Chapter 4

They drew my blood that same night, in the back of an ambulance with the heater running.

The nurse held my arm and said it would pinch.

It was nothing. I didn't even look at it.

Marnie watched through the open door the whole time. When the needle came out, she was the one who had to wipe her face.

At the county hospital, a doctor looked at my back for a long time without talking. Then she wrote things down for an even longer time.

When she came out to the hallway, she said something quiet to the sheriff.

The sheriff took his hat off.

Renata drove me to a house with six beds and a night-light in the hall. The bed was soft and clean and up off the floor.

I lasted an hour in it.

Then I took the blanket into the closet and slept there with the door pulled almost shut. In a closet, you can hear anybody coming.

Marnie showed up the next morning at eight. Visiting hours started at ten.

She sat in the parking lot for two hours.

She came every day after that.

The first day she brought a thermos of stew. Beef and potatoes and carrots, still hot.

I ate the way I always ate. Fast, hunched over the bowl, one arm curled around it.

Marnie didn't say anything about it. She just filled the bowl again.

"There's more," she said. "There's always more, baby. Nobody's coming for it."

I didn't know how to believe that.

But I let my arm come off the bowl.

The third day she brought a brush. Bertie used to cut my hair with the shears from the yard, and it stuck out in chopped pieces all over.

Marnie worked through it slow, from the ends up, holding each piece at the root so it wouldn't pull.

"It'll grow," she said. Her voice stayed level. "Hair grows back."

Then, quieter, mostly to herself: "It all grows back."

Cole came on the fourth day.

He stood in the doorway a while, holding a shoebox. Then he crossed the room, went down on one knee, and put new winter boots on my feet. Both of them. Double knots.

"Renata told me the size," he said, like he owed somebody an explanation.

His hands were huge and careful.

The boots fit. Nothing I ever owned had fit.

He stood up fast and looked out the window for a long time.

Bertie locked shoes away so I couldn't run.

This man tied them onto me. Double knots.

I still didn't know if I was their girl.

The mark matched a drawing. The scar matched a story.

Maybe that was all it was. Matching.

If the test said no, they wouldn't just lose a daughter again.

They'd find out I let them kneel in the snow for a stranger.

On the fifth day, Marnie told me about a shelf.

"At home," she said. "There are five presents on it, wrapped. One for every birthday you were gone. Cole thought I'd lost my mind, buying gifts for a girl who wasn't there."

She smiled, and her eyes went wet at the same time, and she let them.

"You can open them when you come home."

When.

She said when.

I took that word into the closet with me that night and held it the way I used to hold the flyer.

On the sixth day she was telling me about the house. The creaky stair. The kitchen window where you could see the school bus coming.

Then Renata came in without knocking.

Renata always knocked.

She had an envelope in her hand.

Marnie stood up so fast her chair went over backward. Nobody picked it up.

"The lab called me an hour ago," Renata said. "The results are in."