“That’s why I want to be there.”
I didn’t know what to say, having inadvertently proven her point.
“We shouldn’t stay, but . . . it’s so much to give up. Ethan’s school, his friends, everything he does.” Lucinda looked over at him. “I know this is terrible for you, to go. I know that, honey. Your father does, too.”
Ethan sniffled. “Then can’t we stay?”
“I’m trying to figure it out with your dad.” Lucinda turned to me, stricken. “And I hate to leave our friends, Melissa and all of them, everyone. The house. This house. Our home.” She started shaking her head, exhaling slowly. “I remember the day we brought her home from the hospital, don’t you?”
“Sure.” I knew she meant Allison.
“She was so little, in that car seat. We had to put it on the floor, right here. We didn’t even have a table. The furniture was back-ordered. We had nothing, remember?”
I did. A big, empty house. A small baby girl. We were in heaven.
“Even the color of the kitchen, she and I picked it out together.”
I remembered. One weekend, mother and daughter had watched an HGTV marathon, then gone to the paint store. They had chosen Tuscan Gold, which Allison had loved.
It reminds me of the sun in Rome.
Al, you’ve never been to Rome.
I can imagine it.
You can imagine Rome?
Can’t you, Dad?
I couldn’t think about that now. Allison would never get to Rome. We had never traveled out of the country. I hadn’t been able to take that much time off. I felt a wave of regret, of things not done, milestones not achieved, my daughter’s very life ended, my wife and I surviving her, the one thing every parent dreads.
“What about her trees?” Lucinda gestured out the window, to the backyard.
I looked outside, where it was still dark. I could barely see the outline of the two evergreens that Allison used as goalposts. She had named them Scylla and Charybdis, since she had been studying Greek mythology at the time. She had showed me Edith Hamilton’s book.
Dad, how the hell do you pronounce Charybdis?
Don’t say “hell.”
But that I can pronounce.
“And what about this?” Lucinda rose and crossed to the threshold of the kitchen, then ran a finger down the white molding. We tracked the kids’ growth on it over the years, the names and dates wiggly in the paint, with lines written in pencil, crayon, pen, and Sharpie. My anguished gaze stopped where Allison had crayoned in big letters, IM SOOOOOOOO BIG!!!!!!!
Lucinda shook her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
I did. “We can’t look over our shoulder for the rest of our lives. We can’t, honey. It’s not safe to stay.”
Lucinda’s gaze shifted to Ethan, and her lovely face fell into lines of deep sorrow. She didn’t say anything, but I knew what she was thinking: We lost our daughter. We cannot lose our son.
“I would never forgive myself,” Lucinda said quietly.
“Neither would I,” I told her.
I knew it was true.
I was already not forgiving myself.
Chapter Seven
We left our lives in silence. I sat in the back seat of the nondescript white van, with Lucinda asleep on one shoulder and Ethan on the other. Special Agent Kingston did the driving with Special Agent Hallman in the passenger seat. Moonie was in the back in his crate, asleep. We’d had fifteen minutes to pack, and I’d grabbed clothes and cash from the safe. Lucinda took her best jewelry and some clothes, then hurried to Allison’s bedroom. I found her there in tears, stuffing mementos into Allison’s quilted bag, a birthday gift from one Vera Bradley freak to another.
Mom, this is the new pattern! I love it!
Deep inside me was the most profound sorrow I had ever known, one that had unpacked, settled in, and taken up residence. I felt the mute agony of loss, my heart so heavy it weighed on my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I didn’t feel entitled to, when Allison could not.
Special Agent Kingston glanced at me in his rearview mirror, so I turned away, to the window. The morning sun climbed the sky, trying vainly to brighten the interior of the van through its smoked glass. I watched traffic zoom past, eyeing the uniformed drivers delivering paper goods, a florist singing along to music, a white van with a red cross on the door and a windshield placard that read blood delivery.
I looked away. I didn’t want to think about trying to stop Allison’s blood, trying to keep it inside her with my palm, absorb it with my shirt, do anything to conserve it, my daughter’s very lifeblood. I wanted to cry, but I was the center, still holding.
We passed a big green sign for the Port of Wilmington, heading south on I-95. I hadn’t traveled this way often. We had gone to Baltimore a few times to take the kids to the National Aquarium. I remembered Allison loved the puffins, pressing her tiny hand on the glass, and when her fingers had bowed backward at the knuckle, I realized she was double-jointed. It would become her claim to familial fame, and she could twist her elbow around or put her entire fist in her mouth.
Al, you’re a freak of nature.
Jealous much?
The sun came up, and we left I-95 and switched to Route 1 continuing south. Traffic congested through Smyrna, and as we passed Dover Air Force Base, military planes flew overhead like gray shadows behind the cloudy haze. There were fewer trucks as we headed toward the coastline, then fewer cars. The FBI agents didn’t exchange a single word. They knew where we were going, without conversation or GPS.
We passed an Arby’s, a Chick-fil-A, a McDonald’s, and a Dunkin’ Donuts, then got off Route 1. We drove through a series of beach communities, their quiet streets lined with houses, many of which were built up on stilts. Each one was different from the next; modern glass affairs, old weathered clapboard with screened-in porches, new multi-story homes with siding in colorful aluminum, flying novelty flags with lobsters and cartoon fish.
Seagulls scored the sky, and in time the houses grew fewer and farther apart. The landscape changed dramatically, and I shifted upward to take it in, trying to get my bearings. There were wooded patches here and there, but in time there were almost no trees, nor even land.
We drove through vast stretches of marsh, populated with tall green and brown reeds and a variety of water plants I couldn’t identify. A myriad of canals and creeks with brown, murky water snaked through the foliage. Random ponds appeared around every corner, their surfaces covered with moss and algae.
I felt an increasing sense of dislocation. I was a suburban dad, a farm boy at heart. It disoriented me to see the vanishing of terra firma, as if the land beneath my very feet were disappearing. Or maybe it was simply my mood, because I knew nothing would ever be familiar again.
I heard myself say, “I didn’t realize there was so much swamp down here.”
Special Agent Hallman turned to me. “We’re driving on the border of a nature preserve.”
“Oh.”
“But the fact is, about ninety percent of Delaware is wetlands. By the way, it’s not a swamp, it’s a marsh.”
“Good to know. I didn’t realize there was a difference.”
“There is. A swamp is generally standing water. What you’re seeing is saltwater tidal marsh. It flows into the Delaware Bay.”