the muzzle of a fierce gray wolf. He dropped his snout toward her, the white wings of snowy fur splayed out under his eyes, golden irises like new sunlight. She couldn’t hold the gaze. She couldn’t look away.
He snarled, and the reptile slamming her heart into the ground released her but left his venom behind. Her dead heart would never beat again on its own.
Dr. Ransom. Amelia’s tender voice was so very far away.
The wolf sniffed her, and his hot breath was like a cool breeze in hell. And then it opened its mouth wide, and Cat watched as its jaws became unhinged, gaping over her battered head. It closed the final gap between them, and she felt its razor teeth on her jaw, on her temples, as he took her entire head inside of his mouth.
And then it swallowed her whole.
Beth was unprepared for the mystery of what had happened to Garner and Dr. Ransom. She had not anticipated the intensity of God’s healing work, the exhaustion and the exhilaration that ran circles around her mind. She knew she would never be able to adequately explain what had happened to her or to the others in those moments after she placed her hands on them and before she opened her eyes again.
But she was even less prepared for the aftermath.
On the cold floor of the exam room, Dr. Ransom’s body began to quiver. Beth was sitting at her head, hands gently cradling her skull while she prayed for God’s will to be done in this broken life. The convulsing began in Dr. Ransom’s foot, in a spastic ankle that jerked the toe of her shoe against the floor, and then it moved upward through every joint and along every muscle long enough to contort until it reached her head, which she began to knock against the floor so violently that Beth expected the force to break one of her fingers. She entwined them in the doctor’s hair to prevent the woman from cracking her skull.
Then there was the retching, overwhelming and foul and necessary, as purging of any kind always was. Beth was unaffected by the stench, relieved that it had finally happened. And when it was finished, Dr. Ransom opened her eyes, and Beth smiled at her, overcome by the generosity of God.
Cat Ransom looked up into Beth’s upside-down gaze and began to shriek. She took into her lungs all the air that had been denied to her and expelled every last bit of it in endless streams of piercing noise. With unexpected strength, she yanked her head out of Beth’s protective grasp. She fought Beth’s hands and pushed them off her head as if fighting a helmet. Then she created quick distance between them, a gap too far for Beth to bridge with a calming hand or soothing words. The doctor’s noise settled down into a stream of fierce curses.
“You’re not Amelia,” Beth made out between gasps and shouts. “Where’s Amelia, you devil, you dog?”
At first Beth was too stunned to answer, and then she opted not to say anything until Dr. Ransom’s panic subsided on its own. Instead, the disruption mounted. It seemed the doctor’s outburst had roused Garner from his peace in the hallway. There was a confrontation of words between Garner and Trey that Beth couldn’t make out in her corner of the office, where Dr. Ransom’s yells ricocheted around Beth’s head.
When the doctor saw Garner enter the room, her screaming stopped like a car crash, and for a few brief and wonderful seconds, the only sounds were of breathless lungs trying to catch up with the moment. Beth drew in a breath and looked to her grandfather, who was on his feet in the doorway, blocking Trey from entering. The stern gaze he was leveling at her looked so much like her mother’s.
“Garner,” Dr. Ransom said.
Garner didn’t respond to her.
“Who are you?” he said to Beth, and then without giving her a chance to reply, he said: “Where is my daughter?”
37
Cat was a mess, a screaming, hysterical, delusional mess, and Garner’s heart broke with paternal love for her. As he pieced together the emerging stories told by Trey, Dotti, and Nova, who floated onto the scene and took Garner’s hand like a pale ghost, he found the logic to understand what Cat had done.
The sheriff arrived. An ambulance arrived. And the entire town of Burnt Rock came out to see what the trouble was all about.
Garner refused to press charges against Catherine. He