“I’m sorry, I have to pull over, I’m going to need a minute. I need to use the GPS,” Penelope said and looked around for the nearest street address to input. She was in some sort of a residential neighborhood, small houses with siding and patchy lawns and no one was out, even though the lights were on behind just about every window. “Unless you know the way,” Penelope added and turned to look at the woman. Her head was twisted in an unnatural way, like a baby in a carrier without a head support. Contorted.
“Are you okay?” Penelope touched the woman’s hand. So pale and childlike, the hand of a twelve-year-old. “Hey,” Penelope said and tugged on her arm. “Can you hear me?” Penelope wiggled her arm, trying to get her to stir. She wanted to call out the woman’s name but she didn’t. A red line emerged from the woman’s left nostril.
A man approached, walking two large brown dogs. They stopped and sniffed the tree where Penelope was parked, their leashes stretched. The man was less than five feet away from her car and he looked at her, made momentary eye contact, but Penelope didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as reach for the button to lower her window, and he continued on down the sidewalk.
Penelope spotted a street sign. Bellfield, and she typed it in the phone but she couldn’t comprehend the instructions. She switched to the map function and that she could understand, the highway around the next corner, down the access road and then take the next exit and one turn to the right. There was a red cross on the map, which meant hospital.
Penelope floored the gas and the tires squealed. She ran a stop sign, a car came straight at her, they both hit the brakes and came to a screeching halt inches from each other. The driver blew his horn, angrily, three or four times. Penelope raised her hand to apologize for her lack of attention.
She talked to Rachel without looking at her. Everything will be okay don’t do this to me the hospital is around the corner please please please. Last time Penelope had looked, Rachel’s chin had rested on her chest. People fall asleep in airplanes like that, in cars even, nothing to worry about. She’ll be okay, she’s unconscious and everything will be fine. It will be all right.
Penelope took the exit and then took a right, could see the lit-up red cross from far away, the illuminations, five or so stories, and she slowed down. There was a sign, outpatient, but she had to find the emergency room entrance. She turned right, then hit the brakes when the parking lot suddenly ended. There was a row of dumpsters, and she was behind a building with delivery ramps and this was all wrong.
She wanted to collect herself, for just a minute or so, wanted to come up with a story. No, story was not the right word, she didn’t plan on lying about anything, she just wanted to arrive at some logical explanation so she wouldn’t be rambling on and on, so she could tell them that the woman was fine, just fine, walking, talking, one minute she was grabbing her coat, pulling the lapel, the next her head was bent and there was blood coming from her nose.
Penelope got out of the car, hurried around and opened the passenger door. The moment the overhead light came on, when she saw the woman’s face, she knew. The trickle of blood had turned into a tributary of red, leading from her nose across her cheek and down her neck. The woman wore a bright red silk scarf around her neck, tucked into the coat, now Penelope saw how bright the color was, poppy, almost candy-apple red.
Penelope’s stomach dropped as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. She wanted to shake the woman, get her to wake up. Wanted her to respond, in a coherent way. She wasn’t sure what had happened—had the woman not gotten up off the ground earlier, had she not talked, had she not been responsive—and now she was contorted and lifeless? The word dead formed in her mind but before it manifested itself in all its consequences, Penelope somehow was back in the car, behind the wheel.
In the woman’s lap, there was another scarf, red like a garnet. No, that’s not a scarf, no no no no no no no no no no, that’s not a scarf at all. Not around her neck, not in her lap. That’s blood.
Penelope lifted the woman’s head by her chin, but her head rolled to the side and her eyes stared straight at her, struck her with their broken beauty. And beautiful she was, even now, in a desperate and dramatic way, like a painting of a woman she had seen once, chained at the stakes and looking up toward heaven. Rachel looked like that, theatrical and exaggerated. Her eyes. Her eyes were so still.
Penelope sat in the darkness of her car feeling every beat of her heart. A narrow stream of light approached, painting the ghostly loading docks in lights and shadows. The silence was disturbed by an ambulance siren. Penelope held her breath. The ambulance passed. She remained perfectly still until the lights disappeared.
30
DONNA
Penelope sits in a parking lot of a hospital and does nothing. Nothing. A bleeding woman in the seat next to her doesn’t rouse her conscience. Instead of rendering help she . . . waits? And just like that I’m caught up in a tangle of narratives. I’ve been without sleep for two days, I haven’t eaten, my hands are shaking, that’s how low my blood sugar is. I rummage through my purse for anything resembling a mint, gum, or granola bar. Nothing.
I flip to the next page. Speculations and opinions on my part are useless but before I read further, I should try to remember. Hear me out. I make no sense, even to myself.
First, I search my memory and vaguely discover a story resembling the one I just read. Doubt is my next instinct. None of it makes sense. None of it matches up with the narrative I’ve had in my head. And then it all turns peculiar because I know what Penelope did next—suddenly I know it and I can no longer deny it.
There’s a conundrum I have inside. Can I trust this Penelope?
You’d think that’s the most powerful thought in my mind but there’s something else. I stuff the letters in my purse. A question demanding an answer: am I trying to recall something or shut something out?
A voice in my head answers. Find proof.
31
DONNA
I position myself by the stairs leading down into the garage with my hand resting on the banister. I step down—one, two, three, four—and reach into the darkness. The palm of my hands makes contact with the hood of a car. Running them down and back up, I feel a round emblem above the grill. Four rings. Edward’s car. His Audi.
Five steps to the left and there’s my Infinity. On the other side of the garage, the sprinkler display box illuminates the space enough to make out shadows. The third spot sits empty. It’s where Penelope used to park. It feels wrong but I don’t know what’s wrong about it.
Four long steps to my left and I feel the partial wall of the storage cupboards. We used to keep bins full of Christmas decorations in those cabinets but they are gone now, the wall is boarded up. I take out my phone and turn on the flashlight option. The light centers on the wall. It has been fixed in a rudimentary way with a piece of plywood and nails, but there’s no paint or stucco. A Band-Aid at best. My first instinct is I know if I take that plywood down, I’ll find a large gaping hole behind it. I want to make this go away—all of it, the letters, the hunch I have—but I can’t, it’s too late, I knew that when I—