Dear Irene,

by Jan Burke

  “Hang on again, Steven. Now the doorbell’s ringing.”

  The dogs were barking again and got to the front door before I did. “What’s wrong with you mutts?” I heard a voice call from the other side of the door. They immediately settled down into anxious whines. Not to be fooled by this, I grabbed on to their collars.

  “Come on in, Jack,” I shouted.

  He opened the door and stepped in. The dogs sat prettily and were quite well-behaved for him. “If I had known you could have this effect on them, I would have made sure you were here when we walked in tonight. They’ve been candidates for the banana ranch.”

  Frank stepped out into the hallway and invited Jack back to meet his mom. I could tell that it took everything in her power to control her initial reaction to him, taking in his scarred face and shaved head, his earring and tattoos. But Jack has an ability to make almost anybody like him, so Frank and I no longer worry over people’s first reactions to his appearance. I headed back to the phone.

  Steven Kincaid was apparently just feeling lonesome, and had no particular reason to call. I chatted with him for a moment, then covered the receiver and motioned to Frank. After a brief discussion, we ended up inviting Jack and Steven to join us for dinner. While we waited for Steven to make his way over, we fed the dogs and Cody. Jack had already won Bea over by the time Steven arrived. Bea wasn’t too old to appreciate Steven’s good looks, either, so we were happy campers when we headed out to Bernie’s All-Night Cafe.

  It was just as we were finishing dinner that the trouble started. “Irene,” Bea said to me with a smile, “I have the loveliest place picked out for the wedding.”

  Frank and I exchanged a look.

  “Mom, Irene’s sister is already working on that.”

  I tried not to laugh out loud as I added, “We’ll probably be picking something out ourselves when the time comes.”

  The check arrived and we haggled over who would pay, Frank and I finally convincing everyone that we’d cover it this time. We piled back into the Volvo; I sat between Steven and Jack in the backseat.

  Bea took up where she left off. “I’m sure your sister will adore this place. But you two need to set a date and set it now. I think June would be nice. Traditional, I suppose, but still—Irene, have you picked out your dress yet? We need to get going on invitations as well. And set up a florist, and a photographer, a caterer and—oh, of course, a minister.”

  “Irene’s Catholic,” Frank said, the moment she stopped to draw a breath.

  “What? Catholic? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, Frank.” The disappointment level would have better matched an announcement like “Irene’s an ax murderer and cannibal, as well as a polygamist, but by golly I love her anyway.” “Well,” she said, bucking up admirably, “we’re Episcopalian, Irene, and I don’t think you’ll find it too much of a change.”

  We had just pulled up in the driveway. Jack took my hand and gave it a squeeze of silent support, or I don’t think I could have kept my mouth shut. Steven was looking extremely uncomfortable. I suppose it was Frank’s tone of voice that made everyone in the car suddenly snap to attention. It was quiet, but chilled.

  “Irene, why don’t you and Jack and Steven take the dogs for a walk on the beach?”

  I nodded, and we got out of the car. Jack and Steven let the dogs out of the backyard. Frank opened the front door for his mom, who hadn’t said another word, then he came over to where I stood. He put his arms around me and bent to my ear and whispered, “Be careful, you unrepentant papist, and don’t let yourself wander out of sight of Jack and Steven, okay?” He kissed my forehead and went inside.

  The dogs were overjoyed at the prospect of a walk, leaping in circles around us as if they were on springs, bouncing their front and back ends. Their enthusiasm somehow buoyed my own spirits.

  We walked along the shore, watching the dogs chase each other. It was a cloudy night, threatening rain. There wasn’t much wind, but the air was cold. The moon was up; its bright face broke through the clouds now and again, but the night was dark enough to make me heed Frank’s warning—I stuck close to Jack and Steven. Jack was on my left. Steven on my right, as we approached the pier. Each put an arm through one of mine, and we huddled together, listening to Jack tell a story about a job he once had picking pears.

  Suddenly there was hollow “thump” to my right, and I turned to see blood pouring down Steven Kincaid’s face. He stared at me with a dazed look, reached toward his forehead, and collapsed onto the sand. I cried out, and Jack and I quickly knelt down next to him. He was breathing, but out cold. Blood flowed from a deep gash in his forehead, just above his right eye. The dogs started barking ferociously and charging toward the pier, where I saw a thin man running away.

  I looked back to Steven, who was pale and motionless.

  “Get Frank, Jack. Hurry. Tell him about the man on the pier.” As I spoke I took Steven’s head in my lap. I reached beneath my jacket and tore off a wide strip of my cotton blouse and used it to try—gently—to stop the bleeding on his head. Jack whistled for the dogs, who turned and came back. “I’m not leaving you here without them,” he said. The man who had been on the pier was nowhere in sight.

  Jack saw Frank’s dog sniffing at something, and he bent over and gingerly picked it up. He pocketed it, commanding the dogs to stay, then he ran back to the house.

  I sat shivering on the sand, holding the cloth to Steven’s head, listening to the dogs making small whimpers of concern. Frank’s dog licked my face, and I became aware of the fact that tears were coursing down my cheeks.

  Now and then the moon would clear the clouds, and I would see Steven’s pale, blood-covered face. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. The cloth was soaked and still he bled.

  I held back, or thought I held back, a sound of fear and sadness, but I may have made the sound after all, because I heard the dogs echo it. I begged my papist God not to let Steven Kincaid die.

  * * *

  I DON’T KNOW how much time had passed before I saw the dogs prick their ears forward. I looked up to see Frank and Jack running toward us. Probably only a few minutes had gone by, though it felt like hours. Frank knelt down next to me and felt for Steven’s pulse. “He’s still alive,” I managed to say, “but he hasn’t moved or made a sound. There’s a lot of blood.”

  “Foreheads bleed easily,” Frank said softly, and reached over to lift my hand from the wound. The strip of blouse was soaked red, and as it pulled away, the awful gash below it looked worse to me than it had before. Frank had a first-aid kit with him. He moved Steven’s head from my lap onto a sort of pillow. I heard a sound above us, and saw Jack unfurling a blanket. He put it over Steven while Frank made a pressure bandage for the wound.

  Before long, we heard sirens approaching. A beach patrol vehicle pulled up next to us, its floodlamp bathing us in bright light. The light only made me feel greater dismay as I looked into Steven’s pale, bloodstained face. I felt Frank taking me by the shoulders, gently moving me aside. The beach patrol had a stretcher; they took Steven away on it. I stood watching as they made their way to the pier, then met an ambulance; they transferred the stretcher to that vehicle and it drove off quickly, sirens wailing.

  The police arrived on the scene as well, and we talked to them for a few minutes. We had little to tell them. I hadn’t been able to see the face of the man on the pier; Jack hadn’t seen the man at all. Frank carefully held out something to a member of a forensic sciences team, saying Jack had found it on the sand.

  “Actually, your dog found it,” Jack said. Frank reached down and scratched his dog’s ears while the forensics man looked it over. It was a bloody rock, about four inches in diameter. Printed on one side, in small, cramped letters, were the words “Hyacinthus Must Fall.”

  “It’s another one of the myths,” Jack said. “Hyacinthus was a handsome young man who was greatly loved by the god Apollo. One day, at a competition, Apollo threw a disk that accidenta
lly struck Hyacinthus on the forehead.”

  He acted like he didn’t want to say more.

  “What happened to him?” Frank asked.

  “He died,” I said quietly, taking up the story. “Apollo grieved for him. As Apollo wept, a flower bloomed in the place where the blood of Hyacinthus had soaked the ground.”

  I stared down at the sand, red from Steven’s blood. Frank put an arm around my shoulders, and we turned and started back to the house. I couldn’t talk. I heard Jack whistling to the dogs, following us.

  When we opened the front door, Frank said, “Change clothes and we’ll go down to the hospital. I’ll help Jack with the dogs.”

  I just stared up at him. Had he said something?

  “Irene?”

  “Okay,” I said, and walked in the house.

  Frank’s mother took one look at me and rushed over to my side. She put an arm around me and walked me back to the bathroom. She turned on a faucet; I looked down and realized I was quite a sight. My hands and lap were covered in blood; my blouse was torn and my face was red and swollen from crying.

  “I’d better take a shower,” I said.

  “Okay, you go ahead,” she said. “I’m going to fix you something warm to drink. Your skin is as cold as ice.” She started up the shower for me as I peeled out of my clothes.

  I stood in the shower, feeling the hot water pelt against me, watching the pinkish water from my skin go down the drain. Finally, I came alive a little and made myself start to scrub.

  By the time I had dried off and dressed in a pair of jeans and a warm sweater, Bea was in the living room, a thermos waiting for me. “Take this with you,” she said. I looked over at the kitchen.

  “You washed all the dishes.”

  She ignored that. “Steven will be okay,” she said. She turned to Frank, who was sitting on the couch, looking at me with concern. “Franklin, get the lead out. Irene is worried about that boy.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. I’ll just wait here for you to get back. Don’t worry, I can manage.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant it.

  * * *

  WE WERE SITTING in the waiting room at St. Anne’s Emergency Room before I opened the thermos. Just breathing in the aroma of the hot coffee made me feel better. I took a sip and realized it was laced with brandy.

  I offered some to Frank, who took a sip, then made a face. “Wasn’t expecting that. You go ahead and drink it. I’m driving.”

  I drank a half a cup and felt myself steadying a bit. I got up and went over to a pay phone and called the paper. They had already picked up the first police calls on the scanner. I gave them what I could on the story; we were past deadline, so the nightside staff was busy rearranging the front page for the morning edition. “I’m at the hospital now,” I told the man on the City Desk. “I’ll call again if I hear anything more on Kincaid’s condition.”

  I sat back down next to Frank and drank more coffee. The waiting room chairs were apparently designed by the set decorator for the Spanish Inquisition. I would get up every few minutes and walk by the reception desk, which made everyone at the desk get very busy with things that made them face the other way. They were getting tired of telling me that they’d let me know about Steven as soon as they heard anything from the doctor.

  It was a busy night, and I became uneasy watching the incoming stream of the injured and their worried friends and relatives. Frank finally coaxed me into putting my head on his shoulder for a while, and I fell into a restless sleep.

  A voice was calling to me, and I awoke with a start. It was Frank, whose tousled hair told me he had dozed off as well. A weary doctor stood in front of us and told us she would take us back to see Steven, but only for few minutes.

  “Your friend is very, very lucky,” she said. Her manner was calm and sympathetic and I felt myself unwind a fraction as we followed her down the hallway. “He has a hairline fracture of the skull. The blow caused a concussion, but if it had been a little harder, it might have damaged brain tissue, or caused problems with fluid buildup. The CAT scan didn’t show anything like that. We will want to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t have other problems. He’s conscious now, but groggy. He’s experiencing some pain, but when a patient has a head injury, it’s unwise to medicate him for pain relief.” She stopped outside the door to a room. “I realize you’ve been anxious about him and have waited out there a long time. But promise you’ll think of his best interests—don’t stay too long, all right?”

  We agreed and walked into the room. It brought back all of my hospital memories, and Frank put a steadying arm around me. Steven was still ghostly pale, but they had cleaned him up. He had a white bandage around his head. He opened his eyes when we came up to the bed.

  Steven could wake up and look at us. I felt a tremendous sense of relief just being able to see that for myself.

  “Hi, Steven,” Frank said. “Good to see you’re still with us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Frank speaks from experience,” I said. “He banged his head up about six months ago. You look better than he did. But you still scared the hell out of us.” I stopped. It occurred to me that I had been talking a mile a minute.

  Faint smile.

  “Did you see who hit you?” Frank asked.

  “No. What happened?” His speech was thick.

  “You were hit by a rock.”

  “I don’t remember.” He closed his eyes.

  “Remember being on the beach?”

  “Sort of.”

  He was tiring and it was obvious that questions were confusing to him. “Good night, Steven,” I said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  He opened his eyes and said, “I heard you.”

  “Heard me what?”

  “Crying. Praying, I think.”

  “Both. You apparently weren’t the only one who heard me. Get some sleep.”

  He closed his eyes again and we left.

  * * *

  IT HAD STARTED to drizzle by the time we walked back out to the car. We sat in the front seat for a moment. I looked over at the man next to me, and something in me gave way. This happens every so often; some barrier within me suddenly crumbles, some barrier I haven’t even realized was there. I reached over and pulled him closer, stretching up to kiss him. He didn’t balk at it, and returned the kiss enthusiastically. “What was that for?” he asked.

  “For—I don’t know—standing by me, I suppose.”

  He smiled and kept his arm around me. We didn’t say anything more to one another that night, just crawled into bed when we got home and held on to each other. That said all that needed saying.

  25

  I AWOKE WITH A START in the middle of the night, scared. I had been having a nightmare, one in which I went to the hospital, only to be told that Steven had died unexpectedly during the night. I must have made a noise or something, because Frank woke up and pulled me closer, so that my head was on his chest. “You okay?” he asked in a drowsy voice.

  “Yes,” I lied, wanting nothing more than to pick up the phone, to call the hospital to confirm that I wasn’t having some psychic experience, a prescient dream. Eventually, the sounds of rain falling outside and Frank’s breathing lulled me back to sleep.

  Frank had already gone to work when I awoke the next morning. Bea was up and had hot coffee waiting for me. It was a gray day outside, and I had a gray mood to match it, but Bea was full of energy. I tried not to dampen her spirits. She had let the dogs in the house, and seeming to understand their luck, they were on their best behavior. Cody had started training them not to mess with him—each of them had felt the claws of Wild Bill.

  Frank had filled his mother in on the news about Steven, and she asked me a few questions about what had happened out on the beach. “I’m so sorry all of this happened,” she said. “I was hoping we could have a belated Christmas together.”

  “If you don’t mind hanging around in Las Pier
nas for another day, we can celebrate it tonight.”

  “If you two don’t mind my being here—”

  “Not at all. It was a nice surprise. You helped me cope with last night—I appreciate it.”

  She was pleased by this, and I left her in a good mood.

  * * *

  I MADE MY way through Las Piernas’s rain-washed streets at an irritating snail’s pace. Traffic was at a crawl. I listened to the noisy staccato of rain pummeling the cloth top of my Karmann Ghia while my windows fogged up. I tightened my grip on the wheel in impatience.

  As soon as I got to work, I called St. Anne’s to check up on Steven. Not wanting to wake him if he was sleeping, I asked for a friend of mine on the staff there, Sister Theresa. She was happy to hear from me. I explained why I was calling.

  “Mr. Kincaid, is it? Well, he’s doing much better.”

  “You already know who he is?”

  She laughed. “There’s a constant stream of nurses in and out of that poor boy’s room. He’s quite handsome, you know. I only hope it doesn’t cause him to be denied his rest. Detective Harriman had a guard placed at his door, and I’m beginning to think it was to protect the young man from our staff. I have looked in on him, and I must say he does look like a sleeping angel.”

  “Don’t go forgetting your vows, Sister. He likes older women.”

  She found this highly amusing. She encouraged me to say hello to her if I stopped by to see him.

  I worked on a follow-up story based on what Louisa Parker had told us. I called Pete Baird and found out that they were still waiting for a court order to look for adoption records.

  “Sorry to hear about that kid getting hurt last night,” he said. “I like him.”

  “Me too.”

  “You know about the slingshot?”

  “Slingshot?”

  “Yeah, they found a hunter’s slingshot on the pier last night—the lab guys say it might have been used to launch that rock. They make these super-slingshots now—kids carry them around; they’re a real pain in the ass as far as we’re concerned. Lots of property damage. More accurate than the old-forked-twig-and-rubber-band routine we used when I was a kid. The lucky thing is, only a few places in town sell them, so if he bought it locally, we may be able to track down the buyer.”