One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  He came across the room, his face hard, his eyes shielded from her, and sat down on the bed. She watched him as he methodically peeled off one dress sock, put on a cotton athletic sock and then the shoe. Watched him repeat it with the other foot. Finally, with both feet once more on the floor, he rested his forearms on his knees and raised his face to hers. What she saw in his eyes shocked her There was no anger there at all, but only a deep, incomprehensible sadness.

  She muttered a stricken, “I’m sorry-”

  He shook his head, stopping her there. And then said, in a slow, careful way, as if every word pained him, “Her name is Modeen Kemp-the woman you saw me talking to. She’s Brasher’s granddaughter. She’s a licensed practical nurse, and I pay her to take care of…someone…for me.” He paused and looked away, but she saw his throat move and suddenly knew how he was aching. And her throat, her chest, every part of her ached for him. “That someone,” he said harshly, “is my mother.”

  Though she’d already guessed by then, she made a tiny, involuntary cry. She would have gone to him, but he held her back with a look. “You asked me if my mother was alive, and if I ever saw her, and I told you yes. What I didn’t tell you was that she has no idea who I am.”

  “Alzheimer’s?” Summer whispered.

  There was no humor whatsoever in his smile. “Among other things-in recent years, anyway. The alcohol had done its work long before that.”

  Once again she whispered, “I’m sorry.” But he had already risen and turned away with a shrug, his face cold.

  “She’s happiest on the marshes with Brasher and Modeen, and she’ll stay there as long as they can care for her. Sometimes she gets hard to manage-when she’s upset…scared. I’ve got to go and help get her moved, settled down in a strange place-”

  “I understand,” Summer murmured. “Don’t worry about us-we’ll be fine.”

  In the doorway he paused and looked down at her for a long, silent moment, then enfolded her in his arms and held her the way he’d held and comforted her when they’d discovered Helen in the tree. Only this time she knew beyond any doubt that it was he who drew comfort from her.

  And when he had gone, she went on standing there hugging herself and aching inside, thinking, My God, Riley-what’s wrong? What else is it that you’re not telling me?

  Because what she’d seen in the depths of his eyes and felt in the tremors deep within him was as unmistakble as it was bewildering. Why should so strong and capable a man know fear?

  Mirabella was frustrated. And when she finally succeeded in getting through to Special Agent Redfield on the telephone number he’d given her, he sounded just as frustrated as she was, maybe more so.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” she said accusingly. “The circuits have been busy.”

  “It’s this damned hurricane,” Redfield growled, then apologized for his language with a sigh. “First they had us ready to evacuate, then they changed their minds, said it looks like it’s gonna miss Savannah, after all. It’s complete chaos around here…” All of a sudden it seemed to occur to him who he was talking to, and Mirabella could almost feel the electricity coming through the line. “What’ve you got? You’ve heard?”

  “Well, I think so…” But in spite of her caution, she couldn’t keep a thrill of excitement out of her voice. “He said he was from Summer’s class reunion committee. His voice was kind of muffled-you know, like he was talking through cloth? But it was Hal-I know it.”

  “And you gave him the address?”

  “Of course,” Mirabella said impatiently, “I did exactly what you told me.”

  “Okay… okay…” It was an exhalation, almost a sigh. Then, brisk once more, he said, “Okay, thanks very much, Mrs. Starr. Let me know if you hear from anyone else-same procedure, okay? We’ll be in touch.”

  And he broke the connection before Mirabella could tell him she hadn’t had any luck getting through to Summer’s number, either. As a result, she felt more frustrated than ever. And more afraid.

  “She be fine now.” Brasher’s fingers, gnarled as twigs, briefly touched the lined and haggard face of the woman asleep in the hotel bed. Her sallow skin hung loose over the bones of her skull; gray hair with touches of rusty gold, like tarnish, lay sparse on her blue-veined temples; a snore issued from between thin lips sunken over empty gums, the teeth for which were on the nightstand beside her, submerged in a hotel water glass. “Let her sleep…”

  Modeen, who was sitting on the bed taking her patient’s pulse, looked up at Riley and nodded. “It’s just a mild sedative. She’ll sleep now, tomorrow probably be a little bit more disoriented than usual, but once she gets back in her own place, she’ll be okay.” She stood up, coiled the blood-pressure cuff that had been lying across her lap and put it in the medical bag on the other bed, closed it, then went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  “She was beautiful once,” said Brasher softly. Tender and sad, his eyes rested on the woman’s gaunt face. “When she was a girl. You know, she had so many dreams.”

  Riley said nothing. He felt no connection to the woman in the bed at all. He felt nothing. His heart was like stone. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’d better be getting back.”

  Brasher nodded. “You go on home now. Your mama be fine. Best you go now, take care of your woman…those nice kids.”

  Riley made an involuntary movement of denial that involved his whole body. “She’s not my woman,” he said on an exhalation as he twirled his windbreaker over one shoulder. “Wish she could be, but…” He shook his head and walked to the door. “It’s never gonna happen.” He took a deeper breath trying to make room for his heart-still a stone, but too big now for his chest.

  “Boy, what you mean by that?” Brasher threw a look toward the bathroom door, then came over and caught Riley by the wrist.

  Riley shrugged and looked past him, looking for escape. “Oh, you know…she’s got the children-”

  “That’s what’s holdin’ you back? What’s the matter with you, boy? Those kids, they need you-you tell me you don’t see that? That boy, his eyes, they follow you ever’ where you go, ’bout eat you alive. That little girl, she just want a daddy to love her, you can tell that by lookin’.”

  “They need a father. They don’t need me.” Now Riley’s face felt like stone, and his voice sounded like it. He opened the door, but Brasher followed him through it and into the deserted hotel hallway.

  “Boy,” the older man said in a wondering tone, “I know what you’re thinkin’. You thinkin’ you gonna be like her?” He jerked his head toward the room they’d just left. “Like your daddy was?”

  Riley flinched. He said harshly, “I can’t risk that possibility.”

  For a few moments Brasher didn’t say anything, just gazed at the floor, his hands hooked in the straps of his overalls. And for some reason, instead of walking off and leaving him there, Riley found himself waiting, while tension hummed behind his eyeballs and through his molars and vibrated in the pit of his belly. Finally, the old man lifted his head and looked not at turn, but dreamily into the distance beyond his shoulder.

  “Remember,” he said softly, “that time the big storm come through-you were a little boy, ’bout ten-an’ afterward we went out to the island-”

  Riley nodded. He caught a sharp, edgy breath. “And we found the osprey on the beach. I remember. It had been injured in the storm and couldn’t fly.”

  “No, boy-he only thought he was injured. He only thought he couldn’t fly.” Brasher chuckled low in his chest. “Poor old osprey so battered and beat-up in the storm, he too scared to fly. He just sittin’ there on the beach, too scared to move.”

  “I walked right up to him,” Riley said slowly. “I was going to put my jacket over him so we could take him home…fix him up. But before I could, he started to flap his wings and hop, trying to get away. And then he just…flew away.”

  Brasher shook his head, his body jerking with silent laughter. “Just needed a stron
g-enough incentive to make him try. Found out he wasn’t as banged up as he thought he was. Fact is, he was fine.” He stopped chuckling and gave Riley a sideways look. “That woman, you know, she got the healer’s touch.”

  Riley gave a laugh of surprise. “How’d you know that?”

  Brasher shrugged. “See it in her eyes…her hands, too. Oh, yeah, she got the touch.” His smile broadened. “Maybe she’s meant, boy-” he pointed toward the ceiling “-you ever think ’bout that? Maybe she meant to heal you.”

  Riley laughed again, this time with a growing sense of lightness and hope. He said with a smile of irony, “I told her once I was the doctor that was going to take care of her.”

  It was then that his beeper went off.

  Summer had never liked wind. She’d grown up in the desert where the winds blew so incessantly they molded the trees and shrubs to their will. She’d lived in a part of the Los Angeles Basin where the Santa Ana winds blew down the valleys and through the passes with enough force to toss tractor-trailer rigs like toys, hot and dry enough to suck every last drop of moisture from plants and people alike. She didn’t mind rain, even in torrents, and actually found thunder and lightning sort of exciting But wind to her seemed like something alive, like a raging beast trying to get to her where she cowered inside her pitiful shelter. When the wind blew hard, she felt small and helpless, and afraid.

  But she couldn’t let the children know that. For them she had to be strong, confident and brave. Even when the power went out early on, and they couldn’t make popcorn or watch videos as they had during the big thunderstorm, she stayed cheerful, making an adventure out of it. Instead of popcorn, they made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches by flashlight, took them upstairs-along with a huge bowlful of grapes-where, as before, everyone including Beatle climbed into Summer’s bed. No one was going to be doing any sleeping, not with the wind screaming like someone being tortured, and things snapping and crashing and thumping around outside. So, instead of watching videos, Summer read while David held the flashlight They’d finished The Black Stallion and were well into The Black Stallion Returns by now. Summer kept the portable radio on the nightstand, tuned to the emergency station but turned down low.

  Once, after a particularly loud crash that made the windows rattle and the bed shake, Helen crept closer against Summer’s side and said in a small, frightened voice, “Mommy, is this the hurry-cane?”

  Summer put an arm around her and hugged her. “Sure is. Remember what Brasher said? ‘It’s a bi-ig ba-ad storm.’ ”

  Helen giggled, then instantly looked as if she might cry. “He said Riley. would take care of us, but he’s not here. Mommy, when is Riley comin’ home?”

  “Soon,” said Summer firmly. “He’ll be here soon. Hey-you know what? I’m tired of reading. Why don’t we sing for a while? How about, ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells-’ ”

  “Mom!”

  “Well, okay, then how ’bout, ‘On top of Old Smo-o-key, all covered with fleas…’”

  They were singing that, all the verses they could remember, as well as some really silly ones they made up on the spur of the moment, when suddenly Summer went very still.

  David stopped singing and gasped, “What?”

  “Hush,” she said, giving him a squeeze. “Listen…”

  “It’s quiet!”

  “Does that mean the hurry-cane is over?”

  “No, dummy, it’s the eye. That means it’s only half over.”

  “David, please don’t call your sister a dummy-how would you like it if I called you a dummy?” But she said it in a teasing way, tussling playfully with both children, a surefire way to start a roughhouse. But before it could get under way, Beatle went “Wuf!” and jumped down off the bed.

  “Riley’s home!” Helen said with a little gasp of joy.

  But Summer said, “Hush,” and her arms tightened around both of her children. She hadn’t heard a car drive in or a door open. And Beatle’s tail wasn’t wagging. Instead, from her tiny throat came a low but unmistakable growl.

  “Mom-”

  “Shush!”

  At that moment, from downstairs there came a terrible screech. A panic-stricken “Get out, get out, get out!” Then a splintering crash. And finally…silence. Dead silence.

  But Summer knew. Someone was in the house.

  Riley was on his cell phone shouting at the top of his lungs, trying to make himself heard above the roar of wind and rain and the futile slap of his windshield wipers. Somewhere out there in that chaos of fallen trees and blowing shingles and whipping power lines he knew Jake Redfield was doing the same.

  “I can’t get through,” he bellowed. “It’s flooded here. I’m gonna have to try another way. Dammit, can’t you do something? Send a damn helicopter!”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Well, that came through clearly enough. But then Riley heard, “Best I can…police…emergency band…” and then nothing but static.

  He swore, and in a gesture of rage and futility, hurled the phone onto the passenger seat. His lungs burned with cold fire, as if he’d been running. Like a nightmare-his nightmare. From out of his past, from the distant echoes of memory, he felt it-the icy paralysis of fear.

  He wasn’t going to be in time. He’d left them unprotected, knowing that even then the syndicate thugs might be closing in. If they’d taken the FBI’s bait, picked up Hal Robey’s trail, if they came for Summer and the children now, in this…and why wouldn’t they? It was the best possible moment. Power and phones were out, roads blocked, Jake and his agents cut off, the local police helpless to respond even if the security alarm did sound. Dammit, they were alone…helpless.

  He wasn’t going to be able to save them. Dear God, he raged, Why? Why did he always seem destined to fail those he loved most?

  He had only one hope left. Tom Denby. Please, God, he prayed, let him be there, even in this. Please, God, let him be in time.

  “Shh-not a sound,” Summer whispered. With one arm around each of her children, she herded them, tiptoeing, out of her room and into the dark hallway. She’d turned off her flashlight, figuring the one advantage she had was that she knew the layout of the house better than any intruder would.

  “Where’s Beatle?” David hissed. “Mom-”

  “Shh’ I’ll find her. Never mind that now. Come on-m here.” As quietly as she could, she led them across the hall and into the room where they’d discovered Helen in the magnolia tree. “Quick-under the bed. Stay there and don’t move. And not a sound, do you understand me? No matter what happens. Not one sound.” For once there was no argument, no squabbling. Just silence. Summer watched her children wriggle under the edge of the canopy bed, then smoothed the spread and left them there. Left the room and closed the door soundlessly behind her.

  Out in the hallway she stood for a moment, listening. Her heart was pounding, but her head was clear. As she weighed the flashlight in her hand, she knew what she had to do. It was obvious to her that the FBI wasn’t coming, at least not in time; all their carefully laid plans had been blown apart by the hurricane. No one was going to come and rescue her. She was on her own. The flashlight was the only weapon she had, and it wasn’t enough. Her best hope was to get outside. If it was just a burglar she’d heard, taking advantage of the storm and the power outage, let him ransack the place. He could take whatever he wanted-he wasn’t going to find the children. If it was Hal-please, God, let it be Hal-he’d make himself known and then she could talk to him, convince him to turn himself in. And if it wasn’t Hal or a burglar…if it was the same thugs who had burned her house…well, then she’d draw them out after her, make them chase her, like a mother lark pretending a broken wing. They’d probably catch her, but she’d convince them the children were somewhere else, somewhere safe. Then…

  Beyond that she didn’t dare think. First, she had to get past whoever it was…get outside. But where were they? She couldn’t hear anything!

  And then Beatle began to bark. Furiously, viciously,
growling and snarling the way she did when she was shaking and mauling one of her practice “kills.” Summer heard mutters… swearing. A muffled shout. A soft but dreadful thud. A sharp, shrill cry.

  “Oh, no,” she whimpered. “Oh, Beatte-” She lunged for the stairs, her heart racing.

  And stopped, stifling her sobs with her hand. No-she couldn’t go to pieces now. She had to stay calm. Keep her head. Brushing tears from her cheeks, she crept silently toward the stairs.

  Someone was coming up the stairs.

  Summer dropped down into a crouch in the shadow of the banister, and as she did, felt something brush past her face. Something silent as a breeze or a puff of smoke. Or a cat’s tail. Oh, God-Peggy Sue! Once more she clamped a hand over her mouth and held her breath, this time to stifle a hiccup of half hysterical laughter. It was almost too much-no doubt about it, the cat was heading down the stairs. Completely unperturbed by either storm or strangers, parading right down the middle as if she owned them, as she always did. And the intruder was coming up. Somewhere, the two were going to have to meet. And, of course, only one could see in the dark…

  No sooner had the thought formed in her mind than there came an outraged feline screech, followed by a muffled cry and then a whole series of bumps, thumps and clatters. Almost the moment they began Summer was on her feet and running as soundlessly as she could down the stairs, counting on the racket to cover any noises she did make. Near the bottom she halted, warned by some primitive sense. No help for it-she had to risk turning on the flashlight, just for a second. Just for an instant-but it was enough to reveal what she had already suspected. And though she had been prepared, she couldn’t stop the sharp intake of her breath.

  A man lay sprawled on the floor at the foot of the stairs-not dead, or even, she feared, badly injured; he was already beginning to move and groan a little. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it wasn’t Hal-too big and broad to be Hal. And there was no doubt in her mind about what she needed to do. Leaning over the man and gripping the flashlight upraised like a club, she switched it on once more.