Watch Over Me (31 page)

Now he took an envelope from his shirt pocket, handed it to Cheyenne. “We wrote a few things down for the Whalens. About Silvia. Things they might find helpful to know.”

“I’ll make sure they get it,” she said.

“We’d like to see him.”

“Ben—”

“Just ask.”

She nodded and left the room, returning minutes later with a lumpy, dark-haired boy and a lumpier woman, both of whom Benjamin had met numerous times since he’d moved here. The boy wore a clip-on tie and cleared his throat several times before shaking Benjamin’s hand. “I don’t suppose there’s any good thing to say right now,” Jared said.

He’s been told.
One of the other deputies, or Cheyenne—someone— let this kid know Silvia had been loved.

Benjamin knew a few things about him, too. Knew he was the first in his family to go to college, accepted to a handful of schools but chose Dakota State University to be close to his mother. Knew his father had died when he was in junior high. Had a Marine for an older brother, a sister who married right out of high school, with three kids and a husband who worked as an assistant manager at Taco John’s. Decent people. Salt of the earth.

Salt in his wounds.

“I suppose not,” Benjamin said.

Jared looked at Abbi, at Silvia. “She never told me. Skye, I mean. I didn’t . . .” He unclipped his tie, rolled it into his pants pocket. Opened the top button of his shirt. “I wish she just would have told me.”

“Well, you know now.” The words came out ugly, sponging up the bile in his throat. He was the sore loser.

“She’ll have a good home, I promise you that. My mom’s gonna move to Madison, watch her when I’m in class. And I’ll do . . . whatever I need to do. I know how to do that. My dad, he was a good man. He showed me what it means . . . to be a man.”

Yeah, right.
The kid turned eighteen a couple of months ago, and Benjamin was back to feeling old, ancient, really. He expected Jared, after a few sleepless nights, would feel the years piling on, too.

They stood around trying not to look at Abbi, at the baby in her arms. The grandmother whispered to her son.

“Well,” Cheyenne said finally, “the Whalens have a bit of a ride home.”

Benjamin popped his jaw, stretching it as far to the right as it could go, nodded. He turned to Abbi, slid his arms against hers, beneath Silvia. Abbi wouldn’t let go. Her hazel eyes held his—they seemed gray today, matching her shirt and her mood—pleading with him, accusing him. She blamed him, for bringing Silvia into their home, for letting her leave.

I’m sorry
, he mouthed, pressing his arms up into the infant’s body until he was supporting all the weight and Abbi nothing at all. She dropped her arms and went. He listened to her footfalls down the hallway. One door crashed open, then another, more quietly than the first. He heard both snap closed.

I’ve lost her.

He couldn’t bear to wake the baby. “Good-bye, sweet
kanyaratna
.
Me tujhashi prem karto
,” he whispered, kissing her on the forehead before holding her out to Jared, like a doctor in the delivery room. “Here.”

The boy untangled his hands from his pockets and took the small body against his, bumping and shifting her until she was settled in his arms. Silvia arched her back, ballooning her lips in a sleepy pucker before rubbing her face and sighing, nodding off again. “She’s heavy,” Jared said.

“Sixteen pounds.”

“I didn’t expect . . .” The boy’s voice disintegrated as he looked down on her. He sniffled, turned his head and wiped his eye on his shoulder. “She looks like her mother. Good thing.”

“Just . . . enjoy her,” Benjamin said.

“Mr. Patil, we, I mean, my mom and me talked about it, and this isn’t anywhere near anything much, but, if you want to, we’d like you and your wife to come visit sometime. If you want to. And we can send pictures and stuff. E-mails, or whatever. To let you know she’s doing good.”

He meant it sincerely, Benjamin knew. But it burned, seeing his daughter in another man’s arms. Just like he still woke some mornings and—throwing back the blankets and settling his feet on the cool wood floor—was startled to see his deformed foot, he expected he’d be reaching for Silvia in the bed at night, brushing the back of his hand in the air where the bassinet had been, frantically wondering where she’d gone before realizing he never had her to begin with.

His, but not his.

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Really. But I think I’ll have to talk to Abbi and let you know.”

Jared nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“You and me both.”

When they pulled into the driveway she was out of the car before he had a chance to switch it off, and he didn’t, leaving it to idle as she hopped the two patio steps in one stride. At the front door, she turned back to him, and he opened the driver’s side door and stood behind it, guarded, one foot on the blacktop, head above the window. “I’m going to . . . take a drive,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment, then shut herself in the house.

And he drove, sped, needle close to one hundred. The highway stretched before him, billboards cluttering the side of the road.
Free
Donuts for Newlyweds at Wall Drug. Wall Drug—80 Ft. Dinosaur. Have
You Dug Wall Drug?
He passed half a dozen lonely cars, glancing in at the drivers. No singles. All had at least two passengers, most with children in the back seats.

He hurt all over—not physically. His bones had been jarred when Stephen’s Humvee overturned, every muscle fiber bruised by the blasts around him. But this wasn’t the same. Now he was all dry veins and dead space inside, as if even his cells knew Silvia had kept him alive, and now they desiccated in mourning.

Badlands 12 miles
.

The rocks rose up around him, and after parking the Durango, he walked, wearing his church shoes and dress pants, straight out to the first hill. He climbed it, the setting sun’s shadows making it difficult to discern the rolls and dips in the terrain. His shoe snagged in a divot, and he fell forward, skinning his palms, listening to the familiar sound of loose stones cascading over the ledges. He examined his hands, pinpricks of blood in the dust, shook the sting away. Then he ran with his imperfect gait—a limp, a shimmy—down the footpath, between the towering mounds, kicking through low brush, ignoring the threat of rattlesnakes.

The cool autumn air scraped his windpipe, and he swallowed to alleviate the metallic dryness. He stopped, looking up at the steep face to his left. He began his ascent, arms quivering as he lifted his body over shelves and outcroppings. Sweat and dust burned his eyes. He lost his footing, slipping down the rocks on his belly, fingers grappling for any hold, and when the friction slowed him, he flattened his cheek to the rock, arms spread wide, hugging it, breathing deep, his heartbeat the loudest sound around him. His muscles twitched from the fear surging through his blood, until finally he calmed and began to climb again.

He reached the top, panting, hands on his knees. Then he straightened and, digging his fingernails into his raw palms, bellowed until he emptied his lungs of air. The sun, a compact red disc teetering on the horizon, quivered with his cry. The clouds rippled gray and pink and silver above him, choppy like the sea in Boston Harbor on that windswept day, when his parents took him to see the USS
Constitution
and made him walk the Freedom Trail in the rain. Too much sky. Enough to drown in.

He sat and waited in the gloaming, still able to see the skeletons of the buttes in the distance, confessing the glory of creation. He bit the side of his tongue to keep from shouting his confession.

He hated God.

This was beyond a dark night of the soul, beyond doubt and feeling disconnected.
How did I get here?

After Stephen died, Ben had woken up in Germany, and then the U.S. government shipped him back to the good ol’ States, where he spent two months rehabilitating at Walter Reed, learning how to walk without toes. He kept his Bible in the drawer beside his bed, but didn’t open it. Couldn’t. He didn’t want to read the promises, refused to feel Christ’s love for him. He was mad at God, and himself— for forsaking Stephen.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down
his life for his friends.”

Yeah, right. He had cowered behind the Humvee and thought only of his own skin. He owed God more than that. So he pushed Him away, pushed and pushed until it was no wonder he couldn’t find his way back to Him.

Benjamin had heard the stories of the persecuted church, and of ordinary people, how the trials they faced drew them to the Lord. His struggles tore him away, and it was because he’d always had a comfortable, easy journey. Nothing had prepared him for the upheaval that true pain could wreak on the soul. His faith had no calluses.

The moon emerged from the cloud cover, a bright, thin crescent, and behind that the remainder of the moon glowed ashen in the earth’s reflected light. Earthshine. Some people called it the old moon in the new moon’s arms. He saw his own arms, around Silvia.

He woke up, cold under his jacket, stiff in the back seat of the Durango, his good black pants torn at the knee and dusty. Sitting up, he groaned, flipped into the front and started the engine. Cranked on the heat.

He had spent the night in a motel parking lot, could have rented a room but had no desire to be comfortable. The corners of his lips split when he yawned. He wiped them with his thumb, drove to the closest convenience store and bought two coffees. Made it about eight miles outside Temple when he noticed flashing lights in his rearview mirror. He eased onto the shoulder, opened his window. Wesley ambled over to the passenger side, let himself in. “I called the house looking for you.”

“What did Abbi tell you?”

“Nothing. She didn’t answer. Someone else did, told me you weren’t home. What you doing here, Ben?”

“Driving.”

“You should be with your wife.”

Benjamin sipped his coffee, scalding his tongue. He turned the key back toward him so he could put the window up. “I’m heading there.”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Why weren’t you with her when she needed you?”

“She doesn’t need me.”

“She’s hurting as much as you are. Probably more. Her baby gone. Her husband gone, too.”

“Silvia wasn’t her baby,” Benjamin mumbled.

“I’m guessing biology doesn’t matter. Seems you already got that one figured out on your own, though.”

“Get out.”

Wesley nudged the door open, a shrill buzzer echoing in the truck. “Go home to your wife.”

Chapter THIRTY-SIX

After Benjamin left her, just drove away and left her, Abbi leaned against the fat, white molding in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, and slid down the slick wood to the floor. She stayed there, listening. There was nothing to hear.

She’d spent the past four months worrying about Silvia—was she crying, hungry, wet, tired, needing to be cuddled?—having her hanging on her body, on her mind. Abbi felt naked. All this time she’d been hiding behind the baby, too.
Such a big responsibility for an
itty-bitty babe. How sick is that? Save Benjamin. Save me. No wonder you
took her. . . .

Abbi crawled from the floor to the couch, her head pushed up against one arm, her toes skimming the other. The drawstring at her waist felt suddenly tight. She shifted, but it still cut into her skin. The knot opened as she pulled one side of the ribbon, and she stretched the skirt as wide as possible, looking down at her stomach. She knew each roll and lump on her body, and even though Benjamin refused to keep a scale in the house, she could tell the difference between 150 pounds and 170. She was at the high end now. Not enough exercise, not enough laxatives. Too much attention to Silvia and not enough to herself.

“You dumb, fat slob.”

She went to the kitchen and downed two bowls of granola and soy milk, then the crumbs at the bottom of the box. She couldn’t handle open boxes, nearly empty containers. They pestered her, and she was unable to get them out of her mind, there, in the cupboards or freezer, waiting for her to finish them. Then she ate a bag of flax chips, four slices of toast with coconut oil and sea salt, the remainder of the baby carrots, and an avocado. In the bathroom she pulled her skirt low on the hips, hauled up her shirt and twisted it into her bra, her stomach hard with food. She stood sideways in front of the mirror and hated herself, the bulge in her middle. Her jeans, she needed to try them on. She wriggled into the size tens; they wouldn’t zip. She peeled them off, kicked them off her foot and onto the bed, and tried on the twelves. They were tight, too tight. When did she try them on last? She couldn’t remember. A month. More than that. A few weeks after Silvia showed up.

She searched all her hiding places—her winter boots, the underside of the nightstand drawer, the hidden pocket of her rarely used camping backpack. There were no pills in the house. She grabbed her car keys and drove to the Food Mart, ignored the
Hello
s and the
Are you
doing okay?
s and headed to the pharmacy aisle. She knew where they were—first the pain relievers, then the cold remedies, then the antacids and laxatives. She picked up a bottle of natural senna, squeezed it in her hand; it fit there, round and smooth and cool. But she tucked it back in line. Needing more than that today, she plucked a box of Fleet off the shelf. One hundred tablets. She read the ingredients.
Bisacodyl
5 mg.
Some horrid, gut-burning chemical. She paid for them and ripped them open before she was out of the store, tossing the empty box in the garbage can outside.

In her car, she pushed the tiny orange dots through the foil backing, one after another until she’d emptied one plastic square. She sucked all twenty-five pills from the palm of her hand; they stuck to her tongue, sweet, like candy. She poked out another twenty-five and swallowed those, too. Then she drove home, dropped the empty laxative packaging out the window, stuck the full ones in the elastic of her waistband. She felt the little bumps against her skin. They calmed her. She knew she could eat another fifty pills’ worth of food before having to go back to the store. How much was that? In college, before she met Benjamin, she had taken eight senna tablets a day, whether she needed them or not. If she ran out, she could think of nothing but getting to the pharmacy and buying more, the empty bottle haunting her, each forkful of food an adversary she could feel adhering to her fat cells.