She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,229

when she realized what she had done, she released me and squirmed back into the corner of the shower. She got as far from me as she could, pressing tight against the tile. She looked childlike, frail. Frightened and broken.

Without looking up, I said to Cammie, “There’s a basket of fruit on the table out there. I saw it when we came in. Can you get it for me?”

“Are you serious?”

“Please.”

Cammie rolled her eyes, shrugged, and went back to the bunk room. She returned a moment later with the basket. “I don’t think she’s hungry.”

I sat the basket down on the floor beside me and took a large, red apple from the top of the pile. I held it out to Stella. “Take this.”

Stella looked out from behind her arm. She reached out tentatively with her right hand, her quivering fingers wrapping around the apple. Her thumb and index finger passed right through the plump fruit and met as if it weren’t even there—the red skin and yellow flesh beneath turned black and crumbled away, the core withered and her fist closed in the space where the apple had been seconds earlier, the entire thing dropping to the tile floor in a pulpy mess.

“Holy shit,” Cammie breathed.

I handed Stella a banana. It also crumbled away with her touch—drying, rotting, all life leaving the fruit in an instant.

I gave her an orange after that.

Another apple.

Half the bowl was gone before Stella’s erratic breathing began to slow and even out. When I handed her what was probably the sixth or seventh apple, the fruit still died, but it took nearly twenty seconds.

“Better,” Stella said softly.

I glanced at Cammie, still hovering over my shoulder. “Can you give us a minute?”

“We need to tie her up. Like Hobson.”

“We’re not tying her up. Not her.”

Cammie sighed and stomped out of the bathroom.

I turned off the shower, helped Stella stand, and wrapped a fluffy, white towel around her.

“Thank you, Pip. Thank you for being you.”

I lowered my voice. “Somebody back at my father’s house called Charter.” We hadn’t been alone. This was the first chance I had to tell her. The first time in days she was coherent enough to understand.

“What?”

“That’s not the worst of it.” I told her how Fogel had dialed back, what she said. How I had been in the woodshed with my father and had no idea who placed the call to Charter. “It could be any of them.”

“Hobson was tied up, right? Your father, too. That only leaves Cammie and that Preacher fellow.”

Stella looked around the room, seemingly for the first time. “Where are we now?”

“You don’t remember leaving Whidbey?”

She shook her head.

I told her about the second call from my father’s lookout. His seaplane. The drive from Devil’s Lake back to Pittsburgh.

She took all this in. “What is today’s date?”

“August 13.”

Her mouth fell open. “Five days,” she said softly. “I’ve never gone five days.”

Although the fruit had helped, Stella was still horribly pale. Her eyes were sunken and red. When her legs became wobbly, I grabbed her with the towel and held her up.

“I shouldn’t be near the others,” she said in a quiet voice. “Can you bring one of the cots in here?”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “It will be safer.”

Using the towel as a buffer, I helped her to an aluminum bench so she could sit. “Wait here.”

I went back out to the bunk room and grabbed her duffle bag, one of the cots, and a thick comforter I found folded up on top of one of the other cots. My father was awake now. They all watched me but said nothing.

I set up the cot in a small alcove behind some lockers.

Stella’s legs were weak. I worried they might buckle with each step, but I got her there.

She peeled off her wet clothes, dropped them in a pile on the floor, and put on a long-sleeve black dress I found in her duffle.

I had picked up her black gloves, both dripping wet. When I gave them to her, she wrinkled her nose. “These are disgusting. I need to wash them properly.”

The box of latex gloves was on the floor back at the shower. I retrieved it and handed her a pair. “Here. They’re not stylish, but at least they’re dry.”

She put them on, then climbed back into the cot, tugging the comforter over herself. “All will be over soon, Pip.”

Stella fell asleep then, and for that moment at least, she seemed at peace.

I washed her black gloves in