The Shape of Desire (40 page)

“I’ll bathe her,” I say. The truth is, I don’t want to let her go, even to move the short distance to the kitchen. Lizzie is still crying softly, but she calmed down almost instantly once I took her in my arms, and she is nestling her little head against my chest. Her thin dark hair is sweaty from the effort of screaming; her face is red and strained with remembered fury, but it seems to me she is no longer afraid. It seems to me she trusts me. She knows she is safe.

“Sometimes when they’re this dirty it’s just easier to get in the shower with them,” Ellen advises. “And you’re going to need a clean shirt.”

“Maybe you can find something for me in Christina’s closet,” I say. It won’t bother me to wear a dead woman’s clothes. After all, I’ll be caring for a dead woman’s child.

Ellen has no qualms about it, either. “Sure thing. Let me mix up a bottle and then I’ll go look.”

I follow her down the hallway toward the bathroom, still snuggling Lizzie tightly against my body. Her hands have fisted in my shirt; she
hiccups against my chest. All the tension is leaving her small, clenched body—I think she might actually fall asleep before I get her clean. I leave the bathroom door open as I step inside and kick off my shoes. It is quite a trick to undress yourself when you’re holding a baby in your arms, but I manage to struggle out of my clothes without ever putting her down.

She is mine now, and I am never letting her go.

W
ithin a half hour, Lizzie and I are both clean and wearing fresh clothes, and I am sitting in the rocking chair feeding her a bottle. She wants to close her eyes but I have no idea when she ate last. I feel that food is more important than sleep, at least for the moment, so I keep cajoling and insisting until she has almost finished the last ounce.

Ellen comes in and drops to the floor in front of me, seating herself on a hooked rug featuring an illustration of “Hey Diddle Diddle.” It’s clear she’s been busy. “I cleaned the potentially smelly stuff out of the fridge and took out the trash,” she says. “Put the laptop by the door so you can take it back to your house and start going through e-mail. But two things I can’t find—a purse, and a set of car keys.”

That catches my attention. “She probably drove to Babler,” I realize. “Her car is still there. That means—shit, at some point the cops will find it, and investigate it, and trace it back here.”

“So we need to go get it,” she says. “You know how to break into a car? And hotwire it?”

I shake my head and then lean back against the sturdy wood of the rocker. Suddenly I am so weary I can hardly think. I’m not sure I have the energy for one more adventure today. “No, do you?”

“No. But Henry does.”

“Oh, let’s not drag anyone else into this if we don’t have to.”

“Well, we might have to. But we might have a couple days. I don’t know when the police start getting nosy about cars that have been left at the park too long.”

“Then let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s just go home. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

“Fine with me, Scarlett,” she says, coming to her feet. “Let’s gather the baby’s stuff and get out of here.”

It’s while we’re packing grocery bags with diapers, clothing, bottles, and formula that I hear my cell phone ring. I leave Lizzie sleeping on the rug in her room and race through the house to grab my phone. “Dante?” I say. I don’t recognize the number on Caller ID, but I’m sure it’s him.

“Hey, baby,” he says. He sounds tired but not particularly stressed. I think his day must have been better than mine.
So far.
“Guess what I’m calling you on? That cell phone we buried here in the park a few months ago. My own’s completely dead.”

“I knew it would come in handy,” I say, while I’m thinking,
Let’s ease into this.
“Did you get my message?”

“No, but I think I only have about fifteen minutes, so let me tell you my news first. I found him. I found William.”

“Yes? And he said?”

“It’s not him, Maria. He’s been gone so much lately because of a girl. I believed him anyway when he said it, but then—it was so crazy—we were here at the park, and all these dogs and cops started running past us. It was obvious they were hunting something, and we wondered if it might be the killer. William shifted to human shape and found some hikers to talk to, and they said there’d been another attack. The cops tracked the animal down and destroyed it. Do you know if it’s true?”

“It’s true. We saw the whole thing on live TV.”

The breath whooshes out of his body in one long unvoiced
expression of relief. “And it wasn’t William,” he says again. “I can’t tell you, Maria—I hated asking him more than I’ve hated anything in my life. And you know what he said to me? He said, ‘I was afraid it might be
you
.’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, Maria thought the same thing.’ And he said, ‘
That’s
why she was looking for you! Now I get it!’ Smart guy, put it together right away.”

“I thought William didn’t even follow the news,” I reply. “How’d he hear about the murders?”

“Christina told him a couple weeks ago. She’s always pretty up on current events.”

“Dante,” I say, “I have something terrible to tell you.”

I can’t see him and he makes no sound, but I can feel him go into high alert, a predator poised to pounce, a prey animal tensed to flee. “What is it?”

“The creature they tracked in Babler Park. The one they killed. It was Christina.”

There is a silence so long that I would think the connection has failed except that I can still hear him breathing. I am not surprised he has no words. If someone told me my cousin Beth had become a brutal murderer, I would not be able to make sense of the accusation. “I think it was Christina all along. She killed all those people,” I say gently. “I’m guessing that she got a blood transfusion when she had the baby, and she just didn’t bother to tell you guys because she didn’t want you to worry. And then something—something went wrong in her body or in her head. I’m so, so, so sorry to have to tell you this.”

“You’re sure?” he says, his voice shredded.

“I saw the broadcast. I saw the animal change to a person. I saw her face.”

His next words are so faint it is like they have been drawn on a sidewalk with chalk and all but washed away by the rain. “What about Lizzie?”

“I’ve got her,” I say. “I’m in Rolla right now at the house. She looks like she’s been left alone all day, but she hasn’t been hurt. And I’ve fed her and changed her and I’ll bring her home with me tonight.”

Another moment of bleak, empty silence, and then the phone transmits a sound I have never heard before—Dante softly weeping. If only he was not so far away. If only I was close enough to cradle him to my heart, as I cradled Lizzie, close enough for me to whisper the same lie into his ear,
Shh, shh, it will be all right.

But he is not, and all I can do is offer the eternal promise, the eternal invitation. “I love you. I will always love you. Come home to me as soon as you can.”

T
he following week unfolds in such an unfamiliar fashion that I might almost be living someone else’s life. The first thing I learn is that an infant in the house changes everything—what you eat, when you sleep, what every minute of your life holds. Ellen has told me she will not expect me at work for any of the three days leading to the Thanksgiving holiday.

“I’m out of vacation time,” I say.

She waves a hand. “I know. Maybe we can get you FMLA days. We’ll work it out.”

I have to find a day care or a nanny, and soon, but Lizzie and I need this first week to get to know each other. She is still a beautiful child, alert and easily engaged, but I think I can sense a tension in her that was not present before. She cries more easily, she wakes more fretfully in the middle of the night, and more often.
I have to wonder how Christina’s accelerating madness played out in their house—how often she left the baby alone for hours, failed to feed her, or simply allowed her to cry. I have to wonder how long it will take before Lizzie knows I will never fail her.

I have to admit, I am thrilled—and sometimes, moved to tears—when she responds to me, when my touch or my voice is enough to comfort her in the night. When I bend over her, first thing in the morning, she smiles and lifts her arms to me, and every time I am struck in the heart. She is so precious, so pure; if she loves me, I have been approved by angels.

But Lizzie does not represent the only change that has come to my life. She is not the only new addition who looks to be a permanent fixture in my house.

Sunday night, shortly after I have put Lizzie to bed in a makeshift crib constructed of a hastily emptied dresser drawer, I hear a scuffle on the front porch and the sound of a throaty bark. It is close to ten o’clock and I am exhausted beyond description, and yet a prickle of anticipation shoots a burst of energy into my veins. Flipping on the porch light, I open the door to find two large dogs standing just outside, their ears perked up, and their tails straight behind them. One is a German shepherd, mostly black with a little white; the other is some kind of setter, a fluid golden brown. I have never seen either one before, and yet I know, I
know
, that these are Dante and William.

Wordlessly, I open the door and let them in. The shepherd pauses to nuzzle my hand and—when I stoop down—to lick my face, but the setter trots directly to the guest room where Lizzie lies sleeping. Careful not to wake her, he sniffs her face and touches her balled fist with his nose. Then, with a long doggy sigh, he shakes himself and settles on the floor beside her, resting his muzzle on his forepaws. The shepherd also investigates Lizzie, then sinks to his haunches and watches me in the dim light thrown in from the hallway.

Dante has never allowed me to see him in his animal state, and so I am not sure he will permit me to make any contact now. But he doesn’t
pull away when I reach out my hand, and I can’t resist ruffling his fur and scratching the top of his head. He responds by licking the inside of my wrist.

“I don’t know exactly what to do now,” I tell him. “I don’t know if you can understand me. I’ve got a bag of dog food in the basement—long story—so I’ll put out a couple bowls of that and some water. Lay down some blankets. I guess you want to sleep in here with the baby? And then maybe in the morning, if you’re human, we can talk.” I glance at William. “All of us can talk. Figure out what to do next.”

I haul the dog paraphernalia from the basement and set food out in the kitchen. For tonight, I’ll let Lizzie’s uncles watch over her in her bedroom, but I don’t think that should be a long-standing practice. It doesn’t seem like it would be good for her
or
them to be so dependent. I spread out the blankets near the dresser drawer and pat them invitingly. William stays where he is, but Dante ambles over and drops down with a noise that sounds like relief. I ruffle his fur again and then lean down to plant a kiss on the silky fur on the top of his head.

“Love you,” I whisper. “Even like this.”

I
n the morning, I wake to the smell of coffee brewing and the feel of Dante’s arms around my waist. It takes me a second to remember exactly how the situation stood last night when I collapsed into bed, but as soon as I do, I squeal and flip myself over.

He’s awake, he’s watching me, and he kisses me hard for a long moment. I am so happy to see him—days before I could have expected to have him back—that for a moment joy crowds out all other emotions, all other memories. I hug him as hard as I can and return the kiss with abandon.

When he pulls away, he’s smiling, but his face has been etched with a permanent sadness that suddenly reminds me of everything that
has transpired in the past twenty-four hours. “Don’t get too enthusiastic,” he warns. “William’s in the other room making breakfast.”

I kiss him again, just to prove I’m not afraid of William, and then drop my head back to my own pillow. “There’s so much we have to talk about, the three of us,” I say. “But I don’t want to get out of bed as long as you’re in it.”

“Well, in about an hour or so, you’ll be in bed with a dog, so unless you want to start getting kinky—”

I flick him on the nose. “Fifteen years, you’ve managed not to make bestiality jokes, and now all of a sudden—”

“Lot of stuff has changed overnight,” he replies, suddenly serious.

I sigh. “It certainly has.”

He pats my cheek. “Come on. Let’s get up, get dressed, talk to William. Figure out everything we need to do next.”

I
t is a strange convocation at my kitchen table that morning. We take turns holding the baby on our laps as we eat breakfast in shifts. I notice that Lizzie is perfectly at ease with William, catching at his fingers, pulling at his long hair, giggling at the sound of his voice; she has been around him fairly often, I think. By contrast, when she’s in Dante’s arms, she’s a little more reserved, but a little more fascinated. She keeps her head turned so she can watch him, so she can memorize him, so she will know him by sight and scent and sound when she encounters him again.

I outline my ideas for delaying the news of Christina’s death, and they are in absolute agreement. Like me, they believe only disaster could result from the authorities discovering her identity and taking Lizzie into custody. Some of my legal worries melt away when William reveals that he is executor of Christina’s estate and named in her will as Lizzie’s guardian.