“I’ll do it,” she says finally. And they begin to plan.

31

I twist both locks on my door once I’m home, then check again to make sure that the door is firmly shut. Outside, it’s still daytime, not even 3:00 p.m., and for the first time since I quit my job and enrolled in the painting class, I’m desperate for something else to do.

I kick off my shoes, peel off my clothes, ripping away what still smells like that place. Not that it had a scent. But to me, everything suddenly has the pungency of rotting waste, of the dead, and it needs fumigation.

It’s not until I’m naked, my underwear off, too, that I dive into bed, bring the blankets up to my neck. And even then I’m still shivering, my body trying to expel everything I’ve just uncovered.

So it’s with quivering fingers, my body horizontal, that I take up my phone and text Beth, asking for some information. With a ping, she immediately gets back to me, no questions asked, the gray of her text blurring as I gaze at my screen. My fingers continue to palsy as I punch in the right numbers, dialing the extension. After two rings, a male voice picks up. “Caleb Simmons’s office, Kevin speaking.” I swallow, trying to steady my voice.

“I need to speak to Caleb. Now. It’s about his children. Tell him Susanna Keller is calling. Tell him I’m a...friend of his sister-in-law.”

I hear the clicking of a pen. “I’m sorry, Susanna. But Caleb is in a meeting right now and is on a flight to Tokyo this evening. I can let him know you called as soon as possible, though.” I can feel Kevin’s ingratiating smile through the phone, and something in me breaks. His nonchalance makes me want to claw his face.

“I need to speak to him now. Tell him it’s an emergency. If he doesn’t leave that meeting, I’m going over there and dragging him out of it myself.”

I hear a tiny intake of breath. “Okay, okay, ma’am. Give me one moment.” And then I hear Caleb’s voice on the phone, deep and calibrated, and even before he finishes saying hello it’s all spilling out of me, like blood out of a slit throat, the beats of it, both tender and wrenching, and when I finish, he’s silent for a long moment. He doesn’t curse. He doesn’t yell. What I hear when he finally speaks is melancholy spiked with a lawyerly call for action.

“I knew something was happening with them. They’re like me, boundless energy. Always need to be doing something with their hands, their minds. I knew something was wrong. Jesus. I’ll call Gabby right now. That woman needs to be out by tonight.”