Chương 3
Harris turned.
“Mr. Mercer, move away from the door.”
“She needs psychiatric care.”
“Move.”
Victor stepped into the yard.
The second deputy guided him several yards away.
Victor kept talking.
“You’re making a mistake. She’s unstable. Ask her why she was homeless. Ask her why nobody could keep her in a shelter. Ask her what happened in Tulsa.”
Anna folded in on herself.
Margaret heard each sentence land.
Daniel did too.
“Stop talking to her,” he said.
Victor raised his voice.
“Ask her what she did to the woman in Tulsa.”
“Victor.”
“She knows.”
Harris stepped between them.
“Sir. Enough.”
Anna was shaking.
Margaret crouched again.
“Look at me.”
Anna did not.
“Anna.”
Nothing.
Margaret made herself wait.
The coop filled with ordinary sounds: a hen scratching straw, the click of cooling metal from somewhere outside, Daniel’s uneven breathing near the doorway.
Eventually Anna looked up.
Margaret said, “You don’t have to explain Tulsa right now.”
Anna’s mouth moved.
No sound came.
“You don’t have to explain anything right now.”
That was when Anna began to cry.
Quietly.
Almost efficiently.
Tears ran down her face while she continued holding the corn.
She did not sob.
She did not reach for Margaret.
She just sat there with her back against the wall and cried as if her body had discovered a leak.
Margaret had never seen anything more frightening.
The ambulance arrived nine minutes later.
Anna refused to go.
She refused water from the paramedic because the bottle had already been opened.
She refused the blanket because she thought they wanted her dress.
She refused to let anyone examine her injuries.
Margaret sat in the dirt beside her.
Daniel stood outside talking to Deputy Harris.
Victor had been moved near the sheriff’s vehicle. He was not in handcuffs.
Margaret hated that.
She understood why, but she hated it.
At one point Victor looked toward the coop and Anna immediately stopped speaking.
Harris noticed.
After that, he had the second deputy move Victor behind the farmhouse.
Only then did Anna accept a sealed bottle of water.
She examined the cap first.
She drank too quickly.
The paramedic gently told her to slow down.
Anna ignored him and finished almost half.
Her hands shook around the bottle.
Margaret said, “Do you want more?”
Anna looked embarrassed.
That hurt too.
“Yes.”
Daniel came back carrying a grocery bag from the SUV.
“I have crackers.”
Anna looked at him suspiciously.
“They’re sealed.”
He held them up but did not approach.
“Peanut butter ones. Also regular saltines. And there’s a banana, but it’s kind of murdered.”
Margaret looked at him.
Daniel shrugged.
“It was under my laptop.”
Anna stared at the bruised banana.
Then, unexpectedly, a tiny sound escaped her.
A laugh.
It lasted less than a second.
Anna looked shocked by it.
So did Daniel.
He set the bag down near the door.
“No pressure.”
Anna chose the saltines.
She opened them herself.
Margaret watched her eat one cracker in six bites.
That was the beginning.
Not the slap.
Not the locket.
Not the word Mom.
Years later, when Margaret thought about the day they found Anna, what she remembered most clearly was a broken saltine trembling between her daughter’s fingers while nobody in the coop knew what to say.
They stayed on the farm until late afternoon.
The sheriff’s office obtained permission from Anna to photograph the exterior latch.
Getting that permission took almost twenty minutes.
Anna asked what would happen to the photographs.
Harris explained.
She asked who would see them.
He explained again.
She asked whether Victor could make them disappear.
Harris paused before answering.
“No,” he said. “Not if I do my job right.”
Anna watched him.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Harris looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“No. He can’t just make them disappear.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her more.
The deputies searched the coop only after Anna agreed to step outside.
Even then, she refused to walk past the farmhouse.
Margaret understood why when Anna pointed toward an upstairs window.
“My room.”
Daniel looked up.
The curtain was closed.
“You slept there?”
“Sometimes.”
Victor had told them Anna had arrived at the property seventeen months earlier.
Anna said it had been closer to three years.
That was the first major contradiction.
There would be many more.
By sunset, Victor was no longer describing Anna as a guest.
He was describing her as a woman he had “taken responsibility for.”
He told Harris that Anna had wandered onto his property during winter, malnourished, confused, and using another name.
He claimed she became violent whenever he tried to seek medical care.
He claimed she begged him not to contact authorities.
He claimed the coop lock had been installed because Anna sometimes entered the building and accidentally released chickens.
He claimed she locked herself inside that afternoon.
Harris asked how she could have secured an exterior latch from inside.
Victor said he did not know.
When Harris asked who had opened it, Victor stopped answering questions.
By then, the paramedics had persuaded Anna to sit on the ambulance step.
She still refused transport.
Margaret sat beside her.
Not touching.
The sun was lower now. In daylight Anna looked even thinner.
Her feet were cracked and bleeding in two places.
Margaret noticed Anna watching her shoes.
“They hurt?” Margaret asked.
Anna shook her head.
“Your shoes.”
Margaret looked down at her cream leather flats.
“What about them?”
“They’ll get dirty.”
Margaret almost smiled.
“They already are.”
Anna looked at the mud on one toe.
“You like clean things.”
Margaret stared at her.
She did.
Too much, according to Daniel.
She wiped kitchen counters while people were still eating. She straightened magazines in waiting rooms. She had once returned a rental car because there was dried soda in the cup holder.
When Anna was little, she had called Margaret’s hand vacuum “the angry bee.”
Margaret swallowed.
May you like
“I can buy other shoes.”
Anna nodded as though filing away useful information.
