part and lives in a character’s skin. Fiction becomes truth while she’s onstage.
Mallory has always had interesting notions of fiction and truth.
In that tiny clinic room, an image came to mind as the nurse adjusted the bandage: Mallory in a doctor’s office, a bruise on her arm, tearfully clutching the card and nodding, yes, yes, she should call.
Not that I ever touched her in anger—if I didn’t trust myself, I would walk out to the porch—but I realized then I’d have to be twice as careful. Even if that meant she clawed my face to ribbons with her nails, I would have to let her without raising a finger in my own physical defense, or risk losing everything.
I scrub my face dry on a crusty towel, and then I hear something in the kitchen. The phone?
Mallory grabs it before I can get there, clutching it with both hands. She shoots me a look that I can read as It’s the police, and she’s nodding.
“Okay. Yes, thank you. Yes, please.”
She hangs up. “Dylan got on a bus to Cleveland.”
“What?”
Casey had come down the stairs behind me at the ring of the phone. She hovers, mute, in the bend of the open staircase. Angel rushes past her and all the way down the steps, her iPod in her hand. “I heard the phone,” she says. “Cleveland?”
“That’s what the cop said,” Mallory continues. “That they showed his picture at the bus station and the staff remembered him. Because of his stammer. But they said he must have ordered the tickets online and had them mailed because he already had them. He was confused about which bus, though, so he asked for help.”
That solves the mystery of him always getting the mail. “Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the girl did write that they were meeting up in Cleveland and going together from there.”
“So they’re going to have the Cleveland police check the station there,” Mallory says.
Jewel had been munching on the finished popcorn. “Good! Then they’ll bring him home, right?”
I teeter on the brink between protective lying and gentle truth. “He’s been gone a while, hon. He’s probably not in Cleveland anymore. He’s probably on another bus.”
“They said his ticket was only to Cleveland,” Mallory says.
“Why wouldn’t he go straight through if he’s supposed to be going to New York?”
Mallory and I lock our eyes. If “Tiffany” is really a pervert from Cleveland, there’s no reason to buy a ticket all the way through.
In the silence, Jewel gobbles more popcorn, then yawns.
“Babe, you need some sleep,” I say, as much to dispel the frightening quiet as anything.
Jewel shovels in another handful, then nods.
I start to step forward, but Mallory waves me off. “Let me tuck her in. I don’t get to every night.”
“Make sure she flosses,” I say. “The popcorn.”
I walk over to where Casey still stands as if she’s afraid to come into the room. I speak quietly, so Angel won’t hear.
“I can try to get her to go home . . .”
Casey shakes her head. “She’d just blow up. We don’t need that. Anyway, I can see why she’d want to stay.”
“Thank you.”
Casey flinches away as if I’ve said something wrong.
“You’ve really been a champ about this.”
She gulps hard and still won’t meet my eyes. I venture, “I said I was sorry about before. Why don’t you get some rest, it’s been a long day.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of the kids.”
I open my mouth to argue then realize she’s right, of course, that’s exactly what I’d been doing. Right down to my soothing voice.
Casey then says, “Maybe I should go. Give you guys some space.”
“No!”
I glance back over my shoulder, and Angel is staring at us. I nudge Casey back up the stairs to our room.
“I don’t want Mallory to feel like she’s replacing you.”
She closes her eyes and sags in the shoulders. “I’m tired of everything we do viewed as how it affects Mallory. That’s why you don’t want me to leave? Some strategic gambit?”
I pull her in for a hug. “I need you.”
I hugged Mallory so recently that my animal mind compares before I can tell it to shut up. Casey is shorter, more slight. Her head rests on my chest, not my shoulder.
But she doesn’t cling as tight.
“Please stay here.”
“I don’t think the kids want me here,” she says, her voice muffled by my chest.
“It’s just a bad day.”
“I’m not talking about just today.”
I take her shoulders and gently push back to look at her face. “The kids