Mindy McGinnis: In a Handful of Dust

“How you doing, honey?” she asked Lucy, gathering her into a hug.

“Okay,” Lucy croaked. “How’s Carter?”

“We had a good long talk,” Stebbs said, leaning against the wall. “He’s sleeping now, back at our place.”

Lynn propped herself against Lucy’s dresser. “Poor bastard. You talk to his mom?”

“Yeah,” Stebbs said uneasily, his gaze shooting to Vera. “Yeah, we did.”

Vera took Lucy’s hand and looked at Lynn. “Girls… we need to talk.”

“Why? What’s going to happen to Carter?” Lucy pulled her hand away from Vera. “What’s going on?”

“Carter is a sick boy,” Stebbs said. “He can’t be around other people.”

“For how long?”

“That’s where it gets tricky,” he said. “Your grandma can’t say for sure.”

Vera reached for Lucy’s hand again, but she yanked it back. “What do you mean?”

Vera sighed. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to understand. When I was in medical school, polio was nearly eradicated—that means it hardly existed anymore. It wasn’t something we spent a lot of time learning about.”

“One of the things you didn’t learn was how long somebody carries it. That what you’re saying?” Lynn asked.

“Yes,” Vera said. “He could be a carrier for a week, a month, or forever. I simply don’t know.”

“I fetched his mother,” Stebbs said, “brought her back to our place, and explained the situation. Told her that her son would have to leave.”

Lucy clutched a pillow to her chest, denial tearing a hot path down her insides. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t make him go just because your stupid college didn’t teach you something forty years ago. That’s not fair and you know it.”

“What’s fair then, little one?” Stebbs asked. “Letting him stay? Not telling people he’s sick and having him infect others?”

“Stebbs is right, Lucy,” Vera said. “It’s the only thing I can think to do.”

“But what if it’s only for a week, or a month, like you said? What then? He’s gone and he never comes back because you were wrong .”

“That’s true,” Vera said. “But what if we take the chance, let him come back, and more fall sick? What do we tell them?”

“And then what?” Stebbs continued. “Try again later and tell the next round of sick it’s their bad luck and we were wrong again?” He shook his head. “I know you got feelings for the boy, but we talked it and talked it and this is the only way we can think is best for everyone.”

“Except Carter,” Lucy said stiffly.

“What’s best for Carter is if it hadn’t ever happened,” Stebbs said. “But we’re past that.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lucy said, anger clipping her words. “You can’t get sick.”

Stebbs’ face went cold, and his tone matched it. “Kid, there ain’t been nothing easy about this. You don’t know the half of it.”

Lynn perked up at his words. “What’s that mean?” Stebbs looked away from her, and she rounded on Vera. “What aren’t you saying?”

“There is one other possibility I didn’t mention in front of Carter,” Vera said.

Lucy’s heart leapt. Possibilities meant options, and hope. “What is it?”

Vera claimed her hand and wouldn’t give it up. She smiled sadly at her granddaughter before speaking. “It could be you.”

“Me?” she said softly, touching her chest as if the continued beating of her heart stood in denial. “It could be me?”

“It’s not you,” Lynn said through her teeth, and moved toward Vera. “And damn you for saying such a thing to her.”

Stebbs yanked her back by the shoulder. “Easy now. Getting angry ain’t helping.”

“Neither is saying a bunch of bullshit,” Lynn spat.

“I wouldn’t think it, much less say it, if there weren’t a chance it was true,” Vera said. “She was with the sick and the well as much as Carter. She was with Maddy. I can’t condemn him without questioning her.”

Lynn struggled out of Stebbs’ grip and kicked the wall, but held her silence. Vera turned to Lucy.

“Sweetheart, has there been anything, any headache, fever, back pain? Anything at all out of the ordinary you can think of, before Maddy died?”

Lucy shook her head slowly, her mind poring over the hours and days before her friend’s death. “No… I… I don’t think so.”

Images of Maddy flickered through her brain—her friend in a painful coil under the bedspread, her dead body lying at the bottom of the pit. She took a ragged breath, and Adam’s tiny smile flooded her thoughts along with Carter’s slumped body at Vera’s table as he wept for his fate.

“Say it’s not me, Grandma,” she begged, clutching Vera’s hand so tightly her nails left crescent cuts that filled with blood. “Say I didn’t do it to them.”

Vera’s soft, cool hand trailed over her hair. “I can’t tell you for sure. I’m sorry.”

Lucy fell forward onto Vera, burying her head in her lap and sobbing as Carter had, with no hope and nothing left but pain. Vera clasped her arms around her granddaughter and cried as well.

“So what’s it mean?” Lynn asked Stebbs, her mouth a hard line.

“That’s what we’re here to talk about, kiddo.”

Lucy touched her throat as the shot of whiskey Lynn had given her burned down. She imagined it drowning out the virus that might be living in her veins, purifying her blood in a surge of alcohol. But it wasn’t that easy.

They had moved to the kitchen at Vera’s insistence. Her grandmother had washed Lucy’s face and put a cold rag across her swollen eyes, while Lynn and Stebbs had shared a glance and uncorked a bottle of whiskey for everyone. It was Lucy’s first taste of alcohol and she had sputtered, spraying droplets across the table that Vera wouldn’t allow Lynn to clean up.

“I won’t believe it’s her,” Lynn said again. “The boy admitted to having a headache the day before his sister got sick. It has to be him. I’ve been with Lucy as much as anyone, and I’m not sick.”

“It’s likely you’re right,” Vera conceded. “But there are other factors to consider.”

“Like what?” Lucy asked.

“When I brought Carter’s mom over to the cabin to break the news to her,” Stebbs said, “she went biblical—fell to the floor, gnashed her teeth… . It was all Vera could do to keep her from harming her own self, which wasn’t exactly helpful.”

“Monica’s never been one for helpful,” Lynn said.

Stebbs shook his head. “Once we got her calmed down, we told her the boy would have to go. He took the news better than she did, I’ll say that. She broke down all over again, said she’d lost her daughter and now we was taking her son away. So Vera told her she could always go with him.”

“What’d she say?” Lucy asked.

“Exactly what you’d expect her to say,” Vera answered. “No.”

“She cut him loose?” Lynn asked.

“She’s not made of strong stuff,” Stebbs said. “Even if she had gone with him, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help to the boy.”

Lucy imagined poor Carter standing in a corner of Vera’s house, his mother rejecting him in favor of her own comfort. “Maybe she would’ve been,” Lucy agreed, “but now he’ll be alone.”

“What’s this got to do with us?” Lynn asked.

“When I explained to Monica why I suspected it was her son infecting the second wave of victims, she came to the same conclusion I had,” Vera said. “She knew you and Carter had been working together during the epidemic.”

“So she knows it could be Lucy,” Lynn said, guessing the end before Vera could come to it, “and she’s not likely to keep her mouth shut about it, with you two kicking her son out.”