Carter nodded.
“A very sweet girl. And what skin. Absolutely glorious skin.” She smiled suddenly. “And what have we here?”
Her eyes had fallen on the cosmos. She separated from him and walked across the lawn to the beds, Carter following.
“These are just beautiful, Anthony.”
She knelt before the flowers. Carter had planted two shades of pink: the first a deep solid, the second softer with green flares, on long, tippy stems.
“May I, Anthony?”
“You go on and do as you like. Planted them for you.”
She selected one of the deeper pink and pinched off the stem. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, she rotated it slowly, breathing softly through her nose.
“Do you know what the name means?” she asked.
“Can’t say I do.”
“It’s from the Greek. It means ‘balanced universe.’ ” She rocked back onto her heels. “It’s funny, I have no idea how I know that. Probably I learned it in school.”
A quiet passed.
“Haley loves these.” Rachel was looking at the flower, gazing at it as if it were a talisman or the key to a door she couldn’t quite unlock.
“That she does,” Carter answered.
“Always putting them in her hair. Her sister’s, too.”
“Miss Riley. Cute as a bug, that one.”
A soft night was coming on between the branches of the trees. Rachel pointed her face to the sky.
“I have so many memories, Anthony. Sometimes it’s all so hard to sort out.”
“Things will come to you,” he assured her.
“I remember the pool.”
It was happening. Carter crouched beside her.
“That morning, how terrible everything was. The air so raw.” She took a long, mournful breath. “I was so sad. So incredibly sad. Like a great black ocean and there you are, floating in it, drifting, no land anywhere, nothing to want or hope for. It’s just you and the water and the darkness and you know it will always be like that, forever and ever.”
She fell silent, lost in these old, troubled thoughts. The air had cooled; the lights of the city, coming on, reflected off the cloud deck, making a pale glow. Then:
“That was when I saw you. You were in the yard with Haley. Just…” She shrugged. “Showing her something. A toad, maybe. A flower. You were always doing that, showing her little things to make her happy.” She shook her head slowly. “But that was the thing. I knew it was you, I believed it was you. But that wasn’t who I saw.”
She was staring at the ground, dry-eyed, beyond feeling. It would all pour forth now, the memories, the pain, the horrors of that day.
“It was Death, Anthony.”
Carter waited.
“I know that’s an old idea. A crazy idea. And you so sweet to me, to all of us. But I saw you standing there with Haley and I thought, Death has come. He’s here, he’s outside right now with my little girl. It’s all a mistake, a horrible mistake, I’m the one he wants. I’m the one who needs to die.”
The day was fading, colors draining, the sky releasing the last of its light. She raised her face; her eyes were beseeching, moist and wide.
“That’s why I did what I did, Anthony. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right, I know that. There are things that can never be forgiven. But that is why.”
Rachel had begun to cry. Carter put his arms around her as she collapsed into his weight. Her skin was warm and sweet-smelling, just a hint of her perfume lingering. How small she was, and he not a big man in the slightest. She might have been a bird there, just a little bit of a thing cupped in his hand.
The girls were laughing in the house.
“Oh God, I left them,” Rachel sobbed. She was clutching his shirt in her fists. “How could I leave them? My babies. My beautiful baby girls.”
“Hush now,” he said. “Time to let go of all the old things.”
They stayed like that for a time, holding each other. Night had descended in full; the air was still and moist with dew. The little girls were singing. The song was sweet and wordless, like the songs of birds.
“They waitin’ on you,” said Carter.
She shook her head against his chest. “I can’t face them. I can’t.”
“You be strong, Rachel. Be strong for your babies.”
She let him slowly draw her to her feet and took his arm, gripping it tightly with both hands, just above the elbow. With small steps, Carter led her around the pool toward the back door. The house was dark. Carter had expected it to be this way but could not say why that should be so. It was simply a part, another part, of the way things were in this place.