“Maybe your friend could take him,” the nurse said, nodding at Doug. “There’s a very nice waiting room just off the lobby.”
Doug sighed in exasperation. He should have known he would get no work done here. “All right. Whatever,” he said.
Reluctantly Bonnie started to pass the baby over to Doug.
“Can I see him?” the nurse asked sweetly, coming around from behind the desk and craning her neck to get a look at Sean. “I love babies.”
“No,” Bonnie barked defiantly. “There’s too many germs around here as it is. You’re the one who said so.”
The nurse made a face and went back behind the desk. Doug rearranged the baby on his shoulder. “You better give me that bag with his stuff,” Doug said.
“You don’t need it,” Bonnie said, clutching her belongings. “You’re not going to be changing him. You just hold on to him. That’s all you need to do. We’ll find you when we’re ready.”
Doug set his jaw and headed for the elevator. He pushed the button and waited for the doors to open, rubbing the baby’s back absently, watching Bonnie’s rolling gait as she marched toward her husband’s room. “Bitch,” he whispered.
He was infuriated that he had to spend this last precious day before he returned to his job playing chauffeur to these creeps. But he could tell by the look in Maddy’s eyes that there was no use in arguing about it. She had this notion that Bonnie was not the baby’s mother because Bonnie didn’t act all warm and fuzzy about the kid the way Maddy did about Amy. Maddy didn’t realize that plenty of mothers were like Bonnie. “I feel sorry for you, slugger,” he whispered. “But you’re stuck with her.”
Doug stepped inside the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. As the doors began to close, he thought he saw a familiar figure hurrying by in the hallway. It was that wild tangle of gray curls. How many people had hair like that? he thought. “Ellen,” he started to call out, but the space between the doors was disappearing, and the other people in the elevator looked at him suspiciously. Even if it was her, she might not remember him from the other night. After all, everybody said she wasn’t playing with a full deck. He swallowed the name and assumed the impassive expression of the elevator passenger.
Without another look back, Bonnie started down the hallway to Terry’s room. At the doorway of room 304, she pulled a compact out of her purse. The hospital corridor was dim, but she did her best to examine her face critically. She ran a lipstick carefully over her lips and forced a comb through her dry, unruly hair, trying her best to get it to look right. It was hard. Her hair had always had a mind of its own. You got your father’s hair, her mother would say in disgust, and shake her head whenever she barged into Bonnie’s room and found her trying to tame the frizz with gels and rollers. Her mother had beautiful, soft blond hair. She always looked perfect. Right up to the very end.
Bonnie replaced the comb in her purse, straightened out her glasses on her nose, and took a deep breath. He loves you just the way you are, she reminded herself. He is your devoted, loving husband, and you are beautiful to him. “Beautiful to him,” she murmured as if to give herself courage. “You are the most beautiful thing in the world to him.”
She pushed open the door of the room and walked in. She ignored the man in the first bed. Dr. Tipton, the surgeon, looking attractive and efficient in her white coat, stood beside Terry, who was dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed. Now that he was in his clothes, Terry looked weaker than before. And pale. Bonnie’s heart did a flip-flop and seemed to melt at the sight of him, as it always did. He looked up as she came in. She gave him a brilliant smile.
“Hey, babe,” he said, giving her a weak wave. “Where’s my boy today?”
Bonnie’s smile faded. “The nurse wouldn’t let him come in. That Mr. Blake took him downstairs.”
Terry nodded. “Too bad. I was telling the doc about him.”
“Mrs. Lewis,” the doctor interrupted, “I was just telling your husband he is not to overdo it. He needs a lot of rest, and no lifting and no driving for two weeks. If he’s careful now, there will be no long-term repercussions from this. As I’ve told you, he can manage perfectly well without his spleen. We just don’t want those stitches to break. I want to see him back here in two weeks.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Bonnie.
“Well, you need to see a doctor where you are, to have the incision checked. If you like, I can refer you.”
“I’ll take care of it. I think I can take care of my own husband, thank you.”
“All right.” The doctor sighed. “Good luck, Mr. Lewis.” She shook Terry’s hand.
“I’ll let you go, Doc. You have to be about the business of healing the sick. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”
“You’re welcome,” said the doctor as she turned to leave. Bonnie sat on the bed beside her husband, and Terry let out a groan.
“What is it?” she cried.
“Oh,” he said, “it was just when the bed dipped. It hurt a little bit.”
Bonnie jumped up off the bed, and he groaned again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she pleaded.
“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” he said, but he was grimacing.
There was a silence between them for a moment, and then they both started to speak at once.
“What—”
“How—”
Bonnie looked stricken to have stepped on his words. “You go first,” she said.
“How’s our boy today?” he asked. “Did he sleep okay?”
“He’s fine,” said Bonnie.
There was a silence again.
“What were you going to say?” Terry asked.
“I was thinking we should leave today.”
“Leave?”
“From those people. The Blakes,” she said, her face sour. “I can’t wait to get away from them.”
“But they’ve been kind,” said Terry.
“Believe me,” Bonnie said, “they didn’t do it to be kind. I overheard them talking and they were just worried we were going to sue them. I didn’t tell them we have insurance. Let them worry. By the way, we got the car back. So we can leave any time we want.”
Terry frowned. “Well, I’ll try. I can’t go far.”
“Just so we get away from them,” she said. “We’ll get a room.”
Terry sighed, and they were silent again. “Well, I’ll be glad to be out of this place,” Terry said after a while, looking around the room.
“The nurse is bringing a wheelchair,” said Bonnie.
Almost as if her words had summoned her, the nurse appeared. “Okay, Mr. Lewis, let’s get you into this thing.”
Terry started to push himself off the bed. Bonnie rushed to his side and reached around him, carefully encircling his broad back with her arms. “Here, lean on me,” she said. The nurse came near and tried to help, but Bonnie glared at her, and she stepped back.
“I can do this,” Bonnie said.
“I’m all right,” said Terry. He shuffled to the chair and sat in it, with Bonnie letting him slip from her arms with a look of regret. She felt as if her arms were glowing where they had touched him.
The nurse walked around behind the chair.
“I can push him,” Bonnie said.
“Hospital regulations,” said the nurse. “You can carry his things.” There was a small plastic carrier bag with Terry’s photo of Sean, his Bible, and a few personal items in it on the radiator cover beneath the window. Bonnie picked it up and then tried to wedge herself in between the moving chair and the wall, but she was forced to drop back behind the nurse.
Terry waved to his roommate as he passed by his bed. “God bless you, brother,” he said.
“Take it easy, preacher,” the man in the bed said wryly, looking at him over the top of his half glasses.
“He calls me that. Preacher,” Terry confided proudly to his wife as they reached the corridor and she was able to move up beside him.
�
�That’s nice,” she said.
When they reached the third-floor lounge she pushed the button for the elevator. The doors opened and they got inside. None of them spoke inside the elevator. At the lobby, the nurse pushed Terry’s wheelchair out of the elevator.
“I’ll go find Sean and that Mr. Blake,” said Bonnie. “He can bring the car up.”
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to get back up to my floor,” said the nurse. “We’re short-handed today.”
Terry beamed at her. “No problem. I’m blessed. I have a wife who will take good care of me.”
Bonnie gazed down at him tenderly. “That’s right, my darling,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-one
Maddy stood with her hands on her hips staring curiously at the assortment of clothes on the bed. She had gone through all of Bonnie’s possessions except for those she’d taken with her to the hospital. Maddy was feeling guilty but told herself that if her hunch about Sean was right, it was justified. If not, she wasn’t doing any real harm, she rationalized. Snooping through other people’s belongings made her uneasy. Although she had invited these people into her home, that didn’t give her the right to invade their privacy.
While she found their belongings odd, she hadn’t yet come across anything that indicated something criminally amiss. The two suitcases were old and battered. Bonnie’s entire wardrobe consisted of worn, shapeless tops, a couple of sweaters with pills all over them, two synthetic wool skirts, some shabby underwear, and one shiny blue nightgown with scratchy lace and spaghetti straps that still had the tag on it. Maddy felt almost cruel, looking through Bonnie’s meager belongings. The clothes for Sean, on the other hand, were mostly new. That wasn’t surprising for a baby. People gave a new baby lots of clothes, and even the most financially pressed mother always managed to buy her baby new things.
No, only Terry’s clothes were puzzling. They were all brand new. The white sweat socks were still in wrappers. Two pairs of new jeans still retained their price tags, and three new plaid shirts still had pins in the collar. Even the underwear was new and still folded in its plastic three-packs. Oh sure, she thought, it was natural to get some new clothes to start a new job with, but there weren’t any clothes here that had ever been worn. Curious…She rummaged through the pockets of the suitcase but found only a zippered bag with toiletries, a lipstick for Bonnie, and a couple of paperback novels. There was nothing personal in any of it. Nothing that would tell you much about the people who were traveling with those bags.
Maddy sighed in frustration. Suddenly she thought she heard a door slamming. Startled, she straightened up and listened. From Amy’s room came the singsong sounds of her nursery rhyme tape and Amy banging out an accompaniment on the top of a cookie tin. That’s it. It’s just Amy, she told herself. I’m jumpy because I’m afraid of getting caught doing this. Even as she thought that, she had to admit to herself that the brief visit from Heather had depressed her and made her feel anxious, like a shadow falling over her life.
Stop it, she thought. Stop ruminating about Heather and get back to what you’re doing. I guess I better put this stuff back, she thought to herself. Nothing in here that told her any more than she already knew. She opened the suitcases and tried to remember exactly where each item of clothing had come from. Maddy was concentrating on her task, putting things away neatly, when suddenly she sensed that someone was behind her.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck, and she felt her heart begin to hammer. For a terrible moment she froze; why were they back so soon? Why hadn’t Doug warned her? How was she ever going to explain? She tried to concoct a lie, to compose her face, as she turned around.
“Maddy?” said Father Nick, looking at her curiously. “I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“Oh, Nick, you scared me.”
“I’m sorry. I called out, but you must have been absorbed in what you were doing. What are you doing?” he asked, glancing at the suitcases. “Are you going on a trip?”
Maddy shook her head. “No. No. I’m glad you’re here. Give me a minute. I have to finish this.” Hurriedly but carefully, she replaced every item and put the suitcases back where they went. When she was done he was still standing in the doorway, watching her.
“Come downstairs. I’ll make you some tea. Let me just check on Amy,” she said. She went down the hall and peeked in Amy’s room. The little girl was playing happily. Maddy went back to the staircase, gesturing for Nick to follow her.
When they got to the kitchen, she went to the stove and put on the teakettle. Her hands shook as she lit the old gas burner.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You seem like a nervous wreck.”
Maddy sat on a kitchen chair at the table with him and shook her head. “I am. If I tell you, you’ll probably think I’m crazy.”
Nick shrugged. “Try me.”
“I told you about the people in the accident. How they’re staying here?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, I started to get this idea in my head that they’re the ones who took the baby. You know, the missing Wallace baby.”
“Did you call the police?” he asked.
Maddy sighed. “And say what? These people have a baby, and the mother doesn’t treat him normally? The baby made noises when he saw the Wallaces on TV?”
“They’ve showed pictures of the baby on TV, haven’t they? Couldn’t you recognize him?”
Maddy shook her head. “They had Polaroids of a curly-headed little boy; it could be any baby. You can’t tell from that. I’ve taken these people in, and now what am I going to do? Call the police on them? The Good Samaritan, that’s me.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah. I see.”
His understanding warmed her, and for a minute she caught his eye and a complex message passed instantly between them. They both looked hurriedly away.
“Besides,” she continued briskly, “we’ve had enough to do with the police. I told you what happened with Doug. You know, that they picked up Doug and questioned him just because the girl who disappeared was a teenager.”
“Right. How did that go?” said Nick.
“You were right to encourage me to trust him. It didn’t amount to anything. The witness didn’t identify him. Our lawyer is threatening to sue the police department for harassment.”
Nick nodded. “So, everything’s all right now,” he said carefully.
For a moment Maddy thought again of Heather on the doorstep and sighed. Then she got up to pour the tea. Nick studied her as she moved around the kitchen.
“Maddy?”
“Yes, it’s fine,” she said. “Except for me snooping through the belongings of my houseguests, thinking they’re kidnappers.”
“Who are these people, anyway?” Nick asked. “You said they weren’t from around here.”
Maddy poured the steaming water into the cup. “Their name is Lewis. They’re from Maine. They’re a very strange couple. He looks like a motorcycle biker and she’s a frumpy-looking librarian. He seems very religious, though.”
Nick looked surprised. “Terry Lewis.”
Maddy turned and stared at him. “That’s right. Terry is his name.”
“And Bonnie. And Sean,” said Nick.
“You know them,” Maddy said incredulously.
“Yes, I know them. I know them very well. Terry just got out the other day.”
“Out?” Maddy asked. “Out of what?”
“Out of prison,” Nick said calmly.
“Prison,” Maddy cried.
“Do you remember my telling you about the man who was in prison for murder and then the real killer confessed? And he was let out?”
Maddy’s mouth fell open. “You said the other night you’d been up at the prison.”
Nick nodded and smiled. “I was up saying good-bye to Terry. I saw Bonnie and Sean when they came to get him.”
“No,” Maddy cried. “No, it can’t be. No. This can’t be right. They’re from Maine. The
ir license plate…” She felt as if she were drowning in confusion.
“Bonnie is from Maine. I’m sure that was her car they were driving. Terry has been serving a life sentence. It was one of those gas station holdups and some customer identified Terry. He’d already done five years when the real killer confessed. They’d gotten him for another, similar holdup, and he admitted he was the one who’d done the crime Terry was convicted of.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Maddy, thinking of the man she’d met in the hospital bed. He certainly looked like a man who’d spent years in prison.
“I’ve seen him every week when I make my pastoral visits. He handled the whole thing with amazing fortitude. Forgave the guy for letting him take the rap. I’m not sure I could have been as generous as he was. It was very emotional. Anyway, he was released the day before yesterday…”
“That explains the new clothes,” Maddy said.
“What new clothes?”
“In their suitcase. All of his clothes are brand new. She must have bought them for him.”
“He told me he had a job interview lined up when he got out. Yeah. That’s him.”
“Oh, my God, Nick. But a guy who’s been in prison all that time…He must have had a record or something to be convicted in the first place. All those years in that violent atmosphere…And I went and asked them to stay here.”
Nick raised a hand to stop her. “Remember, he didn’t belong there, any more than you or I would. He’d had a pretty rough life before he went to prison. I’m not going to tell you it was his first brush with the law. But I think this experience really changed him. I really believe Terry is going to be able to turn his life around.”
“Wait till Doug hears this,” Maddy mumbled, shaking her head.
“Doug, of all people, should be willing to give others the benefit of the doubt,” Nick said, unable to keep a chiding tone out of his voice.
Maddy looked at him across the table and felt a spark jump between them. She lowered her eyes and took a sip of tea.
“So they really are married?” she asked.
“I married them,” Nick said simply.
Lost Innocents Page 14