Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

They looked up at the police chopper circling above. A media helicopter was keeping a respectable distance.

“Well,” said Owen. “The circus has come to town. And you won’t believe the elephant shit we’re going to be shoveling.”

“We’re not the heroes,” said Lydia, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Daniel was.”

Somewhat cynically, Owen said, “More will be revealed.”

1.

Lydia and Willow lived in opposite directions from Wolcott Mills. The detective told the deputy who was driving to drop him at home in Sterling Heights first, then take Deputy Molloy to her place in Richmond.

As they pulled away, the first thing he did was phone Dixie. He wanted to reach her before she heard about the whole shit show from a coworker who saw it on the news. She asked if he was okay. When he said he was fine but “got a little scrape on my noggin,” Dixie told him that she was leaving work and would meet him at the house. He said that wasn’t necessary but she wasn’t having it. He ignored the repeated calls from Adelaide because he didn’t have it in him for a conversation right now. Besides, he knew that her husband would tell her that he was okay, if he hadn’t already. Ditto for Pace—Mom would do the same. Willow smiled when he realized he’d been putting Dixie first. That felt good. It felt right.

There were other, more urgent matters. Lydia of course would have no worries—for imminently departing child-tenants, the aftermath of moments of balance excluded real-world consequences—but that didn’t hold true for Willow. When her body died, which would probably be soon, he’d be left holding a very large bag of brown matter.

They sat in back of the unmarked sedan as if Ubering home, though to him it felt more like they were prisoners. A movie cliché came to mind: they needed to get their stories straight before talking to the sheriff. As they got closer to his house he whispered to Lydia, “I want you to come in with me. Tell him that you don’t want to go home—that you don’t want to be alone.”

With a measure of gloom, he ruminated on Lydia’s half-life after the moment of balance . Just how long could he expect her to remain in this world? He was new to Portership and so many things were occurring to him, moment to moment, that he hadn’t even had the time to write them down, let alone share them with Annie. One of the mysteries among mysteries was the length of time a landlord remained “functional” after their target was eliminated. The case in point seemed knottier than the norm because Roy Eakins, Maya’s killer, escaped such a fate—not merely because he expired without her (or Troy’s) help but because he was already dead . Things were further complicated by the fact that Grundy died by Maya’s hand and not Winston’s, who by all rules of the Guide was the only one who had the right to such retribution. Would such “complications” cause Lydia to linger among the living a bit longer than the usual?

The self-serving nature of the speculation coupled with the sheer impossibility of receiving an answer struck him as obscene. On the practical side, he doubted whether the deputy’s looming disappearance would dampen the sheriff’s ardor about getting to the bottom of things; in fact, it was likely to do the opposite. Apart from the complex feelings Willow had toward Lydia, there was an element of calculation to the question. Part of what he was asking, really, was how long did he have to clean things up before Lydia was gone? All manner of unpleasant scenarios dangled before him. What if Lydia died in his apartment, right in the middle of “getting their stories straight”? He even began to wonder about autopsy results: What might a pathologist reveal about the vagaries of the reanimated dead? That he hadn’t raised that particular topic to the Porter suddenly seemed like a glaring omission. It was one more question mark on his long mental list of Things to Ask Annie.

The driver waited outside. He would take them directly to the Sheriff’s Office in Mount Clemens as soon as they were ready.

As Lydia stripped off her clothes, Willow couldn’t help but say, “Jesus, did you have to crucify him? What was that about?”

“It’s what he did to me.”

“And the whole eye for an eye thing—”

“It’s what Roy did to me ,” she said high-mindedly.

“Okay, okay. It just… doesn’t make things any easier .”

He brewed some coffee while she showered. Dixie arrived not long after. She hugged him and said, “Poor baby!” then touched the skin around his bandage—a little bit of blood was seeping through. Hearing the shower water turn off, she looked quizzically in its direction.

“That’s Lydia—she lost her partner today. Her boyfriend.”

“Oh my God. Is she okay?”

“As okay as she can be.”

Lydia appeared in the hall, stark naked and still wet.

“Should I just use your towel?” she asked.

“Um, yeah!” said Willow, abashed. He shooed her back to the bathroom. “Go for it! I left a shirt out for you on the bed.”

“Thanks!” She smiled at Dixie and then retreated.

Dixie twisted her mouth in a What the fuck?

“She’s in a little bit of shock,” said Willow. “Which I guess is kind of understandable.”

It was flattering, even under the surreal circumstances, to watch his girlfriend get jealous.

Dixie shook her head and said, “ Whatever .” Then, still ruffled: “‘I left a shirt out for you on the bed’?”

“Hers had blood all over it.”

“Oh shit.” It brought Dixie back to the gruesome reality of what went down. “Are you guys hungry?”

“I don’t feel like I am. But food’s probably a good idea.”

“I’ll go fix something.” She kissed him again and held him tight. “Try and keep your clothes on, Casanova.”

After she left, Lydia came and sat on the couch.

“That was Dixie—a neighbor. She’s bringing us some sandwiches.”

“Are you an item?”

“Sometimes,” he said. They were quiet for a while. “So… how do you feel?” In spite of himself, Willow wanted to sponge up as much as he could. “What does it feel like? After the moment of balance ?”

“It feels… strange. I feel—strange.”

“You mean, like you might be… leaving?”

He thought that any moment she might keel over.

“No, not that—though, that too… I will be leaving, but not just yet. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I’m not Lydia anymore but I’m not Maya either. It’s like I’m no one—I’m no one and everyone. Maybe that’s what ‘moment of balance’ really means. That the balance isn’t revenge , but the moment you become… no one and everyone.”

There was much he wanted to ask but they needed to triage, as Dixie would say. There wasn’t much time.

“We need to talk about what we’re going to say,” said the detective. “How we’re going to explain to Owen what happened today.”

2.

Dixie changed his dressing. The bandage was small and clean and he looked presentable. He even put on a suit. But the deputy was a different story—seeing her through the eyes of the very serious group who was gathered in the conference room, Willow admonished himself for being remiss. She wore a pair of Dixie’s borrowed jeans and an oversized T-shirt that Pace had mailed him during his stay at the Meadows. It said CHICK MAGNET and bore an illustration of a cartoon magnet with baby chicks stuck to its end.

They went through the niceties, with pro forma consolations expressed to Lydia for her loss, before getting down to business. (On the way over, Willow reminded Lydia to let him take the lead and to say as little as possible when questioned directly.) The sheriff reiterated they were here to create a painstaking, linear reconstruction of events, “from top to bottom.”