Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

The second she saw the policeman, the look in his dark eyes, her hand flew to her mouth.

“Ma’am, we believe we found your daughter.”

Two months had passed. Two months of looking out the window and doors and standing on the front porch in the wind and rain and sunshine, just in case Aleta forgot what home looked like. If her little girl happened to wander by, confused, looking at houses and front porches and trying to remember which apartment had been hers, why, there would be her mother! To love and hold and greet her. To smooth her hair back from her eyes and promise she’d love her always, no matter what had happened, no matter what she had been forced to do. There was Grim Marie, who would become Benevolent and Joyful Marie, and her little Aleta would be safe.

But the eyes of this man, of the way he held her gaze far too carefully while his partner couldn’t manage to hold her gaze at all, told her she had no need to stand in that doorway ever again.

“Oh,” she said. She didn’t remove her hand from her mouth. It was far too comforting. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

His mouth moved some more, but his words meant nothing. They were strange sounds made by an animal that didn’t understand how to communicate. She watched his mouth move, watched his lips stretch and bend and press themselves together. She was reminded of caterpillars. His tongue was pink and wet and somehow earnest, and that earnestness made the muscles of her mouth pull up at the corners, made her want to hold out her arms to him like he was a baby. When Aleta was just a wee one and was learning how to talk . . .

The thought. Aleta’s face. The glint of silver in her dimples, the shine of her eyes that set off the wary hardness there. Marie felt a sharp pain in her stomach, like a baby’s foot placing itself firmly in her ribs, and she felt the blood run from her face into other places in her body. Her eyes, mostly, because they began to leak.

“ . . . scraps of fabric. She was identified by dental records, because by the time we . . . we came upon her, there really wasn’t much left . . . ”

“Yes, she had very nice teeth,” Marie said dreamily, and it was true. Aleta brushed them at least twice a day, and used a certain type of mouthwash, because she would never taste man in her mouth again, never ever ever, and Marie made sure that even when the money ran out, the mouthwash never did.

“Such a little thing to do, really,” she said conversationally, and saw the policemen glance at each other. One reached out to take her hand. The other put his arms around her shoulder and guided her to the steps.

“Is there somebody I could call?”

The second policeman was meeting her gaze now, and his eyes were warm and light and nearly suspiciously wet. Marie put her hand up to his cheek and patted it as if he were a little boy. And he was. Look at this man. Look at the way his skin hangs on his frame as if it belongs there. Muscles bunching under his uniform, she saw that he was distressed, that he wanted to take it all away, that he wanted to physically run down some monster and take him apart with an axe. For vengeance. For justice. For sweet little girls who were only trying to help their mothers.

“You have children, don’t you?” she asked him, and that was all it took. The bone structure under his jaw shaped and changed and formed, and she wasn’t looking at a man anymore; she was looking at a wolf. A wolf who knew somebody in the pack had reason to be cast out. A wolf who would find that offender and rip out his throat as he had snuffed a little girl.

You’ll find him, she said, but then realized her lips hadn’t moved. Her hand had dropped from his face. Her fingers fluttered on the ground, useless.

Broken butterflies.

Shredded sparrows.

“Ma’am,” the first officer said again, and his voice was so kindly that it hurt her. Be cruel to her. Yell and scream at her for losing her child. Tell her all of the things she told herself every day, but please don’t be kind. Nobody can stand up to that kind of thing.

“Ma’am, do you understand what we’re saying? Are you able to process the information I just gave you?”

Your lips remind me of young puppies and your white teeth nip at your wife’s neck. Your tongue will taste ice cream and my little girl was identified by dental records.

That was what she thought. This is what she said.

“You’re telling me my daughter was found. In pieces.”

The first policeman drew back as if the words were verbal cat-o-nine-tails lashing his skin. They had pieces of metal, girls’ jump ropes, and tiny facial piercings wrapped into them.

The second one, the man of the wolves, simply nodded once.

Yes. That was what was said, the nod told her. You understand. I’m so terribly sorry, but you understand.

“I know all about wolves,” she said aloud, and then she couldn’t say anything more.