Leaving Time(150)

By the time Gideon and I reached the cottage, the front door was wide open, and Jenna was gone. I could not breathe; I could not think.

I ran into Thomas’s office, thinking maybe he had the baby in there. But Thomas was alone, his head pillowed on his arms, a confetti of spilled pills and a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the desk beside him.

My relief at seeing him passed out without my daughter nearby faded as I realized I still had no idea where Jenna was. Just like before: She had awakened, and found me missing. Her worst nightmare, now morphing into mine.

Gideon was the one who had a plan; I could not think clearly. He radioed Nevvie, who was making the night rounds, and when she didn’t answer we split up to search. He headed for the Asian barn; I ran into the African enclosure. This was a déjà vu, so similar to the last time Jenna went missing that I was not surprised when I saw Nevvie standing just inside the African fence. Do you have the baby? I cried.

It was pitch black, and the clouds moved across the moon, so that the little I could make out was silvered and erratic, like an old movie whose frames don’t quite fit together. But I noticed the way she froze when I said the word baby. The way her mouth curved into a smile as sharp as a blade. How does it feel, she asked, to lose your daughter?

I looked around wildly, but it was too dark to see more than a few feet in front of me. Jenna! I screamed, but there was no answer.

I grabbed Nevvie. Tell me what you did with her. I tried to shake the answers out of her. And the whole time, she just smiled and smiled.

Nevvie was strong, but I finally got my hands around her throat. Tell me, I shouted at her. She gasped, twisted. If it was dangerous to walk in the enclosures in the day, because of the holes the elephants dug for water, then it was an absolute minefield at night—but I didn’t care. All I wanted were answers.

We stumbled forward; we stumbled back. And then I tripped.

Lying on the ground was Jenna’s small, bloody body.

The sound that a heart makes, when it is breaking, is raw and ugly. And anguish, it’s a waterfall.

How does it feel to lose your daughter?

Rage poured through me, coursed through my body, lifting me as I lunged for Nevvie. You did this to her, I yelled, even as, silently, I thought: No. I did.

Nevvie was stronger than me, fighting for her life. I was fighting for my child’s death. And then I was falling into an old water hole. I tried to grab on to Nevvie, to anything, before the world went black.

The next part, I can’t remember. Although God knows I have tried every day for the past ten years.

When I came to, it was still dark out, and my head was throbbing. Blood ran down my face and the back of my neck. I crawled out of the water hole I had pitched into, too dizzy to stand, getting my bearings on my hands and knees.

Nevvie stared up at me, the top of her skull cracked open.

And the body of my child, it was missing.

I cried, backing away, shaking my head, trying to unsee the empty spot where Jenna had been. I scrambled to my feet and ran. I ran because I had lost my daughter, two times over. I ran because I could not remember if I had killed Nevvie Ruehl. I ran until the entire world turned upside down, and I woke up in the hospital.

• • •

“The nurse was the one who told me Nevvie was dead—and that Jenna was missing,” I say to Serenity, who is sitting on the swiveling desk chair while I perch on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t know what to do. I had seen my daughter’s body, but I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d seen it, because then they would have known I had killed Nevvie, and they would have arrested me. I thought maybe Gideon had found Jenna and moved her, but then he also would have seen that I’d killed Nevvie—and I didn’t know if he’d already called the police.”

“But you didn’t kill her,” Serenity tells me. “The body was trampled.”

“After.”

“She could have fallen, like you did, and struck her head. And even if you’d been the one to make that happen, the police would have understood.”

“Until they found out that I was sleeping with Gideon. And if I lied about that, I could be lying about everything.” I look down at my lap. “I panicked. It was stupid to run, but I did. I just wanted to clear my head, to think through what I should do. All I could see was how selfish I’d been, and what it had cost me: the baby. Gideon. Thomas. The sanctuary. Jenna.”

Mom?

I am staring past the face of Serenity Jones into the mirror behind the motel desk. But instead of seeing her pink updo, the hazy reflection is a messy auburn French braid.

It’s me, she says.

I draw in my breath. “Jenna?”

Her voice leaps, triumphant. I knew it. I knew you were alive.