I didn’t know why the herd did not react when Thato tried to take the calf. She was older than Marea, for sure, but she was not a member of the family.
We named that baby Molatlhegi. In Tswana, it means, “the lost one.”
The night after I almost lost Jenna, I had a nightmare. In my dream, I was sitting near the spot where Molatlhegi had nearly been taken by Thato. As I watched, the elephants moved to higher ground, and water began to trickle down the dry throat of the riverbed. The water gurgled, running deeper and faster, until it splashed over my feet. On the far side of the river I saw Grace Cartwright. She stepped into the water fully clothed. She reached down to the riverbed, picked up a smooth stone, and tucked it into her shirt. She did this over and over, filling her pants, her coat pockets, until she could barely bend and stand again.
Then she began to walk deeper into the river’s current.
I knew how deep the water got, and how quickly that could happen. I tried to yell to Grace, but I couldn’t make a sound. When I opened my mouth, a thousand stones poured out.
And then suddenly I was the one in the water, weighted down. I felt the current pull my hair free from its braid; I struggled for air. But with every breath I was swallowing pebbles—agate and spiky calcite, basalt and slate and obsidian. I looked up at the watercolor sun as I sank.
I woke up, panicking, Gideon’s hand pressed against my mouth. Fighting him, I kicked and rolled, until he was at one side of the bed and I was at the other and there was a barricade between us of the words we should have said but didn’t.
“You were screaming,” he said. “You were going to wake the whole camp.”
I realized that the first bloody streaks of dawn were in the sky. That I had fallen asleep, when I only meant to steal a few moments.
When Thomas woke, an hour later, I was back in the living room of the cottage, sleeping on the couch, my arm flung over Jenna’s tiny body as if nothing could possibly get past me to take her away, as if there was no way I would ever let her wake up and find me absent. He glanced at me, seemingly unconscious, and stumbled into the kitchen in search of coffee.
Except I wasn’t actually asleep when he passed by. I was thinking about how my nights had been dark and dreamless my whole life, except for one notable exception, when my imagination kicked into overdrive and every midnight hour was a pantomime of my greatest fears.
The last time that happened, I’d been pregnant.
JENNA
My grandmother stares at me as if she’s seeing a ghost. She grabs me tight, running her hands over my shoulders and my hair as if she needs to do an inventory. But there’s a viciousness in her touch, too, as if she is trying to hurt me just as badly as I’ve hurt her. “Jenna, my God, where have you been?”
I kind of wish I’d taken Serenity or Virgil up on their offer to drive me home, to smooth the path between my grandmother and me. Right now, it’s like Mount Kilimanjaro has sprung up between us.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I had to do some … stuff.” I use Gertie as an excuse to break away from her. My dog starts licking my legs like there’s no tomorrow, and when she jumps up on me, I bury my face in the ruff at her neck.
“I thought you had run away,” my grandmother says. “I thought maybe you were doing drugs. Drinking. There are stories on the news all the time about girls who get kidnapped, good girls who make the mistake of telling a stranger what time it is when they ask. I was so worried, Jenna.”
My grandmother is still wearing her meter maid uniform, but I can see that her eyes are red and her skin is too pale, like she hasn’t slept. “I called everyone. Mr. Allen—who told me that you haven’t been babysitting for his son, because his wife and baby are visiting her mother in California … the school … your friends—”
Horrified, I stare at her. Who the hell did she call? Short of Chatham, who doesn’t even live here anymore, there’s no one I hang around with. Which means my grandmother contacting a random kid to find out if I’m at her house having a sleepover is even more humiliating.
I don’t think I can go back to school in the fall. I don’t know if I can go back in the next twenty years. I’m mortified, and I’m mad at her, because it’s hard enough to be a loser whose mother’s dead and whose father killed her in a fit of crazy without becoming the laughingstock of the eighth grade.
I push Gertie away from me. “Did you call the police, too?” I ask. “Or is that still a sticking point for you?”
My grandmother’s hand comes up as if she’s going to hit me. I cringe; this would be the second time this week I’ve been hit by someone who is supposed to love me.