Rosa fell asleep sitting up, her good hand flat on her thigh. Every time the doors opened, she woke. Every time somebody called a name, she lifted her head before she heard whose it was.
Leah bought a coffee from the machine. It came out weak and hot and tasted of the cup. She drank it standing beside a window that reflected the waiting room more clearly than it showed the dark outside.
At one in the morning a nurse called Rosa through. Leah went with her until the nurse asked whether she was family.
“No,” Rosa said.
Leah stopped.
Rosa looked at her, then back at the nurse. “She can come.”
Inside the little room the light was harsher. Rosa sat on the examination bed and answered questions. What happened? She fell against a step. Did she hit her head? She didn't think so. Had she been drinking? No. The nurse listened without making the story either more or less than Rosa had given her.
When she asked Rosa to move the arm, the bravado went out of the room. Rosa's face changed before she made a sound. Leah looked at the wall, then made herself look back. There was no decency in pretending it hurt less if she did not watch.
Later there were pictures, another wait, a doctor whose shirt collar had folded under his coat. He spoke to Rosa, not to Leah. She could follow most of it. Injury, support, rest, further care if it wasn't improving. The shoulder was not something they could dismiss as a bruise and keep using. There was paperwork and a sling. Rosa listened closely to the instructions and asked what it would cost. Nobody in the room could answer the whole question.
When they were alone again, she looked down at the sling.
“Ugly thing.”
“It isn't a dress.”
“You think I don't know the difference?”
Leah sat on the chair. “Sorry.”
“Stop doing that every time you speak. I'm trying to keep track.”
The corner of her mouth moved. Leah smiled back before she could help it.
Rosa looked toward the door. “I did like the stupid dog.”
“What?”
“In the house. He used to come when Walt was out too. You'd be upstairs with Kit. I'd sit there and let him have the end of the couch.”
Leah had not known. She could see Rosa on that old sofa, one hand resting on the dog. In her memory she'd always put Rosa in the kitchen, busy with something else.
“He wasn't ours,” Rosa said.
“No.”
“I didn't have to think what would happen to him.”
She shut her eyes. Leah stayed quiet. It was nearly three when they left, carrying instructions and the little bag of things a hospital gives you when it can't make what happened unhappen.
Rosa slept in the flatbed. Leah drove gently. Every road bump now contained a consequence, and she found herself resenting the county for failing to smooth them out. At the motel she helped Rosa to number eight. The little refrigerator rattled beside the sink. Its door did not quite seal. Rosa pushed it with her good hand until the light inside went off.
“Stay here,” Leah said.
“Where else am I going?”
“I mean I'll be outside.”
“I know what you mean.”
Leah got her water once the instructions allowed it, put the paper where she could reach it, and turned on the little lamp. Rosa sat on the edge of the bed with her shoes still on.
“Can I—” Leah began.
Rosa held out one foot.
Leah took the shoe off. Then the other. She set them beneath the chair, toes toward the bed. In the old house Rosa had never let anybody touch her things without asking. Leah remembered that now, kneeling in a motel room beside the woman she had left behind.
“Don't make something out of it,” Rosa said.
Leah looked up.
“The shoes. Just put them there.”
She did.
At dawn Leah woke in the flatbed with a stiff neck and one hand caught beneath her thigh. A gull stood on the roof of the next room. Its feet clicked along the metal gutter. Her mouth tasted of machine coffee.
Kit had sent a message at four. I'm fine. Sleeping. Will call.
Devon had called twice.
Leah sat up and looked toward number eight. The curtain was closed. Beside it, number nine looked the same as it had yesterday. Kit's separate room, her little bag of toiletries, the towel over the chair. She was not in it. Leah had lost even the comfort of knowing which window to look at.
She called Devon.
He answered at once. “Did you know?”
Leah held the phone without speaking.
“Kit was there. Izzy saw her. Don't tell me she wasn't.”
“I know.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“You don't know exactly. Great.”
Behind him she heard a metal door being pulled shut, somebody speaking on a radio. The festival was getting up to do the work left after the celebration.
“Are you there?” Leah asked.
“I've been here all night. Somebody's got to do the job.”
“I can come.”
“To help?”
She heard the danger in the question. “To talk.”
“There's a public path by the old ferry shelter. I can meet you at nine. I have to finish here first. Don't come through the gate. They're still talking to people, and there are people in here who've had enough.”
She waited at the motel while the morning warmed the cab. Rosa slept. At half past eight Leah checked on her once more before leaving. Asleep, breathing evenly. Leah wrote a note, left her number even though Rosa had it, and drove toward the lake.
Morning had taken the color out of Bayline. From the public road Leah saw the worn banners and the vehicles waiting outside. She turned away before the staff entrance and parked beside the old ferry shelter. Beyond the fence, trailers were leaving pale rectangles where their shade had protected the grass.
Devon waited beside the shelter. He had changed his shirt, but the new one was already dirty. His glasses were in his hand.
“Leave it there,” he said through the window.
She did. He came to the driver's side and stayed outside when she opened the door. Leah got out slowly, leaving both hands where he could see them. She hated that she had thought of that.
“Izzy?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“Is she—”
“She's scared. She's furious. She's been answering questions since last night. The security guard went to get his wrist looked at. People don't want to come back to work. What part do you need?”
Leah looked down.
“And Mara's crying because she can't get anyone to tell her when they'll pay what they owe her. Not because she's hungry today. Because she knows how long a phone call can take when you're a little invoice in somebody else's office.”
“Returning it would help,” Leah said.
Devon looked at her. “You have it?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying that for?”
She had no good answer. He put his glasses on, then took them off again because the lenses were fogging.
“I told them what I knew,” he said. “I didn't know it was useful until they started asking. Kit's work. Her car. You coming here. The old man.”
He looked through the gate. “And Luis. He was supposed to be done. She told Brenda she'd cover, then she made him clear her way out and left him there. I was standing with a case waiting for her. I thought she'd come back.”
Leah watched his hand close around the arm of his glasses.
“I kept telling him she would,” Devon said. “For ten minutes. Then Izzy came out.”
“All right.”
“I'm not doing you a favor. I've had people asking me questions all night.”
He took out his phone. “Then somebody sent me this.”
He held it so she could see. The public report about Friday's bank robbery that Bell had been trying to discuss with her. The bank name. A request for information. A picture from outside, blurred but not enough: a dark-blue wagon, a shape at the wheel, people moving toward it. Leah knew the moment. She knew which of them was her daughter before she could have identified her from the pixels.
“Was that before you came here yesterday?” Devon asked.
Leah nodded.
He lowered the phone. The anger in his face changed, becoming something quieter and more difficult to look at.
“I showed you the stage,” he said.
“I know.”
“I thought you finally wanted to see it.”
“I did.”
“You can want two things. I noticed.”
He stepped back. Leah did not follow. Through a gap in the fence Leah could see a row of empty cases. Izzy was somewhere inside with people who had questions, and Leah could not go to her.
“Tell Kit to stop calling people friends when she means doors,” Devon said.
Then he walked back toward the staffed gate. Leah got into the flatbed and left before he reached it. She didn't know whom he would speak to next. He had told her plainly enough what he would say.
She did not drive out fast. There was no lane to open, no difficult turn that could change what Devon had seen. She drove away like a person leaving a place where she was no longer welcome, which was all she could manage.