Kisscut

"Men are so weak," Je

"Je

"I'll give you to five," Je

Jeffrey swallowed hard. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he saw rather than heard the girl as she counted.

"Two."

"Je

"Three."

Jeffrey took aim. She wouldn't do this. There was no way she would do this. She could not have been more than thirteen. Thirteen-year-old girls did not shoot people. This was suicide.

"Four."

Jeffrey watched the young woman's finger tighten on the trigger, watched the muscles along her forearm work in slow motion as she moved to tighten her finger.

"Five!" she screamed, the veins in her neck standing out. She ordered, "Shoot me, goddamn it!" as she braced herself for the Beretta's recoil. He saw her arm tense and her wrist lock. Time moved so slowly that he could see her muscles engaging along her forearm as her finger tightened on the trigger.

She gave him one last chance, yelling, "Shoot me!"

And he did.

Chapter Three

At twenty-eight weeks old, Je

For the past three-and-a-half hours, Sara had tried to reassemble the baby from the parts Je

Still, it was not enough. Working on the child, tying the tiny sutures, was like pulling a thread on a sweater. For every area repaired, there was another that could not be concealed. There was no disguising the trauma the child had been through. In the end, Sara had finally accepted that her self-appointed task was an exercise in futility. The baby would go to the grave looking much the way she had looked the last time her mother had seen her.

Sara took a deep breath, reviewing her report again before signing off on her findings. She had not waited for Jeffrey or Frank to begin the autopsy. There had been no witnesses to the cutting and dissecting and reassembling Sara had performed. She had excluded them on purpose, because she did not think she could do this job while other people watched.

A large window separated Sara's office from the outer morgue, and she sat back in her chair, staring at the black body bag resting on the autopsy table. Her mind wandered, and she saw an alternative to the death she had been assessing. Sara saw a life of laughing and crying and loving and being loved, and then she saw the truth: Je

Since an ectopic pregnancy several years ago, Sara had been unable to have children. This had been hard news to bear at the time, but over the years the loss had dulled itself with other things, and Sara had learned to stop wanting what she knew she would never have. Yet there was something about the unwanted child on the table, the child whose own mother had taken her life, that stirred up these emotions in Sara again.

Sara's job was taking care of children. She held them in her arms, cradled them, and cooed at them the way she would never be able to with her own child. Sitting in the morgue, staring at the black bag, that longing to carry a baby came back with startling clarity, and with it came an emptiness that made her chest feel hollow.

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Sara sat up, wiping her eyes, trying to collect herself. She pushed her palms against the top of her desk and forced herself to stand as Jeffrey walked into the morgue. Sara was looking for her glasses, trying to compose herself, when she noticed that Jeffrey had not come directly into her office, as he normally did. Through the glass, she could see that he had stopped in front of the black bag. If he saw Sara, Jeffrey did not acknowledge her. Instead, he leaned over the table, his hands behind his back. Sara wondered what he was thinking, wondered if he was considering the life the baby could have had. Wondered, too, if Jeffrey was considering the fact that Sara could never give him children.

Sara cleared her throat as she walked into the room, holding the autopsy report to her chest. She slid the chart onto the edge of the table and stood across from Jeffrey, the baby between them. The bag was too large for the baby and it gaped open around the body like a blanket because Sara had not had the emotional strength to zip the child into more darkness and place her on a shelf in the freezer.

There was nothing she could think to say, so Sara was quiet. She tucked her hand into the pocket of her lab coat, surprised to find her glasses there. She was putting them on when Jeffrey finally spoke.

"So," he said, his voice gravelly and low as if he had not used it much lately. "This is what happens when you try to flush a baby down the toilet."

She felt her heart stop at his callousness, and did not know how to respond to it. She slipped off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with the tail of her shirt to give herself something to do.

Jeffrey took a deep breath and let it go slowly. She leaned in closer, thinking she smelled alcohol, knowing this could not be the case because Jeffrey seldom drank more than the occasional beer while watching Saturday college football.

"Tiny feet," he mumbled, his eyes still on the body. "Are they always that small?"

Again, Sara did not answer. She looked at the feet, the ten toes, the wrinkled skin on the soles. These were the kind of feet a mother would kiss. These toes were the kind of toes a mother would count each day the way a gardener counts blooms on a rose bush.

Sara bit her lip, trying not to let herself go again. The emptiness in her chest was almost overwhelming, and she put her hand over her heart without thinking.

When Sara was finally able to look up, Jeffrey was staring at her. His eyes were bloodshot, tiny red lines shooting out from his irises. He seemed to be having trouble holding himself up. She did not know if this was from alcohol or grief.

"I thought you didn't drink," she said, aware there was an accusatory tone to her voice.

"I thought I didn't shoot children, either," he said, staring somewhere over her shoulder.

Sara wanted to help him, but she felt paralyzed by her own grief.

"Frank," Jeffrey said. "He gave me a shot of whiskey."

"Did it help?"

His eyes watered, and she watched him fighting this. His jaw worked and he gave a humorless smile.

"Jeffrey-"

He shook off her concern, asking, "Did you find anything?"

"No."

"I don't-" He stopped, looking down, but not at the child. His eyes were focused on the tiled floor. "I don't know how to behave," he finally said. "I don't know what I should be doing."

Something in his tone cut Sara deep down. To see him broken like this hurt her more than the pain she was experiencing herself. She walked around the table and put her hand on his shoulder, but he would not turn toward her.