Page 81 of A Better World

She’d been hoping Gal would be just as histrionic as the night they’d met. Hoping she’d say terrible, nonsensical things that would allow Linda to categorize her as mad. But Gal was sober: reasonable, though the things she was saying were not.

“You’re crazy. Your life is a mess, so you want mine to be, too.”

Gal laughed, deep from her belly. “I don’t care about you. My kids with terminal cancer were gonna be taken away from me. I wanted to spare them that. I wanted the last face they saw to be the person who loved them most. I’d have done anything to keep them. I still would.”

“No one gets hurt at the Winter Festival,” Linda said. “It’s a joke. Just for fun.”

“Look around. You think a place like this is free?”

Linda was standing, somehow. She was at the door. Gal had followed her.

“They’re not with Trish. They’re in this town. I’ll bet they never left the hospital. Chernin always keeps them at the hospital at the end. They probably think I abandoned them, too. But I would never do that. Not ever.”

“You’re not well,” Linda said.

Gal opened her locket. Inside was a photo of two taupe-skinned children, young enough that they probably still had baby voices. This photo was familiar. Linda realized, her skin crawling, that she’d seen it before.

“Help me?” Gal asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening,” Linda said. And then, somehow, she was stumbling out, into the snow-blind light.

Don’t You Know What This Is?

Linda called TrishParker again when she got home. The number was disconnected. She held the device, scrolling through old messages from the ActHollow crew. The smiley-faced epigenetic links to pseudo-scientific articles from Anouk, the inside jokes and mocking asides from Daniella, the sarcasm from Rachel.

She reread Fielding’s original letter and the attendant studies Russell had printed. Then she read all Fielding’s letters after that. She got lost in those letters, noticing the resignation in them that she’d ignored before.I’ll miss these patients, Fielding had written.A bird has built a nest under the eaves of our balcony, and I wonder if I’ll get to see the babies hatch. I never noticed how much I like snow. My advice to you, Linda, is to enjoy the snow.

Before it closed, Linda returned to the library and researched PV’s history again. Found the same passages and reread them. Then she went home and poured herself a glass of mead. And another glass. And a third.

That night, she left out sandwiches. Didn’t bother to check if her family had eaten them, nor did she remind them to clean up after themselves and stop pushing their messes on Esperanza. She sat in the dark bedroom, too drunk to drink more.

She didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning, but when she checked her schedule, she saw that Danny Morales had made an appointment that morning at the clinic.

At breakfast, her voice went raspy, her breath heavy. Even herfingernails hurt, but it wasn’t hangover and it wasn’t sickness. It was sadness worse than any she could remember, including as a kid back in Poughkeepsie. Including the baby blues after the twins. It was a heavy, drowning feeling.

Only Hip was at the table. Russell was already at the office. “Where’s Josie?”

“She went early.”

Linda sat down beside him. “Those kids gave her a ride?”

Hip nodded.

“She doesn’t like them, does she?”

“I don’t really talk to her,” he said, his mouth full of toast.

“Why’s that?”

“You know Josie. Everything’s about Josie.”

“I’m not sure I do know Josie,” Linda said. “She doesn’t like these kids, but she still hangs out with them. That doesn’t sound like my Josie. Do you know what’s going on with her?”

“No. I tried but I give up. People need to take care of themselves, too.” He dipped his toast into his poached egg. The yellow ran all out, swirling the periphery of the white.

“Is this a PV civics lesson?”

“Just common sense.” He pressed his index finger against the bridge of his nose, pushing back phantom glasses that he’d stopped wearing since the laser surgery. “Are you feeling okay?”

---