Chapter Forty-Three
The crowd follows the remaining police officers down the hallway to check on Evalyn McLean. Her head has stopped bleeding, but oh, the purple goose egg blooming on the wide expanse of her forehead.
She is dazed and demands, “I need my dog and a drink.” Both are fetched promptly.
The police move next door, to the room where Kiyoko was tossed inside.
The police unlock the door—
Aye, that creep Blanck has bedchambers that lock on the outside, take note.
—but they struggle to open it, as if the door suddenly weighs five times its heft or is blocked by a large piece of furniture.
Neither is the case.
I realize with growing sickness that they are pushing the door against a strong wind.
The window in this bedchamber, smashed.
I stand on tiptoe and see in the moonlight the jagged shards of the broken panes. A wave of horror as chilling as the wind rushing inside this penthouse bowls me over.
And here again, I am five, filled with red-eyed rage, looking at a hole in a window. A hole with hungry, jagged glass teeth. A hole of glass that eats lives.
“No no no no no,” I whisper. I shake. Terror clogs my throat, stings my eyes. I squeeze my jaw, my fists, my heart. I do not want to see what’s on the other side of that broken glass.
Broken glass cuts lives apart.
“Stand back!” The young officers push the crowd out of this room, toward the hallway. “Do not come in here!”
I ignore them and stumble into the wind-filled room. My hair lashes my face. My skirts whip in the wind.
I am five years old, and the redness has cleared from my eyes, and the boil has left my blood, and I watch as Maman and Daisy lean through a jagged glass hole, crying, muffling their screams, Maman panicking: We’re done we’re going to jail merde qu’est-ce que tu as fait, Rose?
! And Daisy—seven-year-old Daisy, it was always Daisy—shushing our maman, gathering our things, ushering us silently out the door and into our new lives.
I close my eyes against the darkness that quickly fills this room, looming large over us, shadows on walls, lights dimming, fear thrilling up my spine, my eardrums screaming in pain with heavy air pressure.
The wind tears at my skin, whispering Daisy is hereeeee…
I imagine myself a piece of paper, ripped out the gaping glass window, tossed against the forces of the night.
Bruised and beaten. Bile churns in my stomach.
An officer gently takes my elbow. “Step back, ma’am.
” He leads me away from the edge. Away from the shattered window.
Away from this room. The police herd me toward the stairwell in the kitchen, which winds down and down and down, eleven stories.
We—me and the other party attendees—are silent.
Our footsteps echo in the concrete stairwell, our breaths quick and shallow.
Pain shoots through my sliced foot, blood stains my slipper, and I limp.
My throat, my wrists, my heart all ache.
At last we reach the ground floor, and someone pushes open the heavy door onto the sidewalk.
After our blazing evening, the night air feels so frigid, it burns.
Stars pierce the sky like bullet holes. Around the corner, we hear police bells and shouting and chaos.
Reverend Jenkins and his ilk, shrieking. Paparazzi flashbulbs popping.
Do I run and pretend all of this never happened?
“Surely this cannot be right?”
Did Kiyoko…?
Questions.
Spirit is mute.