Leaving Time(98)

Nevvie reaches up until her searching hand finds my face. Using her fingers, she traces my nose, my lips, my cheekbones. “I knew you’d come for us one day.”

I pull away, before she can figure out that I’m not who I said I was. “Of course,” I lie. “We’re a family.”

“You must come inside. Grace will be back soon, and we can visit in the meantime …”

“I’d like that,” I say.

Serenity and I follow Nevvie inside. Not a single window in the house is open, and there is no air circulation. “I wonder if I could trouble you for a glass of water?” I ask.

“No trouble at all,” Nevvie says. She leads me into a living room, a big space with a vaulted ceiling and several couches and tables covered with white sheets. One couch has had its protective cover removed. Serenity sits on it while I peek under the sheets, trying to find a desk, a filing cabinet, any sort of information to explain this turn of events.

“What the holy hell is happening?” Serenity hisses at me as soon as Nevvie shuffles into the kitchen. “Grace will be back soon? I thought she was dead. I thought Nevvie was trampled.”

“I thought that, too,” I admit. “I saw a body, that’s for sure.”

“Was it hers?”

But that I can’t answer. When I had reached the scene, Gideon was cradling the victim in his lap. I remember the skull split like a melon, the hair shampooed with blood. But I don’t know if I ever actually got close enough to see the face. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to say it was Nevvie Ruehl, since I’d never even seen a picture of her; I trusted Thomas when he named the victim, because he would have recognized his own employee.

“Who called the police that night?” Serenity asks.

“Thomas.”

“So maybe he was the one who wanted you to believe Nevvie was dead.”

But I shake my head. “If Thomas had been the one to go after her in the enclosure, she’d be a lot more nervous than she is right now, and she certainly wouldn’t have invited us into her house.”

“Unless she’s planning to poison us.”
“Then don’t drink the water,” I suggest. “Gideon was the one who found the body. So either he made a mistake—which I don’t buy—or he wanted people to think it was Nevvie.”

“Well, she didn’t just get up from the autopsy table,” Serenity says.

I meet her gaze. And I don’t have to say anything else.

One victim had been taken away that night in a body bag. One victim had been found unconscious, with a blow to the head that maybe could even have resulted in latent blindness, and had been taken to the hospital.

Just then, Nevvie comes into the room, carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses. “Let me help,” I say, taking them from her hands and setting them down on top of a covered coffee table. I pick up the pitcher and pour a glass for each of us.

There is a clock somewhere; I can hear the ticking even if I cannot see it. It’s probably rotting away underneath one of the sheets. It’s like the whole room is filled with the ghosts of former furniture.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask her.

“I’ve lost track now. Grace was the one who took care of me, you know, after the accident. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

“Accident?”

“You know. That night at the sanctuary. The one where I lost my sight. I suppose after hitting my head like that, it could have been much worse. I’m lucky. Or so they say.” She sinks down, oblivious to the sheet that covers the wing chair. “I don’t remember any of it, which is probably a blessing. When Grace gets here, she can explain everything.” She glances in my direction. “I never blamed you or Maura, Thomas. I hope you know that.”

“Who’s Maura?” Serenity pipes up.

Until this moment, she hasn’t spoken in Nevvie’s presence. Nevvie turns, a hesitant smile playing over her lips. “How rude of me. I didn’t realize you brought a guest.”

I look at Serenity, panicked. I have to introduce her in a way that follows the fiction I’ve created, where I am impersonating Thomas Metcalf. “No, I’m the one who’s been rude,” I say. “You remember my wife, Alice?”

The glass slides out of Nevvie’s hand, shattering on the floor. I kneel to mop up the water, using one of the sheets covering the furniture.

But I am not mopping fast enough. The water soaks through the sheet, and the puddle widens. The knees of my jeans are drenched and the spill has swelled into a pool. It covers Nevvie’s feet, in her mismatched shoes.

Serenity cranes her neck to look around the room. “Sweet Jesus …”

The wallpaper is weeping. Water trickles from the ceiling. I glance at Nevvie and find her leaning back in her chair, her hands gripping the armrests, her face wet with her own tears and the sobs of this house.

I can’t move. I can’t explain what the hell is happening. Overhead, I watch a crack form in the center of the ceiling and spread as if it is only a matter of time before the plaster gives way.

Serenity grabs my arm. “Run,” she shouts, and I follow her out of the house. My shoes splash in puddles that have pooled on the hardwood floors. We don’t stop until we are back at the curb, panting. “I think I lost my goddamn weave,” Serenity says, patting the back of her head. Her pink hair, soaked, makes me think of the bloody skull of the victim at the elephant sanctuary.