I drew Marshall to me, his dear face, and I pressed my mouth against his forehead, his ear, his hair.

“You got him,” I said back.

To our right a little patch of fire had caught in a dead rosebush. It glowed orange, growing, and smoke rose, and Robert yelled and squirmed in my arms.

Now I could feel where the thorns had torn my skin. My hip pulsed pain from where I’d slammed into the bench. I understood that I was still in Coral’s world. I might live here forever, from now on, in this fear-soaked place my mother had always known existed. She’d tried to tell me. She’d tried, but I refused to listen. Robert’s tiny heartbeat fluttered against my own, his breath and tears hot against my neck, so even now, even knowing she had always seen things right, I could not care.

My husband was calling my name from far away, below us.

“Up here!” I called back. “We got Robert! We’re up here!”

“We got Robert,” Marshall echoed, and his eyes were an animal’s eyes, wild and wide.

Somewhere, watching close or waiting far, Lexie Pine still walked. She was an enigma, who might be as angry and as dangerous as her mother or just something small and broken, wanting only to return to the deadly balm of her addiction. But in this moment my heart was so full I could not spare the room to fear or pity her, not in any incarnation. Nearby, so close we felt the heat of it, the rosebush burned and flakes of gray ash drifted down on us, gentle as snow.

Marshall and I clung to each other, Robert between us, calling loud so Trey could find us, “We got him, we got him!” At the same time, we were saying it most truly to each other, back and forth, back and forth, his arms tight around me with Robert, perfectly angry and alive, held safe and whole between us.

Part III
Daughters

23

Outside my walls, in the dangerous world, Coral’s letter was moving through the postal system. It passed from hand to hand, being sorted and loaded and carried ever closer, as three slow days crawled past. In the aftermath of our meeting, I didn’t think much about the paper words she’d aimed at me. She’d left a legacy that was far more dangerous. Lexie. I could feel her making her way closer, too.