“Daddy,” she said, “you have to try. I won’t always be here.”

Her words had struck him so hard that he couldn’t move, and panicked as she walked off and was swallowed up by the crowd. But she made her way to the cotton candy, just like he knew she would. It was one of the few times since he had come to the Eternal Life church that he truly doubted the existence of God. What twisted deity would grant you the superpower of fatherhood to protect someone who, one day, would not need you?

—

ON THE TWELFTH RING, GEORGE picked up the phone again. “Hello,” Hugh said calmly. “Everything okay in there?”

“Don’t act like you’re on my team.”

“I am, though,” Hugh replied. “I’m gonna make sure everyone listens to what you have to say, so that this ends well for all of us.”

“Oh, I know how this ends,” George said. “You call in your SWAT team and wipe me out like a mosquito.”

“There’s no SWAT team here,” Hugh said, which was actually true. They were still assembling; they had only been called forty-five minutes ago.

“You think I believe that you’re the only cop out there?”

“There are other policemen here. They’re concerned, but no one here is going to hurt you.”

“I bet you have a sniper trained on the door right now.”

“Nope.”

“Prove it,” George said.

A shiver went down Hugh’s spine. Finally. A bargaining chip. “I can prove it to you, George, and give you peace of mind. But I think you should have to give me something, too.”

“I’m not coming out.”

“I was thinking of one of the people inside.” I was thinking of my daughter. My sister. “It’s true they are pressuring me, George, to have a SWAT team assembled. But I said that you and I are having a rational conversation, and that we should wait. If you send out a hostage, that’s going to go a long way to convincing my chief that I’m right.”

“You first.”

“Do I have your word?” Hugh asked.

There was a long pause. “Yes.”

Proof there’s no sniper. Now that he’d promised it, how did he execute that?

Hugh scrambled out of his command tent, still holding his phone. He ran down the sidewalk away from the clinic, blindly grabbing the first cameraman he could. “Dude,” the guy said, backing up. “Hands off.”

“Who do you broadcast for?”

“WAPT.”

“Film me,” Hugh demanded. “Now.” He lifted the phone to his ear again. “George? You still there?”

“Yeah …”

“Is there a TV?” Please, God, let there be a television. “Turn on channel sixteen.”

He heard a scuffle, and a yell, and the voice of a woman. “George?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

But he could hear his own voice coming from the TV inside the Center now. The cameraman had the black eye of the camera trained on Hugh’s face. “George, it’s me. You can see what’s going on behind me, right?” To the cameraman, he said, “Film that way. Pan around me.”

Hugh kept narrating. “It’s like I promised, George. No snipers. No SWAT team. Just some cops who are controlling the scene.” The camera swung back to focus on his face. “So. We have a deal, right? Who are you going to send out?”

—

GEORGE FOUND HIMSELF TRANSFIXED BY the face on the television screen. Hugh McElroy was one of those men who looked tall, even if you couldn’t see his whole frame. He had black hair that was military short, and eyes that looked like the blue heart of a flame. He was staring into the camera as if he could see right into George’s mind.

If he could, he would know what George was thinking. All those years with Lil that he’d believed himself to be her champion? He wasn’t a hero.

Hugh started speaking as if he could indeed read George’s thoughts. “Whatever you did, George, and why ever you did it—doesn’t matter. That’s over and done with. What matters is what you do now.”

George had given his word. He didn’t believe that it meant anything to Hugh, really. But the fact that he’d asked for it had made George feel … well … respected.

For once.

George stalked toward the nurse, the bitch who kept reminding him that there were people bleeding all over the floor as if he couldn’t see it himself, and hauled her upright by her arm. “Pick one,” he said.

—

IZZY LOOKED AT LOUIE WITH her heart in her eyes. He nodded. Even if it felt like a Sophie’s choice, Bex was the hostage who should be released. The rest of them stuck in this room might die. But Bex, if she stayed, would die. “You’ve got to get her out,” Louie said.

“Bex,” Izzy chose.

The shooter started dragging the couch and chairs and tables away from the front door where he’d stacked them like a barricade.

Louie watched him, his eyes narrowed. He looked like any of a hundred white male antis Louie had seen outside clinics. The vast majority of protesters were men, and it made perfect sense to Louie—the male of the species felt threatened by the biology of women. Even in the Bible, normal female biological functions were made pathological: you were unclean when you had your menses. Childbirth had to occur in pain. And there was the questionable nature of those who bled regularly—but did not die.

There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women’s sexuality in the women’s hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man’s role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don’t.

Vonita, God rest her soul, used to say that if men were the ones to get pregnant, abortion would probably be a sacrament. The Super Bowl halftime show would celebrate it. Men who had terminated pregnancies would be asked to stand and be applauded at church for the courage to make that decision. Viagra would be sold with a coupon for three free abortions.

God. Louie missed Vonita already.

Forty years ago, Vonita had had an abortion. It wasn’t legal then, but everyone knew there was a woman in Silver Grove who worked out of her garage. When the woman died in the 1980s and her property got sold and the new people tried to put in a garden, they dug up hundreds of tiny bones, the size of a bird’s.

Vonita told Louie that she herself dreamed of the daughter she didn’t have. She dreamed so vividly of arguing with her lost daughter that she woke up with her throat raw; once, she had dreamed of her daughter braiding her hair and woke up with it in neat cornrows.

She was well aware that although abortion had been legalized, the stigma still existed, even though one in three women would have one. Vonita thought it was her personal calling to create a place where a woman could safely get an abortion if she needed one, a place where a woman could be supported and not judged.

She had opened the clinic and when she couldn’t find a local abortion doctor, she’d tracked Louie down and asked him to fly in to provide services. He had never considered saying no.

“I can’t carry her,” Izzy said, interrupting his thoughts.

“There’s a wheelchair.” Louie pointed to a spot where one was crammed beside a file cabinet, beyond Vonita’s body.

The shooter jerked his gun at Izzy, indicating she could get it. She ran behind the reception desk, past Vonita. She dragged the chair to where Bex lay, straddled the woman, and slipped her arms under Bex’s armpits to lift her. With a struggle that Louie watched, helplessly, she managed to get the woman into the wheelchair and retaped the plastic seal over the chest tube.

Bex coughed and then fought for breath, adjusting to her new position.

“You walk her out,” the shooter said, “and then you come right back. Or I start shooting.” He grabbed the doorknob from the inside and swung it toward him, so that he was hidden behind the slab of wood. Sunlight fell into the room, silhouetting Izzy and Bex.

That slice of light inched close to Louie as the door opened. He leaned a little to the left, wincing, until he could cup the ray in his palm. Suddenly he was seven years old again, sitting on the porch while his grandmama snapped beans. The air was sticky and the wood under his thighs was hot enough to sear the backs of his legs. He stretched out his small hand, trying to catch the sun that spilled through the leaves of the cypress trees. He wondered if it had come to dance for him alone, or if it would put on its show even after he was gone.

Noon

HUGH HAD BEEN THE THIRD POLICEMAN TO ARRIVE. His unmarked car screamed to a stop behind a cruiser. He was immediately approached by two wide-eyed beat cops, who’d been the first to reach the Center after Dispatch’s all-hands-on-deck call reporting an active shooting. “Lieutenant,” one of the cops said. “What do you want us to do?”

“What do we know so far?”

“Nothing,” said the second officer. “We got here ten seconds before you did.”

“Have you heard any gunfire?”