Sole Survivor

“So maybe Nina is a false name.”

He felt slapped. He didn’t reply.

“Maybe the child who came to this house that night is really named Sarah or Mary or Jennifer…”

“No,” Joe said firmly.

“Just like Rachel Thomas is a false name.”

“If the child wasn’t Nina, what an amazing coincidence it would be for Rose to pluck my daughter’s name out of thin air. Talk about billion-to-one odds!”

“That plane could have been carrying more than one little blond girl going on five.”

“Both of them named Nina? Jesus, Barbara.”

“If there were survivors, and if one of them was a little blond girl,” Barbara said, “you’ve at least got to prepare yourself for the possibility that she wasn’t Nina.”

“I know,” he said, but he was angry with her for forcing him to say it. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m worried for you, Joe.”

“Thank you,” he said sarcastically.

“Your soul’s broken.”

“I’m okay.”

“You could fall apart so easy.”

He shrugged.

“No,” she said. “Look at yourself.”

“I’m better than I was.”

“She might not be Nina.”

“She might not be Nina,” he admitted, hating Barbara for this relentless insistence, even though he knew that she was genuinely concerned for him, that she was prescribing this pill of reality as a vaccine against the total collapse that he might experience if his hopes, in the end, were not realized. “I’m ready to face that she might turn out not to be Nina. Okay? Feel better? I can handle it if that’s the case.”

“You say it, but it’s not true.”

He glared at her. “It is true.”

“Maybe a tiny piece of your heart knows she might not be Nina, a thin fiber, but the rest of your heart is right now pounding, racing with the conviction that she is.”

He could feel his own eyes shining with — stinging with — the delirious expectation of a miraculous reunion.

Her eyes, however, were full of a sadness that infuriated him so much he was nearly capable of striking her.

* * *

Mercy making peanut-butter dough balls. A new curiosity — and wariness — in her eyes. Having seen, through the window, the emotional quality of the discussion on the porch. Perhaps catching a few words through the glass, even without attempting to eavesdrop.

Nevertheless, she was a Samaritan, with Jesus and Andrew and Simon Peter marking the month of August as a reminder for her, and she still wanted to do her best to help.

“No, actually, the girl never said her name. Rachel introduced her. The poor child never spoke two words. She was so tired, you see, so sleepy. And maybe in shock a little from the car rolling over. Not hurt, mind you. Not a mark on her. But her little face was as white and shiny as candle wax. Heavy-eyed and not really with us. Half in a sort of trance. I worried about her, but Rachel said she was okay, and Rachel was a doctor, after all, so then I didn’t worry about it that much. The little doll slept in the car all the way to Pueblo.”

Mercy rolled a ball of dough between her palms. She put the pale sphere on a baking sheet and flattened it slightly with the gentle pressure of her thumb.

“Rachel had been to Colorado Springs to visit family for the weekend, and she’d taken Nina with her because Nina’s dad and mom were on an anniversary cruise. At least that’s how I understood it.” Mercy began to fill a brown paper lunch bag with the cooled cookies that were stacked on the platter.

“Not the usual thing — I mean, a black doctor and a white doctor in practice together in these parts, and not usual, either, to see a black woman with a white child around here. But I take all that to mean the world’s getting to be a better place at last, more tolerant, more loving.”

She folded the top of the bag twice and handed it to Barbara.

“Thank you, Mercy.”

To Joe, Mercy Ealing said, “I’m sure sorry I couldn’t be more help to you.”

“You’ve been a lot of help,” he assured her. He smiled. “And there’s cookies.”

She looked toward the kitchen window that was on the side of the house rather than on the back of it. One of the stables was visible through the pall of rain.

She said, “A good cookie does lift the spirit, doesn’t it? But I sure wish I could do more than make cookies for Jeff today. He dearly loves that mare.”

Glancing at the calendar with the religious theme, Joe said, “How do you hold on to your faith, Mercy? How in a world with so much death, planes falling out of the sky and favorite mares being taken for no reason?”

She didn’t seem surprised or offended by the question. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard, isn’t it? I used to be so angry that we couldn’t have kids. I was working at some record for miscarriages, and then I just gave up. You want to scream at the sky sometimes. And there’s nights you lie awake. But then I think…well, this life has its joys too. And, anyway, it’s nothing but a place we have to pass through on our way to somewhere better. If we live forever, it doesn’t matter so much what happens to us here.”

Joe had been hoping for a more interesting answer. Insightful. Penetrating. Homespun wisdom. Something he could believe.

He said, “The mare will matter to Jeff. And it matters to you because it matters so much to him.”

Picking up another lump of dough, rolling it into a pale moon, a tiny planet, she smiled and said, “Oh, if I understood it, Joe, then I wouldn’t be me. I’d be God. And that’s a job I sure wouldn’t want.”

“How so?”

“It’s got to be even sadder than our end of things, don’t you think? He knows our potential but has to watch us forever falling short, all the cruel things we do to one another, the hatred and the lies, the envy and greed and the endless coveting. We see only the ugliness people do to those around us, but He sees it all. The seat He’s in has a sadder view than ours.”

She put the ball of dough on the cookie sheet and impressed upon it the mark of her thumb: a moment of pleasure waiting to be baked, to be eaten, to lift the spirit.

* * *

The veterinarian’s Jeep station wagon was still in the driveway, parked in front of the Explorer. A Weimaraner was lying in the back of the vehicle. As Joe and Barbara climbed into the Ford and slammed the doors, the dog raised its noble silver-gray head and stared at them through the rear window of the Jeep.

By the time that Barbara slipped the key into the ignition and started the Explorer, the humid air was filled with the aromas of oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies and damp denim. The windshield quickly clouded with the condensation of their breath.

“If it’s Nina, your Nina,” Barbara said, waiting for the air conditioner to clear the glass, “then where has she been for this whole year?”

“With Rose Tucker somewhere.”

“And why would Rose keep your daughter from you? Why such awful cruelty?”

“It’s not cruelty. You hit on the answer yourself, out there on the back porch.”

“Why do I suspect the only time you listen to me is when I’m full of shit?”

Joe said, “Somehow, since Nina survived with Rose, survived because of Rose, now Rose’s enemies will want Nina too. If Nina had been sent home to me, she’d have been a target. Rose is just keeping her safe.”

The pearly condensation retreated toward the edges of the windshield.

Barbara switched on the wipers.