Fuck.
Her legs retracted like a roller shade, heels hooked onto the edge of the toilet bowl, as if drawing herself into a ball would make her invisible.
“Andrea?” Palazzolo’s chunky police-issue shoes thumped across the tiles. She stopped directly in front of Andy’s stall.
Andy stared at the door. A faucet was dripping. She counted off six drops before—
“Andrea, I know you’re in there.”
Andy rolled her eyes at the stupidity of the situation.
“I gather you don’t like to talk,” Palazzolo said. “So maybe you could just listen?”
Andy waited.
“Your mom might be in a lot of trouble.” Palazzolo waited another beat. “Or not.”
Andy’s heart leapt at the possibility of the not.
“What she did—I get that. She was protecting her daughter. I’ve got a kid. I would do anything for the little guy. He’s my baby.”
Andy bit her bottom lip.
“I can help you with this. Help you both get out of this.”
Andy waited again.
“I’m going to leave my card here on the counter.”
Andy kept waiting.
“You call me, anytime, day or night, and together, you and I can figure out what you need to say to make this problem go away.” She paused. “I’m offering to help your mom, Andrea. That’s all I want to do—help.”
Andy rolled her eyes again. She had learned a long time ago that one of the prices of prolonged silence was people assumed that you were simple-minded or outright stupid.
“But here’s the thing: if you really want to help your mom,” Palazzolo tried. “First you have to tell me the truth. About what happened.”
Andy almost laughed.
“Then we’ll go from there. All right?” Another weighted pause. “Right?”
Right.
“Card’s on the counter, doll. Day or night.”
Andy listened to the drips from the faucet.
One drip … two drips … three … four … five … six …
“You wanna make a gesture, like flush the toilet to let me know you heard me?”
Andy held up her middle finger to the back of the stall door.
“All right,” Palazzolo said. “Well, I’m just going to assume you heard. The thing is, sooner rather than later, okay? We don’t wanna have to drag your mom down to the station, open a formal interview, all that stuff. Especially since she’s been hurt. Right?”
Andy had this flash in her head, the image of herself standing from the toilet, kicking open the stall, and telling the woman to go fuck herself.
Then she realized that the stall door opened in, not out, so she couldn’t really kick it open, so she waited on the toilet, hands wrapped around her legs, head buried between her knees, until the detective went away.
Andy waited on the toilet so long that her knee popped when she finally uncurled from her perch. Her hamstrings jangled like ukulele strings. She pulled open the stall door. She walked to the sink. She ignored the detective’s card with its shiny gold shield as she washed her face with cold water. The blood on her knuckle ran fresh. She wrapped a paper towel around her finger, then tentatively opened the bathroom door.
She checked the hallway. No Detective Palazzolo. Andy started to leave, but at the last minute, she grabbed the detective’s card off the counter. She would give it to her father. She would tell him what had happened. The cops were not supposed to question you when you had a lawyer. Anybody who watched Law & Order knew that.
There was a crowd in front of the elevator. Again, no Detective Palazzolo, but Andy used the stairs anyway. She walked carefully this time. Her knuckle had stopped bleeding. She threw the napkin into a trash can outside the stairwell. The air in the hospital’s main waiting room was tinged with chemicals and vomit. Andy hoped that the vomit smell wasn’t coming from her. She looked down at her shirt to check.
“My Lord,” someone muttered. “My good Lord.”
The TV.
A sudden understanding hit Andy like a punch to the face.
Every single person in the waiting room, at least twenty people, was watching the diner video play on CNN.
“Holy crap,” someone else said.
On the television, Laura’s hands were showing five fingers and a thumb for six bullets.
Helsinger was standing in front of her. Cowboy hat. Leather vest. Gun still out.
A banner rolled across the bottom of the TV warning people that they were about to see graphic content.
A woman asked, “What’s he doing?”
Helsinger was drawing his knife from the sheath on his hip.
“What the—”
“Oh, shit!”
The crowd went silent as they watched what came next.
There were gasps, a shocked scream, like they were inside a movie theater instead of a hospital waiting room.
Andy was as transfixed as everyone else. The more she watched it, the more she was able to see it happening outside of herself. Who was that woman on the television? What had Laura become while Andy was cowering against the broken window pane?
Someone joked, “Like some kinda ninja granny.”
“Grambo.”
There was uncomfortable laughter.
Andy couldn’t listen to it. She couldn’t be in this room, in this hospital, in this emotional turmoil where the tether that had always linked her back to her mother had been broken.
She turned around and slammed right into a man who was standing too close behind her.
“Sorry.” He tipped his Alabama baseball cap at her.
Andy wasn’t in the mood for chivalry. She stepped to the left as he stepped to the right. The opposite happened when she stepped to the right.
He laughed.
She glared at him.
“My apologies.” Alabama took off his hat and made a sweeping gesture, indicating that she could pass.
Andy walked so quickly that the sliding doors didn’t have time to fully open. She slapped her hand against the frame.
“Bad day?” Alabama had followed her outside. He stood at a respectful distance, but even that felt too close. “You all right?”
Andy glared at him again. Had he not just seen what was on television? Did he not understand that Andy was the useless girl whose mother had faced down a cold-blooded murderer?
And then turned into a murderer herself?
“Is something wrong, Officer?” Alabama kept smiling at Andy.
She looked down at her police-like uniform. The stupid silver badge that was stitched on like a Girl Scout patch—but with far less meaning, because Girl Scouts had to at least do something for those patches. All Andy did was answer phones and walk terrified people through performing CPR or turning off their car engines after a crash.
Jonah