Redemption Road(76)

*

It was nine at night when she told her parents the first real lie: “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

Her father looked up from the kitchen table, and the notes he’d made for Sunday’s sermon. “Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night, Father.”

Such words had been said all the nights of her life. Dinner and homework, his lips dry on her cheek. A week had passed since she’d told the truth of what had happened at the quarry, and supposedly there was peace between them. She didn’t see it, though. She saw his hand on the boy’s shoulder, the way he’d told his own lies, saying, “Prayer and contrition, young man. These are stones in the path to God’s right hand.”

Elizabeth watched her father return to his notes. First gray was in his beard, hair thinning on the crown of his head.

“Come here, baby girl.”

Elizabeth went to her mother, who was warm and smiling and smelled of bread. The hug she offered was soft and long, so complete Elizabeth wanted to fall into it and never leave. “I don’t want this baby.”

“Hush, child.”

“I want the police.”

Her mother squeezed harder and spoke in the same guarded whisper. “I’ll talk to him.”

“He won’t change his mind.”

“I’ll try. I promise. Just be patient.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

Elizabeth pushed away because her own decision was so suddenly hard inside her she feared her mother might feel it.

“Elizabeth, wait…”

But, she didn’t. She pounded the stairs, went to her room, and squeezed her legs together until lights were off in the house. When the time came, she went through the window and onto the roof, then down the great oak that had shaded her room since before she could speak.

A friend with a car waited at the end of the drive. Her name was Carrie, and she knew the place. “Are you sure about this?”

“Just drive.”

The doctor was slick skinned and Lithuanian and unlicensed. He lived in a trailer at the bad end of a bad trailer park and wore his hair long and parted in the middle. His front tooth was gold, the rest of them as shiny and brown as old honey. “You are the preacher’s daughter, yes?”

His eyes moved up and down, gold tooth flashing as he pushed a damp cigarette into the center of a narrow smile.

“It’s okay,” Carrie said. “He’s legit.”

“Yes, yes. I helped your sister. Pretty girl.”

Elizabeth felt a cold ache between her legs. She looked at Carrie, but the doctor had his fingers on her arm. “Come.” He moved her toward the back of the trailer. “I have clean sheets, washed hands…”

When it was done and she was in the car, Elizabeth was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She hunched above the place she hurt. The road was black, and white lines flicked past, one after another and endless. She settled into the hurt, and into the hum of tires. “Should there be this much blood?”

Carrie looked sideways, and her face turned as white as the lines on the road. “I don’t know, Liz. Jesus.”

“But, your sister—”

“I wasn’t with my sister! Jenny Loflin took her. Shit, Liz! Shit! What did the doctor say?”

But Elizabeth couldn’t think of the doctor, not of his dead eyes or filthy room or the way he touched her. “Just get me home.”

Carrie drove fast to make it happen. She got Elizabeth to the house and onto the porch before something else broke inside and stained the porch like a flood.

“Jesus. Liz.”

But Elizabeth couldn’t speak, watching instead from the bottom of a lake. The water was clear and warm, but getting dark at the edges. She saw fear on her friend’s face, and black waters pushing in.

“What do I do, Liz? What?”

Elizabeth was on her back, everything warm around her. She tried to raise her hand, but couldn’t move at all. She watched her friend pound on the door, then turn and run and spray gravel with the car. The next thing she saw was her father’s face, then lights and movement, then nothing at all.

*

Elizabeth eased up on the gas, watching mile markers slide past as she played it out again: long days in the hospital, the silent months that followed. She blamed herself when the nights got long. For not wanting the baby, for the dead place inside her. How old would the child be had she kept it?

Sixteen, Elizabeth thought.

Two years older than Gideon. Two years younger than Channing.

She wondered if that meant something, if God indeed paid attention, and her father had been right all along. It was doubtful, but why else did she find these children? Why were the connections so immediate and unshakable?

“A psychologist would have a goddamn field day.”

The thought amused her because psychologists ranked about the same as preachers, which meant pretty low. What if she was wrong about that? If she’d gone for therapy as her mother wanted, then maybe she’d have finished college and married. Maybe she’d have a career in real estate or graphic design, live in New York or Paris, and have some fabulous life.

Forget it, she thought. She’d done good work as a cop. She’d made a difference and saved some lives. So what if the future was shapeless? There were other things and other places. She didn’t have to be a cop.