The Lost Village(76)

I know what he’s thinking; not so much because I see it on his face as that the same thought hits me simultaneously. But everything in me balks at the idea. I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “No.”

“What?” Robert asks.

“Robert…” Max begins, and I see him falter at the thought himself, then try to swallow it down. But he goes on anyway.

“We looked at … at Emmy.”

How much time has passed? How long has Tone been out there for?

Forty minutes? One hour?

How can it be that Emmy was alive an hour ago but not anymore?

“We were going to cover her with something, a sheet, and when we were adjusting her we saw she—she had bruises. On her neck. They looked like handprints.”

Robert’s eyes look like black-and-white marbles. In the light of the window, his pupils are no more than pinpricks.

“Someone must have done it while we were trying to get upstairs,” Max goes on.

“Tone…” He licks his lips and goes quiet.

I shake my head, tossing it from side to side like a defiant child.

“No,” I say.

Robert turns to me. His eyes are blazing, but I can’t tell if it’s from grief or rage. Maybe even hate.

“You,” he says, swinging that single syllable like a weapon. “You said she wasn’t violent, that we had to come and get her, that she was sick. She…” His voice sticks. “… she wanted to stay there, where it was safe. But you forced us here anyway. To save her.” He nods at the window, out at the being that was Tone.

Then he looks straight at me. His eyes are wide, vast and bottomless.

“And now she’s lying out there,” he whispers. “She’s out there lying on the floor, and she’s dead.”

His eyes narrow and focus on me again. The impact of his rage feels like I’ve stuck my hand in an open flame.

“Don’t try to defend her again,” he says, biting off each word. “Don’t say that again, don’t tell me she isn’t violent. Don’t. Tell. Me.”

I stand completely still. The air prickles against my skin. I think he’s about to fly at me. Hit me, kick me. Hurt me.

As though he hears what I’m thinking, he turns abruptly and walks out the door.

Max and I are left alone. He doesn’t look at me, but stares out of the window as though hypnotized.

My hands are shaking. I want to sit down, but I can’t persuade my knees to obey me.

It’s all falling apart.

I want to try to do what she would have done, but how? How do I even start to come to grips with this? What do rationality and pragmatism help when the world is turning itself inside out, and none of the old rules still apply?

“We should probably go after him,” says Max, and I look up.

“What?”

“If he goes after Tone now, I don’t know what he might do,” Max says. His lips are pale and his face is flat.

“Oh God,” I say, and start running to the doors, feeling a stab in my back every time my feet hit the floor.

I throw open the doors.

There he is, sitting by Emmy’s body, kneeling as though in prayer. His head is bowed.

He has covered her in the sheet we left beside her, and she looks so small under the white, no more than a silhouette. The only thing not covered is her small, thin hand, with its short fingers and bitten-down nails. Both of his hands are clasped around it in a tender, delicate hold, as though not wishing to hurt it.

He doesn’t look up straightaway. It takes him a few seconds to come back to us.

Then he puts her hand down, slowly and carefully, and pulls the sheet over it.





NOW



As we round the school toward the road, it takes me a few seconds to orient myself: I’ve only seen the houses from above, and I’m not completely sure which one she’s hiding behind.

“There,” says Max behind me. He isn’t speaking quietly enough. She could hear him and get scared.

“I can’t see anyone,” I whisper to him. It’s a little red house he’s pointing at, one with a black roof and black trim.

“She could have moved,” he says. “Maybe she heard us coming.”

He takes a few slow steps forward, but I grab his arm.

“Wait,” I say, then turn to look at Robert.

“I won’t hurt her,” he says.

His face has lost something of its flatness—deadness—but I’m still not sure I can believe him.

I go first. I don’t want to let him take the lead. No matter what happens, I want my face to be the first one she sees. Perhaps that could calm her, somehow.

I make straight for the front of the house, then creep toward the corner, keeping close to the peeling red clapboard. I stop at the corner, the blood pumping in my ears.

I step out.

She isn’t here.

The narrow, cobbled passageway between the houses is completely empty. There’s nothing there but shadows and heather.

But then I see a flash of movement at the corner ahead of me.

“Tone!” I say, taking a few steps forward. “Tone, it’s me. Alice.”

It’s too fraught, too loud. The little glimpse I caught of her instantly disappears.