Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “Tell me, Teddy!”

  Smiling into his sister’s anxious blue eyes, so innocent and worried he felt like crying but laughed again. “Mags, I think you should ask Dad why he represents guilty clients because I’d love to hear the lecture he’d give you.”

  “Lecture?”

  “Yeah. All about ‘the miracle at Philadelphia that resulted in the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment, and a defendant’s right to counsel…’ Yay, team. And then he’ll tell you about Oliver Wendell Holmes and how law is ′a magic mirror …where we get to see our own lives reflected. Just ask-you’ll get Dad going, and he won’t stop till dinner.”

  “I wish he would,” she whispered, burying her face in Brainer’s matted fur. “Not stop till dinner. Never leave …”

  Teddy stopped laughing. He figured it was the same for Maggie as it was for him: Ever since their mother’s death, he hadn’t wanted to let their father out of his sight. He listened to the voices in the hall. His father was trying to be friendly to the officers-people he grilled mercilessly when he got them on the witness stand-and the police were treating him coolly back. Maggie had heard too. When she lifted her head, her eyes swam with tears.

  “It’s okay Maggie,” Teddy said, pulling her into a hug. Her thin body trembled in his arms. Her hair looked terrible, as if their father had taken nail scissors to it. It was dirty-just a few hours away from being greasy-and she smelled funny. She smelled like under-the-bed, a mixture of dust and sneakers. She smelled like Brainer, tangled and stuck with dried leaves and seaweed without their mother to lovingly brush him every day.

  Teddy wanted Maggie to smell like lemons and lavender, just like their mother had. He wanted her to have clean hair and straight bangs. She cried, missing their mother as much as Teddy did, and he held her closer as the policemen passed by again, whispering into her ear, “Don’t cry, okay? You’re my girl, Mags. My best girl in the world.”

  Maggie didn’t like the noise. The siren, first of all, but then the police radios squawking like trapped birds. Poor little birds caught inside a speaker box, wanting to get out and fly home to their mamas.

  She didn’t mind the actual policemen. Most of them were nice-to her. They smiled, crouched down to say hi, asked her how was school or was she hoping to be the next Mia Hamm. The soccer jersey, of course. She just acted polite, not bothering to explain that the jersey was her brother Teddy’s, that she wore it because it was like taking a little bit of him to school with her.

  The reason she was so polite, and the reason all the policemen made her heart hurt, was that they didn’t like her father. She thought that maybe if she was very kind, quiet, and well-mannered, the officers would see that her father was a very good man. Didn’t they know what it was like for him, raising his children all alone? But the policemen didn’t care about that. They were like most of the people around: All they knew about her father was that he was the lawyer for Greg Merrill.

  Maggie understood all this. Teddy thought he was shielding her from knowing, but she knew anyway. She’d grown up fast since their mother died. She was eleven, but she felt old. She figured she probably felt twenty. Old and tired inside, wound up like a kid outside. She had come flying out to the porch just to give Teddy a chance to get ready for school: to let him off the hook from having to take care of her.

  Her father sat in a chair, being examined by an EMT Maggie sidled closer. She wanted to make sure the cut wasn’t deep and deadly. Their mother had died in a car accident, and at first the EMTs had thought she would be okay. Her car had hit a deer, then crashed into a tree. She had been on the Shore Road, just past the police station, and help had arrived immediately. The EMT said she had stood up, walked over to the animal to see if it was still alive, and then sat down because she was feeling dizzy.

  Maggie could see all this in her mind even though she hadn’t been there. She could see her mother in her blue dress and white sandals. The moon had been full that night. It was July, and her mother had had a sunburn-y tan that glowed in any light-even moonlight. Her sunstreaked hair would have been windblown from the car window being open. Her lipstick had been fresh and pink-she had heard her dad say that to Gramps.

  Maggie sometimes forgot what she knew and what she had been told. So much about her parents she just knew-held deep inside, the way she knew how to breathe, the way she remembered every day how to walk and ride a bike. But some of this story had come from her father, from two years of trying to make sense of the fact her mother was no longer here.

  Was no longer anywhere.

  The part about the EMTs thinking she was fine. They had examined her. She wasn’t cut anywhere, but they had taken her blood pressure and listened to her heart, thought she was okay, but told her to stay still anyway. An ambulance was coming. It would take her to the hospital, where doctors would check her out thoroughly.

  Her mother had laughed. (Was that the story or something Maggie just knew? It was so there, in Maggie’s mind, the image of her mother’s blue eyes wide and amused, her throat rippling with soft laughter.) “I’m fine,” she had said, concern replacing the amusement. “But what about the deer? Should we call a vet-to put it out of its misery?” And she had gotten up to go see if the deer-a female whitetail-was in any pain.

  And she had sat down. Just like that: a sigh, and she had sunk onto the ground, leaning against a tree as if suddenly exhausted. As if the whole thing-being out so late at night, too late to put Maggie to bed and kiss her good night, driving home in the moonlight, hitting the whitetail deer, hearing the waves on the rocks like the thump of blood in her ears-as if it all had simply been too much.

  Thinking of her mother, Maggie saw her father tilt his head so the EMT could better examine his cut head. The whole time, police officers were talking. “An eye for an eye,” one of them was saying. “Seven girls in the ground, a brick through the window, you do the math.”

  “I have two children,” her father shot back. “Watch what you say.”

  “Seven girls,” the policeman said, holding the brick in what looked like a huge Baggie but which Maggie understood to be an evidence bag.

  “He’s been cut,” a woman said. “Take care of him and lose the attitude.” Her voice was sharp, with a different accent, and made Maggie look. For some reason, Maggie hadn’t noticed her before. She’d been standing at the door, dressed in a dark gray coat with straight brown hair touching her shoulders, but now she moved toward Maggie’s father as if she wanted to protect him. Was she a detective? Or another lawyer? She was pretty and plain at the same time.

  “Who are you?” the head officer asked.

  “She’s from the employment agency,” Maggie’s father said, prodding the side of his head-no longer bleeding-with two fingers. “She arrived just after the incident, but she didn’t see anyone.”

  “That’s right,” the woman said, her voice edgy, as if she didn’t like the cops being mean to Maggie’s father. “I didn’t see a soul.”

  “Pity,” the cop said, but Maggie no longer cared about the officers’ sarcasm or meanness to her father. Her attention was pulled to the woman. She gazed down at Maggie’s father, her expression something between a frown and a look of pure worry. Maggie must have been staring so intensely, the woman felt it. Because suddenly she raised her eyes, looked across the room, locked her gaze with Maggie’s, and gave her a wonderful smile.

  She was their new babysitter.

  Maggie’s heart kicked over. They had had so many. Roberta, Virginia, Dorothy, Beth, and Cathy. None of them were bad, but none of them lasted. The job was too hard. Maggie’s father worked such long, intense hours, he needed someone extra responsible to take up the slack. Someone extra smart, extra nice, extra good, someone who cared when their father had a cut on his head and gave Maggie a great, huge smile to let her know everything would be okay.

  Let her be our babysitter, Maggie thought. She liked the woman’s eyes-dark blue-gray like the Sound at night. But, oh! Turning her head, now her eyes caught t
he light and looked deep green, like a river. Her eyes were alive and deep, filled with the kind of mystery that would make her a good storyteller. Maggie didn’t care about how the laundry was done, and she didn’t care whether eyes were blue or green-she cared about stories.

  Mrs. Wilcox, the next-door neighbor, opened her front door and walked down the sidewalk. The police stopped her, asking questions about what she’d seen and heard.

  “You need stitches, Counselor,” the EMT said, making notes on his pad.

  “It’s nothing,” her father said.

  “Hey, you want a scar to make you look tough around the creeps you see in prison, that’s your deal. But you’re gonna have to sign off on it-acknowledging that you’re denying my first-rate medical advice.”

  Seeing her father reach for the pen, Maggie’s heart stopped.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Only she must have screamed, because very single person in the room turned to look at her, and Mrs. Wilcox gasped. Brainer came tearing in from the den, straight to her side.

  “Maggie, I’m okay,” her father said, smiling to reassure her. Streaks of blood were drying on the side of his face, on his white dress shirt.

  “Yeah, he is,” the EMT said, trying to set her at ease. “I was just busting him-don’t worry.”

  Her father pushed off with his right hand, standing up, and Maggie felt the sob tear through her lungs, screaming through her skin. “Don’t stand up!” she cried. “Let them take care of you! Don’t walk, Daddy!”

  “Maggie, I’m fine,” he said, grabbing for her. “It’s not like your mother-it’s just a superficial cut-nothing serious at all.”

  “Sit down, Daddy,” Maggie wept, pushing him onto the couch. “Please, please. Let them take care of you! Please, Daddy, please!”

  “Maybe she’s right,” the woman, the babysitter said softly. “Why don’t you just do that? Sit down a minute … let them give you the stitches. It would make her feel better.”

  Maggie cried and shuddered, feeling her father’s arms around her, hearing the woman’s quiet voice and somehow suddenly, completely, loving her for it. This stranger had come out of nowhere that awful bloody Tuesday morning to take care of their family. She was saving her father’s life.

  “What’s your name?” Maggie heard her father ask in that flat, unfriendly way that made him sound like the lawyer no one liked, the hard-planed voice designed to drive everyone away from him, from them, and leave the O’Rourke family alone with their private tragedy and dirty clothes.

  “Kate,” she said. “Kate Harris.”

  “Fine, Kate Harris,” Maggie’s father said, his voice just as flat but even icier than before, a frozen lake of a voice. “I’ll have the stitches, but you’ll have to get them off to school. Maggie and Teddy. Mrs. Wilcox-can you help her out?”

  “Of course, John,” Mrs. Wilcox said.

  “We’ll have to work out the details afterward,” Maggie’s father said.

  “You’re on,” Kate Harris said, and Maggie suddenly felt a hand on her head. The fingers were light and cool, and they moved down to take her hand, gently easing her away Maggie didn’t even put up a fight.

  She drifted out of her father’s embrace. He was watching her, and she felt him wanting to take it back-not get stitches, but walk her to the bus stop and then hurry to his office. Maggie’s stomach was in a knot, but Kate Harris crouched down to look her in the eye and melt the knot away.

  “He’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’ll be very brave and let them stitch him up. When they’re done, they might even give him a lollipop.”

  “Why?” Maggie asked, her mouth tugging up in a smile.

  “To treat him, for doing the right thing even though he doesn’t want to do it.”

  “I don’t want a lollipop,” her father said, sounding as sullen as Teddy did when he had to do the dishes.

  “You might not want one,” Kate Harris said, her smile so pretty and gentle, it pulled Maggie even closer to her, “but you might need it. A little sweet now and then never hurt anyone. Right, Maggie?”

  “Right,” Maggie breathed. Her eyes filled with tears, but for the first time in longer than she could remember, from happiness. Kate Harris was her new babysitter. She had landed on their doorstep just like Mary Poppins or a new baby, just like a basket filled with the most beautiful summer flowers imaginable.

  “Right,” her father said, his voice very edgy and hard, but it didn’t matter. Kate Harris had gotten him to sit still and get stitched, taken care of by the proper authorities, so he didn’t stand up, sit down, and suddenly die-just like Maggie’s mother.

  Kate Harris had just saved her father’s life, and Maggie loved her for it.

  FOLLOW THE STARS HOME

  A Bantam Book

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2000 by Luanne Rice

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56754-3

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

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