by Cris Anson
Fantine asked, “Is there any change?”
“Not within the past half hour, but she looks a lot better than when they brought her up around four thirty this morning.” At her questioning glance, he explained, “I took the late shift last night for a friend. I’m back now for my regular shift.”
Harbin reached under the nurses’ station counter and pulled out a brown envelope. “This came with her on the gurney from ER. It’s her medical alert pendant. Apparently she was conscious long enough to push the button. It probably saved her life.”
“I didn’t know she had one of those things,” Fantine mused.
“It’s great for a woman living alone. Especially an older woman.”
Fantine’s eyes clouded. Nonie was eighty-five. Once she brought her home from the hospital, Fantine would bully her into redoing the first-floor study into a bedroom. The obstinate woman had no business going up and down all those steps at her age.
“Her knees and shins are looking good too. They picked out quite a few shards of glass from her skin.”
“Glass?”
“The aide who wheeled her up from ER said the EMTs found her at the bottom of the stairs, facedown on the floor, lying in a puddle of water and broken glass, and flowers strewn around the foyer.”
Fantine felt an involuntary shudder go through her at the image then allowed herself to visualize Nonie’s foyer. “There’s a display table in the entry. She likes to keep a vase of flowers on it.” Her eyes widened. “Hercules. I wonder if that cat jumped up and knocked it over and Nonie heard it and…”
She sighed. “Rats. If Nonie’s been here since four o’clock this morning, that means he hasn’t been fed for nearly twenty-four hours.” Glancing at Rolf bent over his grandmother’s bed, she mused, “Maybe I should go check on Hercules. Rolf can stay with Nonie. Her home is only a few miles from here. Do you think she’ll wake up soon?”
With compassion shining out of his dark eyes, the nurse said, “She could regain consciousness in the next ten minutes or in the next ten days. Traumas of this type are unpredictable.” Checking his watch, he looked over at Rolf and beckoned him back outside. “We’re only supposed to give the family five minutes every hour. Why don’t you both go?”
After assuring that the nurse had Fantine’s cell-phone number, Rolf curved his arm around her and nudged her towards the elevator. “Give me your keys. You’re probably too upset to drive. You can be my navigator.”
Fifteen minutes later, under a dark sky showing just a few streaks of mauve and purple, Rolf pulled her Prius into Nonie’s driveway. He shut the engine and got out of the car. Fantine darted out from the passenger side and ran up the six wide steps onto the colonnaded front porch.
Evidently one of the EMTs had locked the front door, Rolf realized, because Fantine fiddled inside her handbag and came up with another key ring. By the time he reached her, she had opened the door a crack and stooped down, apparently in a move to block any critter—like Hercules—that might shoot out the opening.
Nothing of the sort happened. Gingerly she pushed the door wide open and stood.
“Let me go in first,” Rolf said.
But Fantine had already stepped across the threshold. And made a soft moan.
Rolf kicked the front door closed behind him then bumped into her when she took a step back. His hands automatically grabbed her upper arms and he gently tugged her so her back came up against his chest.
They’d used the sunroom entrance during his prior visit, so this was his first visual of the majestic stairway, the banister sweeping around to a balcony along the upper hall. The stairs widened and curved at the bottom into a two-story foyer almost the size of his entire apartment. A shriveled yellow flower on a long stem, a bunch of dying ferns and shards of glass lay scattered over a highly polished wood floor inlaid with intricate designs. The table from where the mess was obviously knocked off sat in the middle of the foyer atop an oriental rug with predominantly red shades.
Some of the red was blood.
He turned Fantine around in his arms and cradled her head in the crook of his shoulder, absently noting the perfect fit between them. “Remember,” he murmured into her ear, “you’re not alone.”
Instinctively Fantine wrapped her arms around his waist. Bound together by their concern for Nonie, it felt good, it felt right to be held by Rolf. Together they could get through this. Would get through. “It never looked so…forbidding whenever I went up or down those stairs. But thinking of Nonie tumbling down them…”
“Shhh,” he murmured, making small circles on the back of her neck with thumb and middle finger.
At length she pushed back in his arms. “I’m surprised Hercules hasn’t come out of hiding. That cat always has his face in a food dish. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting when he’s hungry.”
Still holding loosely onto her shoulders, Rolf said, “Where would he most likely be? In Nonie’s bedroom? Or in the kitchen waiting right by the can opener?”
That was enough of an image to make one side of Fantine’s mouth curve into a smile, as he no doubt meant her to. She turned and, skirting the rug and gingerly picking her way through the shards, began climbing the steps, her hand smoothing along the banister. “I’ll go check upstairs.”
Rolf took a few steps down the hall that ran alongside the stairs toward the kitchen.
They saw it at the same time, from different vantage points. The body of a large cat, stiff legs protruding upward, lay inside the curve of the stairway, hidden from the doorway and foyer by the intricate balustrade, spatters of blood radiating around its bloated hide. When they’d heard how Nonie’s accident had occurred, he’d wondered if the cat had inadvertently tripped her in the darkened stairway. Now another thought flashed through his mind. No way did that cat tumble down the steps with Grandma Rosalie.
“Hercules!” she cried, and rushed back downstairs to him.
“Easy, babe. Don’t touch him.”
“Hercules,” she whispered, kneeling beside it, unable to resist stroking the soft fur between his ears with her index finger. She felt the sting of tears in the back of her eyes. This would be a blow to Nonie. But she couldn’t cry. She had to be strong for Nonie.
“I’ll go to the kitchen,” Rolf said in a rough voice as he tugged her to her feet. “We’ll find a…” He couldn’t say “trash bag” as though Hercules had been a grapefruit peel tossed to the floor. “A box or something to bury him in.”
Her spine straightened. “No. Nonie would want to be there.” She pulled away from him to look into his eyes. “Do you think it would sound stupid if we…”
With a jerk she turned her head aside. “Damn. Of course it’s stupid.”
He touched his palm to her cheek, gently turned her head to look at him again. “Nothing is stupid. Tell me.”
“Nonie has a chest freezer in the utility room,” Fantine answered slowly. “Maybe we can keep Hercules there and wait until she can join us to say goodbye to him with a proper send-off. She’ll want him buried in the backyard, near the garden.”
His smile was tender. “I think that’s a wonderful idea. It shows how much you care for Nonie.”
The moment stretched between them, his palm warm on her cheek, his other arm around her shoulder, her arms clinging to his waist, her tear-shimmered gaze holding his, emotion swirling around them, between them. Fantine tilted her head forward at the same time Rolf moved his toward her.
Their lips met—tentative, unsure whether even something as small as a kiss would show disrespect at a time like this, with Nonie unconscious in the hospital. Suddenly she let out a cry of emotional pain, of yearning, as adrenaline kept pumping into her. She glued her mouth to his, her teeth scraping and knocking against his, her hands plowing a path up his back to anchor him more fully against her breasts.
And then he was kissing her like a thirsty man sucking water, drawing her in, stroking her tongue with his. She pulled at his bottom lip with her teeth, pushed her hips int
o his groin, bent her knees then stood upright again, rubbing the vee of her legs up and down the bulge in his jeans.
In a quick movement he twirled them around and walked her to the opposite wall of the hallway, lifted her so the place where her thighs met fell smack against his cock. He held her up by pressing her against the wall with his chest then hoisted her legs around his hips. He fumbled his way up the hem of her skirt until he reached her panties, then slipped his fingers inside the elastic.
“Is this what you want?” he growled, finding her slit and thrusting two fingers into her damp pussy.
“Make me forget,” she gasped. Then her mouth got busy finding then sucking his tongue, telling him without words what she needed, the numbness of an orgasm to blast any memory of the previous few hours into oblivion. He was here. Here, in her arms, warm and vividly alive and kissing her, finger-fucking her as if the world would end if she didn’t come right this—
Stiffening in his arms, she clamped her inner muscles around his fingers as all her nerve endings coalesced into a tight ball at her core. She lowered her head to the thick muscles at his shoulder and bit down as she exploded in a violent climax that had her wiggling to wring every last millimeter, every tactile sensation from his fingers, his body.
Still reveling in the contractions her dripping pussy made around his hot, wet fingers and the tight way her legs gripped his waist, Rolf shifted so his other hand held her ass more securely and began scattering tiny kisses along the half of her face that he could reach while he waited for her to come down to earth.
It was probably, he mused, the first time in his life he’d ever made a woman come without expecting any repayment. With Fantine it was easy. He realized he wanted to do things for her, wanted to make her happy.
God, he was in big trouble.
* * * * *
He didn’t know anything about cats, but one thing he knew for sure—Hercules was one big honkin’ bruiser. Fat and spoiled, twenty pounds if he was an ounce. Squatting on his haunches after having convinced Fantine to go look for a large box, Rolf studied the body. He’d hated any kind of math, didn’t know the first thing about calculating arcs or how liquids spattered on impact, but something looked, well, off. If someone had stood on the stairs, he would’ve had to be halfway up—the seventh or eighth step—to toss it over the banister so it landed exactly where it did.
No way did Hercules cause his grandmother to trip if she’d stepped on him as she descended. He would have tumbled in the same trajectory as the woman, maybe even landing beneath her, and judging from the dried blood on the red carpet in the center of the foyer, the EMTs would have found her with her head on the rug and her feet close to the bottom step.
Had she been carrying the cat when she went over? And feeling its world tilt, did Hercules jump out of her arms and over the banister by sheer chance? Then why would the cat have died from impact? Didn’t cats instinctively twist to land on their feet? Couldn’t a cat jump from, say, the top of a tall chest of drawers to the floor without harm? If so, a five-foot jump would have been a piece of cake.
“You think this one will do?”
Rolf stood as Fantine entered the foyer carrying a large cardboard box.
“Yeah, looks like,” he said. “But first, do you have your digital camera with you?”
“Yes, in my bag. Why?”
Rolf hesitated to voice any suspicions until he discussed it with his smarter, more worldly brothers. “Just to be safe. Maybe she’d want to see what everything looked like so she could figure out how she happened to take that tumble. And what happened to Hercules.”
“Oh.” Fantine set the box down and gave him a distracted hug. “Thank you for being so thoughtful. I’ll go get it.”
As she went rummaging in her handbag, Rolf adjusted his cock, which still had not receded after Fantine’s unexpected orgasm. But he felt proud that for probably the first time in his life he’d had the self-control, the strength of character, to subdue his testosterone in favor of a higher motive.
When Fantine returned with her camera, he suggested a number of views for her to take as she clicked away. Based on television programs he’d watched, he knew that cops always took photos of accident scenes. While the EMTs hadn’t thought it necessary to notify the police, perhaps these pictures would come in handy when Nonie awoke, maybe help her remember something, anything, that might have caused her fall.
“That should do it,” Fantine said after a while. She turned to Rolf, who was studying an electronic device on the sideboard set against the rear wall of the foyer. “What’s that?”
“Just what I was trying to figure out,” he said. “Doesn’t look like an answering machine.”
“No, she keeps that upstairs by her bed.”
Fantine came to stand next to him then pushed the red button in the center of the unit. In less than sixty seconds, a firm female voice emanated from within the unit. “Life Monitor Systems, are you all right, Mrs. Dwyer?”
“Who is this?” Fantine demanded.
After a slight pause, the voice answered. “This is the dispatch center. May I inquire who is speaking?”
“This is Fantine Mercier.”
A few clicks of a keyboard. “Oh, good. You’re on her list of family. Did the EMTs arrive in good time?”
“The alert pendant. You’re the one who called 9-1-1?”
“Yes, that was the predetermined response if she couldn’t respond to our callback. I trust everything worked out satisfactorily?”
Fantine blinked back a tear. Satisfactorily. Hell, no. “She’s in the hospital. Thank heaven she had the foresight to make these arrangements. Otherwise…”
“Steady,” Rolf murmured in her ear. “Ask her how the EMTs got in.” She did.
“Mrs. Dwyer set up a push-button lockbox with the front-door key in it. I trust the EMT’s locked the door on their way out?”
“Yes, yes, everything was…fine.” Fantine’s voice broke on the last word. “Thank you,” she added.
“Our pleasure. You have a good evening now.” And the woman disconnected.
As if she’d been doing it for years, she turned to Rolf. And, as if he’d been doing it for years, he opened his arms and held her in a tight embrace until she stopped trembling.
“Come on,” he said at last. “I’ll take care of poor Hercules. Why don’t you gather up some, you know, female things for her to use while she’s in the hospital.”
“Oh Rolf, thank you for thinking of that. She’ll want her nightgown, some hand lotion, and…”
Fantine’s voice faded away as she climbed the steps. He watched her ascend, her hand tightly grasping the banister, probably an unconscious gesture since Nonie had taken such a nasty tumble. Then he set about getting Hercules to his interim resting place.
* * * * *
When she flicked on the overhead light in the master bedroom, the sight of Nonie’s rumpled bedcovers caused Fantine a moment’s heartbreak. Nonie had been tucked underneath the flowery sheets, snug in her bed, and something had distressed her enough to start her journey down the stairs. What happened, Nonie? What did you hear? Or did you have a bad dream and become disoriented?
Hearing Rolf’s footsteps downstairs, she shook off her inertia and began opening dresser drawers. She loaded a Nature Conservancy tote bag with a short-sleeved nightgown, bed jacket, pearl-handled hair brush, the jasmine-scented tube of hand lotion on the mirrored tray, fuzzy slippers and a few other things she thought Nonie might need during her enforced stay. Heading back to the door, she noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine on the far nightstand.
Would she be violating Nonie’s privacy if she listened? On the other hand, maybe she’d heard a message that unsettled her enough to take that tumble. Fantine set the tote bag on the bed and pushed the ”Play” button then picked up the pencil and pad of paper resting alongside it.
The disembodied voice announced the first message arrived at ten-fourteen that morning. “Hey, Aunt Rosa
lie,” she heard Uncle Pearce’s voice, “give me a call. I have some news about one of your utility stocks.”
She saved the message for Nonie and let the second one play.
“Aunt Lee-Lee? I know you’re home, because Fantine went back to Pennsylvania with that—” There was a pause, a throat-clearing, then, “Call me.”
Saving the second message, Fantine wondered why Uncle Pearce was suddenly leaving messages about Nonie’s finances. Nonie had given him carte blanche, so didn’t pay attention to his day-to-day manipulations. Usually he updated her once or twice a month.
And a third message, “Hey, I hope you haven’t fallen down in the garden again like you did the other day. I’m starting to get concerned. I’d come visit, but I’ve got a lot of computer work to do before the close of business today.”
“Boy, he has his knickers in a twist,” Fantine said into the silence. “Still, I should let him know what happened.”
Fantine was thumbing through the alphabetized pages of Nonie’s address book when Rolf called up the stairs, “Hey, are you almost done? Do we have to be there exactly on the hour in order to be allowed inside the ICU?”
“Coming,” she responded. Grabbing the tote bag, she muttered, “I’ll worry about Pearce later. When has he ever been concerned about anyone but himself?”
And why hadn’t Nonie told her she’d taken a tumble out in the garden?
Chapter Twelve
“Hey Fantine, what happened last night? Or should I say, this morning?”
On the front porch of Nonie’s home, Rolf instantly went on alert. Fantine spun around, key in her hand. It was almost midnight and both of them were exhausted. Nurse Leon had allowed them both into the ICU when they returned after taking care of Hercules, but shooed them out shortly thereafter for the night. They would be allowed to return at nine tomorrow morning.
“Shelley, hi.” Fantine relaxed visibly as a woman in her mid-forties with short, tightly curled blonde hair strode up the front walk.