Of course, it isn’t the seashell that makes that sound—it’s your own blood, moving through your body. But there had been a time in Robin’s life when she hadn’t known things like that.
She squeezed her eyes shut and she was a kid again, at her family’s summer rental in Sarasota, Florida, Mom tanned and strong and smiling, handing her a conch shell she’d found on the beach.Put the shell up to your ear, Robbie. It wants to tell you about its home.
Robin opened her eyes. She kept Renee’s cool, limp hand in her own like a gift she didn’t want to part with. “Tell me about your home, Mom,” she whispered, in a voice too low for the police guards to hear. “Tell me who you are.”
THIS MORNING, AFTERhanging up with Quentin Garrison, Robin had washed her face, changed into a cleaner T-shirt, another pair of yoga pants. She’d brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back, put on her sneakers, and she’d driven again to her parents’ house—a repeat performance of the previous night. This time, though, she’d gone inside. Robin hadn’t thought about it first, not enough to prepare herself for what she might see. She was simply drawn in through the back door, into the kitchen as though by a magnet, then through the living room, where the shooting had taken place. The cops had removed everything they needed to, but they’d done a terrible job of cleaning up afterward, and so Robin had to make herself turn away from the chalk marks and the tape, the pushed-around furniture. The throw rug—a bright, handwoven thing her parents had picked up on a trip to India—was no longer there. She didn’t want to think about why.
She’d hurried upstairs and into her parents’ bedroom, which she’d found nearly as hard to look at as the wreck downstairs. It wasuntouched, the bed still neatly made. Her parents had never gone to sleep that night, which of course she had known. But to see the bed like that. To see the drawers closed, the closets shut, the reading material on the two nightstands—a Lincoln biography for him, a stack ofNew Yorkers for her—as though the room still hadn’t heard what had happened, as though it were patiently waiting for the two of them to come to bed...
It had been so much harder than she’d imagined it would be. But she’d gone there with a purpose, and so she’d headed straight for it—the top right-hand drawer in her mother’s dresser.
This drawer of her mother’s held socks, tights, and stockings, and in the very back, a small wooden box filled with old keepsakes. Her father had no reason to know about it and most likely he never had. Robin, though, had known about the box since she was twelve years old. She’d caught her mother looking through it once and stayed in the back of the room like Harriet the Spy, watching. Her mother had been trying on a pair of earrings—big gaudy clip-ons made of painted seashells. Not Mom’s taste at all, which had piqued Robin’s curiosity enough for her to sneak back into the room and take out the box weeks later, when she was alone in the house...
Robin had found it fascinating, the idea that her mother would have a tiny collection of things no one knew about, not even Dad. And for a few weeks during that hot, sleepy July between sixth and seventh grade, the box had been a summer romance—something Robin would sneak in to look at whenever she could and think about whenever she couldn’t. She’d never said a word about the secret box to anyone, just like she’d never said a word about her father’s pack of cigarettes. Grown-ups kept secrets, apparently. It wasn’t her right to reveal them.
By the time September rolled around and school started again, she’d stopped sneaking in to look at it. The box became somethingshe kept in the back of her mind in the same way Mom kept it in the back of the drawer: not thrown away and certainly not forgotten, but never dwelled on, never spoken of.
This morning, Robin had opened the drawer and found that box in the exact same spot, as though no time had passed. She’d pulled it out, removing the seashell earrings and the add-a-pearl necklace, the souvenir penny pressed into an oval and embossed with a star and the wordCorsica. She’d removed the tiny magnifying glass, the rainbow rubber ball, and a few more pieces of costume jewelry—gently, as though these were living things, deserving of kindness.
With the box mostly empty, Robin had found what she’d been looking for. She’d put everything back except for that one item—a Polaroid picture, so faded at this point, you could barely make out the image. She’d placed the box back in its spot and shoved the picture into her bag—where it still was right now.
ROBIN LET GOof her mother’s hand. She unzipped her bag, removed the picture, and gazed at it—a girl with short blond hair, smiling for the camera. The girl was young and coltishly skinny, as though she still hadn’t found her true form. The photo was blurred, the blonde’s features almost completely faded, but Robin could make out the smile—her mother’s dreamy, warm, slightly crooked smile.
Renee White couldn’t have been more than fifteen in the picture, but she looked as though she was trying to be older than that. She wore a halter top and tight jeans that were too mature for her and there was something about her stance too, the way she cocked her hip, that said less about her than the person taking the Polaroid.
With her left hand, young Renee made the sign for “I love you.” With her right, she held a gun.
As a kid, Robin had been unfazed by the gun, a small silver thingshe’d fully believed to be a toy. But now, she didn’t know what to believe.
Robin took hold of her mother’s hand again. She placed the Polaroid in it. “Who took this picture?” she whispered, thinking of the faded photo of April Cooper she’d seen online—a young, unsmiling girl with blond hair like Renee’s. “Was it Gabriel LeRoy, Mom? Did Gabriel take your picture?”
Robin started to tremble. She knelt down and placed her cheek against her mother’s cool wrist, the hand at her neck like the hand of a mannequin. “Was it Gabriel?” Robin’s voice cracked, and soon she was crying silently, each sob sinking deep into her abdomen, a bottomless, never-ending despair. The Polaroid dropped to the floor. She watched it through the blur of her tears and imagined it burning.
Robin cried until she was simply too tired to cry anymore, and only then did she hear it. A low, soft moan. Robin froze. Looked at her mother’s face. Took her hand again. Squeezed it again, expecting nothing.
Mom squeezed back.
The squeeze was weak, but it was real. “Verity!” Robin yelled. “Doctor!” And within moments she was in the hallway with the guards, one of them bringing the radio to his lips, contacting the station. “She’s waking up,” she was telling them, telling anyone she could. “My mother. I think she’s waking up.”
ERIC SURPRISED ROBIN.When she called him at work to tell him that the doctors had said her mother seemed to be stabilizing and that they were in the process of weaning her off the ventilator, she’d expected, at the most, some encouraging words and a promise to come home early tonight. But instead, he’d taken the train back immediately, making it to the hospital cafeteria around the time Quentin Garrison was supposed to show up.
Robin stood up, surprised and relieved that it was Eric, not Quentin, calling out her name. There was only so much tension and uncertainty she could handle, and she’d had her fill for now. Eric, though... He’d come home.
He took her in his arms and she held him tightly and lost herself in the rare feeling of not being alone. “How is Renee?” he said. “When can we see her?”
“I’m hoping soon. The nurse promised she’d come get me.”
“I told you,” he said. “I told you she’d be okay.”
“Eric.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
He pulled away, his features tensing, as though he were bracing for a blow. “What do you mean?”
Robin stared at him. She could tell they weren’t on the same page. “You left work in the middle of the day. I don’t want you to be in trouble with Shawn.”