A Spark of Light(60)

Joy glanced down at Janine’s sprawled body again. It just went to show you: there was no right way to do the wrong thing.

Except to not do it at all.

She could feel the prickle of everyone else’s eyes on her as she slowly knelt on the carpet in front of Janine.

Go figure. When you cradled a liar’s head in your lap, it felt just like anyone else’s.

—


IN A WAY, OLIVE THOUGHT, being in the dark was even harder than being out there with the others. She could hear conversations, stomping, crashes. She knew when the shooter was angry and she knew when someone was in pain. But because she couldn’t actually see with her own eyes, she began to paint pictures in her mind of what was happening. And what she could dream with a fertile imagination had to be much worse than the reality.

Right?

Beside her, Wren shuddered. “Do you think he killed her?”

There was no need to ask who. The woman who had been babbling about how they kill babies here had fallen silent after a heavy thud.

“He didn’t shoot her,” Olive whispered.

“That doesn’t mean she’s alive.”

“The brain can do a lot of things,” Olive said, “but it can’t distinguish between what’s really happening, and what you’re imagining. That’s why scary movies scare you and why you cry at Nicholas Sparks books.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“You talk like a teacher,” Wren said.

“Guilty as charged,” Olive said. “I used to teach at the college.”

She considered the woman who’d insisted she did not belong here. Olive could have said the same. The Center was all about reproductive choices, and she didn’t have any of those left. But she would never have jeopardized Wren’s life by throwing open the closet door to save her own skin.

“If I die,” Wren murmured, “they’ll make a shrine at school.”

Olive turned at the sound of her voice.

“They’ll put flowers underneath my locker. And posters saying REST IN PEACE, and photos of me doing stupid things, like with my face painted for Spirit Day or dressed like Supergirl for Halloween. It happened last year, with a girl who died of leukemia,” Wren said softly. “All these people pretending they miss me, when they never even knew me.”

Olive reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You’re not going to die,” she said.

As if to punctuate her promise, Wren’s phone buzzed.

—


R U STILL SAFE? Hugh texted.

Those three dots appeared, scrolling, and he let out the breath he was holding.

There was someone yelling & then a thud & now it’s quiet.

He wondered how many women were in there, other than his daughter and his sister.

He knew his responsibility was to every hostage inside the Center, but the truth was, he was thinking only of Bex and Wren.

Aunt Bex? he typed.

??? don’t know.

When he was a kid, and he’d gone somewhere after school, Bex used to insist that he call her when he arrived. He hated it—it made him feel like he was the biggest loser. It wasn’t until he had Wren, and worried about her every minute she wasn’t with him, that he understood why his sister had been so vigilant. The reason you hold on to someone too tightly isn’t always to protect them—sometimes it’s to protect yourself.

Hugh stared down at his phone, as if he could will Wren courage, strength, hope. Stay calm, he texted.

. . .

. . .

Daddy, Wren wrote, I’m scared.

She had not called him Daddy for a long time.

When Wren was little, Hugh had come upstairs to find her scrubbing her face with lemons, trying to get rid of her freckles. I have spots, she had said. I’m ugly.

You’re beautiful, he’d told her, and those are constellations.

The truth was, she was his universe.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would, too.

He wondered if the women who’d come to the Center thought differently.

Then, reconsidering, he imagined it was exactly what they thought.

I’m here, he texted Wren, and he hoped that would be enough.

—


BETH STARED AT THE STRANGE man in her room. A cop. Not outside the door, but inside it, and watching her. It was creepy as fuck. As if it weren’t bad enough that she was handcuffed to the bed rail.

She wanted her father. She wished she could text him, apologize, cry, beg, but her phone had been taken away by the police. Was he in the hospital cafeteria, or taking a walk, or just sitting in his car and replaying the horrible things they had said to each other? Beth knew that if she could see his face, talk to him directly, she could make him see that nothing had changed; that she still needed him as much as, if not more than, before. She would spend a month in church with him, if he wanted, atoning for her sins. She would do anything to go back to the way it had been.

When the door opened, she turned, hope swelling. But she hadn’t conjured her father at all. It was a strange man in a suit, with a shock of dark hair. He was followed by a stenographer, who set up a machine in the corner near the radiator.