Page 111 of A Better World

Sebbie was the younger one, his voice still babyish and small. “It’s a scarf for Mommy.”

“Oh, it’s pretty,” she said. “Which mommy?”

“I only have one mommy. There’s also Mother,” he said. “But she went away.”

“And then Mommy went away,” Katie said. She was angry-scribbling on the reverse side, not looking up, her voice still matter-of-fact.

“I guess you miss them,” Linda said.

Katie pushed harder on her crayon so the yellow came out extra deep.

“Did she teach you to knit?” Linda asked.

“With fingers,” Sebbie said, wiggling his fingers through the yarn like a puppet spider.

Often, in abusive upbringings, the children are developmentally delayed. Though they were small, their energy unusually low, Sebbie and Katie had met their milestones. Their fingers were dexterous, their postures straight, their apprehension apparent.

“Is Mommy Gal Parker?”

Katie put down her crayon and squinted. Then she tore up her paper. “You don’t get to know. Nobody gets to know anything.”

“Mommy’s in the tunnels,” Sebbie said. “That’s why we have to live here. We have to wait for the festival, and then they said they’d let us out, so we could find Mommy.”

Linda felt an incredible unease, as if all the atoms in the room had entered gelatinous excited states.

“But is she Gal Parker?”

“—Don’t tell her, Sebbie,” Katie said. “They break all their promises.”

“I’m still a kid. I don’t break promises,” Josie said.

“How old?” Katie asked.

“Fifteen,” Josie answered. “Almost sixteen.”

Katie looked her up and down. Apparently liked what she saw. “My mommy’s Gal Parker,” she said.

“Would you like to get out of this hospital? Are you tired of being here?” Linda asked.

Katie glared; Sebbie nodded.

“Your mother’s outside Plymouth Valley. We can take you there. Would you like that? Your mom said to say ‘heaven’s gate,’?” Linda said.

The kids looked up, and for a moment, before the suspicion of this strange adult returned, their expressions were like flowers to sun.

Linda told Cyrus Galani that she needed to take the children upstairs in order to examine them better. He took this news without obvious suspicion. It seemed likely that they’d been escorted by Chernin plenty before and this was nothing new.

Katie preferred Josie and took her hand—little girls love big girls—so Linda took Sebbie’s very small hand. They took the steps one at a time to accommodate Sebbie’s little legs. Her heart staccatoed. They opened the door to the winter dark, and then arrived at the B-class sedan. Josie sparked, alert as a high beam, during that short walk. At last, after all these months of indecision, she was doing something.

At the car, Josie took control. She pulled the blankets Linda was transporting to the clinic from the trunk, instructed the kids to get into the footwells of the back seat, and covered them. “We’re really taking you to your mom, but we have to get out of here first,” she said, her voice, beside these small children, sounding very grown-up.

“Is it a good idea to hide them?” Linda asked once they were on the road, passing sleeping houses with sleeping birds inside shelters.

“Yes,” Josie said. “What’s the downside?”

“Where’s my mommy again?” Katie asked on the drive.

“She’s outside Plymouth Valley,” Josie answered.

---