Page 2 of The Drowned Woman
“But dogs are smart,” Emily argued, practically bouncing out of her car seat behind Leah. “They can tell us if an earthquake is coming.”
“I don’t think we’re sitting on any major fault lines, no need to worry about earthquakes,” Leah told her daughter. Sometime last week Emily had decided that their little family was in desperate need of a dog, taking every opportunity to introduce the idea into conversation in the hopes of wearing Leah down.
Leah blamed Emily’s trauma counselor, who’d introduced a comfort dog, an agreeable and infinitely huggable chocolate lab, into their sessions. Leah had never had a dog—or any pets—while growing up. To her dogs were the creatures who bit kids and then sent them to Leah’s ER at Good Samaritan Medical Center for her to patch up.
“Fall line?” Emily asked.
“Fault line.” Leah glanced in the rearview mirror. Beside Emily sat Luka Jericho’s nephew, Nate. She and Luka were sharing carpool duties until they both felt comfortable with the kids riding the school bus. Which might be never, given that Emily’s father, Leah’s husband, had been murdered in front of her last month and Nate had recently lost his mother to a drug overdose.
Nate pulled out a small notepad. He and Emily were such contrasts. She was tiny for six years old, but precocious and outgoing with an IQ the school said put her in the highest percentile. No surprise given that her father, Ian, was a genius. Nate was skinny—although tall for an eight-year-old—and had to leave everyone he knew behind last month when he moved up to Pennsylvania to join Luka and Luka’s grandfather here in Cambria City. After having only sporadic opportunities to attend school while in Baltimore, he’d been placed back in first grade to finish out the year.
“Fault line,” Emily repeated, and Leah knew that by the time she got home from work Emily would have drawn a detailed map of Cambria City and the surrounding mountains with every fault line precisely mapped out. And who knew, given all the coal mines and the shale formations in this part of central Pennsylvania, maybe Leah was wrong. Maybe they were at risk of earthquakes. Still, it didn’t mean they needed a dog.
Leah spelled out the word, which Nate laboriously copied onto his notepad. He was a quiet kid, obviously dealing with a lot of pain along with resentment at the adults who’d continuously uprooted his life, but he was sweet with Emily. Every time Luka tried to help him with his schoolwork, Nate would glare and stomp away. Despite the difference in their ages, he was content to allow Emily to tutor him. Leah figured by the end of summer, they would both be ready to skip a grade—although she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, setting up both kids to feel like outsiders. It was why she and Ian had originally decided to keep Emily with her own age group in school. But where Nate went, Emily would insist on following and vice-versa.
“Nate, your uncle—”
“Luka,” he corrected. “Just cuz I live in his house, don’t make him blood.”
“No, him being your mother’s brother does.” Leah felt compelled to defend Luka. Nate blamed Luka for his mother’s death and Luka figured the kid needed someone to lash out at, so he’d allowed himself to become the target of Nate’s wrath. Leah didn’t agree—there was no way Luka or anyone could have saved Nate’s mother. “Anyway, your uncle Luka said to make sure you remember to bring home your great-great-grandfather’s army medal. The one you brought for sharing time yesterday.”
Nate nodded, his eyes tightening, adding Leah to the list of adults trying to run his life for him. She had to stifle her laughter—it was the exact same look Emily had given her when Leah first told her they couldn’t get a dog.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
Something about his tone made her wary. “You still have it, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know where it is.” A little on the vague side, but she let it pass.
“And both of you remember, Ruby’s coming to pick you up today.”
“Because you started your new job and can’t,” Emily said in a bored singsong voice. “So, we wait for Ruby and if she doesn’t come, we call you or Luka.” She tugged her new cell phone from her backpack and waved it so Leah could see it in the rearview. As if anyone could miss it after the bedazzling Emily and Ruby had subjected the phone to.
Leah hated the idea of giving a six-year-old a phone—hated even more that she might need it. But Leah’s mother, Ruby, did not have the best track record when it came to being anywhere when needed. Although after Ian was killed, Ruby had stepped up, helping both Leah and Emily, and for some strange, unfathomable reason, Emily had forged a bond with Ruby—one that Leah was loath to break. Emily had lost too much already.
It was a terrible way to live, always hoping that she was wrong, that her mother had changed, while also fearful that she was right, and that Emily would pay the price. Instead of being grateful for having Ruby’s help, all Leah could feel was a watchful wariness, constantly on guard for any hint that Ruby was reverting to the woman Leah knew from her childhood.
“I still don’t understand, Dr. Wright,” Nate said, his tone more respectful than earlier when she’d mentioned Luka. Although he liked using Leah’s title, he never referred to Luka’s job as a police detective, she’d noticed. Maybe in the Baltimore foster homes he’d bounced around, having an uncle who was a cop wasn’t something to boast about. “You’re a doctor and your job is in the ER, but it’s not really the ER? Like you don’t get to see shootings or stabbings? Don’t you want to be a real doctor anymore?”
Leah sighed. Street-savvy Nate had nailed it. Even her former ER colleagues had been teasing her about agreeing to take the position of medical director of Good Sam’s Crisis Intervention Center. The CIC handled abuse cases, sexual assaults and other domestic traumas, performing physical examinations, social service evaluations, and forensic interviews. Her new job meant giving up everything she loved about working on the frontlines of the emergency department—but also meant no more overnight or evening shifts, although she would be on call for emergencies.
It was worth it, for Emily, to give her a sense of normality, a routine. Before he was killed, Ian had handled most of the child-rearing responsibilities because of Leah’s work schedule, and she’d been fine with that. But now she was playing catch up, forced to learn “how Daddy does it” at every turn from braiding Emily’s hair to how much cereal she liked in her milk.
It’d been hard enough while Leah was home during her four weeks of bereavement leave. Now she had to juggle caring for Emily, watching Ruby to make sure Ruby didn’t break trust with Emily, taking care of all the paperwork and financial details that came with losing a spouse, along with the responsibilities of her new job.
She felt barely able to take care of herself, much less Emily. It might help if she could sleep. Ever since finding Ian’s body and learning that he’d been targeted because Leah had saved the wrong patient, sleep had eluded her. But Emily was healing, and that was all Leah cared about. It would be a long, long time before Leah slept through the night or trusted anyone—or herself—again.
Hypervigilance, the trauma counselor called it during their last session. A symptom of PTSD. Meaning, an abnormal state of being.
Who cared, Leah thought. Who was he to decide what was “normal” after what she and Emily had been through? As long as it kept her daughter safe, gave Emily room to grow and be happy, live the life she deserved, then any strain on Leah’s psyche was worth it.
“She’s still a real doctor.” Emily surprised Leah by coming to her defense. “But now she gets to help people with toys.” She was referring to the child-friendly interview room where she’d given her own statement after Ian’s murder. “So now your job is fun, right, Mommy?”
Leah didn’t answer right away, distracted by her daily dilemma of navigating a labyrinthine route to school to avoid their old house—the house Emily still thought of as home, and Leah as a nightmarish crime scene. It was difficult because the school was only two blocks up the street from their old place, but the last thing she needed was Emily to break down, screaming about wanting to go home again.
“My job is always fun, pumpkin,” she answered as she diverted down a one-way street heading past the park. “But you know the most fun part?”
“Bullet wounds? Getting an arm cut off?” Nate asked, leaning forward with excitement. Leah made a note to ask Luka what the kid was watching on TV. He made a karate chopping motion accompanied by sound effects. “Pow-ee! My arm, my arm! Where’d it go?”
