Crimson Rain

by Meg O'Brien

  Finally, they themselves went through several interviews with the Ewings and Saint Sympatica’s child psychiatrist, interviews that had included psychological tests to assess their level of maturity and ability to carry through with raising the girls. They were young to be adopting, and had been married less than a year.

  “Who will take care of the girls if you both work?” Mrs. Ewing had asked.

  “I will,” Gina had replied. “I plan to work from our house, and only part-time until they’re both in school. After that, I may work longer hours, but I’ll still be at home most of the time. I’ll be working for myself, and I’ll be able to plan my schedule to accommodate the girls.”

  The day they brought the twins home had been the happiest one of their lives. They did everything possible to give the girls tons of love and make them feel secure in their new home. Paul and Gina both thought they had been extremely lucky—at least for the first four years. The girls played like other children, and they seemed loving, both to each other and to their friends. It appeared that, miraculously, they had gotten through their first year of life without emotional damage. Paul and Gina attributed that to the excellent psychiatric care the orphanage afforded to the children in its care.

  Then all hell had broken loose.

  Gina sighed. Her thoughts had a way of drifting in church, when she should be praying. Sometimes, when making the sign of the cross she would say to herself “one, two, three, four,” instead of “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” It was odd how her spirit seemed to have become a matter of rote over the years. Odd how her marriage had become that, too.

  Here in this church that was so familiar to her, however, Gina sat between Paul and Rachel and felt protected with them on either side. The church was warm, and the familiar statues, poinsettias and votive candles lent a cozy air. In the crowded pew they were squeezed together, and with Paul’s and Rachel’s bodies touching hers, it felt as if they were truly bonded together, and that nothing bad could ever happen again.

  It was therefore all the more strange when thoughts of something threatening them crossed her mind. It was a thought that had been nagging at her, actually, the past few days—ever since Rachel had come home.

  Gina mentally shook herself and turned her attention to the swelling sounds of the pipe organ. Everyone rose as the altar boys came down the aisle, the lead one carrying a cross. The priest came behind them, and the choir began to sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” their voices swelling to a crescendo at the end.

  The Mass began, and Gina whispered to Paul, “Do you see Mom anywhere?”

  He turned and scanned the crowds. “Can’t tell. It’s hard to see, it’s so packed—”

  He broke off and his face paled as he saw the blond woman in an aisle seat, five rows behind and across from theirs. Lacey? My God, what is she doing here?

  His eyes met hers, and he thought he saw the beginnings of a mischievous grin. Confusion and a feeling of disaster flooded him. He couldn’t let Gina and Lacey meet. Gina would know right away the place that Lacey held in his life.

  Would his mistress force a meeting? Did she just want to see his wife and daughter, find out what they looked like?

  As if hearing the question, Lacey gave a shrug and looked away. The procession in the middle aisle came between them as it neared the altar. Paul turned back to Gina as she tugged at his arm. “Do you see her?”

  “No,” Paul said, his mouth dry. “I don’t see her.”

  From that point on he barely noticed the Mass going on in front of him. Instead, he worried about what Lacey would do.

  During Communion, as parishioners filled the aisles and walked to the altar railing, Paul risked a look back again. If she met his eyes, he would try to indicate to her in some way that she shouldn’t speak to him after the Mass. Perhaps just a small shake of the head would do it. Surely she’d understand.

  But Lacey was gone, her seat taken by an elderly man.

  Paul felt his entire body sag with relief. Then, quickly, his eyes scanned the pews in case she had simply moved to another seat. He didn’t see her anywhere. Thank God.

  But why would she leave in the middle of Mass? To avoid having to see him with his family any longer?

  That could be it.

  It was several minutes before he was able to breathe normally again. He would have to talk to Lacey, though. In the three months that she had been his mistress, they had never discussed what they would do if they were seen together by Gina or anyone else who knew him. Now he would have to make sure that Lacey knew what to say if such an occasion arose: that they knew each other through Soleil. She was a client; nothing more.

  Paul turned his attention back to the Mass. The priest was saying the Agnus Dei. “Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”

  Paul had little faith that anyone, God or priest, could take away his sins. He thought that he would probably go to hell by the time all this was over. He did pray for mercy, however—understanding, if not forgiveness. “Have mercy on us,” he whispered, along with the congregation. “Have mercy on us.”

  They were on the way home when it happened. A car behind them followed too closely, blinding Paul with its headlights.

  “Damn tailgaters,” he muttered.

  “Golly, Dad, must you swear right after Mass?” Rachel complained from the back seat.

  He was too tense to answer. Between seeing Lacey in the church, and now this, the holiday was turning out to be even worse than he’d anticipated.

  Paul stepped on the brake and tapped it lightly, slowing down gradually. Maybe the car behind would take the hint and pass. The street was dark here, but there was plenty of room on either side, whereas farther up the hill, it narrowed dangerously.

  But the driver behind him stayed on his tail. Dammit, why didn’t it pass? Was it someone unfamiliar with the streets on Queen Anne Hill?

  Paul sped up, and the other car did, too. He couldn’t shake it, and now he was beginning to worry. What if this was some nut, hoping to cut them off at some point and carjack them? Or what if he was following them home to grab them in the driveway?

  Even as he thought it, the car pulled out into the middle of the road and came closer, its front end nudging the left rear bumper of the Infiniti. Paul felt the bump and then heard a loud, metallic screech. The steering wheel began to slip from his grasp, and he clenched his fingers around it. “Hang on!” he yelled as the Infiniti swerved from side to side.

  “Oh, my God!” he heard Gina cry.

  “Daddy, what’s he doing?” Rachel yelled.

  Ahead was a large old cedar tree that stuck a couple of yards into the road, its trunk easily three feet in diameter. Paul saw it looming ahead of him and jammed his foot on the brake. The street was slick from the rain, however, and he could do nothing to stop the Infiniti from skidding and barreling straight into the tree.

  Metal careened against wood. Glass crashed. The front air bags deployed, and Paul felt as if he’d hit a wall as the bag on his side slammed against his chest and face. Gina screamed, and Rachel flew forward. Paul felt her impact on the back of his seat.

  It was over within seconds that seemed like hours. Paul sat shaken, nauseated, and as the air was automatically sucked out of the bags he looked over at Gina, who sat upright with a dazed expression on her face.

  “Are you all right?” he managed.

  Gina nodded. “Rachel?” she said, her voice shaking.

  Rachel was crying, and though Paul was still in shock and felt weak, he managed to unbuckle his seat belt and get out, opening the back door. Rachel sat crumpled over, her face in her hands.

  “Honey, are you okay?” he asked, his voice not much more than a harsh whisper. His legs shook, and he could barely hold himself upright. He grabbed hold of the door to keep himself from falling.

  “Mommy,” Rachel said in a strange, hollow voice. “Is Mommy okay?”

  She sounded like a little girl, and tears
came to Paul’s eyes. He looked at Gina, who was feebly trying to reach back to Rachel.

  “Yes. I think she’s fine,” he said, though he wasn’t sure at all.

  Gina began to unbuckle her seat belt and slide out. Moving slowly around the car and holding on to it for support, she reached Paul. He took her arm to steady her. Gina leaned into the car. “I’m fine, honey,” she said. “Just shaky. What about you?”

  “I think I’m okay,” Rachel answered, unbuckling her lap belt. “My head hurts. It hurts real bad. So does my tummy.”

  Gina touched her gently, feeling her forehead and scalp. “I don’t see any cuts. You do have a pretty good lump starting on your forehead.”

  “She didn’t have her shoulder harness on,” Paul said. “She slammed into the back of my seat. I felt it.”

  “Rachel, for God’s sake, how many times have we told you—!” Gina broke off. “Honey, it’s okay. You’re safe, that’s all that matters. We should get you to the hospital, though. You need to be checked out.”

  “No, I’m okay,” Rachel said, though she clearly was not.

  “We just have to be sure,” Gina insisted, starting to cry.

  “Your mother’s right,” Paul said briskly. Looking at the front of the car, he saw for the first time the full extent of the damage. The hood was crunched like an accordion, and glass from the driver and passenger side windows was all over the place.

  It was a miracle, he thought, that he and Gina hadn’t been badly hurt, if not killed. The windshield, made of safety glass, had held in one piece. It looked like a thousand spider webs against the beam from the headlights, which oddly enough still worked, outlining the tree.

  With a shaky hand Paul took his cell phone out of his pocket, and punched the speed dial for 911. After asking if everyone was all right, the dispatcher told him it might be ten or more minutes. “We’re short-staffed because of Christmas Eve, but there’s a car and paramedics on the way.”

  Paul slumped to the ground, his back to the rear tire. Gina sat on the edge of the back seat with the door open, holding Rachel’s hand and making mothering noises.

  “Whoever that was,” Rachel said in a tight voice, “they did that on purpose, didn’t they, Dad?”

  Paul hesitated. “I…we can’t know that for certain. It’s dark, it might have been someone who didn’t know the road.”

  When the police and paramedics arrived, the medics checked Gina and Rachel for injuries as a young officer talked to Paul.

  “This isn’t the first time somebody ran into this tree,” the officer said. “You see how the street starts to narrow, down there a block? People aren’t prepared for it, and they think they can make it around you. You get over to the right to let them pass, but then that tree looms up and there’s not enough room for both of you.”

  “I drive this street every day,” Paul said impatiently. He wanted this to be over, and he wanted Gina and Rachel safe at home. He still felt shaky himself, and he needed a drink, a bed, some sleep. “I know precisely where this tree is,” he said, “and I also know that we’ve asked for years to have it taken out.”

  “I agree with you, it’s a hazard,” the young cop said. “Especially at night. Seems to me I heard the city’s trying to do something about it.”

  The uproar over this tree had been in the Seattle papers for months. The owners of the property wanted to preserve the ancient tree, and were being supported by a local preservation society.

  “You know,” the cop said, “maybe the person behind you was new around here. Maybe he or she didn’t know the street all that well.”

  Paul’s voice hardened. “They didn’t stop to see if we needed help.”

  “Right. Well, I’m writing it up as a hit-and-run. You remember what the car looked like? Did you get a glimpse of the driver?”

  “No. It all happened too fast, and like I said, I knew the tree was there. I was trying to keep from hitting it.”

  “Yeah. It’s a hazard, all right.”

  Paul nodded. Something in his gut, however, told him that what had happened here tonight was no accident. Someone had deliberately tried to run them off the road.

  At the hospital, Rachel was given a near-clean bill of health. “She may have headaches for a couple of days,” the weary E.R. doctor said to Paul. “Also, since she wasn’t wearing a shoulder harness, the lap belt caused some bruising in the abdominal area.” He shook his head. “Lucky for her, you must have been able to slow the car before impact. Lucky for all of you, for that matter. If you’d hit that tree at any real speed, you might not be standing here talking to me now.”

  Gina shuddered. She didn’t want to think of what might have been. All she wanted to do was get home and go to bed.

  I am so tired of Christmas Eve, she thought. Would they ever have a happy one again? One not fraught with some terrible event, or the kind of gloom that event left them with, like a perverse gift of some evil Magi?

  Oh, stop complaining. Like the doctor said, one or all of us could be dead now.

  As it was, her neck hurt, and there was a vague pain in the area of her collarbone. “Whiplash,” the doctor said. “Also, probably the force of the seat belt holding you back. There’s a bruise on your collarbone. It should go away in a few days.”

  He had wanted to take X rays of her neck, and Paul had wanted that, too. But the X-ray department was backed up with holiday revelers who had fallen down stairs, slipped on a dance floor, rear-ended another car. It would take hours of sitting here, waiting.

  “If I don’t feel better, I’ll come back the day after tomorrow,” Gina promised.

  Paul shrugged off his back pain as something he experienced now and then, and begged off from the X rays as well. “I really just need to get home and sleep,” he said. Foremost in his mind, however, was that there wasn’t any Scotch in the hospital, and he needed a drink—bad.

  The Infiniti had been towed to a shop to be repaired, if possible, after being checked out at the site of the accident by the police. They had taken samples of paint that didn’t match the Infiniti, and anything else the forensics lab could use.

  After picking up muscle relaxants and painkillers at the hospital pharmacy, Paul, Gina and Rachel rode home silently in a cab, each deep in his and her own private thoughts.

  The next morning they all slept in. When they got up sleepily around eleven and poked without appetite at eggs that Gina managed to scramble, they barely remembered it was Christmas Day. In the afternoon they watched movies on tape. Around five o’clock, when the sun had gone down, they lit the Christmas tree and made an attempt at celebration by opening each other’s presents.

  “Thank you, Mom, I love it,” Rachel said, opening a glittery gold box and holding up a pink cashmere sweater. She didn’t try it on as she normally would, but put it back in the box, on the floor.

  Gina knew how she felt, and simply accepted the thank-you, telling Rachel the same when she opened her own gift of perfume.

  Paul did his best to raise their spirits by putting on his new dark green fleece jacket and modeling it, as if on a runway. He looked handsome—like a movie star, Rachel said, smiling—and Gina smiled, too, and agreed. Soon, however, they fell back into sitting silently, watching rain beat against the windows that looked out on the city of Seattle.

  It’s the muscle relaxants, Paul thought. They’ve turned us into zombies. Or maybe it’s post-traumatic stress.

  But he knew that wasn’t the reason for his mood, and maybe not for Gina and Rachel’s, either. He’d bet that they, too, were thinking: Who would want to hurt us so much, they could do a thing like that?

  5

  It was the day after Christmas, and Lacey was stretched out on the sofa when Paul let himself into the apartment. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and had kicked her shoes off. One leg was slung over the back of the sofa. In her white crew socks, she looked like a child. She was even watching the cartoon channel, like a kid on a Saturday morning.

  She picked u
p the remote and flicked the TV off as Paul entered and hung his jacket over the back of a chair. He noted that an open bag of potato chips lay on the coffee table, and a can of Pepsi had left wet rings on the glass top.

  That was one of the things he liked about being here, the fact that he could mess things up a bit. Lacey was easygoing that way, while Gina, probably because of her work as an interior designer, liked rooms neat and tidy. Even the magazines on the coffee table in their living room were chosen to look good, rather than for their reading content.

  In the beginning, Paul had appreciated that Gina kept such a nice house. In time he began to weary, however, of always having to pick things up, especially when his mind was on other matters.

  Before coming here, Paul had been prepared to tell Lacey they should cool things off, not see each other as much anymore. Her presence at Midnight Mass had been a bit too close for comfort. Paul honestly did not want to hurt Gina or Rachel. For that reason, he had never taken Lacey to Soleil, unwilling to risk having any of the employees gossip about them—gossip that might get back to Gina.

  But now, seeing her like this, his heart melted. He had missed her spontaneity the past few days, the quick flashes of humor, her slight Southern accent from growing up in Atlanta. As much as she had tried to do away with it, Lacey had told him, she never was able to. “Guess it’s inbred,” she had said, laughing. “Take it or leave it.” Paul had taken it. And loved it.

  “That was close the other night,” he said, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside her. In spite of himself, he couldn’t resist stroking her breast through the tight T-shirt and feeling excited as her nipples became hard in response to his touch.

  “You’re sure in a hurry to get started today,” she teased, pulling a pillow off the back of the sofa and smacking him with it.