The World Gives Way: A Novel Page 21

  “When did her mind start to go?” Myrra asked, taking another small sip of wine. As if in sympathetic response, Rachel took a long gulp. Myrra took the bottle and topped her off.

  Rachel took a moment to think. “She was diagnosed about… three years ago? Yeah, that sounds right. This was back in New London… It was mostly just the physical symptoms at first, though, the joint pain, stuff like that. Her daughter started closing in at that point, anticipating the inheritance. She put her in a hospital the first chance they could get.”

  Myrra broke in. “Is that the one with the granddaughter, Grace?”

  Rachel smiled and, almost as a reflex, looked over at Charlotte sleeping in the stroller. “Yeah. Gracie was a cutie.” Her smile faded. “Her mother, though—what a vulture.”

  She took another long gulp of wine, and Myrra obligingly topped her off again.

  “This is good,” she said. “Anyway, after about a year of doctors poking at her, Annie could feel her mind starting to go. Her daughter had taken over the town house by then. I still remember Annie grabbing me one night. She kept repeating to me, ‘I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die here.’ So, before her mind was completely gone, I helped her rearrange her bank accounts and we left town to come here. She said she wanted to spend some time with God before she died.”

  It didn’t take much to get Rachel talking, even if she had been wary the day before. Part of it was the wine, Myrra knew, and part of it was Rachel’s naturally outgoing personality. But part of it was the same impulse that Myrra shared—a desire to tell your story to someone and have them listen and understand.

  Myrra was suspicious about Rachel helping to “rearrange” Annie’s bank accounts, but she didn’t judge her for it. After using Marcus’s severed hand to open a safe, Myrra wasn’t allowed to judge anyone.

  “So now you live in Kittimer, indefinitely?” Myrra asked, nudging her on.

  “I guess so,” Rachel said, with a shrug and a smile. “I mean, Annie’s definitely doing better. Her brain suffered some damage, but all the other symptoms vanished.”

  “She doesn’t want to go back?” Myrra asked.

  “Every now and again she does. She misses Gracie. She even misses her daughter. But then I remind her that if she leaves, she’ll probably get sick again, so we stay.”

  Myrra could now see Rachel’s situation with full clarity. She was in control so long as Annie stayed estranged from her family. Of course she would keep Annie here.

  “What happens if Annie dies?” Myrra asked, and then wished she hadn’t. Up until this point they had skirted around the issue of Rachel’s true job title. Rachel looked aghast, but she stayed in her chair.

  “I don’t know what will happen,” she said first. She paused and looked to the side.

  “No, I guess I do know,” she said finally. “Her daughter will inherit my contract.” A wince on her face as she said the word contract. “But I don’t like to think about that.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Myrra gave her a smile and touched her arm. On the bright side, Rachel would probably never have to worry about losing her autonomy again. Annie could last another few months at least. Rachel would die living her best life.

  Rachel’s eyes were pooling, but she held the tears back. She stared for a moment at Myrra, a little confused, a little searching.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her voice cracked slightly. “I have to say, this is not the way people usually respond when they find out about me.”

  “I just know what it’s like not to be in charge of your own life,” Myrra said, worried about revealing too much. She tried to pull the statement back and cap it off with a joke. “I had a bad husband once,” she said, as a light explanation. “All men are scum.”

  Rachel let out a short bark of a laugh and then immediately cupped her hand over her mouth. They were going to wake people up.

  They spent the rest of the night chatting about Myrra’s fictional ex-husband, the rich blond father of Charlotte and all-around louse. All the salacious gossip that Rachel seemed to love. The lie was Myrra’s gift to Rachel, for giving her the truth.

  In Kittimer it was easy to be lulled into a sense of safety. With the bells and the mountain winds, the distant chanting and prayers, Myrra spent her days almost forgetting that the world was breaking apart, almost forgetting about Security. It was only at night it came back to her: she lay awake waiting for a cataclysmic sound, or for agents to break down her door. Waiting for the anvil to drop on their heads.

  She wondered if she was being foolish, to stay in one place for so many days, but it was so calm here, and Charlotte was growing and changing, and didn’t they deserve this for a little while? A place to feel safe? Just safe, for a little while.

  The anvil took another few days to land. It was another lovely summery day, and she was just coming back from a shopping run—just the essentials, now that money was tight. Mashed peas and apricots for Charlotte, and sandwich supplies for herself.

  The hostel’s common area was empty. Myrra went about finding room in the cupboards for her food, leaving Charlotte in her stroller by the table. Everything was blissfully quiet; even the bells had stopped ringing for the moment.

  She didn’t immediately see Rachel enter the kitchen. She appeared right behind Myrra’s shoulder, causing Myrra to jump straight out of her skin and drop the loaf of bread she’d been holding. Rachel wasn’t usually that quiet.

  “Oh! I’m sorry—” Rachel said, and bent to pick it up for her. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, I just didn’t see you there,” Myrra replied, taking the bread from Rachel’s outstretched hand.

  “Everything OK? You seem a little edgy.” Rachel cocked her head in concern.

  “It’s nothing. Just haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Poor thing. The mattresses here really are a nightmare.”

  Myrra nodded in assent, but didn’t add anything further to the conversation. Something was off with the way Rachel was acting. Her face held the same expression it always did, but today it seemed tightly fastened down, as if she were cheerful by force.

  “Where’s Annie?” Myrra asked her, trying to suss out the situation.

  “Oh, she’s in her room sleeping.” Rachel waved generally in the direction of the bedroom. “Thought I’d take the opportunity to roam.” She laughed a little to herself. The laugh felt forced too.

  Myrra wedged the last jar of baby food onto the packed shelf and shut the cupboard door.

  “That sounds nice,” she said, and backed away toward Charlotte’s stroller. Nothing was strictly wrong, but there were alarm bells going off somewhere in her chest, and Myrra trusted her instincts enough to leave. Her cash was in her pockets. That’s all they’d need to disappear. If they needed to disappear.

  “We’ll leave you to your roaming…” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “We’ve got somewhere to be, actually.” She gripped Charlotte’s stroller and pushed her way to the door, keeping her eyes on Rachel the whole time.

  The cheerful mask slipped off Rachel’s face, and before Myrra could get very far, she ran at Myrra and lunged.

  Rachel’s hands closed on Myrra’s left ankle and pulled, dragging her roughly to the floor. Myrra heard a crashing noise; Charlotte’s stroller was sideways on the ground, and the baby was screaming.

  Rachel grunted and panted behind her as her hands climbed, from her ankles up to her calf, clawing at her knees and bunching around her skirts. Myrra kicked at her, her foot connecting once with Rachel’s cheek and again with her shoulder. But Rachel was used to pain, and she was at least fifty pounds larger than Myrra.

  Myrra flailed at her with her fists as Rachel threw her body weight on top of her. Desperately Myrra’s hands clawed and scratched at her attacker’s face, leaving streaks of blood across her cheeks. Rachel bit Myrra’s hand, drawing blood of her own. She held on to Myrra’s fingers with her teeth, a wild look in her eye, and for a moment Myrra was con
vinced that Rachel was going to bite her fingers off. Instead she spit out Myrra’s hand and seized both her wrists, pinning them down to the ground above her head. Rachel had her now, and spit in her face to prove it.

  This was different from squaring off against Security. Contract workers knew how to fight.

  From her spot atop Myrra, Rachel gripped Myrra’s wrists in one hand, then turned behind her and reached out across the floor with the other, searching for something—what?

  Myrra didn’t want to find out. Taking advantage of Rachel’s distraction, Myrra squirmed and wriggled out from under her, crawling toward Charlotte’s overturned stroller. Every move she made left bloody handprints on the floor.

  “Hey!” Rachel shouted behind her. Myrra looked back and saw Rachel standing over her, swinging something glassy and dark—a wine bottle?—toward her face. She felt something hard and cold connect with her temple; a crunch; then the world went hazy.

  Myrra woke with her cheek leaning against a cement wall. Her head was pounding. It was too dark to see. When she tried to move, her arms knocked into something long and rigid. A broom handle? She reached out again, and a whole tangle of brooms and mops tumbled down on her. A closet. She was in a closet.

  Myrra felt around for a doorknob; she was frustrated but not surprised when the door turned out to be locked. She rattled the door against its frame; this was a low-rent place; perhaps the hinges were weak. Perhaps the lock was cheap. There was always a way. Myrra remembered the stroller lying sideways on the floor, the sound of Charlotte crying. She didn’t hear Charlotte crying now.

  She slammed her body into the door, ramming it as hard as she could. It was difficult to get any momentum in such a cramped space, but she gave it her all. Even after her shoulder had gone numb with pain, and it felt as if all the bells of Kittimer were clanging in her skull, the door didn’t give. She kept hitting it anyway.

  “Just stop.” She heard Rachel shout on the other side. “You’re not going to break down that door.”

  “Rachel, what’s going on? Let me out!” She knew what was probably going on. But she wanted to hear Rachel explain it.

  She heard footsteps draw closer to the door. For a foolish, hopeful moment, Myrra thought maybe Rachel actually was going to unlock the door. Instead she spoke in a low trembling voice through the crack in the door.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked. “I knew something was going on. That baby looks nothing like you. You talk to me, pretend to be my friend, get me to tell you all sorts of shit about my life and Annie and my contract…” Her voice broke.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” Myrra interrupted.

  “I’m not going to tell you. Just to spite you, I’m not going to tell you.”

  Myrra threw her body against the door again, and Rachel smacked the door with something heavy in response. It made a huge noise in the closet, causing the pain in Myrra’s head to ratchet up even further.

  “Stop it!” Rachel hit the door one more time for good measure. “You got me to tell you everything, and all this time, you weren’t any better than me. Just thought I’d be stupid enough to swallow what you told me. You, with all your airs, swanning about with all your free time and your baby, visiting churches, wandering the town.” She sniffed. “I could have done that too, if I’d killed my boss.”

  Rachel went quiet. Myrra felt the pressure of her body as she leaned against the outside of the door. She considered denying Rachel’s accusations, sticking by her fake name and fake life, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “I didn’t pretend to be your friend,” Myrra said instead. “I was your friend.”

  “I was your private joke.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Shut up.” The rage had left her voice, replaced by a sad tiredness. “Security will be here soon, so just stop trying to break down the door.”

  Security. Again, she was not surprised, but it still hit her hard. She started scrambling on the floor for something sharp. There was a chance she could fight her way out when they opened the door, if they didn’t tranq her right away.

  She needed to keep Rachel talking as she searched. “How did you figure it out?”

  Had there been bulletins in Kittimer she hadn’t seen? She pictured plastic flyers littering the streets, with just her face and the word DANGEROUS printed above it.

  Rachel sighed, and Myrra felt it through the door. Such a thin metal surface, it was maddening she couldn’t break through. Her fingers scrabbled along the dusty floor. The best she could come up with was a broken-off plastic broom handle. At least it had a sharp point on one side.

  “You’ve got a couple scars on the insides of your arms,” Rachel replied. “You worked in a laundry, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My grandma had scars like that. From the heat presses.”

  Myrra looked down at her own forearms, though it was impossible to see anything in the dark. Still, she knew the scars that Rachel was talking about. They were so thin and faded at this point that Myrra barely remembered they were there. But Rachel had noticed them. Of course she had.

  “So you figure out who I am, and your first move is to call Security. That takes a certain kind of person.”

  Myrra had known lots of people willing to stomp on each other to appease authority. As early as when she was working in the factory with her mother, Myrra had noticed the foremen doling out favors to workers willing to report on their fellows—strikes, stolen merchandise, even laziness on the job could be quelled with the promise of a few extra helpings in the dinner line. Myrra understood the mechanics behind it: keep the rats eating each other and they won’t overtake the kitchen. But she’d thought Rachel was smarter than that.

  “You never respected me, why should I treat you any better? You got out, but you were OK watching me struggle? Just so you could pretend to have some wine-and-girlfriends time with me? That takes a certain kind of person too.” Rachel pushed away from the door, and Myrra felt it jostle. She heard the tap-tap of Rachel’s footsteps as she walked back a few paces. “And anyway, it’s a way out. Annie’s not going to live much longer, and I refuse to go back to New London.”

  Myrra let out a small breath. She’d cut a deal. Rachel was getting out of her contract. It barely seemed possible.

  She wanted to believe that even with freedom dangled in front of her, she wouldn’t do what Rachel had done. But she wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t that long ago that Myrra had been willing to spend the rest of her life lying to a man in order to get free. This life could drive you to extremes.

  But knowing what she knew now, she couldn’t fathom compromising like that. Imogene had bestowed upon her a terrible gift, but a gift nonetheless. She would never do such a thing now, but who’s to say she wouldn’t have a month earlier, if the bribe had been just right and she had still been ignorant of her own expiration date?

  So she could understand Rachel’s decision. But she was still enraged by it.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy your freedom. You’ll be dead in weeks,” she spit into the door.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “What—” Rachel said, but never got to finish her sentence.

  Myrra heard a distant door open, the heavy authoritative steps of a Security officer, and the distinctive click of a tranq gun. Myrra gripped her broken broom handle and waited for the door to open.

  24

  TOBIAS

  Kittimer was a huge amount of ground to cover. They had picked a hotel that they thought was in a central location, but it turned out Myrra Dal was living on the edge of town, three whole mountain peaks away. They grabbed their cuffs and guns, piled into their rental car, and were parked in front of the hostel, Myrra Dal’s new hideaway, in just under an hour.

  Tobias had forgotten how large Kittimer was. He’d only visited a couple of times, when he was a kid, never with Barnes. Barnes was a devout Christian, but he viewed a visit to Kittimer as being disloyal to his own local church.
And he wasn’t all that fond of the other things Kittimer had to offer, skiing and hiking and wine tasting, all things that had the potential to make him look foolish. But Ingrid had taken him to Kittimer once, shortly after a particularly loud fight with David. Tobias remembered hearing the crystal highball glasses they’d swiped from the hotel as they shattered against a wall. He couldn’t remember what the fight had been about, or what the last straw for Ingrid had been, but she left David briefly that time, and she took Tobias to Kittimer, where she vowed that they were going to lead a more moral life. But then she’d gotten bored a couple of weeks in, and pretty soon after that they were back with David, Ingrid laughing and drunk, as if nothing had ever happened. Ingrid was good at forgetting, and as a kid, Tobias had tried to follow her example. Now all Tobias could remember about the situation was that it had seemed startlingly normal at the time.

  Tobias had visited Kittimer alone once, after his parents were detained. At that time Tobias had come to Kittimer for the same reason so many did: to see if he could find his faith. His family was technically Jewish. When he suggested the trip to Barnes, his adoptive father had been supportive, telling him that a man needed to stand on his own and seek out his own identity. So he toured different synagogues, attended different services, and, after a week in the mountains, went home happy, but uncertain about the experience. Anything he did to explore his heritage strengthened his bond to David and Ingrid. And when he returned to Barnes’s apartment to see the usual grilled cheese and eggs waiting for him at the dinner table (Barnes wasn’t much of a cook), he ultimately decided it was fine enough to have faith in a person instead of in a gospel.

  Now, with Myrra Dal so close, Tobias was looking forward to restoring Barnes’s faith in him. All would be forgotten if he managed to finish the job, if he saw it through to the end.