She regarded him warily-or what he took for wariness.
“I promise,” he said again.
“Look, there’s nothing we can do till morning. We’ll worry about all that stuff tomorrow. Meanwhile…” He picked up the remaining can of compressed air and put it in front of her. “Why don’t we take another crack at this?”
Rainy fell asleep at the table with her head resting on her forearm. They’d made no progress on getting past the log-in screen. Weygand’s hacker scheme had given them nothing but cold hands. They’d spent an hour trying every password they could think of-“sandra,” “rainy,” “lorraine,” “switchcreek,” “bowie,” “changes,” then birthdays and favorite places-and then when Rainy put her head down he went on trying the names of flowers and the names of authors on her bookshelf. Uppercase, lowercase, title case. Nothing worked, but at least the laptop refrained from locking him out.
The tube of vintage, melted now, seemed to burn in his pocket.
“Let’s go, Rainy.” She startled when he touched her arm. He helped her to her feet, then ushered her through the dark to her bedroom. He circled his arms around her thighs and hoisted her to the top bunk.
“Paxton,” she said from the dark.
“Yeah, hon?”
She was silent for a long time.
“Are you crying, Rainy?”
She sighed. “No. I have trouble crying.”
“Me too.”
“I sure want to, though.”
Another long moment passed, and then she said, “My mom did some bad things.”
Rainy couldn’t use the A-word more than once, it seemed.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” Pax said. “Some things aren’t black and white. Your mom wasn’t against children-she wasn’t against you. She just believed that a woman has a right to choose when-”
“She killed her baby, Paxton. My little sister.”
“Oh, hon,” he said sadly. Rainy was the stronger of the two sisters, but this had obviously been eating at her, too. “Your mom wasn’t a bad person. It’s just that some people believe that a fetus isn’t…” Isn’t what? He wasn’t prepared to have this conversation. “Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand.”
“She talked about giving all the girls pills. She said they ought to put it in the water.”
“She didn’t mean that.”
“Mom didn’t say anything she didn’t mean. Everyone knew that.”
“Okay, you may be right on that one.” He put a hand through the rails and squeezed her calf. “But those girls at the Co-op, they’re getting pregnant without having a choice. Your mom wanted to protect them.”
“No, she wanted her choice. The white-scarf girls want their babies, Paxton.”
“But they’re just girls. They’re not old enough to make that decision. And when they do get pregnant, of course they want to keep the babies. It’s hormones, it’s-”
“It’s not just hormones!”
“Okay, I shouldn’t have said that. But someday you’ll understand that even good people can do things that seem wrong. Bad things. Sometimes they have to.”
“She was going to keep doing them, Paxton. She was going to keep killing the children. Mom and the reverend.”
“Rainy, no. I don’t know what you heard, or thought you heard-”
“I can prove it.” She started to climb out of the bed. “It’s in my backpack.”
“Hold on, what’s in your backpack?”
“Just get it.”
He went out of the room, found the big nylon bag in the kitchen, and brought it back to the room.
Rainy searched through it for a few moments, unzipping pockets, then said, “Here.” She pressed something into his hand. “Reverend Hooke gave these to my mom.”
It was a pill bottle. It was too dark to make out the label. “What is this, Rainy?”
“Mifeprex is what it says on the label,” the girl said. “Mom called it something with a number. It’s an abortion pill.”
He blinked. “RU-486?”
“That’s it.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. After a moment Rainy said, “I heard Mom talking to Hooke on the phone about it. She asked the reverend for them.”
“Maybe you misunderstood what-”
“I’m not stupid, Paxton.”
“But who were they for?” He still didn’t believe that she’d heard correctly. “One of the white-scarf girls?” Or Jo, he thought, though he didn’t say that aloud.
After a moment of silence Rainy said, “I didn’t hear who it was for.”
“Okay, when was this? How long ago?”
“Paxton, it was the night she died.”
“What?”
“She called the reverend after we went to bed that night.”
Pax pressed his forehead against the wooden frame. “Did you tell anyone this?” he asked. “The police, or Deke?”
“We were too scared. If Mom and the reverend were doing this, then who knows-”
“Jesus, Rainy!” He kept his volume down for Sandra’s sake, but his anger was clear. “You should have told someone.”
He immediately regretted yelling at her. Of course they’d been afraid. What trusted authority figure would turn out to be the next monster? Baby-killer. The most depraved criminal a beta girl could imagine. No wonder the only people the twins trusted were each other. And maybe-now-Pax.
“Don’t worry,” Pax said. “I promise to take care of everything. In the morning I’ll… well, we’ll think of something.” He found her face in the dark and kissed her on the smooth top of her head. “The point is, you’re not alone in this anymore. We’re a team, right? A club.”
Pax had belonged to only one club in his life. As the only remaining member, he granted himself the power to silently induct them on the spot-they’d already met the organization’s membership requirements.
He closed the bedroom door, thinking, Welcome to the Switchcreek Orphan Society, girls.
He sat in the book-lined living room with the computer open on his lap, its screen washing his face with cold light. He thought of unwanted pregnancies and chemical abortions, secret passwords and suicide notes, corruption and embezzlement and blackmail. Deke had said Jo had figured out what Rhonda was doing. The proof might be right under his fingertips. He pecked at the keyboard, typing random words into the password box, watching the machine instantly reject each one.
The vintage sat heavy in his pocket like a tiny bomb.
Instead he picked up the bottle Rainy had given him. The label was muddy and the ink smudged, but he’d been able to decipher the important details: the patient was Elsa Hooke; the prescribing doctor was Dr. Fraelich, Marla; and the three tablets were for something called “Mifeprex (Mifepristone)”-neither of which he’d ever heard of. The tablets came in large 200-milligram doses, and all three were still in the bottle. The prescription had expired more than six months ago.
Jo had known that the reverend had the pills and hadn’t used them. He thought of Jo sitting in this room when she realized that her body had betrayed her again, that it had once again manufactured a fertilized egg like a tumor-unwanted, unearned, and unasked-for. The idea of three such invasions in a dozen years horrified him.
He put the medicine bottle into his pocket-and look, here was the vial of vintage.
He held the tube in his hand, turning it. He decided to empty the vial into the toilet. Later he resolved to take one sip and then throw the rest away. Sometime after that he committed to a new life: In the morning he’d return to his house, empty the freezer, and call his father to tell him he’d never be able to visit in person again.
Then, as morning approached, he thought, One last drink. A toast to my new life.
He removed the cap and kissed the lip of the vial, small mouth to his larger one. He tipped the tube higher and held it until he could no longer feel the thick drops on his tongue.