History of Wolves(64)

That whole morning I kept waiting for her to look up at me so I could reassure her somehow. All I needed was the smallest sign from her, and I would have laid it all on Leo when my time came around. There he sat with his back to me—a Bible on his lap and a full bottle of water. Nodding ever so subtly at Patra. He shifted in his seat when she sat down, recrossed his legs so his knee nudged hers. He’d grown a beard since I’d seen him last, one trimmed so close it was a half-mask of gray. I watched, but he didn’t poke out his cheek with his tongue. He didn’t look upset. He didn’t look at all worried.


“It’s going to be okay,” he’d said to me that last day, after he’d loaded Paul in the car. I’d been standing stupidly on their front stair. Patra was hunched in the backseat, and Leo was circling around the hood when he saw me wavering in their open doorway. He’d paused then. Walked back across the driveway. “It’s going to be okay,” he’d said, hands coming at me through the air. He’d taken the time to reach out and hug me—me—saying, “You can’t be anything but Good. Got that, Linda? You shouldn’t feel bad about any of this.”


Still, I would have accused him of bullying, of making us do his bidding, but Patra never gave me a sign. In the break before I was to take the stand, I went outside and smoked three cigarettes as fast as I could. I sat on the parking lot curb, and when the cigarettes were gone, I put my arms on my knees and my head on my arms. Closed my eyes. My heart felt like a black train chugging uphill through my body. I let the heat of the sun rise from the concrete and cook my skin, and when I opened my eyes, the dazzling white of the day emptied me out. A chainsaw buzzed in the distance. I heard branches splintering down.

Then—in a gust of hot wind—Patra came out. She pushed open the courthouse door and stood for a moment, taking in deep breaths. The wind blew her hair so she looked a little more herself. A little less combed. She uncapped her water bottle and sucked the water down—sucked so hard the plastic collapsed, and when she pulled her mouth away the bottle popped. I guess she didn’t see me crouched on the curb between cars, because when she lifted the bottle to her mouth again, tilting back her head, she walked a few steps closer. She came close enough for me to catch a whiff of her coconut shampoo. Close enough, almost, to reach out and touch her black nyloned leg.

I could have left it like that. It felt like the sign I’d been hoping for. Just her leg and a big drop of water falling from her mouth and graying the concrete.

Thirty-seven, twenty-six, fifteen, I thought, watching another drip come down.

Twenty-six, fifteen, four.

I stood up the second before she turned.

Here’s what her face did then. A mutant half smile formed on her lips, habitual friendliness mixed with undeniable loathing.

“I have nothing to say to you. Please.” It sounded like a lawyer’s line to me. She turned away.

“Patra.”

“What?” She turned back, and her question seemed in earnest now. “What?”

“I—”

“Listen—” A muscle fluttered in her neck.

“I hate him,” I blurted. “Leo.” I hate him for you, I meant.

“Leo?” She seemed confused.

Another gust of wind had tossed hair in her eyes, and she pushed it back. As she did, as she palmed her hairline, I saw her freckles were disappearing in the red of her skin. Something new was turning in her eyes. “Leo?” she asked again, her voice dripping, soaked to the bone.

“Paul was just—” I whispered, more hesitant now. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What are you saying to me?” She took a step forward.

I put my hand on her arm to calm her, and she started back as if stricken. She gave a peculiar shiver, and I saw then that I was just a part of the evil that took him, the one who arrived just in time for, and presided over, his disappearance. That’s all I was to her now.

She bit out at me. “You’re the one who thought of him that way. You’re the one who looked at him and saw”—she sobbed—”a sick little boy!”

“No—”

“I know you did! And that’s all you could see. Isn’t it? Isn’t it!”

“I should have gone earlier,” I admitted—it was the only time I ever said it. “I should have gotten help for us.” Us. We needed it.

“How could he get better with you thinking like that?” she spat. “How could he? I’ve thought about this. I’ve gone over it and over it. Leo told me, control your thoughts, but it was your mind—” She said it like she could barely get the words out. “Your mind. That was too small. To see beyond itself.” She drew a ragged breath. “Yours. You saw him. As sick.”

They’d made me wear my hair differently that day, combed and parted on one side, clipped with a single barrette. It kept getting in my face, so I had to hold it gathered in one fist, my bent arm across my chest. They insisted I wear a long, loose dress with a salady green floral pattern. I could feel my sweaty thighs slip against each other beneath the fabric. I could feel my cotton underwear droop down from my butt. Damp. I smelled like mothballs, cigarettes, and laundry detergent. I felt hideous, ridiculous. The local teenager, I was called by the defense attorney and the North Star Gazette.


Babysitter, Patra said on the stand.