A patient of mine was a foster child here; she’s made claims that no one believes—shocking stories of starvation, children locked in rooms for days, physical and psychological torture. There have been investigations that turned up no evidence. The girl, a damaged young thing, has a reputation as a pathological liar. She has a rap sheet of petty crimes—shoplifting, possession of marijuana, attempted prostitution. But I know the look of trauma. She’s broken. The question is—who broke her? And can he (or she—yeah, sometimes) be stopped from breaking others?
As I make my way through the woods, I hear her shuffling footsteps behind me.
“It’s just an excuse,” Tess says. “He’s aching to do it again. And I don’t think you can contain him.”
Maybe she’s right.
TWENTY-FOUR
Gillian waved from the doorway, a slim figure in a rectangle of light. Lily was already asleep, Rain having nursed her and put her to bed. She was a sound sleeper. If Auntie Gillian didn’t go in there too often, checking and poking around as she was prone to do, Lily would sleep through the night.
They hadn’t even pulled off their street before Rain was checking the app. Lily lay on her back, arms ups, head to the side, mouth agape. The sleep of the innocent, deep and peaceful.
“You’re not checking the app already,” said Greg, looking over. At the stop sign, he took the phone and stared at the baby a moment, then at her.
“Sorry,” she said.
Date-night rules: don’t just talk about the baby. Don’t compulsively check the monitor. Don’t succumb to the constant fatigue and go home early. Devices on Do Not Disturb except for Gillian’s number. No social media posting.
“What did our parents do?” asked Greg. “They didn’t have any tech, not like there is today.”
“I guess they just did what they did,” she said. “Figured if there was an emergency someone would call.”
What if her parents had had that tech? Maybe she, Tess and Hank would all be raising their children together in the same town, like so many of the people she knew. She saw their posts on Facebook, kids going to the same schools as their parents, same community fairs and soccer games. Mini versions of the people she knew, playing in the same parks, visiting the cider mill in fall, the sheep-shearing festival in spring. Maybe Tess would have married Hank, on whom she’d had a lifelong crush. Maybe Hank would have stopped staring at Rain and noticed Tess one day.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Greg, resting a hand on her leg.
“Nothing,” she said, looking at him, trying for a smile. “Just zoning out.”
“So, how’s the story coming?” he asked. “Did you hear from Andrew?”
The space between them was still tingling, charged with the energy of his worry, his anger about the letters, her guarding of this thing she wanted to do, maybe for the wrong reasons, her guilt about Lily, the visit from the FBI, her sins of omission. He hadn’t brought up the letters again, though they were fluttering in the air. What was there to talk about, really? She’d lied or omitted something important. She hadn’t made excuses or even really apologized. He was angry, confused—of course he was. She didn’t know how to make things right. She’d been able to explain it to Gillian, but she wasn’t sure Greg would understand.
She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the best date night they’d ever had.
In fact, sometimes date night just turned into fight night, the only place they had that wasn’t sucked up by work or parenting. So everything they held inside came out in a rush; they’d wind up parked somewhere screaming at each other.
Sometimes they wound up parked somewhere—at the overlook, once in the parking lot of the closed library—and fucked in the back seat—raw, desperate, tawdry. Then, laughing at themselves, they’d grab fast food, or go to a bar and have a couple of drinks. Once they took an Uber home. Thank god Gillian had been there to wake up with the baby.
“He’s pitching it next week,” she said. “I’m taking it slow until then.”
It was a half-truth. She wasn’t taking it slow. She’d connected with Henry, reached out to an old colleague who’d started a very successful podcast. She’d purchased a few URLs—rainwinter, winterstories, murrayandwinter and a few others. She’d created a timeline, compiled a list of people she wanted to interview. All of this in down moments while Lily slept, or was occupied with her toys, eating in her