Twenty-one

It had been a dreamless, lost sleep, like sinking down an endless hole. I’d been grateful for it.

And then the noise, some noise, a firecracker pop.

I look at the clock flaring five forty.

I feel Evie stirring, jumping up, running to the window.

It’s the tiniest gasp from her, and I wonder what she sees, but my head isn’t working right and I can’t unfurl the sheet from my ankle.

I stumble to the window, squeezing my eyes into focus.

It’s the pear tree out back, there’s something at the foot of it, something black at its knotty roots.

That’s a dog, I think, or a trash bag. What is that dark thing?

At the same moment, elbows bumping each other, we lift up the heavy window, push our faces against the screen.

That’s when I see.

It’s a person.

It’s a man, sprawled under the tree.

“Evie,” I say. “Evie.”

It’s all happening, I think, he’s come here to reclaim his girl-queen.

He’s returned from the darkest depths to take her back again, in a titanic gesture, like a knight rescuing the princess from her high tower.

I feel myself running out her bedroom door and it’s so fast and in my head her antic breaths are right behind me. In my head, she’s right behind me.

Sliding across the kitchen floor, I land at the side door, hurling it open, the new security alarm wailing, crashing in my ears.

I’m pounding across the dewy grass of the backyard, my eyes flashing over the black mass under the tree and, ten feet away, my legs shudder to a stop.

I hold my aching chest and stop.

He’s lying there, his arm flung to his side, like when you do snow angels. The black thing in his hand, the gun, looks so small.

I let myself look, I do. I can’t stop myself.

I look down at Mr. Shaw, eyes struck open, and mouth too, the mouth like a black ragged hole.

Like something black inside him exploded, soot sprayed across his left cheek.

Like the thing inside him, the dark and helpless thing, had become so immense, he could no longer hold it. He could no longer contain it. It overtook him.

His eyes open like that, looking straight up into the branches of the pear tree, and I bet he wishes he was looking at her still, looking up at her window, stuck that way forever, arrested.

Then I remember: Where’s Evie? Where is she? This is for her, for her to wail and cry out his name and fall to her knees like in a movie, slow motion and music rising.

Because he’s waiting here for you, Evie, don’t you see?

Wheeling around, I look up and see her. She’s still at her bedroom window. She hasn’t moved at all. She’s looking down at me, watching me. And I want to see the horror on her face, the roaring grief and confusion. I want to see it all. I want her to show it to me, to him.

But there’s nothing on her face at all. Stock-still and vacant-eyed, she’s like an old wax doll, propped on a windowsill.

Where is it, Evie? Where’s all that feeling?

Because I look at your face and all I see is nothing.

The blankness, it terrifies me.

What happened, Evie, that took your face away, that smeared it blank? What happened to Evie?

That’s when I feel Mr. Verver’s arms grabbing my waist, whirling me around.

He’s trying to pull me away from Mr. Shaw, but I’m not done.

Mr. Verver’s hands are on me, he is grabbing me so hard, but I am so much stronger, I am sliding through his arms back to Mr. Shaw.

Mr. Shaw, eyes wide open, and I never got the chance to have that heavy, heartsick gaze on me. And now here it is, eyes open forever, gazing in dreamy wonder.

All these days, these endless days, trying to crawl my way into him, trying to burrow through, I won’t be stopped now.

I want to look at Mr. Shaw’s face forever.

I feel myself drop to the grass, hands and knees, peering at him, my face so close the smells burn in my nose, smoke and sweat and unnamed things, lowering myself nearly to the damp dirt, inches from him.

His face.

I see no horror there, not the gun lacing through his splayed fingers. Not the blood webbed across the tree trunk.

Not even that dark tunnel in the center of his face.

That dark tunnel I stare down, like I might follow it, like it might swallow me whole and I would let it willingly, to see where it might take me, to see what secrets it might tell me, secrets Evie holds in her chest now so tight, inviolate.

She’s holding it all fathoms deep, she hides it from her face even, pulls a mask across, but he won’t. He can’t. He will tell me.

Mr. Verver’s arms across my chest, trying to drag me back, and I won’t go, I won’t.

Those eyes, lashed open, looking straight at me.

For the first time ever, those eyes looking straight at me, into my own black heart.

My heart.

I feel my body swing, flung by Mr. Verver, his hands across my eyes. My knees hit the grass again, my legs wilting beneath me, and I see nothing.

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because it took only a second. It took only that second.

I know how it was for Evie now. She looked into his eyes and thought, Oh, what things he must know, what glistening treasures and wild terrors and white-bone regrets the likes of which we will not know for decades. He carried all this wisdom in him, and loss and feeling, and he carried it for her, he wanted to bring it to her, to press it onto her, a sealy emblem of his own regard, the imprint of his life and sorrows. Doing this, doing it here, he wanted to make her feel it forever, on her very own skin. And she will. And now I will too. I will.