Mother May I(83)

And yet that was such bullshit. He knew his wife. The ghost he felt was nothing but his nerves. If Bets were really here? His bold and mighty wife? She would damn well go in there and get Bree’s boy.

He said a quick and silent prayer, then stood up straight, reaching for the glass.





22




I begged. I kept begging, long after I knew that it would do no good. She was unshiftable, but still I wept and groveled, trying to buy Marshall enough time to find the hidden cabin. It was a one-note role for me; it was Coral who changed as I pleaded and cried. She grew sadder and softer and more and more at peace. Almost relaxed. Or fatalistic. Her sweaty sheen had gone.

I begged until she held up her hand, silencing me. “You aren’t going to call him up. I understand. Deep down in you, you must know that he won’t come. He won’t walk up those steps and do what must be done.” Her voice was gentle, gentle with me, but I could hear scorn for Trey in her tone.

With a wild flash of hope, I thought, Maybe this is a test. If Trey comes up to face her, maybe that will be enough. Or he’ll have to actually drink the cup, to prove his courage, his goodness. It will turn out to be only English Breakfast, brewed strong and black and scary.

But I did not believe it. I was not in the after-school-special version of revenge, here to learn a valuable lesson and then go home with my son and my husband to live a more virtuous life. I’d woken up in the world my mother had always believed in, where strangers had the worst intentions and disaster crouched a breath away, waiting for me to blink.

Only two days had passed since I’d watched Spencer redden and heave and spew bloody foam onto the grass. This woman had engineered that death. She was genuinely sorry she hadn’t been there to see him buck and die in agony. This was a woman who had spoken with simple, sad authority about the difficulties of pushing a three-year-old under the water and holding him there.

I argued anyway, feeling each good second I was buying creep past. “You don’t know him. He will come, if I go to the edge and wave. He’ll come right up.”

She shook her head, then glanced at her watch again. “You’re a good mother. You’d trade yourself for your child, just like I would. You walked up those stairs already. But now you’re out of time. You should call Mr. Cabbat anyway, though. Just so you know the truth. It would be good for you, moving forward, to know. I want you to see him cowering in the car. Or maybe he’ll try. He might even get partway up the steps, dragging his feet. Before this is over, you should know for sure what you married. So you can choose better next time. You have your girls to think about.”

She’d said a lot of things, but only one phrase truly landed for me. “What do you mean I’m out of time?”

She ignored the question, barely pausing to let me finish it. “Or go ahead on down to your husband now. Take him home, if you find you still want him.” She tilted her head to gaze at me with a horrifying pity. As if Robert were already gone. “If you don’t mind a little advice, from one mother to another? Get your girls away from him. My letter will come. You’ll see then. When you do, I hope you’ll get them away.”

I took a step back, toward the stairs. “I’ll call him up. He’ll come. You’ll see. He’ll trade himself. You don’t know him.”

“It’s too late,” she said. “The time has passed. And I have no desire to look into his face. I’ll see him in hell eventually. I’ll go on ahead and start my wait for him there. I want you to know—” Her voice hitched. “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

“How can time—”

And then my voice cut out, because she lifted the closer cup to her lips and drank it off in four long swallows. She set the cup down, flinching and shaking her head at the taste.

“So bitter.” Her eyes were dark pits.

“My God, what did you do?” I asked. How long had it taken before Spencer was sick and convulsing and dead? Fifteen or twenty minutes? But his dose had been in capsules. This was pure liquid.

Coral cleared her throat. Her cheeks had already pinked. She smiled a soft, sad smile.

“What did you do?” I asked again.

That was when the explosion came, a huge reverberating boom, as if God were answering my question. Orange light flashed around the edges of the carousel. The frame shook and rattled. I felt as if a giant hand had reached into my body and grabbed my spine to shake me, too.

The old roof groaned and metal squealed. My hands flew up stupidly to cover my head as I cowered on the bench, sure the roof would come down on us. The china cups rattled on their saucers, dark liquid sloshing up over the rim of the full one. The one that had been meant for Trey.

The heaving earth beneath us stilled. The roof had held. I sat on my bench, blinking in the sudden silence. There had been birdsong all around us, but I had not realized it until they went so quiet.

I could not understand. I looked to Coral, and her face had changed. The afghan had fallen to the floor, and I saw that her hidden hand clutched a small black metal box. Sorrow and ecstasy were at war across her features. Her nostrils flared. Her skin was very red now. She coughed.

“It’s done,” she rasped, so voiceless that I read the words off her lips more than I heard them. “God, it hurts. It hurts me.”

She tipped forward then, landing on her knees in front of her bench, a strangling sound coming from her mouth.