She could hear his breathing-short, shallow gasps. It suddenly occurred to her that he looked awful-even ill. She felt a quiver of doubt, uncertainty. But then his lips curved and his eyelids dropped to half-mast, and he said in that viscous drawl, “What makes you think he’d want to see you?”
The calculated cruelty of it nipped any concerns she might have had for him in the bud. Killed them dead, like peach blossoms in a March blizzard. Once again, just as she had the last time she’d faced this man, she felt herself go cold and still. “What have you told him?” she whispered. “About me?”
He jerked back, pretending insult. “I told him the truth.”
“The truth?” And suddenly she was on her feet and leaning toward him across his desk, all resolve forgotten. “You don’t know the truth!”
His eyes flew wide. “Don’t I?” He coughed, then drew himself up, pressing down on the arms of his chair, his voice rising as he did. “Which truth am I in ignorance of? The fact that his mother was a spoiled, selfish girl whose wanton behavior destroyed her own reputation and one of the finest families in this town? Or the fact that she abandoned her child the day he was born and then ran away? Nevah once looked back?”
Charly was trembling so hard that, but for her hands braced on the desktop, she doubted she could have kept her feet. She was seething with rage, words sizzling like hot coals on her tongue. “I will…see…my…son.”
“Selfish, spiteful girl.” Her father all but spat the words at her. “Have you no shame?”
She was too angry to recoil. “Have you? I did not abandon my son, and you know it. I gave him up for adoption-on the advice of so many supposedly wise and compassionate people, not the least of which was my own father! And I did it-” she sucked in a desperate breath “-I did it so he could have the kind of warm, loving home I never had.”
“How…dare…you-”
“How dare you! What did you do, Your Honor? Did you use your judicial power and connections to gain custody of my son? Did you adopt him yourself? In God’s name, why? Why would you do such a thing?” He didn’t answer, just stared at her from a frozen half crouch, his face like stone. Sensing victory, she straightened and gave a high bark of laughter.
“Did you actually think you’d be a better father to him than I would have been a mother? How? How could you, when you were never a father to me, your only daughter? How could you possibly think you could give him more love than I could, when you never gave me any? Whatever love and affection I got, Dobrina gave me. You were never there for me-never.” The last word was a growl, harsh with pain. But there were no tears. There would be no more tears, not in front of him. Never again.
She turned away from him, her voice brittle now with self-control. “Did you know I used to sit in my room in the evenings, doing my homework, getting ready for bed, and I’d look out my window to see if I could see the light in your office window, just so I could feel near you? But you never had time for me. You never listened to me. You just judged. Hell, you aren’t even listening to me now. You know that? When I walked in here, I was ready to compromise. All I wanted was to see him-not even to let him know who I am, just…introduce me as a distant cousin, or something, I don’t care. Just…to see him. But as always, you didn’t give me a chance to tell you that. You wouldn’t even listen.”
She had run out of words, finally. Shaking violently, gasping like a marathoner, she caught her breath and held it, fighting to regain control and somehow slow her runaway heartbeat. And in that sudden stillness, she heard a faint choking sound.
She turned, jerky and off balance, like a malfunctioning windup toy, and felt herself go numb with shock. Her father was lying across his desk in a half crouch, his arms clutched to his chest. What she could see of his face was a dreadful, slaty blue.
Charly never did remember much about what she did then. The next thing she knew, she was on her knees beside her father, who was lying flat on his back on the floor, and she was blowing into his open mouth, and pumping away at his chest with all her might and saying furiously, in time to the beats, “Don’t… you… dare…die. Don’t… you… dare… die. Dammit, I’m… not… finished… yet.”
She was still at it when Dobrina came home, she had no way of knowing how many minutes later. Then she paused just long enough to say tersely, “Thank God you’re here. Call 911. My father’s had a heart attack.”
Chapter 8
August 4, 1977
Dear Diary,
I don’t know whether to be mad at Colin, or kiss him. He did something that made me so embarrassed I could have just died, but then it all turned out okay, so I guess it was really pretty sweet. What he did was, he told me he was having this pool party at his house, and that it was just going to be Kelly Grace and Bobby and some others, nothing big, and we’d just barbecue and listen to music and hang out. So I went over, and guess who was there? Richie. I mean, just Richie, and nobody else. Talk about embarrassing! God, it was so awkward. There we were, just the two of us, with our bathing suits and everything, and we couldn’t even look each other in the eye! But like I said, it all turned out okay. We started talking, finally-I mean, what else could we do, right?-and we both said we were sorry, and he asked me if I wanted to go with him to see Saturday Night Fever this weekend. Of course I said yes! Even though I’ve seen it three times already.
Of course I didn’t tell Richie about what happened between Colin and me. I’m never going to tell anyone about that, ever, ever. And I don’t think I will have sex with him, either.
Thought for the Day: From now on, I am going to wait until I am truly in love. Or at least married.
Troy had taken Bubba for a ramble up the street and was just working his way back toward the car when he heard the first siren. The first thought he had was that the noise was going to set poor ol’ Bubba off, and every other dog in the neighborhood along with him.
Then the fire-department paramedics came roaring past him, with an ambulance right behind them, and he stood stock-still and watched them both turn into the same driveway he’d just come out of. And God forgive him, what he thought then was, Lord help us, she’s killed somebody!
Even on further reflection it didn’t seem all that far-fetched a notion, considering the jagged edge the woman had been walking for as long as he’d known her. Which, come to think of it, was less than twenty-four hours. After all, what did he really know about this Charly Phelps, anyway?
Okay, for one thing, that she was the friend of somebody whose judgment and good sense he trusted. Other than that, just that she was a California lawyer who’d spent an unhappy childhood in a small Southern town, liked bourbon and french fries, pretended not to like dogs and had a soft, mushy heart she didn’t want anybody to know about. Oh, yeah, and she was one hell of a lover. Passionate. Edgy. Angry…
He took off at a jog-trot, Bubba loping happily along beside him with his tongue hanging out. Half a block later Troy broke into a dead run.
The two meat wagons were parked in the semicircular driveway in front of the big brick house with the white columns, engines idling, lights flashing, ready to roll. No one was in sight. Troy got Bubba put up in the Cherokee and was taking the steps two at a time when the front door burst open and a paramedic came backing out onto the porch, holding an IV bottle high in one hand. After him came the stretcher, or rolling gurney, or whatever they called it, surrounded by a whole bunch of EMTs, all of them in a hurry but businesslike about it. Troy took that as a good sign, meaning whoever was on the stretcher was alive and probably stable, at least for the moment. And he couldn’t see any signs of blood, which was more reassuring to him than he liked to admit.
He didn’t start to breathe evenly, though, until he saw Charly come through the door, right behind the stretcher. She had one hand clamped across her mouth, and what he could see of her face above it was bone white. There was another woman with her-a tall, thin black woman with an Egyptian look about her-and the two were sort of holding on to each other, so
it was hard to tell who was supporting whom. He got out of the way and let the stretcher go by, then lightly touched Charly’s arm. Her eyes leaped to his in startled recognition, and he realized that until that moment she hadn’t even been aware of his presence, so focused was she on the stretcher and its occupant.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked in a tense undertone.
“It’s my dad.” She gulped air, looking like someone woken up from a bad dream. “I think he’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh, Lord.” Troy was thinking about his own father’s two heart attacks. Especially the second, the one that had killed him, when Troy was off somewhere in the service, so he never got a chance to say goodbye. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “He gonna be okay?”
The black woman suddenly squeezed Charly’s elbow, muttered, “I’m goin’ with him,” and pushed past her and took off down the steps.
Charly frowned distractedly, looking as if she wanted to follow. “I don’t know. I have to…get to the hospital.”
“Wait-hang on a minute. I’ll take you.”
Troy reached back and pulled the front door closed, since it didn’t seem likely anybody else was going to think to do it, and followed the crowd down the steps, digging in his pockets for his keys on the way. The fire-department truck was already pulling out, and the ambulance’s engine was revving. Someone gave the black woman a hand up into the back and slammed the doors after her, and it rolled into the street, siren waiting and lights flashing.
Charly made it to the Cherokee before Troy did, running clip-clop on the uneven brick paving in her high-heeled shoes. He went straight to the driver’s seat and climbed in, fired up the engine and hauled the door shut. Then he paused with one hand on the gearshift and looked over at her. “You know where the hospital is, or shall I give chase?”
“I know where it is,” she said tensely, poised on the edge of the seat like a runner in starting blocks.
“That’s good,” Troy said in a quieter and more deliberate voice than he usually used. “In that case what I want you to do is, I want you to take a great big deep breath and ease on back in that seat and relax a minute.” She threw him a burning look, riled and rebellious. He looked right back at her. “I mean it. We’re not goin’ anywhere until you do.”
She exhaled in an angry hiss and muttered something under her breath-probably swearing, which he’d noticed she had a tendency to fall back on in times of stress. The part he could make out clearly was the rough equivalent of “Who the hell do you think you are?”
He folded his arms across his chest in a way he’d seen his mama do a time or two, and when he spoke it was in the quiet voice he’d heard her use to quell tantrums. “Who I am is the friend who’s drivin’ you to the hospital to see about your daddy, for starters. Also the friend who doesn’t want to see you wind up in the bed right next to him.” He paused to let that sink in. “Now, the man’s in good hands, and there’s not gonna be anything you can do for a while anyway. Nobody’s even gonna talk to you until they’ve got him all hooked up and stabilized. You understand?”
She fought it, fought him. Then she let out another breath, this one slow and weary, and sank back, closing her eyes. “You say that as if you know.”
“Oh, yeah. I was in high school when my dad had his first heart attack. I don’t imagine the drill’s changed all that much since then.”
“His first one?”
“My daddy was a stubborn man,” he said softly. “I was in the service when he had the second one. By the time I got there, it was too late.”
“Oh, God.” She didn’t open her eyes. He could see her throat move with her swallows.
“You feel like tellin’ me what happened?” he asked, making it gentle but matter-of-fact, knowing how close she was to breaking at that moment and understanding how much she wanted not to.
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, and he wondered if she would. But then her lips tightened in a spasm of pain, and she whispered, “We were arguing. I was shouting at him. And he just…collapsed. I should have known something was wrong. I should have seen it coming. But I was just…so angry.”
“Hey,” said Troy, “this wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head, a quick, violent denial. “I knew he didn’t look good. His color was bad. I knew it, and I kept yelling at him anyway. I did this to him.”
Troy snorted. “Woman, you do have a high opinion of your capabilities.” He reached over and put the truck in gear, while she gaped at him and tried to decide whether to take offense or not. “Fact is, people don’t get heart attacks from arguing-they get ’em because their arteries are plugged up with junk, due to bad genes or bad living, take your pick. If your dad hadn’t had a heart attack today, he was probably gonna have it later on, most likely when you weren’t even around. Look at it this way-at least you’re here. No matter what happens. You understand? That’s more’n I got.”
She didn’t reply. He drove to the square in a humming silence, wondering why he felt as if they’d just had a quarrel. Shoot, they hadn’t known each other long enough to be quarreling.
But if that was so, then why was it he felt…not angry with her exactly, but…hurt, maybe? Certainly disappointed with her, mistreated in some indefinable way. Which was so unlike him, he kept racking his brain to come up with a reason why he felt so. What was it she’d said or done?
“Turn right at the light,” Charly mumbled, and lapsed once more into brooding silence.
And that was when it came to him. That it wasn’t what she’d said or done, but what she hadn’t. Here he’d driven damn near two hundred miles to bail the woman out of jail, spent the whole night either making love to her or sleeping with her snuggled up in his arms, spent the entire morning helping her iron out her screwed-up affairs and now he was driving her to the hospital and trying his best to comfort her after her dad’s heart attack-and he still didn’t have a clue as to what in the hell this was all about! After all that, after all he’d been through with her and everything he’d done for her-not that he was keeping score-it really was starting to bug him that she still apparently didn’t trust him enough to tell him what was going on inside her.
Dammit, it just wasn’t in him to pry. Growing up in a household with close to a dozen people in it counting grandparents and the occasional extra, not to mention a career in the military and a lot of years living in barracks housing, had given him a healthy respect for privacy. He believed in offering a helping hand if it was needed and asked for, but beyond that, he believed in staying out of other people’s business and minding his own.
And in a way that was the problem. Because after the events of the past eighteen hours or so, he’d begun to feel kind of like she was his business. Like he had a vested interest in her, or something. Put another way…
Hell’s bells, man, say it plainly! You care about her.
Okay, so he did. He cared about her. Which was what made it so damn hard, not knowing what was making her hurt so bad.
Mirabella put down the phone and turned to find that the man she adored was right there, eyes steady and soft with concern, ready to fold her into his arms. She still wasn’t used to the miracle of that, of having someone love her so much, read her so clearly and understand her so well, so she had to be coaxed a little bit. Which Jimmy Joe was more than up to.
“Problems?” he asked, gently massaging her neck until her muscles were ready to relax and let her head settle into its customary nest below his chin.
She tried to disguise a sniffle. “That was Charly. Her dad just had a heart attack.”
“Oh, Lord. How bad is it?”
“He’s alive, but at this point they don’t know much more than that.”
“Well,” said Jimmy Joe, “that’s good. That’s a good sign. Once they get ‘em to the hospital, they usually manage to pull ’em through.”
Mirabella nodded, and then they were both quiet, thinking of Mirabella’s dad, who had survived his recent heart a
ttack, undergone multiple-bypass surgery and was currently doing fine, and of Jimmy Joe’s dad, who hadn’t done any of those things.
“Were Charly and her dad close?” Jimmy Joe asked after a while.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I told you, remember? She ran away from home when she was very young.”
He held her tighter. “Sometimes that makes it worse.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mirabella muffled another sniffle against his chest. After a moment she took a breath and said casually, “Troy’s at the hospital with her.”
“Oh, yeah?” She could feel his smile against her hair, and tilted her head back so she could give him a scolding glare.
“I know what you’re thinking. And you can stop thinking it, because I’m telling you, I know Charly, and it doesn’t mean a thing. So Troy’s at the hospital. Big deal. He’s your brother. If he’s anything like you, where else would he be?”
“You got me there,” murmured Jimmy Joe, rocking her gently with his chuckle.
Mollified, Mirabella relaxed against him once more. But her mind was anything but relaxed. It was busy, as usual, chewing over this latest development, weighing options, making plans. Presently she drew herself up and declared, “We’ll have to postpone the wedding.”
“Well, now,” said Jimmy Joe cautiously, “let’s not get carried away. You really think that’s what she’d want? With your sisters comin’ all the way from California, and your mom and dad up from Pensacola and all?”
“I know,” Mirabella wailed. “But I don’t see how we can get married without the maid of honor and the best man, do you? Oh, God, now I don’t know what to do.” With that almost unprecedented admission came a sigh of vexation. Although she’d gotten considerably better about rolling with life’s punches since meeting Jimmy Joe, Mirabella still didn’t adjust all that well to glitches in her carefully laid plans.
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