Deliver Her: A Novel

by Patricia Perry Donovan

  With every mile, Alex’s life receded into nothingness. They had no right to do this to her. Evan and Shana would be wondering what was up. She had to get her act together and blow off this whole New England adventure her mother had planned for her. This was what she meant that day on the promenade, Alex realized, heat flushing her cheeks—the “new start” she had hinted at. No matter what Camo Man said earlier about her “parents’” wishes, this expedition had her mom all over it.

  Watch out, Mom. Paybacks are rough.

  CARL

  Not long after they settled in on I-95, the girl appeared to fall asleep, head rolled back on the seat, open-mouthed and snoring. She’d likely be out for a while. The kids he picked up were usually in pretty bad shape; their parents wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.

  All in all, the bedroom-to-car segment had gone well, if you didn’t count the flying soda can. The verbal abuse came with the territory. These kids were terrified, cornered. Words were their only weapons.

  Restraints had not been necessary.

  Behind him, Murphy leaned her head back and opened her mouth, imitating the girl. “I hope she doesn’t choke on that gum.”

  Alex gave no sign of having heard her. They took nothing for granted, however. Kids frequently feigned sleep in the car: to avoid conversation, to stew, to plot. Murphy knew never to take her eyes off Alex, no matter how authentic the snoring.

  “Jamie still enjoying karate?” Carl asked. Murphy’s daughter was ten, a quiet, bookish type. The two lived with Murphy’s mother in the mother’s Queens apartment.

  “Got her yellow belt last week. She was so proud. Her dojo says it’s really boosting her self-confidence.”

  “You’ve got a good kid there, Murph.” Not for the first time, Carl was impressed by the way she juggled single parenting with her full-time job and Begin Again assignments.

  They were about a half hour into the drive now. The traffic moved steadily; opposite them, the day’s commuters headed into Manhattan from Westchester and beyond. They should have a fairly easy go of it for most of the day, he estimated, with an off chance of catching early weekend traffic around two or three o’clock. He’d built a buffer into his timetable just in case, booking rooms for himself and Murphy tonight near the main highway in New Hampshire. They’d get an early start tomorrow, be back in the city by midafternoon. With any luck, Randall would have his car ready to roll for Sunday’s transport.

  “Didn’t you say the Carmodys were married?” Murphy asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason. Just something Alex said in her room.”

  Murphy had good intuition. It was one of the reasons Carl had relaxed the rules a bit when he hired her. Murphy more than met most criteria he set for guides: law enforcement training, experience with at-risk youth. Many came from residential-treatment backgrounds, having worked at places like the one they were headed to now and others far more regimented.

  But at thirty-seven, Murphy was younger than the usual female guides he hired. Besides their professional qualifications, Carl preferred mothers with teenage children. These women were in the trenches personally; they understood that no matter how developed the client was physically, a sixteen-year-old was still a child. They responded appropriately. As he witnessed almost daily, there was no animal worse than a teenager wronged: all the strength of an adult, minus the maturity.

  So Murphy was a little green. Jamie wouldn’t show those colors for a few more years—maybe never, if she was lucky.

  But Murphy brought other assets to the table. She had proved herself a tech-savvy and skilled investigator during jobs like the one out of Maryland last month, a no-show. The parents were frantic, worried they’d have to abandon their plan. Cool as a cucumber, Murphy flipped open her laptop at the family’s home. In a few keystrokes, she had called up the kid’s cell phone records, crossmatched some numbers to street addresses and had the transporters knocking on a few doors. By noon, she’d tracked down the boy, who was crashed on a friend’s floor. They woke him and ran their drill, transport delayed only a few hours.

  Yes, Murphy was a valuable guide. And besides that, there was Jimmy—Jimbo, as he had been known in their platoon. They were tight. Carl had made him a promise.

  Movement in the backseat caught his eye, the girl thrashing in her sleep. Murphy clasped her wrist in a light hold. Alex appeared to settle under her touch.

  “Bad dream?” Carl raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Who knows? I got her.” Murphy was facing Alex, primed to react. Carl trained his guides to pick up the slightest nonverbal cue: an eye movement, the way a child sat, a hesitation before answering a question. Each spoke volumes.

  Like right now. Even in sleep, the girl’s hands were clenched in fists. It didn’t take an expert to predict Alex Carmody would wake up in a fighting mood.

  MEG

  Meg made herself go into Alex’s room. She surveyed the mess, inventorying the tornado of dirty dishes, makeup and discarded clothes, including the ones she’d left out for her daughter to wear on the trip north.

  On the vanity, the lava lamp was still warm to the touch. Beneath it sat a metallic mountain of discarded gum wrappers creased and folded into Ws, a curious habit her daughter had adopted. She ignored the temptation to sweep them all into the garbage. Alex would be livid if she knew Meg was in here. She mostly stayed out. Pick your battles. Sage advice from the well-thumbed parenting books on her nightstand.

  Alex’s bifold closet doors were open, shoes and boots blanketing the floor. Through the jumble of leather and suede, she spotted a slice of turquoise. She knelt and grabbed at the fabric, knowing exactly what it was: Alex’s Sweet Sixteen dress, the one Meg had stuffed down in the trash at the end of that long night.

  Holding the dress, Meg sat back on her heels, recalling her arrival at the accident scene, finding Alex white faced and glassy eyed on the stretcher. Her daughter had been in the backseat, her most serious injury a gash on her cheekbone requiring stitches. Another inch, and it would have been her eye.

  A few yards away, another stretcher had borne Cass’s still and broken body. Meg had been seized with an irrational desire to pull the sheet back, as though that might alter the outcome. Unsecured, Cass had been thrown from the car by the impact.

  Meg fingered the dress’s bloodstained neckline. Alex must have pulled it out of the garbage. Why would she want to hang on to such a tragic memento? Meg wondered, tucking the dress back where she’d found it and standing. As she did so, she caught her image in the mirror over Alex’s bureau. Curling from the mirror’s frame was half a photo strip of Alex and Cass mugging in their Sweet Sixteen finery, a souvenir of the party’s photo booth. Across the pictures were scrawled two words: Happy Corner. Appropriate words, as the booth had been wildly successful, drawing a long line of kids to that corner of the ballroom.

  Meg traced the photos on the strip, wondering about its other half, seized with melancholy at the realization of its likely owner. Backing away from the mirror, she closed Alex’s door behind her.

  In the upstairs hall, Meg checked her watch again—at least two hours until Carl’s next check-in. Meg saw how she would navigate her day. The infusion center’s full treatment schedule would be the vehicle carrying her along, Carl’s check-ins the mile markers.

  Half an hour later, hair damp, she carried her travel mug of coffee out to the van. Their street was quiet. Had any of the neighbors seen Carl and the female guide marching Alex down the street to the car?

  Whatever. It was done. Everything would be different, from this day forward.

  Her cell phone vibrated on her hip: Jacob touching base. He yelled to make himself heard over the whrr-whrr-whrranng of electric saws. “Shouldn’t you be at work by now?”

  She had planned for this. “Jack’s teacher wanted to see me.”

  “Jack doing all right?”

  “Great, actually. She moved him up to accelerated reading.” That was the truth; Ms. Traynor had e-mailed
her about it last week.

  “She made you come in to tell you that?”

  “Newbie teacher, trying to make nice with the parents.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “See who?”

  “Jack, Meg. You know, our son?”

  Meg snapped to attention. The last thing she needed was Jacob quizzing Jack on the phone later. “Nope. Kids were in gym. He never saw me.”

  “OK.” He paused. “Alex all right? She get to school today?”

  “Out the door bright and early.” She bit her lip until it hurt.

  “Hah. If she makes it all day, we’ll have to give her a gold star.”

  Meg forced a chuckle. “I hope she makes it the whole day, Jacob. I really do.” She heard someone calling him. “I’ve got to get to work. Call me tonight?”

  He cleared his throat. “Actually, you may see me tonight. Ben said we might finish up around two. There’s some bad weather heading in.”

  Panicked, Meg did the calculations. Even if Jacob stuck to that schedule and drove straight through, he wouldn’t make it back before seven. Alex should be safely to New Hampshire by then. There’d be nothing he could do.

  And after he exploded—which she knew he would—she’d make him see this was the only way to save their daughter.

  ALEX

  The siren sailing past them splintered Alex’s sleep, the midmorning brightness scorching her eyelids. Above her, clouds scuttled past the sunroof at a dizzying speed.

  It hadn’t been a dream. She was trapped in this car. Her neck ached from falling asleep in such an awkward position, and her mouth was dry and sour. And open, she realized with horror, wiping drool from her cheek. The woman tapped her hand, passing a bottle of water.

  Probably thrilled to have something to do, Alex thought, guzzling the water. She shielded her eyes. Squinting helped steady the lurching scenery: steepled white churches, clusters of box stores, a lone motorboat pulling out of a marina slip—typical New England stuff she’d passed a hundred times with her family.

  When she was younger, they had driven all over, her parents offering up special locations from their combined pasts like jewels in some kind of treasure hunt. And every time, they expected these places to be filled with meaning for Alex and Jack. Didn’t they realize their children needed new memories instead of their parents’ recycled dreams?

  There were road trips almost every weekend, before things got all weird between her parents. Alex’s favorite was the visit to a Vermont lodge where her dad vacationed as a kid. The place had been completely redone since his last visit; he was disappointed to find a year-round aquatic center in place of the theater in a barn. According to Grandma Miriam, her father had put on quite a performance there. She insisted Alex inherited her drama gene from him.

  Despite the renovation, they’d had an amazing time. Alex loved the lodge and all its hokey details, from the suspenders holding up the waiters’ shorts to the delicate white flowers painted on the red bedposts. And it was cool to swim in the middle of winter, then jump onto a sled outside.

  There hadn’t been a family road trip in a while. She felt cheated. All the kids she knew with divorced parents ended up with two of everything: two houses, two bedrooms decorated exactly the way they wanted, two awesome vacations every year. They spent just enough time with each parent before they got sick of each other. Tons of parental guilt equaled tons of swag, like they were making amends for the divorce or something.

  But with Alex’s parents, there were no such benefits, only a hypocritical and embarrassing living arrangement that both confused and depressed her. They said it was about the money, but if they could pay for her super-lavish Sweet Sixteen, how bad could things be? And did their staying together in the house mean that they might stay together? That they were secretly working on things? The sight of her parents’ cars side by side in the driveway at night gave Alex hope. Maybe this would be the night they’d all sit down to dinner again or maybe even orchestrate a jam session in the basement together as though nothing had happened.

  But inside it was always still Siberia, the deep freeze. Upstairs, downstairs. Her banishment from the basement had been the final insult. And they wondered why Alex was never home.

  Even Jack was freaked out by it. If it were possible, her little brother had been more annoying than usual, lurking outside her room at night. Like the night a couple of weeks ago, when Jack kept knocking over and over while she was going through some private stuff. Alex had caved and let him in. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

  She closed her eyes again, willing herself anywhere but in this stupid car. Last night at Evan’s, she had felt guilty about ignoring her mother’s text. But now, knowing what was in store for her, she was freaking glad she had stayed out.

  The car changed lanes suddenly; her stomach revolted against the motion. She hadn’t sat in the backseat of a car in a very long time. Not since the back of Logan’s new car, the night of her party. Since then, Alex had made sure to call shotgun before anyone else. Now she had a hazy flash of Cass planting herself next to her that night and sticking her finger in Alex’s face. “Remember, thirty minutes,” she’d said, tugging the seat belt across Alex.

  Thirty minutes for what? Alex couldn’t remember. Whenever she asked Shana, she would only say it was for Slurpees. Shana had a hard time talking about that night.

  From up front, the strains of a reggae song filled the car. Ugh. More lame attempts at Camo Man coolness. For a moment, the sun went behind a cloud, and she noticed a trinket dangling from the mirror. It was a frog, perched on an unseen rock like a Buddha, its eyes two garnet slits in its golden body. She would have recognized it anywhere.

  OMG. Was this another prop in her mother’s drama? Had she deliberately positioned this Amphibiana icon to sway Alex into cooperation? Stop being paranoid, girl. That would be too much, even for her mom. And Meg wouldn’t even know what the frog meant. The only person in her life besides Cass who could appreciate the golden tree frog’s significance was her dad, and he would never use their Phibs connection to manipulate her. It was their bond. Although there had been more than one occasion lately when he had gotten all “tough guy” with her and Jack.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. An entire rain forest of golden tree frogs couldn’t sway her. She wouldn’t give anyone connected to this bizarre road trip the satisfaction of acknowledging the trinket swinging next to Camo Man’s head. The frog no longer meant anything; that dream would never happen now.

  Thankfully, the song ended. But then the silence gave Mom Haircut a chance to ask if Alex had any questions about the school. The way her nostrils quivered when she spoke made the woman look more like a rabbit than a deer, Alex decided.

  And no, she didn’t have questions. Evan had told her everything she needed to know about places like this. He’d “gone away” the entire summer between freshman and sophomore years. Someplace in Maine near a lake. There was so much forced talking and group sharing that summer, Evan had wanted to jump off a bridge.

  “What if you didn’t feel like talking?” Shana had been sitting with her back pressed against her bedroom door. She was always really paranoid when they smoked.

  “They didn’t make you,” Evan said, “but you got, like, extra points for it. It was like a game. I played along, making up shit, just to get out of there.”

  Glancing sideways at Mom Haircut, Alex decided to play that game, too.

  MEG

  Meg flashed her ID badge at the security gate of the Rosswell Infusion Center, a gleaming edifice on the perimeter of Rye Hospital. In the parking lot, she drummed the wheel while a young mother buckled a child into a car seat, collapsed a stroller and slid it into the trunk before relinquishing a space near the entrance. Was it just her, or was the entire world in slow motion today?

  “Morning, Meg.” Up on her floor, a cheery voice called out to her. Ruthann—absolutely the last person Meg wanted to see today. She’d liked her well enough until the motherl
y nurse had slipped her the card, Families Together: Riverport Chapter.

  “Tuesday nights at the Presbyterian Church. Trust me. It helps.”

  Meg had managed a smile and stuffed it in a pocket. Who was Ruthann to pass judgment? Meg barely knew her; she was a name on a sub sheet, someone to switch shifts with. And although Meg might have complained some about Alex in the lounge, it certainly wasn’t enough to warrant Ruthann’s interference.

  “Morning.” Still in her coat, Meg leaned over the desk monitor, typing. The screen flooded with the day’s treatment schedule, patients arriving at half-hour intervals. “Are they kidding? Who squeezed in two more day stays last night? Why don’t they just invite the whole neighborhood?”

  Ruthann pressed a finger to her lips. Meg turned to see a gray-haired man in a cardigan wheel a woman by the intake desk, her lashless eyes disapproving.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Rosenthal. Rough morning.” In front of Meg, the screen blurred. I will not cry. She grabbed a tissue, feeling Ruthann’s eyes on her. She would do her best to avoid Ruthann today, Meg decided. Which she did, for the rest of the morning. Unfortunately, the nurse happened to be passing by at the exact moment Meg’s third patient of the day yelped, and Ruthann felt compelled to stick her head inside the room. Meg was momentarily frozen, staring at the crimson puddling in the crook of her patient’s arm.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Ryan.” The patient was on the floor for a day stay, her sixth in an eight-week chemotherapy regimen. In Meg’s defense, Lara Ryan had been subjected to so many draws by this stage of her treatment that even after making a fist like Meg asked, her overworked veins refused to respond to Meg’s probing.

  Ruthann stepped in and pressed Lara’s forearm a few times, then carefully reinserted the needle. Meg pinched the line, watching for bubbles confirming that the Herceptin flowed freely through Lara’s veins. Ruthann patted Meg’s shoulder and left.

  Lara offered Meg a wan smile. Feeling guilty, Meg asked if she’d like to be taken to a group treatment room, for company during the infusion. Lara was alone today; visitors for the day stays tended to drop off after the first few weeks.