Page 79 of A Better World

“What’s crazy is you act the part of the innocent. How do you think you got here? Hard work?” she asked. “Everyone here is—” she started, then leaned her head back and passed out.

Linda bent down. She started to pick things up.

The housekeeper came into frame. “I’ve got it,” the woman said, polite and full of contempt.

Linda didn’t go home. She didn’t want to carry this knowledge back to 9 Sunset Heights, contaminate the air with it. Adrenaline pumping, she didn’t let herself think as she drove across town, to the southwest quadrant, to the nightmare house.

Frozen snow had hardened, unsalted, all down the short walk. The car was still there, seemingly unmoved all this time. She knocked on the front door. Its handle was caked with ice. There wasn’t that frightened, anxious feeling in her stomach she’d gotten so accustomed to. Instead, she was calm. At last, she’d returned.

She knocked again. No one came.

She walked uphill and around to the side kitchen door. Remembered that night, the sounds of children. Remembered Gal’s abrupt menace. Through the kitchen window, into the living room, she could see the back of Gal’s head. “Hello?” she called.

No movement. She was sleeping or watching a screenie, perhaps.

She knocked.

Nothing.

She banged. “HELLO?”

The head nodded down, reeled up. Slowly, Gal turned. She stayed there, having recognized Linda, but deciding not to move.

“It’s Linda Farmer. I met you several months ago. Hello?” Linda pulled back the old screen door, turned the handle. “Gal? Hello? I want to know how you’re doing.”

“Bad!” Gal called. “How do you think?”

“Yes,” Linda agreed as she entered the small house. “But more specifically.”

Gal finally limped to the door with great stiffness. She was wearing a midthigh-length shirt. The skin along her legs sheened pink from healing burns while her ankles appeared like twisted tree knots. Her arms, which must have been bare that night, were translucent red-pink. Burnt raw to the muscle. Her face was unscathed, but she’d lost most of her hair and it was growing back only along her temples. A heart-shaped locket rested within the concavity of her neck.

“Oh, you,” she said, her voice clear, all its childishness gone. “Come in.”

She turned. Linda gasped. Though her front would recover, her entire hind was ruined. It was like she’d been licked by the devil.

A plausible reconstruction of how it had happened bubbled in Linda’s mind: Gal had started the fire, but electrical smoke burns theeyes. It’s caustic. Probably, she really had intended to burn up with her kids, but her instincts kicked in. She’d run out, saving herself.

It could have ended there. Full of nasty spite, she could have let them burn. Instead, she’d run back inside. She’d carried them out one at a time, Daniella had said. Linda pictured the scene, Gal grabbing the child nearest, shouting:I’ll be back, baby, Momma’s coming back!to the one left alone. Once outside, she’d set Katie or Sebbie down. High on adrenaline, on that promise she’d made to the unchosen child, she’d returned and done it all over again.

“How are the burns?”

Gal moved slowly, favoring her left side. “My throat’s the worst,” she said. “Bleeds.”

“They’re giving you anti-inflammatories?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. Nobody tells me anything. They’re too mad.”

“They are. I can tell. They’re also giving you epidermal growth factors but limiting it to your ventral side for now. The dorsal’s too large. They don’t want to risk doing too much and forcing a bad immune response. With constant treatment, you’ll recover within about eighteen months.”

Gal made a fart noise. “I’m not staying a year.”

The house was spare, everything painted white since the fire, all the iconography gone. Linda had expected bottles of booze, but there were no such signs. Just stray breadcrumbs, some crusty cereal bowls in the sink.

“Your crosses are gone.”

“Yeah. That didn’t work. I was trying to pray to a god stronger than the Hollow god. Reverse the curse; cure the cancer.”

“Oh,” Linda said. “You think the Hollow god made your kids sick?”

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