Chapter 13 Cora
I went to the bathroom before we left.
This was the morning of day twelve. The convoy was loaded.
The kids were in the second truck with Nina and Jet.
Deedee was on the bench-seat of the lead truck with the Polaroid on her lap.
She had asked for the Polaroid herself, in a single quiet voice, the voice six-year-olds had when they were re-learning how to ask for things, and I had given it to her.
She had held it. She had looked at the five-year-old in the picture and at her own hands, and the comparison had been a comparison that did not need explanation.
Drew was in the lead-truck cab.
Sylvia was at the lead-truck dashboard, doing the morning health-check on Drew.
Renn was at the second truck.
Cruz was at the third.
Veron was at the north dormitory roofline. He had been at the roofline for two nights, the cohort-watch position he had taken without being asked, and he was finishing his rotation before he would come down and ride with Renn for the journey home.
I had thirty minutes before we needed to roll.
I told Drew where I was going.
I said: "I am going to the bathroom. The second-floor bathroom. The one in the dormitory."
He looked at me.
He did not ask why.
He said: "Take Nina."
"Yes."
He nodded once.
I walked across the courtyard to the second truck.
The morning was cold for May in Illinois.
The sky was the high pale gray that meant the storm-front had finally moved east of us for good.
The kids in the second truck were quiet.
Most of them had not slept fully through the night.
Two of them were sleeping now against the bench-back, sliding into each other the way small kids did when the bench seat was their first real bed in three days.
The eldest of them, a boy maybe nine, was awake at the door.
He watched me come up. He did not speak.
Nina was at the back of the second truck, helping a small girl into a coat that was two sizes too big.
She had been moving with the slow careful posture of a woman who had not slept properly in a week and who had also just gotten the news that the team had come for them all and not just for Deedee.
She looked at me when I came up. She finished the coat-button.
She kissed the girl on the forehead. She handed her off to a woman I did not know by name, one of Nina's kitchen-volunteers who had been on the safehouse rotation when the raid hit.
The volunteer took the girl. Nina turned to me.
She said: "Yes."
"Bathroom."
"Yes."
She came.
We walked together up the stairs of the dormitory.
The stairs were the same stairs Drake's warriors had come up eleven years ago.
The risers were the same risers. The handrail had been broken on the second flight three years ago and somebody had wired it back together with salvage-cable and the wire was rusted now and the handrail held but barely.
Nina did not look at the handrail. I did not look at the handrail.
I counted the steps anyway. Sixteen on the first flight.
A small landing. Sixteen on the second. I had counted these steps in year three on the morning of the raid.
Sixteen and sixteen. The count had been the same.
I had counted them down on the way to the safe-room with the children behind me, and the count had been thirty-two going down, the same thirty-two going up.
The numbers had not changed. I had changed.
We came to the second floor.
The corridor had been swept of debris by Nina and Jet over the last three days.
The walking paths were clear. The doors of the rooms were closed.
The bathroom door, the one at the end of the corridor, the one with the women's-figure-on-tile sign that had been there in 2003 and was still there in 2026, was closed.
I stood at the door for a moment before I opened it.
Nina stood beside me.
She said quietly: "Take your time."
"Yes."
I opened it.
It was the same bathroom.
The stalls were the same stalls. The tile was the same tile.
The window at the back was still broken.
Drake's warrior had broken it in year three coming through, the morning of the raid.
The light came through the broken window in the same band of light it had come through eleven years ago, because the angle of the morning sun on the second floor of a south-east-facing dormitory at the end of May had not changed in eleven years.
I stood at the door.
Nina came in behind me.
The third stall from the left had been Talia's stall. The door was open now. The door had been closed eleven years ago. Drake's warriors had opened the door.
I walked to the third stall.
I stood at the door.
The tile inside the stall had a small crack at the back corner that I had never noticed in any of the dozens of times I had walked the second-floor bathroom in year two and year three.
The crack ran from the floor up the back wall and stopped at the height of a six-year-old's shoulder.
The crack was hers. The crack had been there when she had been hiding.
The crack had been the last thing on the wall her hand had touched, maybe.
Or maybe not. I would not know. The not-knowing was a thing.
I did not say anything for a long time.
Nina stood at the bathroom door, at the threshold. She gave me the space.
The light through the broken window moved across the floor as I stood there.
The angle shifted. The band of light crossed the threshold of the third stall and lit the tile where Talia would have been sitting.
I had not let myself imagine the tile lit for eleven years.
The tile was a small square of pale gray with a faint dirt-stain at the back grout-line.
The stain was old. The stain was older than Talia.
The stain had been there since 2014 maybe, since whatever had spilled in the dormitory bathroom in the year before Talia had been born.
I looked at the stain.
I looked at the crack.
I looked at the band of morning sun on the floor.
I let myself see her in the stall. I had not let myself see her in the stall in eleven years.
I had let myself see her in the corridor, in the safe-room doorway, at the count, in the moment-before-the-count.
I had not let myself see her in the stall.
The stall was the thing I had been holding closed in my head for eleven years the way the door of the stall had been closed in the world.
The door of the stall in the world was open now.
I let the door in my head be open too.
I let myself see her.
She was six years old. She had been wearing a green t-shirt and jeans the morning of the raid.
Her hair had been in two braids — Nina had braided them, the way Nina braided every kid's hair on the morning of every Monday, because Mara had taught the kids that hair-braided-on-Monday-meant-clean and Nina had taken it over from Mara.
Talia had been in the green t-shirt because the green t-shirt had been the one she had picked.
She had picked it that morning because she had wanted to wear green that day.
There had not been a reason beyond the wanting.
Six-year-olds did not always have reasons. The wanting was the reason.
She was sitting on the tile.
She was throwing up.
She was throwing up the way kids threw up when they did not want anyone to know they were sick, the kind of careful quiet throw-up that ended with a small hand wiping the mouth and the small face deciding whether to call for help.
She had decided not to. She had decided not to call for help because she had been the kid Mara called the listener, who watched, who did not ask for things.
She had been sitting in the stall trying to feel better on her own.
Then she had heard the raid.
She had heard Drake's warriors at the south end of the corridor. She had heard them at the bathroom door. She had not had time to come out. She had been six years old. Six-year-olds did not always know what to do when the raid was at the door.
I let myself see her.
I let myself see her at the moment Drake's warrior had opened the stall door.
I did not let myself see the next moment.
The next moment was not mine.
The next moment was the world's. The next moment was the thing that had happened to her, and her body, and her name. The next moment was the verdict the world had handed down. I did not have to relitigate the verdict. I had been relitigating the verdict for eleven years. I did not have to anymore.
The moment that was mine was the moment in the stall before the warrior arrived.
The moment in the stall before the warrior arrived had a small girl in it, on the tile, in a green t-shirt, with her braids coming undone, holding her stomach with one hand, wiping her mouth with the other, deciding whether to call for the day-staff lead.
The day-staff lead was the woman she called Maestra.
The Maestra was on the floor of the corridor counting heads.
The Maestra was fifteen seconds away. The Maestra had not been called.
The Maestra would not have known to come.
The Maestra had counted twice and the count had been fifteen and the count had been correct because Talia had been off the corridor that morning and the corridor was what the count was for.
The Maestra was here now.
Eleven years late.
She had come.
She was on the bathroom floor.
After a long time I said:
"Her name was Talia Ramirez. She was six years old. Her mother had been Maria. Maria had been killed in year one. Talia had been with us at the Urbana enclave since year two. She had been with Nina since year two."
I looked at Nina.
Nina was looking at the floor.
"You loved her," I said.
"I loved her."
"Tell me about her."
Nina looked up.
She said: