As Billie murmured a thank you, they heard Alice Dean start to cry upstairs. Richard looked up, as if he could see through the ceiling. Sylvie’s voice joined her little sister’s, inquiring, then Bo’s, but Alice Dean’s sobs continued, rising to piercing shrieks.
“Dad!” Bo called. “Dad, hurry!”
He spun and bolted toward their voices. Billie followed.
Alice Dean stood in the hallway in a pink sleeveless nightie, her body rigid, her arms and hands held stiffly out from her sides. Her eyes and mouth were open, the screams coming from her blended into an unbearable siren. Her plastic horse lay at her feet, its legs wrapped in white ribbons or tissues. Beside it, on its side, spilling onto the floor, Billie saw a jar like ones she had seen in trailers at the show at her place and in the barn where she’d worked at Angel Hair Walkers, and in the stall of the filly she stole from the show.
“Mommy,” Alice Dean wailed. “I want Mommy!”
“Call 9-1-1!” Richard shouted. “NOW!”
Bo and Sylvie opened their phones as one, but Richard wrenched Sylvie’s from her hand and hurled it against the wall. “Where did she get it, Sylvie? There isn’t any in the barn, so where did she get it?”
As Bo started to give directions to the operator, Billie thought Richard was going to strike Sylvie. But he unclenched his fists and softened his tone. “Sylvie. I need to know so we can help her. Tell me!”
“My closet.”
Sirens sounded outside. Billie opened the door for the ambulance crew. Red emergency lights strobed the night. Voices, polite but insistent, seemed to be soft and shouting at the same time. She pressed her back against the wall while the response team clustered around Alice Dean and her father, questioning him, trying to soothe the shrieking child.
One of the EMTs called for a chopper to airlift Alice Dean to the hospital in Tucson.
“I want to go too, Dad,” Sylvie cried.
Richard grabbed her arm and dug his fingers in so hard Billie saw the skin turn white. “If you do come,” he said, “you will keep your mouth shut. We have to let them see what did this, but we will not say what it’s used for, understand? It’s just something that was around the house that she got into, okay?”
Sylvie nodded.
“I’ll stay here,” Billie offered, “and feed the horses in the morning before I go home.”
“Good,” Richard said. “Thanks.”
And they were gone.
Alone in the house with Gulliver, Billie washed the dishes she found in the sink. Any feeling of being drunk had left her. She thought of having another glass but decided not to. She turned the television on then off. She stood in the door to Alice Dean’s room, its whitewashed log walls covered in win photos of champion walking horses. Billie stepped closer to look at the legends beneath the photos and saw that each bore the name of Richard’s family—his parents, his wife, Sylvie or Bo, or Richard himself. The biggest, matted in pink and framed in silver was of Alice Dean on a walking horse in a leadline class. Billie couldn’t tell if she had won the class or not, but she could see that the horses in the background were up on stacks and wore chains.
Billie went next to Sylvie’s room, its floor littered with Alice Dean’s toy horses. Billie looked into Sylvie’s closet, a girlish mess of shorts, riding pants, and T-shirts dumped on the floor, the poles laden with frilly bling things.
Behind a rack of shoes and riding boots, Billie found a jumbo baggie lying on its side, spilling bottles, jars, and rags. Fumes stung her eyes and made her throat hurt. She backed away and closed the closet door after her.
She found black plastic trash bags on a shelf in the pantry and rubber gloves under the sink. As she approached the opened jars in the closet, her eyes began to water and she coughed. She pulled on the gloves and checked each bottle and jar, replacing and tightening the lids. Then she stacked them inside one of the trash bags, double bagged it, and tied off the top.
She didn’t know what to do with it. Leave it in the room? Put it back in the closet. Take it outside? Then what? She carried it outside and tossed it into her truck bed then went back inside; she didn’t know what for. Billie stood with her back pressed against the steel refrigerator door. The house was silent. Outside, an owl hooted, hooted again.
Her hands were sweaty inside the gloves. She peeled them off, careful not to touch the outside with her bare skin, using one to remove the other, and dropped them in the sink.
The house phone rang. The machine picked up. She heard a woman ask, “Richard? Sylvie? Bo? Where are y’all? Someone pick up, please?” Then she hung up.
A moment later, Billie heard the lively jingle of Richard’s iPhone coming from somewhere. She found it lying on the bureau in Alice Dean’s bedroom. He must have left it there when he carried her upstairs. It stopped ringing. In a minute, she heard the beep that indicated a voice mail.
She looked at the phone, her mind thick as sludge. Alice Dean’s screams still exploded in her head.
He would need his phone.
She drove to the hospital, parked her truck, and waited in the lobby beside the double glass front doors until she saw Richard approach. He stopped several feet away from her.
“What, Billie?”
“I have your phone.” She held it toward him. “You left it behind. Someone called.”
He took it from her and looked at the screen. “The kids’ mother. I have to tell her.”
“How’s Alice Dean?”
“She burned her face and hands. Chemical burns. She got the juice in her eyes. They don’t know yet.”
“Know what?”
He grabbed her arm and moved
