Guilt Read Free Page B

palms facing one another about a foot apart. “Something dark. Maybe a backpack.”
    â€œHer backpack?”
    â€œNo. She had a briefcase. She always carried a briefcase. She was always so proper and professional. A suit and a briefcase, and she—”
    â€œSo she had a backpack, not her briefcase?” Annie said, cutting in.
    Jackie’s face clouded with confusion. “She had both. But she was holding the backpack out in front of her.”
    â€œLike she was showing it to someone?”
    Jackie nodded. “I heard her calling. She was there, standing on the steps … and then she wasn’t.” Jackie’s mouth strained open in a wordless scream.
    Annie put her hand on Jackie’s arm.
    â€œI knew something was going to happen,” Jackie added.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œHer aura. Everyone has an aura, you know.” Jackie tilted her head to one side and gazed at Annie. “You, too. A pale blue band, right next to your skin. That’s protection and strength. When I saw Miss Boudreaux this morning, that’s what I noticed. The blue was real faint. I tried to tell her.”
    They’d never talked about it, but Peter was pretty sure where Annie stood on the subject of auras. Same place she stood when it came to alien abductions and crop circles.
    â€œIt’s my fault.” Jackie’s voice was barely a whisper. “I should have made her listen. Warned her. And it’s my fault we met there. I was afraid that Joe—” Her eyes widened. “You don’t think Joe could have … I mean he didn’t know where I was going to be. How could he? I was at work. He was at work…” There was a second’s pause and her eyes lit up with anxiety. She jumped up, knocking over a chair. “Sophie!”
    Peter exchanged a look with Annie. “You go,” he said. “I’ll find my way back to your office and meet you there later.”
    He knew as well as she did that Jackie wasn’t thinking clearly. But then, sometimes irrational fear called for irrational action. You couldn’t always sit around and calmly analyze the situation. Jackie needed to know her daughter was safe.

3
    A NNIE WAS already out of her chair holding her car keys. She raced for the door with Jackie after her. They darted across the street, between the stalled-out cars, to her Jeep.
    Annie started the car, and Jackie gave her directions to Sophie’s school. Traffic going into the Square still wasn’t moving. Fortunately, the school was in the opposite direction. She gunned the engine, and the Jeep seemed to leap from its parking spot.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Jackie said, staring down into her lap.
    Annie squashed the surge of anger. Don’t apologize! she wanted to scream. It was all of a piece with what Jackie had learned from years married to that abusive louse. Whatever bad thing happened, he managed to make it her fault. If he had to beat the crap out of her, well, that was her fault, too. Peter probably had a fancy term for it. Annie called it “doormat syndrome.” At least in self-defense class Jackie was learning how to fight back.
    Didn’t sound as if Mary Alice had had a chance to fight back. Wrong place, wrong time. Shit happened—that’s what everyone said. It would be a long time before Annie would get to where she could accept this particular piece of shit. She felt herself choking up. She couldn’t cry, damn it. Now was not the time. Focus.
    She punched the radio and news came on. A commentator was on the scene, talking about the explosion. The entire Harvard Square area was closed to traffic. The Red Line subway trains were stopped. Dozens had been hurt, at least one fatality. A breathless witness reported: “It was a woman. I saw her. She shouted something, and then she blew herself up.”
    Now the commentator was spinning—a female suicide bomber, unheard of just a few