“Rod, Angel. Angel, Rod.”
“Hello, Angel. Welcome to the circus. How long will you be with us?”
“One night, maybe two,” I say. “She doesn’t like to talk. Yet.”
“Silence is golden. You hear that, Beatrice? Silence is golden. Want to come to Dad?” He reaches over for his daughter. “Angel, you can have the bedroom down the hall, the third door on the left. Sheets were just changed. Earplugs are in the side table drawer, and I suggest wearing them at night. A bathroom connects. You’re welcome to take a shower before dinner and pick whatever you want out of the closet. Later, I’ll take a look at that eye. Just check you over a little, OK?” It’s the first mention of Angel’s eye, and it’s so very casual, as if one-eyed girls walk in every day.
“You’re awake. Thank God.” Maggie, slightly breathless, is back inside. Lola is in her arms, wrapped in a beach towel like a pink burrito. Lola is staring intently at Angel’s face, scrunching up her nose and vigorously sucking her thumb.
Lola removes her thumb. “Your eye is green,” she says to Angel. “Like an arty-choke. And brock-ly. Spinch. Turn-ed greens. Okra.”
“Spin-ach. Turn-ip greens,” Rod corrects her. “Our vegetarian babysitter is aggressively trying to get Lola to eat fewer orange things and more green things, which she mostly spits up.”
“Kale is bad for my tummy,” Lola confirms. “It tastes like sh—”
“OK, Lola,” her dad interrupts. “Come help me. You can be in charge of the mac and cheese.”
“He always comes home from a shift at the ER barking orders,” Maggie says to Angel as soon as Rod exits. “I remind myself it’s because people die in his emergency room if he doesn’t, and that’s a hard switch to turn off.”
A few minutes later, Maggie and I sit on the edge of her bed with the soft sound of Angel’s shower running down the hall. Maggie is listening to me with her usual quiet intensity, making notes in loopy handwriting on a yellow legal pad, the word Angel at the top, underlined three times.
Yellow legal pads are the only objects in this house that might outnumber diapers.
Down the hall, Angel is starting up a blow dryer. Maggie slides the pad on the nightstand and caps the pen. “I’m really happy to do what I can. I’ll have Rod check her out thoroughly, or as thoroughly as she’ll let him. I agree, her eye is a priority. I wonder how old she was when she lost it. It had to be extraordinarily traumatic. Is this hard … on you? Does it bring things back?”
“I’m fine, Mag.”
She places a hand on my shoulder. “Please stop protecting Wyatt. You saw that documentary. Everyone in town is still talking about it. That young woman who says he practically raped her in a filthy bathroom. The interview with the girl in town who looks eerily like Trumanell. How can you possibly know what Wyatt would have done with Angel if you hadn’t shown up?”
There’s no point in arguing the facts the documentary left out. Cheap Maybelline beauties have stalked Wyatt for years. That girl has been told what to think by a mother who made her lose fifteen pounds for her trembling appearance on national TV.
Maggie flicks the pen open and shut nervously. “Look, we’ve talked about this before. There is no upside to defending him. You’ve been hell-bent on solving Trumanell’s case since you came back. But it’s been five years. You’re still nowhere. And that’s OK. The more I live, the more I binge Netflix and read overhyped novels, the more I think that knowing the ending is overrated, that the beginning and middle are enough. Answers aren’t going to change anything. Or fix your relationship with your dad. And Wyatt … at least face up to the reality that he’s hurting you and Finn.”
“Finn left. Five days ago.”
Maggie throws her arm around my shoulders. “Oh, sweetie.”
I can’t tell her about the sex with Wyatt. I don’t think I could watch the disappointment swim in her eyes, already tired and puffy from 2 A.M. feedings. She would want to know why, a question I’m still asking myself. I clear my throat. “I’ll tell you about it later. I really appreciate your help with Angel. You won’t have to keep her long. I just don’t want to leave her alone at my house or make her sit at the station while I pursue her story. I do worry every time I bring a girl here that it might erupt into something. But I can’t seem to stop doing it.”
“This girl is meant to be here. Like the others. And risk is just life. My family could walk outside tomorrow and be crushed by a construction crane. I choose to believe the boogeymen will stay away. Until then, I’m grateful. Have faith, Odette.” She jabs me in the arm. “God’s last name isn’t damn.” She pokes my arm again. “Come on. That was our best sign ever.” For a brief interlude, Maggie and I were appointed to write the pithy moral messages on the sign in front of her father’s church.
“No,” I say. “Our best sign was, “‘How often do you come?’”
“We didn’t know people would take it the wrong way.”
“Didn’t we? Especially after some dick drew a dick on it.”
“Most packed Sunday ever. I’d never seen my father so angry. I still itch when I think of how he punished us. We must have weeded the garden of every old church lady in the congregation.”
“And gotten bit by every chigger in town. Every chigger bite you get is the bite of the devil …”
“… a sign that evil is running sweet in your blood,” Maggie finishes. “My father, always with a line for everything. He’s still a never-ending font of ways to terrify children about God. He told Lola that God was making a list for Santa Claus of every cuss word she said.”
“I still think about going to hell every time a bug bites me.”
“Have you seen my dad lately? He’s always asking about his favorite niece.”
“As a matter of fact, he dropped by the house last week on his way back from visiting your mom at Sunny Hills. Asked me how the job was going. Said that only cops and preachers really know the underbelly of a town and that he was worried about me. I’m guessing you two have been chatting.”
There’s a rustle behind us. We turn to the doorway. Our reminiscing, over. Angel’s standing there, hair falling straight and shiny, two shades darker than I thought it was. She has tied a blue silk scarf over her empty eye. A lavender tank top bares her sunburned shoulders. The jeans hang just a little too loose on her, and she’s rolled up the cuffs. On her feet, black Nikes are like two chunks of coal grounding her to earth. Maggie stocks them, in all sizes, by the dozens.
The picture of her in the doorway is of a confused and lovely child. Mysterious. Afraid. Whatever she’s running from—it feels near. I tamp down an urge to throw my arms around her. To walk the perimeter of the house, gun out.
“Let’s eat,” I say.
An hour later, I step over a pile of sleeping girls on Maggie’s living-room floor. The baby is stretched out flat on her back. Angel is nestled against a floor pillow, clutching the baby’s foot. Lola’s head is in her lap. On the TV, the fish are still running from the shark.
“You are not responsible.” Maggie has lowered her tone. “For Trumanell or Wyatt. Or me or even that girl. This town should have fucking saved Trumanell when she was alive. Our fathers should have saved her. Everybody knew something was wrong out there, even me, and I was a kid. You were a kid. This is about people bored with their lives, with something to prove, and an old boyfriend who always, always had a black river running in him. You owe him and this town nothing.” She pauses. “I’m scared for you. Please be careful.”