But I can tell from her face that Evie can’t hear me now, not after what I said about the baby. She’s written her reasons in blood, and she cannot erase them. She glances over her shoulder. When she turns back to me, the tightness is gone, and she looks troubled and sympathetic, as if I’ve just announced I’ve got the flu.
“Maggie,” she says in a cold, lucid voice. “Do you really believe all of this? Because no one else does. When Dee said you might show up today, I had to stop Yegina from calling Fritz and having you barred from reentering the museum. You’re making it hard for the rest of us to do our jobs. I spent a whole day on that provenance stuff because I took pity on you.” She pauses. “Shaw is free. And some twisted creep killed Kim Lord, but the police will catch him. Now I’ve got to get some sculptures to the airport, okay?”
Evie is lying, but I can’t find the falsehood in her face.
“Okay,” I say.
She turns away, still clutching her phone. I can’t let her go.
“Wait,” I say. “I’m sorry Brent hurt you.”
She hesitates, gazing at the dark rift in the ground.
“You’re sweet,” she says. “You know they call you Maple Muffin down in crew.”
At that moment, a loud click tells me my recorder has switched off. Before I can fully register this, a man’s voice calls from the far side of the clearing.
“Maggie!” He sounds alarmed. And more awake than ever. But how is he already here?
Something hurtles at me so hard I only see it in parts—smooth white arms, swinging blond hair, a fury-distorted mouth—before I stagger two steps and slip on the springy soft earth at the edge of the hole. I hear my raspy, surprised cry. Then Evie’s final push, full of senseless strength, flings my head so hard it snaps, and I fall.
27
Sounds: glass shifting and breaking against itself, like the crashing of surf onto small round rocks. The dull crack of my purse hitting the blade and my body after it, thudding to its side. I scramble up, cutting my knees and palms before I notice the wetness spreading over my belly, and a great wind rising through my skull, making it hard to see the sky above me. Evie’s gone. The man’s voice has stopped calling me. He must not know where I am. He must not know I’m here. I cry out, the effort blacking my eyes. I sink to my knees. The blood keeps spreading like silence. I call again, but the sound is too weak. My fingers fumble in the purse for the recorder. I press the rewind button on the cassette player and turn the volume dial high, blasting what I said to Evie into the clearing.
I hated her.
Footsteps, fainter then louder. The crack of sticks. My name bursts over the stretch of sky, and then there is Hendricks’s face peering over, measuring the distance for less than an instant before he leaps.
THURSDAY
28
The room swims in and out, and I am inside it, lying on a bed, my arms taped with tubes, a rubbery taste in my throat. My belly enormous and strained, a beach ball of flesh. White walls blister with light. Women in blue masks lean over me. Then another room, another bed, same tubes, an IV machine blinking. Yegina is sitting with me. Then no one. Then a cluster of doctors who talk about my concussion, broken ribs, and damaged right kidney, the fluids that are filling my body because the organ isn’t working properly.
Then Yegina’s back, announcing, “They got her, and they found Brent, too. He was in New York. He said he didn’t have any idea about Evie, said he was just tired of L.A. But I think he knew. It’s so messed up.”
I blink away tears, unable to speak.
She looks at me, her lips trembling. “You’re going to recover. I won’t let you alone until you do.”
I struggle to say Yegina’s brother’s name, but my mouth still won’t make a sound.
Yegina’s eyes fill. “Don’s okay. It’s just going to take some time. For all of us.”
Later Hendricks comes, sits in a chair by my bed. He looks like he’s washed his whole person in darkness: the edges of him are gritty and indistinct. It must be twilight. I don’t know how long I have been here, in the hospital. Hendricks raises his closed hands to his mouth; they are lunar, bandaged, and he leans into them like a man in prayer.
When I make a noise, he glances over at me, eyes traveling over the hump of my midsection. His lips tighten.
It’s me. The sight of me bloated and bruised makes him flinch.
But instead of looking away, his gaze is steady; he puts his palm over my hand, covering it, his fingers warm, the cotton bandages rough and cool, until I fall asleep again.
In the morning, I waken to the swelling and the sensation of the catheter winding from my legs into a bag, and the heaviness of a blanket. I don’t feel pain so much as an overwhelming fullness, as if someone has poured liquid into every hollow of my body. When the nurse comes in, I ask her how long I’ve been here and she says “Two days,” but I have a hard time believing her because it feels like much longer and where is my family?
“Your mom’s on the way,” she says, standing close to me. “There was bad weather in Chicago and a few flight delays. She’s dying to get here, though.” She touches my rank hair. “Want me to fix you up later? We could give you a shampoo.”
As soon as she leaves, doctors and residents flood in, yanking the curtain around my bed and examining me with clinical eagerness. Their voices volley around me like gunfire. After they quiet, the oldest doctor, a wrinkled woman with eyes the color of dates, tells me gently that I may be able to recover without surgery, and this is good news. She says the swelling will go down with rest and diuretics. I fall asleep again after they leave. The nurse wakes me; she is carrying a blue plastic basin with a tiny bottle of shampoo and a small brick of soap.
“There’s still a risk of infection, so we’ll do a sponge bath,” she says. Her movements are deft, and the warm water feels good on my face and scalp, but when I ask for a mirror, I see the warning in her eyes and I want to cry.
“Let’s wait a couple of days,” she says. “The swelling should go down.”
Then she gently combs my hair and gives me my pills and I gratefully fall asleep again. When I wake, it must be late afternoon: Detective Ruiz is shaking my shoulder, and Hendricks is leaning against the wall, arms folded, hands still in bandages, eyes on his black canvas shoes.
Detective Ruiz reintroduces herself. She keeps her eyes on me, but they clench at the corners, as if she is forcing herself not to look away.
I say I remember her visiting my office.
“Good. I’m sorry to disturb your rest. We just need a brief statement from you about the events that occurred at Janis Rocque’s estate.”
“Did Evie confess?” I whisper.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” says Detective Ruiz, but behind her, I see Hendricks shake his head no. How did he get to the sculpture garden so fast? I thought he was almost at my apartment in Hollywood. Gratitude floods me. I could have died if Yegina hadn’t found him, if he hadn’t found me.
“Maggie, I’m going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer as honestly as possible. You arrived at the sculpture garden at what time?” Detective Ruiz has a little recorder in her hand, proper-sized and digital. The doctors said that the big clunky machine inside my purse actually broke my fall, so the blade only cut my belly after I rolled.
I tell Ruiz everything I can remember about the morning, including calling the storage facility, including the heat and the drive through Hollywood, including the coolness of the bower where Theresa Ferguson’s art opened the ground. I keep talking until I get to the part where Evie pushed me and then the words abruptly stop. I can’t say it, can’t describe the look in her face when she shoved me: She wanted me dead. The force of that feeling: it’s like a steel wall slamming into my nose and skull. I don’t want to experience it again.
“And then?” Detective Ruiz rubs her temple.
I shake my head, still unable to speak. My hair is still damp from the bath. It drags on my cheeks like fingers.
Ruiz glances up at Hendricks, as if soliciting his advice.