By the time we arrived at the bus stop, Lydia was even more insistent, to a higher degree of craziness than usual. She made the leap from the grubby little object on my pinky to the Hope Diamond. It grew in the ground for 1.1 billion years before it exploded out of the earth and then cursed almost everyone who touched it. Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off and her princess friend was hacked to death with axes and pikes. It even hexed the innocent mailman who delivered it to the Smithsonian. His family died, his leg got crushed, and his house burned down.
Say what you want about Lydia Frances Bell and her ridiculous chatter, she said things I never forgot. If she were standing here, she’d be alternately dismayed and thrilled to be starring in the kind of morbid tale she devoured and repeated over and over.
The lieutenant is holding the ring so the pearl faces me like a blind eye. Everyone is being courteously silent. The weight of their expectations is suffocating.
“Yes, that was mine,” I affirm. “It went missing right before I testified at the trial. Lydia thought the ring was bad luck and wanted me to stop wearing it.”
“Why did she think it was bad luck?”
Pearls bring tears. Suicides and insanity, murders and carriage crashes.
“She didn’t believe you should wear the jewelry of dead people unless it belonged to someone you once knew. History was important to her.” And she was right, a Susan chimes in my ear.
It’s true-the ring was on my finger when he threw me in that hole. Everything else I wore that night-my favorite black leggings, Dad’s Michigan T-shirt, the cross necklace that Aunt Hilda gave me at my confirmation-disappeared. The ER doctors cut off every bit of it and handed it over to the police.
The night nurse was the first to notice the ring while checking my IV, a couple of hours after my pacemaker surgery. I could feel her wriggling it off, her fingers floating like feathers across mine. Shhhhh. When I woke up, there was a pinched, untanned circle where the ring had been. A month later, at home, I discovered that someone had tucked a hospital Bible into a pocket in my suitcase. When I opened it up, an envelope was taped to Psalm 23, the ring tucked inside.
The first thing I think when I hear the thump is that Charlie has tumbled out of her crib. It takes an instant of consciousness to realize that Charlie has not slept in a crib in thirteen years. She’s tangled in the covers beside me, red hair splayed on the aqua pillowcase like she’s floating in an ocean. It’s coming back to me now: our late-night marathon of The Walking Dead, popcorn, and cheddar cheese chips. The antidote to identifying inexplicable objects dug out of your best friend’s back yard.
I’d shut off the TV in my bedroom around 1 A.M. That could have been thirty minutes or four hours ago. It’s pitch black outside the window. I reach over to touch Charlie’s bare shoulder to be sure I’m not dreaming. It feels velvety and cool, but I don’t make the usual move to cover her up.
A low hum of chatter, as the Susans gather in my head to confer. I feel for the phone in the bed, where it usually sleeps beside me: 3:33. Charlie’s breath is even, and I decide not to wake her. Not yet.
I hear it again. The leaden sound of something dropping, like the lid of a trunk. It’s outside, toward Charlie’s room, but definitely not in the house. I slip over to my closet. Drop to my knees to grope around the shoe rack that hangs over the door. Second row up, fourth pocket over. My fingers tighten around my.22. For three years after the trial, this pistol was tucked in my size 2 waistband. I considered a bigger weapon, but I didn’t want anyone to see the bulge against my bony hip. Especially not my dad. Lucas secretly taught me to shoot when we weren’t sneaking around accidentally making Charlie. He insisted on one thing when he pressed the.22 into my hand for the first time: Go to the gun range like it’s a church, at least fifty-two times a year.
I’ve always hoped it’s OK to shoot more than you pray, because that’s how it’s turned out. Lucas has urged me to trade up for the last ten years, but I can’t imagine any gun but this one in my hand.
I shake Charlie’s shoulder and she groans. “Not morning.”
“I hear something outside,” I whisper. “Put your slippers on. And this.” I toss over a sweatshirt, hanging out of my hamper.
“For real?”
“For real. Get up.”
“Why aren’t you calling the police?” The sound is muffled, as she tugs the hoodie over her face.
“Because I don’t want us to be on the evening news.”
“Is that your gun? Mom.”
“Please, Charlie, just do what I say. We’re going to slip out the back door.”
“That makes no sense. The… thing is out there. Isn’t this why we have an alarm system so freaking sensitive that it goes off every time I turn up Vampire Weekend? Shouldn’t we at least look out the window and make sure it’s not the garbage truck?”
It’s at times like this that I wish I had a daughter who wasn’t so wrapped in the confident armor of her beauty and intelligence and athletic grace. Instead, she is just like the Before Tessie. Both insisted strange noises outside the window were teen-age boys with soap and eggs, not monsters with rusty shovels and guns. Most of the time, they were right.
“Charlie, I just need you to do what I say. Follow me.”
Another thump. Now tapping.
“OK, I heard that. Weird.” Charlie is quickening her steps behind me as we navigate the darkened hall and living room. The shades are drawn as usual, but I don’t want to flip on any lights.
“Follow our fire drill plan,” I say. “Go to Miss Effie’s. Bang on her back door. Call her house if she doesn’t answer. Here’s my phone. If I’m not there in five minutes, dial 911.”
“Keep it. I already have my phone. What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry, Charlie. Just go.” Run.
I push her out the back door, into utter blackness. The last thing I see is the fleeting deer flash of her pink-and-white polka-dot pajama bottoms between the pine trees that border our properties.
I creep toward the front yard, using my photinia bushes as a shield. The thumping hasn’t stopped, just moved inside me, to my chest. The gun is cocked in my hand. I want to be done with him. Tonight. Forever. I peer through a branch.
What the hell? Four gray squares are stuck in the middle of my yard like a row of gravestones. A small shadow hovers beside one of them, bathed in faint light. A time-traveling Victorian girl searching for her ring? I blink hard to make her go away. Instead, the shadow rises. The ghost child transforms into a man with a flashlight and a shiny gray nylon sweatshirt.
“Hey!” My reckless scream rips the air.
I make out a Nike swoosh, black hair, a wiry beard, before the man flips off his flashlight and runs.
If he’s running, dammit, so am I. Across the yard, down the street. Feet pounding. He’s too fast to be my monster. Young legs. Marathon legs. I am still fast, but not this fast. The slippers flop on my heels.
All of a sudden, he slows. Maybe he’s stepped in one of our historic potholes. He’s taking aim. I raise the.22 in warning just as he presses a car remote, triggering the taillights of a parked sedan. In seconds, a car door slams and he’s screeching off. I can’t make out the license plate.
I turn back. It’s not a cemetery in my yard. I’m staring at crude plywood signs. Hate shimmers off them.