“So this person, what kind of person is he, and where did he go?”
He wanted to make her say it, but she wouldn’t. Let him ask Ella Dane. “A sad person,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She closed her face, a trick she had learned from Eric; nobody could slam shut the way he could. He couldn’t make her say, This house is haunted, because then she’d be as crazy as her mother, and that was a thing no one could ever say about her. She bit the last piece of liver in two, ate half herself, and held the other half over the side of the bed. Bibbits licked it from her hand.
“Okay.” Eric stood up and took the plate. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m going upstairs to get caught up on my work.” He left, just as she had predicted.
She sighed and rolled over. Bibbits fell asleep next to her. She jiggled her feet, rolled over again, and blew puffs of air on Bibbits’s closed eyes. He wrinkled his little nose with each puff, but didn’t wake up. She was so bored. She wished she could get up and walk around the room, run screaming from the house, drive to a mall, anything. But the baby needed her to stay still and behave. Rock the cradle gently, rock him only with her breath. He turned, and she watched the bulge slide under her skin. What was that—his knee, his whole body? What was going on in there, double Dutch with the umbilical cord?
Her thoughts clattered, what-if chasing maybe-then. If she left the house, where would she go? Her beautiful house with the beautiful furniture Eric had chosen just for her, their first real home; it wasn’t like filling up a couple of old backpacks with clothes and putting the boyfriend-of-the-month’s stereo in a box and walking out toward the next place, the way Ella Dane had done so often, dragging Lacey along. To stand up, walk away, leave—to abandon her own real adult life, like a refugee—she couldn’t.
And even if she left, Drew might follow, as he had followed her to the hospital. No point running, unless she knew she was running to a safe place. Not a good house for babies: How bad was it? She had to stop these racing thoughts. She had to rest. She had to give the placenta a chance to heal, to save the baby. She hitched herself up to a sitting position, dragged her laptop from the nightstand, and logged on.
First, she visited her favorite maternity-clothing website and ordered a new dress, dark brown cotton printed with purple flowers, all pintucks and lace, the skirt opening out in long elegant gores. She also bought a pair of amethyst earrings, because they matched. Then she remembered she was stuck here in bed, so Eric would see the mail before she did. He would open the Visa statement, and he would want to know what she needed a new dress for when they hadn’t paid for the furniture yet. So she canceled the order. She’d order them again when she could get out of bed. Now that was motivation.
The room felt empty. “Drew?” she asked. Nothing, so it was safe to search.
Greeley Honeywick wasn’t anywhere near Utah, as her ancient uncle had said. She lived in Vancouver, Washington, where she was a high school gym teacher and triathlete. She smiled out of the computer screen, her auburn hair in shining waves in publicity shots, ponytailed and severe at finish lines. She was a double amputee, having lost her left leg below the knee and her right foot at the ankle in a domestic accident.
A domestic accident. Lacey checked the time. Nine P.M., so it was only six in Washington. Greeley Honeywick was on Facebook, with a pair of six-year-old twins, as smiling and auburn haired as herself, with the confident, well-brushed look of children born to middle-aged parents, and a tall husband who stood behind her in the pictures and looked away to the left or down at one of the twins, never at Greeley herself. Trouble at home, the teacher’s eye said, looking at the children’s smiles, so wide and bright. Domestic accident. Greeley Honeywick had taught at Burgoyne Elementary in Greeneburg eighteen years ago.
That was the school Drew must have attended. Greeley couldn’t have taught him, though; CarolAnna had known Drew before Greeley lived in the house. Lacey raised her hands from the keyboard and let her senses spread through the room, feeling for Drew’s weight. Nothing—she was still safe. Maybe he didn’t understand computers.
She found a phone number in the Vancouver, Washington, telephone book, attached to Honeywick Auto Repair. Lacey called, and within minutes she was talking with the tall husband. Lacey told him she had been a student of Ms. Honeywick’s at Burgoyne Elementary. “In second grade,” she burbled, “and I loved her so much, she was my favorite teacher! And now I’m a gym teacher myself, and I just wanted to get in touch with Ms. Honeywick and tell her how much she meant to me. She changed my life. She really, really did.”