The room was silent. Abby was still holding Danny’s hand, and Mac saw her press her fingers gently. Danny squeezed back and then let go and turned toward the stairs. She took them slowly, as if very tired.
Cleo waited until they heard Danny’s bedroom door close upstairs, her pistol still on Sherrill. “Abby, go ahead and make that call. Tell them to cut their damn lights this time. We don’t want a repeat of cop cars scaring everybody to death.”
Relief seeped through Mac. Cleo was calm now, grim but rational. She heard Abby call her name softly.
“You all right, Counselor?”
“I’m fine, Doc.”
Abby nodded, and started toward the kitchen.
“You go on and make that call, Doc.” Sherrill’s words were still slurred, but the venom in them was poisonously clear. “I’m the one that needs a little protection here. The cops are gonna be real interested in seeing a convicted felon waving a handgun around. They’ll cuff your ass, you black bitch.”
“Shut up, Sherrill.” Cleo sounded more disgusted than angry. “You’ve got nothing on me.”
“I got a drinking buddy who remembers you real well.” Sherrill rested his butt against the back of the sofa and folded his beefy arms. “Told me he heard a murderer got hired out at this place. Said this worthless hag ran over a kid several years back, when she was drunk out of her mind. And then drove off and left him to die in the street.” Sherrill grinned. “Real sweet role model ol’ Lily ran off with, hey? Did she know about that dead kid, Cleo? Does Danny know? You think I won’t tell her?”
“There’s no need, Mr. Sherrill, because you’re talking about me.” Abby still stood in the kitchen doorway, her face the color of ash. “You might as well get your facts straight. I didn’t kill the boy, but I crippled him. He’ll never walk again. I was never convicted of a crime, however, and I didn’t go to prison, so your ugly threats are useless. I suggest you direct your energies to following your daughter’s advice.” She turned, and went through the swinging door.
Mac and Cleo stood very still.
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m not leaving my Danny here.” Sherrill got heavily to his feet. “Not with a crazy bulldyke and a fucking drunkard. You all brainwashed her against me. You perverts put your hands on her in the night, don’t you? That’s what you’ve always wanted, Cleo, you bl—”
Mac took three steps, drew back her fist, and punched Sherrill in the jaw, a roundhouse right with all her strength behind it.
He uttered a sharp barking sound and staggered back against the couch, then toppled over it, sprawling on the cushions.
Mac stood over him. “I’d stay down, you sorry sack of sewage. And keep your mouth shut. Open it again, and I’ll shoot you myself.” Her hand hurt like hell.
Behind her, Cleo whistled softly.
Whether it was Mac’s threat, his aching jaw, or the continued presence of Cleo’s handgun, Sherrill chose not to push it. He remained in a sodden slump on the couch, his hands dangling between his knees, breathing noisily.
Abby pushed through the door from the kitchen and took in the subdued scene. She looked at Mac, then walked over to Cleo and spoke to her quietly. Cleo nodded and lowered her gun, still holding it ready by her side.
Abby stepped behind Cleo and started massaging her shoulders, and she was still doing it when the police cruiser pulled into the front drive. An hour and several forms later, the police were gone, Sam Sherrill in tow.
Chapter Thirteen
Abby closed the door to Danny’s bedroom, cushioning any sound with the heel of her hand. Cleo and Mac had both visited the girl earlier, and more than anything now, Danny needed the peace and privacy to sleep.
Abby’s step was silent on the carpeted hallway that connected the private quarters of the staff. Abby paused outside Cleo’s door. It was cracked open, a small light burning within. Abby hesitated. As the sole personal space any of them had, bedrooms were considered fairly sacrosanct. Cleo was especially fierce about her privacy because she was fierce about almost everything. But because Cleo was her friend, Abby knocked softly.
“Yep.”
Abby peered around the door. Cleo was propped up in bed, a shoebox in her lap. Photos were scattered across her blankets.
She looked up at Abby over the gold wire-rimmed glasses she wore only for reading. “Is she down for the night?”
“Yes, I think so.” Abby came into the room, but not too close to the bed, not wanting to see the photographs unless invited. “Your Danny did a fine job down there.”
“Yeah, she spoke up for herself real well.” Cleo lifted another photo from the shoebox.
Like Abby’s, Cleo’s bedroom was small. Unlike Abby’s, it was a cheerful mess, paperwork and books scattered everywhere, pictures of her mother and sisters, her nieces and nephews taped haphazardly on one wall. But her furry bear slippers were paired neatly on the floor beside her bed. Abby’s gaze chanced across a framed drawing on another wall, and she had to smile. It was the portrait Danny had drawn, depicting Cleo about to ignite herself with her cigarette. It might have been intended as a health advisory, but predictably Cleo had enshrined it as art.
The silence between them grew. Abby waited, braced for questions about drinking and driving and a crushed boy lying in the street. But it seemed Cleo had a more important question in mind.
“You want to see Danny’s mom?” Cleo extended the picture toward Abby, smiling almost shyly.
Relieved, Abby took the small square and held it closer to the lamp beside the bed. “Ah, honey. She was lovely.”
Perhaps not traditionally so. Lily Sherrill had been thin and spare, and there was a pleasant plainness to her even features. But that broad splash of a smile was all Danny, dazzling and warm. Abby would have enjoyed sitting down with this woman over a pot of good tea, and talking about their lives.
“There won’t be another like her, for me.”
Abby felt her smile fade. Cleo had spoken the words with such quiet finality, as if voicing a simple truth. “Really, Cleo? You don’t think you’ll find a partner again?”
“Lily was my wife.” Cleo shrugged and took the photo back. She looked down at the image fondly. “I ain’t saying I’m determined to be a widow for life, but damn, she would be a hard act to follow.”
Abby stifled the impulse to argue with her. She certainly didn’t believe every human being needed to be matched to a mate—she quickly suppressed an image of Mac—but she wanted so much for this stubborn, loving woman to be blessed with every gift life can offer. “I’m sorry, Cleo.”
“No. I’ve been lucky, Ab.” Cleo was still gazing down at Lily’s face, with no trace of sadness now. “We had five years together. Some people look all their lives and never find what we had. Hell, most never find it. Do you know how rare that kind of love is?”
“What you and Lily shared must have been very—”
“I’m not spewing platitudes here.” Cleo lowered the photo. She removed her glasses and looked at Abby with an intensity that surprised her. “Do you know how rare that kind of bone-deep love is, Abby? And how incredibly fucking lucky we are, if we get even the smallest chance to find it?”
“Yes,” Abby whispered. “I do know how rare love is.”
“Sometimes, you’ve just got to be brave.” The corner of Cleo’s mouth lifted. “That’s how Danny summed up everything she’s learned in her sessions with Mac. Hey, speaking of.” She slipped her glasses back on. “You got your spare medical bag up here?”
“Yes, in my room, I think.” Abby struggled to refocus. “Why?”
“Mac smashed the hell out of her hand when she clocked Sherrill down there.” Cleo grinned. “A sight I truly wish you hadn’t missed, by the by.”
“I’m just as glad I did.” Abby frowned. “Is she really hurt?”
“Looked like it was swelling up to me. You might want to check it out.”
“I will, after I clock her in the jaw myself for not telling me about this.” Abby started towa
rd the door, then stopped, and turned back to Cleo. “Hey. You about ready to sleep?”
“All tucked in my jammies and everything.” Cleo’s eyes warmed. “Good night, Abby-gail.”
“Sleep well, Ms. Lassiter.”
“Leave the door cracked, so I can hear Danny if she wakes up.”
“Will do.”
Abby went to her room and retrieved the small satchel from a closet shelf. She felt unreasonably annoyed as she made her way to Mac’s door and tapped on it softly but rapidly.
“I’m awake.”
Abby turned the knob. “Permission to enter?”
“Granted.” Mac was sitting back against her headboard, reading, her lean form bathed in gold light from the bedside lamp. She smiled at Abby. “Is Danny se—”
“Danny’s fine, she’s asleep.” Abby went to the bed and saw the folded washcloth resting across the knuckles of Mac’s right hand. She sighed and touched the damp cloth. “This is fairly useless in terms of swelling. May I?”
Mac set her book aside. “Okay.”
Abby plucked the washcloth off her hand. The knuckles looked chafed and raw, and there was definite bruising underway. “Honestly, Mac. Scoot over.”
Mac’s eyebrows rose, but she shifted her long legs, and Abby sat on the edge of the bed. She lifted Mac’s hand and tilted it carefully beneath the light. “Move your fingers, please.”
Mac obliged, slowly and with some evident pain. “Nothing’s broken, Doc.”
“Well, I doubt if we can know that for sure without an X-ray, but I’ll have to take your word for it tonight.” Abby laid the washcloth aside and opened her satchel. She tore open a pack of antibiotic cream and smoothed a small dab over the chafed skin at the base of Mac’s fingers.“Cleo mentioned I might want to look in on the consequences of your sudden punching prowess. You might have told me yourself, Mac.”
“I didn’t want you to see this.”
That startled Abby, and brought her out of the distracted irritation she couldn’t explain in the first place. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sorry I hit Sherrill. I’d do it again, given a chance to do things over.” Mac shifted her bruised hand. “But it’s nothing I’m proud of, either.”
“Cleo said he was saying terrible things.”
“Yeah.” Mac shrugged. “I just don’t think violence is ever an appropriate response to words, even terrible ones.”
Abby rested Mac’s battered hand on her knee. They sat together quietly for a while as she probed the contours of her fingers with care. She reached into her satchel, pulled out a chemical ice pack, and bent it to activate it. She draped it over Mac’s knuckles, then took out a small roll of elastic bandage. Mac’s gaze was on her, tender and patient.
“I wasn’t much older than Danny.” Abby unclipped the bandage and began winding it around Mac’s hand, to provide some support and hold the ice pack in place. “I’d only had my driver’s license for a year.”
“Abby.” Mac was a still presence beside her. Abby could feel the warmth of her shoulder against her own. “I want to listen. But don’t let Sam Sherrill choose your time to talk about this.”
“No, it’s all right.” Abby wound the bandage evenly, careful not to make it too tight. “I was eighteen. I’d been to a party. My first experience with drinking, really. I never even saw the boy. He was riding his bike through a well-marked crosswalk, at a well-lit intersection. He had a dozen reflective patches on his jacket and pants. I simply plowed straight into him. I did stop, however. Sherrill was wrong about that.”
Abby fixed the small Velcro strip at the end of the bandage around Mac’s wrist. “Several vertebrae were crushed. I know now that the damage couldn’t have been repaired, even if the boy had had surgery instantly, but I stood over him for nearly fifteen minutes. There were no other cars. I was so wiped out I couldn’t think.”
Mac had an old-school wind-up clock beside her bed, one that ticked rather than blinked. Abby found its soft, continuous chant soothing. It counted off a full minute of silence.
“Help me understand.” Mac covered Abby’s hand with her uninjured one. “Abby, you probably couldn’t think because you were in shock. And yes, you made a terrible mistake, all those years ago. But it was a mistake. And you were hardly more than a kid yourself.”
“Well, the mistake kept right on happening, for a while.” Abby rested her head against the headboard, avoiding Mac’s gaze. “The next morning, my father hired the best legal firm in the city. The case was dismissed without even going to court. But we learned a few days later that the parents wanted to sue. So there was a meeting. Me and my father, our attorney, and the boy’s father.”
Abby’s saliva turned bitter in her mouth. “My lawyer wanted to know why the boy had been allowed out on his bike alone at night. Apparently there had been a Child Protective Services report on the family, years before. My lawyer asked the father if he wasn’t concerned that he might lose custody of his son, if he insisted on dragging out a lawsuit and all the facts came to light. There was little chance of that, but our attorney was quite good. The man certainly couldn’t afford high-powered legal help, and he was frightened. We never heard from him again.”
Mac twined her fingers through Abby’s.
“I sat in that meeting and I watched my father’s face. Social justice was his life, Mac. He devoted his career to fighting the abuse of power, and teaching others to fight it. I saw him age a decade that morning. It may have been the only dishonorable thing Phillip Glenn ever did. My mother has barely spoken to me since.”
Abby realized she couldn’t put off seeing Mac’s face forever. She looked up, and the kindness in Mac’s eyes loosened the vise in her chest.
“And now you work with women and kids who can’t buy their way out of trouble,” Mac said quietly. “You could be bringing in huge money working in hospitals, or in private practice. Instead, you came here.”
“Yes.” Abby nodded. “Penance, I suppose.”
“Maybe at first. Now it’s service.” Mac said the word with as much respect as Cleo had voiced the word “wife.” “And you love your work, Abby.”
“I do.” Abby drew her hand through her hair. “The boy is a graduate student at MIT now, on scholarship. Chemical engineering. I believe he’s some kind of genius. But he’ll always be in a wheelchair, and he’ll never father children.”
Mac’s long fingers were strong and warm, laced through hers. And it was staring down at that hand that returned Abby at last to the visceral connection she shared with Mac, in a way that broke through all her defenses. It was remembering how Mac’s hand had trembled as she cradled her face when they kissed.
She was touching Abby’s chin, tipping her face so she would look at her. Abby did, and knew she would be lost if she didn’t go now. She slipped her hand free and reached for her satchel, then rose unhurriedly from the bed. “Good night, Counselor.”
Abby crossed the small room, noticing its chill for the first time, and had opened the door when Mac spoke.
“Abby. Stay.”
Abby gazed at the oak panels of the door in front of her. The small clock ticked off the seconds. Then she closed the door, and turned back to Mac.
Sometimes, you just had to be brave.
Mac lifted the edge of the bedcovers, and Abby slipped off her shoes and slid fully clothed beneath them. She heard herself titter—actually titter—from sheer nerves. “Is this some gallant bow to my British prudery?”
“Nah.” Mac chuckled, climbing beneath the blankets herself. “It’s just cold in here.” She raised herself on one elbow. “Bienvenida, Abby Glenn. Welcome.”
“Thanks,” Abby whispered. Mac’s handsome features were so familiar to her now, and so dear. She started to speak, but Mac rested a finger against her lips.
“You’ve been lying here beside me, just like this, for a lot of nights now. I’ve made love to you a hundred times or more, in my mind. I’d like to touch you now the way I have in my dreams, if that’s
all right with you.”
“Yes.”
Mac tucked the blankets around Abby’s shoulders, to keep her warm. And at first her touch was as light and platonic as air, brushing Abby’s hair off her forehead. She drew one finger down the side of her face, studying her so closely that Abby realized this was the first time they could gaze at each other, full and long, without having to look away to disguise their hearts.
Mac cupped her face again as their lips met. There was no tremor in her fingers now, they were warm and sure. The kiss deepened from a friendly brushing to a more sensual caress, and a soft sigh escaped Abby as her body melted against the sheets.
“Mph.” Abby had to speak, and Mac lifted her head quickly. “Mac. Cleo and Danny and God and everyone are right down the hall.”
“Abby.” Mac blinked. “They’re behind solid walls, and they’re probably sound asleep.”
“Oh. Right. No real worries, then.”
Mac grinned, a flash of white in the dim gold light. She rested her hand on Abby’s waist and drummed her fingers patiently, and even through her shirt, the touch sent a deep shiver through her. “Is there anything else you wish to discuss at this time, Abigail? We could talk about our feministic awarement, if you want.”
Abby just smiled in response. Mac kissed her again. She shifted, sliding her bandaged hand beneath Abby so her arm supported her neck, her touch feather-light on her face. Mac’s lips moved against hers in sweet exploration, tasting her, her breath smelling lightly of the winesap apples she loved. Abby felt that melting begin again, a languid ease stealing through her limbs, draining away the last vestige of tension from this frightening night.
“I’m at a little disadvantage here.” Mac tapped her injured hand on the pillow. “So just let me—”
“Are you going to talk all night, Counselor?”
“Nooo, ma’am.”
Her mouth moved to Abby’s throat, and her hand slid beneath her sweater to push up her bra. Her rough palm cupped one breast, the nipple pebbling against it as her lips skated slowly up to Abby’s chin, then back down. Abby swept her hands through Mac’s thick, dark hair, cool softness spilling over her fingers. A thrilling, expectant tension was forming in her sex.
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