then for the grand gesture—an American Girl doll (which Tess hated), once a trip to Disney. When Tess and Rain were older, he took them to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert once.
Tess hated her dad a little, but was giddy with excitement when he’d called, or sent her something in the mail. She deflated when afterward he disappeared again. Now, a parent herself, Rain could see how totally messed up it was. But then—it just was. That was Tess’s life. And Rain often found herself wishing that her dad would buy extravagant gifts and take them to concerts and amusement parks—museums and summers overseas didn’t quite cut it. The fact that at least her father was there mostly—when he wasn’t traveling for work, or locked in the attic working, or drifting about, “thinking”—didn’t seem like much at the time.
“I remember thinking on the way to the hospital that the real stuff of parenting is in the details, the day-to-day,” said Sandy. “I felt like a failure for having to work when other women could stay home.”
“You were never a failure.”
But Sandy’s gaze had grown distant. She was back there, and Rain felt a spasm of regret for having opened this door into the past.
“The day is a blur after that,” she said softly. “Until the call came. The rest of that day and night, the week, and the year after, her missing, her found, the funeral, the trial—well, it’s every parent’s nightmare, isn’t it? It’s a tunnel I walked through, kept looking for the light of forgiveness, which I knew was the only way I’d survive it. I remember that I wanted to survive, which is odd. Because—why? Any mother would rather die than face that pain. But there was something alive inside that wanted to stay that way, even without her.”
Lily started to whimper, maybe sensing the change in their mood, their tones. Sandy picked her up and nuzzled her. Predictably, Lily cuddled right up. Sandy reached into a bin under the coffee table and pulled out a small stuffed frog, handed it to Lily, who regarded it seriously.
They sat quiet a moment. Outside somewhere a lawn mower hummed.
“And when Kreskey was released?”
Sandy stroked Lily’s hair.
“Hank came to see me.”
This was news to Rain. She couldn’t imagine Hank coming back here, to this town, to see Sandy. The rage he carried inside, it was a force. It had frightened her when they came to know each other again. She couldn’t be in the same room with it.
“He did?”
“Do you still talk to him?” Sandy asked.
“No,” Rain answered, bowing her head against the complicated rise of feeling. He talked to her endlessly in his letters. But she didn’t talk to him. “He’s so—”
“Broken.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted something that we can never have,” said Sandy.
“What’s that?”
“Justice,” she said.
“But justice was done.”
“Was it?”
“Kreskey is dead,” said Rain. “Someone killed him, the way Tess died, in the same place.”
“Is that justice, Lara?”
Rain didn’t bother to correct her. She would always be Lara to Sandy, to Hank. She’d always be LAH-raine to her father.
Rain was the name she gave herself. It was her survivor’s name.
“Isn’t it?”
“Do you feel better? Does Hank? Did Tess come home? Can I turn back the clock and not go to work that day, take you girls to the mall instead?”
Rain didn’t say anything, just looked around the room, which was the same as it had always been, cozy, safe, a fat Buddha on the coffee table, a Tibetan singing bowl, two papasan chairs, the same velvety couch.
“Justice is a modern concept,” said Sandy. “In ancient cultures, time, life, is a continuum, no beginning, no end.”
“No justice?”
Sandy smiled, patient, loving. “Justice is not for this plane. Punishment, yes. Consequence, certainly. For someone like Kreskey, damaged beyond repair by violence and trauma. How do you break something that’s already broken? How do you repair something that has so many critical pieces missing?”
Lily issued a noise that Rain recognized as a shift in mood.
“How did you feel when he died?” asked Rain.
Lily started to fuss again, and Sandy handed her over. Rain fished through her bag while Sandy sat silent, retrieved her shawl and started to nurse. So much for weaning.
“Sad,” Sandy said finally. “Sad for the horror of his life, that more evil was done. Sad that it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to anyone or anything except to make the world seem a little harsher, uglier than it already was. Violence is never the answer. I believe that with