As she started down the staircase from the third floor, Kelly was thinking about the interconnections between her grand-mother’s chart and her own. When her grandmother had taught her how to draw a chart, the first two charts Kelly had done by herself were her grandmother’s and hers. She had immediately seen how much they had in common and that the charts showed how they complemented each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Like Kelly, her grandmother had been a Pisces with Aries rising—which made both of them emotional and intuitive as well as pioneering—but where Kelly had a moon in Capricorn, which made her reflective and focused, with a tendency toward fixed opinions, her grandmother’s moon was in Cancer, which made her protective and nurturing. Their charts also showed that they had a deep connection in the fourth house, the house of family, where her grandmother’s moon conjuncted Kelly’s south node; they were profoundly bonded to each other like a mother and daughter on a soul level from a past life.
Kelly was thinking about her dream about her grandmother from the night before when she stepped down to the next step and felt herself slip on the runner and lose her balance. Disoriented, she slid down the staircase, each step hitting her back as she fell until her body hit the second-floor landing. She took stock of herself, saw that she was still in one piece, so at first she thought that the worst was over, that she was a bit shaken and her back might be bruised a little, but other than that she was okay. Then she tried to stand and fell to the floor again; the pain in her right ankle was excruciating.
She lifted herself on her hands to a sitting position and saw that King was running up the stairs toward her from the first floor. He padded onto the landing and howled softly as he approached her. “It’s all right, King,” she told him, patting his nose. “I just had a little fall.” She looked toward the first floor and called out, “Emma! Emma!” A moment later she heard footsteps in the first-floor hallway and looked down the stairs, expecting to see Emma, but instead she saw a gray-haired man in paint-spattered coveralls climbing the steps as quickly as his stiff legs could carry him. She remembered him from the last time she’d had the house painted.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, looking up the stairs toward her. “Hold tight.”
“Thanks,” Kelly said. “I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
“That’s okay. What happened?” he asked as he reached the landing.
“I must’ve tripped on the carpet.”
He extended his hand toward her to help her up. She took hold of his hand and was surprised to find that he had the strength to pull her to her feet.
“Now take hold of my arm,” he instructed, “and lean on me. We’ll get you someplace where you can sit down.”
Kelly held on to his arm. So far she was putting all her weight on her left foot; now she tried to put some weight on her right foot, but the pain was too great.
“Be careful,” he told her. “It might be broken. You’ve got to have someone look at it.”
She nodded and did as she was told, leaning on him as he slowly led her into Jeff’s room. She sat down on the bed and looked up as Sarah came in.
Sarah’s eyes went to Kelly’s right foot, which she saw Kelly was barely letting touch the floor. “What is it, Kelly?” Sarah asked worriedly.
“I was clumsy and I fell. That’s all.” Kelly tried to keep the pain out of her voice. “I didn’t know you were coming in today. I thought you were staying home to take care of yourself.”
“I didn’t need to stay home,” Sarah told her. “Is it your leg or your ankle?”
Kelly felt like a fool; she wished she’d paid more attention as she’d gone down the stairs so she wouldn’t have tripped. “I think it’s my ankle,” she said.
“I was just telling her she has to go to a doctor,” Ed told Sarah; then he turned to Kelly. “I’ll drive you to the emergency room if you like.”
Sarah glanced at Kelly and saw that she was looking down at her ankle; to Ed it might look as if the pain had drawn her attention to it, but Sarah knew Kelly was looking down to avoid his eyes, so he wouldn’t see how tense his suggestion of going to the hospital had made her. Going to the hospital would mean leaving the house, and Kelly couldn’t do that.
Sarah answered before Kelly could come up with a reason not to go. “I appreciate it, Ed,” Sarah said. “But I know you have to leave for your next job. I’ll stay with Kelly and make sure she sees someone.”
Kelly was looking at Ed now. “Thank you again for helping me, and for your offer. It’s very kind of you.”
“My pleasure, Dr. York. You just get that ankle healed soon.” He was already out the door.
Kelly listened to his footsteps in the hallway heading toward the staircase and then descending the steps. When she could no longer hear them, she said to Sarah: “You really don’t have to be here. You should be home.”
“It would be depressing to stay home,” Sarah said. “I could practice for a few hours, but I’ll be doing that later anyway. The rest of the time, what am I going to do? Sit around thinking about Kevin? What’s the point of that?” She looked at Kelly with an expression that told her she meant what she was saying. “I’ll get over it. I have the concert coming up. And I have at least another fifty years to live. I’m not going to be one of those women who spends her life pining over a man. Now, what are we going to do about your ankle?”
Kelly moved to the edge of the bed and let some of her weight fall onto her right foot. The pain was just as sharp and intolerable as it had been when she’d tried standing up on the landing. She looked up at Sarah. “If you don’t mind, please call Michelle. Ask her if it’s possible for her to come by today to examine it.”
Sarah met Kelly’s eyes. She sensed that Kelly was avoiding making the call herself because she hadn’t yet told Michelle about her agoraphobia, and she wanted to leave it up to Sarah to make up a reason why she needed Michelle to come to the house instead of her going to Michelle’s office.
“Of course I’ll call her,” Sarah said. “In the meantime, I’ll get you some ice.”
“Thanks. I feel like an idiot for being so clumsy.”
“You’re not an idiot. You’re just human.”
She looked at Kelly a moment longer to make sure that she was okay; then she left the room.
Kelly removed her shoes, pulled her legs up on the bed, and leaned back against the pillows. Taking off her right shoe hurt her ankle, and so did the pressure of her right foot coming up onto the bed. The pain made her feel incredibly vulnerable. She had already been feeling emotionally vulnerable; now she was physically unable to walk, which made her feel even more vulnerable. She hated it. She looked around Jeff’s room, her eyes focusing on a photograph of him in his high school football uniform, standing with her and Julie on the football field. She loved seeing the three of them enjoying each other’s company; it made her think about how they would all be together again on Thanksgiving and how far away Thanksgiving suddenly seemed. She picked up the telephone on Jeff’s night table, put it on her lap, and punched in his cell phone number. It was already ringing when she noticed that it was only ten fifteen a.m., which meant that it was seven fifteen in Los Angeles. She was thinking about hanging up when her son answered.
“Oh, Jeff,” she said apologetically, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“I’m already up and dressed, Mom. I’ve got an eight-thirty class. Biology. The teacher’s terrific.”
She was glad to hear that his voice sounded strong and happy.
“How come you’re calling during the week?” he asked her. “You usually only call on weekends.”
Kelly was still gazing at the photograph of Jeff in his football uniform with herself and Julie. “No particular reason,” she said. “I missed you, so I thought I’d give you a call.”
He laughed. “Between clients, of course. I know how busy you are. When’s your last appointment today, six o’clock?”
“Six o’clock, that’s right,” Kelly responded. She was lying aga
in, but she didn’t want to tell him the truth, not about her agoraphobia or the man who had been stalking her on the telephone or even about her ankle. She didn’t want him to worry about her. “How are you, honey?” she asked him.
“Working hard, just like you,” he said. “No matter what you hear, it’s not all parties at this place. I haven’t put on a toga in days.”
She broke into a smile; her son always managed to make her smile. He was referring to the toga fraternity parties in Animal House, of course; they’d rented the DVD and watched it with Julie before he’d gone off to college. “I hope you’re going to some parties, at least,” she said.
“I am, but only if they’re drunken orgies. What about you?”
Kelly did her best to keep up her end of the joking. “Oh, I’m going to my fair share.”
“How many drunken orgies have you been to this week?”
“Five or six,” she said. “I’ve lost count.”
All at once, even before she finished talking, the vulnerability and helplessness she’d been feeling returned. She hoped it hadn’t come through in her voice, but her son’s next words told her that it had.
“How are you really, Mom?” he asked. “You don’t sound too good.”
She forced the smile back on her face, determined that it would make her sound as well as she was going to tell him she was. “I’m fine, Jeff. Absolutely fine. I called to say hello, that’s all.”
“If anything was wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
He sounded very earnest now, as he had when he was a child and had wanted to talk to her about something serious, like whether or not there was a God and, if there was, was there a heaven and a hell.
“Of course I’d tell you,” she said, just as seriously as when she’d told him that she did believe in God and that she didn’t believe in heaven or hell except those that people created for themselves here on earth through their good or bad actions.
“I’d want you to tell me. I’m not a kid anymore. You can rely on me.”
“I know I can, Jeff.” She was feeling more and more emotional. She wondered how much longer she could keep it together if they continued their conversation. “You better leave for breakfast so you can be on time for class. “I don’t want you to be late.”
He laughed. “You’re right. It’s not like the days when you could write a note to the teacher for me, is it?”
“I’m very proud of you, Jeff,” she said, not caring if it seemed to come out of nowhere; it was how she felt, and she needed to tell him.
“I’m proud of you, too, Mom,” he told her; then he added: “I’ll call you later.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”
Then he was gone, and suddenly she could feel the three thousand miles between them, the same three thousand miles that separated her from Julie. Suddenly she missed them so deeply that the pain she felt throbbing in her ankle seemed to have risen to her heart. She hung up the phone and looked around his room again, wishing desperately that Thanksgiving were tomorrow instead of a month away.
Thirty-Five
AFTER TAKING MICHELLE UP to Jeff’s room to see Kelly, Sarah came downstairs again. She was about to go into her office to start going through the next three months of files to search for women who’d come to see Kelly with relationship problems, but she realized it was lunchtime and that she was hungry. She walked into the kitchen and saw Emma at the counter, making a salad.
“How’s Kelly’s ankle?” Emma asked, continuing her preparations.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait to see what Michelle says.” Sarah took a cup and saucer out of the cabinet and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “What are you making for lunch?”
“Chicken and a salad,” Emma said. She turned to Sarah, her face showing the worry that had been with her all morning. “Kelly’s always telling me Mars or one of those other planets is conjuncting another planet or squaring it or whatever and what I’m supposed to watch out for. Before all this, I only half believed it. But now …” She didn’t finish her thought right away. When she spoke again, there were tears in her sweet gray eyes. “I’m scared for her, Sarah. She seems so strong, but underneath she’s always been delicate, ever since she was a child. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to her …”
Sarah put her coffee down, came over to Emma, and put her arms around her. As she hugged her, Emma was crying. “You don’t have to worry about Kelly,” she told her. “Kelly’s a survivor.”
Emma, still crying, looked at her with wet eyes. “But what if it’s the planets? What if whatever is happening with them means this is just the beginning of her bad luck?”
“You can’t think that way, Emma,” Sarah said sternly. “Remember what Kelly says in her column. The planets can present you with a challenge, but they don’t determine your fate.”
“What determines your fate?” Emma asked, her voice quavering.
“Your choices,” Sarah said. “And Kelly makes good choices. She’s not going to let this challenge overcome her. She’s going to meet it. You’ll see.”
Emma nodded, crying less now. She was starting to feel better.
Sarah was relieved to see this. She didn’t want Emma to worry. But despite her positive words to Emma, Sarah, too, was worried. She knew the pressure Kelly had already been under before falling down the stairs, and she worried that the accident would further undermine her belief in herself.
Kelly sat on the edge of the bed as Michelle held her right foot and inspected her ankle, which was puffed up well beyond its normal size.
“It’s very swollen,” Michelle said. “But it’s not crooked. That’s a good sign. No bones sticking out. Did you hear a cracking noise when you fell or just a pop?”
Kelly thought about it for a moment. “I didn’t hear anything. I was too busy falling.”
“See if you can move the joint,” Michelle said, the ankle still in her hand. “Take it easy, but just try.”
Kelly tried to move her ankle joint. She felt a knifelike pain that made her wince, but her ankle joint moved and allowed her to turn her foot slightly to the right.
“Good,” Michelle said. She gently released Kelly’s ankle. “Now lower your foot to the floor.”
Kelly slowly brought her right foot to the floor alongside her left foot.
“Let me help you up. I want to see if you can put any weight on it at all.”
“It really hurt when I tried to stand on it before,” Kelly said.
“I understand that,” Michelle said, all doctor now. “But I want you to try again.”
Taking Michelle’s hand, Kelly rose from the bed with all her weight on her left foot. Once she was standing, she lowered her right foot onto the carpeted floor and slowly redistributed some of her weight onto that foot. “I can, a little.”
“I’d say it’s a bad sprain,” Michelle said, “but it’s probably not broken. The only way to be sure is if you come in for an X-ray.”
Kelly looked into her best friend’s eyes. She’d told Michelle so many secrets in the years they’d known each other, but this was different; this was the first time she had a secret that made her feel humiliated. “I can’t,” she said after a while. “I can’t leave my house. I suppose you must’ve suspected by now. I just can’t.”
“How long have you been afraid to leave?” Michelle asked. Neither her face nor voice showed any sign of judgment.
Kelly had thought about this often, and she gave Michelle the most accurate answer that she’d come up with for herself. “I’m not sure exactly. Around the time Julie left for school. I don’t know if it was the same day or the day after or the day after that. But ever since the morning it first happened, every time I try to leave, I get panicky. I start sweating. My heart beats fast. I breathe so hard I feel like I’m going to die. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I just get so frightened. This is the only place I feel safe. Or at least I did …”
>
Michelle’s dark eyes became somber. “Has that man called you again?”
“Yes,” Kelly said, “but the police are investigating it. The detective said that he’s going to find him. They’re monitoring my phones and they’re beginning to look at suspects—”
“You’ve got to learn to go out of your house again, Kelly. You’ve got to find the key.” As she said this, Michelle’s voice was no longer even and professional; it was insistent.
Kelly laughed grimly. “That’s what I keep saying to myself. The ‘key.’ KEY. My initials. Kelly Elizabeth York. People come to me to give them the key to their lives, and I can’t help myself.”
“But you have to,” Michelle told her. “You can’t just be trapped in here, afraid in your own home and afraid to go out.”
“I don’t want to be afraid, Michelle,” Kelly said. “I really don’t.”
“Then it’s up to you. Either you have to get help, or you have to help yourself.” Michelle was looking at her urgently now. “Whatever is making you feel like this, you really do have the key. You just have to find out what it is and use it.”
Kelly continued to meet her friend’s eyes, but she didn’t answer right away. When she did, she said emphatically: “I will.”
Michelle smiled. “I know you, Kelly,” she said. “If you tell me you will, you will. I just wanted to hear you say it. When we’ve made a pledge to each other, we’ve never let each other down.”
Kelly smiled, too. “No, we never have. And I’m not going to start now. I’m going to find the key. I will. I’m going to find the key.”
Thirty-Six
FBI AGENT MARY ANN Winslow was filling in her junior colleague, Eric Broadbent, on the serial killer case she’d just been handed as they walked toward the elevator in the agency’s headquarters on East 57th Street. Winslow walked at her usual fast pace, and Broadbent had to quicken his steps to keep up with her. She talked as quickly as she walked, and he had to make sure he caught every word because he knew she expected that he’d remember everything. Whenever he forgot something she told him, she’d get icy and condescending, and he hated being treated that way. He wished he had a kinder, gentler boss, but the powers that be had assigned him to Winslow, so that’s the way it was. At least she was good at her job.
Horoscope: The Astrology Murders Page 16