SeventeenBridget gagged even as Plum Cake’s agony, the guttural sobbing, raw and belly-deep, filled her with pity and sorrow. In bed with Wire the night after Papa Henry’s murder, she’d cried as hard, biting on her blankets as anguish rolled over her in wave after wave.
Plum Cake’s situation was bad, horrible, but her heaves of emotion seemed to come from an even more cavernous source. As though her helplessness unearthed myriad agonies from another time.
“It’s all right.” Bridget’s eyes stung with pity. “We can fix this.”
“I wish I was dead.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Bridget said. She hadn’t. Never anything like this. She tucked her nose into the neckline of her shirt, took a breath there. “It’s just illness. I’ve been around a lot of illness.”
“Go away,” Plum Cake moaned.
Bridget hadn’t
