Last Run

by Hilary Norman

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kez told her later, shrugging off defeat as she had victory.

  She was starved, she said, knew exactly what she wanted – and no, the coach didn’t know and would not approve, but she hardly ever broke diet rules and right now, at least sometime in the next hour or two, she wanted steak.

  They left West Palm Beach and Cathy drove them – Kez had come up in Mike Delaney’s car – to Fort Lauderdale and found Ruth’s Chris Steak House, because most people agreed their sizzling broiled steaks were the best around.

  ‘You’ve told me,’ Kez said a while later, eating Gulf shrimp, ‘why you run, but I haven’t told you why I do.’

  ‘Because you’re so talented.’ Cathy speared a heart of lettuce from her salad. ‘Because, I guess, you have no choice?’

  ‘I started out running,’ Kez said, ‘because I could, went on because I seemed pretty good at it and then, like you, I got hooked.’ She finished a shrimp, licked her fingers, met Cathy’s eyes. ‘But you run partly to get away from things, and I run because I’m afraid that if I stop I’ll get ugly again.’

  ‘Ugly?’ Cathy could not keep the astonishment out of her voice.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Kez said. ‘I was a real ugly teenager.’

  ‘You can’t have been,’ Cathy said.

  ‘I’m no oil painting now.’ Kez held out her hands, palms down, fingers splayed. ‘That’s why I do stuff like paint my nails this way.’

  ‘I figured it was a tribute to Flo-Jo,’ Cathy said.

  ‘Sure,’ Kez allowed. ‘I admired the hell out of her – who didn’t?’ She paused. ‘But I also do it because they distract people from the rest of me.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Cathy said. ‘You’re wonderful to look at.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ Kez said.

  ‘No,’ Cathy insisted. ‘Your face, your body, it’s all marvellous.’

  Kez shook her head. ‘You’re too beautiful to understand.’

  Cathy laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Kez asked sharply.

  Cathy looked at her in surprise and saw what looked like hurt in her eyes, perhaps a hint of anger too, realized suddenly that Kez might think she was laughing at her.

  ‘I guess I’m embarrassed.’ She paused. ‘I’ve never seen myself as beautiful.’

  The hurt and anger had already left Kez’s eyes.

  ‘Then you’re the one who’s crazy,’ she said.

  She was looking at Cathy now with warmth. Making her feel special.

  There was no doubting one thing.

  Cathy had never met a guy who’d made her feel like that.

  ‘Did you see how she looked?’ Grace asked Sam softly.

  Cathy had come in a while back and found them settled in the den watching one of the old British sitcoms they enjoyed; Woody on the sofa between them, sharing the popcorn Grace had developed a liking for during the pregnancy. She hadn’t said much about her day, just that she’d had a great dinner and was tired and going straight to bed, and then she’d gone upstairs.

  ‘Happy,’ Sam said. ‘Like she had a good time.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Grace said. ‘Little more than that, I’d say.’

  He watched her for a moment. ‘And that’s bad, why?’

  ‘Not bad, of course not.’ Grace thought for a moment. ‘I can’t give you a good reason why I feel this way, but I just seem to have this sense that Kez might be having a more powerful influence than Cathy may realize.’

  Sam frowned, then leaned forward. ‘What kind of influence?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘I’m probably turning into a neurotic mom, scared of Cathy getting hurt.’

  ‘Nothing neurotic about that,’ Sam said, ‘especially not in Cathy’s case.’ He fondled the dog’s ears. ‘Gracie, just tell me what you’re thinking – just say it.’

  ‘I think Kez is gay,’ she said.

  ‘And?’ Sam waited, looked at her face. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Cathy isn’t gay,’ he said with absolute conviction. ‘I know there haven’t been that many guys around for a while, but she’s only ever dated men—’ He broke off. ‘Unless you know something I don’t?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Grace said. ‘This is just some kind of instinct.’

  ‘Then I don’t get what your instinct is telling you,’ Sam said. ‘That Cathy might be lesbian?’ He paused, his brain working to catch up. ‘It’s never entered my head for a second, but it would be OK, wouldn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘It would be absolutely fine with me, so long as it made her happy.’ His brow creased. ‘Are you saying you think Kez is out to seduce her?’ He stood up. ‘And if she is, what makes you think Cathy couldn’t handle that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Grace said. ‘She’s a survivor, after all.’

  ‘I think – ’ Sam sat down again, moved Woody to the end of the sofa so he could get close to Grace, take her hand – ‘you’re overreacting, which is unlike you.’

  ‘I know,’ Grace agreed. ‘They’ve gone running together a few times – they both go to Trent – Cathy went to see her friend compete at a meet.’

  ‘But your instincts are telling you there’s more to it, and for some reason, that’s worrying you.’

  ‘Only a little,’ Grace said. ‘As you said, she looked happy.’

  ‘Which is all we want,’ Sam said.

  They were both still awake two hours later.

  ‘Feeling OK, Gracie?’ Sam turned on his bedside lamp, propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her, lying on her side on the big maternity pillow they’d recently bought in the hope that she might sleep more comfortably.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You?’

  ‘I’m not pregnant.’

  ‘No, but you’ve been lying there wide awake and scared to move in case you disturb your big, fat pregnant wife.’

  ‘True,’ Sam said.

  Grace rolled on to her back and cuddled closer, Sam resting his hand in its new favourite place, somewhere over what he thought of as the greatest gift anyone had given him since Althea had born him Sampson.

  ‘So,’ Grace said, ‘your turn to tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Do you really think Cathy’s still vulnerable enough to allow herself to be coerced into a major lifestyle decision she would not otherwise make?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grace answered. ‘I hope not.’

  They fell silent. Sam’s hand remained on her belly.

  ‘I take it,’ Grace went on slowly, ‘we’re both agreed that if it were to turn out that Cathy wanted to choose that path, we would support her one hundred per cent?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Sam said. ‘A thousand per cent.’

  Grace laid her own hand over his. ‘But?’

  ‘No buts about supporting her,’ he answered. ‘Except we both know it’s not an easy path to follow, especially when your history’s as messed up as Cathy’s.’

  ‘Don’t forget I may be entirely wrong,’ Grace said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve grown to trust your hunches.’

  ‘Not a hunch,’ she pointed out. ‘Instinct.’

  ‘Even more powerful.’ He sighed. ‘It bothers me some, too, that Kez is older—’

  ‘Only by a couple of years,’ Grace said.

  ‘Almost certainly more experienced.’

  ‘We can’t know that.’

  ‘I guess that’s the main point,’ Sam said. ‘We can’t – we don’t – know anything about Kez, or the way Cathy may, or may not, feel about her.’

  ‘And Cathy may be vulnerable, but I got the sense the other day that the same could be said for Kez.’ Grace smiled. ‘Which may just make them a good match.’

  ‘And probably just good friends,’ Sam said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Grace said.

  ‘But you don’t believe that, do you?’

  ‘I believe that our daughter has a certain wisdom,’ Grace replied.

  ‘So we just
better trust her,’ Sam said.

  ‘And be there for her if she needs us.’

  ‘Otherwise, butt out,’ Sam said.

  ‘Definitely,’ Grace said.

  Sam leaned towards her, kissed her on the mouth.

  ‘Could you sleep now, do you think, fat, pregnant, beautiful wife?’

  ‘So long as you go on holding me,’ Grace told him.

  Chapter Ten

  August 21

  Annie Hoffman heard her husband’s scream, and knew.

  Just another gorgeous Sunday morning in Sunny Isles. Jay showering and getting dressed before making coffee, then telling her he was going to see if Greg was up and ask him if he wanted to come buy the papers and pick up bagels and lox.

  ‘Greg?’

  She heard that first. The last shred of normality, her husband calling his son’s name as he knocked on his bedroom door.

  Then the door opening – and for a few more seconds, maybe as many as ten, she was still herself, still Annie Hoffman, wife and mother of two.

  And then she heard Jay’s scream, primal and terrible, filling the sweet Sunday morning, filling her ears, her brain, all of her.

  And she knew. Was already picturing Gregory hanging, had never realized until this instant that it was an image she had been harbouring in her mind for a long time; that this was what she had been so terrified of since the time of her beautiful boy’s first depression.

  Stay here.

  A voice in her head was telling her, even as she was already moving, that if she stayed in this room, turned on the TV, volume up high, maybe even locked the door, she need never know, not for sure.

  But she was already on her way, had already crossed the hallway, taken a swift, wild look into five-year-old Janie’s room, and her daughter was still in bed, just stirring, and swiftly Annie closed the door again and locked it.

  The door to Greg’s room was open.

  She stepped inside.

  No one – nothing – bed empty, room empty – not there, not hanging – the glass door to the deck open, the sounds of the bay, sweet water sounds, flowing in.

  And then another sound.

  Her husband, keening.

  Annie stopped, stood motionless for one more instant, then walked outside.

  Jay was sitting on the deck, turned, saw her.

  ‘No, Annie,’ he said, ashen-faced, ‘don’t look.’

  She looked.

  At her boy, their boy.

  The picture in her head had been nothing compared to this.

  ‘Mommy!’

  Janie’s voice, from inside, frightened by her locked door and the awful sounds her daddy was making.

  And her mommy now, too.

  Sam was at the department and Cathy – still giving her ankle a rest from running – had gone for a swim, and so Grace was home alone when David called with the news that Gregory had died, most probably of a drug overdose.

  ‘I’d have liked to spare you this,’ he said, ‘but Jay thinks you might possibly be able to help Annie in some way, maybe just persuade her to take something. I’ve tried, but she’s . . .’ His voice was weary. ‘You can imagine.’

  ‘No,’ Grace said, deeply shaken. ‘Thank God, I can’t begin to imagine.’

  As Gregory’s doctor, David had been the first person Jay Hoffman had called, aware there was nothing the paramedics could have done for his son. David had told Jay that of course he would come, but that he needed to call the Sunny Isles police right away, because from what Jay had said this was not a natural death, which meant the cops would have to bring in the medical examiner.

  ‘Do you know what he took?’ Grace asked David now.

  ‘I can’t say,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t examine him, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There’s no point in speculating, Grace. But if you can stand going—’

  ‘David, please.’ Grace persisted. ‘You know me well enough to know I won’t repeat a syllable of anything you tell me.’ She paused. ‘It might make a tiny difference to how I try to help Annie.’

  ‘Not a word, OK? This is the ME’s territory, not mine.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  ‘Definitely drugs of some kind, possibly cocaine – I’m no expert, thank God. But I saw some silver paper and one of those damned little plastic bags near the boy, and . . .’ He hesitated again. ‘And this probably means nothing, but it looked to me as if maybe whatever he took was bad.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Grace’s horror was intensifying.

  ‘I’m very likely wrong.’ David sounded very upset. ‘Gregory’s face was very contorted, probably from some kind of convulsion, which could have been caused by any number of things, but—’

  This time, Grace waited for him to go on.

  ‘But it wasn’t just his face,’ David added. ‘His whole body looked contorted. I think the drugs might have been cut with something toxic. It happens all the time, doesn’t it? Drugs adulterated for a bigger “high”. Rat poison added or insecticide, God alone knows what else.’ The doctor’s sigh was heavy and sad. ‘Craziness.’

  Grace summoned up the courage to ask the question that seemed, at that moment, to be the most unbearable of all.

  ‘Not suicide then?’ She felt the baby kick, laid her free hand over her stomach.

  ‘I can’t commit myself to that, Grace.’

  ‘I don’t know if Jay told you,’ she said, ‘that I saw Greg twice last week.’

  ‘He did tell me,’ David said gently.

  ‘I couldn’t help him,’ Grace said. ‘Didn’t help him.’

  ‘You tried,’ David said.

  Not hard enough came into her mind, and she dismissed it, angry at herself, because this was most certainly not about her, this was about a fourteen-year-old boy and his parents and little sister.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘Right away.’

  She drove the familiar route up Collins, passing Haulover Park, dozens of apartment blocks and hotels, steeling herself all the way for the questioning likely to come – if not now, then later – from the distraught, grieving parents.

  Some years ago a severely depressed patient of hers had committed suicide, and Grace had never forgotten the agony of that girl’s mother and father, nor her own anguish and self-recrimination.

  And Cathy, don’t forget Cathy.

  Who’d cried for help once a long time ago, had tried . . .

  Not now.

  Fiercely, Grace pushed that terrible memory away, concentrated on Gregory.

  Accidental, please. Her desperate need for this boy’s death not to be suicide was, of course, primarily for his family’s sake, but there was undeniable selfishness in it too as she trawled back and forth through her mental log of those last two sessions with the teenager.

  Disturbed, damaged, haunted; above all, scared. Not suicidal. At least not when Grace had seen him, but that didn’t preclude a deterioration.

  If, say, the unknown cause of his terrors had in some way tightened its grip, Gregory might have found it intolerable. Unbearable enough, at least, to use whatever substance had been in the bag David had seen near the body.

  The closing stages of her final appointment with Greg came back to her. Those two words she’d had to strain to hear.

  ‘Saw me.’

  He had looked so frightened when he’d said that. More than frightened. Terrified.

  Had that perhaps been nothing more real than the product of a drug-disordered mind, something reaching out of his nightmares to grab him by the throat, the awful dreams that had driven his mother to bring him back to Grace for help?

  No help given.

  Horrors on horrors beyond the palms and begonias in the pretty front garden of the Hoffman family home on North Bay Road.

  The body had been taken away, but Miami Dade police and crime-scene technicians were all over the house, coming in and out of the teenager’s bedroom, moving to and fro from the deck; evidence bags being sealed, cameras flashing, marine p
atrol officers visible on the Pegasus, all the peace of the bay sickeningly destroyed.

  More like a homicide, Grace thought, than accident or suicide, then remembered what David had said about the drugs maybe being adulterated.

  Toxic. Enough to kill.

  ‘Oh dear God, Annie,’ she said when she saw the other woman.

  Ravaged already, the pretty face changed for ever.

  ‘Grace,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  Grace stood there uncertainly, wanting to embrace her, but half expecting Annie to strike out at her, rage at her, the person she had come to for help.

  It was Annie who put out her arms to her.

  ‘I know, Grace,’ she said, weeping softly. ‘I know.’

  ‘They can never get over this,’ Grace told Sam later, at home. ‘I’ll never forget what Annie told me, so how will she ever be able to bear it?’

  It seemed ineradicably etched in her mind, the description of Gregory’s poor body, arched back, the dark colour of his face, the blood from his nose. His terrible grimace. Unbearable.

  ‘There were photos of him everywhere,’ Grace went on. ‘All his belongings strewn around, as if he was still right in the middle of things, alive and there, and Annie and Jay were both extraordinary to me.’

  It was early evening and they had come out on to their own deck, letting the sorrows of the day wash over them.

  ‘So kind, I could hardly believe it,’ she said.

  ‘They’re good people,’ Sam said.

  ‘I was expecting them to lash out at me,’ Grace went on, ‘because maybe they might feel I’d failed Greg, which is true, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Sam said firmly. ‘It is not true.’

  ‘I saw him twice last week.’ Grace didn’t bother to wipe away the angry tears in her eyes. ‘Two hours, and I achieved nothing.’

  ‘They’re not always ready,’ Sam said. ‘You’ve told me that.’

  ‘I could have pushed harder.’

  ‘And risked driving him away altogether.’

  ‘I managed that anyway, didn’t I?’ She tried to get up swiftly, but the baby’s weight seemed to pin her down, so instead she slumped back in her chair and covered her eyes with both hands. ‘Sorry.’