Still, no shame or horror had prepared her for this: not even witnessing the cavitation of a human skull when Juma was shot with an elephant gun that morning. No, in the last few minutes, she had heard too much, and the fact she was hearing it all in the dark made it like a carnival funhouse, but real. She was virtually blind; no human eye had the capability to turn this darkness to day. There were the gunshots, three of them, but two at first. That’s where it began, with men arguing, fighting, behind the boma and then inside the boma. The languages had been Russian and English. She had heard David, she was positive, and though she couldn’t make out most of the words, she’d heard the wrenching fear in her husband’s voice. And she’d heard Terrance Dutton speaking, and he was adamant and angry, which might have given her hope, but no one came for her. No one. Good God, was David even still alive? Were Terrance and Billy and Margie?
Margie. Margie. Katie asked herself over and over in her mind what she had done allowing her sister-in-law to join them on this safari. She should have insisted that Billy and Margie remain in California. Before all of that activity and the gunshots just now, maybe—just maybe—she had heard Margie, and the woman was crying, and then one of the vehicles had left in a hurry.
She was afraid she was losing her mind, but she was far more terrified that though this had begun as a kidnapping, something had happened and everything had changed and now it was going to be a massacre. The Russians were going to kill them all. Her feet were tied to the foot of the pallet and her hands were bound, but she could easily bring her fingers to her cheeks and wipe away the tears. And so, finally, she did. She wiped the rivulets of mucus that were streaming from her nose, too.
God, she thought, splaying her fingers because some were falling asleep, I am oozing fluids everywhere. And that didn’t even count the sweat.
This safari had been her big idea. Now it had fallen apart—Fallen apart? That was like saying Jack Kennedy’s visit to Dallas had had a few hiccups—and when they all died, it was on her for bringing them here.
She wished she were being too hard on herself. She tried to convince herself that their deaths would be no more her fault than if the plane had crashed on its final approach to the airport in Nairobi. But she also understood that none of this self-flagellation mattered, because dead was dead and it was the only thing in the world you had no hope of changing.
Finally, she could stand it no longer and so she cried out. “Let us go!” she wailed. “Please! Let us go! Someone, please, tell me what’s happening!”
And then she said the same thing softly—Let us go. Tell me what’s happening—the words this time lost in her sobs.
* * *
.?.?.
Billy and this new woman in his life, Margie, were sitting with her at the wrought-iron table under the umbrella on the east side of her swimming pool. Katie thought Margie was smart and pretty and hoped that things would work out for her brother and her. But she had no idea. She hadn’t realized that Billy’s first marriage was crumbling until he had dropped the bombshell on her last year that he had moved out and he and Amelia were resolving the custody arrangements.
Custody arrangements.
God, what a concept. She was poor Marc’s aunt and hadn’t even known that his parents’ marriage was in trouble until it was over.
“Sometimes, I miss living back east,” Margie was saying, and she swirled the ice in her glass.
“Would you like more iced tea?” Katie asked her.
“No, but it’s delicious.”
“It’s from a cannister. It’s powder. The best thing about it is that it’s sugar free but tastes like sweet tea,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she was telling them that the tea was instant. She’d discovered sweet tea on a movie set in Atlanta, and she associated the drink now with southern hospitality. Confessing that she hadn’t even bothered to steep some real tea and chill the beverage before her guests arrived seemed the exact opposite of hospitality. But then she knew: her mother would have lied and told Margie some story about the work that either she or the latest Irish girl had done to prepare tea that was exquisite and special. Katie was being （one of her mother’s favorite words） contrary because she didn’t want to be her mother.
“One summer, Katie ate nothing but sugar-free iced tea from a cannister and peanuts,” Billy told this new woman in his life. “Whole damn summer, that was it.”
“How would you know?” she asked him, shaking her head at the story. “You were in college!”