And then the baby fusses. The baby whimpers. The baby whines. And although there is much begging—pleases, and don’ts, and promises of cookies—it is useless. Out of the baby’s mouth comes a single birdlike shriek, and in less than the time it took to fall from the cement wall to the hard ground, there is a blur of yellow stars and moons, the baby is pressed down, the little face covered, tiny threads of yellow blanket securely plugged in the baby’s mouth, which is now suctioning in, warm and wet, like a newborn puppy, and an arm is pushing, pressing, fastening tightly into the mouth and nose like glue, no air, no breath, pressing, holding, tighter, tighter, tighter until everything is going dizzy, dizzy, dizzy as if spinning in circles forever and ever and ever.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHEN HER FATHER ASKED HER TO STAY FOR ANOTHER WEEK, SHE had not known what to say, and for the first time, she wished he could see her the way her mother had—see her insides illuminated like an X-ray, the small dark circle in her heart like a swallowed quarter. But he couldn’t see. And he didn’t need to, she told herself. It was her secret. Her marble. She would carry it the way she had all along, deeply and quietly. But she could feel it rumbling inside her, clanking against the tin can of her insides, threatening to expose itself, and she knew she needed to leave, needed to go back to North Carolina and see Tyler and Mary.

The night before she left, she forced herself to look at Matthew’s room. She waited until her father went to sleep and then snuck down the hallway. The door was shut, and she stared at the knob for a long time before pushing it open. And then she simply stood, framed by the doorjamb, and looked. The room had been turned into a guest bedroom, painted a pretty sea green and filled with light pine furniture. She was taken aback. After Matthew died it had been a storage room of sorts—a stack of cardboard boxes in the middle, an old weight machine and extra television in one corner, a heavy oak chest of drawers in another. Now she could remember exactly where the crib had been, where the changing table butted up against the window, where the rocking chair that had once been hers sat. If what happened had not happened, the room was sure to have been filled with books and computer equipment and dirty laundry. Her brother would have grown up to be a real boy, a man actually, not “the baby,” probably not even Matthew, but Matt. The idea was so startling she drew a quick breath.