For a second, Holly imagined she heard movement on the stairs outside her door, and in the hallway. Her heart fluttered with relief. If she could get someone’s attention and stall Johanna long enough for someone to get help... She spoke quickly to conceal the noise from Johanna.
“Why, uh, why would Oliver’s falling in love with you make his father unhappy?” she asked.
“He never liked my daddy. He didn’t think he was good enough for his precious sister, Elizabeth. He hated me too. He was in on it with Elizabeth, sending me away all the time, sending me away from Oliver so he couldn’t fall in love me. They always kept Oliver home, but me they sent away.”
“Maybe...” she stalled. “Maybe they would have sent Oliver away, too, if he wasn’t such a bad boy? Maybe they didn’t think it was safe to send him away?”
“He was never really a bad boy,” she said, smiling. “All he ever needed was someone to love him. I think that deep down he knew I loved him. But they kept sending me away, and he would rebel. It was only natural. I don’t think even Oliver knew why he was doing all those things he used to do.”
“No. He probably... didn’t,” she stammered, as Oliver’s large form filled the doorway. The door blocked the view between him and Johanna. She couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see that she had a gun. Now Holly was terrified. “You know, Johanna,” she said impulsively, turning a bit to set her glass on the table, hoping beyond reason that Oliver would catch sight of the knife in her waistband, guess at the situation, and go for help. “Adults do so many unthinking, unfeeling things to children. They run around living their own lives and never think about what it’s doing to their children. Look at me and Carolann. She was crazy,” she said, emphasizing the word for Oliver’s sake. “Using all those drugs. She might as well have put a gun to her head, for all the good it did her... and me.”
Johanna made a regretful grimace.
“Yours is a sad story, too, Holly. And I’m sorry for that. I liked you. I thought you had a lot of potential. You could have made something of your life if you’d been given a chance.”
She felt the ominous change as her life slipped from the present to the past tense as Johanna spoke. Her fingers started to ache and her palms were clammy. Her heart was throbbing in her throat, and tears were backing up behind her eyes. Johanna was planning to kill her. She knew it as well as she knew that Oliver was still at the door, that he hadn’t yet gone for help, that her time was running out.
“Why are you doing this, Johanna?” she asked quietly, not wishing to disturb her serene disposition. “I thought we were friends. I trusted you. I did everything you asked of me. I sent Oliver away. I didn’t confront your mother. Why this? Why the gun?”
“Like I said, yours is a sad story. You were always going to die, whether you sent Oliver away or not. You were always going to be another statistic, another poor young woman shot and killed in her own apartment. This really is a terrible neighborhood, Holly.”
“But why? I haven’t hurt you.” Her peripheral vision caught Oliver motioning her back. Back toward the bathroom or the kitchen? The kitchen would put Johanna’s back to Oliver—if she followed. “I won’t hurt you. I’m your friend.”
“I don’t have friends,” she said simply. “I have people who like me because they think I have money, but no real friends. I’ll be sorry to lose you, Holly. I’ll cry when I read about it in the papers. I’ll cry on Oliver’s shoulder at your funeral. And I’ll be sorry. I truly will be, but you couldn’t have stayed here. I’ve seen the way Oliver looks at you. He never would have given up. He would have been hurt and then angry for a couple of weeks, during which time you would have been brutally killed, of course, but then I thought that as long as I was here...” She shrugged and the gun in her hand wavered unsteadily. “I mean, why come all the way back?”
“Johanna,” she said, her tone reasoning. She took a tiny, baby step back toward the kitchen, and Oliver stepped to one side of the door, still watching and listening intently. “You don’t want to do this.” She took another minute step backward. “You’ve never killed anyone before, and... and I hear it’s really ugly.” Another small step. “I hear it’s something that lives with you forever, that never leaves your mind. I hear it haunts you. You don’t want something like that to ruin your life with Oliver, do you?” One more shaky step. Her heart jumped when Johanna took one forward. “I... uh... I’ll move away. I’ll leave. I’ll disappear, out of Oliver’s life.”
“What about your mother?”
“Who? Carolann? I’ll take her with me. I’ll transfer her to another facility. I can do that. I’m her legal guardian, you know.”
She’d taken three more small steps. Johanna had taken two. The apartment felt as big as the Taj Mahal. She was beginning to think she’d never reach the kitchen. Then she felt the doorway behind her.
She must have looked surprised or relieved or glad that she’d reached the opening, because Johanna smiled at her with great sympathy and understanding. “Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be, Holly.”
Without looking, she reached out and pushed at the open door. Only Holly saw Oliver’s fingers suddenly gripping the jamb to keep it from closing completely.
“Hiding in the kitchen won’t help, you know.” Her laughter was pleasant and unnaturally natural. “A liberated woman like you wouldn’t want to die in the kitchen anyway. No. You deserve better. You should die like a real heroine. Burned at the stake or... well, how do they kill heroines these days?” She paused. “I do admire you, Holly. You’re everything I always wanted to be. You have everything I always wanted. And Oliver. Don’t you see that I can’t let you stay?”
Holly shook her head. She couldn’t see it. And she’d run out of words. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and the tears finally broke loose and began to trickle down her cheeks. She was no heroine, she thought, as she questioned the wisdom of falling to her knees and begging for her life.
She stumbled back into the kitchen and found herself pressed tight against the counter, next to the sink. Johanna took one last step to point the gun directly at her. There was nowhere else to go. No place to hide.
The door to the hall swung open, and Oliver’s face was both heavenly and devilish. Tight. Focused. Malevolent. Holly averted her gaze to keep from telegraphing his presence to Johanna.
“You’ll see. This is best for all of us, Holly,” she was saying. “Maybe you should turn around. It’ll be easier for you if you don’t watch.”
“E-easier for you too,” she stammered, taking her last stubborn stand. She looked straight into her eyes. “So you won’t have to see. I want you to see, Johanna. I won’t let you forget what you’re doing.”
Johanna cocked her head to one side, as if struck by a sudden notion. She smiled. She raised her hand slightly, taking careful aim.
At Holly’s head! Don’t shoot me in the head, she kept thinking. Mama won’t recognize me. Oliver will be disgusted. Not my face. Not my head. Not my mind.
They all heard it at the same time. Oliver had taken several steps into the room and was within reach of Johanna’s arm when his final step disturbed the aged floorboard beneath his foot. It whined and squeaked as if it were in pain; a noise generally unnoticed or ignored was now louder than the screams from hell.
The next second crawled by in the space of an eternity.
Johanna turned, the gun aimed straight at Oliver’s heart. Holly screamed and took a mad, wild dive at Johanna from behind. Oliver ducked out of the way even as he tried to reach out and grab the gun. When the gun fired, with so quiet and benign a sound, like a rush of air that was heard and gone in the same instant, no one even realized it had gone off. But suddenly there was blood, and the three of them grappled for the gun. The blood, the horror, the screams, the grunts, the cries...
And then it was over.
The clocks started again and time moved on.
The gun fell to the floor and Johanna broke loose, knocking Oliver to one
side and down to his knees, dropping Holly to the floor behind her. She’d vanished through the door before Holly could look up, and then all she saw was Oliver’s blood—on the wall behind him, on the floor, on his face. Part of the left sleeve of his ski jacket was missing.
“Oliver!” she cried as he got to his feet and turned to follow Johanna. “Oliver! You’re hurt. Stop!”
“Call the police,” he shouted back at her with what seemed like his last breath. “Now! Stay here. Wait for me.”
“What?”
“Stay here. Wait for me.” He repeated his words from several feet down the hall.
Holly staggered over to the telephone. It was so queer... The entire incident with Johanna didn’t seem nearly as strange to her as Oliver’s parting words. Not the “stay here,” but the “wait for me” words. They rang like bells in the back of her head as she dialed 911.
“Wait for me. Wait for me. Wait for me.”
She disengaged the “please hold” and redialed.
“Wait for me. Wait for me.” The words were so familiar, and yet she was sure he’d never said them to her before. It was like... like a dream, like a memory... like déjà vu, or simply a mental souvenir to jog her memory of some great event or precious moment.
When the operator answered, she quickly told her the information she needed and then dashed to the door to follow Oliver, without hanging up the phone.
She found him, with Johanna wrapped tightly in his arms, on the stairs below the second-floor landing. She couldn’t tell if there had been a struggle. Johanna was weeping pitifully, and he was rocking her back and forth, and back and forth, looking dazed, weak, and tired.
He heard her on the stairs above them and looked up. There was a sadness in his eyes that came directly from his soul. A little relief, too, some remorse and some pity. There was blood soaking through the hole in the left sleeve of his jacket, and she could see that his left hand was covered with it—it was dripping off one side.
“Oliver,” she said, whispering and not knowing why as she crouched and crept closer to them. “Your arm...”
He shook his head and closed his eyes without loosening his grip on Johanna. His head jerked upright and he opened his eyes again, as if he’d almost fallen asleep.
“I called,” she said quietly, talking to keep him awake; to keep him from passing out from the shock and the pain and the loss of blood. “They’ll be here soon. Hold on, Oliver. Is she all right? Is she hurt?”
He glanced down at his step-cousin, frowning as if he didn’t know who she was, then shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” he murmured. After a moment, he added, “I never dreamed... I saw her car... down the street... I never thought...”
“No one did.” She heard sirens in the distance, and for the first time in her life, she welcomed the familiar sound, praying they were headed their way. “It’s over. All her pain is out in the open now, and she can begin to heal.”
“Why didn’t I see it?” he asked, his voice low and frail. “I never looked at her. I never saw her.”
“You had to heal your own wounds first, Oliver. It isn’t anyone’s fault.”
His head sort of bobbed on his shoulders, and he tightened his hold on Johanna. She lay in his arms like a loose bag of bones. Powerless. Without purpose. She wept quietly now, her sobbing muffled in his ski jacket.
Wanting to cry, not for Johanna, not for Oliver, not for herself, but for the whole world, Holly closed her eyes and leaned the side of her head against the stairwell. The three of them were safe now. Not from one another, but from their pasts.
Not a cynic by nature, she couldn’t help but wonder who the fool was who had made babies the symbol of new life, of new beginnings. There ought to be someone around to point at, to tell them they were wrong, to show them how children come into the world carrying the baggage of their parents.
Kind, loving baggage from Marie and Roberto Spoleto. Deluded and pathetic, maybe, well-intended baggage from Carolann and whoever her father was. Quiet, misguided baggage from Oliver’s parents. Selfish, greedy, mindless baggage from Max and Elizabeth George.
Good or bad, it was all baggage that children had no control over. All they could do was take it in and react to it. Was it a dice roll, a flip of the coin, a draw of the straw as to whose suitcase they ended up with? Or did it all fit into her theory of reincarnation as to whether you got nice sturdy, dependable luggage or a beat-up knapsack at birth? Either way, it was plain that a baby’s life was never truly fresh and new. It was more an extension of the life it came from, and the life before that, and the one before that...
A child’s life was never his own until he accepted the burden of his parents’ belongings and molded them into something he could carry and live with. And then... he passed to his child, and to his child after that, and to his child after that...
Thirteen
THE POLICE TOOK JOHANNA away.
Holly protested when they handcuffed her; it was like watching them bind up a Raggedy Ann doll. But they insisted it was as much for her own protection as it was for theirs, and they were gentle with her as they passed her into the backseat of the squad car.
She’d stopped crying. She sat mute and staring off into space as if it were happening to someone else. As if she weren’t really there at all.
“Johanna?” Holly said softly, leaning into the car, a policeman standing nearby. “Johanna? If you can hear me, I want you to know this doesn’t change anything. I still want to be your friend.”
The woman’s blue eyes moved slowly toward hers, but when they met, there was no sign of Johanna in them.
“I understand, Johanna. I know and I understand.”
Johanna didn’t care.
She stepped back and closed the door, and as she watched the car drive away she thought of Carolann. How many times had she been taken away in just such a manner? And how many times had she fought her way back, only to find that there was still no one around to tell her they loved her?
It wouldn’t happen to Johanna. Johanna had Holly—and Holly knew about love.
An ambulance had been called for Oliver.
He’d passed into unconsciousness almost the minute the policemen had pried his fingers loose of Johanna. He’d come around momentarily, to protest their prodding fingers near his wound and to insist that an ambulance wouldn’t be necessary if they’d give him a ride to a hospital, and then he was gone again.
Holly held his head in her lap until the paramedics came. She answered the policemen’s questions and told them to contact Oliver’s aunt in regard to both Oliver and Johanna. In the end, she’d made the entire incident sound more like a family dispute with the gun going off by accident—which in truth it had—and not like the intended murder it might have been.
She followed the stretcher they’d put Oliver on into the back of the ambulance and held his hand as they drove away from the apartment building. She wondered briefly if anyone had thought to close her front door, but didn’t think of it again as Oliver began to stir to consciousness once more.
“Holly?”
“Yes, Oliver. I’m here.”
“Don’t go away.”
“I won’t, Oliver. I’ll be right here.”
“Wait for me.”
Aw, wow. There it was again. All the little hairs on her arms and at the back of her neck stood straight up and wiggled with the heebie-geebies.
“You aren’t going anywhere, Oliver. Just to the hospital, and I’ll stay with you the whole time. I promise.”
“Wait for me.”
“I will. Stop saying that. I promise, I will,” she said. She was almost shouting at him. He didn’t seem to be hearing her reassurances. “Oliver?”
He’d lapsed into unconsciousness once more. He was so pale. He was always so strong and confident; it was frightening to see him helpless and weak. What if the paramedics were wrong? What if it was more than what they’d called a simple flesh wound? What if he’d lost more bloo
d than they suspected? What kind of a gunshot wound was ever simple, for crying out loud?
“Oliver?” she called, recognizing the panic in her own voice.
Panic that hadn’t been there the whole time she’d been with Johanna. Panic that hadn’t been there when she’d talked to the police. Panic that wouldn’t be there at all if it hadn’t suddenly occurred to her how close she’d come to losing him, how close to his heart the bullet had come, how close to her heart he’d become.
“Oliver, don’t die,” she said, starting to cry at last. She slid off whatever she was sitting on, elbowed the attendant out of the way, and got closer to him. “Please, Oliver,” she said close to his ear. “We can be rich if you want. You can buy me a car, a big one, a big red one, and I’ll drive it everywhere... And a house, bigger than Carey House, with gold door-knockers and... and bodyguards.” She sniffed and wiped her cheek and nose with the back of her hand. “Big, ugly bodyguards. You can buy me anything you want and I’ll act happy to get it, even if I don’t need it, and... and in the winter we’ll burn the money. I’ll roll ten-dollar bills into little Presto-Logs”—she showed him how she’d do it with her fingers—“and we’ll take turns throwing them into the fireplace, just please, please don’t die.”
“Ma’am?” said the medic beside her. She glanced at him. He was watching her as if he thought she needed the stretcher more than Oliver did. “Ma’am, he isn’t going to die. His vital signs are stable and he’s stopped bleeding. He’s just weak. He’ll be fine.”
“Oh, what do you know?” she said irrationally. “People die all the time when they’re not supposed to. I did and look at me.”
He was. With a great deal of caution.
“Holly?” It was Oliver. His voice was weak; his lips were dry.
“Yes, Oliver? Oh, yes, Oliver, what?”
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