“Like the brothers and sisters of people that were first sick,” Lucy said slowly. “They were passing it to each other.”
“Except they weren’t,” Vera said. “I thought so too, but then I realized the incubation period was wrong. If the second wave of patients were catching it from their siblings, they would’ve been symptomatic sooner. Instead they weren’t showing up here until their brothers and sisters were better.”
“Or dead,” Lynn added.
“Incubation period?” Carter looked from Vera to Stebbs. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s the time period from when you’re exposed to the virus to when it actually makes you sick. This second wave was getting sick after they came here.”
“So they caught it here,” Lucy said. “No big surprise, this place was crawling with sick.”
Vera shook her head. “No, sweetheart. We made sure there was no contact between the well and the ill. The first rule of keeping a contagion in hand is quarantine.”
“People break rules, Grandma.”
“If it were an isolated case or two, I would agree,” Vera said. “But every person in the second wave had been here. So it had to have been someone carrying it between the two groups.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Carter said, color draining from his face. “It was me, wasn’t it? I must’ve mixed up which canteen I was using for the sick and for the well.”
Lucy felt his fingers go cold in her own. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said, voice hard. “You wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”
Stebbs walked over from his place beside Vera and put a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “It’s best you sit down, son. There’s more to tell.” Stebbs steered him away from Lucy to the empty chair opposite Vera.
“Lucy,” Lynn said. “You come on over here with me now.”
Her body tensed in rebellion, every muscle wanting to follow Carter, but Lynn’s tone left no room for argument, and Lucy joined her against the wall.
“He wouldn’t have done that,” she said vehemently to Lynn. “He’s smarter than that.”
“It wasn’t the water,” said Vera. “Do you remember me telling everyone about the different kinds of polio, and how they affect people?”
“Yeah. Some people are paralyzed, like Adam. Some people only get a fever, and then feel fine. Some die, like my sister,” said Carter.
“And some don’t even know they have it,” Vera said.
Realization dawned on Lucy, her heart collapsing under the weight of what Vera was saying. “No,” she said, the word barely squeezing past her lips. “He is not sick.” Carter’s gaze jumped from Vera to Lucy, his confusion evident.
Vera reached across the table, clasping his hands in her own. “I’m so sorry. I tried to find another answer, but it fits. Your sister was the first, the people who came in after had all interacted with you at some point. The second wave was so perfectly timed it had to be someone here. You were the one moving between the sick and the well, carrying messages and sharing your water.”
“Can you . . . Is there any way to tell, to be sure?” Carter asked, his voice stronger than his shaking hands.
“Without a way to look at cells in your blood, no. All I’ve got to go on is timelines and crossed paths,” Vera said.
“So you could be wrong,” Lucy said.
“It’s possible,” Vera admitted, still looking at Carter. “But that would put me back at square one, searching for a source. So I need you to tell me—had you not felt well at any point before Maddy got sick?”
Carter shook his head, his throat too constricted for speech. Stebbs stepped behind him, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “This is important, son. So think hard, and be honest.”
“No fever? No muscle spasms?” Vera continued.
“No, nothing,” Carter said.
“What about headaches?”
Carter stopped shaking his head and closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said, slowly and quietly, the one syllable damning him. “Yeah. The day we went swimming. I had a blinder, but I went anyway.” He opened his eyes and looked at Lucy. “’Cause I wanted to see you.”
A breath slipped from her hitching chest, and a sob followed it. She tried to go to him, but Lynn’s grip on her arm was like an iron band. She couldn’t offer him comfort when he put his head on the table and sobbed for the death he had brought upon his sister, the racking breaths shaking his frame, his tears soaking Vera’s notes. Vera and Stebbs did what they could, the inoculated surrounding the infected, the innocent watching from the shadows.
Four
“You can’t see him again, Lucy. I’m sorry,” Lynn said.
Lucy sat on her bed in the home she shared with Lynn, her heartbeat a dim echo inside her body. Light flickered across the walls from the oil lamp on Lucy’s nightstand, the flame burning low on the wick. Lynn sat at the foot of the bed.
“I mean it. It’s not games now. I know you’ve snuck out of here once or twice in the past, but you can’t go to him. I won’t let you.”