Bone Dust White Read online

  Up ahead there’s a police roadblock. The towns of Walleye Junction and Wilmington Creek have sent in reinforcements. It’s freezing cold, and the sleet shoots down at a forty-five-degree angle, but the officers are huddled outside questioning everyone. Traffic is thick with eighteen-wheelers and early-morning commuters. Like everyone else’s vehicle, Jared’s truck slows to a crawl. A hundred feet farther on he’s pulled over by a cop bundled up in a long down coat and wearing a cowboy hat.

  “ID and registration” is all the cop says, looking Jared full in the face with unblinking blue eyes.

  Jared hands over his driver’s license, registration documents, and his paramedic badge. “You from Walleye?”

  The police officer nods before looking over Jared’s paperwork. “Sorry about that,” he says, his mouth barely breaking out from a hard line. “We have to check everyone coming through.”

  “No need to apologize. We appreciate the help.”

  “Least we can do.”

  Collier County Hospital is a dense block of cement that crowds the landscape as uncomfortably as a heavy meal. The stunted trees in the parking lot barely rise above the rooflines of the cars and a high barbed-wire fence separates the hospital from the Flathead River and train tracks, which run along the edge of town. The parking lot is a sea of slush but the temperature is dropping. The snow swirls in Jared’s headlights like summer pollen. He eases into an employee parking space and cuts the engine.

  The lobby is unusually full, and he recognizes only a few of the faces.

  The receptionist spots him and laughs as she fusses with her spray-mounted hair. “Hey, honey. When are you going to make an honest woman out of me?”

  Jared pretends he hasn’t heard her say the same thing to him at least once a week for the past twelve years. “If your husband hasn’t managed yet I don’t think there’s much hope for you.” At the elevator he stops and turns to face her, going off script. “Say,” he says quietly, walking back to the desk with his coat tucked under his arm. “The girl that we brought in yesterday, Grace Adams, have you heard if she’s going to be okay?”

  The receptionist takes a quick peek around, making sure no one is within earshot. “I’ve got reporters prowling everywhere. From what I’ve heard she’s up on the top floor in the private wing. Moved her out of ICU late last night.”

  Jared raps the desk with his knuckles and thanks her.

  Long, low-ceilinged corridors crisscross the hospital in a confusing maze. Over the years departments have been moved or shut down but no one has bothered to change the signs. Patients wander the hallways in their hospital gowns and slippers and families go round and round trying to find their sick relatives. Jared thinks of Grace up on the top floor, where they would have given their prize patient a private room overlooking the rooftop courtyard, and heads for the elevator.

  4

  The smell hits Grace first—disinfectant, meds, and sweat. Sound comes second. A heart monitor reminds Grace she’s still alive while her aunt Elizabeth’s familiar snoring provides another sort of comfort. Elizabeth is sound asleep, sitting in her usual chair, gold cross around her neck and wrinkles etching her face like fine lace. Grace runs her fingertips along the tubes taped to her left arm and closes her eyes again.

  Her mother’s last words are the first ones she remembers. You’ll have to be careful. They’re still looking for the money.

  Panic swells in Grace’s chest until it feels as if her ribs might snap one by one like violin strings. She holds her breath, counting down from ten. All she can see is her mother lying broken on the forest floor. Grace opens her eyes and is relieved when the memory dissolves in the glare of the overhead lights.

  Her thoughts dart to her chest. There are no bandages. She wasn’t the one bleeding. She’d been so cold. Those big snowflakes fell from the sky by the thousands. She gazed straight up into them, some in sharp focus, others blurred like white cotton balls, wet and pressed behind glass. It was like resting within a snow globe. She sets up the little tableau and changes her mind. It was nothing like any snow globe she’s ever seen.

  On a side table, bottles of her prescription medicine crowd in with floral bouquets and get-well cards. Still wrapped in cellophane, the flowers smell of nothing. She reaches for a card attached to a bunch of pink carnations and notices Jared’s knitted cap. She picks it up, kneading it in her hands before bringing it to her nose. It smells of cigarettes and coffee. It’s warm in the room but she slips it on anyway, pulling it down over her dark, lank hair. The wool itches her forehead so she takes it off for a second so she can smooth her bangs underneath its brim. She steadies her hands by tucking them under her armpits and tries her best not to cry.

  What was it her mother always used to say? You don’t look pretty when you cry.

  Something catches her eye, and Grace sees a stranger’s face swallowed up by the shadows beyond the door to her room. She tries to piece together the bits she’s seen but can only draw a caricature in her head—a sullen expression, pale complexion, and an angular jaw, but nothing more detailed. It was definitely a man.

  “Who’s there?” she says, a little too late and projecting her voice no farther than the end of her bed. She hopes no one answers.

  Grace squints, searching, giving up when she decides that whoever it was, is now gone. She pulls down Jared’s cap, almost concealing her eyes. Her heart sinks when she hears the familiar squeak of Sam Fuller’s cart, its one wheel still ungreased. As regular as a heartbeat, the noise rises above the din of foot traffic and voices of the hospital corridors. The squeaking cart stops outside and Sam walks in carrying a tray. His smile is a wall of veneered teeth. His wire-framed spectacles perch on an elongated face covered in liver spots and little else. He’s as bald as an egg. He looks from Grace to the tray and back again, his elastic face changing its message more than once. The smile is gone.

  “You’re not George,” he says in a low voice. He squints his filmy eyes at Grace, inspecting her like she’s a specimen trapped under glass.

  Grace shakes her head and wishes him gone.

  As if he’s expecting to find the missing patient hiding behind curtains, Sam cranes his neck around the room like a curious lizard. Grace follows his eyes, imagining George’s shadowy profile behind the backlit drapes. Sam hovers with the tray held in midair, his old gnarled hands trembling. Grace decides it best to help him on his way.

  “Maybe George has gone home,” she suggests. Her unused voice rakes against her throat and she falls into a fit of coughing.

  His wire-framed eyes tilt forward and look down his nose at her. “George is never going home.”

  She pulls her blanket up so it rests beneath her chin. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. I’ve just woken up.”

  “Grace Adams,” he says when he finally recognizes her from past visits. “You’re the girl from the woods?” His milky eyes go wide and he backs away a step, sucking his lips in around his teeth.

  “What day is it?” she whispers.

  Sam walks toward Grace again, the tray at waist level, friendly once more. “Same day it’s been all morning. Tuesday, just coming up to noon.”

  I’ve lost a day, she thinks. Grace sinks down farther into the bed. She wants Sam to go look for George somewhere else. The woods, the snow, her mother, the crows; it’s all coming back to her. Inside her chest, panic awakens like a giant spongy moth. She puts her fingertips to its powdery wings before it can take flight.

  Instead of leaving, Sam holds up the tray and lifts the metal lid. The plate rattles and gravy pours across the rim. “We’ve got some nice mashed potatoes and roast beef today. I’m sure George wouldn’t mind if you took his order.”

  She imagines lumps in the mashed potatoes the size and texture of mothballs. “No, thank you.”

  He leans in so close she sees the crescent moons of sweat under his arms. His eyes are cold. “Is it true what they’re saying? That a woman was butchered.”

  Grace clutches her hand
s tightly in her lap. They’ve been scrubbed clean. All she can remember is how dark and sticky they once were. She holds them out in front of her, checking them over carefully. All trace of her mother is gone. Grace doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes. She can tell from his breath he’s been picking at the mashed potatoes. They hear voices down the corridor and Sam backs away.

  “You sure you don’t want some?” he asks once more, tilting his long face at the plate before looking at her chest. “You need your strength.”

  She says no, thank you again and after a pause, Sam scurries off to look for George in other rooms. His cart rattles back down the hall, the one wheel still squeaking.

  Grace’s hands tremble as she sips water from a paper cup. The taste is metallic on her tongue. Her thoughts jump to the gate key where it’s hidden in the silk-lined pocket of her kimono. It’s lying among the bracken, invisible under a thick layer of newly fallen snow. In the night animals could have dragged it away; or worse, he could have it.

  Grace sees Jared standing at the door and blinks several times, hoping to erase the previous day from her thoughts.

  Jared knocks lightly on the doorframe. “Feeling better?”

  They regard each other across the small distance. Grace notices how his eyes droop down at the corners and wonders if he always looks this tired.

  She wants to speak, say something coherent, but tears come too easily when she asks after her mother. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” is all she says.

  “I’m sorry” is all he says.

  Grace closes her eyes and pretends she’s elsewhere, but instead of fading, Jared’s footsteps come closer. When she looks up, Jared is reading her chart. He gnaws at a cuticle, and his forehead pinches up into a series of questions as he sifts through the pages. He takes his time flipping backward and forward then repeating his actions until he’s satisfied.

  “You look young for your age,” he says as he hangs the clipboard back in its place.

  She shrugs. This man has seen her breasts, her scar, and her medical history. He knows everything. She knows less than nothing.

  “How old are you?” she asks, picking at the tape on her arm, feeling the hairs tug from their roots.

  He tells her he’s thirty-two. “When I first saw you I thought you were much younger, but you’re nearly eighteen.”

  Grace looks out the window. It’s snowing again. A long time ago her mother promised to take her away from Collier. In the intervening years Grace has often hoped her mother was someplace really warm, like hell. Other times Grace was more forgiving. Kneeling next to her aunt on Sunday mornings, she’d pray for her mother’s soul.

  Jared gestures toward Grace’s aunt. She is squeezed into the same lilac tracksuit she’s always worn during Grace’s hospital stays. A small gold cross sits flat against her white turtleneck. Her silver hair is pulled back into a loose knot.

  “That’s my aunt Elizabeth,” says Grace, thinking back on the number of times she’s awoken in the hospital to find her aunt sitting next to her bed. “She’s learned to sleep through almost anything.”

  Jared drops his voice to a whisper. “I imagine she never lets you out of her sight.”

  Grace wipes away a tear and keeps her own counsel. The previous morning had been an exception. After breakfast she’d chased her aunt out of the house, swearing that she was going to spend the day resting in front of the television. Her aunt had laughed before telling her niece not to swear. Grace thinks of everything bad that’s happened since. She closes her eyes and counts down from ten again. She can hear Jared’s footsteps. He is coming closer still. All she can smell is cigarettes and coffee. The stale scent of booze is gone. He reaches out to touch her, and her eyes open wide.

  He wraps his fingers around her shoulder, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Going out in the woods like you did. That took guts.”

  Grace doesn’t know what to say. Talking will only bring tears, and she doesn’t want to cry.

  Jared removes his hand, but Grace can still feel the pressure of his grip. He tells Grace that she couldn’t have saved her mother.

  Grace doesn’t agree, but instead of arguing, she asks him if he would like his hat back. She’s hoping he says no.

  He bends forward to adjust it so it sits evenly on her head and says she can keep it.

  Elizabeth stirs in her sleep, and they both stop moving. For a few seconds his fingers sit in frozen benediction on Grace’s forehead. Elizabeth’s neck is arched back and the loose skin on her throat trembles with each breath. Like an A-frame house about to slide off its foundations, the book The Pilgrim’s Progress rests unsteadily on her lap.

  Grace lowers her voice. “They always hated each other.”

  Jared folds his arms across his chest. “Who do you mean?”

  “My mother and my aunt.”

  “That’s a shame. Do you have any other family?”

  “No one.”

  “What about your father?”

  Grace blinks up at the lights. The tears are flowing again. Jared hands her a tissue and apologizes.

  “No, it’s okay,” she says quietly, her words muffled by the tissue pressed to her face.

  “No, it’s not. I had no business asking.”

  “It’s always been everyone’s business. My dad could be anyone.” Her face reddens. “My mother never told me his name.”

  “She was probably looking out for you.”

  She puts her hands flat against her face and holds them there. “My mother never looked out for me.”

  There is a beeping noise and Jared slips his pager out of his pocket. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”

  Grace is too upset to speak.

  Jared passes her the entire box of tissues. “Look, I’m here at the hospital most days. Why don’t you call me if you need someone to talk to?”

  She almost manages to say thank you.

  Jared hides his hands away in his trouser pockets and gazes outside. His stare is vacant, but his jaw looks like it’s set as tight as a snare. “You know, you scared me out in the woods. You were so still, I thought you were dead. When you started screaming, I think my heart stopped.”

  “I seem to have that effect on people,” she says, not meaning to be funny, but realizing how it must sound. She rubs her sore eyes.

  He leaves her then, promising to visit when she’s feeling stronger.

  “I’d like that,” she confesses in a low voice only she can hear.

  Grace reaches forward to take her aunt’s book, but Elizabeth springs up from her chair just as Grace’s fingers touch the spine. The book falls, its flat cover slapping hard against the floor. Her aunt lets out a small cry, and her pale eyes dart about the hospital room as they try to find a safe place to land. The thread-like veins in her cheeks glow brightly against her ivory complexion. Behind her reading glasses her small cornflower blue eyes water. She calms down when she sees Grace but starts to panic all over again when she remembers why they are in the hospital.

  “Oh, Grace,” she says, reaching out for her niece’s hands, rubbing them with her own because she always finds them cold. She breathes deeply again and presses the flat of a palm to her bosom. “Oh gosh, what a dream I just had.” She looks at her niece once more just to be sure. “But you’re okay. You’re still here. You’re okay.” A tissue appears out of nowhere. She lifts her glasses and dabs her moist eyes before blowing her nose.

  Grace hands her aunt a paper cup filled with water and tells her to drink. “Do you remember your dream?” she asks.

  Elizabeth’s brow wrinkles. “It was too upsetting to talk about,” she says. The cup trembles in her hands and some of the water spills on her lap. More water drips down her chin. Her stubborn mouth refuses to function as it normally would. “I think I need to eat something. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be possible for some time.” Elizabeth points at Jare
d’s hat. “It’s hot in here, why are you wearing that ugly thing?”

  Grace’s voice goes up sharply. “It’s not ugly.”

  Elizabeth places a hand on Grace’s arm. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night. I couldn’t sleep so the doctors gave me something. I feel so groggy.”

  “You look tired.”

  “That’s because I am tired. How are you feeling?”

  Grace thinks she should ask the same question of her aunt. She’s slowed down over the past few months. Some mornings she can barely get out of bed. Grace bites her lip. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Elizabeth breathes uneasily, rubbing her hand up and down the center of her chest as if pressing into the flesh would help the air move along. She shivers in the heat of the room. “I just can’t get it out of my head. You must have been terrified.” She lays a hand on one of Grace’s forearms but doesn’t let it settle. “Your mother and I had our differences but you must know how very sorry I am. I feel awful we never reconciled.”

  “She sent her love.”

  Elizabeth fingers the gold cross at her neck. “Pardon?”

  Grace makes it up as she goes. “It’s one of the last things she said to me. Please tell Elizabeth I love her.”

  “You have no idea what a relief that is to hear.”

  “She looked ill. I didn’t recognize her.”

  “We’ll know more soon enough. I imagine they’ll tell us everything soon enough.”

  “I wish she’d told us she was coming back.”

  Her aunt draws in a deep breath like she’s preparing to dive into a pool then she asks in that clear Methodist voice of hers, “Did you know him? The man who attacked your mother. Had you seen him before?”