The Darkest Evening of the Year

their baby, why wait?”
    “I wondered. And then this guy offers me a commission—a custom home to design for another friend of Hisscus.”
    “If it were his baby, he wouldn’t try to buy it that way.”
    “I turned down the commission. Went to an attorney. Then another attorney. Same story from both. If Vanessa and Hisscus say he’s the dad, I have no grounds to push for a DNA test.”
    Threads of self-disgust and quiet anger had been sewn through Brian’s voice thus far, but now Amy heard something like sorrow, too.
    “I kept trying to find a way, and then one night she came to my place with the baby not two weeks old, born premature. She said…”
    For a moment, he could not repeat Vanessa’s words to him.
    Then: “She said, ‘Here’s what you pumped into me. This stupid little freak. Your stupid little freak has screwed up everything.’”
    “So it was over with her and Hisscus.”
    “I never understood what was going on there anyway. But it was over, it wasn’t his baby, and she was out. She wanted money, whatever I could pay for the baby. I showed her my checkbook, savings-account balance. So there I was, made a baby and put it in a situation where it’s up for sale, I’m no better than she was.”
    “Not true,” Amy said at once. “You wanted the girl.”
    “I couldn’t get the money till morning, but she wouldn’t leave the baby with me. She was crazy bitter. Her eyes were more black than green, something so dark had come into them. I wanted to take the baby, but I was afraid if I tried, she’d kill it, smash its head. She needed money, so I thought she’d bring the baby back for it.”
    “But she never did.”
    “No. She never did. God help me, out of fear, I let her walk away that night, take my baby away.”
    “And she’s been tormenting you ever since.”
    The low orange candle of the sun spread the warm intoxicating light farther across the western sky.
    “Unless it’s a federal case with the FBI,” Brian said, “it’s not possible to track somebody from an e-mail address. I can’t prove I’m the girl’s father. Vanessa’s careful what she says in the e-mails.”
    “And private investigators haven’t been able to find her?”
    “No. She lives way off the grid, maybe under a new name, new Social Security number, new everything. Anyway, what she’s done to me doesn’t matter. But what has she done to my daughter? What has she done to Hope?”
    By intuition, Amy understood his last question. “That’s what you’ve named her—Hope.”
    “Yes.”
    “Whatever Vanessa’s done,” Amy said, “what’s important now is, you might get a chance to make it right.”
    This was the “big thing” of which he’d spoken earlier, bigger than the drawings that he had done of Nickie’s eyes, bigger than the auditory hallucinations and the mysterious shadows he had glimpsed at the periphery of vision, bigger than his dream and waking up on the inexplicably made bed. After ten years, he might be able to get his daughter back.
    Amy had read his e-mail to Vanessa, in which he avoided argument and manipulation: I am at your mercy. I have no power over you, and you have every power over me. If one day you will let me have what I want, that will be because it serves you best to relent, not because I have earned it or deserve it.
    After waking from his dream of storm-racked Kansas, Brian had found a reply from her. He held it in his hand now, as he stood at the window.
    You still want your little piglet? You piss me off, there in your cozy life, everything the way you like it, never sacrificed a damn thing. You want this little freak on your back? All right. I’m ready for that. But I want something from you. Stand by.
    The quality of light had changed enough to permit upon the pane a transparent reflection of Amy’s face.
    With his secrets all revealed, and with his own face forming on the glass before him, Brian turned now toward Amy.
    She joined him at his window and took his hand.
    He said, “She’s going to want every dime, everything I own.”
    Smiling, Amy repeated, in this new context, what she had said earlier. “Not everything. There’s still you and me.”

 
    Chapter
35
    T he severed limbs, the headless torso, the eyeless head, and the pried-out glass eyes of the doll are arranged beside the lunch tray on the desk, where Moongirl carefully placed them.
    Not once during the dismemberment and beheading did Piggy appear to notice the destruction her mother