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“This is my mom,” Nikolai explained again, in a whisper. “I told you. She was out back.”
“What are you doing in my house? You have no right! Where’s Masha? Where’s Masha?”
Sophie’s eyes shifted across the kitchen island and landed on the doctor, who was stepping into the doorway. Josh slowly followed her gaze.
His mother, a blood-soaked ghoul, was alive. Like a demon in the doorway, she’d risen, half dead.
Josh mumbled, “No,” and turned around, like Amory had, to run off to who-knows-where.
“Josh!” said the doctor, as Sophie raised her gun and aimed.
CHAPTER 36
“NO! PLEASE!” DR. Parks shouted, hoping that Sophie would spare her son.
But Sophie had already made up her mind. She stood her ground and let Josh run. She didn’t move an inch, and finally the doctor stepped into the kitchen, revealing herself in her full ghastly state.
“Go,” she said to Sophie and Nikolai. “Same as before. But this time for good. Go! Hurry!”
Sophie crossed to Dr. Parks. “No, we’ll stay. We have to call 911 for you.”
“No. I’ll call. I will. Go first. Hurry. Leave. Take all your stuff, all of it, leave nothing behind, and get out of here.”
“Your son might kill you.”
“Give me the gun. I’ll say I did it. I’ll say I shot them, like with the coyote.”
Sophie shook her head no.
“Please,” begged Dr. Parks. “Wait, the bullets. What about the bullets? They’ll check the bullets.” She couldn’t believe she was thinking this straight. “Your fingerprints are on the bullets.”
“No,” Sophie said. “I wore gloves. We never touch nothing. Masha told me to always wear gloves. She always wears gloves.”
“For germs? For the virus? Right? To protect herself?”
“No,” said Sophie, shaking her head. She paused. She would tell the doctor the truth. She owed her that. “For fingerprints. We never leave them on nothing.”
Fingerprints? The doctor was stunned.
“Where are you bleeding?” Sophie said, approaching her, but the doctor backed away for fear. “Why would your son do this to you? Why would a son murder his mother?”
“Why would a father murder his son?”
Sophie gently held out the gun, and the doctor saw that she indeed wore the silicone gloves that Masha bought and kept under every sink in the house, to protect from germs, she always said, from bringing them in or taking them out of the house; and of course to keep her manicures safe, the gel and glitter, the rhinestones.
She wore them to hide her fingerprints?
Clearly and gravely, the doctor realized, she had completely misjudged her maids.
CHAPTER 37
NIKOLAI AND SOPHIE turned and fled through the mudroom door.
“Sophie!” the doctor called after them. They stopped and turned, and listened.
“Go out over the garden wall, behind the grove at the top of the hill. There’s a wood back there and then a ravine. Walk. If you see or hear a car, hide. But keep walking. Head toward the valley.”
“Thank you,” said Sophie, “I’ll pray for you.”
