Page 42

FORTY-ONE

The words, so inappropriate, coated with bitterness, left a strange feeling of relief in their wake. Something hard and impenetrable inside her dissolved, evanescing in a way that almost felt blissful. It was one of those things you didn’t even know you felt until it was gone.

Roe stared at her with an odd look in her eyes but she neither nodded nor shook her head.

“Why?” Josie said quietly, still spinning out, unable to stop herself from asking things she knew she shouldn’t. “Why the others and not Lila?”

A look of confusion crossed Roe’s face.

Yes or no questions, Josie reminded herself.

“Did you kill the other babies because they were boys?”

No response, just that odd, indecipherable look again.

“Did you let Lila live because she was a girl?”

Nothing but the jangle of the cuffs as her right hand shook.

“Because you thought boys would grow up to be a threat, but a girl wouldn’t?”

Josie wondered whether Roe was refusing to answer or if she failed to understand the line of questioning. It didn’t matter. Knowing why Lila had survived when her siblings hadn’t wouldn’t change one damn thing. It was an endless hamster wheel of searching behavior. As if she could undo years of suffering just by finding one shining piece of information that made everything that had happened to her make sense. That wasn’t how life worked.

Sometimes, bad things just happened.

Roe’s lips formed a circle. An “uh” sound came from her throat. This was an easy one.

“You’re trying to say something that starts with O.”

This was met with confusion. Then Josie remembered she couldn’t read. She knew the word she was trying to say but not how it was spelled. Josie made an “oh” noise. Roe shook her head and tried to form the word again, this time opening her mouth wider. “Uh.”

Josie repeated it and was rewarded with an empathic nod. Her earlier guesses had come as much from the context of their conversation as from the shapes Roe’s mouth made. This time, she had no idea what the word could be.

Roe lifted her hands and pointed to the guard and then to Josie. “Uh, uh, uh.”

The tip of her tongue touched the roof of her mouth, as if she was trying to add to the first sound, but nothing came. Again, she indicated the guard and Josie. Then she brought her hands to her chest and shook her head. Josie watched as she alternated between the two gestures, pushing out the “uh” sound when she came to Josie and the guard. She attempted the second part again, tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth, just behind her front teeth. This time, a “th” noise came out. Air hissed around the sides of her tongue. Spittle flew onto the table.

Josie tried to put the two sounds together with Roe’s gestures. Indicating Josie and the guard. Fisting her hands at her chest and shaking her head. “Us three?”

Immediately, Josie felt stupid. The question was if Roe had killed her other children because they were boys and she believed they would grow up to be threats. What did the three of them in this room have to do with anything?

Face flushing, Roe shook her head violently. She repeated the sounds, the motions. Again and again.

“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

Roe slumped in her chair, head lolling against her chest in defeat.

“Try again,” Josie told her. “Is there another way that you can…show me what you’re trying to tell me?”

Roe’s arms returned to the cradling position, rocking and rocking. This time, she looked from the invisible infant to the clock high on the wall to their right. Slowly, she brought her hands up, angled toward the clock. Then she arced them down toward where the crook of her left elbow had been. “Roe,” she said. “Roe.”

She repeated the pattern. Cradling, pointing to the clock, slashing downward, repeating her name. More tears spilled down her cheeks. Her tremor grew worse. Was the downward motion supposed to represent her bringing a blunt object down on the child’s head? But what did the clock have to do with anything?

“Is that how you did it?” Josie asked.

No response, just a repeat of the gestures, her movements becoming jerky.

“Time,” Josie tried. “Something about time.”

Roe shook her head, even as she thrust her hands up toward the clock once more. She held them there, her cries growing more frantic. “Roe. Roe. Roe. Roe!”

Josie’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket with a call.

“Roe,” the guard said firmly. “Calm down or this visit is over.”

Her cries ceased. She returned her hands to the table, but tears kept streaming down her face.

Josie’s phone continued to ring silently, buzzing against her rear end. Every inch of her body hummed with anxiety, but she kept her expression blank, her hands steady, as she took it from her pocket.

Thirty-nine and half hours.

It wasn’t Heather. It was the caller from last night. Pain pierced her heart, daggerlike and merciless. Mentally, she caught the arterial bleeding in a jar and locked it away. It had to wait. She couldn’t break right now. Wouldn’t.

Swiping the decline icon, she took a couple of deep breaths. She needed her four-seven-eight breathing right now but that wasn’t going to happen in this room. Last round of questions. The most important ones.

“You met your daughter.” Josie pulled up the side-by-side photo of Lila, young and old, and turned her phone toward Roe. “She pretended to be a reporter so that she could meet with you.”

Roe’s eyes bulged as she took in the photo.

“Did she tell you who she really was?”

She shook her head. No.

The words, “What did she want?” were on the tip of Josie’s tongue but she held them back. Yes or no questions. How would she narrow down what Lila came to talk about?

“Did she ask you about the babies?”

Yes.

“Did she ask about herself?”

Yes.

“Did she ask about her father?”

Yes.

“Did you know the father?”

No response.

“Was there more than one? More than one man?”

Nothing.

Josie took another approach. “The man who hurt you before Lila came out of your belly, did you meet him in the woods?”

A nod.

It wasn’t Roe’s father, then. A hunter, like she and Trinity had thought. “Did he ever meet Lila?”

No.

“Did he know about Lila?”

Roe didn’t respond.

“Did he hurt you before the other babies came out of your belly?”

A slow nod. Fear crept into Roe’s eyes. That trauma was still alive and well and she was locked inside her mind with it. Anger welled again as Josie imagined Roe, young and alone, isolated from everyone but her father, who had betrayed her in the worst way. She’d worked up the courage to leave, hoping to disappear to a place remote enough that he might not find her, only to fall victim to another monster. Roe had never been given the tools to fight back. Hell, she’d never even been taught basic things in life or anything that might have helped her become more than prey.

Even so, she’d given birth to a predator.

Josie could ask if he’d told her his name but what was the point? Roe wouldn’t be able to say it or spell it and even if she could, he had probably given her a fake name. Even if Roe could somehow communicate his real name, he was likely dead by now.

Josie tapped the side of her head. “Did he hurt your head? Take away your words?”

No response.

“Do you remember how your head got hurt?”

No.

That wasn’t unusual with traumatic brain injuries.

From the corner of the room, the guard cleared her throat. They were almost out of time. Josie had gotten off track. “When Lila was here pretending to be a reporter, did she tell you anything about herself?”

No.

“Did she talk about anyone besides herself?”

No.

But Lila wouldn’t have dished about her myriad crimes or her accomplices at that meeting.

Josie brought up the photos of Lila once more. “Later, she became a prisoner here.”

Roe’s gaze snapped to Josie’s face. She hadn’t known. Josie forged ahead anyway, tapping her finger against Lila’s mug shot. “This is what she looked like when she became an inmate here. Did you ever see her?”

No.

Josie hadn’t asked the superintendent to check but it was likely that Lila and Roe had never crossed paths. Muncy had sixteen housing units and, if Josie remembered correctly, had over fourteen hundred inmates while Lila was incarcerated.

“Did she ever send any kind of message to you through other inmates?”

No.

Josie sighed. She’d known this line of inquiry was a Hail Mary but she felt disappointed nonetheless. Roe Hoyt was a dead end. A sad, twisted, tragic dead end.

She removed her finger from the phone screen. Roe’s eyes locked on it. Then she lunged across the table, hands grabbing for Josie’s phone. Her voice went up several octaves.

“Roe! Roe! Roe!”

Josie jumped up, backing away as Roe threw herself across the table. The guard yanked her back, lifting her to her feet, shouting for her to calm down. But there was no getting through to her. Straining toward Josie, she flailed as much as she could while the guard dragged her toward the door. Josie’s phone had fallen, face-up, onto the floor near her feet. A photo of the contents of Lila’s box filled the screen. Had she accidentally swiped to it? Had something in the photo caused Roe’s reaction?

Josie snatched up her phone and held it out toward Roe, whose feet kicked in the air as the guard lifted her, carrying her toward the exit.

“Roe,” Josie shouted. “Do you recognize something in this photo?”

Roe didn’t hear her. Those familiar blue eyes were wild, panic-stricken. Wherever she was, it wasn’t in this room.

“Roe! Roe! Roe!”