circled around again. The great black face of its engine roars out of nowhere, blotting out the scene before me: people, grass, trees, and sky. In the last instant before impact, searing images pass behind my eyes: the New Orleans murder victims, naked and mutilated; Nathan Malik lying dead in a motel bathtub, a human skull in his lap; Ann sprawled on the floor of the clinic with two skull-and-crossbones symbols drawn on her abdomen, her stuffed turtle beside her. But nowhere do I see my father’s face. I try to summon it, but all that appears is a necklace of ears, a sculpture of a hanged man, photographs of naked children, and two black shadows fighting above me in the dark.
And then I see nothing at all.
Chapter 53
I’m running.
Harder and faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Tree trunks flash past the way they used to when I rode horses on the island, but it’s only my legs hurling me forward, my feet flying from something too terrible to face.
No! I want to turn back time. Push back the days to the point before I began asking questions-questions to which I thought I wanted answers.
Now I know better.
Michael Wells’s house appears between the distant trees. The sight of it brings a strange feeling of hope, the way a thief might feel sighting a church, his sole chance at sanctuary. I sprint harder, and soon the shining blue rectangle of the Hemmeters’ swimming pool appears. But the Hemmeters’ are gone now. The pool, like the house, belongs to Michael. Too many changes…
I stumble down to the concrete patio that surrounds the pool, my eyes plumbing its blue depths. Part of me wants only to slip beneath the surface, to lie on the bottom and hold my breath while my heartbeats get further and further apart, stretching into ever increasing increments of time, eventually reaching infinity. But that’s not the way it happens. Deprived of oxygen, the heart will eventually beat harder and faster, struggling to feed the starving tissues until at last it squirms frantically and uselessly in the chest. I would kick to the surface then. Not even a death wish can suppress instinct honed over millions of years. That takes coercion. Or a suicide method from which there is no turning back. Like intravenous morphine. That probably plunged Ann into blissful sleep so fast that any second thoughts quickly faded into oblivion. But I doubt she’d have turned back, even if she could.
In some people, the pain of living minute to minute simply grows so acute that they can finally stand to look into the face of death without blinking-even look at death as a friend-and cross that river Dr. Malik talked about without a backward glance. For me, even though I’ve crawled right up to the black rim of suicide, pain has always been preferable to the void.
There’s a light on in Michael’s house. That alone draws me past the pool and up to the French doors at the back of the house. Suddenly I’m banging on the glass, banging hard, and the pain shooting up to my elbow doesn’t stop me, but only reminds me that I’m alive. I see movement inside, and then Michael is hurrying to the door, his face all concern. Before he can speak, I throw my arms around his neck, stand on tiptoe, and hug him as tightly as I can.
“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” he asks. “What happened? Did you and your mother have an argument?”
I want to answer, but my chest is heaving against him in great racking sobs that make my whole body shudder.
“Calm down,” Michael says, stroking my hair. “Whatever it is, we can deal with it.”
I shake my head violently, staring at him through a screen of tears.
“You’ve got to tell me what happened, Cat.”
This time my mouth forms the words, but again no sound emerges. Then, like a distraught child, I manage to stammer out the truth. Michael’s eyes go wide for an instant, but then he pulls me tight against him. “Your grandfather told you that?”
I nod into his chest.
“Did he give you any proof?”
I shake my head. “But I feel it…the minute he said it, I felt I’d finally heard the truth. Only…”
“What?” asks Michael.
“I was eight years old. Could I really have shot my father?”
Michael sighs with deep sadness. “When I moved back to Natchez, it was autumn. And one of the first things that struck me was all the pictures in the newspaper of seven- and eight-year-olds who’d shot their first deer.”
I close my eyes in desolation.
“I thought about the possibility yesterday,” he says. “I told you that if it was your father who had molested you, it could have been Pearlie or your mother who shot him. But, yes…it could have been you. Patricide is certainly the most convincing scenario for your retreat into silence.”
“If that is what happened,” Michael says, “if you did shoot your father, it was a clear act of self-preservation. If an eight-year-old girl was driven to the point where she had to shoot her father, no one in the world would question the rightness of her actions.”
I hear Michael’s words but they have no effect. Words cannot penetrate the wounded region of my soul. He seems to sense this. Keeping one arm tight around me, he leads me to the master bedroom, pulls back the covers, and sits me on the edge of the bed. He kneels and removes my shoes, then stretches me out on the bed and pulls the covers up to my neck.
“Don’t move from this spot. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He vanishes, leaving me in the cool, dry darkness of his airconditioned bedroom. I feel strangely at home here. Mr. and Mrs. Hemmeter slept in this room for more than thirty years. They loved me like a daughter, and something of their spirits must remain.
Michael reappears beside the bed, a glass of water in his hand.
“This is a Lorcet Plus. It’ll take the edge off.”
I take the white pill from his hand and pop it into my mouth, but as the glass touches my lips, I realize I’m making a terrible mistake. I spit out the pill and put it on the bedside table.
“What’s the matter?” Michael asks.
“I can’t take this.”
“Are you allergic to hydrocodone?”
I look up into his concerned eyes, wishing I didn’t have to tell him the truth. Why has he done all this for me? He’s disrupted his entire life to help me. There’s got to be a reason for that. But I can’t lie to him anymore. Not even by omission.
“I’m pregnant,” I tell him, my eyes never leaving his.
He doesn’t flinch the way my mother did when I mentioned my father’s mistress, but something changes behind his eyes. The warmth slowly dissipates into a cool and wary look.
“Who’s the father? The married detective?”
“Yes.”
He stares silently at me for a few moments. “I’ll make you some tea instead,” he says awkwardly. “Decaf.” He turns and walks quickly to the door.
“Michael, wait!”
He turns and looks back, his face pale, his eyes confused.
“I didn’t want this,” I tell him. “It wasn’t planned or anything. But I’m not going to terminate it. I should have told you before now, I guess, but I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think badly of me. But now…with everything else you know, it’s absurd to hold anything back.” My next words take more courage than swimming into
