This Story Might Save Your Life(81)

“But what if it is my fault?”

“Benny.”

“What if it is? Mom wouldn’t have died if I’d taken a different flight. That’s a fact. That’s simple cause and effect. So how can you say the same isn’t true for Joy? Because I can think of a lot of things I could’ve done differently. Like maybe not opening my stupid mouth and getting myself kicked out the night she went missing. Or not being so goddamn blind when she sent me her memoir. The clues were right there. Right in front of my face. And not just for the memoir—for all of it. If I’d read between the lines just once, just once…”

She turns onto my street. “Benny…”

“Stop, okay? Just stop.” My voice cracks. I focus on my splinted hand. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ve had enough of Dr. Sarah for now.”

“No, Benny—”

“I said stop!”

“No, look.”

Reluctantly, I follow her gaze. “Oh.”

The crowd of reporters has doubled. Tripled. They race toward us, and we slow to a crawl as they shout out questions, lenses tapping the glass of my window. Did you kill Xander, Benny? Where are you hiding Joy? What have you done with Joy?

I exchange a terrified glance with Sarah. “Why are they saying that?”

“This can’t be good.”

There’s no way to get past without going through.

“Try backing up,” I say.

“I can’t.” Sarah white-knuckles the wheel. “If I run over them I’m the bad guy, right?”

“I think that’s usually how it works.”

We inch forward. At the pace we’re going, it’ll take an hour to cover half a block. But then someone shouts for everyone to clear the way, and the crowd begins to part.

“Oh, thank god,” I say.

The relief lasts for exactly five seconds.

“Benny?” Sarah says. “Why are there so many policemen here?”

There are three cruisers—no, four. My front door is open, uniformed officers tramping in and out of my house. Keller is waiting at the curb.

“Benny Abbott,” she says when I step out of the car, “you are under arrest for malicious destruction of property and concealment of evidence.” She says more but I can’t process for the pain in my hand as she pulls my arms behind my back.

I yelp as she snaps cuffs onto my wrists. “Please don’t,” I rasp, “it’s broken.”

She holds a piece of paper in front of my face and explains that they have a warrant to search my home. The angle at which my arms are fixed is awkward. The pain is excruciating. “Please,” I say. “Please. It hurts.”

She nods at another officer, who rests a hand on his gun as she unlocks the cuffs and repositions my arms to the front of my body. It’s no better. There are so many spots floating before my eyes I can barely see.

“Enjoy the ride.” She pushes me down into the back of a cruiser and slams the door.

This time, I get a lawyer.





Joy Moore


Day Six

Staring out from under my handsewn quilt, I wish for the thousandth time I hadn’t visited the doctor. I wish I could go back and unlearn that Xander is dead. Wish I could unsee that tiny sac.

Dr. Singler asked me to come back in two days. “Perhaps then we’ll have a better idea about how to proceed.”

She said it like a question, as if to gently remind me that I need to make a decision, and I nodded my consent because I would love a better idea about how to proceed.

When Carlotta first mentioned the shelter, I could never have imagined it playing out like this. It was three weeks after Ted ambushed me on the street, and I hadn’t left my property since. Carlotta caught sight of me on my back terrace, slumpy shouldered and pale faced, nursing a midmorning coffee, and called me over for some “soil therapy.”

“I’m starting seeds for winter,” she said as I slipped through the side gate. She handed me a spade and a plastic tray with twelve empty cells and led me to the glass porch table, which was covered in pocket-sized packets listing every winter vegetable under the sun. I’d never started seeds before, and so she taught me how to handle each one: sprinkled atop the soil or buried a quarter-inch deep, single or multiple per plug, sprayed with a gentle mister until just so.

“How long do they take?”

“Some, one to two weeks. Others, two to four.” She sighed at the planter beds. “You always have to decide this time of year whether to cling to summer or prepare for winter. It hurts, uprooting the ones that still have something left to give.”

The cantaloupes had all been harvested from their vines, but the tomatoes and jalape?os held on to some fruit. The bell peppers showed signs of exhaustion, as did the picked-over lettuces. The butternut squash leaves were turning yellow, but the herbs were teeming and aromatic, more than any one household could ever use. On this warm day in mid-September, it was impossible to believe winter would ever come.

“I can see that,” I said.

“I know you can.” It was an odd response, and I was still contemplating its meaning when she changed the subject.

“This whole business with Shake Awake…” Her baby-fine silver hair was wet with sweat; a drop trickled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. “I feel just awful about it.”