I was about to pick up Jane when Eve came in. She stood, her arms behind her back, looking at her shoes. Something about the way she was standing put me on full alert.
“Miss Lily, you remember that day you came to our house and cleaned up?” she asked, as though it had been weeks before.
I stood stock still. I saw myself opening the box on the shelf…
“Wait,” I told her. “I want to talk to you. Wait just one moment.”
The nearest telephone, and the one that was the most private, was the one in the master bedroom across the hall.
I looked through the phone book, found the number of Jack’s motel. Please let him be there, please let him be there…
Mr. Patel connected me to Jack’s room. Jack answered on the second ring.
“Jack, open your briefcase,” I said.
Some assorted sounds over the other end.
“OK, it’s done.”
“The picture of the baby.”
“Summer Dawn? The one that was in the paper?”
“Yes, that one. What is the baby wearing?”
“One of those one-piece things.”
“Jack, what does it look like?”
“Ah, long arms and legs, snaps…”
“What is
“Oh. Little animals, looks like.”
I took a deep, deep breath. “Jack, what kind of animal?”
“Giraffes,” he said, after a long, analytical pause.
“Oh God,” I said, scarcely conscious of what I was saying.
Eve came into the bedroom. She had picked up the baby and brought her with her. I looked at her white face, and I am sure I looked as stricken as I felt.
“Miss Lily,” she said, and her voice was limp and a little sad. “My dad’s at the door. He came to get us.”
“He’s here,” I said into the phone and hung up.
I got on my knees in front of Eve. “What were you going to tell me?” I asked. “I was wrong to go use the phone when you were waiting to talk to me. Tell me now.”
My intensity was making her nervous, I could see, but it wasn’t something I could turn off. At least she knew I was taking her seriously.
“He’s here now, it’s… I have to go home.”
“No, you need to tell me.” I said it as gently as I could, but firmly.
“You’re strong,” she said slowly. Her eyes couldn’t meet mine. “My dad said my mom was weak. But you’re not.”
“I’m strong.” I said it flatly, with as much assurance as I could pack into a statement.
“Maybe… you could tell him me and Jane need to spend the night here, like we were supposed to? So he won’t take us home?”
She’d intended to tell me something else.
I wondered how much time I had before Emory came to find out what was keeping us.
“Why don’t you want to go home?” I asked, as if we had all the time in the world.
“Maybe if he really wanted me to come, Jane could stay here with you?” Eve asked, and suddenly tears were trembling in her eyes. “She’s so little.”
“He won’t get her.”
Eve looked almost giddy with relief.
“You don’t want to go,” I said.
“Please, no,” she whispered.
“Then he won’t get you.”
Telling a father he couldn’t have his kids was not going to go over well. I hoped Jack had found something, or Emory would make that one wrong move.
He’d have to. He’d have to be provoked.
Time to take my gloves off.
“Stay here,” I told Eve. “This may get kind of awful, but I’m not letting anyone take you and Jane out of this house.”
Eve suddenly looked frightened by what she had unleashed, realizing on some level that the monster was out of the closet now, and nothing would make it go back in. She had taken her life, and her sister’s, in her own hands at the ripe old age of eight. I am sure she was wishing she could take back her words, her appeal.
“It’s out of your hands now,” I said. “This is grown-up stuff.”
She looked relieved, and then she did something that sent shivers down my back: She picked up the baby in her carrier and took her to a corner of the bedroom, pulling out the straight-backed chair that blocked it, crouching down behind it with the baby beside her.
“Throw Reverend O’Shea’s bathrobe over the chair,” the little voice suggested. “He won’t find us, maybe.”
I felt my whole body clench. I picked up the blue velour bathrobe that Jess had left lying across the foot of the bed and draped it over the chair.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said and went down the hall to the living room, Anna’s milk-stained clothes still under my arm. I tossed them into the washroom as I passed it. I was trying to keep things as normal as I could. There were children here, in my care.
Emory was standing just inside the front door. He was wearing jeans and a short jacket. He’d pulled his gloves off and stuck them in a pocket. His blond hair was brushed smooth, and he looked as if he’d just shaved. It was like… I hesitated to say this, even to myself.
It was like he was here to pick up his date.
His guileless blue eyes met mine with no hesitation. Luke, Anna, and Krista were playing a video game at the other end of the room.
“Hey, Miss Bard.” He looked a little puzzled. “I sent Eve back to tell you I’d decided the girls should spend the night at home, after all. I’ve imposed on the O’Sheas too much.”
I walked over to the television. I had to turn off the screen before the children would look at me. Krista and Luke were surprised and angry, though they were too well raised to say anything. But Anna somehow knew that something was wrong. She stared at me, her eyes as round as quarters, but she didn’t ask any questions.
“You three go back and play in Krista’s room,” I said. Luke opened his mouth to protest, took a second look at me, and jumped up to run back to his sister’s room. Krista gave me a mutinous glare, but when Anna, casting several backward looks, followed Luke, Krista left too.
Emory had moved closer to the hall leading down to the bedrooms. He was leaning on the mantel, in fact. He’d pulled off his jacket. He was still smiling gently at the children as they passed him. I moved closer.
“The girls are going to stay here tonight,” I said.
His smile began to twitch around the edges. “I can take my children when I want, Miss Bard,” he told me. “I’d thought I needed time alone with my sister to plan the funeral service, but she had to go home to Little Rock tonight, so I want my girls to come home.”
“The girls are going to stay here tonight.”
“Eve!” he bellowed suddenly. “Come out here right now!”
I heard the children in Krista’s room fall silent.
“Stay where you are!” I called, hoping each and every one of them understood I meant it.
“How can you tell me I can’t have my kids?” Emory looked almost tearful, not angry, but there was something in the way he was standing that kept me on the edge of wary.
Truth or dare. “I can tell you that so easy, Emory,” I said. “I know about you.”
Something scary flared in his expression for just a second. “What the heck are you talking about?” he said, permitting himself to show a reasonable anger and disgust. “I came to get my little girls! You can’t keep my little girls if I want them!”
