The Queen of Hearts

by Kimmery Martin

  “She asked me to talk to Boyd. Despite her grief, I don’t think she wants to go after you; maybe I can persuade them to drop the suit.”

  I could hear the sharp intake of her breath over a hum of many voices. She must have been calling on a break at her conference. “Are you . . . ? Will you do it?”

  “Emma! Of course I will. Of course. I would do anything to help you. And I hope you can find some comfort in the fact that Betsy asked me about it. She doesn’t hate you, Emma.”

  This was a stretch. Betsy’s feelings regarding Emma were unknown to me; owing to time constraints, her whispered request this morning led to minimal discussion. But surely she wouldn’t have talked about interceding with Boyd if she wanted retribution.

  Emma made a noise. “Thank you.”

  “Well, don’t thank me ye—”

  Emma cleared her throat. “There will never be a way for me to thank you enough, Zadie. I just— This isn’t even why I called, actually. It was something else.”

  “Okay. What?”

  When she spoke, her voice struck a different note of caution. “When I checked my phone, I also had a bunch of texts from Nick.”

  I made a noise registering somewhere between disgust and alarm. I knew Nick had assimilated into Emma’s large surgical group with ease. Through the grapevine, I’d heard he lavished the office girls with good-natured teasing, so they were hopelessly charmed within minutes of meeting him. He was particularly attentive to the scheduler, who adored him; she’d begun giving him better call days and OR times than he probably deserved.

  “You know, he’s always willing to switch one of his call days with the other guys, right?” Emma asked, sounding peevish but more lively. “They think he’s the best partner. He golfs with Jack Inman, and Jack’s introduced him to Buzzy Cooper and that crowd, so now we’ll probably have to endure him leering at us at the pool next summer too. Why can’t he leave us alone?”

  “Emma?” I asked. “What did the texts say?”

  “That’s why I called. He keeps asking for your address.”

  “Which under no circumstances you would share with him,” I said.

  “Of course not. But this last message I got—it’s from hours ago now—said that he’s stopping by your office. Today. It said he’s stopping by today.”

  “What?” I shrieked. This was a really bad time to get attacked by the past. I glanced at my schedule, which stared back at me reproachfully. I was already two patients behind, and there was no way I could insert a wholly undesirable encounter with a detested ex-boyfriend into the middle of my work day.

  “Hang on, hang on,” said Emma. “I called him. We had a brief but emphatic discussion of why that would be the stupidest idea ever, and he relented. But he says he sent you something.”

  Perfectly on cue, there was a knock on my door. I hung up with Emma and swung the door open to reveal Della Rae, our receptionist. Or at least the person looked like Della Rae from the bottom half. Her torso and head were obscured by a gigantic tower of gold foil boxes of various sizes, topped off with an enormous blobby thing in the shape of a bow.

  “What is that?” I asked weakly.

  “Chocolate!” She beamed, lowering the monstrosity onto my desk. “Somebody knows you pretty well, Dr. Anson. Even the bow is made of candy.”

  “I don’t like candy!” I protested, hastily shoving closed the top drawer of my desk, which was full of emergency chocolate bars. “Give it to the girls out front.”

  “Ooh, okay,” said Della Rae, scooping it back up. “But here’s the card.” She grinned and flipped a white envelope at me. A strange mix of repulsion and intrigue gripped me as I caught sight of the spiky handwriting inside. I opened it.

  Zadie,

  I promise I am not stalking you. I want to say I am sorry for what I did to you, and I miss you. And I am still so sorry about what happened to your friend Graham.

  I hope we can be friends.

  All my best,

  Nick

  Chapter Twenty-four

  GET IN THERE WITH YOUR ELBOWS

  Emma, Present Day

  Because Zadie is my closest friend—my only close friend, really—I find myself willing to overlook traits that would ordinarily disturb me. Like a certain lack of punctuality and a tendency to believe that obligations mysteriously pop up on her calendar without her placing them there.

  So I wasn’t surprised when, on my first Saturday back from Finland, Zadie failed to appear for a run we’d scheduled for eight a.m. in order to discuss the situation with the Packards. A quick call to her cell revealed the reason: she had forgotten which day it was and was at her twins’ basketball game.

  “I’m so sorry, Em!” she wailed. “They have three games and the first one is almost over. . . . Why don’t you meet me here? Drew can stay at the game and we can still run.”

  I agreed. I knew that Zadie had reached out to Boyd Packard in an attempt to save my career and hadn’t heard back yet. Over the last few months, I’d tried to soothe myself by running or reading or organizing, but it was like trying to relax before you were beheaded. I struggled to present a normal facade to the world. Depression had wormed its way into my core, each sonorous beat of my heart sending out a wash of dread. I walked around in a fugue of resignation, certain I’d never again feel the absence of worry.

  Still, I held on to one hope: that Zadie would save me.

  When I reached the Presbyterian church where the games were played, a sea of people churned in the lobby outside the gymnasium, all squawking and chattering with the bright, mindless intensity of birds. Moms in tight, sweat-wicking performance athletic pants, clutching to-go cups from Starbucks; clumps of dads in golf shirts; shrieking children weaving through everyone’s legs. I hugged my arms in at my sides. I didn’t see Zadie anywhere.

  I kept to the periphery of the room, my eyes darting through the crowd for a friendly face. No one spoke to me as I edged closer to the indoor basketball courts. Finally, I spotted Delaney by the vending machine, which she was attempting to manipulate by shoving crinkled-up paper towels into the coin slots. Because I was distracted by the hapless vending machine—which was making a grinding noise as it tried to reject the onslaught of counterfeit funds—it took me a second to realize something was off in Delaney’s appearance. Closer inspection revealed she had lodged a wad of scrunched-up paper towels under her headband. That, and her outfit was odd: she was decked out in a pair of tight-fitting camo shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of a deranged-looking older gentleman with a full beard. The caption read, Y’ALL OUGHTA GO BY WALMART AND PICK YOU UP A PERSONALITY.

  Zadie appeared out of the crowd and stared at Delaney. “Honey,” she said in a calm but ominous tone. “What are you wearing?”

  Delaney looked down. “This?” she asked pertly.

  “Yes.”

  “I look very attractive, sweetie dear.” She twirled.

  “Where did you get those clothes, Lainie?”

  “I traded.”

  “With who?”

  “I don’t know. Do you love it?”

  Rowan was dispatched to help Delaney hunt for her clothes as Zadie and I tried to find Drew. The girls eventually returned with a bewildered two-year-old boy, who had been unable to articulate to his alarmed parents why he was now clad only in pink smocked overalls. Apologies were issued and suspiciously accepted; a clothing exchange was conducted. The Ansons and I slunk away.

  “Thank you, baby,” Zadie called to Drew as he strode away from us with Delaney tucked like a football under one arm, her legs furiously churning in the air behind him. With his other arm, he was gesticulating at the twins, who appeared to be zooming in different directions. There was no sign of Rowan.

  “Have a good jog,” he replied cheerfully over his shoulder, blowing her a kiss. I looked away.

  We hit the sidewalk outside
the church at a fast clip. The streets surrounding the church were a riotous blaze of fall colors: the gusty wind blew gold- and flame-colored leaves into our faces as we flew along. I concentrated on the rhythmic pounding of our shoes on the pavement, enjoying the absence of thought, until Zadie finally spoke.

  “How are you?” she panted.

  I answered the question honestly. “I’m depressed.”

  She slowed to a trot and looked at me. “I know that’s normal, but it still sucks. I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. “Right,” I said briskly. “Tell me what you’re thinking about how to approach the Packards.”

  This seemed like a straightforward question to me—what exactly to say to them and how to phrase it—but Zadie launched into an analysis of first Boyd’s and then Betsy’s personalities, complete with anecdotes from her friendship with them, and how they’d reacted to various social occurrences, and how she’d reacted in turn to them, until my head was reeling with emotional overload. By the time she wrapped up, I decided just to trust her on the subject of the Packards.

  “Tell me about the note from Nick.”

  Her face, which had been cast in an expression of empathetic concern, became instantly animated. “The note!” she squawked. “Can you believe that? He’s still trying to make contact. Why would he care if we were friends?”

  “He said that to me too,” I offered warily. This conversational path was strewn with potential pitfalls, but I couldn’t see a way to avoid it.

  Zadie’s jog turned into an agitated hop. “I think he can’t relax unless he’s messing with somebody,” she said. “And he didn’t just send a note. There was an obscene pile of chocolate, too.”

  “Did you keep it?” I asked.

  “I did not,” she said piously. “I gave it to the front office people.”

  “All of it? You didn’t have one bite?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she growled. “It was too busy for me to get lunch that day.”

  I smiled at her, but then I felt a flash of disquiet. I stopped jogging.

  “I hate working with him,” I said to her quietly. “I hope you know that.”

  Zadie stopped too. “Oh, Emma, I know you do,” she said, her big golden eyes glistening. “You are so good to me.” We were quiet for a moment, and then she grinned at me, her humor restored. “If you were thinking of having him murdered, you can proceed.”

  “I’ll consider that carefully,” I said. I hadn’t followed through on my futile threat to ruin him after he’d joined my practice. At first I’d tried the noble route by simply ignoring him. This became more and more difficult, as he seemingly went out of his way to annoy me: he befriended the scheduler and sucked up all the best OR block time; he befriended Nestor Connolly, the hospital’s CEO, and somehow convinced him hepatobiliary surgeons should be excused from taking overflow trauma call; he befriended all the clerical girls on our shared surgical office floor, who now tittered and grimaced when I walked by. He turned my favorite scrub nurse against me. I endured it, because what else could I do? He possessed the ability to destroy what was left of my life.

  Zadie started walking, but then stopped and gave me a big hug. “Nick can go to hell, Em,” she said. “I don’t care what he does. And it’s fine with me if you work with him; you do whatever you need to do to make that okay.”

  “Thank you,” I said, marveling for the millionth time at her ability to love me, but she was already walking again. She looked back over her shoulder, reading something in my face.

  “But, Emma,” she said cheerfully. “I was kidding. Don’t actually kill him.”

  —

  We returned to the gym in time for the boys’ last game. It was kind of cute, actually. I found myself watching intently, wondering if there was any way Henry would ever become this coordinated. I was graced with height, but I’m klutzy and dysfunctional when it comes to sports, and sadly, Wyatt wasn’t any better. Henry would have to figure out a way to socially compensate. Zadie’s son Finn was the opposite. I watched him as he strutted around the basketball court, blissfully ignorant of the fact that he was a tiny forty-six-pound white person. In his mind, apparently, he was Stephen Curry. He flicked a lock of sweaty hair out of his eyes and hollered, “Hey, guys! Guys! I’m open!”

  The church gymnasium roared. Finn got the ball and passed to Eli, Zadie’s other son, who, although the more timid of the two, was actually the better shot. His ball sailed up and hovered tantalizingly on the rim of the basket before finally plunging through, which left Finn and Eli’s team down by one with thirty-four seconds left in the game. The other coach promptly called a time-out.

  Beside me, I could feel Zadie and Drew beaming; Drew had an arm draped around Zadie’s neck, and she leaned into him. I watched as he picked up her free hand in his larger one and squeezed it. He whispered something into her ear and she smiled.

  Ignoring the game, Mickie Blanchard leaned out across me to talk to Zadie. “Are y’all going to the thing at the Mint next week?” she asked, blinking her pale eyelashes.

  Before I had time to fully register the social sting of not having been invited to the thing at the Mint—really, I had donated to Mickie’s committee for funding guest speakers at the Mint Museum! So why wouldn’t—

  A thud of shock belted me in the stomach. Instantly, I felt my physiology change: my heartbeat sped up, my hands went cold, and my breathing accelerated. I tried to make myself look small as the intense, consuming terror of cornered prey swept over me.

  Hovering alongside the first row of bleachers, Boyd Packard leaned in the direction of the coach’s huddle, dispensing loud and doubtless unwanted advice to his son some twenty feet away.

  “Get in there with your elbows, Willard,” he bellowed. “You’re running like you’re locked in a damn straitjacket.” He wiped a streak of perspiration from the overworked sweat glands at his temple and advanced closer to the court. Even before I let his daughter die, I’d recognized Boyd was one of those people who generally got what he wanted. Had he not been born into spectacular wealth, he would have been successful by virtue of sheer cussedness. He was not handsome or intelligent or pleasant, but he was indefatigable.

  Keeping my movements slow and nonchalant, I stood and eased myself behind the bleachers, where I gripped one of the rickety metal legs. But this offered scant protection; there were only five rows of seats, so my head and torso stuck up like a scarecrow behind the people seated in the top row. This was worse than if I’d stayed seated. A wordless bubble of dismay escaped my lips as I risked a glance in Boyd’s direction.

  He was now ten feet in front of me, practically frothing at the mouth in his urgency to communicate to the coach and players that they needed to get the ball back in order to win. Tension gripped the gymnasium as the final seconds of the game ticked away. Will Packard made a desperate lunge toward the hoop, hurling the ball into the air with both hands.

  It missed.

  The defeated Myers Park Pres boys lined up for the postgame handshake. Most of them appeared to be handling the loss with good grace, but both Finn’s and Will’s shoulders heaved as they fought off tears. As a stream of parents, including Boyd, headed into the lobby, I saw Drew kneel down, pulling a sobbing Finn in for a hug.

  “There you are,” someone said, causing me to leap backward like a startled gazelle and actually knock my head—hard—against the painted cinder-block wall. I winced.

  “Ouch,” said Zadie. “You okay?”

  “Boyd Packard is here.”

  “Yeah,” she said calmly. “I saw him.” She gave me a speculative look. “C’mon, let’s talk to him.”

  “No,” I gasped, but Zadie was already boinging away from me, her characteristic springy gait almost lost in the swell of people at the gym’s doors. I slumped back against the wall and then started after her.

  Battling against a tide of incoming parents as the whis
tle blew for the next game, I momentarily lost sight of her. The doors of the gym opened up to the massive lobby, where we’d met before our run; apparently it served as a daylong repository for families to socialize before and after games. I dodged a conversational clump of women I recognized from Henry’s preschool, not bothering to speak to them as I barreled past. Where had Zadie gone?

  Then through the large windows at the front of the room, I caught a glimpse of her outside. She and Boyd were standing in the parking lot. I assessed his body language: cocked head, torso turned, leaning slightly toward her; he seemed receptive enough. No smile, but no overt hostility either. I opened the door and walked outside.

  I came from Zadie’s blind side, so Boyd saw me first.

  He stiffened, his chest expanding. For a ridiculous moment, he reminded me of an angry peacock, puffing out its feathers, but the illusion shattered when he spoke.

  “Get this bitch away from me,” he said.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Boyd,” said Zadie, “accord me one minute. Please. I’ve been thinking of nothing besides you and Betsy, and I know we all want the same thing here.”

  “What?”

  Who knows why the physical arrangement of some faces invokes trust? Zadie’s was one of those, all shining earnestness and sincerity, with her lilting, lovely eyes and the childish sweep of her snub nose and her little chin. You wanted to look at her and you liked her on sight. Boyd softened.

  “We want to ease your sorrow, Boyd. And, especially, we want to make things more bearable for Betsy.”

  “And how would you do that, Zadie?” Boyd asked, ignoring me.

  She stayed upbeat. “Well, I know you are fond of Macon Bradford”—I recognized the name instantly: another country club pal, and Boyd’s family attorney—“but call off the dogs, at least temporarily. Give Emma a chance to sit down with you and Betsy, alone, and allow yourself the chance to hear her out.” I startled a little—my lawyer would never agree to this—but Zadie forged ahead. “Nobody except Macon stands to gain anything from going to court, Boyd. You know that. You owe it to yourself to have all the information first, and you owe it to yourself—and Betsy—to see if this is something you can understand, or even forgive.”