“And what was the worm?” Dross asked.
“Irene Paavola claims she hasn’t seen or heard from him.”
“Cork,” Theresa Lee said. “Could I talk to Waaboo?”
“The little guy’s been through a lot the last couple of days. Why do you want to talk to him?”
“I’d like to do everything I can to help identify the girl in the blueberry patch. Maybe help bring some closure to her family. It would be…” She seemed to search for the right word, the right explanation. She finished simply, “It would be helpful to me. Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” Cork said. “But I’ll have to ask Jenny.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
It was late in the day when he headed home, the trees flaming with the last red-orange light of the setting sun. The world around him seemed on fire. And Cork thought about hell. He hoped with a deep bitterness and complete lack of forgiveness that the people, probably men, responsible for all the bodies of Native women and girls that Theresa Lee helped pull from shallow graves would burn for eternity.
CHAPTER 18
Annie sat alone on the porch swing. The sun was setting, the houses on Gooseberry Lane aglow in the warm light. In Guatemala, she’d lived in a row of single-room shacks built of cinder block and with corrugated metal roofs. She had no toilet, using instead a communal latrine behind the building and drawing her water from a communal spigot.
Although she’d been born here, had grown up here, had spent so many good years here, she felt uneasy in the comfort of this quiet town, this quiet neighborhood, this quiet house. She should have been in Guatemala, still doing her best to help. But that was behind her now.
Rainy stepped from the house. “Feeling better?”
“Much,” Annie said.
“Okay if I sit?”
Annie said she didn’t mind. “It’s lovely here,” she said, once Rainy was beside her. “Very different from the asentamiento Maria and I call home.”
“What’s it like?”
“A barrio on the edge of Guatemala City. Lovely people struggling with poverty and prejudice and violence. We do what we can to help.” She fell silent for a moment, then nodded to a tire swing that hung from a branch on the elm tree in the front yard. “When we were kids, we had a tire swing just like that one. After we all became teenagers, Dad took it down. I like that it’s back up again. Does Waaboo enjoy it?”
“We all do because he does. We take turns pushing him. His laugh is infectious.” Rainy studied her, then said, “Your hand is trembling.”
Annie quickly nestled it in her lap. “Still recovering a little from my headache today.”
“Do you often have headaches?”
“Sometimes.”
“How are you sleeping?”
“Not very well.”
“I noticed when we were having coffee at the Four Seasons this morning that your hand trembled then, too.”
Annie didn’t reply.
“In the white culture, I’m known as a nurse,” Rainy said gently. “In the culture of my people, I’m known as a healer, a Mide.”
“I know.”
“If you want to talk, I’m happy to listen.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Annie lied.
“All right,” Rainy said.
Maria stepped out onto the porch. “It is a beautiful evening.”
“Yes, it is,” Rainy said. “And I’ll let you two enjoy it. I’m going to put some dinner together.” She got up, offering her seat to Maria. Then she went inside.
Maria sat and Annie held out her trembling hand. “She suspects.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“I’ll wait. After the wedding will be soon enough.”
“More headaches, more trembling, more stumbling, they will know.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
Annie tried to settle again into the quiet of the evening, but she felt tethered to a wagonload of concerns. “I should go back, Maria. I feel like a deserter.”
“You haven’t deserted anyone.”
“I see their faces, the little ones especially. I wanted to do so much more for them.”
