Fall Into Me: Hearts of the South

by Linda Winfree

  Watery sunlight peeked in around the blinds. Midmorning, according to the angle. One night down. Mackey was talking about days on the respirator. It was like being at mile one of a marathon.

  The door whispered open. He shifted his eyes, catching a glimpse of Chris’s and Cookie’s serious expressions as they slipped into the room. Man, they looked rough—tired, wrung out, worried.

  Chris peered down at him, blue gaze roving his face, clearly concerned. “Brought you a present.”

  Troy Lee grasped the smooth rectangle, about the size of a picture frame. The roughness of a hook-and-loop fastener dragged at his fingers. He held the object up. He’d have grinned if he could have. The dry-erase board from Chris’s dash.

  Cookie proffered the marker. “But you probably can’t write as fast as you talk.”

  Troy Lee cut his eyes at him, a visual screw-you-buddy. Chris studied the monitor screen, a slight frown drawing his brows together. “Layla was at the nurse’s station. She says you’re doing good.”

  Resting the small board against his thigh, Troy Lee scribbled and held it aloft.

  “Want off the machine,” Cookie read aloud. His gray gaze lifted to Troy Lee’s. “It’s got to be a bitch, but Mackey knows what he’s doing.”

  Troy Lee focused on the ceiling for a second, gathering his nerve. He swiped his wrist across the board to wipe out his previous words and scribbled again. He held it up.

  Kids OK?

  The look Cookie and Chris exchanged was answer enough. Cookie muffled a cough with his wrist. “Paul’s in the surgical ICU upstairs. Santana’s at Emory and it’s kinda touch-and-go with her. Kaydee Davis and Devonte Richardson were DOA.”

  Devonte? Shock sheared through him, leaving an emotional pain that rivaled the physical agony the nerve block kept at bay. Eyes wide, he looked to Chris for confirmation, hoping he wouldn’t get it. Cookie had to be wrong. Not Devonte, not when he had so much going for him.

  Chris’s miserable blue eyes and stiff nod slammed the reality into him. He lifted his hand to press the heel against his forehead. Fuck. What a damn waste…

  He smeared the words away with his fingertips and scrawled again, holding it up for Chris. Miss Francie?

  Chris wrapped his fingers around the bed rail, skin tight over white knuckles. “She’s taking it hard. I went by to see her last night.”

  Cookie was right—he couldn’t write as fast as words and questions formed in his brain. The frustration dragged at him while he cleared and wrote again. Cookie leaned to read the board. Knew would be bad why didn’t he stop?

  Cookie lifted his gaze to Troy Lee’s. “Paul?”

  Troy Lee raised two fingers as a negative. Cookie nodded. “The deputy.”

  One finger. Cookie shrugged. “I don’t know. Tick’s all over that. The guy’s only been at Whitman a little while. He’s not even fully POST certified yet. He came over from Alabama, where he’s been at five departments in the last six years.”

  “A gypsy cop.” Disgust tightened Chris’s tone.

  “Tick and the sheriff are pushing McMillian to charge him, pending the outcome of the ART’s findings.” Cookie cleared his throat and a look passed between him and Chris.

  Troy Lee frowned and scribbled across the board. Not telling me?

  Another pointed visual exchange. Cookie looked up at the ceiling, as if unseen answers might be written there, then dropped his gaze to Troy Lee’s. “Bubba’s kicking up a fuss, trying to take the heat off Paul.”

  The marker slipped between Troy Lee’s suddenly sweaty fingers. Blames me.

  “Yes.”

  Not my fault. On my side. Swerved to miss—

  Cookie’s hand on his wrist stopped the frenzied script. “I know. Dale Jenkins saw it happen. He’s already given the ART a statement. Everything’ll be all right. We just have to wait it out, until the reconstruction team’s report is final.”

  “Gentlemen?” The nurse, out of Troy Lee’s line of sight, spoke from somewhere near the door. He recognized that voice. The sadistic one, who’d about made him come out of his skin checking the wires in his chest and then nudged his broken nose while she messed with the tape around the ventilator tube. “I’m sorry, but your time is up.”

  “We’ll check in on you later.” Cookie patted his arm in an awkward goodbye. “And don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

  Easy for him to say. Eyes closed, Troy Lee lifted an affirmative finger. Chris murmured a quiet farewell, and the door whispered shut. F-uck. Everything would be okay? Not from where he was. No, everything—everything—spiraled out of his control, and he couldn’t roll with any of it because he couldn’t get his feet under him long enough before something else knocked him down and winded him. He sure as hell couldn’t fight against it.

  All he could do was lie flat on his back and wait. Oh, hell yeah. He was loving this.

  Angel snagged another fry from her McDonald’s bag and scrolled through her contacts. With the fry clenched in her teeth, she sank onto one of the benches scattered before the hospital entryway and typed in directions to Julie. Thank God she’d had the foresight to train Julie in the day-to-day operations of the bar. The automatic doors behind her whooshed.

  “Do you think it was a good idea to tell him?” Doubt laced Chris Parker’s familiar voice.

  “Wouldn’t you want to know, if you were him?” Cookie replied.

  “Probably.”

  Their quiet conversation, not meant for her ears, shivered foreboding over already taut nerves. She dropped her phone in her purse and looked up as they approached where she sat.

  “Hey, Angel.” Chris met her eyes briefly and nodded, his gaze darting away in the manner she’d grown accustomed to.

  “Chris.” Her own gaze flicked to Cookie’s. “Is he awake?”

  Cookie nodded. “They’d only let us stay a few minutes. He was pretty alert, though.”

  “He was last night, the couple of times he woke up.” The moment lulled, and she wanted to ask about the exchange she’d overheard but held the words back.

  Chris coughed and glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going. I’m supposed to meet with McMillian at eleven.”

  “I’ll catch up with you later.” Arms folded over his chest, Cookie met her gaze once Chris departed across the parking lot. “So how are you holding up?”

  She clasped her hands around her knee. A half-hearted smile tugged at her mouth. “Better than the couple of times you saw me yesterday.”

  “Do you mind?” He indicated the bench and she slid to give him room to sit. He leaned forward, wrists between his knees. Fingers laced, he tilted his hands to study his palms. “I told Tori. And Tick.”

  She swallowed a facetious reply. Instead, she fiddled with her hem where it hit her knee. “I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you.”

  “Pretty sure it hasn’t been a picnic for you.”

  “Yes, well, it kind of pales in comparison to yesterday. I’ve discovered I have much to be thankful for.”

  An ironic smile flitted over his face. “That’s along the lines of Tori’s reaction.”

  “It can’t have been easy for her either.”

  “She handled it okay. She’s pretty good with the hard stuff. How did Troy Lee take it?”

  “He’s been great. Very caring, very supportive.” Sheer affection warmed her chest. “You know him. Troy Lee is…Troy Lee. He’s not like any man I’ve ever known.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” Laughter lurked in the dry remark.

  Angel cut her eyes at him in a suppressing glare, the way she’d done dozens of times over the years when he’d been teasing. “I guess it’s my turn to support him.”

  “He’ll probably need it. He’s facing a hard few days.”

  She pulled her purse onto her lap and gathered her empty McDonald’s bag. “I should probably go up and—”

  “Angel.” He turned serious gray eyes in her direction. “When will you know?”

  “Maybe another month.�
�� She twisted her purse strap around her hand. “The measurements from my sonogram should narrow it down, although you’re not supposed to use that dating to prove paternity, from what I read on the internet. If I have an amniocentesis, which I think I’ll have to have because I’m over thirty-five, they can do a DNA test from that. That would be in a month or two.”

  He nodded. “If it’s mine…I’ll want to be involved. I’ll be a father to her, take care of her. You won’t have to worry that she’s made to feel like anybody’s mistake. I’ll love her, Angel.”

  “There you go, just like Troy Lee. Her, when it could very well be a boy.” She used the flippancy to cover a very real urge to cry. She touched his wrist, lightly. “Thank you.”

  He cleared his throat. “So I guess you need to get upstairs.”

  “Yes.” She rose, turned to look at him. “Does it make me an awful person if I hope it’s you and not Jim?”

  “No. Not at all.” His face softened a moment, then he pushed up from the bench. “I’ve got to get to work. Go check on Troy Lee. I think he’s going stir crazy.”

  “Knowing him?” A puff of laughter escaped her lips. “Most likely. Something tells me he’s a horrible patient.”

  “You know, I can imagine that.” Cookie’s quiet chuckle rumbled between them. “Later, Angel.”

  “Bye.” Her spirit lighter by one encumbrance, she watched him walk to his patrol car. Slinging her purse over one shoulder, she turned away and headed inside, impatient to see Troy Lee. When she reached his room, after checking in with the nurses for permission to visit, she found him awake, staring at the ceiling, his entire body rigid and vibrating with tension.

  Looking at him hurt her heart.

  At his bedside, she smoothed his hair with a gentle hand and leaned to kiss his forehead. “Hey.”

  Vivid blues brimming with frustration and anxiety locked on hers. He fumbled with a small dry-erase board, slashing words across it then turning it toward her. Can’t do this.

  “Yes, you can.” She touched his cheek, stroked his temple. “I know you can.”

  A vicious swipe of his wrist across the surface, more scribbling. Can’t breathe.

  “What?” She darted a look at the respirator. It functioned the same way it had the night before. She reached for the call button, but he caught her fingers. The marker squeaked over the shiny surface.

  Need to do it myself.

  “No.” With a touch as soft as her voice was firm, she caressed his shoulder, almost bared by the hospital gown. “You need to get well. Right now, that means living with the ventilator. I know you hate it, but I want you to get better, Troy Lee.”

  Out of control.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what he was talking about, but his agitation grew more and more apparent, through the stiffness in his body, the dismay radiating off of him, the rapid flutter of his long lashes. She rubbed her thumb across his biceps, hoping to smooth away some of the stress.

  “I brought you something.” She dug through her purse and retrieved his iPod, which had been lying on her coffee table where he’d forgotten it the morning before. Hard to believe that had only been yesterday, when she’d been trying to lure him back to bed. “Maybe this will help.”

  She slipped the buds into his ears, adjusted the cord and placed the small rectangle in his hand. Eyes sliding closed, he passed his thumb over the control pad. Some of the visible strain eased from his long body. She pressed her lips to his ear. “Better?”

  He scrawled words on the board. Yes.

  “Good.” She stroked his hair. “Now, rest and concentrate on getting better. Everything will be fine.”

  She continued touching him, calming him, as he fell into uneasy sleep.

  An hour later, Christine and the girls arrived. Eying her with a critical maternal gaze, Christine coaxed Angel away for a cup of tea, leaving Troy Lee under the watchful presence of his sisters.

  “So how is he this morning?” Christine rubbed her arm with soothing affection as they boarded the elevator.

  “Edgy. He was upset earlier, I think about the ventilator.” The memory of his anxiety and frustration bit deep, cutting because she could do so little to alleviate any of it.

  “I’m sure.” Christine selected the lobby level and leaned against the wall. She watched the numbers above the door, a distracted, faraway expression on her delicate features. “He’s very much like his father, and Troy was always horrible about being incapacitated in any way. He wanted to be up, doing things.”

  An affectionate smile touched Angel’s lips. “That sounds like Troy Lee.”

  “Hmm.” The elevator arrived with a tiny jolt. “Yes. He caught chickenpox when he was seven. I finally gave up trying to keep him in bed. When he had the flu at twelve, I didn’t even try. The best I could do was getting him to sit in the armchair in Troy’s office with a quilt.”

  Fondness colored the memories. Christine held the door and gestured for Angel to precede her. Angel darted a glance at the older woman from beneath her lashes. “You adore him.”

  “That charmer? Oh, yes. I always have. Troy used to tease that I’d only married him so I could have Troy Lee for my baby.” Christine’s light laugh trilled between them and she winked. “He was probably half right. I fell in love with both of them at first sight. I never understood how Vanessa—she was Troy Lee’s mother—could prefer a research lab over that beautiful boy. She was used to statistics and experimental theory, and I’m not sure she knew what to do with the reality of him. He was a handful, always into something.”

  Angel could just imagine. If he had half as much mischief in him as a child as he did as a man…that house had never known a dull moment.

  “I think I have photos.” Christine dug in her purse as they approached the cafeteria. She removed a strip of plastic-encased photos from her wallet and handed them to Angel after they’d placed their orders. The first picture was a family group, taken on the beach before what looked like the Tybee lighthouse, all of them dressed in khaki shorts and white shirts. A younger Christine sat on a weather-beaten log with what looked like an older version of Troy Lee, a man with slight silvering at his temples and stylish spectacles. The children gathered at their feet, Ellis a toddler, Montgomery a beautiful little girl, and Troy Lee a grinning boy.

  She flipped past that to find a shot of him at four or five, big blue eyes glinting with mischief beneath tousled brown hair. Christine tapped his wide smile with a fingertip. “How could I not fall in love with that?”

  Tucked beneath a photo of Montgomery at the same age was a snapshot, cut down from a bigger picture. A recent candid of the siblings, gathered on a plush sofa, each holding a Chinese food container. Angel traced the line of Troy Lee’s jaw, tearful laughter pushing into her throat when she saw he held a fortune cookie aloft. “He is beautiful.”

  “Inside and out.” Christine paid for their tea and nudged her toward a table. “That’s why he’s the child of my heart.”

  “What?” Angel met her gaze over a cautious sip of hot tea. Peppermint exploded on her tongue.

  Christine waved a negligent hand in the air. “My standard answer when asinine people made a big deal about the fact that I wasn’t his ‘real’ mother. I’d tell them he was my child by choice, the child of my heart, and that usually shut them up pretty quickly. Of course, he took that and ran with it. He spent years torturing his sisters with the fact that I’d chosen him and just gotten stuck with them.”

  “That sounds just like him.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Christine wrapped both hands about her cup. She looked up, her eyes serious. “He loves you. I hope…” Her voice trembled and her lashes fell briefly. “I hope you understand how precious that is, how special and wonderful and beautiful that sweet heart of his is. I want you to treasure him as much as we do.”

  “I do.” Angel blinked hard and bit her lip, trying to stop the quivering of her chin. “I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for him, waited to get to this point where
I could appreciate and value him most.”

  “That is so…oh, my God.” Her eyes filling, Christine touched her fingers to her mouth. She dropped her hand on a shaky laugh. “When he wanted me to get that ring, I asked him if he was sure and he said yes, that all he’d been waiting for was you to realize you’d been waiting for him.”

  Troy Lee jerked into awareness, much as he had all during the previous night. His body seemed constantly poised on the edge of panic, yanking him from an edgy rest to jittery wakefulness in seconds. Everybody kept telling him to rest, but being checked over at least once, if not twice, an hour precluded any real respite.

  Cognizant that he was alone again, he stared at the ceiling and dug his fingers into the sheet. He brushed paper and lifted two folded sheets from Montgomery’s sketchpad. He unfolded the first to find Ellis’s girlish handwriting: Angel and Troy Lee, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g…

  Such a brat. He refolded it, tucked it beneath the dry-erase board, unfurled the second. If he’d been able to breathe on his own, the little drawing would have taken his breath. One of Montgomery’s distinctive tattoo designs, the ones she did for fun and gave away to a friend who owned a tattoo parlor. He traced the ephemeral angel with his eyes, awed at the way Montgomery had captured the essence of his Angel in just a few lines, shy and bold, innocent and sensual, playful and loving all at once.

  Oh, yeah. He was getting that inked on his shoulder, as soon as he got out of this damned bed. Carefully creasing the paper back into a smaller rectangle, he slipped it beneath Ellis’s teasing rhyme.

  The problem with being laid out this way was having too much time to think. To ponder what had been in Devonte’s head in the moments before he died. To grieve for everything the boy had been and would have done. To hurt for Miss Francie, who’d lost the only family she had left.

  Too much time to wonder how long it might be before the ART report was in. To worry that it wouldn’t matter, that he might find himself without a badge, his career gone. Somehow, over the past three years, he’d become a cop. Not his job, but who he was, the way his dad had been a mathematician.