Page 33 of The Delivery

“Oh,” she says. “I know where I left it.”

“Better go get it,” Maddy says, so sleepy the last words come out as one: geddit. “So we can be twinsies tomorrow.”

And she is asleep.

As Rebecca pads down the hall, she rubs her shoulder, which has abruptly knotted. Mr. Man stands in the sparkling kitchen, sponge in hand, everything polished to a shine. Not a crumb, not a smudge. Maddy’s lunch box has been retrieved from the minivan, cleaned, and left open face down to dry on a dish towel.

Rebecca smacks her forehead. “Groceries. I forgot to get groceries.”

“Are you hungry?” Mr. Man asks.

“No, no, we ate. Just need to make her lunch for tomorrow. Can you rustle something up? Something fresh and healthy?”

“ Of course ,” Mr. Man says.

“Okay. Be right back. I left something next door.”

As she exits the house and steps clear of the porch, the sudden quiet of the neighborhood cocoons her. The fire engine is gone, as are the cop cars and ambulance. A few bits of trash wag in the breeze on Jackson’s lawn—a square of gauze, a wrapper from some medical implement, scissored-off shreds of clothing. His house is dark.

The ladder remains there on its side, ominous in the moonlight. How little it takes for a life to be immutably altered. A visit to a developmental pediatrician, a placental abnormality, a toppled ladder.

As she cuts through the break in the hedge, she holds her gaze steady on the fallen ladder. Tentatively she approaches the spot where Jackson landed. Several spots in the dirt are soaked dark. It is hard to look away from them.

It feels odd to be standing here on Jackson’s side of the divide. Aside from this evening, she has never been over here.

A light rain starts up, spitting at her cheeks. She steps up onto his porch for cover and to get a better vantage, hoping to spot a sparkle of plated silver in the grass.

The soles of her shoes stick to the poured concrete. Jackson’s porch is gummed up with sap from her pine tree. It’s a lot.

In fact, it’s quite awful.

Leaning out from the eaves, she gazes up at the gutters. Their edges, too, are caked with sap, bristling with pine needles.

She feels like a total asshole. How different the perspective is. Here across the hedge, the pine tree isn’t a source of pride but a shedding mess.

The rain quickens, a snare drum rat-a-tat-tatting against the roof.

As she lowers her gaze, she catches a glimmer among the blades of grass. There it is, her cheap half-a-heart pendant. Gathering it up, she hurries home. The moon is almost full, the light nearly orange. She notes the fine patterns of needles on the ground.

She reaches the break in the hedge.

For a moment, she does not believe her eyes. The humming has returned, a bee swarm filling her head. Her nerves are tingling, all of them, all at once.

Pressed into the wet dirt of the gap in the hedge, a single barefoot print.

The toes slightly too proportional.

They are aimed in the direction of Jackson’s house.

Forgetting to breathe, she watches as the raindrops pick apart the faint impression, melting it back into the mud.

Chapter 26

As Rebecca walks up the front path, her stomach roils with trepidation. Alexa de Grasse’s words echo uninvited in her mind: It’ll see to everything you really want. In your darkest heart of hearts. What the hell does that mean? This isn’t what Rebecca wants. She doesn’t even know what she wants.

Overhead the pine tree whispers and sways, a tangled mass of shadow. Her legs don’t tremble, but they feel numb, bloodless. The thought of Maddy inside with him drives her forward onto the porch, through the front door, into the kitchen.

Mr. Man stands near the sink, back turned, his arm working at something. As she nears, she sees that Bao-Bao is on the counter, but it isn’t Bao-Bao.