Leaving Time(122)

“I’m okay.”

“I’m getting you something to eat,” he insists. “I know that’s what Alice would have wanted me to do.”

“Okay,” I say, and we walk back to the barn I had first seen when I arrived in the pickup truck. His car is a big black van, and he has to move a box of tools from the passenger seat before I can sit down.

As we are driving, I can feel Gideon still sneaking glances at me. It’s like he’s trying to memorize my face or something. That’s when I realize that he’s wearing the red shirt and cargo shorts that were the uniform at the New England Elephant Sanctuary. Everyone at The Elephant Sanctuary here in Hohenwald wears straight khaki.

It doesn’t make sense. “How long did you say you’ve worked here?”

“Oh,” he says. “Years.”

What are the odds that, in a sanctuary twenty-seven hundred acres large, I would run into Gideon first, instead of any other person?

Unless, of course, he made sure I did.

What if I hadn’t found Gideon Cartwright? What if he’d found me?

I am thinking like Virgil, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in terms of self-preservation. Sure, I’d set out all determined to find Gideon. But now that I have, I am wondering if it was such a great idea. I can taste fear, like a penny on my tongue. For the first time, it occurs to me that maybe Gideon had something to do with my mother’s disappearance.

“Do you remember that night?” he asks. It’s like he pulled the thread out of my mind.

I picture Gideon driving my mother away from the hospital, pulling over, and wrapping his hands around her throat. I picture him doing the same thing to me.

I force myself to keep my voice steady. I think of how Virgil would do this, if he were trying to get information from a suspect. “No. I was a baby; I guess I slept through most of it.” I stare at him. “Do you?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I wish I could forget.”

We are almost in town by now. The ribbon of residences whizzing by starts to give way to box stores and gas stations.

“Why?” I blurt out. “Because you were the one who killed her?”

Gideon swerves, braking. He looks like I’ve slapped him across the face. “Jenna … I loved your mother,” he swears. “I was trying to protect her. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to take care of you. And the baby.”

All the air in the car is gone, just like that. It’s like a seal of plastic has been placed over my nose and mouth.

Maybe I’ve heard him wrong. Maybe he said he would have taken care of me, the baby. Except he didn’t.

Gideon slows the car to a stop and looks into his lap. “You didn’t know,” he murmurs.

In one move, I press down on my seat belt latch and open the passenger door. I start to run.

I can hear the door slam behind me—it’s Gideon, coming after me.

I enter the first building I can find, a diner, and run past the hostess to the back, where the restrooms usually are. In the ladies’ room I lock the door, climb onto the sink, and slide open the narrow window cut into the wall beside it. I can hear voices outside the ladies’ room, Gideon begging someone to come in and get me. I shimmy through the window, drop down on the lid of the closed Dumpster in the alley behind the diner, and bolt.

I race through the woods. I don’t stop until I am on the outskirts of town. Then, for the first time in a day and a half, I turn on my cell phone.

I have a signal, three bars. I have forty-three messages from my grandmother. But I ignore them and dial Serenity’s number.

She picks up on the third ring, and I’m so grateful, I burst into tears. “Please,” I say. “I need help.”





ALICE




Sitting in the attic of the African barn, I wondered—not for the first time—if I was the one who was crazy.

By then, Thomas had been home for five months. Gideon had painted over the walls again. There were drop cloths on the floor, and cans of paint lining the edges, but otherwise, the space was empty. No evidence remained of the break from reality that had swallowed my husband whole. At times, I was able to convince myself that I had imagined the entire episode.

It was pouring today. Jenna had been so excited to leave for school in her new rubber boots, which were fashioned to look like ladybugs. They had been a gift from Grace and Gideon for her second birthday. Because of the weather, the elephants had chosen to stay in their barns. Nevvie and Grace were folding and stuffing envelopes for a fund-raising campaign. Thomas was on his way home from New York City, where he’d been meeting with officials from Tusk.

Thomas never told me where he’d gone for treatment, just that it wasn’t in this state, and he had driven there when he realized that the first center he’d planned on checking into was now closed. I didn’t know whether or not to believe him, but he seemed like himself again, and if I had doubts, I kept them quiet. I did not ask to see the books, or to second-guess him. The last time I had done that, I’d nearly been strangled.