Chapter 12
Jane woke up in the morning to the sound of May’s first movements in the crib and the audible quickening of her breathing.
Jane turned off the baby monitor, slid out of the big bed silently so she wouldn’t wake Carey, padded on bare feet to the nursery, lifted May up, wrapped her in a soft blanket, and closed the door.
As she rocked and felt the touch and warmth of May’s little body, she thought about all the years she had spent wishing she could be doing what she was doing now.
When May had been fed, Jane burped her, set her down on the changing table, and dressed her in a fresh onesie, then dressed herself in a pair of the jeans and one of the sweatshirts she kept in this room’s closet for early awakenings, and carried May to the stairs and down to the ground floor.
The McKinnon house was not the only eighteenth-century house in this part of the state, but it was certainly one of the earliest, built well before the Revolution.
Carey’s ancestor had come through here after the French and Indian War to establish a business trading with the Senecas.
This living room and the floor above it were the whole place at first—a stone fireplace and a rectangle made of straight tree trunks over a foot thick, the logs on the second floor drilled at intervals for gun ports.
The building had been augmented and revised many times, generation after generation.
The big kitchen had probably started as a detached cookhouse, and the staircases to the second floor had been added later, after sawmills had been introduced to the area and boards were available.
Jane walked across the living room and then saw Clare coming out of the kitchen to join them.
Jane said, “Clare. It’s not even five. There’s still plenty of time to go back to bed.”
“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” Clare said. “I wanted to hear what you found out.”
“I can give you the short version now. After talking with your lawyer, I think that nothing has improved. If you go back to Stanton, the very best you can hope for is a plea deal that gets you something like a ten- or twenty-year sentence. If they don’t offer a deal or you don’t take one, they might go through with it—try you as an adult and sentence you the same way.
It’s also possible that afterward a higher court will throw the whole case out because it’s so outrageous, but I don’t like the chances of that, and when it happens, it can take years. ”
“That’s what I thought,” Clare said.
“I also sat in that diner downtown, and the supposed victim’s brother, who is a cop, stopped in to get some coffee.
He got a lot of condolences and support.
The people in there were not a cross section.
They’re older than the town’s average resident, and they were sitting in a diner during the first part of a Friday morning, which means they’re more on the boss side of things than the low-wage worker end.
The problem is, that’s who is most likely to be on a jury.
Obviously, nobody your age is on any jury anywhere. ”
“Thank you for going,” Clare said. “It was risky for you to go to Oklahoma to poke around.”
They both heard the sound of Carey McKinnon’s footsteps coming down the stairs, and fell silent.
Jane said, “Here, May. Let Katie take you while I make your daddy’s breakfast.” She handed May to Clare and led the way into the kitchen.
She plugged in the coffee maker and laid out the pan, spatula, eggs, olive oil, and butter, and put bread in the toaster. “Okay, what are we making today, Doc? Eggs, sausage, pancakes, smoked salmon, dinosaur, woolly mammoth?”
“Two eggs, sunny-side up, whole wheat toast would be nice,” he said. I’ve got my first surgery at seven, two more after that, and then I’ll have time for lunch so I don’t think I’ll have to worry about being hungry. Hi, Katie,” he said. “I hope we didn’t wake you up.”
“No,” she said. “I’m used to getting up when the sun does, but some days I just sleep enough before then, wake up, and feel fine.”
“I’m like that too,” he said. He walked up to her and held his arms out to take May from her, and walked around the kitchen carrying the baby, collecting his keys, wallet, and sunglasses while telling May what he was doing, and explaining to her that he was staying far from the stove because sometimes a little grease could splatter when somebody was cooking food, and right now Mommy was making him a nice breakfast. He told May that pretty soon—not soon by her standards, but soon—she would be able to eat regular food, and then they would all be able to eat together at the same time.
“Then, you’ll be ready to go to your job as an airline pilot or a movie star or a diamond cutter and have a lot of energy.
” A few minutes later he said, “Oh, it looks as though Mommy is putting my breakfast on the table, so I guess you go back to Katie.” He raised her high in the air and then brought her back down, kissed her cheek, and handed her to Katie, then ate while Jane sat with him and had a cup of caffeine-free herb tea.
In a few minutes they hugged and he was out the kitchen door on his way to the garage to drive to the hospital.
Katie said, “Do you do that every morning?”
“Cook his breakfast? Whenever I can. You know something about my life. There have been far too many days when I really wished that I could have been here to do that.” She took Carey’s plate and silverware to the sink. “What would you like for breakfast?”
“I can cook,” she said.
“So can he,” Jane said. “And I can do most of the things he does for me. It’s not about capability, it’s about giving to each other.”
“I can make what you made for him,” Clare said.
“Okay. Make it for me too. I’ll take May.”
When the food was ready, they ate, with Jane holding May on her lap. “The eggs are just right,” she said. “I don’t usually have breakfast until later, but this is nice.” She watched Clare for a moment. “You’re wondering what’s going to happen to you.”
“Yes,” Clare said.
“So far you and I have been discussing two options. One was to go back and stand trial. Your public defender struck me as a competent attorney, and she thinks the chance you’ll be tried as an adult is serious. Since you did stab a man who bled to death, the result would be bad.”
“You think the best thing to do is to ask you to help me disappear and start a new life?”
“I think that would probably be the narrow winner for some people. I don’t think it will work for you. You’re smart and brave and self-reliant, but you’re sixteen years old. Not many good things happen to girls on their own who are sixteen, no matter who they are.”
“You said before that I’m smart enough.”
“You are, but being smart is only one advantage, and you’ll need a few more.
We can do a lot to change your appearance, and maybe add a year or two to the way you look, but nothing we do is going to make you look twenty-one.
Or even nineteen. A lot of the secrets of disappearing are about what totally random strangers think when they look at you.
Right now, if most of those people saw you on your own, they would wonder what such a young girl is doing here alone.
They would start asking each other, and then maybe the authorities.
I’m talking about normal people who would only be concerned about you and want to help and protect you. ”
“I can handle myself,” Clare said. “I found my way here, didn’t I?”
“The best way to hide is to not stand out. Not standing out means you’ve got an identity, a role in society.
What you do is a big part of who you seem to be.
That usually means a job. But you just started high school, so you can’t get the kind of job that will support you, or make people stop wondering and forget asking questions. ”
Clare said, “I’ll start by doing the jobs I can get now, and work my way up from there.”
“People do that. It takes a lot—work, patience, toughness, and luck.”
“You make everything sound hard. Then what can I do?” Clare said.
“We talked about going back and we talked about disappearing. There’s a third choice.
What I’m thinking right now is that you need time.
I’m guessing three years would do it. Three years from now you could graduate from high school in June and join the freshman class of a good college in September. ”
“I’ll never have the money for that.”
“I’ve got it. College gives you another four years of being a person with a certified identity and an obvious purpose, four more years of a fixed name and address. At the end of it you’ll be twenty-two and you’ll be qualified for good jobs.”
“I can’t believe this,” Clare said. “First you make everything sound awful, and now you make it sound so good. What’s after that?”
“By then you’ll know. You’ll settle somewhere. Maybe around here, maybe not. You’ll make a good life for yourself. Then you’ll live it.”
“What do I have to do?”
“We’ll start by enrolling you in a high school. It’s barely summer. We can do it carefully, without being in a panic, and pick the right one.”