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37

F lora needs to find the birth tusk. If her mother was right, and the tooth is somehow connected to Jodi, then it must hold the key to her questions. And she needs answers now. Without them, she doesn't trust herself around her own baby. And that, she is learning, is the cruelest form of torture.

She is searching the garage when Connor finds her surrounded by boxes and tools pulled from the shelves. Her hair is frizzy and half-brushed, her eyes wide with wonder.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

Flora shrugs. "I had the urge to purge!" she says with a laugh that isn't quite her own.

Connor doesn't reply. He just tilts his head to the side, as if he might see things differently that way, as if his wife might suddenly make sense from a slightly altered vantage point.

Flora spent the morning searching, but the birth tusk wasn't in the bathroom or the nursery or her bedroom or—well, anywhere in the house. So she thought it might be here in the garage, where she originally found it.

But no. Flora has gone through the box four times, and four times all she found were long-forgotten trinkets from her childhood. She chucked the whole thing in the trash.

At lunchtime, her father sits across from her at the kitchen table. Connor and Esther have taken the baby for a walk around the block. Flora eats a turkey sandwich on rye that her father made. It has too much mustard.

"Esther told me about your conversation yesterday," he says, and Flora understands now why Esther and Connor vacated the premises. Her father must have told them he wanted to have a Talk.

"Mm-hmm," she says, wet bread sticking to the roof of her mouth.

"It was probably a lot, learning about your mom's stay in the psychiatric hospital. And, well, it's normal for you to have questions. Is there anything else you want to know?"

Flora stares at a tiny piece of toilet paper that her father has attached to a razor nick on his neck. A drop of blood sticks the paper to his skin.

"Anything else I want to know about what?"

He shrugs. "Any of it. The hospital. Her death."

Flora wants to ask how it's possible she knew about the flesh-eating beetles before Esther told her. How it's possible she knew the bullet went out her mother's right eye. How it's possible she knew the history of the birth tusk before her father ever admitted it.

But, of course, she cannot ask these things. Because this Talk is a test, and those questions would mark an automatic failure.

"No," she says. "Esther pretty much filled me in."

"I don't know if she should have," he says, fiddling with a piece of uneaten crust on his plate. "The bit about the bugs… I hope it didn't upset you."

Flora shakes her head. "I asked."

"I know, but there are some things in life we're better off not knowing." Her father looks at his fingers, pressing his index nail into the pad of his thumb so that it turns white.

"What do you mean?" she asks. "Is there something else I don't know?"

His ears perk like a curious dog's. "Hmm? Oh, no. No, I just meant in general." He presses his hand into the table, a physical reset. "I did want to let you know that I have some things of your mother's at the house. Just a box or two. I saved them after… I thought there might come a day when you would want them."

"Yes," Flora says, her heart pitter-pattering in her chest. "Yes, I would love those."

"I'll bring them next time we come down."

"Can you mail them?" she asks quickly. "As soon as you get home?"

He looks at his daughter for a long moment. "Okay," he says, "I can do that."

Later, Flora tells Connor what her dad said about how she's better off not knowing some things.

"It's just an expression, though, isn't it?" he asks, joining her on the couch. "‘Ignorance is bliss' kinda thing."

"But it didn't feel like that. It felt like he was referring to something specific. His mind drifted. He went somewhere else."

Connor shrugs. "Flo, his mind could have gone anywhere. He was probably thinking about something in his own life, from his own childhood."

Connor knows something

they're all hiding something from me

Before bed, Flora pads into Iris's room to watch the baby sleep. It's the first time she has allowed herself to be alone with the baby since the attempted drowning.

The new monitor is balanced on the nearby dresser. Connor bought one without Wi-Fi but hasn't yet mounted it to the wall. Flora thinks about the man's voice, her daughter's stalker. Connor believed her when she first told him the story, but does he still? Or is he second-guessing that now, too?

She looks at Iris's face, which somehow seems to have changed in just the last couple of days. Every hour she avoids her baby is another hour her baby grows and evolves without her. But she doesn't have a choice. Until she knows the truth about what happened in that bathroom, the only way to keep Iris safe is to stay away.

It's so hard, though. So hard to stay away. She just needs one look, one touch. She is drawn to her daughter like water to a crack. Wherever her tiny baby's body is, Flora's body will find her, will fall into her.

"I'm working my way back to you, little one," she says. "I promise."

And then,

ZAP! Flora's brain conjures an image and projects it behind her eyelids. A tree falls on the roof, wood and shingles and wet caving and collapsing into the crib, the fragmented end of a broken board angling so it slides effortlessly through the soft spot on Iris's head.

get out of here now

Flora backs out of the room and hurries to her own bed, balling her fingers into fists so they cannot act of their own accord.