Panic(41)

At least Heather could use the car. The library had reopened. She dropped Lily there.

“Want me to pick you up later?” she asked.

Lily was back to being snotty. “I’m not a baby,” she said as she slid out of the car, not even bothering with the umbrella Heather had brought for her. “I’ll bus it.”

“What about—?” Before Heather could remind her to take the umbrella, Lily had slammed the door and was dashing for the library entrance through a slow ooze of dark puddles.

Despite the rain, Heather was in a decent mood. Lily was almost twelve. It was normal for her to be a brat. It was maybe even a good thing. It showed she was growing up okay, the way that everyone else did—that maybe she wouldn’t be messed up just because she’d grown up in Fresh Pines with ants parading all over the spoons and Krista fumigating the house.

And there were still no police knocking on her door, still not a single, solitary breath about Panic.

Work was hard: Anne wanted her to muck the stables, and afterward they had to recaulk a portion of the basement, where the rain was coming in and the walls were speckled with mold. Heather was shocked when Anne stopped her for the day. It was nearly five p.m., but Heather hadn’t noticed time passing, had barely looked up. The rain was worse than ever. It came down in whole sheets, like the quivering blades of a giant guillotine.

While Anne was preparing her a cup of tea, Heather checked her phone for the first time in hours, and her stomach went to liquid and pooled straight down to her feet. She’d missed twelve calls from Lily.

Her throat squeezed up so tight she could hardly breathe. She punched Lily’s number immediately. Her cell phone went straight to voice mail.

“What’s the matter, Heather?” Anne was standing at the oven, her gray hair frizzing around her face, like a strange halo.

Heather said, “I have to go.”

Afterward, she didn’t remember getting into the car or backing it down the driveway; she didn’t remember the drive to the library, but suddenly she was there. She parked the car but left the door open. Some of the puddles were ankle deep, but she hardly noticed. She sprinted to the entrance; the library had been closed for an hour.

She called Lily’s name, circled the parking lot, searching for her. She scanned the streets as she drove, imagining all the terrible things that might have happened to Lily—she’d been hurt, snatched, killed—and trying to stop herself from losing it, throwing up or breaking down.

Finally, she had no choice but to go home. She’d have to call the police.

Heather fought back another wave of panic. This was it, the real thing.

The road leading to Fresh Pines was full of ruts, sucking black mud, deep water. Heather bumped through it, tires spinning and grinding. The place looked sadder than usual: the rain was beating fists on the trailers, pulling down wind chimes, and overflowing outdoor fire pits.

Heather hadn’t even stopped the car when she spotted Lily: huddled underneath a skinny birch tree missing most of its leaves, only fifteen feet away from the trailer steps, arms wrapped around her legs, shivering. Heather must have parked because all of a sudden she was rocketing out of the car, splashing through the water, taking Lily in her arms.

“Lily!” Heather couldn’t hug her sister tight enough. Here, here, here. Safe. “Are you okay? Are you all right? What happened?”

“I’m cold.” Lily’s voice was muffled. She spoke into Heather’s left shoulder. Heather’s heart seized up; she would have spun the world in reverse for a blanket.

“Come on,” she said, pulling away. “Let’s get you inside.”

Lily reared back, like a bucking horse. Her eyes went huge, wild. “I won’t go in there,” she said. “I don’t want to go in there!”

“Lily.” Heather blinked rain out of her eyes, crouching down so she was eye level with her sister. Lily’s lips were ringed with blue. God. How long had she been out here? “What’s going on?”

“Mom told me to go away,” Lily said. Her voice had turned small, broken. “She—she told me to play outside.”

Something inside Heather cracked, and in that moment she was conscious that all her life she had been building up walls and defenses in preparation for something like this; behind them, the pressure had been mounting, mounting. Now the dam broke, and she was flooded, drowning in rage and hate.

“Come on,” she said. She was surprised she still sounded the same, when inside of her was a sucking blackness, a furious noise. She took Lily’s hand. “You can sit in the car, okay? I’ll turn on the heat. You’ll be nice and dry.”

She brought Lily to the car. There was an old T-shirt in the back—Krista’s, reeking of smoke—but it was dry, at least. She helped Lily wriggle out of her wet shirt. She untied Lily’s shoes for her, and peeled off her wet socks, then made Lily press her feet up to the vents where the heat had begun to blow. The whole time Lily was limp, obedient, as if all the life had been washed out of her. Heather moved mechanically.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Lily. She felt detached from the words, as though she wasn’t the one speaking. The anger was drumming out the knowledge of everything else.

Boom, boom, boom.

There was music coming from the trailer, practically shaking the walls. The lights were on too, although the blinds were down; she could see a figure swaying in silhouette, maybe dancing. She hadn’t noticed before because she’d been too worried about Lily. She kept seeing her sister huddled underneath the pathetic birch, practically the single tree that Fresh Pines boasted.