Rob pauses.
“When I left, I’d get these calls … first it was just heavy breathing, all hours of the day and night. I’d change phones, get burner phones. I’d change my number and they’d find me. They did it just to let me know they could always find me. When I started asking for the money I put into The Project—I was starving, barely keeping a roof over my head—I threatened to go public with what they did and then, when I got the calls, there’d be this voice on the other end of the line.” He looks at me. “It was mine. It was my voice, Lo.”
“What?”
“They’d spliced together my Attestations—because they record you in the Reflection Room—and the shit they made it sound like I’d said … are you saying you talked to Bea? Or that you heard her?”
“She said good-bye.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “You expect me to believe—”
“It’s the truth. Oh man, they tried to end me in every way they could think to do it. I’d wake up in the morning and find the gas was on or … I get in the car, and I’m going ninety on the highway and the fucking thing won’t stop…” He runs his hand over his mouth. “My scars are real. I didn’t do that to myself. They held me down. Tied me up.” He exhales. “And after I’m done here with you, Lo, you know what I’m doing? I’m leaving town because I won’t make it out of this alive if I don’t. I didn’t want to stick my neck out like this at all, but if Bea wanted one thing, it was to get Emmy out of The Project and I know the last thing she’d want to see is both of you in it—”
“You think she’s dead,” I say suddenly.
They both look at me, silent.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No … I don’t believe you—”
“We need to talk to someone,” Father Michael says without meeting my eyes. “Call the authorities in Morel, Chapman—”
“They got Bob Denbrough wrapped around their goddamn finger,” Rob says, “and half the Chapman Sheriff’s Department too—”
“If you think she’s dead, say it,” I whisper.
“We need to figure out a course of action—”
“I don’t even know you!” I explode. They both shut up. I stare at them, trembling, my eyes filling with tears. “If you think she’s dead. Say. It.”
Finally, Rob speaks: “I’m sorry, Lo.”
I grab Father Michael’s car keys from the table and I’m at the door before they realize what’s happening and I’m in the car by the time they’re at the door, pulling out of the driveway and back on the road. The sheer effort of being behind the wheel pushes me toward the edge of a full-blown panic attack but I have to get back to the house. Emmy’s at the house. I reach an intersection at the same time a semi comes down the highway. I slam the brakes and come to a screeching halt, my body forced forward by the momentum—but the car stops.
It stops.
I park the station wagon in a clearing down the road from the house, tossing the keys in the front seat and then I run back to the house. As soon as I’m within arm’s length of the front door, it flies open and Foster is there, wide-eyed and wild.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I went for a run,” I gasp. “I just … I needed to get out.”
He covers his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ, Lo—I got up and you weren’t there. I looked everywhere for you. You should have left a text, something—”
“I don’t have a phone,” I remind him and I’m amazed at how effortlessly all of this is coming out of my mouth. He’s looking at me and he doesn’t see someone who is dying. I look past him, trying to see into the Great Room. “Is Lev back?”
“They’re about ten minutes out.”
Fuck. “Where’s Emmy?”
“She’s having a snack and watching TV.”
“Okay.” I nod, my throat is getting so tight, in a minute I won’t be able to say another word. “Okay. I’m going to head to the cabin, shower…”
“All right.” He studies me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t look like he believes it. “Don’t go anywhere else.”
“I won’t.”
I stare at him for a moment too long, my head full of Rob’s voice. Foster and Bea. Emmy. Foster’s child. I’m terrified I can see it now, how there are parts of Emmy that don’t belong to me or Bea, our mother and father. And what I thought might have belonged to Lev—the curve of her jaw, her frame, her square shoulders—so obviously, painfully, belong to someone else. He grows uncomfortable under my gaze.
“What?” he asks.
“You said Bea would come back. Do you really think that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because Lev saw it.”
* * *
I slam the door to the cabin behind me, pacing the room.
She can’t be dead.
She can’t be.
“You can’t be dead,” I whisper.
He saved my life.
I sink to my knees and press my hands against the floor, too shocked, too numb to cry. She can’t be dead. I reach for her, trying to conjure her from nothing to prove me right. You’re not dead, Bea, you’re just not here.
Come back.
The door to the cabin opens and Lev steps inside, finds me on the floor. He says my name and I don’t answer him. He kneels in front of me, concerned.
“Lo? What is it?”
I look up at him.
“Did you see Rob?” I whisper.
He looks away. “It was fruitless, but this isn’t over.”
I can’t stop myself; I start to cry.
“Lo.” He’s alarmed. “What is it?”
“I’m scared,” I manage.
“Of what?” He presses his hand to my cheek and I squeeze my eyes shut and I see a semi coming down the road and my brakes don’t work. The calls, the breathing on the other end of the line. Good-bye … “Is it the baptism?” He presses his lips to my forehead as the tears continue to stream down my face. “Trust in me with all your heart. Don’t try to understand it, just trust in me, and I will show you the path.”
“If Bea came back,” I ask, “where would she fit?”
I open my eyes, and find myself face-to-face with the necklace. It’s turned around, the anchor against his throat, and from here, I can see, for the first time, what’s etched on the back, what Rob told me was on the back: B & F.
I slowly look up at him.
He brushes a tear from my cheek.
“Do you think she’ll ever come back?”
“Forget the things which are behind you,” he tells me, “and look forward.”
Tonight.
Leave with Emmy tonight.
2017
Bea waits.
In the cabin, while Lev showers, she curls up on the couch and closes her eyes. By the time he’s done, she’s made her body still, parted her mouth, turned her breathing even and deep. The light shifts under her eyelids, his shadow falling over her body as he contemplates it. And she prays—to who, she doesn’t know—that he will let her rest.