The Wall (The Woodlands) (28 page)

My broken body
collapsed to the floor. I heaved myself towards the bedroom door, using my very last bit of strength. I got there and relaxed. I was cold. Curling myself around the hammer, I embraced it, convulsing once, wrapping around it like an old guard dog.

My body
was slipping away, slipping into the floor.

My home.
Not in my home.

I
’d make myself small. Turn my body into a knot in the floorboards. Hard. Impenetrable. Strong.

The clock swirled before my eyes
, the ticking unnaturally loud.

7:55.

In my dream, Joseph came home at 7:45 PM.

I run to the door and he tells me to c
over myself up with a wink. It’s violating our agreement.

In my
dream, I’m not trying, unsuccessfully, to lift my head off the floorboards or even open my eyes.

In my
dream, my eyes are bright and my hair is pulled back the way he likes it. It’s not matted and soaked with blood, my head feeling like a hardboiled egg that’s been stepped on.

In my
dream, I am safe. Until I wake, I can pretend I am safe.

Because the truth is, I
’m never safe.

I never was.

~Joseph~

As I approached the house, I could hear Orry screaming. But I didn’t think much of it. He was probably fussing. I imagined Rosa running around the house, worrying about what we were going to do tonight. I knew she hated surprises but I wanted to show her I knew her. I wanted to show her I listened to her and understood what she needed.

Deshi walked
next to me. It was cool and he rubbed his hands together to warm them. He’d left Hessa in town with Apella and had agreed to babysit for me. I think things were easier for him now. He had his own place, a family. But I always felt bad for him. I understood more than most how it felt to love someone and not be able to do anything about it. I hoped he would find someone here, but if he didn’t, there was Hessa. Now it felt more like it did in the beginning, when we were great friends, the best.

“
So what’s the big plan?” he asked. Although, I was pretty sure he didn’t really want to know. He didn’t hate Rosa, in fact, I think he respected her, maybe even liked her, but he didn’t understand the two of us together. In my mind, there was nothing to get. Whatever we had—it just
was
. It worked and would always work. There actually couldn’t be anyone else.

I shrugged at his question, downplaying it. I didn
’t want to flaunt our romantic escapades in his face. “Just dinner and a campfire.”

Deshi rolled his eyes
. “Sounds boring.”

I shoved him gently
. “It won’t be to her.”

I kind of wished I could talk to him about it but I couldn
’t, not yet anyway. I wanted to explain how she made me feel. She was this force of nature. At any one time, she was a storm, a sun-filled day, a tornado, and I was willingly caught up in her weather. When she laughed, the air around her moved and changed. When she was angry, lightning threatened the sky. She was unpredictable but I liked to think my presence was calming to her. I felt like I provided her with balance.

We
walked up the steps. The door was unlocked and creaked open eerily. I had warned her to keep it locked.

Pushing it open, Orry
’s screaming hit me like a warning.

I didn
’t see her at first—the pulled-over furniture and streaks of blood drawing my focus. But following the tracks of blood to the origin of my son screams, there she was.

I froze.

“Oh my God,” Deshi gasped, as he ran towards the tiny, curled-up mass of dark hair and blood. He approached her slowly, kneeling down, blood soaking into his khaki pants.

I threatened
myself to move, but when I saw her lying there, curled around that hammer, she wasn’t moving. I thought she was dead. She looked impossibly small, her hair fanned out around her like someone had creepily arranged it that way. The floor beneath me seemed to rock and shift and my body started to shake. I told myself to move. My head moved from side to side in slow motion. Where was Orry—was he hurt too?

Thank God for Desh
i. Deshi… the guy who got squeamish at the sight of blood, and stood back when I was attacked by that lynx. He saved us both.

He ran to me
and shook my shoulders. My body was rigid and didn’t react to his light attempts. “Joe. Snap out of it. She’s alive. Come here.”

She was alive
. I waited for the feeling of relief but it didn’t come. Deshi went in to Orry, returning with a tightly wrapped, upset but unharmed, baby. “Is he…?” I asked.

“
He’s fine,” Deshi answered but his eyes were dark as tragedy as he looked at my girl. My son was safe. Thank God for that. I knelt down next to her, cupping her shoulder as gently as I could. She looked broken and folded, like the tiniest disruption would make her body collapse. But I knew this wasn’t possible. I had to get on the other side of my panic. “Rosa?” I whispered, my voice sounding breathless. The air in the room felt thin, like we were on top of a mountain.

She managed a moan but she didn
’t open her eyes. I turned her over and tried to stretch her out, which was no mean feat. She was clinging to that hammer like it was part of her and I couldn’t pry it out of her hands. I gently shook her tiny wing of a shoulder. “Rosa, it’s Joseph, can you hear me?”

She mumbled something. I
t sounded like, “Not in my home.”

My heart sank like a lead weight. Whatever happened here,
it could have been stopped. I should have been here to stop it. Anger rattled me but I pushed it down. Right now, I needed to help her.

I scooped her up as gently as I could, noticing that one arm was han
ging limply at a strange angle. It was definitely broken. She was also bleeding from her scalp and had several cuts and bruises starting to form over her face.

Rosa, what happened to you?

We walked as quickly as we could towards a slowing spinner and jumped on. The bump made her moan again. She was so small, so minute in my arms. I was trying so hard not to let my anger take over but it was pressing into my back like hard hands shoving me forward. I kept thinking,
Whoever did this, I don’t care what the reason, I will kill them. I will kill them.

Deshi touched my shoulder and I flinched, every muscle tensed. It jerked me back to reality.
He leaned back like he was afraid of me.

“
Joe, breathe. If you keep holding your breath like that, you’re going to pass out. I can’t carry the three of you on my own.” He smiled weakly but his eyes had no humor in them.

I lifted
her unbroken arm. Her fingers were bleeding; tiny splinters were jammed under her nails like she’d been gripping into the wood for dear life. Her chin was grazed with splinters too. She squeaked and I realized I was holding her too tightly.

How did this happen?
The thoughts running through my head made me feel sick. I relaxed my grip and she slumped back in my arms. I watched her chest rise and fall, too fast, noticing that her shirt buttons were done up all wrong.

“
It’s all right,” Deshi said, trying to calm me down. “I think she’s going to be ok… most of this looks superficial.”

I stared at him, scared to utter the words I was thinking,
“But what if they…” I stared at her torn clothes, grief drying up my words. I couldn’t even say it. Even if she was going to be fine physically, how would she be emotionally?

“
Don’t say it, Joe, don’t even go there. We don’t know what happened. We won’t know until she wakes up and tells us. And she will wake up. She
will
be ok.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence. I just watched her breathe.
I watched the air pass quietly through her beautiful, parted lips and tried to ignore the red splotches of skin that were fast turning purple all over her tiny body.

Deshi rocked Orry and
reached out to stroke Rosa’s hair every now and then. I was wrong about him, his feelings for her ran deeper than I realized.

Is this what it felt like for you? When you watched me collapse in front of you
, did it feel like everything was being stripped away, dreams turning to dust, nothing but grey ash covering the earth? Were you angry? Did you blame me?

You
’re so much stronger than you know.

She
’d been under sedation for a day now. Matthew showed me her scans. Her arm was indeed broken near the wrist but it was a clean break. They set it easily. She had a pretty bad concussion and a hairline fracture in her skull that would heal on its own. The scan also showed a previous break in her jaw that had been repaired with a great deal of skill. Matthew told me it was at least a year old and asked how it happened. When I told him I didn’t know, he looked perplexed and I felt inadequate.

When they rolled her onto her
side, her gown slipped away, revealing one big bruise spreading over her perfect skin like someone had spilled ink on her. It was like someone had picked her up and dropped her from a height. The insides of her elbows were a blackish purple too. He couldn’t tell me if she had been assaulted in any other way. He was not going to do an exam without her permission, and for that she had to wake up.

Whoever did this was a monster.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it when she did wake. I wanted to hold her, cover her in kisses but Matthew warned me that if she had been assaulted, she might not want to be close to anyone for a while. That terrified me. And then I felt guilty that I was worried about something so stupid.

What I felt was powerless. I had all this anger, all this
pain, and I didn’t really know where to put it.

Watching her now, people would say she is so small.
Frail even. Not to me. To me, she was a storm brewing and I knew as soon as she opened her beautiful eyes, she would be a thunderous force.

I
just worried and wondered where the lightning strike would be aimed.