The other boy had been damp, along with the dreadful cold. All they could do now was wait and pray. Poor family.
Thinking of family, where was her sister?
Lily looked at the clock. An hour before Forbes was due. She needed more distraction from melting into a gooey mess about Cam. Last night before they left she’d put one of Bonnie’s diaries in her coat pocket. She took it out now to read, turning back to the entries from early sixties to read more thoroughly, since she’d been interrupted by Kingston’s visit. Had that really only been yesterday?
Milwaukee, 1962
Spring. Gregor and me, we’re finally able to buy a place of our own. It’s perfect. Three bedrooms, so that Jules doesn’t have to sleep in the living room. A bathroom we don’t have to share with other families. I’m putting in pink tile. My man, he says it’s okay by him. So many of our colored brothers and sisters cannot even rent a place in the city, but I will not allow myself to feel guilty. We had a picture taken in front of the house. That’s Barbara and Jules on the steps. Even now I can’t write the address in here, but it’s near a nice park. We worked hard, harder than anybody. We earned our money, and nobody can say we didn’t. Gregor puts in his time at Bucyrus, working on the mining equipment. It’s in his blood, making those big drills. We don’t want trouble. We only want what anybody is supposed to have, a dream, and something to pass on to the children. The land of the free – that’s what it says in the anthem, doesn’t it? It’s a law, a law about our Civil Rights from 1957, says we can vote where we want. To me, that means we can live where we want, too. Everybody in Milwaukee, no matter who, goes to register at City Hall. We vote in the Third Ward. They can give all the funny looks they want, but we are legal citizens and we will vote.
* * *
Lily shifted her eyes from the cramped writing to stare at the far wall of the hospital room. Sharing a bathroom with other families? What kind of place did that? Surely it was illegal. Why had Bonnie been so afraid to even put the address in writing?
Cameron had been right in a way. There were a lot of things about the Civil Rights era she’d never known. Her neck warmed as she realized she’d taken voting for granted. She hadn’t even gone in the last race for state senate. She’d take that privilege more seriously.
May, 1964
Florence Mason is no longer welcome in my home. I’m sorry she has to ride a bus to get here for Ladies Circle, but I’m not sorry I have a place for them to come. I am not a prideful woman as she says, but I will not have her mocking my son’s admit—to the university. If I am proud of anything, it is the accomplishments of my children, not in material things. I told her so. Betty Jean backed me up. Grateful.
That Dr. King would do better to remember it’s not only the Southern Negro has troubles. We here in the North receive our share. My Barbara couldn’t go to Beauty School like she wanted. Vanita said she didn’t need school to get a job in her shop, but I want both my children to get an education – a degree. They give you a degree at Beauty School.
Govmt passed another Civil Rights bill, but it won’t help my Barbara in time. S’posed to say she can go to any public school she wants, but what about after graduation from high school?
All that marching last summer on Washington might look good on the television, but it don’t translate well into real life. A whole lot of hooting and hollering.
So not all black people loved Martin Luther King? Wow, that was a new one on Lily. She read over the words again. No, she shouldn’t take Bonnie’s words as not appreciating Dr. King, just that he was focused on events happening in the south when there were troubles all over back then.
Still. All she had to do was check the evening news.
An alarm sounded from the computer hooked up to Kenny. Lily stood before she remembered it would hurt, and winced. Where was that nurse?
A woman came bustling in. “Morning. What have we here?” She checked the clip stuck on Kenny’s finger. “Hmm, slow breathing.” The nurse studied Lily. “Hi, I’m Mona. I’m Kenny’s nurse today. Looks like he’s still having a bit of trouble catching his breath. We might need to help him out if his numbers don’t get better soon.”
“What does that mean?”
Mona, who was pretty in a round way—round brown hairdo, round cheeks, round glasses, round arms—checked the computer, businesslike, as well as the IV going into Kenny’s hand. “Just that the doctor ordered a tube if needed.”
Lily swallowed. “Will he need it? What happens if he doesn’t get enough air?”
Mona patted her arm. “The doctor will tell you more about it when he comes in. You’re Kenny’s mother?”
“No, his aunt. Lily.”
“Nice to meet you, Lily.” Mona erased the wipe board on the wall by the door and wrote in the new date and her name. “That’s me. Just call if you need anything. You can order breakfast, you know.”
She studied Lily’s hands with troubled eyes and furrowed brow, as if only then realizing something was off. “What did you do to yourself, dear? Will you need some help? Let me see, I think I can round up Pam.”
Mona left before Lily could explain about the frostbite. Maybe she didn’t even need the bandages anymore. Cameron—Cam—could check if he was here. She looked up, heartbeat twitching, when she realized someone stood in the door, and let her shoulders droop.
Forbes.
“Call me paranoid, but I’m getting the distinct feeling people aren’t ecstatic to see me today,” he said with a raised brow.
Any other day, Lily might be ecstatic that a very well put-together professional man had come to see her, but today wasn’t it. She wanted answers, she wanted Kenny awake and all better, and she even wanted Berta back. She wanted the pain-free use of her hands and feet, but most of all, she wanted Cam Taylor here with them.
* * *
Cam checked the black cat-shaped wall clock with the swishing tail above the cashier at Lou’s. Eight forty-five. He reached for his wallet and tossed a ten on the table. “I have to go. I’ll check in later. Thanks for rescuing me,” he told Matt.
Matt waved his fork and swallowed. “Go? Go where? Don’t you want to get to the bottom of all this?”
“I have the impression I’ve stepped into quicksand. I’d better tread lightly.”
“I gave Minerva your number. Your phone all good?”
“Yeah, should be. Thanks.” He looked up at the sound of door chime and loud guffaws. Sven and Ole. Making a tactical decision, Cam sneaked down the hall toward the men’s room, ducked through the kitchen too fast for Lou to fuss, and took the back way out. The whole planet would know the feds had cornered him after those two were through breaking the news. Right now, he wanted to catch Forbes and Lily together at the hospital. If Nurse Ratchet would let him in.
At the med center, for all his worry, it had been surprisingly easy to stride across the waiting area and lobby like he knew what he was doing, climb the stairs, and peek inside the half dozen rooms branching off the corridor. Forbes’s tones trickled to Cam’s ear before he stopped in the door of the next room. The small space was crammed with a bed, its occupant, and lots of flashing equipment, besides Lily on a recliner and the agent on a folding chair.
“So I’m clear,” Forbes was saying, “You aren’t sure if it was your stepbrother’s original idea to set up a job interview with Securities Unlimited?”
Cam clenched his fists, and he stepped back to lean against the wall outside. But then Lily’s voice was muffled. He peeked around again. A blue curtain cut off his view of Lily. He inched closer.
Forbes looked up. “Mr. Taylor.”
Nothing seemed to faze the guy. Cam strode in like he just got here. Lily’s green eyes were huge in her face. She opened her mouth but glanced at the child and closed it. She pursed her lips and breathed out heavily, looking away. Apparently she’d gone mute again. He hoped Forbes got enough intel from her.
The guy had that smirk plastered all over him.
Two white coats w
alked into the room next, making it impossibly crowded.
“Miss Masters?” the older one asked.
“Yes,” Lily replied.
“I’m Doctor Raines, and this is Doctor Hanson. We’re here to take a look at your nephew.” He tilted his head politely at Cam and the agent.
Forbes rose. “Thank you, Miss Masters. I’ll be in touch.” He nodded and walked past Cam, beckoning. “May I talk to you outside?”
“Come back later, Cam…please?” Lily asked, her cheeks now pink.
A hitch in his breathing prevented him from answering out loud. Cam agreed with a wave and followed Forbes. “Hey, I would have appreciated being allowed to at least say hello.”
“You’re going back later.” Forbes led the way to the tiny cafeteria back on the main floor. Barter Valley Medical Center didn’t boast of being the biggest or most opulent, but the food court and tables weren’t crowded or too fussy, and the aroma wasn’t revolting. Crazy thoughts revolved around how Lily would probably like the colors, some sort of purple. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and that kid upstairs. Breakfast sandwiches were warming at one counter, and the coffee smelled fresh. He declined Forbes’s offer of another cup and sat at one of the tables, waiting while shredding a napkin and rolling little balls of paper.
The agent brought a loaded tray with him. “Haven’t eaten yet,” he said and dug into some kind of tortilla thing. After a couple of bites swished with the coffee, Cam waited until Forbes’s mouth was full again before he asked, “So, you were digging around in my personal paperwork at my house? I hope you have a warrant.”
Forbes puckered and chewed faster, swallowed. “Now why would I do that? Are you under suspicion for something?” He settled a serious look on Cam. “Anything I might have accidentally seen at your place of residence was strictly open to public view.” He drank more from the cup. “I’ll be visiting the correctional facility later. I ordered a protection detail sent to the hospital. This is no longer a local situation.”
“This? Local situation? What?” Cam stopped pinching the napkin and glared. “What did it take to get you in on the picture?” He dry-gulped when the real message connected. “Lily is in danger?”
“Until we locate Findley and corroborate the events of yesterday, I feel it’s reasonable to believe Miss Masters was a target of the traffickers.” He kept his voice low, his tone friendly as if they were having an everyday conversation about anything. No one glanced their way a second time. Again, genius. Hiding in plain sight. A quiet conversation in the open kept others from thinking something clandestine was going on.
But Cam’s sense of reality slipped through his fingers. Yeah, right. Like anything had been real since he first came across what he thought was a deer carcass in his backyard.
“No, of course you can’t help what other people do,” Cam’s father had lectured when he was nine years old and some loud bully wouldn’t stop pestering him at the school on the army base in…where, again? Oh, yeah, Germany… “But you can help how you respond,” Dad told him.
“Sometimes you just have to pray,” Grandma tagged on. “That’s the best thing. You pray for your enemies. The good Lord knows all and takes care of his own.”
Just like Lowell tried to tell about in the poem.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.
Only Cam didn’t always like the way it seemed to work out for him.
FORTY-FIVE
“His numbers seem to be coming up,” Doctor Raines said to Lily over Kenny’s bed.
“That thing on his finger keeps making the machine go off,” she said.
“The pulse oximeter? Yes, we’re watching the situation.”
“The nurse said something about a tube? To help him breathe?” Lily said in a low voice. People heard things even when they weren’t awake. She’d read about it in some health magazine. She didn’t want to worry Kenny too much.
“Only if we need to.”
Doctor Hanson had been studying the computer monitor near the door. His beeper sounded. “Looks like I’m needed downstairs,” he told Raines and Lily. “I’ll try to stop in later. Really, Mrs. Masters, Kenny is a lucky little boy.”
“It’s Miss…” Lily became warm and let the words die. What had gotten into her lately? Letting strangers know she was single? Especially in her condition…and with a medical professional, since that last time with the potential college boyfriend had gone so well.
She felt and sounded vulnerable, needy, whiny.
Doctor Raines offered a twinkly grandfather grin and patted Kenny’s blanketed feet. “He’s a trooper. Don’t worry, he’ll wake up when it’s the right time. If you have any other questions, have the nurse”—he checked the board—“Mona call me.”
“Thanks, Doctor Raines. I appreciate everything. I sure wish I knew where his mother was.”
He nodded, eyebrows bunched, and left the room.
Lily watched Kenny breathe for much of the rest of the day, grateful, and tried to pray. Nothing specific poured out, but she remembered from church, a Bible Study, something about the Holy Spirit knowing the words to prayers of the heart if a person ever got stuck. “Keep breathing, Kenny. Don’t worry about a thing. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Hey, Lil.”
For such a big guy, Ole slipped in quietly enough that she had missed it. “Ole.” She was still annoyed with him and gave him a level look.
He shifted his huge feet like a nervous calf. “Um, yeah, about last night…sorry. Ma said you got along fine.” He gestured over his shoulder toward the corridor. “So, how come you got the goon squad out there?”
“I do?” News to her.
“Yeah, like Deegan from the cop shop and one of them guys from Findley’s place.”
She frowned. “Agent Forbes is back? He was here earlier.”
“Nah, not him. The other one that found the…you know…body.”
“Shh!” She gazed at Kenny, letting Ole know by her frown that she didn’t appreciate such an inappropriate subject in front of a child. “They figure out who it is yet?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Okay. Tim said he would send someone to watch Kenny. I didn’t know it would be Agent Stewart. He must have more important things to do. I don’t know why Officer Deegan would be here.”
“Tim?” Ole’s eyes turned a colder shade of ice blue between his furrowed brows.
“Look, I’m sorry about…before, um, when you asked me out. It’s not that I don’t like you and all, because I do, but everything’s just weird right now.”
“Taylor?”
She sucked in a breath, held it to the count of five. “I don’t know that I need to explain anything. You must have gone out plenty since… No? Seriously?” She put her hands up. “Okay, we’ll stop right there. You’re not pining away from some unrequited love for me, but let’s just leave it for a while. I have to concentrate on Kenny. Did you find out anything at the trailer park? Where’s my sister?”
“Yeah, about that…I got news.” He twitched his mouth. “Or, I mean, I don’t. Mahoney, the manager, he said Deegan and your brother were there when the blizzard started.”
“Okay. Then what? Why would the manager say that? Did he tell you why the cops were there?”
“He wouldn’t say. There’ve been some accidents and stuff. We made a transport. Some guy with a bad ticker, and Mahoney said some other outfit was in to pick up a potential patient. He wouldn’t say who, but I can ask around.” Ole turned his head toward the door. “We can talk to the cops, though, right?”
“Yeah.” Lily kept her voice low. “But first, did you run across Art anywhere?”
His face turned red and he examined his boots. “Um, I can’t talk—”
“Like you couldn’t talk yesterday?” Lily forgot to keep quiet and flinched, dropping her voice to a harsh whisper. “When
you didn’t have the common decency to tell me about my nephew? Kenny is my family, Ole. You owe me.”
“I know,” he said in the most miserable voice that almost thawed a piece of Lily’s heart. “But it’s the law. I can’t break the law, Lily. No one would trust me. I’d lose my job.”
She sighed and picked some more at the tattered gauze still attached to one finger, unwound and twirled it. “Let me guess. You and Sven transported Art to the hospital?”
His eyelashes flickered.
“So he’s here right now.”
He studied his feet again before throwing a desperate glace toward the door.
“Great.” She moved a little closer to Kenny. “I suppose we could talk to Officer Deegan. Wanna call him in?”
The officer apparently didn’t need another invitation. He appeared in the doorway and walked over. He reminded Lily a little of a young Kevin Spacey with his hang-dog features and expressive, dark eyes.
“Hi,” Lily said, unsure what she was supposed to do or say or know. She’d never been in this situation, and he’d obviously been listening. “Um, than-thank you for being here.” It came out like a question, and she cleared her throat. He said nothing but inclined his head.
“So, how come?”
“How come I’m here, ma’am?” Deegan replied.
“Right.”
“We have reason to believe you and your nephew are in need of police protection.”
“Because my brother, who tried to get rid of me and plans to kidnap my nephew to do only he knows what, is here in this facility right now?”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am.” Agent Stewart spoke from the door, though he didn’t cross the threshold. “He doesn’t want you dead. Exactly. Either of you.”
“Oh, joy,” Lily said, the sarcasm that she tried hard to control but never quite won, dripping from her lips. “Lemme guess. It’s not really a plot to scam the insurance company. He wants to sell us for sex.”
At the sight of Stewart’s sympathetic expression, Deegan’s worry lines between his eyes, and Ole’s red face, the room begin to spin with a vision of Alice drinking one of the potions in Wonderland and everything starting to shrink. “I was kidding,” Lily whispered. “It’s in the news all the time. People disappear. Oh. My…”
Understory Page 20