by Erin Healy
“Has she woken?”
“In and out,” Mrs. Harper said. The women walked arm in arm to Gina’s room without going in. She lay in bed on the other side of the window-wall, looking unearthly pale but at rest. An IV was hooked up to her hand. “Her oxygen’s not what it should be, you know. And her blood pressure is low. But they’re good people here. They’re looking after her alright.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“Oh no. Gina’s dad is on his way down and he’s bringing my things. The two of us’ll do fine.”
“What about Gina? Maybe I could bring her pajamas or something.”
“That’d be nice. I’m sure she’d like that.”
“Next time I come then. In the meantime, you’ll let me know how I can help?”
“You pray, dear, and we’ll do the same.” Mrs. Harper smiled at Angelo, who lingered by the nurse’s station, and patted the back of Lexi’s hand.
“I’ll do that. Molly will too. Iassume you’ve got our number at home?” When she nodded, Lexi said, “Please tell Gina not to stay down too long. Molly wants to learn some more blonde jokes.”
“We’ll kick her into gear as soon as she’s sitting up.”
“Okay then.” Lexi kissed Mrs. Harper’s cheek and waited until she was beside Gina again before turning to go.
Without taking in any details, her eyes scanned the other rooms on the ward. She probably wouldn’t have noticed anything had an orderly in green scrubs not pulled back a privacy curtain in one of the rooms on the opposite side of the unit.
Through the sliding glass door, she saw a uniformed police officer standing in the corner of the room and a patient with a bruised face lying in the bed. His left arm was in a cast and his head was wrapped in gauze over his right eye.
A slim doctor about Lexi’s age, perhaps Pakistani or Indian, was walking into the room while engrossed in a chart. The officer walked out and took up post by the door.
The man in bed turned his head to the doctor and in so doing caught sight of Lexi.
Norm.
He smiled. A light, casual, corner-of-the-mouth, isn’t-it-a-crazy-day kind of smile.
That scythe of a smile cut Lexi’s heart. That smile, which had once knocked her senseless, aroused in her every fiery arrow of flaming emotion she had ever felt over the death of her sister. News of his pending parole had made her angry, but this unexpected encounter transported her to the day she had learned Tara was murdered and Norman charged with the crime.
The blackest day of her blackest year.
Tara had visited Lexi the day before she died. She arrived while Molly napped, bearing hot cinnamon rolls and a thermos of fresh coffee because she knew both were Lexi’s weakness. They sat and ate and laughed and licked their sticky fingers, and she waited until Lexi bit into her second roll before ruining the mood.
You need to end this thing with Norman, she said. You need to cut him off because he has a wife and they want a child and he needs them the way you need Grant. Norm won’t make you whole.
You’ll shatter his family into a million pieces, Tara said. And yours. If you and Grant can’t hold it together, you’ll kill Molly.
Lexi found that last bit to be over the top. Grant is the one who’ll kill Molly, she shot back. He’ll kill her by ignoring her or by hooking her on his drugs—if he doesn’t kill himself first. Tara didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, Lexi announced. She couldn’t possibly. She wasn’t married. She wasn’t even dating.
Neither Tara nor Lexi budged in their positions, Lexi because she was stubborn and Tara because she was right. Lexi sent her away with her thermos but kept the leftover rolls and devoured them all within the hour.
They turned to a rock in Lexi’s stomach and sat there for weeks, months even, after she understood she would never see Tara again.
Barrett was the one who called with the news. He was in the morgue and couldn’t speak for a whole minute after Lexi realized it was him on the other end. He sobbed and she imagined him with his free hand tilting his forehead so that his face turned up toward God, groaning the questions that had no answer.
“Your sister’s dead, Lexi. A random, freak accident. They’ve arrested someone.”
Lexi was at home, tethered to the kitchen phone by a cord too short to reach a chair, and by the time he finished she was on her knees on the cold, sticky floor, pressing her brow into a cupboard door and gripping the overhanging counter above her head.
Grant came home in a drugged-up stupor. He found Lexi on the floor, still holding the phone receiver, which by that time was droning on with a recorded message about what to do if she’d like to place a call. Molly was crying, but Lexi only noticed because Grant demanded she hang up the phone and do something about it.
Now, there he was, Norman Von Ruden, getting the same professional medical care that her best friend was receiving. What he deserved was a third-world, flea-infested armpit of a disreputable clinic.
No, he didn’t deserve even that.
There he was, getting patched up to be released a mere seven years after he killed Tara in a haze of what experts believed was undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
There he was, smiling at her, after he huffed and puffed and blew down her family and left her standing in the rubble.
You should have died last night! Lexi’s screams bounced around inside her brain. You don’t deserve to lie in that bed! They should dump you out on the street!
She was aware of a presence by her right arm, touching her at the elbow.
Even in prison you can’t leave my family alone! Molly almost died! It’s your fault! You don’t deserve to live!
The hand on her elbow took hold of her, squeezing hard. The brownskinned doctor in Norm’s room turned to look at her. A nurse at the station was staring. The sheriff posted at Norm’s door was headed in Lexi’s direction.
Her body quavered. Norm’s smile faltered. She heard the sound of her own voice and realized she was shouting.
I’ll kill you myself! I should do it right now!
The physician took two steps and yanked the privacy curtain closed.
Angelo gently pulled Lexi from the ICU before the officer reached them.
{ chapter 15 }
The cloudy-gray post office boxes seemed to darken as Grant stood in front of his open cubby and read his daughter’s note. He hadn’t expected a reply so soon, though the reply itself wasn’t a great surprise.
Grant, thanks but no thanks. Don’t bother asking me again. Molly. (Just plain Molly.)
It wasn’t the rejection that disheartened him, but the fact that Lexi had written it. She hadn’t gone to great lengths to disguise her handwriting, which made the impersonation that much stranger. He hadn’t thought she’d use Molly that way. Ever. For any reason. Grant tossed Lexi’s fakery into a freshly lined trashcan and stood there a minute, trying to sort through what this meant for him.
“Can I help you?” A postal worker stood at Grant’s elbow. The man sounded worried, and Grant didn’t look at him. Sometimes Grant figured he looked like a con, with his tired eyes and scruffy hair, and it was hard for him to tell if people who approached when he was pondering life were more concerned for him or their own well-being.
“Sorry. No. I was just leaving. Thanks.”
Grant pushed out the door into the afternoon glare and thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, the employee leaning into the trashcan where he’d tossed Lexi’s letter.
What first struck Grant as strange sorted itself out with an easy explanation. The cans had to be emptied at some point, didn’t they?
As he pointed his rusty Datsun back toward the trailer park, Grant picked the course of action that seemed most insane. He decided to try seeing Lexi at the bar and grill again. He was nuts, sure, but at this point, what more could he possibly lose?
He took a back road home, swerving casually across the double yellow line on the carless road, back and forth, weighing his options. An unexpected fear caused
him to linger on the wrong side of the stripes. If Lexi wouldn’t forgive him, what hope did he have that God ever would?
In the St. Luke’s hospital parking lot, Angelo sat with Lexi on the open tailgate of his Chevy while she calmed down. She found him to be nothing short of the ideal man in that moment: he didn’t leave her, and he didn’t try to talk to her. She tucked her hands under her legs because they were cold, and he got her jacket from the Volvo and brought it to her.
“It shouldn’t have surprised me to see him,” she said after several minutes. “I knew he was there.”
It was almost one o’clock and she hadn’t eaten anything yet that day. Her stomach was making small clenching jerks.
“Did I say all that? I mean, was I really shouting?” Angelo rested his huge hand on Lexi’s shoulder. “They must think I’m crazy. Except . . . I guess they wouldn’t know me from any plain Jane down here. But he is a con. Do they know who he is? What he did? I wonder if it’s hard for doctors to patch up guys who have killed other people, no matter what their oath says. I could have killed him.” Lexi stared at the asphalt several inches beneath her dangling feet. “If we’d been alone, I think I might have done it. Does that make me like him?”
Lexi didn’t want Angelo to answer that question, and he didn’t.
The discomfort of concealing truth from another person came over her then, between her stupid question and Angelo’s gaze.
She shook off her unease. Angelo couldn’t have had any inkling of her past relationship with Norman. Still, his compassionate silence also seemed to judge her. She wished he would speak and dispel that notion. She wished he would say anything to make her feel better.
“What would you have done?” she asked.
“What would I have done, or what would I have done if I were you?”
Lexi wasn’t sure.
“The way people hurt each other is a terrible thing,” he said.
“That man did more than hurt my sister.”
Angelo nodded once. “He did.”
“You can understand why I feel the way I do.”
“I can.”
Rather than justify her anger, his agreement stirred a well of grief in Lexi.
“That yelling, ugly screamer is not who I am. It’s not the way I want to be.”
“Of course it’s not.”
“But his offense was so . . . huge.”
“It has you by your hair,” he said.
“What?”
“His sin. It’s got a hold of you.”
“No it doesn’t.” She wasn’t angry at his observation, but confused. “I’ve done fine moving on with my life since it happened. You know my husband left me that same year? What a double whammy! But I put that behind me. I had to. If I hadn’t, I probably would have lost my job and Molly and who knows what else. I don’t think it has a hold of me. It’s just the stress of everything that’s happened in the last day or two. I’m tired. I snapped. That’s all.”
Lexi sat on this claim for a few seconds. Wasn’t it bad enough to have lived through Tara’s murder and Grant’s abandonment? Why heap on the possibility that Norman and Grant still had some psychological influence over her? An unbidden image of Norman’s fist gripping her hair at the roots made Lexi shiver.
“Anyone in my shoes would have done the same thing,” she said. “It’s normal.” Lexi slid off the back of the tail gate. “I should go.”
Angelo followed her home without offering to, perhaps to avoid the risk that she’d refuse him. As they climbed the mountain between Riverbend and Crag’s Nest, Lexi pondered what the protective gesture might mean. Brotherly love or something more? She tried not to overanalyze it. After all, she’d invited him to lunch, and they hadn’t eaten yet.
She planned to invite him in. Angelo’s presence would be a buffer between her and her mother. Maybe even between her and Molly, depending on whether Alice had stirred up Molly’s need to see Grant. Lexi wondered what her mother had been saying about that in Lexi’s absence.
If Angelo could handle this dynamic, Lexi would take a closer look at the merits of his friendship. His visit would be something of a test. It couldn’t hurt to have a man of his size and apparent devotion nearby, considering the present company she seemed to attract. On the other hand, if anything could send a man running, the collective effect of Warden Pavo, Grant Solomon, Alice Grüggen, and Norman Von Ruden should have been it.
Thinking of the pancakes that Molly had wanted to make, Lexi swung into the Crag’s Nest Safeway to splurge on a pint of blueberries while Angelo waited in his truck alongside her Volvo. By the time Lexi pulled into the carport in her apartment complex, the berries sat on the passenger seat looking like an insignificant gesture. She hoped Molly would accept them anyway.
Angelo seemed glad for the invitation to come in. Lexi promised him a hot chocolate but avoided mention of blueberry pancakes until she talked to her daughter.
When Lexi opened the front door, the sound of Molly and Alice laughing spilled out onto the walkway. Angelo held the screen door open and she turned to smile at him, glad to start this thing on a positive note.
But he was scowling.
Lexi felt confused. She glanced around the entry. The place was decently clean, no doubt Alice’s doing in Gina’s absence. Nothing smelled bad. In fact, the welcoming aroma of bacon floated out of the kitchen. Her mother and daughter had been cooking.
Lexi moved down the short hall and took one step into the kitchen before realizing what was wrong.
Warden Pavo sat at her kitchen table.
He was laughing. And Molly was laughing. Her head was thrown back over the top of her seat, and her brown hair shimmied with her giggles.
“Lexi!” Alice gushed. “We have a guest!” She stood at the stove, using tongs to turn bacon. Molly sat with her leg propped up on a chair. She had a bowl of spinach leaves in front of her, and a pile of stems sitting on the edge of the table. She straightened when Lexi came in, then looked away.
Warden’s jack-o-lantern grin faltered when he saw Angelo, but he recovered quickly enough.
Alice said, “Molly and I are making spinach salads, and here he comes, knocking on the door.” Mom gestured to a photograph lying on the table. “When he told me he was an old friend of yours, I invited him to eat with us. Figured you’d be back soon in any case.” She caught sight of Angelo and brightened further. She set down her tongs and wiped her hands on her apron, then held her arms out to him as she walked around the table.
“Our local hero!” she announced, and he bent into her overexuberant hug. “Angelo, right? Well, this is going to be one happy luncheon. Good thing I boiled extra eggs. You could have let me know you were bringing him home with you,” she scolded.
“I don’t have a cell phone, Mom.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded if you borrowed his,” she said.
Considering Alice’s poor judgment in allowing a complete stranger into the house, Lexi decided she was entitled to ignore the remark.
“Are those blueberries?” Mom took the pint from Lexi’s hands.
“They’re for Molly,” Lexi said. Molly glanced up but let her grandmother keep the fruit.
“We’ll have them for dessert,” Alice said. “With cream.”
“I don’t have cream,” Lexi mumbled, picking up the photograph.
It appeared to have been taken several years ago. Grant, Warden, and Lexi stood in front of their tiny bungalow over on Fireweed Street. Molly, who was still a toddler, hugged her mother’s neck. The men flanked them. A much younger and more handsome version of Ward goofed off by making devil’s horns behind Grant’s head.
Lexi had no recollection of posing for this picture, but that didn’t mean anything. She wondered if Norman had taken it. She tossed it back onto the table.
Ward spoke up, “You’re the only one of us who hasn’t changed since then.” He nodded at Alice. “It’s obvious now where you get your good looks.”
Alice blushed. Lexi
bristled.
“You owe me some money for that drink you ordered last night,” Lexi said, hanging her keys on the hook by the phone.
“Oh, right. I’m so sorry about that. Had an emergency call and had to go, and I couldn’t find you to tell you.” He fished in his back pocket for a wallet and withdrew a five-dollar bill, then extended it to her. “Please. Take it. I won’t be indebted to you.”
“I thought you took off when you caught sight of Grant.”
Ward scratched his neck. “Grant’s in town?”
Ward was a liar. He had pulled off this play-dumb skill of his more than once in that short era when he and Grant and Norman were a trio. Its obviousness now spooked Lexi. What else did Ward know about her that he pretended not to? How long had he known?
How would he use it against her?
She tried but couldn’t come up with a reason why Ward, Norman, and Grant had all reemerged in her life within a twenty-four hour period after being wonderfully absent from it for all of seven years. It couldn’t be coincidental.
When Lexi didn’t take the bill, Ward laid it on top of the discarded photograph.
Alice kept looking at Angelo, who was a hulk under the low ceilings of the old building. “Aren’t you going to introduce your friends?” she asked Lexi, returning to the bacon.
Lexi shrugged out of her jacket, then made appropriate hand motions. “Warden, Angelo. Angelo, Warden.” Introductions hardly seemed necessary, however, because Angelo completely ignored Ward, and Ward didn’t seem to mind. His posture relaxed slightly.
She glared at him, told him with her eyes as loudly as possible that he was not welcome here. The presence of her mother and daughter prevented her from vocalizing it and exposing her twisted dilemma. Ward lifted the glass of iced tea in front of him and raised it to Lexi, with a nod, a toast that thumbed his nose at her.
“How’s the ankle?” Angelo asked Molly, taking the seat between her and Ward.
“It hurts. A little.”
“That’s all? If that were my ankle I’d be saying it hurts a lot.” He rested his elbows on his knees so that he didn’t tower over the girl. She responded with a light giggle.