just thinking about her this morning. Remember that shirt she used to wear? The one with the green stripes?”
Lena nodded.
“She still had it.”
“No,” Lena said, surprised. They had fought over that shirt during high school until Hank had settled it with a coin toss. “Why did she keep it?”
“It was hers,” Hank said.
Lena stared at her uncle, not sure what to say.
He stood up, taking a mug from the cabinet. “You want some time to yourself, or do you want me around?”
Lena considered his question. She needed to be alone, to get some sense of herself back, and she could not do that around Hank of all people. “Are you going back to Reece?”
“I thought I’d stay at Nan’s tonight and help her sort through some things.”
Lena felt a slight panic. “She’s not throwing things away, is she?”
“No, of course not. She’s just going through things, getting her clothes together.” Hank leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. “She shouldn’t have to do that alone.”
Lena stared at her hands. There was something under her fingernails. She couldn’t tell if it was dirt or blood. She put her finger in her mouth, using her bottom teeth to clean it.
Hank watched this. He said, “You could come by later if you felt like it.”
Lena shook her head, biting the nail. She would tear it off to the quick before she let the blood stay there. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow,” she lied.
“But if you change your mind?”
“Maybe,” she mumbled around her finger. She tasted blood, surprised to see that it was her own. The cuticle had come away on the nail. A bright red dot radiated from the spot.
Hank stood, staring, then grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. They had been through this kind of thing before, though admittedly never on this scale. It was an old, familiar dance, and they both knew the moves. Hank took one step forward, Lena took two steps back. Now wasn’t the time to change any of this.
He said, “You can call me if you need me. You know that, right?”
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, pressing her lips together. She was going to cry again, and Lena thought that a part of her would die if she broke down in front of Hank again.
He seemed to sense this because he put his hand on her shoulder, then kissed the top of her head.
Lena kept her head down, waiting for the click as the front door closed. She gave a long sigh as Hank’s car backed out of the driveway.
The kettle was steaming, but the whistle had not started yet. Lena did not particularly like tea, but she rummaged around in the cabinets anyway, looking for the bags. She found a box of Tummy Mint just as a knock came at the back door.
She expected to see Hank, so Lena was surprised when she opened the door.
“Oh, hi,” she said, rubbing her ear as a shrill noise came. She realized the teakettle was whistling and said, “Hold on a second.”
She was turning off the burner when she felt a presence behind her, then a sharp sting came to her left thigh.
17
Sara stood in front of the body of Julia Matthews with her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the girl, trying to assess her with a clinical eye, trying to separate the girl whose life Sara had saved from the dead woman on the table. The incision Sara had made to access Julia’s heart was not yet healed, the black sutures still thick with dried blood. A small hole was at the base of the woman’s chin. Burns around the entrance wound revealed the barrel of the gun was pressed into the chin when it was fired. A gaping hole at the back of the girl’s head revealed the exit wound. Bone hung from the open skull, like macabre ornaments on a bloody Christmas tree. The smell of gunpowder was in the air.
Julia Matthews’s body lay on the porcelain autopsy table much as Sibyl Adams’s had a few days ago. At the head of the table was a faucet with a black rubber hose attached. Hanging over this was an organ scale much like the scales grocers use to weigh fruit and vegetables. Beside the table were the tools of autopsy: a scalpel, a sixteen-inch-long surgically sharpened bread knife, a pair of equally sharpened scissors, a pair of forceps, or “pickups,” a Stryker saw to cut bone, and a set