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“That’s when I heard the footsteps. Nova she doesn’t . . . I mean, she doesn’t even walk. That’s when I knew someone else was in the house.”
Her eyes wheeled to Silas. He was still feeding her his nods.
“Maybe we shouldn’t get into this right now,”
“Right, Preeti?
“That means he was in Nova’s room.”
“What would he be doing with her?”
“That’s . . . no. The baby’s fine. Look.”
“I don’t think she was stealing Nova.”
“Was it a woman you saw? Running down the hall, could it have been a woman?”
“I think it was a woman.”
“It was a woman.”
“The intruder,”
“I know who it is.”
To not be believed was nothing new, nothing new.
My green canvas bag gone.
I’ve always been good at staying. That’s what I am good at.
I cried because I was convinced that my parents would forget about me, that after a night away their love would fade and wisp.
Verisimilitude,
“There are lots of them? Her fans?” “Dozens.”
“Fern found out something about me. And now she won’t talk to me.”
When Angela said she saw Fern here, I thought . . .”
“I thought she was waiting here for me.”
It was three days later, the day my body was found.
“Brad’s friend, the file clerk, she said that before the replication commission got involved, before they caught Early, before he confessed, before all of that, the detectives were sure it was Silas who’d killed you.”
“No. Because they thought he was lying.”
Every last detective was convinced he was lying about your murder.”
How well can you know someone? Really know someone? That is one of the questions of marriage. The question maybe.
How well do you know yourself? That is the other question of marriage. How do you know you’ll stay faithful? Interested? Loving? How do you know you’ll stay in love? And even if you stay all of those things, how do you know you won’t one day fling out an arm and shatter something irreplaceable? And the truth is, you probably will do that, so then the question becomes, How good are you with a tube of glue?
That’s when I saw it, what I’d been looking for, the name I’d seen elsewhere, time and again, in the list of calls: Gert.
Gert had been calling Silas every week. Every week since my murder.
But the calls went back too far for it to be that. There were calls before the survivors’ group had ever met, before I’d arrived home from the hospital, before the replication commission had even brought me back.
It wasn’t on the day of my murder; it was on the day after. Two days after that a police dog would find my body curled in a rain ditch by the side of the road. Gert had called Silas when I was still missing, before my body was even found, which seemed to suggest that she already knew I was dead.
smiled. “You don’t have to lie. About a client.” “I’m not lying.” “I got the invitation, too.”
“I don’t know. I just came in.” “You just came in?” “I ported in, and then I was here.”
Where was he running? Why was he running?
“Those Angelas had knives.”
“He said not to say anything.” “Who said?” I asked, and then it dawned on me, “Silas said?” “He said it would only upset you, because you wouldn’t remember.”
“And you don’t remember, do you?” “Remember what?” “Being in the house.” “What house?” “Your house.”
“You were the one in the house,”
“You were the intruder.”
was mostly like I said. I heard someone in the house, and I called Emergency. When I went to get Nova, someone ran down the hall. But I lied about not seeing them. I did see them. It was you.”
“That was who I saw. I saw you.”
but that was all it took for me to recognize her voice.
“What is Fern doing at your house?”
He doesn’t make me talk about you. When you call sometimes, he hurries into the other room so I won’t have to hear his side of the conversation.
This time I was leaving, not running.
He’s my dad, and even if he doesn’t understand me, he still loves me. He loves me still.
I thought about the day care worker who knew Nova was mine without my telling her, who’d assumed I was there to take her out for a midday walk.
“The babysitter?” “She doesn’t know what she saw. She thinks she saw me.”
“The same reason as you, Lou.”
