Chapter 29

June 29, 1997

SAN RAFAEL WAS A FEW TOWNS OVER,but it might as well have been across the Pacific Ocean. Luce had never been outside the Red Grove alone. Her palm was damp as she slid the key in Una's car for the second time in the last few days, but this time, she did not stop to think. She turned the key. She did not want to press the gas pedal, but her brother was somewhere out there, the pad of his feet in his morning pajamas, and she could not stall, did not let herself think, just foot down and here we go.

She drove. The dark giants and their shadows passing on each side of the car illuminated a moment in the headlights before they returned to darkness. Swallow what was rising in the throat. Take a breath and swallow and keep the car pointed on the road, keep the foot on the gas.

At the crest of the hill leading out of the valley, she could see, on either side of the road, the low stone wall, trees on each side, their necks wrapped in red yarn. That was it right there, the border of the Red Grove just ahead of her, then just exactly to the sides, and then just behind. Her hands would not stop shaking on the wheel, the distance between her and what she thought she knew of the world growing and growing.

She swerved, slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road. Not much of a shoulder here on this narrow road that connected the valley up and then down the steep hillside to the next town below, no redwoods along this road, just the dry old earth, the whiskers and cobwebs of roots sticking out from the side of the hill where the cracked dirt had crumbled away. Her hands shaking, sick everywhere, she could not go, she would not, shaking, it was too much to know what had happened to her mother, she could not think of it, couldn't know it yet. There would be a time she could sit with it, but not now. She pressed her palms hard enough into her eyeballs that she saw confetti, until they ached.

She should turn the wheel to guide her back onto the road, press the gas. Do it. Now. Wiping the snot, thin and hot, falling from her chin. Stop being afraid, she could not be afraid, not right now. It didn't matter that she had no license, that wasn't what tethered her to what was behind her. She closed her eyes, let her neck loose and her forehead drop against the steering wheel. There was nobody else.

Eyes closed, forehead throbbing against the steering wheel. As if they were standing right in front of her, in the darkness, in front of the dry dirt, she saw her mother holding Roo on her hip. She wasn't saying anything, and neither was Roo, there was just the sound of his little footy pajamas smacking the floor in the mornings, thwack, thwack, the sound of the flies hitting their heads against the window, the sound of the sliding glass door shutting behind her, out on the balcony in the dark. And then, beside her mother, Gem, before her everdream, reaching one arm up and out toward her.

She lifted her head. Opened her eyes. Wiped them with the back of her hands, everything still shaking. On she went.

Luce pulled into an apartment complex, dull brown and three stories high. Double-checked the address she'd written down, lucky, so lucky, that this was along a main road she'd taken each time she left the community, one she knew how to find. Cigarette butts in the parking lot, flattened soda cups. She scanned the lot for Boog's car and didn't see it, but no matter. She had to go in. There were a few people here, outsiders locking their apartment doors as they left to go somewhere, someone sitting in their car with music on, windows down. Just because she was outside the Red Grove did not mean something terrible was necessarily going to happen, she told herself, and told herself again, shoulders clenched as she forced one foot in front of the other, past these people, right out here in the open, she had to go and so she did. The stairs smelled faintly of pee, and she took them two at a time, the blood thrumming in her neck, her ears. Apartment 312.

She reached the door. It was unlocked. Inside, then.

Silence. The shadow of Gloria and Gem and baby Roo flickered on again, then was gone. She was in a living room with an overstuffed couch, old smell of cats, musty, everything in tans and beiges with coral flower accents, scanning quickly for signs of Boog, of Roo, but they were not here.

What was in here, near the door, was the melon-headed mummy. It was impossible. But here she was. The mummy, seated upright in a chair, staring at the front door. As if she were guarding it. Her lopsided eyes, watchful. A jolt of adrenaline, seeing the mummy so far from their house, why here, what could be happening, and she started to walk over to touch it, see if it was real, but then she heard Roo's small, high voice, singing. "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf." His voice was muffled, coming from behind a closed door.

She turned the handle. Roo was sitting cross-legged on a bed, his legs scooted up beneath his body. His palms rested on his knees. He looked like a little Buddha, calm, tranquil, alarmingly so.

With her palm against the door, Luce pressed the wood, widening the angle of the room so she could see inside. Standing across from Roo was Boog, rocking, cracking the knuckles on each finger again and again.

"Goose," Roo said, looking relieved. "Boog took me on an adventure."

"Come here," Luce said, loud and fast, but Boog cut her off.

"Stay, Roo. Wait right there. Luce, Roo was about to tell me about an envelope with some special papers in it," she said. Her face was dry in patches, more than before, splotchy red. She looked Luce right in the eyes. "I am so, so very sorry. Luce, I need you to go back, slowly, into the other room. I'm going to stay in here with Roo." Luce squeezed her fingers into her palms—clammy, shaking.

"I'm not—" Luce started to say, but Boog cut her off.

"Roo," Boog said. "Sweetie. I was hoping we'd have a little more time here, just the two of us, to play. That's why I brought you all the way over here to Katie's house, because I was hoping for some more time before your sister was here too, to help you remember where those papers are, that's what I was hoping. But okay, since we're all here—"

"Sure," Roo said. He looked pleased, scooched his butt off the chair, and pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. Luce watched, swallowing a knot. She had called him and told him to hide the folder. Surely he wouldn't be stupid enough to have hidden it in his pocket? Boog unfolded the paper, concentrated on what was in front of her. Roo looked up at Luce then. "I brought Mom along," he said. "I wouldn't come on this adventure with Boog until she let me bring Mom. Did you see her?"

"I sure did, Roo," Luce said, catching a glimpse of the paper over Boog's shoulder. It was one of Roo's drawings, a template for a robotic ball gown. Boog smiled, thin and fake, and set the paper down, pinching her temple. The fake smile faded from her mouth. "Other papers," she said, and this time her voice was less friendly. "This can all be over soon, easy, no problems. I need to be sure"—she swung her face back to where Luce stood, still frozen in the doorway—"you understand that we need to keep things as they are in the Red Grove. Too many people's lives are at stake. Our whole community. If you ruin this place, where will they go? What will happen to my Katie and her kids? Back here, where she is one wrong word away from being choked or punched or killed? No. Katie believes she's safe in the Red Grove and so she stays. Doesn't go back to him. Is looked after and supported. The women's belief that they are safe in the Red Grove makes them so. Do you get that?"

"We'll leave," Luce said, her voice low, barely a voice at all. She was staring at Boog, willing her to make eye contact and remember that they were kids, that she knew them, loved them. "Roo, come on. We'll go. We'll drive away, across the country, even. We won't tell anyone. You'll never see us again."

"Luce, honey," Boog said, and she, too, was crying, wiping tears from her face. "I am so, so sorry. I loved your mother, loved her fiercely. If she'd have cooperated with what we were helping her with, none of this would have happened. But we can still save it all together." Boog's face, turned half sideways to Luce, held a kind of demented, hopeful grin, as if somehow she thought Luce would agree to sweep her mother's death under the rug.

There was a sound just then, by the front door. One sound, and then many. It seemed impossible, yet that was the sound Luce heard—the clicks. There were clicks in the other room. And some kind of pressure change, her ears popping, and a warmer current of air blowing into the room. Boog turned back quickly to Luce and Roo. Luce couldn't believe the clicks had followed them here, outside the Red Grove, but here they were. "Who's here?" Boog asked. So she could hear the clicks too. She ran into the living room, and as Roo jumped up to follow, Luce grabbed his shirt to catch him, held him to her.

"Una?" Boog called. "Who's there?"

Luce looked wildly around the room for an out—she could toss Roo out the window and climb after. She pushed him toward it, away from the door, trying to keep quiet against the creak of wood beneath their feet. But then there was another click, so loud, so close, nearly inside Luce's head. She looked back into the other room, and Boog was reeling around too, spinning fast toward them, trying to find the source of the strange sound, human but disembodied, a language she didn't speak.

As Boog spun toward them, there was another motion. Boog's foot clattered against something, and the mummy—perched on a chair by the front door—was suddenly tumbling off its chair in front of where Boog spun. It looked, for a blurred, impossible second, like her mother, and then it—she—clattered into Boog.

Boog's hands, on reflex, moved up to protect her face as her body's momentum was moving toward the ground, off-balance already, panicked, her legs and arms twisted in with the mummy's. Boog was thrown backward onto the wooden floor. Her head smacked the ground with a huge, flat thud. She was still. Her face gaped open, her eyes, still open, blinking at Luce.

There was only one way out. The window was three stories high, so they had to make it to the front door, passing Boog. Every inch of Luce's body was pulsing, sweating. She grabbed Roo's hand, and they went, each step the loudest she'd ever taken, and with each one, she prepared to kick out wild if Boog sat up. She nodded at Roo to walk past Boog—there was a berth of about two feet he needed to pass to reach the door, but Boog could lurch up at any second, grab his ankle, anything.

Roo, whimpering, crept forward, almost next to Boog's face, but when they came close, the sounds changed. A squelch, as Roo's foot touched the sticky, wet floor. Surrounding Boog's head was blood.

Luce grabbed Roo's hand and ran out the front door. It didn't matter that she didn't know where to go to keep Roo safe right now, or ever, she just needed to get them out. They had to go fast. She ran down the steps and across the parking lot, holding him tight. Who could they trust? How many people had known about their mother and not told them?

The parking lot's lights cast yellow circles on the asphalt, a swarm of insects fluttering in and out of the beam of light. The person was still in their car, music blaring, as if life were the same as it had been fifteen minutes earlier, a day ago, a week. Luce kept on, close to the car, and then a man stepped out of the shadows, right in front of them. Luce screamed and clutched Roo tighter, jumping backward. Here it was; the next awful thing.

"Whoa whoa whoa," the man said, putting his hands up. "Take it easy. I didn't mean to scare you, sorry." She took a shaky breath, but it was too late, she was scared, terrified, flies buzzing around the lights, darkness hiding the danger, not her darkness in the grove, but the infinity of this open night. She ducked past him and into the car, locking the doors.

Do not wait, do not think, go. She tore out of the parking space, screeching to the edge of the lot where she needed to turn onto the road, but she froze. Where was it safe to go?

For the first time since she'd arrived in the Red Grove, she didn't know.