“No. Because I’m not God,” he says. “I’m just a man.” He moves closer, taking up the whole of my vision, forcing eye contact, and his closeness activates a flight response in me, makes my mouth dry, my lips and fingertips numb. There’s a vise around my heart and my heart flutters frantically against it. “Tell me what it is that you want from us.”
“I want the truth.”
“I’ve given you the truth and you reject it.”
“I want my sist—”
The sound of that voice. The sound of her voice. That small, broken girl clawing against the wall inside me, but now the wall’s gone and I feel its absence and a flood of need in its wake. I want my sister, the girl whispers in me and the words try to slip from my mouth whole. I bite down. I want my sister. It’s louder than Jeremy’s voice still echoing in my head. His last plea blurs into her sorry refrain until they form a whole new want: Find her.
“Lo.”
The gentleness of Lev’s voice makes me flinch but there’s something else—my name. The way “Gloria” sounded on his lips earlier, as though he’d never said it before and how effortlessly “Lo” falls from them now. The thought of being spoken about between him and Bea hardens something inside me enough for my anger to rise above all my want.
“Didn’t Casey tell you? It’s not Paul’s story anymore. It’s mine.”
“Is it?” he asks.
“Yeah. Starts with a half-dead kid in a hospital. All she’s got left in the world is her big sister until The Unity Project takes her away,” I say. “I remember every single call with Casey, every door she slammed in my face, all the times she told me Bea wanted nothing to do with me. What would people think of that? How you treated a child? A broken, orphaned kid—” My voice splinters. “And now Jeremy. He joins The Unity Project, shuts his dad out and jumps in front of a train. I think you’re poison. I think the world needs to know.”
Lev doesn’t respond.
“And if all that doesn’t get everybody’s attention, maybe this will.” I gesture between us. “Lev Warren’s first meeting with the press since 2011.”
I turn and step into the hall just as the little girl runs up the porch steps, giggling, Foster trailing behind her. She stops in her tracks when she sees me and watches me carefully through the screen, her face obscured by mesh.
The floor creaks quietly behind me.
“There’s so much you don’t understand,” Lev says at my back.
“If The Unity Project doesn’t want this story getting out,” I say without turning around, “then Bea needs to tell me a different one and she needs to tell it to my face.”
PART TWO
2012
To give the gift of atonement, Bea must first be redeemed.
To be redeemed, Bea must let go of all she knows she is.
She presses the phone to her ear, trembling, while she waits for an answer. She takes in the serene winter scene outside the window before her. Her eyes follow a beautiful blue sky down to the tops of the snow-dusted pine trees that stretch across the perimeter of the property, and, beyond them—though she can’t see it—the lake, shimmering, she knows, with light.
The water will be cold.
But first, this.
Patty picks up.
Bea asks for Lo.
She took her meds a little while ago. She’s in no state to talk.
Bea insists. A series of sounds follow. Patty’s voice again, gentler than Bea’s ever heard it, encouraging Lo to open her eyes: That’s a girl, you’re fine … the soft sounds of Lo surfacing, the clumsy transfer of the phone from Patty to Lo’s weak grip and finally, her sister’s voice in her ear, thick as molasses: Hello?
When Bea says, Hey, Lo, Lo replies, Mom?
The silence that follows is painful, but much less painful than it would be if Lo were more aware. It’s better this way, Bea tells herself. Better to have Lo blunt at the edges and open instead of angry and closed off, blaming her for things so far out of her control.
Bea. Lo corrects herself. Is it really you?
She ignores the pang of guilt the question inspires and asks one of her own. She wants to know how Lo is feeling. Lo’s answer is slow to travel the distance from her head to her mouth to Bea’s ear: Tired. She’s so tired. Healing is exhausting work.