by Faye, Amy
"Fuck you," she said. Her voice was low and soft and cold, and she wasn't sure it he could even hear her on the other end of the line.
"You mean you haven't told him? That's cold, Lara. You really ought to tell him. It's a cruel secret to keep from a man."
"Fuck you," she answered again, a little louder this time.
"Paul drops out, and we keep what we've got under wraps. Senator Green stays in the race come Monday, and we drop all our research and all our information in the middle of a rabid, desperate-for-a-scoop press pool. I don't think I have to tell you how that would go down."
"He won't drop out," she said. Her voice was hard and cold and the pit inside her swallowed up everything but cold reason. "He's got too much tied up in this election. He's been working for it for too long, and if you think he'll sacrifice all that for me, you didn't do your research well enough."
The phone on the other end of the line was silent for a long moment. "Didn't I? Or didn't you?"
The line went dead in her hand and she dropped the phone on the bed beside Tim's foot. She dropped her hand on his leg beside it and squeezed.
Her head should have hurt. She could feel the ache, she could feel the sensitivity to noise and to light. She could feel every hint that she should have had a migraine, but that blackness in her stomach swallowed that up, too, and left her with nothing at all to fall back on except for the distant knowledge that there was nothing she could do for her son but wait for him to get better.
Or, she thought bitterly, wait for him not to. An innocent boy. One that had never done anything wrong, one that had never hurt anyone. Everyone but her had wanted him gone, had wanted him out of the world, from the moment he was conceived.
And now, when she was finally starting to feel like he was coming into his own… God had decided that he was going to give very serious consideration to taking her boy back.
35
Paul's face felt long and stretched, and he seriously considered going back to Tim and talking about everything he was thinking about. It wasn't as if the entire choice was his to make, after all.
But if he did, he wasn't sure what would happen. Why would even go to ask her opinion? The best that would happen for Tim would be for her to agree that he was doing the right thing. On the other hand, what if she didn't agree? What if she decided that his career was, somehow, more important? What if she decided that she couldn't stomach the guilt any more and she wouldn't allow him to make the sacrifice?
It would be easier after he'd already cut the check, after Tim was getting all the treatment that he needed. Then he could go back, tell her that he was sorry for running away. He'd done it before and she was no doubt used to it by now, after all.
His stomach twisted and he rubbed his head, his eyes still shut. There was no choice, but he just needed somewhere to lay his head, somewhere away from it all.
Paul headed toward the entrance to the hospital. Robbie followed behind, two inches or more taller than he was, and his posture impeccable. Paul had never had impeccable posture. He had good-enough posture. But he'd never developed military bearing because he'd never had the distinction of serving.
He looked up from the white and gray tiled floor when he heard the footsteps behind him stop. It wasn't the sort of thing that was preferable for a bodyguard, to allow the subject to distance himself. Which meant there was, without a doubt, something to see.
Helen was always a sight to see, though she was never particularly pretty, and she had only gotten less appealing as the years passed. She had a grim expression on her face that was startlingly unlike a smile, in spite of the corners of mouth being pulled back in a way that she no doubt thought might be a smile.
"Paul. Is everything alright?"
He pinched his lips together. The 'good wife' act was decades late for either of them to pretend that she was going to be polite or kind. If she was playing at sympathy then it was just another part of her attempts to get something that he couldn't put his finger on yet. It was a matter of time until she came out with it.
"Why are you here?"
She raised her eyebrows in a pantomime of surprise, but that pulled-tight rictus never faded from her face, as if she was afraid that someone might get a photo of her with a frown. Afraid that it might come back to bite her somehow, if anyone caught her anything but ecstatically happy. Instead, they were going to catch a photo of her looking like she wasn't sure how human expressions worked.
"I'm here because I'm worried for you, of course. How's the boy?"
"The boy does have a name, you know."
Helen took a breath and let it out and blinked at Paul as if he were being terribly childish. "Of course he does, Paul. I know that. But I'm not worried about him. I'm worried about you, about how you're doing. I know you're worried. He's a good boy but it's not important to me how he's doing as much as how you're feeling about it. Is that fair?"
"When have you ever worried about me in the past?"
There was that pantomime surprise again. She raised her eyebrows as much as she possibly could and her eyes rolled around in her head like marbles across the floor. "When–why, Paul, I can't believe you'd say that to me!"
"Believe it," he growled. "I don't know that you've ever worried about me for one moment in the past, and I'm having trouble believing you're worrying about me now."
"That's totally unfair," she protested. "I've been very worried. These twenty-five years, I've been keeping a very careful eye on you. Making sure that nothing could possibly happen to you."
"That nothing could possibly happen to your meal ticket, you mean."
"That's not fair, Paul. I know I may be hard to get along with…"
It was the most sympathetic she'd ever been. At least she could admit that some things might be her fault. At least, she could do it when she sensed that she'd overstepped herself. But he almost felt sorry for her in that moment. Almost.
"I don't want to hear it, Helen. Tell me whatever it was you cam here to say, or leave, but don't play as if you've got only the best motives because I have known you far, far too long."
She harrumphed and turned. He could almost imagine the theatrical expressions she must have been making because there was no way that she was going to turn away from him so theatrically without the facial expressions, in case anyone might be paying close attention.
"I don't know why it is that I'm always the last to know about these things, but I just heard about these calls that your… friend has been getting. Some strange man, they say, calling to threaten you if you don't drop out of the race? Absurd."
Paul turned his head and looked over at Robbie, who's face pinched itself. The last to know, indeed.
"What do you know about it?"
"Know? I don't know anything at all, I was hoping you could tell me what you knew."
"Well, you know more than I do, apparently. Last I heard, when I spoke to her an hour ago, she'd been told to await further orders."
"So… you mean, you didn't know?"
He let out a breath and for the hundredth time in the past month he realized how tired he was of the entire charade. Normally, Helen managed to keep her life quite separate from his. She could be counted on not to involve herself with whatever he was doing, which was good because it was the only way he could stomach one more day of marriage with her.
Today, though, of all days, she seemed to have decided that she needed to involve herself and make sure that she was always within earshot of every little thing. To make sure that she always came by to make herself feel important.
"Don't know what? I'm very tired, Helen, and I'm not in the mood for any theatrics. Just cut down to business."
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Well, you're not going to do it, are you?"
"Drop out of the race?"
"What did you think we were talking about?"
He let out a breath. If that was the price they were asking to keep her out of the press… well, there were
other ways around it. Ways that were more complex, that was for certain.
"Why would I do that, Helen?"
"Well, you know, I don't know. But you seem to have been so hyper-focused on that slut and her magic vagina, that–"
He sucked in air through his teeth and she stopped for a moment. Long enough to turn, slowly, and look into his eyes. The theatrics had gone on long enough for her, it seemed, and now she was prepared to get to brass tacks with whatever it was she really wanted.
"Well, I don't know what else it is that you find so interesting about her, after all. She's just some girl. Some nobody. What can she offer you? Anything at all?"
Paul's voice was low and hard and he should have felt bad for the harshness in it. He didn't. "You wouldn't understand, Helen. She offers something you haven't got, and I don't blame you because you don't know any better. But don't pretend to be shocked."
He pushed past her and as he did so he realized exactly why she'd come. She was pushing him, like he was some kind of chessman. Eventually, if she'd really gotten that call, Lara would tell him. That, or she wouldn't, and that would be her decision he supposed.
But Helen needed to make sure that he didn't think too hard about it, or else there would be hell to pay one way or another. But he wasn't thinking that far ahead right now. Right now, he was going to find a checkbook.
36
Lara's phone was a heavy weight in her pocket. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she had no trouble figuring out what she was supposed to do. What the man on the other end of the line wanted her to do.
He wanted her to get on the phone, and call Paul, and talk to him. If she explained the situation she wasn't sure what he would choose. The odds of him agreeing to the terms were higher than she would have liked.
It wasn't fair to him. It wasn't fair to Tim that he might be the instrument of his damn hero's downfall. If he knew Paul's relationship with him, if he knew he'd been abandoned the minute that a second line showed up on her pregnancy test, then maybe he would see Paul differently. She couldn't destroy that, no matter how much she might want to. It wasn't fair to Tim, regardless of how fair it was or wasn't to Paul.
She sucked a breath through her nose and picked the phone up, looked at the turned-off black screen and thought about touching the button to turn it on. Her finger moved to turn it on and then she didn't push it.
There had to be another way. She didn't know what it was, and she sure as hell didn't know what she was going to do to make it happen, but she was going to have to figure it out. Something outside the room moved closer, and a man's voice spoke.
"324. This is the one."
She looked up just in time to see a man's head peek in. He had a stern expression and in spite of leaning through the doorway his back was ruler-straight.
"Is there anyone else in here?"
Lara raised an eyebrow. "No," she told him. She wanted to ask why he cared, what it was exactly that they were looking for. Other than her son, of course.
The man stepped inside, and then Helen stepped through the door behind him. A second man was behind her. Paul had never kept two bodyguards with him, not if he could help it. Certainly not in public. Apparently Helen was a little more paranoid.
"Lara, how have you been? How's the road suiting you?"
Lara's face darkened. If Helen was here then it wasn't to be polite, she knew. Maybe things were different for other women, but Helen's relationship with Lara began and ended with calling her a slutty bimbo.
"Leave me alone. I'm spending time with my son. Please, just go."
"About your son," Helen said. She frowned. "You know, I was thinking about what you'd said to Paul. I was thinking about how you said that you'd gotten pregnant right after he left."
"What's your point?"
"My point is, Lara, that doesn't really add up, does it?"
She let out a long breath. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Let's not be coy here. Ten years ago, you decided you thought you could get your hooks into my husband if you flashed around a pregnancy test and tried to pressure him into, who knows what was going on in your mind. Marrying you?"
Helen snorted and Lara's eyebrows knit together in anger. For a long time, the cold fury of remembering that day had been what got her out of bed. The baby growing inside her, that had been what kept her going at the end of the day, but it was the cold rage that stoked the fires that kept her pushing harder. That was what got her the rest of the way through law school, when things got hard.
But that was ten years ago, and she wasn't that woman any more. She was above it. She was beyond it. It didn't hurt any more, except as a memory of a time that she'd been hurt, once.
Somehow she'd been wrong about that, she found, as Helen's hard voice ripped out all the sutures in the wound and she found that it was as fresh as the day she'd gotten it underneath.
"Helen, I need you to leave." Paul's wife started to speak, but she barely got a word out before Lara cut in. Her voice cracked as she lost control of herself for an instant. "Now, Helen."
The older woman stepped forward and gave her a full-bodied slap across the face. It burned hard and nearly sent Lara to the floor. The two men moved almost immediately, anticipating a response that never came. That would explain why she needed bodyguards, Lara thought bitterly. To ensure that she never got any of the comeuppance she deserved.
"Don't you dare talk to me like that, you fucking slut. Don't you imagine for one second that you're allowed to even look at me. Is that clear?"
Lara's face burned with pain, but more than that, it burned with rage. She managed to contain it as best she could.
"Did you just come here to slap me, then? Fine. You've done it. Go."
A second blow came, and though she anticipated it Lara couldn't move fast enough to prevent nor avoid it.
"What did I tell you about speaking to me?"
Lara bit the insides of her cheeks and kept silent.
"What seemed strange to me about it all, when I thought about it, was that you were pregnant ten years ago. You were told to get rid of the child, of course. You know that, and I know it, both of us very well. So what I'm confused by is exactly how you expect me to believe that you got rid of the child, then got some other poor son of a bitch to seed you less than a month later."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Lara said. She braced for a blow that never never came.
"I very much doubt that. Now why don't you tell me the truth, Lara? And understand that your dangers aren't all anonymous men on telephones."
Lara shivered and looked into Helen's eyes and knew without needing to be told exactly what danger she might be risking.
She had been told once before, ten years ago, and it was no less scary now than it had been when she was a young woman.
37
Paul Green looked at the clock face on the home screen of his phone and new in his gut that he had waited long enough for Lana to get in touch with him about whatever agreement the man on the phone had tried to make with her.
It made him sick to think that anyone would threaten her under any circumstance. To think that they would threaten her using him, and that they would do so with the apparent belief that they could do so with impunity…
He shivered at the feeling of anger that ran through him. It sickened him, and at the same time he couldn't bring himself to hate that part of him any more than he hated any other part. It was the most useful piece, and the revenge that he might be able to claim for himself…
It wasn't good, and he wasn't happy about it, but he was happy that he could muster that kind of attention about anything at all. Surrounded by people who didn't believe in anything except their own power and greed, surrounded by doubt and unhappiness and everything that he hated, it was amazing that there was anything left that he felt the need to defend. Maybe he shouldn't have been amazed by it, but he was in spite of himself.
Paul's fingers tapped the buttons to cal
l Lara. That would be the first step. If Helen had made it up to split the two of them, then he needed to ensure that hadn't happened, by getting the information straight from the horse's mouth.
The phone rang once, twice. Three times, and he was convinced that he'd have to call back later when Lara's voice answered. She sounded tired and something quavered in her voice that told Paul she'd been crying.
"What?"
He forced himself to ignore all of that. If he didn't, it would rip him apart, and he needed to at least temporarily remain focused on the task at hand.
"Lara, I need to talk to you about something."
"Yeah, well. I guess that makes two of us."
"Have I done something to upset you?"
Paul expected more reaction to that question, but it didn't come. Instead, Lara just held her answer for a long time before she gave a quiet, meek "No."
"Helen tells me that you got another call."
"Is that what she told you?"
"She told me that he insisted you get me to drop out of the race. Is that right?"
"If you know so much about it, why don't you tell me?"
She had been crying. Perhaps, she was still crying, though he couldn't be sure. She was angry with him, though. He was sure of that. What he wasn't sure of was exactly why she was angry.
"I just want to know if it's true or not."
"What, you don't believe your wife?"
"If she told me she'd killed a man and needed me to help me bury the body, I'd believe it in a heartbeat. When she plays nice and decides to give me information that seems useful, I'm a little less trusting."
"Well, why are you asking me, then?"
"You wouldn't lie to me," Paul said.
"You don't know that."
"Could you just answer the question, please? Is that what he wanted, or isn't it?"
"Just leave me be. Go away, forget you ever knew me, and I'll get over it. I've gotten over everything else. I'll get over this, too."
He wanted to tell her what was going on with the hospital. If the doctors hadn't spoken to her yet, though, he didn't want to give her false hope. So he tried to think of something else. A vague feeling at the back of his mind, that there was something he wasn't telling her, something he ought to have said, gnawed at him.