New York to Dallas

morass of guilt and grief and terrible hope.
    “My dad’s been crying,” Darlie said when they were alone. “He tries not to, but he can’t help it. He’s trying to make it better, but he can’t.”
    Faced with the girl’s misery and exhausted pain, Eve missed Peabody like a limb. Her partner would know what to say, how to say it, how to reach both the child and her parents.
    “I can’t tell my dad what he did to me. I can’t talk about it, not to my dad. I want to tell my mom, but I don’t know how. I was stupid, so it’s my fault. I can’t tell them.”
    “How were you stupid?”
    “I’m not supposed to talk to people I don’t know, like that woman. If I hadn’t—”
    “She was nice,” Eve began. “She looked nice, normal. And you were right in the store, with lots of other people around, your friend right in the dressing room.”
    “She said she was going to buy a present for somebody—I can’t remember. It was a really mag dress, and she just wanted to ask me if I liked it. It’s all mixed up.”
    “I bet your parents taught you to be polite to adults.”
    “Sure, but—”
    “And you were in a store you know, with other people, the salespeople, your friend. And a nice woman asked you a question. You weren’t stupid to answer it, and she counted on you being polite, being raised well. It’s not your fault she wasn’t nice. None of it’s your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to you.”
    “You don’t understand.” The tears started, slow, thick drops sliding down her cheeks. “The other police don’t understand. You can’t.”
    “Yes, I can.”
    Darlie shook her head, fierce now. “You can’t. You don’t know .”
    “I do know.”
    Eve’s tone had Darlie swiping at tears, staring at her. Then her lips trembled. “Was it him? Was it Isaac?”
    “No. It was someone like him.”
    “You got away? They came and saved you?”
    Blood on her hands, her face, her arms. Wet and warm. “I got away.”
    “How are you okay? How can you be okay? I’m never going to be.”
    “Yes, you will. You’ve already started. You told your father you wanted ice cream, but you don’t. You said it because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings, because you want him to be all right.” She picked up a brush from the table beside the bed. “I bet you let your mother brush your hair, because she needed to do something for you.”
    “It felt good when she did.”
    “You’ve already started,” Eve repeated. “It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy. You’ll want it to be. They’ll want it to be. It won’t. The ones who tell you it will are the ones who can’t understand. I guess that’s not their fault, but it’s annoying and . . . it hurts some, too.”
    Tears spilled as Darlie nodded her head, quick and hard.
    “You’ll be pissed, you’ll be scared,” Eve continued in the same easy, matter-of-fact tone. “Now and again you’ll go back to thinking it’s your fault, which is bullshit.”
    “Everybody’s going to look at me different.”
    “Probably, for a while anyway. They’ll feel sorry for you, and sometimes you’ll hate that. Really hate it because you just want everything to be like it was. It’s not going to be.”
    “I can’t ever go back to school.”
    “That won’t fly, kid,” Eve said, and made Darlie blink. “Nice try though. You’ve got plenty of people to get you ice cream, brush your hair, hold your hand, and dry your tears. That’s good, because you’ll need them. I’m going to give it to you straight. You’ll learn to live with what happened to you. What you do with that life is up to you.”
    “I’m afraid he’ll find me.”
    “It’s my job to see he doesn’t.” Monster slayer, Eve thought. Maybe that would do, for now. “I’m good at my job. You don’t have to tell me what he did to you. But if you could tell me anything you remember about him and the woman, what they said to each other, or about the apartment, whether they talked to anyone else.”
    “She said he should give her a tattoo, to give her a heart with his name in it. He laughed, and that made her mad. He was . . .” Like Melinda, she touched her heart. “I couldn’t move. It hurt. It burned, but I couldn’t move.”
    “You were awake?”
    “I could see them and hear them, but it was like I was dreaming. She said he could go ahead and stamp his little whores. She’d go get a real pro to give her a tat.