in her fingertips a month ago when she first carved away the dirt around it. The bliss of spotting that maroon edge, the shock that she hadn’t noticed it until this second, the ridiculous passing conviction that it had just sprung into existence. She felt the slightest sensation of heightened gravity at that moment; even now she could sometimes almost feel it, an extra heaviness tugging at her in the Pit.
Before calling Shaina, she had picked up the Bible, brushed it off.
To open it to this first page. To skim the familiar language. To crash into the new pronoun.
The divine pronoun.
13
Her eyes were still fixed on the coffee table when she heard Viv coming down the hallway behind her, that combined resoluteness and lightness of her footsteps. While she was pregnant with Viv she had imagined having a baby, but she had never imagined having a child: a child who could be a sidekick, a helpmate, a collaborator; who could follow complicated instructions. Who could fetch a weapon.
She shifted Ben to her left arm and reached back for the bat with her right, desperate to make contact with it, not yet thinking of the thing she would have to do with it once she had it in hand.
Viv, misunderstanding, grabbed her mother’s hand and gave it a squeeze. There was something so grown-up about the gesture, so fortifying, that Molly’s eyes dampened, tenderness flaming up in her alongside the panic. The panic increased by the tenderness. She had to make sure nothing horrific happened to this child or her brother within the next sixty or thirty or five seconds. Her milk came down.
“The bat,” she commanded in a whisper, pulling her hand out of Viv’s, waggling her fingers with impatience, her eyes always on the lid of the coffee table.
“Okay,” Viv whispered, placing something soft and leathery in Molly’s palm.
It was the stuffed animal that Aunt Norma had given Viv last Halloween: a bat.
14
She was relieved that this particular tour group happened to include more smilers-and-nodders than usual. During the Q and A following the tour, back outside under the awning, they asked all the expected questions.
She was responding to the one about carbon dating (no, couldn’t be used to date the fossils, since they were too old; no, couldn’t be used to ascertain the authenticity of the artifacts, since they were too recent, with the exception of the potsherd, but since no organic material had been found in its vicinity, carbon dating wasn’t an option) when it struck her that she was supposed to have watered her aunt Norma’s plants days ago. She had intended to go over with the kids on Sunday night, but then David had gotten the call about the Argentina gig. Norma was particular about her plants, and her plants were particular too. Probably dead by now. Molly was wondering whether she’d have time to swing by Norma’s after work (Norma’s key was on her key chain, wasn’t it?) as she called on the middle-aged man sitting in the first row of chairs with two of the kids on his lap, his hand raised high.
“Excuse me,” he said, more loudly than necessary, “but you seem like a nice lady.”
Molly immediately came to, alert. Anxious.
“I see that you’re wearing a wedding ring,” he continued.
She nodded reflexively, then clasped her hands behind her back, her fingers damp.
“Do you have any children?” he said.
She paused—Wasn’t it a violation of their privacy for this random man to know about them? But what was the harm in his simply knowing that she was a mother?—before nodding.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. That’s great. Congratulations.”
Was it only she who felt the almost unbearable tension, some threat muting the midday noise of highway and birds, something perhaps about to take place in this desolate field? Or were the people on the tour also staring at the man, uncertain, apprehensive, maybe even protective of her, their guide?
Twin droplets of milk emerged from her nipples, dampening her bra ever so slightly.
“Do you mind,” the man said, “if my kids and I pray for your soul?”
15
Molly threw the bat on the floor.
“You hurt Batty,” Viv said, stricken.
She grabbed Viv’s hand and started pulling her down the hallway, back toward the closet, so she could get the baseball bat and guard the children at the same time.
Viv resisted her, bare feet planted on the wooden floorboards, her skin squeaking with each of her mother’s yanks.
“You come with me right this second,” Molly scream-whispered.
“But there’s a deer in