Page 20 of Our Last Resort

We didn’t move.

“Come on, stupid kids.”

Nothing.

The mother had to pry us apart before she could pull us out.It was a severance. The brutal white light of childbirth, the two of us torn from a womb.

Finally, our backs straightened, the knots in our muscles unfurled. My right arm hung limply at my side.

The boy’s gaze met mine. For the first time that day, I saw him clearly: Taller than I was, already, by three inches. Long limbs. Freckles on his nose. One eye like the sky, the other like a rain puddle.

We walked back to the classrooms together, realized they were empty, and made our way to the cafeteria. I tried to pick up a tray, but it was impossible with only one arm.

“Got you,” Gabriel said, and he carried my tray for me.

We sat down. He gulped down the day’s stew (root vegetables) in frantic, greedy spoonfuls. I was hungry; he was starving. I reached across the table and placed my piece of bread by his bowl.

In the outside world, later, I’d say “brother,” he’d say “sister.” But we hadn’t been taught to think that way. We hadn’t grown up with the words of family, of infatuation, of marriage, of reproduction.

In Émile’s world, we were just us. Something that mattered more than any of the concepts that tied our universe together. Brighter than everything else.

8Escalante, Utah

The Fifth Day

I do not want to see Sabrina Brenner’s body again.

But I owe her at least that much.

When I get back to the edge of the compound, the hotel guests are gone. Three new figures have materialized, wearing the same uniform: khakis, long-sleeved shirts, and ties, badges gleaming above their left breast pockets, weapons hanging at their waists.

One is crouched next to Sabrina’s body, looking up every ten seconds or so at her colleague, who jots down notes. The third is holding a roll of yellow crime scene tape.

After the police found Annie’s body, they spoke to me, too. Just once. They wanted to know about Gabriel, his marriage. It was a brief conversation. There had been a condescension about it, a hint ofWhat would you know?I was an unmarried, childless woman. What could I understand of marriage, of domesticity, offamily?

Still, that interview taught me the basics: With the police, say only what you need to say. If the question isDo you have the time,then the answer isYesorNo,notTen-thirty.

The policeman with the crime scene tape—young, brown hair, and the squint of someone who wishes he’d rememberedhis sunglasses—wraps one end of the roll around a nearby tree, then unfurls it toward one of the large lanterns that line the Ara’s pathways.

“Excuse me, Officer?”

The young cop turns around.

“Deputy,” he says. Then, in a weary voice: “Only deputies out here.”

Right.

I watched a documentary, once—a missing wife and their two children, a husband who may or may not have killed them. It happened in a small town in Arizona, not too far from here.

“They could have caught him,” the missing wife’s sister told someone off camera. But the local police force did too little, and what little they did, they didn’t do fast enough. The husband vanished. “For all we know, he’s living the good life in Brazil or something,” the sister said, rolling her eyes.

This world of small-town crime, of sheriff’s offices stretched too thin, of deputies moonlighting as prison guards—it was new to me. The cases in my own life were big enough, one handled by the feds, the other by a robust police department. Which doesn’t mean that everything went swimmingly. Obviously. Annie’s murder was never solved. As for Émile, well. It was—still is—complicated.

“Could I speak to you?” I ask the young deputy.

He raises an eyebrow.

“We’re still working on the scene,” he says. “Stand by. We’ll get to you.”

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