Page 114 of A Better World

“Is Hip here?”

Daniella sighed, deep and theatrical. She was wearing those same tight blue coveralls as when they’d gone out to Sirin’s for the first time. “So much emotion. So much weeping.”

“Why’s that?”

Daniella looked at her sidelong. “You screwed the pooch. Your whole family’s in serious trouble. But these two idiots had their fifteen-year-old fantasies of getting married.”

Linda could tell that Daniella expected an apology. At the very least, an explanation. “Can you get my son?”

Daniella leaned into the doorway an extra beat, deciding. Then, catlike, she turned.

A minute later, Hip was at the door, his eyes deep red.

“I need you to come with me,” she said.

He lowered his voice. “Is it true, Mom? Did you kidnap kids from a clinical trial and give them to a crazy lady?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

He took a step deeper into the house. Linda noticed Cathy on the stairwell, eyes red and swollen. She stood under an altar of feathers and meat, the Geiger counter’s watch hand at a steady low level.

“Why would you do that?”

“For their own good,” Linda said.

“But they were getting better,” Hip said.

“I doubt that.”

He looked back, seemed ashamed that Cathy had to see this, that Cathy had to have a bad thing happen tangentially to her. Delicate little Cathy. “It reflects on me, Mom! It reflects on Cathy! We’ll never get universal golden tickets passed now. She’s been crying for hours.”

Linda didn’t mean to be so cold, but the discrepancy between fantasy and reality here was obscene. “I’m sorry, Hip. But that kid doesn’t know her ass from her elbow and neither do you. Now get in the car.”

He didn’t move.

“Now!” she yelled.

“Mom!” he said, his eyes ragged, his voice ragged, everything about him holding the stance of the betrayed.

By now, Josie had come to the door. “Come on, Hip,” she said.

He sneered an ugly sneer. “I knew you wouldn’t let me have this.”

“Have what?” Josie said.

“You liked it when I followed you around. When I had nobody else,” he answered. “Both of you. But I’m happy. I’m the one who belongs. And you couldn’t let me have it. You had to mess it up. I never ruined anything for you, Josie.”

“You mess your own shit up. You never needed my help,” Josie answered.

“I’m staying over here tonight. They said I could,” Hip said. Then he shut the door on them.

They drove to the border. Linda planned to set the luggage in the halfway house and leave Josie there, then head back and try to salvage what she could. But the gate was blocked. Sally, Cyrus, and Pratt all got out of the security booth.

“No passage!” Pratt said, genial and sympathetic, like he was sorry for the inconvenience.

“I just need to get something at my clinic,” Linda said.

“No, you don’t,” Sally answered, her thick brows knitted in fury.

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