“You have a seat right here, Dad,” she said, and pulled the wooden deck chair up close to the railing and helped him into it. The fishing pole, rusted and old and long unused, stood in the corner of the railing. She handed it to him and told him she would be right back with some bait that she had in the freezer.
“Over there,” he said suddenly, pointing across the porch. “Dean had a girlfriend who lived in that blue house.”
“Probably just some silly summer infatuation,” she said.
“No, no, she came to see me.”
Uh-huh, sure. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, Dad.”
He simply sat there, gazing off across the marsh, the pole clutched in his right hand, the fingers of his left hand pinching and smoothing and rubbing at his jeans.
On the sun porch she checked her dozens of potted herbs and thought they looked remarkably healthy. She leafed through the mail on the kitchen table, then checked her answering machine. The only message of any importance was from Keith, a call that had come in the night she was in North Carolina, at about the same time that Mira had opened the cabin door.
“Hey, Al. Call me when you get this. My cell should work, but if it doesn’t, call the Balboa Yacht Club in Panama. I’m in slip fourteen.” He rattled off a number, which she jotted down. “Just want to wish you a merry and a happy. I called Dad Christmas Day, but he didn’t seem to remember who I was.”
Hardly surprising. Her father hadn’t seen Keith for a year. Hey, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and glad you’re up there taking care of Dad, sis. Keep up the good work while I’m down here screwing my brains out and sailing around the world.
What strange twist of genes or behavioral disposition had created such a disparity between her and Keith? They both had trust funds, yet he had spent the last thirteen years squandering his and living the high life while she had worked sixty-hour weeks. Why did she bother? She could be off living in Paris or New Zealand, or could plop herself down in the middle of the Amazon and research the vast, untapped potential of plants that might yield new pharmaceuticals. She didn’t have to work.
But her work gave her life meaning, and who else would look after her father? You love the adrenaline rush of ER, Keith had once said to her. And it was true. But what was even more true was that she enjoyed playing God. In ER she held the power of life or death.
Her rage erupted suddenly, without warning. She jerked the phone out of the wall and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the kitchen table. She whipped out her cell phone, started punching out the number for the Balboa, then disconnected.
Can’t. For all she knew, Nosy Neighbor/Divine Lover had called Keith again and told him what a wild ticket his sister was. He would wonder about that, her brother would, and if he stayed sober long enough, he would reconsider her story about why she had gone to his place on a frozen river for rest and relaxation. The last thing she needed was for Keith to show up at the house while Mira was still there, recovering...
From what? Who is she? What’s wrong with her? What the fuck have you done, Allison?
She could hear Keith’s voice, see the confrontation. He would even call her by her full name, Allison, the name he used when he was pissed. The night of Ray’s funeral, he had called her that after he’d decked her, while she lay bleeding on the ground, her nose broken, her jaw dislocated. Allison, if you ever lay a hand on Dean again, I’ll waste you. Got it?
They would get into it and every little thing that had gone wrong throughout the years would be dredged up, every accusation, hurt, betrayal. And in the end Keith would betray her.
Allie covered her face with her hands. Harsh, grating sobs exploded from her mouth despite her efforts to stifle them. She stumbled back, horrified at her outburst.
“Lori? Lori, hon?”
She whipped around. Her father stood there, still clutching the fishing pole in one hand, his other hand tugging at his jeans, which were unzipped and sliding down, exposing his pull-up diapers. Allie swiped at her eyes and hurried over to him.
“Christ, Dad, what the hell are you doing?”
“I—I have to use the toilet, and I . . .” A frown appeared between his rheumy eyes. “I.. . Where’s Lori? You’re not Lori. I thought I heard Lori in here.”
She jerked his jeans back up, zipped them shut, took the fishing pole away from him, and set it against the couch. “If you have to use the toilet, it’s right there.” She pointed him in the direction of the bathroom.
“You’re not Lori. Where is she?”
“Mom’s dead,” Allie snapped, and instantly regretted the words. Her father’s face seemed to cave in, the features collapsing, eyes plunging into his nose, nose coming apart and crashing into his mouth, mouth sagging to his chin.
“That’s a lie!” he shouted, and grabbed the fishing pole. “That’s a goddamn lie, she’s here, I just heard her. What’ve you done to her?” And he swung the pole.
It whistled past her head, the hook at the end whipping back and forth, nearly snagging the side of her face. Allie ducked and came up behind him and grabbed the pole out of his hand, shrieking, “Stop it, Dad, stop it!”
She kicked open the door to the sunroom and tossed the fishing pole through it. When she turned back to him, he looked beaten, his shoulders stooped, saliva sliding out of the corner of his mouth and onto his unshaven jaw. His expression was that of a man defeated by life who no longer knew how to fight back or if the battle was even worth it.
“Give me a shot,” he begged in a broken voice. “Just give me a shot so I’ll go to sleep and never wake up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She took him by the arm, sat him down on the couch. “I’ll make you something hot to drink. Tea, cocoa, coffee, whatever you want.”
He looked up at her, his face now draining of color, his eyes bulging in their sockets. A vein pulsed and throbbed at his temple. “I want to die, “he shrieked. And, with shocking rapidity, he leaped up and ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Allie stood still, his words slamming around inside her skull. Deep breaths, calm down, you’ve been here before. In fact, she’d been down this road so many times before that she’d lost count. It had started right after her mother’s suicide, when her father was merely forgetful but aware enough to know that his memory was failing him. He’d made her promise that she would euthanize him when he reached the point where he could no longer function.
Oh, c’mon, Daddy. You’re just a little forgetful.
We both know it’s more than that, Allie. Just promise me that you’ll do what Josh. When I’m a pathetic, drooling slob in diapers who doesn’t know you anymore, just do it then.
Many times, in situations worse than today, she had almost done it. The ER had all the drugs she could possibly need to euthanize a patient, including the particular drugs used in most lethal injections for death row inmates. A shot of potassium chloride would induce cardiac arrest. Five grams of sodium thiopental—otherwise known as Pentothal—would kill him in about thirty seconds if administered intravenously. A hundred milligrams of pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, could paralyze his diaphragm and lungs within a minute.
In the event of his death, there wouldn’t be an autopsy; people in Alzheimer’s units and nursing homes died all the time. Unless murder was suspected, their deaths were listed as “natural causes.” She was a physician who visited him almost daily, the only remaining member of the family who did. Who would suspect?
Not a soul.
Nearly a year ago, shortly after Dean’s death and a horrible moment of clarity in which her father had begged her to kill him, she had taken potassium chloride from the ER, frilly intending to fulfill her father’s wishes. She had driven over to Lakeview, where he had been slumped in a chair in the TV room, snoring loudly, and had gotten him back into his room. She had helped him change into his pajamas, gotten him tucked in, and as he had fallen off to sleep, she actually had brought the syringe out of her pocket.
And that w
as as far as she had gotten. She simply couldn’t bring herself to do it.
But in the last three days, she had killed four people, was holding a woman captive, and the idea of ending her father’s suffering didn’t seem quite as terrible. But it couldn’t happen here. Not in her home. Not now. Not today.
“Dad?” She knocked softly at the bathroom door. “Go away.”
“Dad, please unlock the door. Otherwise I’ll have to remove it from the hinges.”
“I’m using the toilet, for Christ’s sake. Just give me some peace.”
Allie listened at the door. She heard pages turning. He was looking through a magazine. She decided he was probably okay in there for a few minutes and hurried into the downstairs bedroom, into the closet. She brought out her medical case, the one where she stored all the drugs she could possibly need for emergencies, the case she should have taken to North Carolina with her. In here she had more Midazolam, Ketalar, antibiotics, and a number of barbiturates. She had syringes, N supplies, a stethoscope, scalpels, sutures, and suturing needles, a regular ER supply case. Since she was in charge of the ER supplies, the losses wouldn’t show up during the inventories.
She grabbed an empty bag from her closet floor, tossed it on her bed next to the medical kit, and packed some fresh clothes. She added a couple of heavy sweatshirts and sweatpants, heavier socks, winter shoes, a quilted jacket, clothes she usually didn’t have to wear on Tybee. She zipped up the bag, picked up the medical kit, and returned to the front room.
Her father now wandered slowly through the kitchen. Except for a small addition on the south side of the room, which she had expanded to fit in a dishwasher, the kitchen was pretty much unchanged since she was a kid. The tiled counter over which her father’s fingers trailed dated back to 1934, when the cabin was built. The glass panes through which he gazed out onto the dock and the marsh were the originals. Perhaps, in some dim pocket of his mind, the kitchen triggered memories of the past. She couldn’t tell. She never could.
“Dad, we should get going.”
“Going, going, gone,” he murmured, and turned to face her, tears brimming again in his eyes. “You promised me. You broke your promise.”
She tensed, terrified that another storm would erupt.
“I’m there,” he said desperately. “You know I am. I know I am. I’m there. Look at me.” He threw his arms out at his sides, his expression was one of such profound torture and agony that she finally looked away.
Allie set her bags on the couch and went over to him, hugging him close, his body so thin and frail against her own that she knew she could break his neck with a single, swift wrench of his head. Never mind that it would be merciful, the right thing to do. She couldn’t. Not now, not yet, not here, not like that. It’s not in the pattern.
“C’mon, Dad, we’ll stop for chocolates on the way back. Remember that great chocolate shop in town?”
Allie took his hand, slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, picked up her med kit, and together she and her father walked out to the Rover.
Chapter 17
“I don’t even know your last name,” Curry said.
“You don’t remember my last name,” Faye corrected.
They sat in the Hotel Caribe, at a corner table where the lights were dim and cool air poured through the overhead vents. Samba music played softly in the background. Curry was sober, as straight as he had been in months, and she still looked good.
“Okay, so I don’t remember. What is it?”
“What difference does it make?”
Good question, he thought, and the answer was a no-brainer. She was the first woman he’d met in years who intrigued him so much that he actually wanted to know her better, to have a relationship with her, wanted to love her and be loved by her. The feelings made him feel like a ninth grader with wild, raging hormones.
“You made me breakfast this morning,” he said. “Now we’re having an early dinner together. Tomorrow we’ll be traveling on the same transport plane to the States. I should at least know your last name.”
“Davis. It’s Davis. But I bet you don’t know the last names of half the women you’ve been with, Keith.”
It was true. It was also necessary in the particular world that he lived in. “Most of the women I’ve known aren’t like you. They don’t know how to talk about anything other than themselves.”
“You can’t even remember our conversations.”
“I remember enough of what we’ve talked about.”
She laughed and sat forward, elbows on the table. “Yeah? Like what?”
My God, she was beautiful, but there was no conceit in her beauty. She didn’t flaunt it, didn’t wear clothes or behave in a way that called attention to herself, that screamed, Hey, notice me, aren’t I something else? But beneath that beauty lay a strange and mysterious current that he couldn’t quite define. Whatever it was, he desperately wanted to dip his hands into it, dive into it, flow with it, be swept along with it.
“Well?” she asked.
“This is a test, right? If I don’t answer five questions correctly, then you get up and leave. Is that it?”
“Naw, I’m just giving you a hard time, Keith. I’m curious what you’re running from, that’s all.”
The conversation now veered into an area that made Curry distinctly uncomfortable. He disliked talking about his family, about the past. What was the point? It wouldn’t change anything. “What makes you think I’m running from anything?”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and sat back, her index finger sliding around the rim of her water glass. “You don’t drink or get stoned for pleasure. You seem to do both to forget.”
Was he that transparent? He told her that 80 percent of the people in Panama were running from something—the IRS, FBI, Scotland Yard, a pissed-off spouse, social services, the Mafia. She just smiled and shook her head.
“Those reasons don’t fit you.”
“C’mon, I could be a serial killer on the run.”
“Nope.”
“Or a rapist.”
“Nope.”
“A bank robber?”
“Sorry.”
He shrugged. “I’m here because I like the country and I don’t want to deal with my family.”
He was grateful that the waiter arrived just then with their meals, disrupting the direction of the conversation. There was cerviche, a way of preparing fish, with black beans and rice, baked plantains, and thick, rich cups of coffee. They ate in comfortable silence until she said, “By family, do you mean a wife or an ex?”
“I’ve never been married.”
“No kids?”
“None that I know of.”
“So, you’re running from a parental situation?”
“I’m not running. I made a choice. And no, it’s not parents. My mother’s dead, my father’s in an Alzheimer’s facility. I had two brothers, but they’re both dead. It’s a sister, a control freak. It’s just like your buddy, the blind seer, said. Domination by others—by my sister. That’s the issue. My life is a hundred percent easier not having to deal with her.” There. It was the most he’d told anyone about his family in years.
But Faye couldn’t leave it alone. “Then why’re you going back to the States?”
“I have property there. I should check in with my old man. What’re you digging for, Faye?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just curious, I guess.” Curious, okay. He could buy curious. But he sensed there was more to it.
“Why’d you get so freaked out over what Milagro said to you?” she asked.
Because he’d been stoned. That was what he wanted to say. But it wasn’t the whole truth. “I think my sister has gone over the edge, that she’s the powerful and vengeful woman Milagro mentioned. And since she’s staying at my place, it could implicate me. Bottom line. She isn’t just a control freak. She may have come completely unhinged.”
“Over what? How?”
He pushed his fish and pla
ntains around on his plate and sat back. “Look, my sister’s fucked up. I just need to deal with this situation. Now, how about if you list your questions on a sheet of paper and then I’ll just answer them one by one?”
She tried hard to look guilty, but burst out laughing. “Okay, okay. You made your point. But everyone’s family is fucked up in some way. My mother was into appearances, you know? In her mind you had to belong to the right clubs, hobnob with the right people, do the socially acceptable things, and the rest of the family had to toe the line. My father was passive, unless he got pissed off and then watch out.”
“What’d he do?”
“Do?” She looked up from her plate, her lovely eyes shadowed with remembrances. ‘Most of the time he went along with my mother’s agenda just to keep the peace.”
“For work.”
“Oh. He was an engineer. And he loved to fish. I was just sort of the sideline family business. When they discovered I was sleeping with my boyfriend, they sent me out of state.”
“Hey, you went to law school. They must have supported your ambitions.”
She nearly gagged on a bite of food. “I ran away from home when I was fifteen and haven’t seen either of them since.”
“Ever been married?”
Or, more to the point, was she married now? Even though she didn’t wear a wedding band, married women in Panama, especially in the boating world, often removed their wedding rings.
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“So where’s your husband?”
“Dead.”
Of all the things she might have said, he hadn’t expected that. “Christ, I’m sorry, Faye.”
She quickly lowered her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was way too soft. “Me too.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Long enough.”
“Then what’s pulling you back to the States?”
“I want to spend the new year with my daughter.”
So there was family.
“And right after the new year, I should hear about a job I applied for as a translator for a criminal-law firm. But there’re a lot of other qualified applicants. So. . .” She shrugged and finished off the last of her fish. “We’ll see.”
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