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When Lydia folds her coat and slips off her shoes at Phoenix airport security, she finds the red soles newly scuffed by concrete and sand, so that the bare colour of leather presses up like the cold linoleum under her stockinged feet. The skirt has no pockets and she's already taken off her belt, but as she walks through the gate the alarm is triggered anyway.
"Ma'am, step aside, please."
Arms up, Lydia concentrates on the narrow line where the dividing wall meets the white ceiling somewhere above the agent's head, and makes herself still and obedient. Hands ghost down the sides of her thighs, skim across her hips and chest, over her furiously beating heart.
She trembles with what she knows, though they won't find a thing on her; she's unarmed and immaculate in her sleekly fitted clothes. Two hours ago she killed ten people, but it happened in a place she can't identify and her impressions of their faces will soon be washed away by the sun. It isn't what she wanted, but knowing how Mike's gun felt against her cheekbone she only regrets that it came to this, that Declan had refused to listen. It would have been so much cleaner if he'd listened.
"It was quick, you know?" Todd had said afterwards, still holding her hand, rubbing circles on the back of her wrist. "It was real professional."
She'd blanched at that: in Lydia's mind, quick and professional meant a silencer and a leather glove, blood but no body, the sandpaper rasp of Mike's breath. Todd's mild voice and careful manner were distracting, so she'd sat in the car and let him calm her, although something about him prickled at the nape of her neck and kept her guarded. Todd offered her a very specific kind of safety, and she trusted him in a very specific way. It was something to be navigated as carefully as the desert, which became vivid and hazardous as soon as she closed her eyes.
"Ma'am, are you wearing any metal pins or clips in your hair?" the agent asks, after a few passes of the wand. Lydia's hands flutter to the back of her head.
"Yes. Yes, I have hairpins. I didn't realise that would be a-- a problem."
"Could you take them out for me, please?"
The long pins that held her French twist together end up in the TSA's perspex bin of pocket knives and nail scissors, so Lydia's hair swings loose in awkward waves as she bends down to slip her shoes back on. She can still feel Todd's broad solid hand settling between her shoulderblades, close to the scruff of her neck.
Lydia doesn't think she can sleep on planes, but when the stranger in the next seat rouses her as they start to descend, the window shade is pressing into her temple and she doesn't remember any of the flight. Nor can she tell whether her watch is back on local time, until the flight attendant announces that they're due to land at 9.46pm Central.
Houston is home, if home means the way that when the industrial lights gather on the edge of the Gulf she feels herself being set back into place. Really, what it means is Kiira. Home is temporary and contingent, but Lydia can't remember when she began to love her daughter; it is something that seems to go on forever. Shortly before Lydia's status as adoptive parent to her tiny, fretful nineteen-month-old girl was legally finalised, she found Kiira's first photograph in her binder of notes and Child Protective Services paperwork and thought I must have loved you since I was born.
Kiira has long since been put to bed when the cab climbs the driveway. The house is quiet as Lydia pulls down the blinds and undresses, folds her skirt for dry-cleaning, puts her jewellery away. She scrubs the makeup from her face and stands in the shower until condensation settles like a fine frost on every surface in the room. The hard spray hammers the tension out of her shoulders and the dust of Arizona dissolves in the inch of water at her feet, and it gets easier and easier to tell herself she was never there.
Things settle back into their ordered positions. Lydia works at her laptop until she can no longer focus on the screen, then sets her alarms for the morning and slips into bed, aching and clean, her nerves buzzing gently. Separated from her transgressions by distance and time, glass walls and cool sheets, she thinks about the ocean. She imagines floating in shallow water off a Mediterranean beach where everything is bright and warm and her bare feet are as white as the sand.
Forgive me, she thinks, more out of reflex than reason. I did my best. If Gus were here, he'd understand. For the last few months she's survived by being needed, but sooner or later people stop needing or stop listening, and Lydia's fear becomes the knife in someone's back. Mike thought her cowardly, and she respected him enough to want to prove him wrong, but Mike is also the reason she triple-checks the home security system every night and doesn't go into underground parking decks any more. She knew that the blast of silence after the gunfire meant that ten men lay with smashed skulls and empty eyes (and where will I shoot you?) and their blood welling uselessly in the sand (in the head, that's right) and she can understand those things without seeing them. She tries to remember the ocean. She tries not to remember the gunshot that echoed from everywhere at once, so loud and so close that for a fraction of a second she thought it was for her.
The time is marked by blurred red digits in the dark when Lydia jerks awake, unfolding like a knife and kicking at the sheets. She knows it's just Kiira, brushing against the comforter and sliding her weight onto the bed, but her startle response has been sharpened lately and she has to gasp for air. She could frighten the child with this sudden ragged panic. She tries to collect herself.
"What's wrong, honey? Did you have a bad dream?"
Kiira crawls under the covers and attaches herself to her mother, tucking her head into the crook of Lydia's neck. She admits no fear. Maybe Lydia doesn't want to know what Kiira's scared of, in case it's something she can't chase away with a flashlight and some reassuring words about what's real and what isn't. They are both so small and fragile in the face of such things, and the walls of the house are so thin.
"Okay, okay. Shh," she soothes, although Kiira's not making a sound. Her hands and feet are cold, as if she's been lingering out of bed for a while, reluctant to creep in and seek contact. Lydia's frantic heartbeat begins to slow down: the way Kiira clings, the gathered weight of her, is comforting. She's getting so tall.
Kiira waits to be coaxed out and taken back to bed, but neither of them really wants to move. With her free hand Lydia folds down the edge of the comforter and adjusts the pillow next to her; she has read so many things about where small children should sleep so as to be safe and well. At the age of five, the pediatrician says, Kiira should be able to get through the night in her own bed, but she is still working through some separation anxiety. (Lydia nods, smiles and doesn't say she's afraid the girl will grow up to be like her.) When she was still very young, Lydia used the sleepless early hours to conference call her colleagues in Hanover with Kiira perched on her lap or nestled in a sling. Meine Tochter will nicht schlafen, she would explain, to murmurs of understanding from the other parents in the group, who by that hour had fed their own children breakfast and taken them to kindergarten. On nights when Lydia comes home early enough, she can still get Kiira to sleep by talking quietly to her in German.
"Let's both go back to sleep, okay? It's very late."
Lydia extricates Kiira's hand from her hair, and the sheets rustle as Kiira climbs off her chest and settles down by her side. She tilts up her forehead for a kiss.
"Goodnight, Mommy. Love you."
"I love you too." I love you unbearably.
Lydia cradles her daughter, feels the neat curve of the back of her head, and breathes. She's lying with her back to the wall where Mike once waited with his gun, but nobody will ever get that close again. She'll kill them first.
Perhaps it shouldn't be this easy to fall asleep, but Kiira draws her down like a sinking stone.