark, that she felt certain the world would be no poorer without her.

‘Would you like to pray?’ the nun asked.

‘I’m not religious,’ Audra said.

‘That’s okay,’ Sister Hannah said. ‘I’m a qualified counsellor as well as a nun. The first part and the second part don’t always overlap.’

‘A counsellor,’ Audra echoed as she remembered the conversation she’d had with Patrick on Sean’s second birthday.

Sean was seven and a half now, Louise not quite four. At Patrick’s insistence, Audra quit drinking as soon as the pregnancy test showed positive and they knew she had another baby inside her. She was allowed to keep taking the drugs, but at a reduced dosage. When Louise was born, Margaret swooped in once more and took over. Audra didn’t even get to try breast-feeding this time. In fact, she couldn’t quite remember feeding Louise at all. Three days after the baby was born, Patrick gave Audra a bottle of wine, and so she descended into the pit once more.

‘Do you feel like talking?’ Sister Hannah asked.

Audra said nothing. She rolled onto her side, faced the other way.

‘Would you rather I left?’

Audra opened her mouth to say yes, but the word did not come out. A silence hung in the room, and it terrified her so much that she had to say something.

‘I don’t know my children.’

‘Do you know their names?’

‘Sean and Louise.’

‘Well, that’s something. How old are they?’

‘Eight and three. Well, maybe closer to four. I’m not sure.’

‘And that’s something else. Try for a third thing.’

Audra thought for a moment. ‘Louise has a pink bunny. She calls it Gogo.’

‘What do you feel in your heart when you think of your children?’

Audra closed her eyes, concentrated on the ache in her breast. ‘That I miss them. That I let them down. That I don’t deserve them.’

‘No one deserves children,’ Sister Hannah said. ‘They’re not a prize you get for being a good girl. I understand the children’s nanny found you unconscious. Who hired her?’

‘My husband,’ Audra replied. ‘He said I wasn’t fit to care for my son. She’s been in our home ever since. I see my children at the dinner table, and they kiss me goodnight. I see them at breakfast, and they kiss me good morning. They call me Mother. They call Patrick Father. Not Mommy or Daddy. That’s not right, is it? I should be their mommy.’

‘You should. Then I guess the question is, why aren’t you?’

‘Like I told you, I don’t deserve them.’

‘Bullshit,’ Sister Hannah said. ‘You tell me that again, I’m going to kick your ass. Does Patrick drink?’

‘No,’ Audra said. ‘Not like I do.’

‘What about the drugs, the antidepressants, all that? Does he take them too?’

‘No. Never.’

‘What does he say about your drinking?’