Wee hours. Robert Lowell’s Skunk Hour. So late. So tired.
Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep…
She closes her eyes for the briefest of moments.
Void.
Sunlight.
Birdsong.
Shit.
What day is it?
The hours are like years and the days are decades. How many millennia into this goddamn nightmare is she?
Another morning. That feeling in her stomach, those butterflies of terror, of gut-churning horror. You’ve never experienced fear until something or someone puts your child in danger. Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is for something to happen to your kid. Having a child instantly turns you into a grown-up. Absurdity is the ontological mismatch between the desire for meaning and the inability to find meaning in this world. Absurdity is a luxury parents of missing children can’t afford.
She sits at the living-room table. Eli the cat meows next to her. He hasn’t been fed in almost two days.
She fills his bowl, drinks a mug of cold coffee, and steps out onto the deck. Then she puts on a coat and walks along the basin trail to the Appenzellers’ house.
The sun comes up over the Atlantic and the big houses on the eastern side of the island. Her iPhone rings. Unknown Caller. Her stomach lurches. What now? “Hello?”
“I need you! Get over here!” Pete yells.
“I’m two minutes away.”
“Run! I need help.”
She sprints along the basin trail and onto Northern Boulevard. Heart pounding, she runs down the path onto the beach and up the back steps of the Appenzellers’.
Worryingly, the door is open.
She goes inside.
On the kitchen table there’s Pete’s .45 and a bag of what looks like drugs. What the hell? Is Pete a user? Her mind races.
Can he be trusted? Jesus, is he part of all this?
Rachel thinks she knows Pete, but can you ever really know anybody? He’s crazy about Kylie but there were those arrests a while back, and what has he been doing all these years since getting out of the Corps?
She shakes her head. No, it’s Pete, for heaven’s sake. This is the paranoia talking. The Chain has nothing to do with Tammy and it has nothing to do with Pete.
But drugs? This is serious. She’ll have to—
“Rachel! Down here! Put your mask on.”
She puts on her ski mask and runs down the basement stairs.
Pete is holding Amelia, who is wrapped in a towel, writhing and shaking. Cereal is spilled all over the floor.
“What happened?”
“Gave her the Rice Krispies. I thought it would be fine! I didn’t see the small print. It says that it might contain trace nuts.”
“My God!”
“The EpiPen won’t be here until later this morning,” Pete says in a complete panic.
Amelia’s lips have swollen and she’s deathly white. There are specks of foam at the corners of her mouth and her breaths are shallow and raspy.
Rachel puts the back of her hand on Amelia’s forehead.
Fever.
She lifts Amelia’s shirt.
Hives.
Rachel opens Amelia’s mouth and looks inside. No obstruction. Her tongue isn’t swollen. Yet.
“Are you having trouble breathing, Amelia?” Rachel asks. “Can you breathe? Answer me.”
Amelia nods.
“What does your mom do when you’re like this?”
“Doctor.”
She’s covered with sweat and her breathing is getting more labored.
“We need to take her to a hospital,” Pete says.
Rachel turns to face him. What the hell is he thinking? Hospital? There’s no way they can take her to the hospital. If they take her to the hospital the jig is up and Kylie’s dead.
“No,” she says.
“She’s having an allergic reaction,” Pete says.
“I can see that.”
“She has to see a doctor. We don’t have the EpiPen.”
“No doctor,” Rachel insists. “I’ll hold her.”
She takes the girl and Pete finally understands. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve made the decision.”
A terrible decision, but one The Chain has forced on her.
Either the little girl is going to die in her arms here and now or she’s somehow going to get better.
“I’ll stay here with her. You get an EpiPen any way you can!”
“How?”
“Rob a goddamn pharmacy! I don’t know. Go!”
Pete runs upstairs. “I’ll leave you the gun,” he says from the kitchen.
“Fine. Just go!”
She hears the back door slam.
She holds Amelia.
“Doctor,” Amelia says.
“Yes, honey,” Rachel replies.
There will be no doctors and no hospitals.
If she dies, she and Pete will abandon the house and try again. The cops will find a dead little girl chained to a pillar, covered in spit and vomit, surrounded by dolls and toys and games. They will think it’s one of the most evil crime scenes they’ve ever laid eyes on.
Amelia’s face is pale. Her eyes are glassy. She begins coughing.
The hospital could save her.
A paramedic unit from the Newburyport Fire Department could save her.
But Rachel isn’t going to call the paramedics or a doctor or a hospital. That path will kill Kylie. If she has to choose between Amelia and Kylie, it’s going to be Kylie.
Rachel starts to cry. “Try to breathe more slowly,” she says to Amelia. “Slow, easy, big breaths.”
She feels Amelia’s pulse. It’s getting weaker. Amelia looks green. Her skin is soaking, as if she’s just had a bath. “Want Daddy,” Amelia moans.
“Help’s coming, I promise.”
Rachel rocks the little girl in her arms. She’s dying. Amelia is dying and there’s nothing Rachel can do.
Maybe antihistamines would help? There might be some upstairs in the medicine cabinet.
She picks up her phone and Googles peanut allergy and antihistamines. The very first article that comes up tells her not to give antihistamines to a child having a severe allergic reaction because antihistamines don’t treat anaphylaxis and might make things worse.
“Come on, Pete,” Rachel says out loud. “Come on.”
Amelia’s limp and hot and bubbles are frothing on her lips.
“Mom,” she says and moans again.
“It’s OK,” Rachel lies. “It’s OK.”
She holds the little girl tightly against her.
The minutes tick past. Amelia gets no better but no worse.
The house is quiet.
She can hear gulls, the sea, a rat-a-tat…
Huh?
She sits up on the mattress and listens.
She hears the rat-a-tat again.
What is that?
“Elaine?” someone says.
Someone is knocking at the front door.
Someone is upstairs right now.
A woman.
She lays Amelia down on the mattress, quietly runs up the basement steps, and crawls into the corridor.
Rat-a-tat again and then another “Elaine? Are you home?”
Rachel flattens herself on the corridor floor.
“Elaine? Is there anybody home?”
Amelia’s little voice drifts up through the open basement door. “Mommy…”