24 Hours

Hickey groaned again, and this time the sound pierced her to the marrow. Will sometimes made exactly the same sound during sex. The thought that there was any connection between her marital lovemaking and what was happening now nauseated her. But of course there was. Will was as human as any man, and he wanted sex all the time. Much more often than she did, anyway. And not just lovemaking. He wanted physical sex, an outlet for his drives and frustrations, and she resented that. There had been a time, just before and after their marriage, when she had felt a powerful urge to make love. But that had slowly faded with time. Not that she loved him less. But after she was forced to give up medical school, her desire flatlined. She couldn’t voice the reason to Will, but the fact was that submitting to his sexual desires seemed the ultimate expression of the terrible sacrifice she had made. Because it was sex, at bottom, that had made that sacrifice necessary. And just because Will got an erection every morning and night was no reason she had to wait at his beck and call like some nineteenth-century hausfrau-

“Get up!” Hickey ordered. “That’s enough fore-play.”

She practically leaped off him and retreated toward the TV cabinet.

He thrust himself to his feet and carried the bottle of Wild Turkey to the bedside table. Then he walked back toward her, pulling off his Polo shirt as he came, revealing a pale, wiry torso. Only his neck was tanned, and his arms from the elbows down. A farmer’s tan, her father had called it. When he reached for his belt, Karen looked at the carpet.

“Watch,” he said, his voice full of pride.

She took a deep breath and looked up as Hickey’s khakis hit the floor. A tingling numbness began to creep outward from some place deep within her. The act would be bad, she knew, but the anticipation was worse. The knowing-while you were still intact-that absolute suffering was inevitable. That the place you had protected all your life was about to be violated. That no help would come. There was only Hickey. And Abby. Abby hanging over her head like a sword, enforcing every command he gave.

The numbness continued to spread through her, and the temptation was to let it come, like a freezing person giving in to the cold. Let it penetrate into my bones, she thought. Into my heart and soul, so that whatever happens will be unfelt, a crime committed upon another person, an insensate body. A cadaver. And yet, if she let the numbness that far in, could she ever get it all out again?

As Hickey stared at her with his stupid schoolboy grin, something stirred deep within her. Not quite a thought, but the seed of one. A tiny spark of awareness, smoldering and darkly feminine. A ruthless, chthonic knowledge of male vulnerability.

Her moment would come.

EIGHT

Huey sat across from Abby on the linoleum floor of the cabin, whittling slowly. He had dragged an old saddle blanket in from the bedroom and set her on it, so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bare floor. She clutched the Barbie in her little hands like a talisman.

“Do you feel better now?” asked Huey.

Abby nodded. “A little bit.”

“Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

“Kind of. My tummy hurts.”

A knot of worry formed in Huey’s stomach. “What do you like? I got baloney. You like Captain Crunch? I love Captain Crunch.”

“I have to eat Raisin Bran.”

“You can’t eat Captain Crunch?”

“No.”

“How come?”

Her lips puckered and moved to one side as she thought about it. “Well, when you eat, the food puts sugar in your blood. And you’ve got stuff in your body to make the sugar go away. But I don’t have any. So, the sugar gets more and more until it makes me sick. And if I get too sick, I’ll go to sleep. Sleep and maybe never wake up.”

Fear passed into Huey’s face like a shadow falling over a rock. He rubbed his hands anxiously across his puttylike cheeks. “That happened to my sister. Jo Ellen. I wish I could give you some of my blood to make your sugar go away.”

“That’s what’s in my shots. Stuff to make the sugar go away. I don’t like needles, but I don’t like being sick, either. It hurts.”

“I hate needles,” Huey said forcefully. “Hate, hate, hate.”

“Me, too.”

“Hate needles,” Huey reasserted.

“There are big ones and little ones, though,” Abby said. “My shots have the littlest kind. Some shots have really big ones. Like when they take your blood. And sometimes my dad has to stick people in the back. In the spine cord. Or in the nerves sometimes. That hurts the worst. But he does it to make a bigger hurt go away.”

“How do you know so much?”

Abby shrugged. “I don’t know. My mom and dad are always telling me stuff. People at school say I talk grown-up all the time.”

“Are you going to be a doctor when you get big?”

“Uh-huh. A flying doctor.”

Huey’s eyes got bigger. “You can’t fly, can you?”

“In an airplane, silly.”

“Oh.”

“My tummy still hurts.”

Huey’s mouth fell open. “You just play here with your doll. I’m gonna make you the biggest bowl of Captain Crunch you ever saw!”