lost my temper. Nothing for you to worry about. What time are you going over to Jimmy’s?”
“His dad is picking me up in a minute.”
Margaret took a gulp of wine and said, “Are you sure you want to spend the night over there tonight, darling?”
“Yeah. Unless… unless you don’t want me to.”
“I like having my baby under this roof,” Margaret cooed.
“Nonsense,” said McDill. “Go have some fun, son. You’ve been studying too hard this week.”
A car horn sounded outside.
Peter looked uncertain. “I guess that’s them.”
“You’d better run, son. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Peter crossed the room and kissed his mother. Over his shoulder, Margaret glared at McDill.
“We’ll be right here if you need us for anything,” she said. “Just call. We’ll be right here. All night.”
McDill stared dejectedly at his plate. He had lost his appetite.
The Expedition jounced and jumped along rutted ground beneath black trees, Hickey sitting stiff behind the wheel. Karen gripped the handle on the windshield frame, the ice chest cold between her legs. She was terrified that Hickey would wreck the Expedition before they reached Abby. He had let her remove the blindfold after the last turn, but she felt like she was still wearing it. He refused to use the headlights, and with only the running lights on, she was astonished that he could pick his way through the dense trees. Wherever this place was, Hickey must have spent a lot of time here.
“We’re going to meet Huey on this road,” he said. “You and I will walk forward with the ice chest. You will not get emotional. You will not freak out. You hear? You can hug your kid long enough to calm her down. Then you take her blood sugar and give her the shot. After that, one last hug, then we go.”
“I understand.”
“Be sure you do. She’s going to go crazy when you start to leave, but you’d better tough it out. Just like the first day of school. Huey’s told her he’s baby-sitting her for one night. You reinforce that. Tell her everything’s okay, we’re all friends, and you’re going to pick her up in the morning. If you flip out…” Hickey turned to her for an instant, his eyes hard as agates. “If you flip out, I’ll have to hurt you right in front of her. She’ll have nightmares all night. You don’t want that.”
A pair of headlights flashed out of the dark and speared Karen’s retinas. As she threw up her hand to shield her eyes, Hickey stopped the Expedition and blinked the headlights twice. Then he left them on, creating a long tunnel of halogen light that merged with the dimmer headlights pointing at them.
“Come on,” he said, shutting off the engine. “Bring your stuff.”
Karen picked up the ice chest and climbed out. When she got to the front of the Expedition, Hickey grabbed her arm and said, “Start walking.”
Night mist floated through the headlight beams as they walked along them, and the humidity was heavy on Karen’s skin. She was straining for a sight or sound of Abby when a giant form blotted out the other pair of headlights.
The silhouette was about thirty yards away, and it looked like the outline of a grizzly bear. Karen stopped in her tracks, but Hickey pushed her on. Suddenly a squeal cut through the night.
“Mama? Mama!”
Karen rushed forward, stumbling in the ruts, picking herself up, going on. She fell to her knees and embraced the tiny shadow that had emerged from behind the massive one.
“I’m here, honey!” she said, squeezing Abby as tight as she dared and choking back a wave of tears. “Mama’s here, baby!”
Abby keened and cried and screeched all at once. She wanted to speak, but each time she tried, her little chest heaved and caught, and she kept repeating the same syllable over and over.
“Wh-wh-wha-”
Karen kissed her cheeks and nose and forehead and hair. Abby was almost hyperventilating, mucus and tears running down her face, sheer panic in her eyes.
“It’s okay, baby. Take your time. Mama’s here. I can hear you, baby.”
“Wh-why did you leave me here, Mama? Why?”
Karen forced herself to appear calm. She couldn’t let Abby see how terrified she was. “I had to, honey. Daddy and I have an important meeting. One we forgot about. It’s only for grown-ups, but it won’t last long. It’s only for tonight.”
“Are you leaving again?” The confusion in Abby’s eyes was the most wrenching sight Karen had ever seen. Terror of abandonment was something she had known herself, and seeing it in her daughter made her bones ache.
“Not for a while yet,” she said. “Not for a while. We need to check your sugar, baby.”
“Nooooo,” Abby wailed. “I want to go home!”
“Is Mr. Huey being nice to you?” Karen looked fearfully at the huge shadow standing a few yards away.
Abby was too upset to answer.
Karen opened the ice chest and took out the springloaded finger-stick device, which she had already loaded with a needle. Abby halfheartedly fought her, but when Karen took firm hold of her hand, she let her middle finger be immobilized. Karen pressed the tip of the pen to the pad of the finger and popped the trigger. Abby yelped, though the pain was negligible, and Karen wiped off the first drop of blood and forced out another. She wiped that against a paper test strip, which she fed into a small machine containing a microchip. After fifteen seconds, the machine beeped.
“Two hundred and forty. You need your shot, sweetie.”
Karen drew three units of short-acting insulin from one vial, then, using the same syringe, added five units from the long-acting vial. This was more than usual, but she suspected that Abby would sleep little during the night, and would probably be given food of some kind.
“Has Mr. Huey fed you anything, sweetie?”
“Just some crackers.”
“That’s all?”
Abby looked at the ground. “And a peppermint.”
“Abby!”
“I was hungry.”
Karen started to pull up Abby’s jumper to inject the insulin into her stomach, but with Huey standing so near, she decided to inject it right through the material. She pinched up a fold of fat and shot the insulin into it. Abby whimpered softly and locked her arms around Karen’s neck. Karen threw the used syringe into the woods and lifted Abby into her arms. There, on her knees in the dirt, she rocked her daughter back and forth like an infant, singing softly Abby’s favorite childhood rhyme.
The eensy-weensy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
And the eensy-weensy spider climbed up the spout again.
“I love you, punkin,” she murmured. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
She felt Hickey brush past her as he walked forward to speak to Huey.
“Keep singing, Mama,” Abby said.
Karen started the song again, but as she sang, she tuned her ears to the male voices drifting back to her on the night air.
“You doing okay?” Hickey asked.
“Uh-huh,” said a much deeper voice. Deeper but more tentative. “She’s nice.”
Hickey took out a cigarette and lit it. The match flared like a bonfire in the blackness.
“I thought you quit, Joey.”
“Give me a freakin’ break.”
The orange eye of the cigarette waxed and waned like a little moon. Karen knew Hickey was watching her, transfixed in the headlight beams with her child, as vulnerable as a deer under the hunter’s gun. She put her mouth to Abby’s ear.
