When she woke, p.20
When She Woke, page 20
“If you aren’t sure, then you shouldn’t go,” Anthony was saying to Kayla.
Hannah felt Paul’s eyes on her, prodding her: Don’t let them separate you. She studied her friend, evaluating her with the same dispassion she’d trained on Paul, TJ, the Green on the subway. She saw fear and doubt and vulnerability, intelligence and pluck. What she did not see was cowardice. If she were in Kayla’s position, would she not have the same reluctance to give up her whole life? Except Kayla wasn’t in the position she thought she was, and Hannah knew that unless she said something, they’d allow her to decide unknowing.
“Your stepfather’s dead,” Hannah said.
Kayla stared at her for a moment, stunned, and then turned to Susan. “Is it true?”
A grudging nod. “He died of sepsis two days ago.”
“That son of a bitch. He would have to up and die.” Kayla’s voice splintered on the word, and Hannah could see that beneath her bravado, she was deeply shaken. Her expression turned grim as she absorbed the implications. “Murder’s what, ten years minimum?” Another nod from Susan. “Son of a bitch.”
“At least he’ll never touch your sister again,” Hannah said.
“Yeah, there’s that.” Kayla took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Guess it’s two for the road.”
SUSAN HAD TOLD them they’d be leaving in a few days, but a week and a half later, they were still cooped up in the house, waiting. “There’s been a delay,” was all the explanation they were given. Susan and Anthony were gone during the days, presumably to their respective, respectable jobs, and either Simone or Paul babysat. Hannah and Kayla felt increasingly caged and irritable. They couldn’t go outside and were forbidden to access the net—to keep them from contacting anyone they knew, Hannah supposed—which meant they weren’t even allowed to turn on the vid unless one of their minders was in the room with them. There was little to do besides eat, worry and play with the cats. Susan and Anthony’s nondigital library, such as it was, consisted mainly of cookbooks, military histories and women’s self-help books with wince-inducing titles like How to Feed Your Inner She-Wolf. Hannah suspected that all of it—the books, the dubious taste in clothing, the cutesy decor—was an elaborate camouflage. She imagined them leading a totally different life somewhere else: in a sleek condominium, perhaps, where they drank French wine and discussed politics over elegant dinners.
Except at night, Hannah and Kayla were allowed to wander the house freely, but every few days, and always in the early evening when Susan and Anthony were home and Simone was there, the women were locked in their rooms for an hour or two without explanation. After the second time, Hannah saw five used coffee cups on the dining room table. She figured the visitors were other Novembrists, coming to report to and scheme with Susan and Anthony, and she wondered how many members of the group there were and what they did in their other lives. It was disconcerting to think that she might have met one of them, shaken hands at church or made small talk in line at the grocery store, and never known it.
Fortunately, Paul was their daytime minder much more often than Simone. His kindness was a reassuring counterweight to the nerve-wracking state of limbo in which they found themselves; that, and his cooking, which was very good. He prepared sumptuous lunches to distract them and put flesh on their scarecrow figures: chicken parmesan, asparagus risotto, spinach soufflé. Hannah had never had such food in her life—her mother was a conventional cook, and she herself had never been interested enough to learn beyond the basics—and the flavors astonished her, often making her moan out loud. But when Paul served the food, his eyes rested on Kayla, and when she ate with gusto, they lit with pride and pleasure.
She began to bloom under his attention. Her despondency over TJ lifted a little, and her wit and irreverence reasserted themselves. She tried to banter with him, but more often than not, her flirtatious remarks left him tongue-tied. Hannah observed them, trying to suppress her envy. How wonderful it must feel, to be wanted by a man—a decent, attractive, unchromed man—in spite of your red skin. Paul seemed impervious to the fact that Kayla was a Chrome. When he looked at her, it was plain that what he saw was a desirable woman.
Hannah’s thoughts returned constantly to her family and Aidan, her mind circling around them like a June bug on a fishing line. Aidan was the most insistent presence of them all. There was no escaping him, even in sleep. He was waiting behind her eyelids, erupting jubilant from the lake, rocking Pearl in his arms, unbuttoning Hannah’s dress, his mouth following the path of his fingers. Once, after a particularly erotic dream, she touched herself, pretending it was him, but the pleasure turned bitter afterward, when she opened her eyes and saw the vacant space beside her. She speculated fifty times a day about where he was, what he was doing, whether he thought of her, and then castigated herself for her weakness. She had to let him go. So she told herself, fifty times a day, but it was like letting go of her own lungs, her own beating heart, and she wasn’t yet ready for that death.
And then one afternoon, she was sitting with Kayla and Paul in front of the vid searching for something to watch, when suddenly, as though she’d conjured him, there was Aidan.
“Stop search,” she said. He was on a stage in a large arena, preaching to a group of teenagers. It was a live show. The camera panned over the crowd, lingering on the rapt, adoring faces of the young women.
“I’m really not in the mood for a sermon tonight,” Kayla said crossly. “Continue search.”
“Go back,” Hannah said. The camera zoomed in on Aidan. “What is up with you?”
“Shh, I want to see this.”
“Fine, watch what you want,” Kayla snapped. She got up and flounced from the room. Paul swore and went after her.
Hannah stared at Aidan. The last time she’d seen him, on the vid of his swearing-in ceremony in September, he’d looked sad and drained. Now, just three months later, his face was shiny and pink with vitality. His eyes were lit with passion, his movements across the stage powerful and exuberant. And his words! He was afire with the spirit of God. She could see it passing like an electric current from his lips to the ears of his mesmerized listeners, many of whom stood with their arms stretched up to the ceiling, eyes closed, swaying back and forth to the cadence of his voice. Hannah watched, hurt warring with furious incredulity. Here she was, a Chrome, a fugitive, targeted by the Fist, running for her life. And he looked … happy.
Her spirit puddled within her, a leaden thing, shapeless and abject. How remote he must be from her, and from the love they’d shared, to look like that. Had it ever been real, or had it just been a vivid dream? She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence before her eyes was damning, irrefutable.
He had let her go.
She had been dead for some time now and not even known it.
FOUR
THE WILDERNESS
HANNAH DID LITTLE BUT SLEEP in the days that followed. The alternative—to stay awake brooding about Aidan, missing her family, worrying about Kayla’s looming renewal date and watching the growing attraction between her and Paul—was intolerable. There was nothing to break the monotony of the days, nothing to keep the darkness at bay. Even Christmas failed to lift her spirits, despite the efforts of their minders to make it festive. Susan and Anthony played carols on the vid and gave Hannah and Kayla gifts of warm jackets, gloves and sturdy boots. Simone was absent, but Paul arrived on Christmas morning with bags of groceries and spent the day cooking, with Kayla as his sous chef. Hannah sat listlessly in front of the vid, a prisoner to the memories summoned by the happy sounds and smells emanating from the kitchen. At home, she would have been peeling potatoes while her mother kneaded dough and Becca basted the turkey. Her father would have poked his head in every so often, hoping to steal morsels of food, and her mother would have pretended to be vexed and shooed him theatrically from the kitchen. Aunt Jo would have brought her famous buttermilk pie, and Hannah’s cousins would have come bearing homemade pralines, ginger bread and casserole dishes of macaroni and cheese and sweet potatoes studded with marshmallows. The women would have chatted in the kitchen while the men watched football and talked politics in the living room. When dinner was served, they’d have all joined hands while her father led them in prayer.
No prayers were said in Susan and Anthony’s household, not that day or any other. Anthony opened a bottle of red wine and poured it round. He raised his glass and said, “Merry Christmas, everyone.” Hannah took a cautious sip. She’d only drunk alcohol once before, some pink box wine her boyfriend Seth had procured the night of their high school graduation. If his plan had been to get her tipsy enough to have sex with him, it had backfired; she got sick after two cups of the stuff, and he spent the next hour holding her hair while she retched.
This wine, though, was altogether different. It was lush on her tongue and tasted of cherries, vanilla and, faintly, leather. She downed the first glass more quickly than she’d intended and began to feel a pleasant, floating detachment from herself and the others. The sensation of being unmoored, of drifting outside the present moment and watching it grow vague and unimportant, like something seen in the rearview mirror of a slowly moving car, intensified as she drank the second glass. When she reached for the bottle to pour herself a third, Susan moved it out of her reach.
“Oh, let her have it,” Anthony said. “It’s Christmas, and she’s far from home among strangers. If she wants a little oblivion, who can blame her?”
Hannah stumbled to bed that night and was locked in alone as usual. But when she woke the next morning, her mouth thick with fur and waves of pain pulsing through her head, Emmeline’s warm weight was lying across her abdomen and chest, and the cat’s paws were kneading her in rhythm with its purring. A kindness, a gift—Hannah couldn’t be certain from whom, but she had a strong hunch it had been Anthony. She lay there for a long while, stroking the cat’s sleek body, grateful for the brief reprieve from loneliness.
Her bladder and her aching head forced her from the bed eventually. Her face in the mirror looked puffy, especially around the eyes, and she had a deep crease in her left cheek from a wrinkle in the pillow case. A month ago, she reflected, she wouldn’t have noticed these details; she would have seen nothing but red and quickly looked away. She realized she was beginning to get used to it. Soon, her scarlet skin would be as unremarkable to her as the mole on her neck or the tiny scar, legacy of a tumble from her bicycle, beneath her lower lip. And say she made it to Canada and the chroming was reversed. Would she ever be able to look at her face and not see red?
She felt marginally better after brushing her teeth and showering. When she came out of the bathroom Emmeline was prowling by the door to the hallway, probably wanting breakfast. Hannah gave the knob a perfunctory twist, expecting to find the door locked, but it opened under her hand. The cat darted out into the hall, and Hannah followed more slowly. As she neared the end of the hallway she heard raised voices, coming from the dining room. She crept as close as she dared to listen.
“It’s either got to be George, or Betty and Gloria,” said Susan.
“Stanton suspects George,” said Simone.
“Well, I’d put my money on the ladies,” said Paul. “The disappearances didn’t start until after we made Erie a way station.”
“Coincidence,” said Simone emphatically. “It is impossible that Betty and Gloria would do this thing. They are lesbians, feminists.”
“So?”
“So, they betray their sisters? They help these Bible-frapping salauds to subjugate other women? Never.”
Paul made an impatient sound. “Here’s a news flash for you, Simone: women are human, just like men, and so are lesbians. You’re just as capable of treachery. When you shit, your merde stinks just as bad as anyone else’s.”
Hannah’s eyes widened. You’re just as capable, he’d said. Was Simone a homosexual, then? Hannah only knew one person who was gay, a sweet, fluttering young man who worked at the drugstore near her house. She’d always felt sorry for him, an attitude her father had fostered in her and Becca when their mother was out of earshot. John Payne didn’t share the view of his wife and many evangelicals that gays were minions of Satan. Instead, he looked on them as misguided, damaged souls deserving of prayer and pity. Hannah pictured Simone: her fierce gaze, the proud, unyielding set of her mouth. There was certainly nothing pitiable about her. And Hannah seriously doubted she’d appreciate being prayed for.
“We may not even have a traitor,” Anthony said. “The road is dangerous. Anything could have happened to those women.”
“Three in seven months?” Simone said. “And only the young and pretty ones? I think it smells.”
“Me too,” Susan said.
“Ben,” Simone said. “There is only one way to discover the truth. We use the girl as bait. We take her to Columbus, and when she leaves, we follow and see what happens.”
“Wait a minute,” Paul interjected. “You said ‘the girl.’ What about Kayla?” There was a fraught silence. “No,” he said, raising his voice. “We offered her the road, and she accepted. We’re bound to help her.”
“We have lost too much time,” said Simone. “She is now a liability we cannot afford.”
“You know the code as well as any of us, Paul.” Susan’s tone was regretful but firm. “No one life is more important than the mission.”
“And no life will be sacrificed except as a last resort,” Paul said, “and we’re not at that point yet.”
Hannah felt the hairs on her arms rise. She’d suspected Simone of being ruthless enough to kill, but to hear Paul speak so matter-of-factly of “sacrifice” was chilling.
“That is your opinion,” said Simone.
“That is fact. Kayla hasn’t done anything to endanger us.”
“Yet.”
“Paul, surely even you can see the folly in this,” said Anthony. “The girl’s due in a week, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ten days. And what do you mean, even me?”
“He means your heart is too soft,” Simone said. She spoke like an older sister, exasperated but not unkind. “You attach yourself too easily.”
“It’s personal, remember? That’s the whole point of what we do. I’d think you of all people would understand that.”
“Paul!” Susan exclaimed, at the same time Simone said, “What are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer.
“Explain yourself,” Simone said.
“I know what happened to you,” he said. “I’ve known for a long time.”
“You know shit,” Simone snapped.
“I know you’re willing to die to keep other women from having to go through that.”
Meaning an abortion? It had to be; what else could Paul be referring to? And besides, it explained so much. Having something so profoundly personal in common with Simone gave Hannah a queer, unsettled feeling. Except in her case, all she’d had to “go through” was the abortion itself. Nothing had gone wrong, not until afterward. Had the doctor botched Simone’s procedure or hurt her in some other way? Had she served time for it? Though abortion was legal again in Canada, it had been a felony offense during the scourge and for several years afterward.
“Yes, I am,” Simone said. “But I am not disposed to risk my life and yours for some girl who killed one of her own family.”
“Well, I am.”
“You think she cares about you, eh?” Simone made a scoffing sound. “She is using you. And if you were not thinking with your other head, you would see it.”
“What I see,” Paul said, “is a young woman in trouble. Someone we looked in the eye and promised we would help.”
“I’m sorry, Paul,” Susan said. “I have to agree with Simone. We can’t risk her going into fragmentation on the road.”
That’s it then. Hannah leaned into the wall, mind whirling. She and Kayla would have to escape somehow. Steal a car, leave Dallas. Outrun the Novembrists, the police, the Fist. And if they managed to do all that, what then? Where would they go? Who would take them in?
“On the other hand,” Anthony said speculatively, “the girl’s young and pretty.”
“So?” said Simone. “Double bait for the hook.”
“He has a point,” Paul said quickly.
A silence fell, and Hannah knew they were all waiting for Susan to decide.
“Simone?” Susan said finally.
“All right,” Simone said. “But if she starts to frag out, or if she compromises the mission …”
“You follow the code,” Susan said. “Agreed, Paul?”
“Agreed.”
Hannah shivered. If he was dissembling, she couldn’t detect it.
She was about to steal back to her room when she heard a faint meow coming from the dining room. She froze. She’d forgotten about Emmeline, who was supposed to be locked in with her. If they realized she’d been listening in … She ran back to her door and closed it loudly, then strolled to the dining room, praying none of them had noticed the cat’s presence until just now.
“Good morning,” she said, striving for nonchalance.
They were all startled by her appearance, all except for Anthony, who studied Hannah with a narrowed gaze. “I put Emmeline in her room last night,” he said to the others. “I must have forgotten to lock the door.”
Four pairs of eyes skewered her, looking for telltale signs that she’d overheard them. With a rueful smile, she raised her hand to her forehead. “I think I had a little too much holiday cheer last night. Have you got some aspirin?”
For long seconds, no one moved. Then Paul said, “I’ll get it,” and Hannah felt the tension drain from the room. She sat down, wobbly with relief.
“Fetch Kayla while you’re at it,” Susan said. She turned to Hannah. “You’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, she and Kayla were back in the van, hooded, on their way to Columbus, Wherever. The only one Hannah was familiar with was in Ohio, but there was probably one in every state.
She had a sense of dislocation, an untethered feeling that grew as the minutes and the miles passed. Here she was again, hurtling forward in the darkness, destination unknown. It seemed an apt metaphor for what her life had become. She pressed her back into the wall of the van, feeling suddenly giddy with loss, attached to nothing and no one. Everything she had was dropping away from her, everything. And then Kayla moved and accidentally kicked Hannah’s foot, and she corrected herself. She had a true friend, if nothing else. It was enough, for now, to sustain her and give her life some meaning.
Hannah felt Paul’s eyes on her, prodding her: Don’t let them separate you. She studied her friend, evaluating her with the same dispassion she’d trained on Paul, TJ, the Green on the subway. She saw fear and doubt and vulnerability, intelligence and pluck. What she did not see was cowardice. If she were in Kayla’s position, would she not have the same reluctance to give up her whole life? Except Kayla wasn’t in the position she thought she was, and Hannah knew that unless she said something, they’d allow her to decide unknowing.
“Your stepfather’s dead,” Hannah said.
Kayla stared at her for a moment, stunned, and then turned to Susan. “Is it true?”
A grudging nod. “He died of sepsis two days ago.”
“That son of a bitch. He would have to up and die.” Kayla’s voice splintered on the word, and Hannah could see that beneath her bravado, she was deeply shaken. Her expression turned grim as she absorbed the implications. “Murder’s what, ten years minimum?” Another nod from Susan. “Son of a bitch.”
“At least he’ll never touch your sister again,” Hannah said.
“Yeah, there’s that.” Kayla took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Guess it’s two for the road.”
SUSAN HAD TOLD them they’d be leaving in a few days, but a week and a half later, they were still cooped up in the house, waiting. “There’s been a delay,” was all the explanation they were given. Susan and Anthony were gone during the days, presumably to their respective, respectable jobs, and either Simone or Paul babysat. Hannah and Kayla felt increasingly caged and irritable. They couldn’t go outside and were forbidden to access the net—to keep them from contacting anyone they knew, Hannah supposed—which meant they weren’t even allowed to turn on the vid unless one of their minders was in the room with them. There was little to do besides eat, worry and play with the cats. Susan and Anthony’s nondigital library, such as it was, consisted mainly of cookbooks, military histories and women’s self-help books with wince-inducing titles like How to Feed Your Inner She-Wolf. Hannah suspected that all of it—the books, the dubious taste in clothing, the cutesy decor—was an elaborate camouflage. She imagined them leading a totally different life somewhere else: in a sleek condominium, perhaps, where they drank French wine and discussed politics over elegant dinners.
Except at night, Hannah and Kayla were allowed to wander the house freely, but every few days, and always in the early evening when Susan and Anthony were home and Simone was there, the women were locked in their rooms for an hour or two without explanation. After the second time, Hannah saw five used coffee cups on the dining room table. She figured the visitors were other Novembrists, coming to report to and scheme with Susan and Anthony, and she wondered how many members of the group there were and what they did in their other lives. It was disconcerting to think that she might have met one of them, shaken hands at church or made small talk in line at the grocery store, and never known it.
Fortunately, Paul was their daytime minder much more often than Simone. His kindness was a reassuring counterweight to the nerve-wracking state of limbo in which they found themselves; that, and his cooking, which was very good. He prepared sumptuous lunches to distract them and put flesh on their scarecrow figures: chicken parmesan, asparagus risotto, spinach soufflé. Hannah had never had such food in her life—her mother was a conventional cook, and she herself had never been interested enough to learn beyond the basics—and the flavors astonished her, often making her moan out loud. But when Paul served the food, his eyes rested on Kayla, and when she ate with gusto, they lit with pride and pleasure.
She began to bloom under his attention. Her despondency over TJ lifted a little, and her wit and irreverence reasserted themselves. She tried to banter with him, but more often than not, her flirtatious remarks left him tongue-tied. Hannah observed them, trying to suppress her envy. How wonderful it must feel, to be wanted by a man—a decent, attractive, unchromed man—in spite of your red skin. Paul seemed impervious to the fact that Kayla was a Chrome. When he looked at her, it was plain that what he saw was a desirable woman.
Hannah’s thoughts returned constantly to her family and Aidan, her mind circling around them like a June bug on a fishing line. Aidan was the most insistent presence of them all. There was no escaping him, even in sleep. He was waiting behind her eyelids, erupting jubilant from the lake, rocking Pearl in his arms, unbuttoning Hannah’s dress, his mouth following the path of his fingers. Once, after a particularly erotic dream, she touched herself, pretending it was him, but the pleasure turned bitter afterward, when she opened her eyes and saw the vacant space beside her. She speculated fifty times a day about where he was, what he was doing, whether he thought of her, and then castigated herself for her weakness. She had to let him go. So she told herself, fifty times a day, but it was like letting go of her own lungs, her own beating heart, and she wasn’t yet ready for that death.
And then one afternoon, she was sitting with Kayla and Paul in front of the vid searching for something to watch, when suddenly, as though she’d conjured him, there was Aidan.
“Stop search,” she said. He was on a stage in a large arena, preaching to a group of teenagers. It was a live show. The camera panned over the crowd, lingering on the rapt, adoring faces of the young women.
“I’m really not in the mood for a sermon tonight,” Kayla said crossly. “Continue search.”
“Go back,” Hannah said. The camera zoomed in on Aidan. “What is up with you?”
“Shh, I want to see this.”
“Fine, watch what you want,” Kayla snapped. She got up and flounced from the room. Paul swore and went after her.
Hannah stared at Aidan. The last time she’d seen him, on the vid of his swearing-in ceremony in September, he’d looked sad and drained. Now, just three months later, his face was shiny and pink with vitality. His eyes were lit with passion, his movements across the stage powerful and exuberant. And his words! He was afire with the spirit of God. She could see it passing like an electric current from his lips to the ears of his mesmerized listeners, many of whom stood with their arms stretched up to the ceiling, eyes closed, swaying back and forth to the cadence of his voice. Hannah watched, hurt warring with furious incredulity. Here she was, a Chrome, a fugitive, targeted by the Fist, running for her life. And he looked … happy.
Her spirit puddled within her, a leaden thing, shapeless and abject. How remote he must be from her, and from the love they’d shared, to look like that. Had it ever been real, or had it just been a vivid dream? She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence before her eyes was damning, irrefutable.
He had let her go.
She had been dead for some time now and not even known it.
FOUR
THE WILDERNESS
HANNAH DID LITTLE BUT SLEEP in the days that followed. The alternative—to stay awake brooding about Aidan, missing her family, worrying about Kayla’s looming renewal date and watching the growing attraction between her and Paul—was intolerable. There was nothing to break the monotony of the days, nothing to keep the darkness at bay. Even Christmas failed to lift her spirits, despite the efforts of their minders to make it festive. Susan and Anthony played carols on the vid and gave Hannah and Kayla gifts of warm jackets, gloves and sturdy boots. Simone was absent, but Paul arrived on Christmas morning with bags of groceries and spent the day cooking, with Kayla as his sous chef. Hannah sat listlessly in front of the vid, a prisoner to the memories summoned by the happy sounds and smells emanating from the kitchen. At home, she would have been peeling potatoes while her mother kneaded dough and Becca basted the turkey. Her father would have poked his head in every so often, hoping to steal morsels of food, and her mother would have pretended to be vexed and shooed him theatrically from the kitchen. Aunt Jo would have brought her famous buttermilk pie, and Hannah’s cousins would have come bearing homemade pralines, ginger bread and casserole dishes of macaroni and cheese and sweet potatoes studded with marshmallows. The women would have chatted in the kitchen while the men watched football and talked politics in the living room. When dinner was served, they’d have all joined hands while her father led them in prayer.
No prayers were said in Susan and Anthony’s household, not that day or any other. Anthony opened a bottle of red wine and poured it round. He raised his glass and said, “Merry Christmas, everyone.” Hannah took a cautious sip. She’d only drunk alcohol once before, some pink box wine her boyfriend Seth had procured the night of their high school graduation. If his plan had been to get her tipsy enough to have sex with him, it had backfired; she got sick after two cups of the stuff, and he spent the next hour holding her hair while she retched.
This wine, though, was altogether different. It was lush on her tongue and tasted of cherries, vanilla and, faintly, leather. She downed the first glass more quickly than she’d intended and began to feel a pleasant, floating detachment from herself and the others. The sensation of being unmoored, of drifting outside the present moment and watching it grow vague and unimportant, like something seen in the rearview mirror of a slowly moving car, intensified as she drank the second glass. When she reached for the bottle to pour herself a third, Susan moved it out of her reach.
“Oh, let her have it,” Anthony said. “It’s Christmas, and she’s far from home among strangers. If she wants a little oblivion, who can blame her?”
Hannah stumbled to bed that night and was locked in alone as usual. But when she woke the next morning, her mouth thick with fur and waves of pain pulsing through her head, Emmeline’s warm weight was lying across her abdomen and chest, and the cat’s paws were kneading her in rhythm with its purring. A kindness, a gift—Hannah couldn’t be certain from whom, but she had a strong hunch it had been Anthony. She lay there for a long while, stroking the cat’s sleek body, grateful for the brief reprieve from loneliness.
Her bladder and her aching head forced her from the bed eventually. Her face in the mirror looked puffy, especially around the eyes, and she had a deep crease in her left cheek from a wrinkle in the pillow case. A month ago, she reflected, she wouldn’t have noticed these details; she would have seen nothing but red and quickly looked away. She realized she was beginning to get used to it. Soon, her scarlet skin would be as unremarkable to her as the mole on her neck or the tiny scar, legacy of a tumble from her bicycle, beneath her lower lip. And say she made it to Canada and the chroming was reversed. Would she ever be able to look at her face and not see red?
She felt marginally better after brushing her teeth and showering. When she came out of the bathroom Emmeline was prowling by the door to the hallway, probably wanting breakfast. Hannah gave the knob a perfunctory twist, expecting to find the door locked, but it opened under her hand. The cat darted out into the hall, and Hannah followed more slowly. As she neared the end of the hallway she heard raised voices, coming from the dining room. She crept as close as she dared to listen.
“It’s either got to be George, or Betty and Gloria,” said Susan.
“Stanton suspects George,” said Simone.
“Well, I’d put my money on the ladies,” said Paul. “The disappearances didn’t start until after we made Erie a way station.”
“Coincidence,” said Simone emphatically. “It is impossible that Betty and Gloria would do this thing. They are lesbians, feminists.”
“So?”
“So, they betray their sisters? They help these Bible-frapping salauds to subjugate other women? Never.”
Paul made an impatient sound. “Here’s a news flash for you, Simone: women are human, just like men, and so are lesbians. You’re just as capable of treachery. When you shit, your merde stinks just as bad as anyone else’s.”
Hannah’s eyes widened. You’re just as capable, he’d said. Was Simone a homosexual, then? Hannah only knew one person who was gay, a sweet, fluttering young man who worked at the drugstore near her house. She’d always felt sorry for him, an attitude her father had fostered in her and Becca when their mother was out of earshot. John Payne didn’t share the view of his wife and many evangelicals that gays were minions of Satan. Instead, he looked on them as misguided, damaged souls deserving of prayer and pity. Hannah pictured Simone: her fierce gaze, the proud, unyielding set of her mouth. There was certainly nothing pitiable about her. And Hannah seriously doubted she’d appreciate being prayed for.
“We may not even have a traitor,” Anthony said. “The road is dangerous. Anything could have happened to those women.”
“Three in seven months?” Simone said. “And only the young and pretty ones? I think it smells.”
“Me too,” Susan said.
“Ben,” Simone said. “There is only one way to discover the truth. We use the girl as bait. We take her to Columbus, and when she leaves, we follow and see what happens.”
“Wait a minute,” Paul interjected. “You said ‘the girl.’ What about Kayla?” There was a fraught silence. “No,” he said, raising his voice. “We offered her the road, and she accepted. We’re bound to help her.”
“We have lost too much time,” said Simone. “She is now a liability we cannot afford.”
“You know the code as well as any of us, Paul.” Susan’s tone was regretful but firm. “No one life is more important than the mission.”
“And no life will be sacrificed except as a last resort,” Paul said, “and we’re not at that point yet.”
Hannah felt the hairs on her arms rise. She’d suspected Simone of being ruthless enough to kill, but to hear Paul speak so matter-of-factly of “sacrifice” was chilling.
“That is your opinion,” said Simone.
“That is fact. Kayla hasn’t done anything to endanger us.”
“Yet.”
“Paul, surely even you can see the folly in this,” said Anthony. “The girl’s due in a week, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ten days. And what do you mean, even me?”
“He means your heart is too soft,” Simone said. She spoke like an older sister, exasperated but not unkind. “You attach yourself too easily.”
“It’s personal, remember? That’s the whole point of what we do. I’d think you of all people would understand that.”
“Paul!” Susan exclaimed, at the same time Simone said, “What are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer.
“Explain yourself,” Simone said.
“I know what happened to you,” he said. “I’ve known for a long time.”
“You know shit,” Simone snapped.
“I know you’re willing to die to keep other women from having to go through that.”
Meaning an abortion? It had to be; what else could Paul be referring to? And besides, it explained so much. Having something so profoundly personal in common with Simone gave Hannah a queer, unsettled feeling. Except in her case, all she’d had to “go through” was the abortion itself. Nothing had gone wrong, not until afterward. Had the doctor botched Simone’s procedure or hurt her in some other way? Had she served time for it? Though abortion was legal again in Canada, it had been a felony offense during the scourge and for several years afterward.
“Yes, I am,” Simone said. “But I am not disposed to risk my life and yours for some girl who killed one of her own family.”
“Well, I am.”
“You think she cares about you, eh?” Simone made a scoffing sound. “She is using you. And if you were not thinking with your other head, you would see it.”
“What I see,” Paul said, “is a young woman in trouble. Someone we looked in the eye and promised we would help.”
“I’m sorry, Paul,” Susan said. “I have to agree with Simone. We can’t risk her going into fragmentation on the road.”
That’s it then. Hannah leaned into the wall, mind whirling. She and Kayla would have to escape somehow. Steal a car, leave Dallas. Outrun the Novembrists, the police, the Fist. And if they managed to do all that, what then? Where would they go? Who would take them in?
“On the other hand,” Anthony said speculatively, “the girl’s young and pretty.”
“So?” said Simone. “Double bait for the hook.”
“He has a point,” Paul said quickly.
A silence fell, and Hannah knew they were all waiting for Susan to decide.
“Simone?” Susan said finally.
“All right,” Simone said. “But if she starts to frag out, or if she compromises the mission …”
“You follow the code,” Susan said. “Agreed, Paul?”
“Agreed.”
Hannah shivered. If he was dissembling, she couldn’t detect it.
She was about to steal back to her room when she heard a faint meow coming from the dining room. She froze. She’d forgotten about Emmeline, who was supposed to be locked in with her. If they realized she’d been listening in … She ran back to her door and closed it loudly, then strolled to the dining room, praying none of them had noticed the cat’s presence until just now.
“Good morning,” she said, striving for nonchalance.
They were all startled by her appearance, all except for Anthony, who studied Hannah with a narrowed gaze. “I put Emmeline in her room last night,” he said to the others. “I must have forgotten to lock the door.”
Four pairs of eyes skewered her, looking for telltale signs that she’d overheard them. With a rueful smile, she raised her hand to her forehead. “I think I had a little too much holiday cheer last night. Have you got some aspirin?”
For long seconds, no one moved. Then Paul said, “I’ll get it,” and Hannah felt the tension drain from the room. She sat down, wobbly with relief.
“Fetch Kayla while you’re at it,” Susan said. She turned to Hannah. “You’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, she and Kayla were back in the van, hooded, on their way to Columbus, Wherever. The only one Hannah was familiar with was in Ohio, but there was probably one in every state.
She had a sense of dislocation, an untethered feeling that grew as the minutes and the miles passed. Here she was again, hurtling forward in the darkness, destination unknown. It seemed an apt metaphor for what her life had become. She pressed her back into the wall of the van, feeling suddenly giddy with loss, attached to nothing and no one. Everything she had was dropping away from her, everything. And then Kayla moved and accidentally kicked Hannah’s foot, and she corrected herself. She had a true friend, if nothing else. It was enough, for now, to sustain her and give her life some meaning.
