Coming Back

by Marcia Muller

  She stopped and looked from me to Piper and back to me. “Well,” she said, “what’s this?”

  I introduced myself as Piper’s friend from Alta Vista Rehab. “I was about to call 911. Piper’s out of it; it looks as if she’s taken an overdose of drugs.”

  The woman glanced at Piper. Behind her glasses her eyes moved shrewdly, assessing the situation.

  After a few beats she said in a faint drawl, “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s a diabetic, you know, and isn’t good about taking her meds. I’ll give her an insulin shot and she’ll perk right up.”

  I found that explanation hard to believe. Piper had never mentioned diabetes, and even if she had the disease, I couldn’t imagine her ever neglecting her medications.

  The woman set down the grocery bag on the nearby dining table and went to Piper. “Upsy-daisy, honey. Let’s get you into the bedroom.” She lifted her with ease and pushed through one of the closed doors, shutting it behind her.

  I went over there and listened, but couldn’t make out anything. Shortly the woman reappeared. “She’ll be okay now.”

  I asked, “And you are?”

  Hesitation. Then, “Melinda Knowles, a friend from back home. Piper’s aunt, actually.”

  “How long have you been visiting?”

  “Oh, just a few days. I came west to help out.”

  Why hadn’t she come before this, when Piper really could have used help? Why now, when Piper had regained her independence?

  “Came out from where?” I asked.

  She moved closer to me and began herding me toward the hallway, in a series of little, nipping invasions of my space designed for that purpose.

  “You’re from where?” I repeated.

  Knowles kept herding me. I held my ground till we were close enough that I could feel her breath on my face. I caught the scent of mint overlying alcohol. An early happy hour?

  Finally she said, “I’m from a little town near Oklahoma City. You wouldn’t know of it.”

  Now I placed her accent—not Southern or Texan, but distinctive in its own way. “The town where Piper is from?”

  My guess was right. Knowles nodded. “If she’d stayed home, this awful thing never would have happened to her.”

  “I’d like to look in on her for a moment.”

  “No, she needs her rest. And I need to get dinner on the table. She has to have her nourishment on a regular basis.”

  But Piper was perfectly capable of providing her own meals. Just last week she’d told me about a complicated soufflé that she’d cooked.

  I hesitated, reluctant to leave her alone with this woman who so obviously wanted me gone.

  Knowles’s face softened. “I know you’re worried about Piper. I am too. She was doing so well until this week.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. She won’t talk about it.”

  “A shock of some kind?”

  “Maybe. I’ll ask her to call you when she’s better.”

  “Thank you.” Then I realized Piper didn’t have my number, and I gave Knowles one of my business cards. She set it on an end table, barely glancing at it.

  “I’m sure Piper will be glad you stopped by,” Knowles said, ushering me to the door, her movements no longer so aggressive.

  Still I hesitated. This woman reminded me of a watchdog, and not the benign kind.

  “Good-bye for now,” she said.

  I stepped into the hall and the door closed behind me, the dead bolt clicking into place.

  HY RIPINSKY

  He loved Shar, but she could be a pain in the ass sometimes. Like tonight: dragging into the house at nearly seven after taking two streetcars from the rehab center. She’d told him she’d had an upsetting experience and needed time by herself to process it, but she didn’t want to discuss it just yet.

  Bullshitting him, probably. The Muni was not a place to do any serious thinking. Just an excuse for her damned stubborn insistence on being independent.

  He’d told her as much, and she’d disappeared downstairs to their bedroom suite to take a shower. Moving more slowly than normal; the long rides—probably standing up—had tired her.

  He grabbed an IPA from the fridge and sat down in front of the fire to wait for her.

  The last few months had been hard on him—a conflicted time. What he’d most valued in his wife when they first met, her self-sufficiency and bravery, were taxing his patience. Scaring him a little too. She’d come a long way since last July, when she’d been delivered by a gifted neurosurgeon from a life in a locked-in state, and most times she seemed like her old self.

  Well, except for her hair: it had grown back thick and black as before, but it was short and spiky and there was a weird white streak that she complained made her look like a skunk. She’d had a small gray streak in the same place since her teens, which she dyed, but she refused to color this one till her hair grew out. People joked about her new look, and she laughed, but he knew her appearance bothered her.

  It certainly didn’t bother him. It was the pushing of her limits that did. If as a result something happened to her…

  He’d had experience with disability before: his first wife, Julie Spaulding, had died of multiple sclerosis. But Julie had been ill before he married her and had learned to live with the disease. She knew her limits and didn’t exceed them and, as a consequence, Hy had made his own accommodations.

  Julie, he thought now. Something she’d said about being disabled flickered in Hy’s memory, then vanished. He tried to recapture it but couldn’t. Julie had been gone many years, and the small details of their life together had faded. Some of the bigger ones, too, he hated to admit.

  He heard Shar coming up the spiral staircase from the bedroom and went to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of chardonnay. By the time he was back in the sitting room, she had sunk onto the sofa and pulled a soft woolen blanket around her. Her hair was wet from the shower, her cheeks rosy. He handed her the glass and said, “Better now?”

  “Yes.” She sipped, smiled at him. Their spats were infrequent and short; neither could stay angry with the other.

  But, dammit, she had to understand how he’d felt: alone, unsure where she was and if she was all right. She hadn’t even given him the courtesy of a phone call.

  “My cell discharged,” she said.

  Reading his mind; they’d always had that connection, even at a long physical distance.

  “And there aren’t many phone booths around anymore.”

  He put his hand on her knee, enjoying the solid feel of flesh and bone. “I know.”

  “The damn thing’s unreliable,” she added, looking down into her wineglass. “My cell, I mean.”

  “Buy a better one. Or keep it on the charger when you’re home.”

  “I know I should. But I…” Her voice trailed off into silence. “It’s hard,” she added, “getting around to things like that.”

  “I understand.”

  “And sometimes it’s a relief to be unavailable. My mother, my brother, John. Charlene and Patsy too. The only ones who don’t want to caution me to take it easy a dozen times a day are my birth family. At least they trust me.”

  “Your mother and brother and sisters care.”

  “That’s not the point! They view me as infirm, somebody who’s not capable of getting on with her life. Ma left seven messages at the agency today. Seven! John’s down to five, Patsy and Charlene two apiece. But I bet there’re more on the voice mail here.”

  “Well, not exactly. When I got home there were a few from your mother and John. I called them back with my daily report.”

  “You’ve gotten sucked into reassuring them too?” Her face was scrunched up, her eyes flashing.

  Mildly he said, “They’re family, McCone. The only family I’ve got except for you.”

  Her eyes softened and her mouth pulled down.

  God, he thought, now I’ve gone and made her feel sorry for me!

  But he knew t
hat wasn’t quite right: his parents and stepfather had been dead many years; Shar knew he’d gotten on fine, never been really close to them.

  He put his arm around her. “Hey, McCone,” he said, “what’s made you so blue?”

  She took a sip of wine and patted the sofa for their sole remaining cat, Allie—her brother, Ralph, had died peacefully of old age in November—to jump into her lap. Then she told him about her visit to Piper Quinn.

  “I just can’t understand what’s happened to her. I’m sure she doesn’t have diabetes and that she’d never willingly take recreational drugs, but something’s very wrong, something so bad the Knowles woman came out here from Oklahoma. She seems to be very protective of Piper. In fact, it’s as if she’s taking over her life.”

  He was silent, considering the situation.

  “So what do you think I should do about Piper?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Ripinsky, the woman’s in trouble! She asked for my help with a problem.”

  “Maybe it was the drugs—whatever they were—talking.”

  “… Maybe, but… She mentioned my job. What if she needs the agency’s help?”

  “It doesn’t sound as if an investigation is required. You admit you don’t know much about her.”

  “True.”

  “She’s probably just going through a bad patch. Rehab, as you know, isn’t always a straight upward trajectory.”

  “I know.”

  “So let it go. The aunt seems to have everything in hand.”

  McCone’s brow furrowed. Hy felt faintly guilty about his advice: his wife’s instincts were excellent, but he was deliberately steering her away from getting involved.

  He thought of all she’d been through, how far she’d come, how important it was for her to maintain the status quo. He touched her hair, brushing the white streak.

  “Look, haven’t you had enough stress recently? How about we fly up to Touchstone tomorrow? Look at the sunset, eat some fresh crab, relax?”

  Her expression softened, was replaced with one of longing. They hadn’t visited their seaside retreat in Mendocino County since before the shooting.

  After a moment she said, “On Monday, if Piper’s not at the rehab center, I’ll visit her again. Get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

  He pulled her close. “Monday’s soon enough.”

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7

  MICK SAVAGE

  He and Derek Ford were going over their software licensing contracts with Omnivore when his cell rang. He ignored it, let the call go into voice mail.

  They were sitting side by side on the futon couch in Derek’s tiny SoMa loft, the contracts for the real-time search engine—SavageFor.com—that they’d developed spread out on a low table before them.

  Real-time searches were the hottest trend in the Internet industry; a number of them were already up and running, but Mick and Derek’s tapped into a much wider and more reliable range of resources to bring people up to the minute on what was happening in the world. From TIME magazine to Twitter, from CNN to personal blogs, information was gathered, posted, and updated by the second. Omnivore would oversee and maintain the site, leaving Mick and Derek to follow their other pursuits.

  Derek’s loft was one of the kind that you bought with only the electrical and plumbing in place, then finished yourself. He’d done a good job: bamboo floors and a small but convenient kitchen nook. A little spare for Mick’s taste—no pictures on the white walls, nothing but a computer workstation that took up half the space, the futon, and the table. But Derek was a minimalist and spent most of his downtime at the clubs or various women’s places.

  Mick wished he could get as much action as Derek apparently did.

  “This clause needs rewording,” Derek said, running a long slender finger over a highlighted passage.

  Mick read it, shrugged. “Let the lawyers deal with it.”

  Derek frowned. He was a tall, slender Eurasian—Vietnamese, American, French, and Chinese—and always perfectly groomed and dressed. A tat of linked scorpions circled his neck. For years, Mick knew, Derek had lived beyond his means and had the credit card balances to prove it.

  Well, once the contracts were signed he would easily be able to afford the silk shirts and leather jackets and pricey shoes he favored.

  Derek said, “Hey, man, it’s our future we’re talking about. We ought to work on the wording.”

  “I don’t know shit about this kind of stuff.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “So leave it to the lawyers.”

  “Right. Leave it to the lawyers. You want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Mick’s phone rang again. He ignored it. The ringing stopped, then immediately started. He checked it, noted Shar and Hy’s number at Touchstone. A prickle of anxiety touched his spine. What if something had happened to his aunt? She was okay, the doctors claimed, but wasn’t anything possible? Even a relapse?

  He picked up. No, she told him, sounding a touch testy, she was feeling fine. “The reason I’m calling is I need you to run a deep background check on a couple of people,” she added.

  “You sound as if you’re in a cave.”

  “I’m in the pantry with the door closed.”

  “Why’re you calling from the pantry? Gorging on canned goods?”

  “Hy and I are supposed to be on a getaway, but… This is really important, Mick.”

  “Okay. Which case file?”

  “None of them. It’s personal.”

  What kind of situation had she gotten herself into now? She’d been coming into the office on a semi-regular basis since December, but as far as he knew she wasn’t handling any cases except for being a chief witness in a big federal appeals trial that would go to court next month. But with Shar many so-called personal cases turned into official investigations—usually major ones with major consequences. Was she up for something like that?

  “You gonna tell me why you don’t want Hy to know you’re calling?”

  “No. Will you do it or not?”

  Yep, stubborn as ever and off on some wild-hair investigation over Hy’s objections.

  “You’re handling the testimony in the Andersen Associates appeal,” he said. “You’ve got a lot on your plate.”

  When she replied her voice was tart and steely. “I know my capabilities, Mick.”

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Shar had always stretched herself to the limit, but was that wise now? But if Mick didn’t run the check, she’d do it herself, and then she and Hy would get into a big fight on their supposed romantic weekend.

  “All right,” he said. “Give me the information.”

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8

  SHARON McCONE

  The getaway weekend wasn’t a success.

  First of all, Allie the cat acted mournful as we packed some provisions on Saturday morning. She and Ralph had always recognized the signs that we were going away, but before they’d had each other, and now she’d be all alone. I called next door to Michelle Curley, my house- and cat-sitter, and asked if Allie could stay with her while we were gone. As I carried the cat over there she felt bony and frail, and I sensed impending loss.

  The flight up from Oakland’s North Field to our airstrip at Touchstone only reinforced the feeling. I watched Hy at the controls of our Cessna 170B: his motions so precise, so easy. When I followed them through from the right seat—my hands light on the yoke, my feet light on the rudders—I became confused, clumsy.

  Was it possible I’d never pilot well again? Or never pilot at all? That was unthinkable.

  Our house at Touchstone was musty and damp. Mold lurked in the shower stall and the bedroom hot tub looked scummy. The ice maker had seized up. Outside the sea was gray and curiously placid; a thick bank of fog menaced on the horizon. The crab season hadn’t been good, and the ones we’d picked up at our favorite seafood market in Mendocino were small and tasteless.

  Saturday morning I didn’t feel up t
o climbing down the long stairway that scaled the cliff from our property to Bootleggers’ Cove below. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I’d ever descend it again.

  That afternoon, Hy spied me coming out of the pantry with the cordless phone after I talked with Mick. He didn’t comment—a sure indication that he was onto me but didn’t want to initiate any conflict.

  Jesus, I was sick of being treated as if I were special!

  Special—as in “special needs.”

  No, handicapped. Less than my former self.

  When I woke Sunday morning, I was alone in bed. I put on my robe, moved through the house. No Hy. Then I spotted him on the platform above the stairway, staring out to sea, a coffee cup balanced on the railing before him.

  I wondered what he was thinking of. The sea, its constancy? How different it was from our life together, with all its changes?

  In an instant what we’d both taken for granted had been destroyed. What was possible had become the impossible. The landscape of our existence was forever altered. He and I didn’t recognize this new, strange world—a world of “no’s” and “can’ts” and “shouldn’ts.” Didn’t want to recognize it.

  And as I watched my husband I realized he and I hadn’t made love all weekend—or all the week before. Good and frequent sex was one of the cornerstones of our relationship; now, apparently, that was altered too.

  When I’d first been released from the Brandt Institute, we—with some difficulty—had resumed and enjoyed sexual relations, but our interest hadn’t lasted long. Now we were both indifferent.

  What had happened to us? And where were we going?

  On the trip back to the Bay Area I slept—ignoring the controls, Hy’s piloting, and the 360 degrees of striking vistas. When I woke upon our touchdown at Oakland, I felt as if I’d lost some essential part of myself in the skies above.