Till the Dust Settles

by Pat Young

  ‘It’s McBride. She was, I mean, she is Scottish originally.’

  ‘That’s nice. Do you have some ID?’ she asked him.

  He pushed the dog-eared, soiled remains of Curtis’s driver’s licence across the counter. The woman, who looked reluctant to touch the card, barely glanced at it. ‘That’s fine, Mr Jardine,’ she said, leaving it for him to pick up. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

  When she came back she gave a little cough, and said sadly, ‘I’ve found your wife, sir. I’m very sorry.’ She handed Dylan a computer printout.

  There it was.

  In black and white.

  Confirmation of Lucie’s death. September eleventh, two thousand and one.

  Dylan bit down hard on his lip till he felt his teeth piercing the skin. The pain shooting through his chest was like a bolt of electricity, blocking out every other sensation. He clasped his chest, as if he could hold together his breaking heart.

  ‘Sir, are you okay?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m so sorry. This is such a terrible way to find out.’

  He’d tried to prepare himself for this news, but Lucie’s loss hit him harder than he’d imagined possible. If this was grief, it was a deeper, more devastating pain than any emotion he’d felt before, even when his dad died.

  Dylan thought of Curtis and wondered how he’d react to this news. Time would tell, but so far Curtis seemed to be grieving not for Lucie, but for himself and the life he’d squandered. There was no sign of any regret for the way he’d treated Lucie.

  Maybe her death would move Curtis to show genuine grief for his wife. Dylan had no way of knowing what was going on in his friend’s head. Whenever he communicated it was in a rant, a raging tirade about the injustice of what had been done to him and how Lucie would have to pay.

  Someone muttered about the time it was taking for the line to move along, and Dylan realised he was holding up the queue.

  ‘Can you tell me how she died, please?’ he asked.

  The woman shook her head. In a low, official-sounding voice she said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, because of the scale of the 9/11 tragedy, there weren’t too many details logged.’ She consulted a single sheet of paper. ‘All I can tell you is your wife was found on Murray Street. She was already dead, I’m afraid. There was no suspicion of foul play. Your wife appears to have suffocated in the dust cloud. She wasn’t the only one to succumb. Unfortunately, a number of our fellow citizens appear to have died in the same way.’

  As if to prove how damaging the dust cloud had been, someone in line behind Dylan started to cough uncontrollably.

  ‘Can I see her?’ he asked.

  The woman shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. That won’t be possible.’

  ‘Why not? I’d like to see her, please.’

  The coughing stopped and the child’s crying too. The silence seemed to amplify her whispered words. ‘It’s too late, I’m afraid. When no one came forward to register she was missing …’

  She seemed unwilling to finish the sentence. Dylan waited.

  ‘I’m afraid the records show your wife’s body has already been cremated, sir.’

  Dylan’s breath stopped for a second then caught on a sob. He slapped his hand over his mouth.

  ‘I’m really sorry, sir. The city morgue was overwhelmed, as you can imagine. Bodies could only be kept for so long and if no one came to claim them, those whose identity had been established were cremated. I am so, so sorry for your loss.’

  Dylan blinked hard and chewed on the inside of his lips. Taking his hand away from his mouth, he attempted a smile for the woman. He felt sorry for her. What a job.

  Lips welded tight, he nodded to accept one last apology and left the office, passing people who looked as distraught as he felt.

  So Lucie was gone. How could he accept he’d never see her again? It didn’t seem real. Only a few days ago he’d made her laugh at some silly joke his mum had heard at the grocery store. Lucie’s laughter was rare as gold these days. When he managed to coax a smile from her, Dylan felt like a prospector panning a stream. Making Lucie laugh was like finding a glistening nugget amongst the silt.

  He stood on the street and looked up at the sky where smoke still drifted. At the heart of Ground Zero a fire was burning that seemed impossible to extinguish. Exactly how Dylan felt.

  21

  Lucie had only one connection to the outside world apart from television – the newspapers that were delivered each day to Charlotte’s apartment. Even so, she would probably have stopped reading them by now, were she not worried sick she might have killed Curtis. Every morning she dutifully skimmed each paper searching for a report, but she was growing tired of seeing nothing but photo after photo of destruction and suffering. It seemed there was only one item worth covering, as far as the New York dailies were concerned, and she wondered if other crimes had stopped since the eleventh or if they were going unreported. As the days passed and nothing appeared in the papers about a man found murdered on his kitchen floor or a nationwide search for a fugitive wife, Lucie began to hope she might have got away with it. Either Curtis was still alive, or the death of a drunk in a suburban slum wasn’t newsworthy.

  Lucie had flicked through the pages of The New York Times and was working her way through the Post, scanning for her name or Curtis’s, when the words Glasgow and Scotland leapt off the page at her. The newspaper flopped to the floor like a broken kite. She steadied herself against the counter then bent to retrieve the jumble of pages.

  Lucie spread the paper on the kitchen counter and smoothed the page with the flat of her hands. She reread the full article. It made no sense.

  Accident investigators have revealed that the incident which closed the Lincoln Tunnel for several hours on September 10th was due to driver error, the most likely cause of which was fatigue. The driver is thought to have just landed at Newark after an overnight flight from Glasgow, Scotland. She has been identified as Margaret McBride. Mrs McBride was taken to Hackensack UMC where she remains in a very serious condition.

  Lucie stared at her hands, their palms blackened with newsprint. She wiped them on her jeans and inspected them again. They were no cleaner. She grabbed the Times and searched each page thoroughly, but there was no coverage of the accident or mention of her father. What had happened to him? And why was Mum driving? Dad was always the driver. Lucie carefully tore out the article from the Post and laid it to one side. Then, on hands and knees, she gathered the piles of scattered pages and rolled them into a fat, untidy bundle.

  She got to her feet, feeling as stiff as an old woman, and leaned on the wall with one hand while she raised the internal phone to her ear.

  Rob answered right away. ‘Ms Gillespie, good morning. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Could you come up and collect a pile of old newspapers, please, Rob? Put them in the recycle bin for me?’

  ‘Of course I can. I’ll be right there.’

  When Lucie hung up she noticed the black handprint on the wall beside the phone but felt too weary to do anything about it. Was Mum driving because Dad refused to come after all?

  Lucie had a few happy memories that featured her father, but not many. He was always working, or so it seemed. She remembered how Mum would dress her up in frilly frocks with white shoes and socks. She could recall her granny and other women fussing over her, saying things like, ‘Isn’t she the brawest wee lassie you ever saw?’

  Occasionally Mum had a reason to take her to the yard and Dad would hoist her into his arms and show her off to the drivers. ‘What do you think of my wee princess, boys?’ he’d say. ‘This one’ll break some hearts, eh?’ Then, as if to please her father, the men would pinch her cheek or tousle her curls.

  She once heard one of the men muttering, ‘She’s a bonny wee thing, right enough, but a daughter’s no good to McBride.’

  Later, when Mum was tucking her into bed, she’d asked, ‘Why am I not good, Mummy?’

  When Lucie stopped be
ing sweet and biddable, her father had stopped calling her his princess. His disapproval had grown as fast as she did. When Lucie reached high school age, he seemed to find it impossible to praise her. His resentment at having no sons was plain for Lucie to see. She was ‘just a lassie’. A boy would have made him proud. He never said that in so many words, but the subliminal message was loud and clear.

  No matter what her achievement, he never seemed impressed. When, aged fourteen, she showed him she could drive a lorry, he wasn’t proud. He was outraged and almost sacked Old Sandy for teaching her. When she started to excel at distance running he’d taken an interest in her wins, but he never went to see her run. The trouble really started when she began to talk about getting a place in the American scholarship system. Dad refused point blank to give his permission. She’d cried herself to sleep night after night, but he wouldn’t be swayed.

  Then there was the way he’d reacted to Curtis and the news of the baby. She’d shed a few floods that time too.

  She hadn’t seen Dad for years, and although it was distressing to be rejected by her parents, he’d been no real loss. The lack of a mother in her life had been much harder to bear, especially when the going got rough.

  She remembered the day she’d finally plucked up enough courage to call home. She had to tell them she was pregnant. She needed to ask them to send her money, so she had no choice but to tell them Curtis had lost his job. Because of the baby. She couldn’t see her father’s face but he’d sounded fit to explode. After a lot of unintelligible shouting she heard him growl, ‘Tell her to get rid of it.’

  Mum said, ‘I’m sorry if you heard that, Lucie. Your dad doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘I mean every bloody word!’ he bawled. ‘It was bad enough she got mixed up with the likes of him in the first place. Now we’re to be humiliated by our unmarried daughter giving birth to a wee bastard? Thank God she’s at the other side of the world, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Jim! How can you talk like that?’ Lucie’s mother had covered the phone, but Dad’s voice was too loud to be muffled.

  ‘I’m only saying what should have been said months ago, when she first got involved with him. A man that takes advantage of his students? Gets them pregnant? No wonder he’s lost his job. He deserves to be struck off, or whatever it is they do to unethical teachers. And as for sending them money? Well …’ Whatever he’d been planning to say was lost in some sort of scuffle.

  ‘Give me the phone, woman. Let me talk some sense into her.’

  There was a pause, then he came on the line. ‘Listen here, Lucie. That’s not the right man for you. Can’t you see that? If you have his child, you’ll be tied to him forever. Here’s what we’ll do. First thing in the morning, I’ll send a ticket for a first-class flight home. You come on back here and we’ll forget this ever happened.’

  ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘Your mum can see Dr Wilson and make arrangements.’

  When Lucie had refused to have an abortion, her father tried everything in his power to make her change her mind, including guilt-tripping about her mum’s mental health. He even stooped to bribery at one point, and when that too failed, he lost his temper and told her he hoped he’d never set eyes on her again.

  Lucie could still hear her mum’s anguish as she begged her husband to reconsider, but Big Jimmy McBride was a not a man to be dissuaded once he’d made a pronouncement.

  Lucie had phoned back the next day to tell her parents that she and Curtis planned to get married. The baby would be born legitimate. Curtis was standing by their daughter and would do the right thing.

  Lucie had never been in any doubt that he would. Although he was angry about losing his job and devastated that Lucie would not be able to run in the American championships, he had seemed pleased about the baby.

  Lucie explained that the wedding ceremony would be small and the celebrations modest. She asked if they’d please come. She’d like her dad to give her away.

  But instead of softening, her father became more entrenched in his position and neither Lucie’s tears nor her mother’s could move him.

  His voice rose as he issued his ultimatum. ‘If you insist on staying with that reprobate and having his child, we’re finished with you. Whether he marries you or not. You’ve let me down, Lucie, and your mum. I’m just glad your granny never lived to see this day. She’d have been black-affronted. Now, make up your mind. Come home and get rid of it and we’ll forget any of this ever happened. You can finish college here, get on with your life and we’ll never speak of it again.’ He paused, waiting for her to agree, she supposed, then said, ‘Or—’

  ‘There’s no need to tell me what the “or” is, Dad. I’ve heard enough.’

  ‘I haven’t finished!’

  ‘Please, Jim!’ wailed Mum. Lucie could picture her, dragging at his arm, distraught.

  ‘Or …’ His voice was low and much more frightening than all his screaming and shouting. ‘If you stay with him, don’t ever come back. You will not be welcome. And your mother,’ he said, as if he was threatening his wife, ‘will not be making arrangements to come and see you. You’ll be dead to us.’

  Dead to us. Curtis might be dead too. Her granny always said deaths come in threes.

  22

  After a shower and a strong cup of coffee, Lucie felt brave enough to phone the hospital.

  The switchboard operator’s tone was curt and Lucie was forced to listen to a xylophone version of ‘Greensleeves’ three times before the woman came back on the line.

  ‘Sorry you had to wait so long, but it’s been crazy here since Tuesday.’

  When Lucie said she was calling for an update on Mrs Margaret McBride’s condition, the receptionist’s tone dropped a few degrees from cool to chilly. ‘I’m sorry, who did you say you are?’

  Lucie didn’t answer.

  ‘See, unless you’re a relative and a pretty close one at that, we can’t divulge patient information.’

  Lucie thought about it. ‘I’m her niece.’

  ‘Your name, please?’

  Lucie’s confidence deserted her. She put her finger on the button, very gently, terminating the call and hoping the woman would think they’d been cut off.

  Lucie made a fist and knocked on her forehead. She should have decided what she was going to say before she called the hospital. She thought about trying again but fear of the dragon on the switchboard put her off.

  She’d been looking for a reason to leave the apartment. Now she had one.

  Even with the most compelling reason in the world, the thought of venturing beyond these four walls made Lucie cringe.

  What if someone saw her and knew she was an impostor? They would call the police.

  Lucie considered ringing a lawyer; maybe she ought to confess everything and ask for help. Good idea, up to a point. Until Lucie saw herself being put in the back of a police car, with some cop’s hand on the top of her head. She thought about spending months in jail waiting to come to trial and knew she couldn’t go through with it. Life with Curtis had been hard, but not hard enough to prepare her for jail. She didn’t know much about prison, other than what she’d seen on TV dramas and documentaries, but she knew enough to convince her she wouldn’t survive a day.

  She wondered if she could simply ring a lawyer’s office and ask to speak to someone, make an anonymous enquiry, but when she rehearsed the conversation in her head it sounded ludicrous. She could ask her mum’s advice. Except Mum was fighting for her life, by the sound of things.

  Another cup of coffee would help her think. She couldn’t contact anyone in the outside world without identifying herself as Lucie Jardine, but she had to remain incognito for as long as she could. At least till she had proof that Curtis was alive.

  Stimulated by caffeine her thoughts raced off in all directions. Why not call the police in her old neighbourhood, give them the address and ask if they had found a dead body? She tutted with impatience as that thought screeched to a
dead-end halt. Soon she had run through every scenario she could think of and discarded all of them. Lucie sighed heavily. For all her plotting, she’d achieved nothing but a headache from too much strong coffee.

  But it had served a purpose. She had identified her priority, beyond which nothing else mattered.

  Her mind was far from clear, but at least it was made up.

  An hour later, with make-up disguising the fading remains of her bruises, Lucie was ready to go, but too scared to open the door. She took another last look in the mirror. And peered through the peephole for the tenth time. All clear, but what if a neighbour’s door opened at the same time as hers?

  ‘Come on, Lucie,’ she whispered. ‘You can do this. For Mum.’ With a deep breath she opened the door and stepped out. The hallway was silent as she tiptoed towards the elevator, praying it would be empty when it stopped at her floor. A green light flashed on the wall above her head and she could hear the mechanism working in the shaft. A hydraulic hiss announced the elevator’s arrival but the doors seemed to take forever to open; when they did, they revealed a man in a business suit who seemed intent on the Financial Times. He didn’t raise his head until the doors started to close again. He looked puzzled as she let the elevator go without her, but it was clear he didn’t recognise her.

  She tried to see herself from the man’s point of view. She had chosen dark clothes that would blend into the Manhattan crowd, but nothing too new or too stylish. She did not want to stand out and was aiming to look like any other young businesswoman on her way to work. Now she had drawn attention to herself by acting suspiciously. What normal person waits for an elevator and then doesn’t get in? Maybe the man was talking to Rob right now, alerting him to the fact that there was a stranger hanging about on floor forty.

  She darted back to the apartment and slammed the door behind her, gasping for breath as if she had outrun an attacker. As she waited for her heart to slow she wondered if she were having some sort of a panic attack. Maybe she was turning into one of those sad people you saw on the programmes Curtis used to watch. People who lost their nerve for facing the outside world, so they didn’t ever leave the house. Just stayed in and ate their way to an early death, by which point they were so enormous they couldn’t be removed from their home without a crane and a crowd of neighbours watching. One Ton Wonders, Curtis called them.