She stalked from the room with heavy footsteps. The noise made Callie stir, and her eyes blinked open before shutting again. Marcus scowled as his eyes followed Denise, but then he scrubbed the anger from his face and nodded at Serena.
'I am grateful for everything you did,' he told her. 'Don't misunderstand. I'm just furious at how I've been treated.'
'I do know how you feel,' Serena replied. 'Innocent people often wind up destroyed by these crimes. I won't pretend it's fair.' She added, 'Do you have Valerie's note? May I see it?'
He gestured at a three-by-five card on the kitchen counter. 'It was taped to the mirror in our bathroom. I saw it when I got up overnight.'
Serena read the note, which said: Now we're both free. She tried to reconstruct Valerie's fragile state of mind, and the implications scared her.
'Did anything happen between the two of you this evening?' she asked. 'A fight.'
'About Callie?'
'Yes.'
'Do you think she would harm herself?'
'I don't know,' Marcus said. 'She was poisoned by all the rumors against me. She was in despair of ever seeing Callie again. I think she was capable of anything.'
'If she turns on her phone, or turns on the radio, she'll know Callie is safe.'
'Yes, if it's not too late,' he said. He glanced down at the sleeping child and added, 'I should put Callie to bed now.'
'Did Denise tell you about the woman who took her?' Serena asked. 'Kasey Kennedy?'
'I hear she's still at large.'
'That's right, and we don't know what she's going to do. With your permission, we'll keep police officers around the house. I'd also like to have a policewoman stay inside in the nursery with Callie.'
'Fine, but you don't really think this woman is foolish enough to try this again, do you?'
'She's desperate and unstable. Until we find her, I think we need to take every precaution. It might be better for you to take Callie somewhere else for a few days, with police protection. Your house is an obvious target.'
He shook his head. 'I won't be driven out of my home.'
'I understand.'
They both looked up as Denise Sheridan reappeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Her face was stricken, and her voice caught in her throat.
'Someone spotted Valerie's car by the river near the radio station,' she said. 'It's empty.'
Valerie sat on the wet ground with her arms wrapped around her knees. In front of her, the dark water of the Mississippi was crusted with ice. It was the kind of brittle sheen that would crack like glass and open up a hole for her as she walked from the shore. She wondered if that was the easier way to do what she had to do. Walk on the ice. Let herself be swallowed up by the grip of the frigid water.
She was numb with cold. Tears had frozen into pearls on her face. She couldn't feel her fingers, and her feet tingled as if they had been stung by bees. She had been sitting here, alone with the chill and the water, for an hour, and still she couldn't bring herself to do it. She had taken the bottle of aspirin from her pocket a dozen times, and each time, she had put it back without opening it. She hoped if she simply sat here a little while longer, the cold would do its work for her, taking away her sensations until she felt nothing at all.
Nearby, she heard voices floating in the wind like the whispers of ghosts. People were above her, on the crest of the river bank at Canal Street. Shouting. Insistent. On the bridge of Highway 169 upriver, she saw the speeding lights of cars. She ignored them all.
She withdrew the bottle again. Her raw fingers felt clumsy as she handled it. She stared at the tablets and imagined washing them down her throat with melted snow. Last time, she had used a bottle that wasn't full. That had been her mistake. That was why she had awakened in the hospital. This time, the bottle brimmed with hundreds of pills. She could swallow them all before they dulled her system and lulled her to sleep.
She fingered the plastic wrapper around the neck of the bottle. With the edge of her nail, she tried to cut it away, but her hands felt thick. She put the cap in her mouth and scraped the wrapper with her teeth. A little piece of it tore. She tugged at the flap and finally pulled it free, unwinding it like a ribbon. That small success felt like a huge victory.
Valerie squinted to line up the arrows on the cap in the darkness. She tried to pry off the cap with her thumb, but her skin was damp, and her fingers slipped on the ridged plastic. Finally, attacking it with both thumbs, she popped the cap off the bottle, and it flipped like a coin into the air. She punched through the foil seal, and the bottle squirmed in her numb fingers. A dozen tablets spilled on to the ground around her legs. She didn't care about losing them. They weren't enough to make a difference.
She put out her left palm. Her arm trembled. The bottle shook as she overturned it, tumbling a pyramid of white pills into her hand. She balanced the open bottle in her lap and stared at the tablets. It wasn't hard. Put them in your mouth. Grab a handful of fresh snow. Do it over and over until the bottle was empty.
But she couldn't. She wanted to, and she couldn't.
'Oh, Callie, I'm sorry,' she said.
She was angry with herself for hesitating. Her baby needed her. Her daughter was alone. All it would take to rescue her was one small, meaningless step; all she needed was to do the right thing, and they would be together. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to die like this. Giving up felt like a selfish and faithless act for which she would never be forgiven. It was as if she could hear a lonely voice talking to her grave and shaming her: How could you give up on me?
Valerie listened to the voice and spread her fingers wide. The aspirins fell and bounced and made dimples in the snow. The wetness began to dissolve them into paste. She got up, limping as the blood made its way back into her legs. She wandered until she was nearly in the water. Ice crept from the shore like a foggy window. She put one foot down in the water, cracking the ice with the heel of her boot, and then again, making jagged holes in the surface. She turned the bottle upside down and let the tablets cascade through the ice and disappear into the river. Finally, when it was empty, she flicked the bottle end over end beyond the ice. It floated for a while, and then, as water leached through the neck, it turned over and sank.
She knew she should feel like a failure, but she felt a rush of adrenaline instead. A new sensation washed over her, coming from nowhere, making her feel restless. Somewhere, somehow, something had changed, like a shifting in the earth under her feet. She felt drawn away from here. When she touched her face, she found warm tears streaming down her cold face again. Pouring. A waterfall. A deluge. It didn't matter why. She only knew she had to go. Go now. Go fast.
Valerie walked, and then she stumbled, and then she ran. She clawed her way up the slope away from the river. Her breath hammered in her chest. She couldn't go fast enough to satisfy the impatient urge that had taken hold of her brain. She heard them again, louder and closer as she neared the street: people calling for her, shouting her name.
She burst from the low brush near the parking lot where police had surrounded her car. Red and blue lights lit up the street like fireworks. She saw Denise. She saw Serena. Everyone looked everywhere in the empty town, except at her. She was invisible. She stayed where she was, catching her breath, unable to move or to shout, 'I'm here.'
Then Serena turned. Their eyes locked on each other, thirty yards apart. Valerie watched Serena's face erupt into a smile and heard her yelling excitedly, the same words over and over. The wind drowned her voice, but it didn't matter, because she already knew what Serena was saying. She knew the impulse that had drawn her away from the river and back to her life.