Counting by 7s(21)

I try to focus everything on this sound.

It makes me think, for just an instant, of the tiny squeak that the little green-rumped parrot baby made when he fell from the nest in our backyard years ago.

I look over at her and see that Mai is crying too.



The police officers, with Dell Duke at their jutting elbows, make phone calls. To the police station. To Social Services. To a dozen different workers and agencies as they look for someone who will tell them what to do.

I don’t listen.

But I hear them.

I cannot count anymore by 7s.

I hear a voice in my head and it says “Make this stop.”

That’s all I know.



Should they take me into something called “protective custody”?

If they can’t locate next of kin, can they turn me over to a family friend?

I have to go to the bathroom, and finally, that feeling is overwhelming.

I take out my house key and give it to Mai, who opens the door.

When I step inside, I feel certain that my mother will be in the kitchen.

My father will be coming around the corner from the garage and he will be wearing my mom’s Peeper glasses.

This has all been a big mistake.

But the house is dark and no one is there.

It is a house now of only ghosts.

It is only a museum of the past.

We

are

d o n e.





Chapter 18





Willow was finally willing to go inside, to use the bathroom.

Mai gave her a cold, wet towel to hold to her face.

The teenage girl then found a paper grocery bag in a drawer in the kitchen. She went down the hall to Willow’s room, where she stood for a moment in the door frame and stared.

It didn’t look like where a twelve-year-old kid would live.

All the walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and they were full. There were more things to read in this room than in some bookstores.

Just above the desk (which had a microscope and an elaborate computer setup) was a bulletin board covered with photographs of plants.

Mai moved to the bed, where red pajamas were folded neatly on an espresso-colored comforter. She stuffed them into the paper bag. Mai turned to leave and that’s when she noticed the top book on the tall stack of reading material sitting on Willow’s night table.

It was open and face-down.

From the position of the spine, Mai could tell that it was almost finished.

She moved closer and she saw that the book was from the Bakersfield public library and it was called Understanding Vietnamese Customs and Traditions.

And that was when Mai knew that Willow was coming with her.



She lied.

She told the police that she’d known Willow for many years, not for only weeks.

She said that her mother would sign any paperwork because the families were very, very close.

Dell Duke didn’t contradict her because Mai was so convincing that he now half believed her story.

Quang-ha, unnerved by the police, had stayed the whole time in Dell’s car. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

So Mai was taken as the authority on the situation.



As Dell pulled his car away, he could see neighbors coming out onto the sidewalk. But Willow, with her eyes closed in the backseat, saw nothing.

Dell drove as slowly as he’d ever maneuvered a vehicle, heading across town to the nail salon with the patrol car behind him.

No one knew it, but they passed through the very intersection where Jimmy and Roberta Chance had been hit.

There was still an official vehicle on the scene, but what was left of the pickup and the box truck had been taken away.

There were four gray coils on the pavement where flares had burned out.

Dell’s car drove straight over the ash.



They swung into the parking lot in front of Happy Polish Nails, and Mai opened the car door immediately. She and Quang-ha seemed to be in a race to get inside the shop.

But Willow didn’t move.

Dell decided to wait with her, but it was killing him.

The real action was obviously going on behind the plate-glass window that had purple sausage-shaped writing, which said: MAN + PED EURO-STYLE SPECIAL!

WALK-INS VERY WELCOME!

Dell read the message at least a dozen times and could make no sense of it.

He had to concentrate.

Not only were two people dead, but there would now be all kinds of official reports filed, and it was going to become pretty darn obvious that Mr. Dell Duke had taken three kids from the school district off school property to have ice cream and French fries and look at geese.

Talk about terrible timing.

There were police involved and social workers already on high alert.

This was a nightmare.

In so many ways.

It was crucial that Dell look professional, which was one of the hardest things for him to do.

He glanced up into the rearview mirror at Willow.

She had her eyes closed, yet tears still oozed out of the corners and ran at intervals down her dark cheeks.

He wished that he could think of something to say that would be comforting to her. He was, after all, a trained counselor.

And so he turned to the backseat and sputtered:

“This is such a big loss.”

He then exhaled and more words dribbled out like applesauce from a baby’s mouth. Just audible lumps: “It’s not much consolation, but you’ll probably never have any loss this big again.”