4.5 stars – 46 reviews!
“…a terrific escape from the outside world. Fabulous characters with a fun storyline…”
Overnight, everyone onboard a huge cruise ship vanishes into thin air. Everyone, that is, except five teenagers…
in this fascinating sci-fi page-turner by the always surprising Dan Rix.
Find out what happens while TRITON is 67% off the regular price!
In the middle of the Atlantic, four hundred miles west of Bermuda, the eight thousand passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship MS Cypress vanish into thin air. Everyone—men, women, and children—all gone. Taken.
Everyone except five teenagers.
In an instant, their seven day cruise becomes a nightmare: eighteen decks of haunted hallways, pools and bars completely empty, desserts still half-eaten in the abandoned Royal Promenade. A ghost ship the size of a city, sailing blind. At least their annoying parents are gone.
But now strange things are happening. Satellites are dropping out of orbit, falling from the sky. Satellites…and bigger things. They’re not as alone as they think. A message appears in an ancient language, burned into the carpet in the deck ten elevator lobby. It’s a warning. A monster lurks onboard, hunting them. What they’ve long suspected appears certain: the vanishing…it was an attack.
Now the most unlikely of friends must confront the shadowy pasts that link them and regain control of a runaway cruise ship, crack a four-thousand-year-old mystery, and wage war on a formless evil…before they too vanish into oblivion.
5-star praise for Triton:
Well-written teen-survival supernatural thriller
“…a page turner…I promise you won’t get bored…Great read for YA and Adults…”
Kept me guessing!
an excerpt from
Triton
by Dan Rix
So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7, NIV)
The Interference Zone
Mauna Loa Observatory, site of cosmic microwave background observatory AMiBA.
Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Cosmology postdoc Joan Martinez pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, tapped a few keys to amplify the signal, and watched the triangular blob progress across her LCD monitor again.
“Do you see it?” she said.
“I see it,” said Dr. Peter Granger, her postdoctoral advisor. He sighed and dragged his hand down his face, mirroring her own sleep-deprived bewilderment.
It was definitely moving.
She paused the playback and the shape vanished, camouflaged perfectly against the blue and teal thermal readout of the cosmic background radiation.
They had spent the last three months preparing this data for their joint presentation at the USP Cosmology Conference in São Paulo, which started Monday.
It was Saturday afternoon. Outside the windows of their portable, the shadows were already lengthening across the barren landscape of volcanic rock. They had twenty-four hours before their plane flight to determine how—if at all—this artifact would affect their results.
Joan buried her face in her hand and exhaled slowly through her fingers, dreading yet another all-nighter.
The cause of the artifact was obvious. Something way out in space had passed in front of their radio telescope at exactly the wrong time. Now it could render their entire data set useless.
As it was, the hot topic at the conference would be the recent spike in high-energy neutrino emissions from the galaxy’s core, not cosmic background radiation; their project was in serious danger of going unnoticed.
“How did we miss this?” said Dr. Granger.
“It only showed up after image processing,” she said. “Otherwise it’s invisible.”
“It’s alright, Joan. We can leave this set out if need be.”
“It’s our best set, Doctor Granger.”
“I know.” He peered intently at the screen. “What’s in the sky up there?”
She consulted the list they had printed out from the UCS Satellite Database. “Just EchoStar-9 and Galaxy-23, direct broadcasting satellites. They should have been downrange, though. Could it have been military? A spy satellite?”
“No, that area of disturbance is too big.” He leaned over her and tapped the screen. “At least five miles across. Plus the optical telescopes didn’t pick up anything. Whatever’s up there, it’s just interfering with the CMB. I’m guessing it’s just a cloud of dust, maybe debris from something older.”
“I can’t believe we had three months with this data and we never caught it,” she said.
“Like you said, it’s invisible.” He checked his watch. “It’s going to come around again in a few hours. Let’s aim every telescope we got at it. I’ll call around . . . see if I can get some more powerful eyes.” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out what the hell that thing is.”
Two years later
The Largest Cruise Ship in the World
Seventeen-year-old Cedar Edgerly followed his dad and younger sister out of the cruise terminal and up the gangway, now absent of their luggage, which the porters would bring to their stateroom separately. After hauling his bags into and out of taxis, security gates, and airports for the entire morning, his hands could find nothing to do, and he jammed them into his pockets.
Through the glass and metal struts encircling the gangway, he glimpsed a dozen thousand-foot cruise ships presiding over the piers of Port Canaveral like giant condominiums. Ahead of them, the gangway plunged straight into the white hulk of their own ship, the MS Cypress.
He craned his neck and counted ten levels of gleaming white balconies before his view cut off. He couldn’t even see the top.
At 1,187 feet, the Cypress was the largest cruise ship in the world. She carried over 5,000 passengers and weighed in at 110,000 tons, just shy of the gross tonnage of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
The eighteen decks packed twenty-four different restaurants, a zip-line, a rock climbing course, twenty-one swimming pools, a basketball court, two theaters, a miniature golf course, and even a carousel. He wondered why they were even bothering to sail—they’d have just as much fun if they never left harbor.
The Cypress wasn’t a ship, it was a floating city . . . a dangerous floating city. Cedar’s gaze fell to his sister’s blonde head, bobbing in front of him on the gangway. He would need to keep an especially close eye on her.
They reached the end of the gangway and stepped onboard the cruise ship into a marble-floored atrium alive with excited chatter. The fragrance of roses and expensive leather hit him hard, like the perfume department at a mall. Cedar wrinkled his nose and jogged to catch up with his dad and sister at an elevator.
Before he could join them, though, he spotted a group of teenage guys playing Hacky Sack by a bar. One of them, an asshole in a tank top and aviator sunglasses, was ignoring the game and staring in their direction.
Cedar didn’t have to follow his gaze to know why—the kid was ogling Brynn, his fifteen-year-old kid sister. Blonde, blue-eyed, and an insufferable flirt, she drew way too much attention from guys for Cedar to ever relax when she was in public.
He veered to the other side of her, blocking the douchebag’s view and replacing it with his own ice-cold stare. After a second, the guy glanced away, and Cedar finally unclenched his fists.
He didn’t know whether he was more pissed at Brynn for wearing those stupid cutoff shorts or at their dad for letting her. But one thing he did know—he needed to warn her about guys on cruises. Before it was too late.
Once they got to their stateroom, he’d remind her that for the next seven days she was not to stray from his sight. Ever.
“Bro, come on!”
Eighteen-year-old Jake Carmelo looked down to see that the Hacky Sack had landed on the marble floor at his feet. He had been distracted.
He rolled the sack onto his toes, kicked it into the air, and whacked it back into the circle. Another guy caught the sack on his heel and dished out some wicked freestyle. As the footbag moved faster and faster between his feet, the other guys cheered him on.
Jake wasn’t interested. His eyes wandered back to the source of his distraction—the girl who’d just walked aboard with her family. Chin held high, confident. Just his type.
Before she boarded the elevator, he caught another flash of her long, flowing blonde hair, cute lips sparkling with lip gloss . . . flawlessly tanned legs. She looked awesome in those cutoffs.
Still, on a cruise ship that held over 5,000 people, he doubted he’d ever see her again. They might as well be in different cities.
“Bro, seriously . . . are you in or out?”
Jake glanced down and saw that once again the Hacky Sack had landed at his feet. He kicked it back into the group. “I’m out.”
He left the group and wandered back toward the guest services desk, where his parents were still trying to finagle their way into an ocean view stateroom.
He checked his cell phone.
In a half hour, the cruise ship would depart Port Canaveral. Their first stop—before the islands of Bermuda—would be just ten miles up the coast.
Tonight, the passengers onboard the Cypress would have front row seats to the midnight launch at Kennedy Space Center.
Brynn Edgerly led the way down the long, crowded hallway to their stateroom on deck fourteen, her dad and older brother in tow. The thick, royal blue carpet sank under her sandals, and every few steps she passed through the cold draft of a ceiling vent. They had cranked the air-conditioning up to the max to battle Florida’s August heat. Except for the fact that the end of the hallway was a long, long way off, they could have been in a luxury hotel.
“Deck fourteen. Room six-sixty,” she said, stopping at their room. She slid her key into the door, and the latch opened with a green flash and a click.
The room was spacious—a grand suite, after all—complete with a balcony, two twin beds, and a kitchenette. Their luggage had already been brought up.
She bounded into the room. “Dad, which bed do you want?”
He had already made a beeline for the bar to fix himself a scotch. “You take the one by the window.”
Which left the foldout couch for her older brother, Cedar. Served him right.
Brynn tugged open the sliding glass doors and burst out onto the balcony, and a warm breeze whipped through her hair. She ran to the glass railing and leaned out into the sun. A bird’s eye view of Port Canaveral stretched to infinity.
Below her, the dock bustled with activity. Forklifts carried food pallets into a loading dock inside ship. Crew the size of ants barked orders, gesturing wildly. Off to the side and clad in blindingly white, creased uniforms, a group of officers stood chatting, coffees in hand, proudly admiring their ship.
The cruise was starting off well. She had even seen a cute guy playing Hacky Sack—in fact, maybe her boyfriend Simon had even tried to reach her while they were boarding. Feeling giddy at the thought, she pulled out her cell phone.
Zero missed calls.
A pang of sadness jolted her heart. Stop checking, Brynn.
Behind her, the sliding doors slammed shut, startling her. She spun to see Cedar step onto the balcony, wearing a tight frown.
“What do you want?” she said, curling her lip. Another lecture was the last thing she needed right now.
“We need to talk,” he said. “About ground rules. Now.”
Seeing the mutinous look in his sister’s eyes, Cedar cut right to it. “If I so much as find you in the same room as someone’s dick, it’s getting cut off and you’re getting handcuffed to your bed for the rest of the cruise.”
“Jesus Christ, Cedar. I’m fifteen.”
Freaking fifteen. She had that number stuck in her head like it was some kind of badge of freedom. “Did you hear I just said?”
“You want to cut someone’s dick off, go ahead,” she said. “They have cops on ship’s too, you know.”
“You didn’t hear what I said.”
“No guys. I get it.”
She didn’t get it. She wasn’t listening. She never listened. Every single conversation with her was harder than the last.
But he had heard of rapes and murders aboard cruise ships. Somehow, he had to impress this into her thick skull and into that tiny brain of hers. “These are the rules: on this ship, you don’t go anywhere, you don’t do anything, you don’t talk to anyone . . . you don’t take a piss without my permission. Got it?”
She flipped him off and yanked open the door.
“Brynn, where do you think you’re going?” He chased her into the room.
“What do you think, asshole? I’m going to go find a dirty creep to have sex with.”
“Great, we’ll go together.” He threw his clothes back in his suitcase and laced up his shoes. “We’ll tour the ship.”
“I didn’t say you were invited.”
“I’m inviting myself. As your older brother and the only responsible one here,” he nodded to their dad, already comatose on the bed with a half-empty bottle of scotch at his side, “I am the law.”
“Cedar,” she whined, stamping her foot, “you always do this!”
“Because I love you and sometimes your decisions scare me to death.”
“Well, I hate you,” she said, and before he could react, she sprinted for the door, yanked it open, and was gone.
“Brynn, wait!” Cedar cursed and ran after her, but by the time he made it out the door, she was already a hundred feet up the hallway, running as fast as she could.
He sprinted after her, but just then an elevator opened between them and a surge of people blocked his way. By the time he had shoved through them, she was gone.
At the Sand Bar on deck fifteen of the Cypress, seventeen-year-old Naomi Delacruz slumped at a barstool, already bored out of her mind.
“Could I get another one?” she asked, sucking away the last of her virgin piña colada with a bubbly slurp.
Manny, the bartender, swung around, still polishing a glass, his barrel chest bulging under a Hawaiian shirt. “Just know I’m not carrying your drunk butt home when you pass out.”
She smiled, though it felt insincere. “Oh, so there is alcohol in these. In that case, give me two.”
With a chuckle, Manny prepared the drink and slid it up the bar toward her. She took a sip, and the burst of surgery sweetness in her mouth gave her a lightheaded rush.
Just then a guy about her age came up to the bar breathing hard and looking flustered. She glanced over—and did a double take.
He was cute.
Wavy, light brown hair hung down over his forehead, which he swept aside impatiently, and an adorable flush reddened the skin under his high cheek bones.
Inside, she cheered. The first cute guy she’d seen.
“Hey,” he said to the bartender, tapping the bar.
Manny, who was fixing a drink, didn’t hear him.
“Hey bartender,” the guy said louder. “I’m talking to you.”
And anger management issues. Lovely.
Manny swung around. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for my little sister. She’s lost, I’m wondering if you’ve seen her. Blonde, real cutie, you’d know if you saw her.”
“Haven’t. Sorry.”
Alarmed, Naomi butted in. “Your sister wandered off?” On a cruise ship the size of Cypress, losing a little girl was not good news. There were a million places she could end up, and it could be hours…days until someone finally found her. “How old is she?”
“Fifteen,” he said.
Her prior alarm evaporating in an instant. “Oh, come on,” she sneered. “Fifteen? She’ll be fine.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “She’s not supposed to wander off on her own,” he said, and then he was gone.
Naomi and Manny exchanged an eye roll, and she went back to her piña colada, disappointed. The tally of cute guys who weren’t jerks was still at zero.
Halfway through the shop-lined Royal Promenade on deck five, Brynn felt it.
The floor shifted underneath her. She glanced around at the other guests scattered around the promenade, doubtful anyone else had noticed. The diners at Sorrento’s Pizza feasted on, oblivious.
Then the boat swayed. Though subtle, she sensed the movement in her inner ear. The Cypress was casting off.
She ran outside and flung herself against the railing. The ocean breeze caught her long hair and whipped it across her face, but the lifeboats blocked her view.
She darted back to the elevators and took the first one that opened as high as it would go.
Deck seventeen.
She emerged outside the Viking Crown Lounge, out of which leaked a nauseating piano waltz. Ew . . . not here.
She fled down the stairs and burst onto deck sixteen, into full sun. The Florida heat hit her like a blast furnace, and she sprinted to the railing, suddenly giddy.
Brynn shoved past the other passengers and leaned out over the railing, drinking in the sight of the ocean and Port Canaveral. Hulks of cruise ships and tankers floated past, an unreal display of floating cities, each one baking in the heat. The sun kissed her hair, the golden strands glowing as they lifted in the wind.
Then the ship’s horn roared. The sound jolted her out of her euphoria. She clamped her ears, but the thunder filled her mind like a fog, obliterating any chance of thinking. Just as abruptly, the horn cut off, leaving the deck in dumbfounded silence. Timidly, she lowered her hands. Around her, the stunned passengers clapped and cheered, clearly just as shaken . . . and she found herself joining in.
The MS Cypress had officially begun its seven day cruise into the Bermuda Triangle.
Kennedy Space Center
In the Royal Promenade on deck five, Jake’s eyes wandered wistfully from their “outdoor” table at Sorrento’s Pizza to the sliver of ocean visible past the Prince & Green botique clothing store.
He had just seen her.
That blonde girl. She had run right past their table; her silhouette still lingered in his vision. Up close, that face . . . so freaking annoyingly adorable.
Jake turned back to his parents, seated across from him, wishing he were anywhere but here. Maybe after lunch he’d head down to the cruise ship’s fitness center and lift a bit.
“So . . .” Jake began, his third attempt at striking up a conversation. “They’re supposed to launch at midnight.”
“That’s kind of late, Jake-ey.” His mom tugged her sun hat lower, so it blocked most of the right side of her face—a move that had become a nervous tick since the fire.
Jake caught himself staring at the puffy scars visible under the hat’s brim and averted his eyes. “But this is the big one, remember? This one’s manned.”
“You go ahead,” his dad said. “We’re probably going to hit the sack early.”
“What do you they’re going to find up there, Dad?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Like always, his father avoided his eyes.
“You think it’s got anything to do with all that neutrino radiation they’ve been detecting?”
“Just some kind of magnetic disturbance, that’s all,” he muttered. “Hope they don’t crash into it.”
“Come on, Dad, they’re not going to crash into it—”
His dad flinched at the sharpness of his voice, which Jake hadn’t intended, and his gaze dropped to his plate.
“Jake,” his mom scolded, patting his dad’s knee reassuringly.
“I’m trying to be nice.” Fed up with his parents, Jake tossed his napkin on the plate and stood up. “Whatever. I’m going to go get some fresh air. I’ll see you guys back in the room later.”
His parents didn’t ask him where he was going, they just watched him leave with that sad, regretful stare . . . as if they hardly knew him.
Because of what happened six months ago. Because of what he had done.
Because of the fire.
Jake sauntered out onto the deck and decided he really needed to hit the gym and lift. Just a few sets to get the endorphin rush, the big muscle groups. Then he’d go for a swim.
The blank screen of Brynn’s cell phone tormented her. No calls. Not from Simon, not from anyone.
And once they hit open ocean, there would be no more reception.
Why did she keep checking?
She shoved her phone back into her pocket, feeling both angry and hurt. Simon had been the first and only boy she had ever been in love with. They had been perfect together.
Until Cedar had put an end to it.
Brynn hung onto the deck sixteen railing, reflecting on her shattered love life. As the Cypress cruised up the coast, the port shrank into the distance, replaced by a bare stretch of beach and flat marshes crisscrossed by Air Force service roads. In the noon sun, her hair singed the back of her neck.
All that ocean and all that heat made her want to swim. Yeah, a swim would take her mind off things. She slipped back through the crowd.
Brynn slipped into her bikini back in the stateroom. Her dad was napping on the bed, his hand still clutched around the empty bottle of scotch. Basically, he would miss the whole cruise. Cedar was probably still out looking for her.
She dragged her big fluffy pink beach towel out of her suitcase, wrapped herself in it, and headed back up to deck fifteen, the pool deck. Barefoot, the soft carpet tickled the undersides of her feet.
She chose the main pool and scanned the poolside for a cute boy to plop her towel down next to.
A real hottie by the deep end caught her attention. Her eyes roved over a chiseled bronze torso, a broad jaw and thick lips, deep-set eyes hidden behind aviator sunglass, a head of curly black hair. She pressed her lips together.
Perfect.
She trotted over to him and chose a poolside recliner two away from his. She recognized him. The guy she had seen playing Hacky Sack earlier.
“Excuse me?” she said. He didn’t move. “Hey, buff guy!”
He opened his eyes, squinted into the sun, and glanced over at her.
This is for you, Cedar. You asshole. She made doe eyes at the guy. “Do you think you can rub sunscreen on my back?”
He nodded and waved her over.
“Cool, thanks.” She giggled and dropped her towel, exposing her right side to him—and noted smugly the way his gaze descended slowly over her bikini-clad body. She carried the sunscreen over to his recliner. Success—
“There you are, Brynn.” Cedar appeared between them and dropped a load of his own stuff onto the recliner between them. “Awesome, you got sunscreen. Mind putting some on my back?”
Then her idiot brother whipped off his shirt and flashed the entire pool with the whitest skin they’d ever seen.
Sabotaged.
Beyond Cedar, the hot guy settled onto his back and closed his eyes again.
“Put it on yourself.” She uncapped the tube and sprayed her brother with a fat white glob.
Satisfied his sister had resigned to arm-crossed sulking on her own recliner, Cedar turned to the bro-hulk taking up space next to him. “Hey man, I’m Cedar,” he said, extending his hand.
The guy opened his eyes with a pained expression, but didn’t take his hand. “Jake.”
“Don’t keep me hanging.” Cedar held his palm right over the guy’s face, until he finally took it—about a minute later. Cedar gripped hard. “Attaboy . . . good firm handshake. You here with friends, Jake?”
“Family.”
“That’s cool. Where you from?”
“California.”
“Nice. Why you here in Florida? They don’t have cruises in Cali?”
“Not cruises around the Caribbean.”
“You ever been on a cruise before, Jake?”
Jake shook his head.
“I like your board shorts,” said Cedar. “Where’d you get them?”
“Look man, I’m just trying to enjoy the sun.”
Cedar held up his hands in surrender. “No problem, just trying to make conversation. Oh, by the way—” He pointed over his shoulder at Brynn. “That’s my sister.”
“I get it, bro.”
“No, you don’t get it, bro. That’s my sister. She’s fifteen.”
“Cedar, shut up!” said Brynn.
“Just trying to make conversation,” said Cedar, laying back on his own recliner. “Just trying to enjoy the cruise.”
Later that night, Naomi watched the countdown to the launch from her mom’s bunk below the waterline. Every flash on the small flatscreen flooded the entire closet-sized cabin with blue light.
Even on the tiny screen, though, it was hard to miss the behemoth size of the Triton IV rocket—so named because it was NASA’s fourth attempt to investigate the interference zone.
The other three unmanned missions had vanished off the radar once they reached their destination.
They were never heard from again.
In the two years since its discovery, the interference zone had remained a complete mystery. Like a hole in space.
Some people saw it as an omen that Armageddon was near.
“T minus two minutes and thirty seconds,” said the announcer’s voice.
Well, she may as well watch the launch from the decks. She dragged herself unhurriedly off the bunk and slipped into the corridor.
From the deck sixteen railing, Jake’s gaze wandered across the glassy water to the Kennedy Space Center nine miles away. Earlier, the Cypress had sailed within three miles of the launch site, giving the passengers an up close view of the thirty-two story Triton IV rocket that would carry two astronauts into high earth orbit for the flyby. Now, just a few minutes until T minus zero, a constant patrol of military helicopters enforced the exclusion zone back to nine miles.
In the distance, the reflection of the floodlit launch site rippled off the water.
Jake thought of that girl he had met earlier that day, Brynn—her brother had used her name.
Trouble. She was nothing but trouble.
Yet, as far as Jake could tell, she remained the only cute girl aboard the entire cruise ship. Not that he had searched every cabin, but he had an eye for that sort of thing.
And he had a thing for blondes. Such silky blonde hair . . . girls like her drove him crazy.
But she was only fifteen, too young for him. If he tried anything, her brother would murder him in his sleep.
Behind him, the ship’s intercom system streamed the Kennedy Space Center announcer, “All systems are go. We’re about ninety seconds from the launch of Crew Rendezvous Vehicle Triton Four . . .”
He sighed. It wasn’t like he got a choice with Brynn, anyway; now that her brother had no doubt locked her in a stateroom and thrown the key in the water, he doubted he’d ever see her again.
The announcer fell into the familiar countdown. “All engines are go for ignition . . . in T minus ten—nine—eight—”
His heart picked up speed. Around the deck, the Cypress passengers joined in the countdown, which rose to a chorus. “Four—three—two—one!”
The rocket’s base ignited in a white-hot flare, forcing him to shade his eyes.
“We have liftoff,” said the announcer. “Triton Four has just cleared the tower . . .”
The passengers cheered. The rocket climbed slowly, as bright as the sun, burning an arc through the heavens and flooding the Atlantic with blinding white light. It could have been daytime.
The sound wave rippled the water’s surface with lightning speed and slapped his chest. The blast of air tore at his skin, throbbed his eardrums, echoed in his lungs. Behind him, glasses clinked on tables. He opened his mouth to breath, but all that entered was the roar of two million pounds of solid fuel burning underneath the Triton IV rocket.
And for a moment, he forgot everything—Brynn, the gulf between him and his parents, the fire. In that moment, watching, feeling, the rocket streak into the sky, he only felt pride.
On the open air portion of deck fourteen at the back of the ship—the stern—Cedar let out his breath slowly, mesmerized by the blinding flare of the Triton IV thrusting skyward. The rocket burned like a torch atop a growing column of smoke, its reflection splintering on the water.
Next to him, Brynn stood just as mesmerized, her hands firmly clamped over her ears.
At midnight tomorrow, the Crew Exploration Vehicle would reach the interference zone, and Cedar knew what they would find. Some kind of radar jammer the Soviets had put up back in the sixties.
Nothing mysterious at all.
Though fainter now, the rhythmic thumping of burning propellant still made his ears ache. A projection screen in the Aquatheater below them still showed the rocket hurtling through the hazy upper reaches of the atmosphere.
The sight of the launch brought tears to his eyes, and for a second, washed away his demons. Everything. His anger toward his dad, his guilt over his mom’s death . . . and now his terrible remorse for pushing away Brynn, the only person in the world who still mattered to him. For a second, that was all gone.
The Vanishing Girl
After the launch, the first sea day passed without incident, just the unbroken Atlantic stretching horizon to horizon. The following evening, Brynn, Cedar, and their dad emerged from the elevators on deck four and entered the theater for the ten o’clock Headliner Show, which would feature singers, musicians, and a Broadway magician famous for his vanishing girl act—the renowned Zé Carlos.
The Opal Theater sat 1,380 guests and rose a full three decks. Purple and blue lights lit up row upon row of suede seats, already packed.
They descended the aisle and slid into their seats in the second row, which Brynn had had the foresight to book with their dad’s credit card months earlier.
Now she leaned forward eagerly, as the show began. She was most excited about the magician.
Cedar suffered through the singing and dancing acts without comment, but when the fraud magician came onstage and began his chicken-like posturing, he could barely take it anymore.
“The magic is a gift,” Zé Carlos boomed in a stilted Brazilian accent. “They kidnap me and take me into jungle for a year. They take everything—my family, my possessions, my memories. For a whole year, evil lives in my body, it feeds off me. When I begin to remember again, when I begin to wake up, I have this gift . . . this magic.”
“Look at that loon,” Cedar sneered aside to Brynn. “What an idiot.”
“Shut up,” she hissed.
“I require a volunteer.” Zé Carlos swept his cloak over his shoulder, and the spotlight cast ominous shadows under his sharp cheek bones. “A young lady, if you please.”
Next to Cedar, Brynn’s hand flew up. Of course.
“Brynn, put your hand down,” he said.
Instead, she raised it higher.
Zé Carlos paced the stage, peering intently out into the audience. His eyes settled on Brynn. “Perfeita,” he said. “The lovely blonde in the second row, if you please.”
Brynn giggled and climbed to her feet.
Cedar went rigid. “Don’t,” he warned, grabbing her arm.
“Cedar, stop it,” she whispered.
“Sit down. Now.”
She glared daggers at him, tugged her arm free, and pranced onto the stage, where she smiled shyly at the crowd. The little narcissist.
Cedar planted his palms on the armrests, ready to jump to his feet and drag her back to her seat if need be, but his dad’s hand landed on his arm, halting him.
“Let her enjoy it.” His alcohol-soaked breath washed over Cedar, potent enough to fumigate the theater. “It’s a show.”
“Her whole life is a show,” Cedar spat, but he sank back, defeated. He glared at her instead, teeth gritted.
She always got picked. Always. Her blonde mane stood out in a dark crowded theater like a homing beacon. Oh, and how she loved the spotlight.
Zé Carlos admired Brynn with a raised eyebrow and a satisfied smirk. At the hungry look in his eyes, Cedar’s fists tightened.
The magician raised a gloved hand and waved her over to a plain table, which he had spread with a red tablecloth.
He circled her. “This is terrible,” he said, taking a strand of her glossy hair between his fingers. “They will be too focused on you; they will miss the trick entirely.” He turned his head back to the crowd and gave a wink, which earned him a chorus of laughter.
Touch her like that again, and you die in your sleep. Cedar’s forearms strained against the armrest.
Brynn flashed a camera smile and tucked her hair behind her ear, as if her ego wasn’t large enough already.
“But enough preening—” Zé Carlos clapped his hands. He gave her a boost onto the table and instructed her to stand perfectly still.
For the first time in her life, she did as she was told. Chin held high and hands rigid at her side, she didn’t budge an inch . . . from the looks of it, she had even stopped breathing.
Cedar edged forward. What the hell was this voodoo?
With one hand tucked behind his back and flamboyant theatric flair, Zé Carlos circled the table, lifting the tablecloth at each corner so the audience could see there was nothing underneath.
The rest of the stage was well lit . . . drenched in light, in fact. Cedar tilted his head, trying to catch a shimmer of wire or a pane of glass, but he couldn’t spot the mechanism.
“The illusion,” Zé Carlos shouted suddenly, stepping in front of Brynn and interrupting Cedar’s thoughts, “is not the vanishing girl . . . the illusion is reality itself. The girl was never here.” He snapped his fingers and stepped to the side.
The audience gasped.
Cedar saw it happen, and his eyebrows tightened. Atop the table, Brynn’s body become translucent. Through her torso, he saw the ruffled curtains at the back of the stage. She was fading right before their eyes.
She raised her arm and peered at it, as if aware that she was vanishing. At the sight of her own ghostly arm, her mouth fell open. Fear crossed her face. Wide-eyed, she gaped at her audience, threw one last terrified glance at Cedar, and faded completely.
Then the tabletop was empty. Brynn was gone. Vanished. Just like that.
The crowd erupted into applause, a few even stood. Zé Carlos bowed.
But Cedar felt none of their delight. He scanned the stage, the back of his neck bristling. He had never seen a magician do a vanishing act on such a well-lit stage, with no props, no places to hide. Right in plain sight.
And where was Brynn? With a final bow, Zé Carlos swept his cloak over one shoulder and strode off the stage through the side curtain.
Oh hell no . . . this was not happening.
The lights dimmed, and a pair of figures dressed in black ran onto the stage.
Cedar squinted into the darkness . . . No, just stage hands, carrying away the table. He swiveled in his seat and scanned the aisles, heart thumping. Where was she?
Something was wrong.
The lights dimmed further, leaving him blind. Onstage, a spotlight illuminated a woman in a glittery dress—the next act. She started singing.
No. No, no, no. When you made someone’s little sister disappear, you brought them back. That was part of the contract.
You didn’t just leave them like that, hanging in limbo.
“Where’d she go?” Cedar said.
“Jesus Christ,” his dad barked. “Just sit tight. It’s all part of the show.”
“She’s supposed to unvanish.”
“She’s backstage.”
“I never should have let her go.” Before his dad could stop him, Cedar elbowed into the aisle
“Cedar, sit down!”
He ignored the command. At the corner of the stage he swung a leg up—drawing a wary glance from the singer—and clambered onto the three foot high platform. The singer’s voice wavered. No one else seemed to notice, though; the spotlight was on her. Cedar barged through the curtain, shoved past a few technicians in the wings, and burst through a double door into a maze of corridors. He found Zé Carlos smoking in a backstage lounge.
“Where’s my sister?” he spat.
“Perdão, senhor, you are not allowed backstage.” Zé Carlos rose to his feet and waved him out, his English more stilted than it had been on the stage
Cedar didn’t budge. “Where’s my sister?” he repeated. “The blonde girl you made disappear, where is she?”
“Senhor, you must go.” He took another drag from his cigarette.
Cedar plucked the cigarette from his mouth, and flung it aside. “Not until you bring her back, asshole—”
Eyebrows arched, the magician reached sideways, flicked his wrist with a dash of panache, and closed his fist around empty air. When he opened his hand again, he held the burning cigarette between his fingers . . . as if by magic. Eyes locked on Cedar’s, he brought it back to his lips for another hit.
“See, you made that reappear,” said Cedar, pointing at the glowing butt. “You did it right that time. Now make her reappear.”
“I not do illusion,” he said. “I tell you already, your sister never there.”
“You expect me to swallow that crap?”
He shrugged. “I sorry. Cannot help you.”
Cedar gritted his teeth and jabbed his finger at the magician’s chest. “You’re an asshole.”
“I’m not so sure you point at right person.”
“His vanishing girl act,” said Cedar. “He made her disappear and never made her reappear.”
In his office across from the dressing rooms, the Assistant Stage Manager regarded him calmly across a wide oak desk, fingertips pressed together. “I assure you Zé Carlos didn’t actually make your sister vanish.”
“No shit, Sherlock. He kidnapped her and stowed her away somewhere on this boat.”
“Ship,” the manager corrected.
Cedar steadied his breathing…she’ll be okay. She’ll be okay. It will not end up like it did for Mom. “Stop the show,” he ordered. “We need to find her.”
The manager raised his palms. “No need to be hasty. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on here.”
“Ask any one of those people back there,” said Cedar, his voice rising. “Not one of them saw her reappear.”
“Zé Carlos claims he sent her back to the audience after his act.”
Cedar made fists then splayed his fingers in exasperation. “He’s a magician, for God’s sake. His whole career is based on lying and deception, and you believe him?”
“Perhaps she returned to her seat after you left to look for her.”
Cedar chuckled. “Now that would make me just plain stupid, wouldn’t it—?”
“Cedar!” said a girl’s voice from the doorway. He spun as Brynn stuck her head into the office. “Dad said you were making a fuss. I got back to my seat right after you left to look for me, dumbass.”
“The two astronauts aboard the Triton Four Crew Module are reporting minor radio-frequency interference as they near the rendezvous. So far, though, all onboard systems appear to be functioning,” said the NBC newscaster. The image blurred, melting into static, then came into focus again.
Naomi rolled onto her side and turned up the volume. Everyone aboard Cypress got satellite TV streamed directly to their cabins, but the dish was at the top of the ship, sixteen decks and more than two hundred feet above her. Considering the maze of wires the broadcast had to navigate to get to her mom’s cabin below the water line, Naomi was impressed there wasn’t even more static.
The newscaster continued. “. . . the Triton crew module is expected to pass into the interference zone sometime within the next thirty minutes, at which point Earth will lose all radio contact with the spacecraft. NASA will continue to update us on the astronauts’ status, but as to what they find up there . . . that will remain a mystery until their return on Thursday.”
The newscaster changed to a more jovial tone. “The hot spot of electromagnetic interference has been nicknamed the Bermuda Triangle of outer space—”
Naomi clicked off the news. Just a big tease, that’s all it was. The astronauts were less than thirty minutes away from making contact with whatever was up there, and no one else even got to see it.
She could hear the crew bustling outside along the I-95, the main passageway through the upper crew deck, still busy even now.
Her mom had been up before six for the early breakfast service, long before Naomi awoke. They hadn’t seen each other since. Now it was nearing midnight. With a yawn, Naomi rose from the bottom bunk and stretched out in the tiny cabin.
Well, if she didn’t get to see her mom, then she may as well make the most of the evening. She recalled a cool teen hangout on deck fifteen that was worth a shot.
She combed her golden brown hair, put on some makeup, and headed to the upper decks.
Cedar’s relief that his kid sister had not, in fact, been abducted by a Brazilian magician named Zé Carlos was short-lived. The rest of the show had sucked, and now he sat at the bar in The Living Room—a teen hangout on deck fifteen—one eye fixed on his sister’s game of foosball and one eye intent on the diagrams he had nabbed from the jerkoff illusionist.
Brynn’s expression of fear during the vanishing act, she told him later, had been part of the act. Apparently Zé Carlos had whispered the instructions as he boosted her onto the table.
As for the trick itself . . . Cedar studied the complicated diagrams the performer had sketched with wrinkled eyebrows. Why, it was nothing more than an adaptation of Pepper’s ghost, an illusion involving mirrors, a bright source of light, and a transparent screen.
He scoffed. Nothing special at all—
“So, did you find your sister?”
Cedar glanced up at a girl who had slid into the barstool next to him. About his age, thick caramel colored hair, rosy cheeks and full lips . . . plenty alluring. He recognized her from the Sand Bar: the girl downing piña coladas. Right, he had been looking for Brynn yesterday, too.
He nodded to the foosball table across the room, to Brynn. “That’s her.”
The girl raised her eyebrows. “Still babysitting?”
“She’s younger than she looks, okay?” He made no effort to hide the edge to his voice. “She’s only fifteen, and she’s not that smart. It’s like I blink, and she’s gone.”
“Probably just needs her space. You seem like a . . . protective older brother.”
Cedar nodded, conceding the point. “True.”
“I’m Naomi, by the way.”
“Cedar.” He didn’t hold out his hand.
Naomi ordered a virgin piña colada from the bartender. “So,” she started again, “how are you enjoying the cruise?”
“I’m not.”
“Neither am I.”
He peered sideways at her. “No?”
“It’s the third cruise my mom’s taken me on this summer. I’ve seen her maybe ten minutes total—she’s an assistant maître d’ on the ship.”
“Sounds impressive.”
“It’s not. She’s just a head waiter.”
“Hey, where do you guys sleep? I’ve always wondered.”
“Underwater.”
“Oh. Damn.”
“Like not actually underwater,” she said, “but below decks, you know, below the surface.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
She smiled, an impish little glint in her eyes. “Actually, I have access to crew-only areas. I could show you if you want?”
Her studied her for a moment, tempted by her offer. He was practically suffocating in this stupid teen zone, after all—his gaze jerked back to Brynn.
“Oh, come on. She’ll be fine.”
“She’s never fine.”
“You should trust her.”
“Her? How about the twenty-five hundred douchebags on this boat who would give their left nut to get into her pants.”
Naomi’s gaze wandered dubiously over Brynn’s tomboyish ponytail, her baggy T-shirt, and the ill-fitting board shorts that fell to her calves. “She’s not that great a catch.”
Cedar blew air through his lips. “That’s what I keep telling her.”
“Come on—”Naomi tugged on his T-shirt. “Are you seriously going to babysit her twenty-four hours a day for seven days straight? She’ll be fine.”
Naomi did have a point.
Cedar watched his sister, still completely absorbed in a foosball game with a much younger girl. Without makeup, without her blonde hair flying all over the place, dressed in his board shorts—which he’d insisted she wear after the magician fiasco—Brynn might just go unnoticed. Come to think of it, she’d been on especially good behavior the last few minutes.
In fact, earlier when he’d scrounged up her outfit, she hadn’t even argued. She hadn’t even tried to put on anything skimpy. She hadn’t combed her hair, doused herself in fake perfume, or done anything to make herself into a sexual object. Maybe she’d finally learned her lesson.
The Brynn playing foosball reminded him of her much younger self, her nine-year-old tomboy self, back when she was innocent and adorable.
He breathed a contented sigh. Brynn wasn’t planning to sneak off the moment he left, she was just trying to enjoy the cruise like a normal kid.
Tonight, he could trust her.
“Hang on.” Cedar crossed the room to the foosball table. “Brynn, as soon as you’re done with this game, go straight back to the cabin, got it?”
She yawned. “Good idea, I’m getting pretty tired. I’ll call it a night after this game.”
“Straight down to the room, Brynn.”
“Okay.”
“No detours, no games, no sneaking off. Straight down to the room.”
“Okay.”
“We’re in room six sixty, deck fourteen. That’s one level down. One flight of stairs—”
“I know, Cedar,” she snapped.
Satisfied that she had at last gotten the point, Cedar followed Naomi out onto the deck. He threw one last glance at Brynn and saw her yawn again and lean back over her game. Outside, a cool night breeze sliced through his shirt. Ah, it felt good to be outside.
Yet something about Brynn’s response nagged him. She had agreed too easily.
The moment he was through the door with that girl, Brynn stood up straight, alert and ready, and glanced around the Living Room. Free. She was actually free.
“Thank you,” she whispered, watching the girl Cedar had left with. Not that she had any chance with him, but God knew he needed a distraction.
“Got ya!” said the little girl she was playing foosball with, whacking the ball into Brynn’s goal. “Hey, are you still playing?”
“Here’s my advice,” said Brynn, kneeling down next to the little blonde—a miniature version of herself. “Tonight, find yourself a cute guy and have some fun. You only live once, right?”
“Are you leaving?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, young lady. I’ve seen you, you’ve been eyeing those boys over there all night, you little tiger . . .” she trailed off. “How old are you?
“Seven.”
“Well . . . never too young to start.”
The little girl frowned. “Boys are icky.”
Brynn gave a sly smile. “You have no idea.” She winked, trailed her fingers across the girl’s cheek, and started toward the exit opposite the one Cedar had taken.
She went straight down to their stateroom to change, a thrill fluttering up her spine at disobeying her brother’s orders. Instead of going to bed, she dolled herself up for a night out on the ship.
Her dad, she noticed, wasn’t in the room. Could he actually be enjoying himself like Cedar? Was it too much to ask that the two overprotective men in her life—her dad and brother—had both forgotten about her for the night?
Practically giddy, she dragged on a short jean skirt they had no clue she owned—and wouldn’t let her own in a gazillion years—a loose fitting tank top, and platform sandals. Next she applied pink lip gloss and dark eyeliner, doused herself in Dolce & Gabbana perfume, and dashed out the door again, her confidence soaring.
Thank you, thank you girl-who-has-a-crush-on-Cedar. Whoever she was, Brynn owed her one for sure.
Her first stop was Fuel, the teen disco on deck fifteen astern. Cedar, of course, had forbidden her from setting foot in the place, but tonight she made her own rules.
Beams of neon light darted around the dark club, flashing over teens on the dance floor leaping up and down. She made out a few groups of friends dancing in circles.
She stepped onto the dance floor and started jumping up and down too in time with the beat. One of the circles opened up to include her, which she joined. Aside from the slitted eyes from the girl across from her, the rest of the group—mostly boys—welcomed her with smiles and head nods.
The guy dancing next to her was really cute, baby-faced and curly haired . . . like adorably cute. He grinned at her and angled his body slightly toward hers—in other words, a noncommittal signal that he might think she was cool that could be easily denied later if she didn’t return it. Excited, she grinned back, and angled her own body a few degrees toward him.
He swiveled a smidgeon more so he was facing her instead of the rest of the group, and they broke off from the circle to dance facing only each other.
But aside from furtive glances at each other and shy smiles, the boy stayed two feet away—no more, no less—as if held there by a force field. Cedar would be proud.
What was this . . . middle school?
That was the problem with boys her age. They were all too afraid to touch girls. She scanned the rest of the dance floor, not a soul touching. Zero skin contact. Pathetic.
But she also felt a strange sting in her heart, like she didn’t belong here anymore. Dancing in this room with strangers, she was more alone than ever.
Simon had been her whole world. She remembered when they had experimented with third base, it was the most natural and exciting thing in the world. Only afterwards had she realized most girls her age hadn’t even been asked out on a date yet, let alone been through a serious long term relationship. After Simon, her never-been-kissed best friends were jealous and treated her like an outcast. They wanted what she had, not realizing how much it hurt. How much it isolated her.
Brynn faced her guy again. “Want to dance?” she yelled over the music.
“What?” he yelled back.
“Want to dance? Like actually dance?”
He stared at her, for a moment confused before his eyes flashed with understanding. He nodded to the corners of the teen disco, where a handful of adults stood with crossed arms, watching the dance floor like hawks. Chaperones. Yuck!
And then she spotted something else . . . he was leaning at the bar: the hot guy she had seen by the pool whom Cedar had cockblocked. Jake, if she remembered correctly. Even in the dark club, he still wore his aviator sunglasses.
He was chatting with a couple of older girls and looked bored.
Brynn’s ideas of finding a perfect stranger flew out the window. She kind of just wanted him right now.
“Got to go,” she muttered to the boy she was dancing with and pushed through a gap in the crowd.
“Wait, I don’t even know your name?” the boy shouted behind her.
Brynn ignored him, hastily tugged down her skirt—which had been riding up ever since she started dancing—and trotted over to the bar. She slid onto a stool at the opposite end as Jake, feeling a bit alarmed when her butt came into direct contact with the cool, molded plastic. A quick glance over her shoulder reassured her she was still covered.
She glanced over at Jake. Though his head faced her direction, his shades blocked his eyes and she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her. She turned away, hot in the face.
Was he looking at her?
She peeked again, without moving her head, and out of the corners of her eyes saw the two girls leave. One of them pressed a folded note into Jake’s hand—a phone number, probably. He displayed no reaction, not even a thank you, just took the note stone-faced and pocketed it. His head didn’t move.
The girls gone, Brynn was even more self-conscious that he might be looking at her, and her cheeks flushed. Screw it. She sighed loudly and blatantly turned her head to stare at him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Where’s your brother?” he said.
Oh, so he had noticed her. “You shouldn’t be scared of him,” she said. “You could beat him up.”
“I don’t want to have to beat him up,” he said.
“He left with another girl,” said Brynn.
Jake’s eyebrow nudged higher. “You’re okay with that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“He gets to go off with some girl, but you don’t even get to sit next to me at the pool. Hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?
“That’s him.”
“Brynn, right?”
She nodded. “Jake?”
He rose from his chair, downed the dregs of an orange-colored drink, and turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” she said, not meaning to sound so accusing.
“Going to take a soak. You’re welcome to come.”
“A soak?”
“Hot tub. They won’t be too crowded this late.” He waited for her answer, face stoic like he couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not she joined him. Just her crap luck . . . he was one of those guys.
But then a thrill fluttered across her skin. Jake was one of those guys. Older, sexy, self-assured . . . and in a few minutes, they could be giving each other half-naked massages in a private hot tub. Would Cedar approve?
He’d have a heart attack.
“Let me just change into my bathing suit,” said Brynn, climbing to her feet and smoothing down her skirt again, blushing hotly at what she was about to do.
Midnight
Naomi led Cedar, her unusual boy-find, through the hanging plastic flaps and into the crew-only area on deck two. Beyond the flaps, the floors were scuffed, the bulkheads made of unornamented white steel, and the overhead hidden above a maze of metal pipes and ventilation ducts.
“I should just check,” said Cedar.
“Give her space,” said Naomi. “She’ll love you for it.”
“I want her to be safe, I don’t care if she loves me.”
“Yes, you do care.”
A waiter hauled a pallet of food past them, forcing them flat against the bulkhead. The cart banged over a foot-wide metal gap in the floor. She noticed Cedar studying the break in the passageway.
“Watertight door,” she explained. “They close if there’s a hull breach, sectioning the bottom decks into individual watertight compartments.”
Cedar sneered. “No, Naomi, that’s what they did on the Titanic. I’m sure they have a better system by now.”
She sighed, already regretting inviting him along. Sure, he was cute, but his bad attitude was really starting to piss her off.
“Anyway, we’re here.” She veered off the I-95 down a smaller hallway and into a dark room. She flipped a switch, igniting an array of overhead fluorescent tubes.
The light revealed a ceiling mounted crane, a large rectangular door that opened through the ship’s hull, and in the room’s center, all gleaming yellow metal and plexiglass—a minisub.
“Whoa . . .” Cedar’s eyes widened, and for the first time that night, he didn’t sound preoccupied.
“It’s only available for private booking,” she said. “There’s an underwater tour, Shipwrecks of the Bermuda Triangle and all that, if your parents are loaded.”
“It’s just my dad. My mom’s not with us. Do you know how to work it?”
“I watched them do it once before. I could probably figure it out.”
Cedar ran his hands over the sub’s steel hull, his face mesmerized, his sister apparently completely forgotten. At last he faced her, and his intense gray-blue eyes invited her into a private world only he had access too—and made her rethink him all over again. “Let’s go inside it,” he said.
Jake did his best to remain impassive as he watched Brynn undress in front of him. When her jean skirt hit the de
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an excerpt from
The Imposter
by Judith Townsend Rocchiccioli
and published here with her permission
Chapter 1
“Holy Shit, Mary, Mother of God! What the hell is wrong with people? Are they crazy, stupid, or just nuts,” hollered Jack Françoise to no one in particular, even though he was sure his rants could be heard through the bull pen of the 8th Police District. “Honest to God, two tourists with their throats torn out in the deepest, darkest part of the Quarter. What is wrong with these idiots? I don’t even go in that part of the French Quarter. No one needs to go down there, no one in their right mind wants to go down there, not even NOPDs swat team in full combat gear. Holy Shit, can anybody be that stupid or that drunk?! I just don’t get it.”
Newly minted New Orleans Police Commander, Jack Françoise, sat behind his massive, but deeply scarred, walnut desk at 334 Royal Street glaring at two crime reports placed in his in-basket for review. A big, burly man who tended towards overweight, Jack looked distinguished in his Commander uniform and his polished medals matched the glint of silver in his hair. A man’s man, Jack commanded the respect of almost everyone he met. He stared out of his tall office windows, already heating up in the August sun, but saw nothing. His attention returned to the crime sheets, and as he reached for his coffee cup, his administrative assistant and PR guy knocked at his door frame.
“What’s up, Jason? Did I wake everybody up yelling?”
Jason Aldridge grinned at his boss. “Well, maybe a few left over from the night beat, but they were due to go home anyway,” Jason joked.
Jack shook his head. “Did you check out these murders in the Quarter last night? What the hell?”
”Yeah, pretty bad. Young people, too, from what I heard. Kind of similar to that woman they found in that abandoned warehouse near Canal over in the First District several years ago. By the way, the Coroner’s Office just called and they want you over there ASAP. It’s about this new case, the one they are investigating in the Quarter now.”
“Yeah, I just bet it is,” Jack muttered sarcastically. “Who’s working the scene in the Quarter? Think I’ll go over there on my way to see the M.E.”
“I think Bridges caught the case, but he’s probably gone now. Don’t know who is head of the forensic team. I can check for you.”
“Never mind, I don’t care. If the M.E. calls back tell her I’m coming, but am stopping by the scene first.”
“Will do, Capt’n! Whoops, Commander,” Jason stumbled over his boss’s title and smiled apologetically.
“Just call me Jack. Skip the title. I don’t act like a Commander anyway. Didn’t even want to be one. I was and am happy in the trenches and on the street. But, as you know,” Jack said wryly, “I never planned to leave them.”
Jason nodded, “Yeah, I know that. I’m sure you’ll always be a beat cop, no matter the title. You’ve never left the streets before, and you’re too damn old and stubborn to start at this late date,” Jason acknowledged, waving his boss out of the office. His heart swelled with pride as he watched the big guy leave the 8th district office.
Jason loved being Jack’s right hand, a job he had just formally assumed several months ago when Jack had risen in the ranks. Jason had more respect for Jack Françoise than he’d ever had for any one man. Françoise could come across as a total police asshole, but deep inside, he was kind and generous and a true advocate for the citizens, particularly the victims of murder and violent crimes in New Orleans. Jack was also tenacious, bull-headed, and hard to work with, but Jason was used to this as well. Sometimes, Jack’s dark moods surfaced when he reached a dead end in the crimes he sought to solve. In Jason’s mind, Jack was a hero and always would be even though Jack would never claim fame or recognition for the cases he solved.
Jason smiled as he considered that magical way Jack disappeared from press conferences and the media. He was sure Jack planned to keep it that way, even as a Commander. He was as humble as he was caring and altruistic and Jack flat out hated the press. Jason smiled to himself as he reflected on his years with Jack Françoise. An honorable man, Jason thought, closing the An honorable man, Jason thought, closing the Commander’s door quietly as he left the office.
Chapter 2
Jack hated the blast of August heat that momentarily blinded him as he exited the 8th District office. He jumped into his vintage, police-retrofitted, silver Cadillac, which was parked in a no parking zone on the side of the building, and headed down towards the Canal crime scene on Burgundy. He parked, illegally of course, at the corner of Toulouse, knowing that all NOPD in the area knew his car and would never ticket him. He trudged down towards the scene, wiping the sweat off his brow with a white linen handkerchief.
Jack, as hardened as he was to street scenes, turned his head away from a man with a needle in his arm and a guy lighting up his crack pipe while sitting in a doorway. He was convinced that neither man had seen the inside of a house or had a meal or shower in days. He quickly glanced inside a vacant, burned out building on Canal noting several others vagrants boldly smoking crack, not caring who or what could see them. The bottom of the barrel, the dregs of humanity, hung out in this part of the Vieux Carre. The Commander hurried his pace towards the crime scene. He could see the yellow tape several blocks away. He thought about what a bitch it would be to climb back up the hill in the August heat. He hailed the CSI team chief processing the scene.
“Yo, Vern, what’s your ornery ass doing up so early in the morning,” Jack asked, slapping the forensic chief on the back. “I thought you were working nights!”
Detective Vernon Bridges stood up, turned and faced Jack smiling broadly, “Why Commander, what in the world are you doing down here in this hell hole this early? With your big promotion and all, I never expected you’d leave your air conditioned office on Royal Street,” Vern joshed, pumping the Commander’s hand.
Jack returned the grin, happy to see his old friend. “Vern, you know me better than that. I get the hell out of there every chance I get so I don’t have to write reports and go to meetings. I hate all of those damn meetings.” Jack shook his head and sighed, “These bureaucrats are crazy. They even meet to decide where to place the water fountains.” Jack rolled his eyes and Vern laughed heartily.
“Well, then, who writes the reports and goes to the meetings? Isn’t that why you got the big pay raise?” Vern teased his old buddy.
“Jason goes. He likes meetings, and as my assistant, it is his job to make me happy. So, he goes to the meetings and writes the reports, and that makes me happy. Besides, he’s glad to get me out of there so he can do his own thing. So, what do we have here,” Françoise questioned, gesturing toward the crime scene.
Vern pointed to the two chalk-etched bodies on the ground and groaned, “The meat wagon took the bodies away an hour or so ago. Two kids, probably late teens or early twenties. Most likely tourists. They were pretty tatted up, lots of body piercings. Looked Goth if you ask me, but then, what the hell do I know? Black clothes, black hair, black nail polish and lipstick on the female vic, lots of metal.”
Françoise shook his head, “Geez, not again. The report said their throats were torn out, sort of like an animal had attacked them. Anything else?”
Vern searched out his digital camera and flipped to a couple of shots. “They also had their wrists slit.”
“Not much blood around here,” Jack said. “Has anyone hosed down the streets? Had city maintenance been through here before they were found?”
“No, I don’t think so, although they often come through before dawn. We waved off one truck when we got here a little after 5.”
“Who called it in?” Jack asked.
“Anonymous. Someone dialed 911,” Vern said, shrugging his shoulders. “Figures, doesn’t it. Probably the sick SOB that did it. I got a funny feeling that he is sitting somewhere close, watching us work the scene. Been thinking that all morning,” Vern ended, looking around the area at the rundown buildings and dark alleys.
“Could be. It’s happened before. Any possibility they could have been killed somewhere else and dropped here? Any witnesses?”
“Shit, Françoise, you think we got a fairy godmother hanging out down here in no man’s land? Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and, the truth is, everybody we’ve seen is smoking a crack pipe, shooting up, or is drunk or drugged out of their mind.”
“Yeah, got’cha. Figures. Get the troops to canvass the neighborhood. You may get lucky. Keep me posted. I am off to the Coroner’s Office. The M.E. sent for me to talk about these two vics.”
“Will do. See you, Jack. Hey, by the way, looks like the male may have been upside down on that wrought-iron fence at one point. See the blood on the concrete? Stay out of trouble and meetings,” Vern joked as he turned back to the scene.
“Upside down, what the hell,” Jack muttered to himself as he began his hike back to his car. “Damn, it’s hotter than the gates of hell already.”
Chapter 3
When Jack reached his car, he was sweating like a pig. He opened the door of his silver Cadillac and sat down relishing the plush seats. He turned the AC on full blast, turned all the vents towards himself and sat there for a good three minutes taking pleasure in the cold air. Finally, he started the short distance towards the M.E.’s office on Rampart, praying for a decent parking place, even if it was illegal. He spied one. Bingo! It looked promising as he viewed the street parking. And the parking spot was legal. The day was looking a bit brighter as he slid into the metered spot. Of course, he would never put money in the meter.
Jack squinted in the florescent lights as he entered the temporary administrative offices of New Orleans Forensic Center. He was overcome by the smell of disinfectant and bleach. He high-fived the guard at the desk, signed-in, and continued down the back hall to the stark white autopsy room and morgue.
The NOLA Coroner’s Office had been under considerable strain lately due to bad publicity in the media. The Times Picayune had run a whole series of articles about screw-ups at the Coroner’s office. The stories had focused on staff losing DNA evidence, filing incomplete reports, and misinterpreting autopsy findings that had never existed. Worst of all, the office had been accused of selling body parts. It was rumored that the coroner had made thousands of dollars selling livers, corneas, and bone marrow. These provided a field day for defense lawyers. Jack clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth just thinking about it. Damn the liberal press!
The Coroner’s office employees, like most state offices in the many parts of the nation, were underpaid, understaffed, and under appreciated by most people who crossed their thresholds. The NOLA staff was demoralized and the office had experienced lots of turnover when in fact it was also home to some really fantastic forensic pathologists, dentists, and physicians. They were probably some of the best in the country, although you can bet the Times Picayune hadn’t reported that little detail. He cursed the newspapers again under his breath.
The autopsy room was busy. Three physicians were autopsying recent victims, but he didn’t see his favorite medical examiner. Nor did he find his two stiffs from this morning – at least, he didn’t think he did since the victims on the tables all looked pretty old.
“Yo, Fred,” he hailed a morgue tech, “You seen Dr. Jeanfreau?”
“Yeah, she’s in her office. Straight back, Commander,” Fred gestured, giving the Commander a big grin. Fred was a favorite of Jack Françoise because he always knew what was going on, never played dumb, and wasn’t lazy, all traits which put Fred on his way to meeting most of Jack’s criteria for earning praise.
“Thanks, man,” Jack said as he started back down the hall and noticed the decrepit condition of the offices. Unlike the bright autopsy room, the temporary offices of the Coroner were pretty shabby. Jack eyed the faded, dirty carpet as he wandered down the hall towards Maddy’s office. He wondered when they were moving into their new building, although he hated the thought of them leaving his police district. It had been convenient having them so close. Now he’d probably have to hit I-10 to get there. What a pain. Traffic was always bad going out of New Orleans. As a matter of fact, traffic in New Orleans was always awful and he didn’t know all of the illegal parking spots in that part of town.
Maddy’s door was partially open. Since she wasn’t dictating, Jack decided to knock and interrupt her.
“Yo, Maddy, you rang?”
Dr. Madeline Jeanfreau, Assistant Medical Examiner, stood and walked around her desk to see Jack. She was a tiny woman. Even with high heels, she was only a little over 5 feet tall. She hugged Jack and kissed him on the cheek. Jack returned the hug.
“What the hell, Commander? You get promoted, have a party and don’t even invite your favorite M.E.? How do you expect to keep getting special treatment from me or my office?” the diminutive Dr. Jeanfreau queried, as she smiled and shook her short, highlighted hair.
“That wasn’t a party, it was just a bureaucratic BS hour. I didn’t want to go and you would have hated it. Think of who you would have had to hobnob with for an hour, all while getting nothing but punch and cookies. It was grueling.”
“Well, you owe me lunch then and it’s going to cost you a bunch … and drinks as well,” Maddy insisted, giving Jack a grin. “Soon! I want my lunch soon.”
“Anytime, Maddy. You’re the busy one. You know I just sit around and eat chocolate éclairs all day, Jack commented sarcastically. “What’s up? Jason said you wanted to see me.”
“Yeah, about those two dead kids that came in a couple of hours ago. Have you got any ID or information on them?”
“No, nothing yet. I just talked to Bridges, the detective who caught the case. We’re still looking for witnesses. There was no ID found with the bodies. The detective said they looked Goth and were tatted up. Not much blood at the scene, though probably enough for DNA. Why?”
Maddy shook her head and said, “It’s pretty strange. We haven’t finished the autopsies yet, but we started collecting body fluids when they first came in, before we put them in the chiller.”
“Yeah, so? That’s pretty normal, right?”
“Yes, it is,” Maddy replied, looking straight at Jack. “Problem is, they didn’t have any.”
“Didn’t have any what? Maddy, I am not getting this. What are you telling me? The stiffs didn’t have any fluids?”
“That’s right, Jack. They didn’t have any blood. It’s likely the C.O.D. will be death by exsanguination.” Maddy stared at Jack.
Jack’s shoulders slumped as he stared back at his friend. He felt the fear crawling out of his pores. Maybe not fear, just uncertainty perhaps? What The Fuck! Not again! Please, not again, he thought to himself. Their eyes locked, each reading the meaning on the other’s face.
Maddy finally broke the silence. “Yeah, Jack. Here we go again. Just like 2009, 1984 and 1933.”
Jack was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He shook his head. The day really wasn’t getting better after all. “Well, keep me in the loop. Hopefully, these are the only two. We’ll know more when we ID them.” His voice sounded worn and tired.
“If you ever do ID them,” Maddy replied. “Remember, we never had an ID for the case in 2009. I’ll handle the autopsies personally. There could be another cause of death, but it is unlikely with the two of them and the fact that they are young and healthy…..”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack replied, while checking a text message that had just come in. “I’ve got to go. I just got a 911 from CCMC. I hope there’s nothing major gone wrong over there,” he groaned, as he hugged Maddy and left her office. But, he knew better. He knew something bad had happened. Whenever he got called to Crescent Center Medical Center, it was always something bad.
“Oh, Jack,” Maddy called after him, “The vics had a receipt on them for $116. From Howl.”
Jack turned around, looked at her, and shook his head. “Great, this day just keeps getting better, ” he said sarcastically.
Chapter 4
It was a little after midnight and Angela Richelieu was just finishing her nursing shift report when the red light went on in the corner of the nursing station at Crescent City Psychiatric Pavilion signaling an All Staff Alert. “Damn!” she muttered under her breath. Flashing red meant all hell had broken out somewhere on the unit. She sadly knew what that meant for her and picking up her daughter on time. Her shift had ended at 11, but paperwork had taken her an hour after that. Now who knew when she would get out of there.
Cursing under her breath, she unlocked a small metal cabinet and took out a syringe filled with Vitamin G. She laughed a bit as she thought about the Vitamin G – a nickname for Geodon. A powerful anti-psychotic agent, it could settle down a horse almost immediately. G for good night! She placed the syringe in the pocket of her blue uniform top and cautiously opened the security door that led onto the Psych unit. Never knew who was hanging around, just waiting to get into the office.
Now the coast was clear. Angela saw everybody heading toward the east corridor. She heard an angry “Get the hell off of me! I’m a policeman!” coming from that hallway. Big Jim! she thought to herself.
She was surprised and not surprised at the same time. James McMurdie, the former NOPD cop, had been a model patient up until now, so she was surprised that he was involved. She was not surprised because that she had almost seen something coming earlier in the evening.
It had been a great shift on the unit until that new administrator, Lester Whats-his-name, had shown up. He wasn’t even a real employee. Don Montgomery, the CEO, had contracted with him to run the Psych Pavilion. Lester was weird, just as weird as some of the patients. The patients had been quiet until he came onto the unit. Once the patients saw him, a sort of agitation had set in like a wolf walking into a field of tasty sheep.
Plus he was creepy. Angie shook off a chill when she thought about the way he had looked at her. He was gross and struck her as a real letch. He’d stayed most of the evening on the unit. He was working in his office between the general psych and the prison units when he wasn’t on the units talking with the patients. She remembered how the other nurses had said how inappropriate it was that he talked so much with the patients. He had spent a lot of time talking with Jim in the dayroom. A lot of time….
Angela hurried past the shuffling patients and when she turned the corner and looked down the corridor, she saw a sight that was both tragic and comical. Jason, the lone security guard, whose best asset was his enormous weight, was lying on top of Jim in the hallway. Ben the orderly had control of Jim’s right arm and Amy, a petite Asian-American patient care assistant was trying to control his left arm. Amy was wrapped around the arm like a python as he threw her up and down as if she were weightless and he tireless. Amy grunted each time Jim slammed her onto the dirty green tile floor.
Ben looked up as Angela ran down the hallway. “Hurry up! He’s beating the hell out of Amy!”
Angela looked to Jim’s left arm where Amy was clinging like a tired squirrel to a tree trunk, and saw that Jim’s sleeve had ripped at the shoulder, exposing his taut deltoid muscle. Without hesitating, she sat down on top of Amy. Mercifully, their combined weight kept the flailing left arm pinned to the floor as Angela plunged the needle into the deltoid muscle and pushed the Vitamin G into Jim’s body. She withdrew the needle and waited.
As she sat perched on the softening arm, Angela thought about what a joke the Psychiatric Pavilion was. The “Pavilion” was really an old three-story storage warehouse that CCMC had hastily renovated into three psychiatric units about eight years ago when psychiatric and substance abuse services had actually been money-makers for the hospital. Now they weren’t and the building had been sadly neglected and was beginning to have the look of a “blighted” building that Angie remembered from her Community Health class at LSU where she had recently received her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing. Fat lot of good that did me, she mused.
But Angie knew in her heart that her degree did matter. She chose to work at the Pavilion where the salary was at least 50% more than the medical units because the patients were so sick, scary and dangerous. The Pavilion was actually three nursing units. Pavilion I was now was the Prison Unit and housed some of the most dangerous, criminally insane inmates from the deep south. Pavilion II was general psychiatry where chronically psychotic patients were committed by temporary detaining orders. They were kept there “until they promised not to try to kill themselves or others again.” Angie thought it was criminal that these sick patients were generally discharged in two days. Jim was one of the exceptions. Pavilion III was the substance abuse unit where patients were detoxed and “cured” in three days when they were discharged. The absolute worst was the CCMC Pavilion management. Don Montgomery, the CEO of CCMC, had contracted with the state hospital over in Mandeville to take their forensic psychiatric patients several years ago when a public outrage from the good citizens of Mandeville had succeeded and the hospital closed. Even though CCMC received a premium for housing and caring for the forensic patients, none of the money went back into the safety and security of staff and patients at CCMC. Angie shuddered and felt a chill when she thought about the patients she’d worked with over the past year. Some of them had nearly frightened her to death. She had thought Jim was one of the safe ones – until now.
As she had plunged the needle into Jim’s shoulder, she had made the mistake of looking into his eyes. The eyes were there, but Jim wasn’t. It was as if he were somewhere else. He had not recognized her. Recognition was the basis of human interaction, and is what separated friend from foe. Those empty eyes terrified her!
“What set him off tonight?” Angela asked Ben as she came back to the present. “He was one of the good ones – I thought.”
“Louis and Jim were playing Battleship in the dayroom. Louis won and Jim said he was cheating. It was strange-like. Normally Jim didn’t care if he won or lost. Not this time. Next thing, Jim said Louis was sleeping with his wife. Crazy! Louis hasn’t had a hardon in ten years. Next thing, Jim lunged at Louis and missed and Louis ran into the hallway yelling. Jim followed with murder in his eyes. Louis ducked under Jason’s arm and Jim ran smack into that arm. Knocked him down and Jason got on top of him. I came out of the dayroom and jumped on Jim’s arm.”
“Thanks, Louis. Many thanks to you, Jason. And Amy -what you did was above the call of duty. I think you’re going to be pretty sore. If you need to call off for your next shift, I’ll vouch for you,” Angie said as she looked at the poor battered Asian-American woman.
“Thank you, Miss Angie.” replied Amy in broken English.
“OK, let’s get a stretcher and get Jim into the seclusion room. I’ve got to go back to the office and write up the report for this incident.” Angie got up and hurried back to the office, carrying the capped syringe with her to deposit in the sharps container.
Chapter 5
It was after two am when Angela finally stood in front of the first of two locked metal exit doors. This one bore the scars of countless chair and table strikes. The institutional grey paint was scratched and the graffiti had not been washed off for a week. She fumbled with her keys and finally got the key in the lock and urged the heavy tumbler to turn. “Damn,” she cursed glancing at her watch and noting the time. She wished she had called the child care center in the main hospital to tell them how late she would be picking up Jessica. Oh my God, I am three hours late, she thought. They’re going to kill me over there. She felt her pulse race with anxiety as she considered how upset her 16 month-old daughter was going to be when she woke her up to take her home.
I’ve got to get a new job, she thought. This psych unit is killing me. She closed the door and heard the reassuring click as it locked. She walked down the short hallway to the second of the two locked doors. This one only bore a couple of scars, but they were deep. She didn’t remember who it was or when, but one of the patients had followed a staff member through the first door with a broken off chair leg in hand. Most of the blows had landed on the unlucky staff member. A few had landed on the door. The door had survived – the staff member had not.
I never get off on time, she thought. She glanced behind her just once to make sure nobody was in there with her, then she unlocked the second door. Once through that door, there was a long hallway, then an exit door with a push bar. The second door closed behind her and she made sure it was locked before she walked down the long hallway. Boy, it’s dark out there, she thought as she peered through the glass windows of the hallway. Sensing freedom, she pushed on the bar to open the door to the outside. The elation was short-lived.
The heat smacked Angie in the face as she walked into the August night. The air was close and heavy. A crimson-tinged bolt of lightning highlighted the sky for an instant, then things went dark again. Thunderstorms, she thought. “I’ve got to get home soon. Jessica is scared of thunderstorms and lightning and she will freak out if it happens in the car.” She walked quickly through the darkened path towards the parking lot. She looked around and told herself she was alone. It’s pretty spooky out here, she thought. For a moment, she considered calling security, then she remembered that it would take at least thirty minutes for the guard to get over to the Pavilion. Besides, if he were busy, it could be twice that time.
With the cutbacks heralding the new health care act, there was only one security guard on the night shift now. There used to be three or more guards, even on weekends and now there was only one roaming guard and one – Jason – in the forensic psych unit where Angie worked. After all, it is New Orleans and even post Katrina, the crime rates were startling.
Angie continued the trek to her car,She continued to reflect on the Pavilion as she walked to her car. Now psychiatry was a money-loser, a liability to the bottom line — and CCMC, a world-class hospital, wasn’t about to spend large sums of money to safeguard patients or staff. Managed care payment systems made it almost impossible for you to be crazy, have a breakdown or recover from prescription or street drug abuse or alcohol. Reimbursement had all but disappeared and with health reform on the horizon, it would only get worse. The mental health system in the US was sadly and severely broken, irretrievably so, perhaps. In fact with everyone getting care under the new reformed system, it was predicted that mental health care would increase steadily with shorter term admissions. Angie shook her head when she considered just how awful the mental health system was in the US. Depressed, deranged and addicted psychiatric patients could no longer come in for a few weeks of therapy, get their meds regulated, have a few art classes and play some board games to learn to control their anger. Why, just last week they had discharged a newly diagnosed Bipolar II female patient who had attempted suicide and been in a coma for 10 days with an aspiration pneumonia. She only stayed on the psych unit for two days, because the patient promised, “I’ll never do it again. I don’t know what came over me.” Of course, her insurance didn’t want to pay either but the hospital would have been ethically bound to keep her if she had asked to stay. In Angie’s mind, that bordered on gross negligence. Suppose that woman went home and “offed” herself with her small children in the home? Worse still, suppose in her psychosis, she killed herself and her family? It had happened before. What safeguards had been put in place? Oh, I forgot, Angie admonished herself. She had two days of counseling and three days of Lithium. At least that’s what the attending shrink had told Angie when she questioned the discharge. That should do it. Yeah, sure Angie thought. She was disgusted with the entire US mental health system. How in the world could anyone get better in only several days? These poor, mentally sick, often physically ill patients, were discharged back on the streets of NOLA or even to their homes with no regulated medicines or skills to fight back against the demons that endlessly plagued their minds.
Her walk in the black night seemed endless. Even this late, the southern air was stifling and viscous. She was sweating, but she felt cold on the inside. Angie continued to think about the dangerous patient population at the Pavilion. Many of CCMCs psychiatric admissions were initiated at the hands of the New Orleans Police and the local magistrate who had them committed after they had been picked up for a crime or some sort of outburst. Angie quivered again when she thought of some of the deeply psychotic patients trying to live on their own. They also had to medicate several of the most violent patients prior to bedtime. Angie had doled out six Thorazine slurpees like they were health food drinks but even then, the brutality was awful. She thought about it and then deliberately pushed it from her mind.
When she was honest, Angie admitted to herself that she hated working on psychiatry. She hated it because she was afraid. And she knew the patients knew. It was almost as if they could smell it on her. She could see the recognition in their eyes when they realized it. They seemed to give her a secret smile. Many of their eyes seemed to have an evil glint. Besides, on the critical care units or in the emergency room, you could predict physiological changes in patients. You knew if a patient was going to “go bad” and have a heart attack or throw an embolus. You knew what to expect. But, in psych! You just couldn’t tell. You couldn’t anticipate the interworking and short circuitry in the minds of the profanely and criminally insane. They’d go off at the drop of a hat over nothing. You could hand them their fork the wrong way and they’d come after you. It was frightening. Many of the patients were violent, criminals who had committed heinous crimes, yet CCMC cared for them and she didn’t mind caring for them. She just wanted to have enough staff to work in a safe place.
Angie continued her musings on the way to her car. Her background was critical care and emergency department but there’d been an opening on the psych unit where she could work just weekends and get paid for full time. This was ideal in many ways as it allowed her time with Jessica. She could be the kind of wife her husband wanted–at least most of the time. Besides, the money was good. Everybody at CCME knew the Psychiatric Pavilion was the armpit of the hospital and that nurses were paid a premium to work there because it was dangerous. The Pavilion was also isolated, turbulent and chronically understaffed, especially now because nobody really knew what health reform was going to do to psych care. Usually Angie didn’t mind so much. But the past three nights had been particularly stressful for her, more so than usual. She had been on a different unit each night and besides, Jessica had a cold and she always felt bad leaving her baby in daycare when she was sick. Her Catholic guilt kicked in every time.
It was darker than the blackest of nights, as an ominous feeling of dread hung thick in the night air. Thunderstorms earlier in the evening had created a mass of low, overhanging clouds that completely obliterated the moon. Suddenly, Angie felt a chill come over her. She looked over her shoulder as a quiver ran up her spine. Her legs tingled. Did she hear someone breathing? She strained her ears. She didn’t hear anything. The hum of the cicadas and other night insects was deafening. Angela picked up her step, making a pact with herself never to walk to the parking lot alone again. Not ever. It was scary and unsafe. What in the world was wrong with her? Why had she made such a reckless decision? After another minute or so she heard another noise. It sounded like a set of keys hitting the pavement or, perhaps, like metal hitting metal, she thought. Then, she heard a cough and a sigh of what seemed like satisfaction.
Angie’s autonomic nervous system kicked in. Fight or flight! She started running for her life, but was no match for her assailant. He quickly overtook her, grabbed her by the hair, stuck a rag in her mouth, and pulled her over into a crop of trees to the right of the road. Her attacker seemed huge and had a large scarf tied over his face. His head was covered with a hat. Angie looked into her attacker’s face as he leered over her. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her pupils widened in disbelief. She knew this man! Her heart was firing erratically and she was dizzy and weak with fear. Her assailant looked at her and laughed.
“So, you recognize me, you little slut bitch. We can’t have that now, can we?” Her assailant spat the words at her.
Angie was paralyzed with fear. Her hands were pinned down and the assailant’s knee was in between her legs. Her captor outweighed her and was strong. She couldn’t move, but struggled against him anyway, trying to overcome his strength. He let one of her hands go for a second while he pushed one of the metal spikes into the soft ground. Angela’s hand ripped the hat off her assailant’s head and she dug her nails into his hair, pulling as much hair out as she could. She had wanted to poke out his eyes, but had missed.
“You little bitch, I could kill you for that! How dare you touch me. You are one of them. The man slapped her, dislocating her jaw. Angie felt the bone pop near her ear. The pain was overwhelming and she started to vomit. This further enraged her captor and he slammed her face into the dirt, ripping off her uniform pants. His intent was clear, but all Angie could do was lay there and focus on the smell of the rotting vegetation on the side of the road. She tried to detach herself from her surroundings. It didn’t work.
She heard him grunting while he pushed three more stakes into the ground, singing quietly to himself as he moved methodically through his tasks, clearing old leaves and trash out of his way and away from her. It was like he was cleaning house. For a moment she thought he had forgotten about her and she felt a bit of hope. But it was far-fetched. He turned to her, smiled sweetly, and bit her on her shoulder. Angie screamed and then her attacker hit her in the head with a piece of metal pipe.
Angela felt the searing pain rip through her head and down into her neck and shoulders with the first blow. The second blow didn’t seem to hurt so much. Her last conscious thought was how pretty the twinkling lights looked in the intensive care unit in the main hospital building. She could see them clearly from where she was and she wished she were working a double shift up there where everything was predictable, where the patients were harmless and appreciative. Then, finally, blessedly, she lost consciousness.
Chapter 6
“Oh, no, no … no …. Oh, no …, it can’t be. It just can’t be. This has to be a joke and it isn’t funny. Stop telling me these things. Angie’s at home right now taking care of the baby. She worked last night, she only works on the weekends. Today is Monday,” Bridgett insisted.
A short silence followed as Bridgett continued to listen to the voice on the other end of the phone. Her voice was confused, skeptical as she responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is wrong, wrong, WRONG! It’s not funny! ” Bridgett’s voice reached a fevered pitch as she continued to argue with the person on the other end of the phone for playing games with her about her sister. Finally, she slammed down the phone down and marched into Alex’s office, all legs, high heels, and long, blonde hair.
Alex , the legal counsel for Crescent City Medical Center, looked up from her desk, startled to see her normally good-natured, fun-loving secretary glowering at her, full of rage. Bridgett could best be described as a blonde bombshell. She was tall and beautiful. She wore bright colors and survived a full day in the highest stiletto heels Alex had ever seen. Bridgett’s big blue eyes flashed anger and her voice was clipped as she addressed her boss.
“I’m so mad, in fact, I’m pissed. Somebody from the E.D. just called and told me Angie is a patient there and is all beaten up. It really isn’t funny and it’s a sick joke. I know Angie’s at home taking care of Jessica.” Bridgett glanced down at her watch and added, “Besides, it’s 10:00 in the morning and she worked last night over at the Pavilion. I know, because I talked to her.”
Alex stared at Bridgett, confused by the conversation. “Who called you, Bridge,” Alex asked, her voice soft and concerned.
“I’ve no clue. I didn’t hear their name. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but I am still pissed because they got the wrong person. They need to be more careful over there. Besides, I’m too busy for this stuff today. I love to have fun and cut-up, but not about sad stuff. This just isn’t funny. It pisses me off.” Bridgett fumed, her blue eyes stormy with anger.
Alex and Bridgett heard a knock in the outer office and stared as the door to Alex’s private office slowly opened. Crossing the threshold into her office were Dr. Monique Desmonde, the chief of psychiatry at CCMC, Commander Jack Françoise of the New Orleans Police Department, and Alex’s old nemesis, Betty Favre, the chief nursing executive at CCMC.
Alex felt a cold, numbing twinge in the pit of her stomach and the hair on her arms began to rise. She knew something was very wrong and surmised what was coming next. Dr. Desmonde gave Alex a hard look, shook her head negatively and turned her attention to Bridgett. Jack moved into a position behind Bridgett and gently directed her towards the elegant sofa grouping in Alex’s office. Alex felt as though she were watching a perfectly choreographed production. Betty Favre stood uselessly to the side of the group for a moment, studying her bright red manicure, and then took a seat in a Queen Anne chair.
Alex’s heart was thudding as Monique motioned for her to join them on the sofa. Bridgett seemed transfixed, unable to talk. She looked like a tall, beautiful Barbie doll. Dr. Desmonde began slowly, “Bridgett, I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you.”
Bridgett’s eyes were blank as she stared at Monique, a beautifully groomed, dark-haired woman in her forties. Dr. Desmonde began gently, “Bridge, can you hear me? We must talk, now.”
Bridgett nodded her head slowly. Alex could feel fear and uncertainty crawling up her own spine. Her knees began to shake and her heart was pounding madly. It was the same feeling she always had when something bad had happened. Alex felt her knees jerking so badly that she was sure they would cause her feet to jump out of her 4 inch heels. Jack touched her knee, realizing Alex’s discomfort and offering support. Alex gave the police Commander a small, tight smile.
Dr. Desmonde continued, her voice soft, her eyes meeting Bridgett’s straight on. “Angela worked yesterday, Bridgett. She worked the 11am to 11 pm shift on the psych unit.”
Bridgett interrupted Dr. Desmonde. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I tried to call her last night. . I called early in the evening, but she was working on the prison or forensic unit or wherever. We never spoke,” Bridgett continued, the irritation in her voice unmistakable. “The idiot from the E.D. said she was over there and had been beaten up or something, said she couldn’t speak so I didn’t believe them.” Bridgett turned and noticed Commander Jack Françoise at her side and addressed him, her brilliant blue eyes full of anger. “Commander, can you do something about this? Someone is harassing me about Angie,” Bridgett said as she started to rise from the sofa. “I’ve got to go. I have a ton of work to do.” Bridgett rose from the sofa to leave, as if nothing real had just happened.
Jack looked over at Dr. Desmonde who gave him a thumbs-up sign. He took Bridgett’s hands in his own and said, “Bridge, it’s not a joke. Someone hurt Angie after she left work last night. She was attacked and we didn’t find her until this morning and ….”
Alex’s heart lurched at the sight of Bridgett’s big blue eyes. They were filled with terror and uncertainty. Her pupils were huge, surrounded by liquid pools of white. Her long blonde hair created a halo around her head. Alex wasn’t completely sure if Bridge understood what the police commander had said.
Dr. Desmonde interrupted, “Angie’s over in the E.D. They’re going to take her up to surgery and I thought you might like to see her before she goes,” Monique’s voice trailed off, uncertain of Bridgett’s level of comprehension.
“Yes, yes, I would. Is she OK?”
Monique continued, slowly as she shook her head, “No. Not really. She is very sick. In fact, she is in critical condition. She has a machine breathing for her, a ventilator, and she has some head injuries. She has lost a lot of blood. She also has some internal injuries and Dr. Goshette wants to do an exploratory to be sure she isn’t bleeding on the inside,” Monique said.
“How’d she get hurt?” Bridgett asked in a dazed and child-like manner as she looked around the room. It was clear to all of them that Bridgett really wasn’t getting it. Alex couldn’t help but be amazed at how good the brain was at screening out bad news.
Being the psychiatrist that she was, Monique tried hard to work through Bridgett’s shock and denial. She started again, “Bridgett, Angie was attacked and beaten last night after work. She is very ill. Do you understand?”
Bridgett nodded impatiently, “Yes, you told me. I’d like to go see her now, if you don’t mind. You said she was going to surgery, right?” Bridgett stared at Dr. Desmonde as if she was a moron for not understanding her.
“Yes,” Monique sighed. “Bridgett, you must understand that she has bruises and cuts on her face and that ….” Monique stammered, searching for words, “You must understand that she looks very different. Someone beat her badly. Are you sure you’re up to seeing her?”
Bridgett nodded her head impatiently, “Of course, Dr. Desmonde, of course I am. But it isn’t all that bad, not nearly as bad as you say. Angie and I are twins. If she were hurting badly, I’d be hurting too. It’s always been like that, since we were babies.” Bridgett smiled and continued, “I’m really not worried, let’s go,” she said looking around the group. “Hurry up! I just need to get my purse.”
Alex, Jack, and Monique looked at each other while Bridgett went into her office. Betty Favre had completely removed herself from the situation and was flipping through a copy of “Architectural Digest” she’d removed from Alex’s coffee table. What an uncaring bitch, Alex thought silently to herself.
Monique rolled her eyes at Betty, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, Bridgett doesn’t really get it. Angela looks pretty bad, and believe me she is really hurting. The reason Bridgett isn’t feeling any pain is because Angie is in a coma.”
Alex was startled, “Oh no, is it really that bad?” She searched the faces of her good friends and colleagues. Her crystal blue eyes locked with Commander Françoise’s dark ones. “Please say it isn’t, Jack,” she implored.
“Wish I could Alex, but I can’t. It’s bad. It’s real bad. I’ll fill you in later. Let’s get Bridge through this part first.” Jack lifted his large, bulky frame from the chair and moved into the outer office to help Bridgett gather her things.
Dr. Desmonde added quickly to Alex, “Jack’s right, Alex. Angie is pretty beat up. She may be bleeding internally. She has a skull fracture and some seriously broken bones. Her jaw is broken, as well. She laid out there for hours before anyone found her. She lost a lot of blood and Lord knows how long she has been unconscious. Her crit, CBC are way down.”
Shsssst!” Monique put her finger to her lips as Bridgett and the Commander returned to Alex’s office. “We’ll catch up later.”
Betty looked up from her magazine and spoke for the first time. “My secretary called Bridgett’s husband and he’ll meet us in the E.D. They’re looking for Angela’s husband. He is supposedly on his way. Favre’s voice was flip and tinged with sarcasm. Alex immediately moved into Betty Favre’s personal space to confront her, but Monique waved her away while she motioned for Jack and Bridgett to wait in the hall for them.
“Later, Alex,” she cautioned, “We have enough going on here and you’re not dying on the Betty Favre hill right now.” Monique glared at Betty Favre, “See me later, Ms. Favre. I want to discuss the concept of empathy with you. And I do mean it.”
Alex smiled to herself as she watched Betty bristle with anger and then felt ashamed for enjoying the exchange. Dr. Desmonde was probably the only person at the medical center who disliked Betty Favre as much as she did and this behavior was so unlike Monique it was a bit shocking. They both had Favre’s number and supported each other when the nurse executive ran rough shod over the staff. Betty was uncaring, incompetent, inept and not very smart. Unfortunately, the CEO, Don Montgomery, didn’t share their opinion of Betty — most likely because they were very much alike. If you were to believe the hospital scuttlebutt, they were lovers. Gross, yuck, is all Alex could think about that rumor. It made her feel slightly sick.
As Monique and Alex joined Jack and Bridgett in the hallway, Alex began to feel angry about what had happened to Angie. For three years, Alex repeatedly asked the hospital executive committee to at least move the psych units closer to the main hospital, if not into the main medical complex itself. Of course, Don had a shit fit over that one. He would never tarnish his “world-class, prestigious medical center, soon to be a health sciences center” with the likes of the crazy lowlifes of New Orleans and criminals with HIV. He had even declared at the Board of Trustees’ meeting that he would never turn CCMC into an insane asylum or increase the number of beds for the psychiatric community. Alex doubted if he ever knew how much he had appalled the Board or that he had made an enemy of Monique Desmonde for life, which was probably not a good thing.
Needless to say, Alex had met massive resistance from both Favre and Montgomery, who had issued a joint press release suggesting that “psychiatry, while a necessary albatross to any hospital, was CCMCs gift to the sick, poor, and disenfranchised mental cases of New Orleans.” Monique had seethed with anger and it had taken her and Alex several bottles of Virginia wine to settle both of them. Alex had always been afraid that an accident like Angie’s would happen and that someone, whether a patient, visitor, or staff member, would be seriously attacked in or around the Pavilion. Now it had happened.
All four were silent as they waited for the elevator to the ground level E.D. The elevator seemed to take forever as it stopped on each and every floor. They were met at the nursing station by Sandy Pilsner, the nursing director of the emergency department. Sandy eyed her friends for some nonverbal direction. She moved close to Bridgett, took her hand, and said, “Bridge, Angie looks bad. Her face is black and blue, her eyes are swollen shut and she is hard to recognize. We have IVs and bags of blood hanging and she has a tube down her throat that is hooked to a machine that is breathing for her. She’ll be going up to surgery in a few minutes. We think she is bleeding internally because her lab results are so bad.”
Bridgett smiled brightly at Sandy. “Is Angie talking you to death. I know how she is. She has never even been in the hospital, except for when Jessica was born. Do you think we can even count that?” Bridgett seemed totally out of it.
If Sandy was surprised at Bridgett’s lack of understanding, she didn’t let on. She said very clearly, “Angie is not talking. She’s not breathing on her own and she cannot talk to you. Bridge, do you understand me? She is very sick. Maybe she can hear you, but she cannot talk to you. There is also a possibility her assailant raped her.”
Bridgett didn’t respond. Her expression showed no emotion and her affect was flat. Sandy glanced at Alex and Dr. Desmonde, who shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head. “Let’s go, Sandy,” Monique said gesturing forward with her hand. “We’ve got to break through this denial somehow.” Jack’s face was impassive. Alex knew him well enough to know that he was feeling phenomenal stress. She patted his hand for reassurance.
The sounds of the E.D., the newly renovated patients’ rooms, and the spanking clean floors brought no comfort to Alex. As physicians and nurses glanced at her and offered tight smiles, she felt their pain. They all knew Angie and many had worked with her over the years at CCMC. They had celebrated her graduations from nursing school – first from Delgado at Charity Hospital and then LSU. They had celebrated her marriage and the birth of Jessica. They had worked side by side with her every day. Angie was one of the team, one of their team. She was their friend. She was one of their own, one of CCMCs highly skilled and coveted nurses, and one of the millions of caregivers all over the world who gave endlessly and selflessly of their time, talents, and gifts every day.
Alex noticed that Monique was eyeing Sandy carefully. They both knew this was especially hard for her. Angie had worked in the E.D. prior to the birth of her baby and Sandy had hosted her baby shower. Sandy had already lost her good friend and mentor, Diane Bradley, during the tragic accident in the emergency department just before Mardi Gras earlier in the year. Sandy seemed to be holding up pretty well. Nurses are tough creatures, Monique thought to herself. Much tougher than we docs.
As they entered the patient bay, they walked slowly towards the bed. Bridgett looked hard at the patient in the bed and said angrily, “What in the world is going on? I don’t know who this is, but it certainly isn’t Angie. What kind of sick joke is this?” Bridgett’s eye flared with anger as she glared at Alex.
The next few seconds seemed like eons and finally Monique said gently, “Yes, Bridge, it is Angie. Look carefully. Her face is swollen, her jaw is broken, but it is Angie.”
“It is not, it is not! Why are you all doing this to me? I thought you were my friends.” Bridgett’s enormous blue eyes brimmed over with tears as she stared at the faces of her friends around the bed.
Sandy reached to remove the O.R. cap from Angie’s head. When Bridgett saw the long, mussed up blond curly hair, just like her hair only matted with dark, dried blood, she knew and she began to scream, “Oh, no! Oh, no, no, … PLEASE, no, it can’t be. Angie, Angie, talk to me, Please, Angie, please answer me.” Bridgett touched the long knife wounds extending from her sister’s forehead all the way around her face. She looked at her friends around the bed. “Who did this? Who did this? It must be a monster. It looks like someone tried to cut off her face!” When she noticed her sister’s Mother’s Ring with Jessica’s birthstone she began to sob, “Oh, no, she wanted that ring for so long and Johnny just gave it to her on Mother’s Day.” Her sobs became uncontrollable and could be heard throughout the E.D.
Sandy and Monique lead the sobbing Bridgett away while Alex and Commander Françoise stayed by Angie’s bedside, continuing to observe her injuries. Alex, numb with shock, turned away, attempting to control her emotions. Jack gently touched her on her shoulder, “Alright, Alex, we can go. You’ve seen enough.”
“No, just give me a moment.” Alex drew a deep breath and turned to face Angie again. As she worked hard to dissociate herself from the body of her friend, she noticed some funny shaped marks on Angie’s left shoulder, visible where her hospital gown had fallen to the side. She eyed them curiously and looked at the Commander. “Jack, what are these? They look weird.”
Commander Françoise shuffled uncomfortably. “It’s a damn bite mark, Alex. The SOB bit her at least three times. He’s a sick son of a bitch. I’d like to kill him. I will kill him when I find him,” Jack hissed, as he felt for his holstered gun under his coat.
Alex looked at Jack Françoise with alarm. He was working himself into a frenzy. Not good, she thought to herself. Ever since the spring, when Jack had finally gone to Dr. Robert Bonnet complaining of chest pain, Alex had been afraid that Jack’s stress level and stressful job would cause him a heart attack or stroke. He’d done absolutely nothing Robert had recommended. Typical, stubborn Jack. He was still overweight, had high blood pressure, and had high cholesterol. He drank gallons of black coffee every day, and his diet was horrendous.
Jack had spent his life living on the edge. He had been a football star in high school and at Tulane University, where he had played linebacker. Shortly after graduation, Jack had joined the service and gone Army Spec Ops. Alex assumed Jack had been engaged in Black Ops, but didn’t know for sure. Jack didn’t talk about it much, but she knew that he had been everywhere in the world where there had been a skirmish in the last 25 years. He finally retired from the reserves about 10 years ago.
Of course, now, he was a police Commander in New Orleans working in the city with the highest crime per capita of any city in the U.S. Plus, he now was Commander over the district with the most crime. This was further complicated by the fact that Jack was an honest cop and still clung to his ideologies, even after all of his years of investigating murders, assaults, drugs, and abuse. Jack didn’t even need to be in the trenches anymore. He was a Commander, for God’s sake! But, Alex knew that Jack would never leave the trenches. It wasn’t in his genes. He didn’t go to meetings, ever if there was a way he could get out of them. He cared about victims and worked endlessly to avenge the dead and maimed. Besides, Jack liked to get even, and Jack liked to get back at the perpetrators. It was who Jack was and what had earned him the nickname of “Get Back Jack.”
For a fleeting moment, Alex considered calling Dr. Robert Bonnet, the chief of surgery at CCMC. Robert and Alex were close to Jack and shared concerns about him. Six months earlier, Jack Françoise had saved both of their lives as they were being pursued through the French Quarter by an assailant intent on murdering them. Consequently, a short while later, Robert had overseen Jack’s surgery after he’d been shot by that same man. Robert had been injured as well, by a gunshot injury to the medial nerve in his right arm that could still cost him his career as a surgeon.
Robert couldn’t operate. The verdict was still out on his injury. Additional surgery and physical therapy would render a determination of Robert’s future in a few months. Hopefully, he would be able to operate again. If not, he’d be an excellent medical doctor, as Alex had told him repeatedly. Robert was a natural healer but he was NOLA’s most outstanding surgeon. The police Commander, the surgeon, and the lawyer had become close at that time and forged a bond that would never be broken. The three had traveled to Alex’s home in Virginia with her grandfather, Congressman Adam Patrick Lee, and her grandmother, Kathryn Rosseau Lee, for a well earned vacation and deserved respite. Alex and Robert had been married while attending the University of Virginia. Later they divorced, but had begun to build a new relationship in New Orleans.
Alex’s thoughts briefly returned to her relationship with Robert Bonnet, back when the two were still married. Alex had loved Robert without reservation. They met when Robert was a surgical resident and Alex was a doctoral student in clinical nursing. They dated for over a year, became engaged, and married at the University Chapel on the Lawn in Charlottesville in a very proper circumspect ceremony. The marriage had merged two of the most powerful political families in the South: the Bonnets of Louisiana and the Lees of Virginia. Robert’s family had been prominent in the social, cultural, and political fabric of the state since the French had discovered Louisiana in 1769 and his ancestral grandfather had been the first governor of French Louisiana. Robert’s father, a former governor, presently served as a United States Senator for the great State of Louisiana.
Alex’s Virginia heritage was equally impressive. She could trace her ancestry to Richard Henry Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, Commander and Chief of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Her uncle still owned the ancestral family home, Stratford Hall, in Westmoreland County. Another relative owned a historic plantation on the James River near Richmond. Alex’s grandparents, Congressman Adam Patrick Lee and his wife, Kathryn Rosseau Lee, owned a large estate in Hanover County, Virginia — not far from Scotchtown, the home of Patrick Henry.
Congressman Lee, a diehard law and order politician, had been overwhelmed with respect for the then Captain Françoise’s integrity, character, and investigative skills. He had tried unsuccessfully to lure Jack into a high-level position with the FBI in Washington, D.C., but Jack was resistant. He had told the Congressman quite bluntly, and on several occasions since then, that he “wasn’t working for no damn bureaucrats,” that he was not for sale. Congressman Lee had loved the response and had tried even harder to recruit the burly, fearless New Orleans policeman. In fact, the Congressman was still trying to get Françoise to come to Washington and work on some special law enforcement projects, particularly anything related to terrorism, but Jack still refused. Alex knew Jack would never leave NOLA. Alex felt an arm on her shoulder that halted her daydreaming. She turned and looked at Jack Françoise.
Alex’s mind returned to the grim situation at hand. She stared again at Angie’s battered body. Alex noted how pale, almost waxen, Angie’s face looked and turned to Jack.
“Jack, she is so pale. She looks like a corpse. Feel how cool she is.”
“Yes, I see.” Jack was thinking back to the pale young corpse he had seen at Dr. Jeanfreau’s morgue last week. She had looked just li
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It’s 1977 and ten years have passed since they had joined hands in the ruins of the old abbey church. Standing before the high altar, they were handfasted in the Celtic custom, engaged to be married. A rose bush had bloomed beside the ruined altar. Stephen had reached out to caress one of the flowers. “I’ll find you,” he had said. “In ten years, when we have finished school, when we are able to marry, I’ll find you. Until then, whenever you see a yellow rose, remember me. Remember I love you.”
In those ten years, Katherine has finished college, completed med school, and become a doctor. In those ten years they have not seen each other, have not spoken, and have not written. It was what they had agreed.
For a decade, she has been waiting, hoping, praying. Today─her birthday─she finds a vase of yellow roses when she reaches home.
Stephen, though, is not Katherine’s only suitor. Bill Wilson has known her since they were in high school. He has long planned to wed her, and he finally decides to stake his claim.
Although the action occurs primarily in New York City, psychologically, the story is set in a small town in Virginia. Change came slowly to the rural South in the nineteen-seventies and women were expected to be subservient to men, to have children, to keep house. A woman was to be above reproach, and any hint of scandal was met with censure, with ostracism, with shame. These attitudes threaten to destroy Katherine and the life of which she dreams.
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The Handfasting
by David Burnett
Handfasting
August 1967
Theirs was the only room on the third floor of the small hotel, so no one noticed when they walked, hand in hand, down the short hallway. Katherine had never done anything quite like this before, and her hand shook as she took hold of the rail at the top of the stairs. She looked at Steven and smiled nervously as he squeezed her hand in reassurance.
Small lights gleamed on the landing below, but the stairs were dark, her steps unsteady, and she stumbled twice on the way down. Steven was holding her arm, though, and he caught her each time she tripped. They stopped as they reached the hotel’s front door.
“Are you all right?” he whispered.
“Fine. It’s just dark.” She hugged him. “Really.”
“You have the key?”
She reached into a pocket and pulled out the ring that held both the key to their room and the one to the hotel’s door. “Got it.”
They opened the door and slipped out into the darkness. Even though it was summer, the night air was cold and Katherine pulled her sweater around her, tightly. Only in Scotland, she thought, would she need a sweater in August. It was just after midnight, and the small Scottish town was effectively closed for the night. Their hotel was dark, except for a light in one room on the second floor. The other hotel, directly across the street, was also dark.
They turned to the left and walked down High Street toward the central plaza. They passed two pubs, one on each side of the street, both closed. Farther down, a third one, the Golden Lion, appeared to be open—lights were visible through the window at least. Katherine thought it unlikely that many patrons were still inside. If so, they were surely sipping their last pints for the evening.
They reached the plaza, the one part of town that was brightly lit. It was surrounded by shops—a candy store, a shop that carried Scottish woolens, two cafés, and one filled with what Katherine called tourist junk—stuffed Nessies, t-shirts with cute slogans, tartan ties, plastic swords, anything that might induce a tourist to part with a few pounds or dollars.
The Mercat Cross, the ancient symbol of royal authority, stood in the center of the plaza. Some fifteen feet high, it had occupied the same spot in the center of town for over five hundred years, witnessing the town’s gradual change from a place of pilgrimage, to a bustling market town, to the tourist attraction that it had become in recent years.
The tourists came to see the ruins of the great abbey, much as the pilgrims in centuries past had come to see it in its glory. Katherine and Steven were going to the abbey, tonight.
High Street ran through the plaza and they continued for two more blocks before turning left on the B road that ran toward the ruins. The buildings blocked the lights from the plaza and they had to watch their steps to stay on the sidewalk that ran beside the narrow road. Since it was late, there was no traffic—if a car should come speeding along, the driver would be as surprised to find them on foot, as they would be to see the car.
The walkway ended abruptly and they stepped off onto the grassy shoulder.
When Katherine looked up, she could see the stars. She had been in Scotland for almost six weeks and this was the first time she had seen them. Perhaps it was a good omen.
Ten minutes later, they reached the abbey. The floodlights that illumined the ruins had been turned off and a single streetlight in front of the visitor center provided the only illumination. A chain hung across the entrance to the abbey grounds. Few visitors would walk out from town,and since there was no place to park, other than in the car park, the chain effectively closed the site to visitors.
Steven started across the road, but Katherine held back.
The abbey seemed ominous in the darkness, and Katherine could easily envision that the spirits of the monks who had once lived within its walls still hovered about.
Steven must have felt her hesitate because he squeezed her arm.
Katherine looked up into his eyes. Coming here had been her idea and she wondered if he still thought it was a good plan.
“You’re sure?” she whispered. “You want to do this?”
Steven nodded and hugged her. “Positive.”
They crossed the highway, stepped over the chain, and hurried across the brightly lit lawn, stopping when they reached the shadows of the abbey’s walls. They had to walk slowly because the ground was uneven and littered with stones, but they finally reached the side entrance to the abbey’s church.
The church had held up better than the rest of the abbey. When the abbey had been disbanded in the mid fifteen hundreds, the church had continued to be used as the parish church for another two centuries. The walls were mostly complete, and the stone floor was still in place. A roof and windows were all that would be needed to make the building serviceable again.
Katherine switched on a penlight when they entered the church, confident that it would not be seen by a passing motorist. Walking through the nave and the choir, they approached the high altar—the altar itself was gone, but the raised platform, on which it had stood, remained.
To one side, a yellow rosebush was in full bloom. The fact that it could survive in the abbey was amazing on its own, that it bloomed each year in August, even more so. It was said that a sixteenth-century abbot had removed stones from the floor in order to plant the bush and that it bloomed once each year, on the anniversary of the last mass said by the monks. Its water source was a mystery. The yellow rose had been adopted as the symbol of the abbey, and later as the symbol of the town itself.
Together, they knelt in front of the space where the high altar had stood. Katherine unfolded a sheet of paper, placing it on the ground. Steven held the light as they joined their right hands and Katherine wrapped a purple cord around them. She picked up the paper, and Steven began to read.
“I, Steven Andrew Richardson, take thee, Katherine Lee Jackson, to be my betrothed wife, as the law of the holy Kirk shows, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Katherine looked into his eyes. “I, Katherine Lee Jackson, take thee, Steven Andrew Richardson, to be my betrothed husband, as the law of the holy Kirk shows, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
A smile spread across Katherine’s face. She wanted to jump and shout, but she remembered that they were not supposed to be in the abbey. She put her arms around Steven and squeezed as hard as she could.
He hugged and kissed her in return. “We are engaged now?” he whispered.
“According to Celtic custom we are. I am bound to you forever, unless you release me. You are bound to me.”
They knelt in silence and she whispered a prayer, asking that they would be able to carry out the plans they had made. When she had finished, she raised her head and looked at Steven. Her eyes followed his toward the rosebush. The moon had risen behind the abbey and its light streamed through one of the small round windows on the side of the nave, falling on a single rose at the end of an especially long cane.
He reached out and pulled the rose toward them. The fragrance was sweet, reminding Katherine of a perfume that had once been her favorite.
“Whenever you see a yellow rose, Katie, think of me.” He said quietly. “Every time you see one, remember that I love you.”
Steven released the rose and took her hand in his. “Everything will work out. You’ll see.”
After another minute, he helped her to her feet and they retraced their steps to the entrance. A light raked across the door just before they reached it, and he peered around the wall.
Two police officers stood at the chain, shining lights around the ruins.
“They couldn’t have seen my light,” she whispered.
“Just a routine check. If they had seen the light, they would have come in.”
After several minutes, the officers drove away. Katherine and Steven hurried down the road and returned to town.
The police car was in the plaza as they turned onto High Street.
“Good evening, Officer,” Katherine said as they passed.
“Good evening, ma’am. It’s a bit late for a stroll.”
“We’re going in now, Officer. Good night.”
“Good night, ma’am.”
Reaching the hotel, Katherine looked back down the street. The officer was still watching them. She inserted the key, opened the door, and carefully, they climbed the stairs.
Reaching their room, they changed clothes and kissed good night. Then, as they had for the past two weeks, Katherine lay under the covers, Steven on top. He put his arm around her and they slept.
Birthday
August 1977
The twang of the electric guitar and the whine of the singer’s voice drowned out the conversations from the other tables, as Katherine sat with Becky and Sara in The Shining Stallion Restaurant, not far from Central Park.
Friends in college, the three of them now shared an apartment in a converted brownstone on the Upper West Side. While Sara and Becky had moved to New York several years earlier, after graduation from UVA, Katherine had completed med school and her internship. She had then taken a position in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, joining her friends in June.
“Ow!” Katherine’s hand flew up as a couple of peanuts bounced off her forehead. Others hit the posters of Loretta Lynn and Kenny Rogers hanging on the wall behind her.
A young guy sitting at the table next to them laughed. “Sorry, lady.”
Bowls of roasted peanuts sat on each table, and he and his friends were tossing them at each other, trying to catch them in their mouths. Katherine looked for the peanuts on her table, planning to throw them back at him, but they had fallen and were now lost on the sawdust-covered floor.
She appraised their waiter as he strode across the room. He stopped to deliver fresh drinks to a group of guys, then he approached their table. He looked good in his white Western shirt, red bandana, and cowboy boots. He touched the brim of his Stetson as he smiled, speaking loudly to be heard.
“Everyone all right? You ladies need more to drink?”
He reminded Katherine of the clichéd man in the white hat in her father’s favorite Westerns—the hero who rode into town, cleaned it up, and then in the last reel, rode away with the girl.
She returned the waiter’s smile. She supposed that almost any girl would be willing to ride off with this guy.
“Another for the birthday girl,” Becky replied, pointing at Katherine.
“If I have much more, I’ll be the birthday blimp.” She patted her stomach, as the waiter went off to get their order. “This barbeque is good. Reminds me of what we eat in Hamilton.”
Becky laughed. “That was the point, child. That was the point.”
As the song ended, a line of waiters formed near the entrance and began to snake through the restaurant toward their table. Before Katherine could react, the waiters began to sing their own song. “Happy birthday! Happy birthday! Happy birthday to you!”
Katherine’s eyes grew wide and her face felt warm. “You didn’t!”
The waiters circled the table, still singing. On cue, they stopped. The crowd fell silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Katherine.” The lead waiter pointed to her. “Katherine came in tonight to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday.”
“Woo-hee!” A voice rang out from the other side of the room.
“On the count of three, let’s all give her a big, Shining Stallion birthday wish. One. Two. Three.”
The crowd roared, “Happy Birthday.”
Katherine covered her face with her hands as the waiter set a cowboy hat on her head, kissed her on the cheek, and placed a giant cupcake in front of her.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you both!”
Becky and Sara were doubled over, laughing.
“Death is certain!”
The waiters drifted away amid diminishing applause as the conversations around them resumed.
“Okay, old lady, what words of wisdom do you have for us?”
“Old lady? I won’t be old until—”
“I guess you’re right,” Becky cut in. “Twenty-eight isn’t thirty…but it’s getting awfully close.”
“Hey. You two are only a couple of months behind. Just wait until October.”
“Sweet twenty-eight and never been kissed,” Sara sang.
“Stop it. Someone might hear you. Besides, it’s not true. Of course I’ve been kissed.”
“Not true? Tell us. Who has been able to pry the book out of your hands to even get close enough to kiss you?”
“Stop!” Katherine laughed.
“Who? Was it Robert Carson, that guy who was sweet on you your senior year at UVA? Maybe what’s his name?” Sara snapped her fingers three times, as if recalling the name. “Yes, Bill Wilson, that attorney from Hamilton who calls sometimes?”
“Leave her alone, Sara, or she’s going to get upset.”
“She knows I’m teasing.”
“I know she’s teasing, but if she doesn’t stop, I’ll start asking her about Will.”
“You don’t want to go there.” Becky laughed. “You’ll hear a lot more than you bargained for.”
“Not true,” Sara replied. “I always behave myself.”
“Right.” Becky turned to Katherine. “Back before you moved in, they used to sit in the living room while I was trying to sleep. The things I heard!”
“You heard nothing.”
“Sara and Will sitting in a tree…”
Sara rolled her eyes and the others laughed.
“So, Katherine, what are you doing this weekend?” Becky asked. “Did you say that the aforementioned Bill Wilson is coming to town, going to take you to dinner for your birthday on Saturday?”
Katherine shrugged. “I had a letter saying he would be in town—that he wanted to take me to dinner. He was supposed to call or something, but he hasn’t, so I guess not.”
“That’s not nice.”
“He wasn’t coming just to see me, Sara. I would have told him not to do that. I’m not sure that he knew Saturday was my birthday.”
“He wasn’t your boyfriend?”
“In his mind, maybe. We dated a little in high school, but he wanted more than I did. He would show up at random times when I was in college and med school. Really weird. You know, I haven’t seen him in,” Katherine looked up, recalling, “oh, over a year, at least. He dropped in to see me in Atlanta last summer, at the hospital. We went to lunch. He got really upset about something. I never knew what.”
Sara pouted. “You’ll be all alone on your birthday.”
“That’s right. Sara is going to Boston to see Will.” Becky turned toward Katherine. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall at his apartment.”
“You’re terrible. I’m staying with his sister.”
Becky ignored her protest. “And I’m flying to Denver for that sales meeting.”
Katherine waved it off. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a birthday. Anyway, I volunteered to work a shift for one of the other doctors. I’ll be in the ER until three or four o’clock.”
The recorded music stopped and a live quartet began to play. A boy tapped Katherine on her shoulder.
“Uh…birthday girl, would…would you like to, uh, dance?”
Katherine looked at the guy standing beside the table. He might be twenty-one, she thought. Probably not, though. Must have a fake ID. His face was red and his eyes darted everywhere, except to hers. She glanced over her shoulder at the table where he had been sitting and saw five other guys, snickering.
“How much?”
“What do you mean, how much?”
“How much is the bet?” She smiled, trying to put him at ease.
He looked at his feet. “Uh, twenty bucks.”
“To ask me or to dance with me?”
“I have to get you on the dance floor.”
Becky started to laugh, and the boy turned a deeper shade of red.
“What’s your name?”
“Chris.”
“Well, Chris, I’m Katherine. I’d love to dance with you.” She took his hand and they walked onto the floor as the musicians began to play.
Katherine glanced over Chris’s shoulder and saw his friends staring, mouths open, eyes wide. She smiled and put her head on his shoulder. It had been years since she had been to a dance. He put his arms around her waist and she put hers around his neck. They began to sway in time to the music—the same song they’d heard earlier, a woman growing older without a man in sight. Katherine attempted to ignore the lyrics.
It was true, she was only twenty-eight. That wasn’t old. Not for having finished med school and all. She thought about the boys she had dated in high school, in college. Almost all of them were married now. Most of them had children. Back then, there was so much time, so many guys, but now? She suddenly felt all alone, and a few tears slipped out.
The song ended. Katherine quickly wiped her tears and kissed Chris on the cheek.
“Thanks for asking me to dance. I enjoyed it.” She smiled and Chris blushed.
“I…I did too.”
“That was really nice,” Sara said when Katherine reached the table.
Katherine looked back at Chris’s table and saw the other guys reaching for their wallets. “I hate jerks like them.”
“That’s why you shouldn’t encourage them,” Becky replied. “But you were nice to Chris.”
“Are you crying, Katherine?” Sara reached across the table and patted her hand. “What’s wrong? You were really nice to him.”
“It’s nothing, really. Just that song, I guess. I feel so alone. No boyfriend. You know, I really would like a family someday.”
“Well, you’ve been in school—”
“And almost everyone in my med school class was married by the time we finished. The young nurses at the hospitals look forward to the new interns because they know that those who are not married are looking for wives. And they find them.”
“Prince Charming will come along. Any day now.”
“Only in fairytales, Sara. Maybe I should chase Bill Wilson. He would marry me.”
“But you don’t love him.”
“No, but sometimes there are other reasons for marriage.”
“Not good ones, Katherine. Not good ones.”
“I’m being silly. I’ll be all right.” Katherine wiped her eyes. “Ready to go?” She stood up. “Dinner was delicious. Thank you.”
***
Bill Wilson sat at the end of a long table at the Pub Beside the River, in the fishing village north of Charleston.
“To friends, fun, and fish!” His friend, Johnny Metzger, raised his mug high.
“Hear! Hear!”
“Fantastic trip, isn’t it, Bill.”
“In more ways than one, Johnny. In more ways than one.”
“We certainly reeled them in today.”
“Certainly did. Two more days like this and we’ll be able to feed the whole town of Hamilton for a month.” Bill smiled. “Great fishing.”
“You were supposed to be in New York this weekend.”
“Yeah, I was going to drop in on Katherine Jackson.”
“You still sweet on that woman? I thought you lost interest last summer.”
“Oh, I thought I’d give her another chance.” He sighed. “But she would have dragged me around town, poking in antique stores, going to museums. You know how Katherine is. She’ll be at home next weekend, anyway. I’ll see her on Saturday at the cookout.”
“Missed a weekend with your girlfriend? Wouldn’t the nights have made up for the museums?” His buddy, Eugene, snickered.
Johnny laughed too. “You’ve never met Katherine Jackson.”
“No action, huh?” Eugene shook his head.
“Not for lack of trying on Bill’s part.” Johnny motioned toward the group sitting around the table, all of whom had turned to listen. “Tell them Bill. Tell them what happens when a guy gets fresh with Katherine Jackson.”
Bill reflexively rubbed his left side. “You brought it up, Johnny, you tell them.”
“It was—what?—about ten years ago, just before graduation. Bill and Katherine had been to a movie over in Richmond. They stopped for a burger and then Bill drove her home. Now, you fellows have never met Katherine. The word fox doesn’t even come close to describing this girl—beautiful, smart, funny. Every guy wanted to date her, and a bunch of them tried.” Johnny took a swig of his drink.
“Well, they drove up to Katherine’s house. The lights were on, but Bill didn’t see any cars. They walked in—he didn’t hear anything. Dead silent. He checked his watch, saw that they made it home a lot earlier than they had planned, and he recalled that her parents were going to a dinner party a couple of blocks down the street.”
Johnny looked around the table. “You guys aren’t from Hamilton—in Hamilton, dinner parties are long-term affairs. You might start with drinks and appetizers at seven, move on to dinner at eight, and find yourself eating dessert on the deck around ten. People often don’t leave until after eleven o’clock. Her parents wouldn’t be home for at least an hour. Maybe longer.”
Johnny chuckled. He had told the story many times and it appeared to Bill that it never got old for Johnny.
“Well, Bill tells Katherine, ‘Your parents aren’t at home. I’d better make sure everything is safe.’”
“She asked me in!”
“That’s his story.” Johnny waved him off. “Katherine’s version says Bill had been drinking and he pushed his way in.”
Bill didn’t need to finish listening—he clearly recalled what happened next.
“No one’s here, Katherine.”
“I know. I’ll be fine. Mom and Dad are down the street. I’ll reset the alarm as you leave.”
Bill locked the door and stepped toward her. “That might not be for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
He ignored her question and pushed her down on the sofa in the living room.
“Bill! Stop!”
“There’s something I want to do before I leave.”
Katherine tried to push him away. “Bill, let me up!”
“When I’m finished.”
Holding one hand firmly on her chest, he began to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his pants.
“Let me go!” Katherine rolled from side to side, struggling to free herself.
Bill laughed.
She hit him, kicked him, scratched at his face. “You’re hurting me!”
“You’ve been asking for this and it’s past time I gave it to you.”
“Let me up! Get out!” Katherine was shouting. Her face was red. She hit at him, tried to push him away again.
She screamed.
He laughed.
“Scream away, Katherine. No one is home.”
She started to cry. “My father will use you as crab bait!”
Bill stared down at her in utter contempt. “Typical female,” he snorted. “You tease a guy all night long, but when the time comes to fill your part of the bargain you don’t do it. You cry,no, no, and turn on the tears.” He chuckled. “Well, darling, tonight I’m going to get what I deserve, and I don’t give a damn about your tears.”
He turned his head as he dropped his pants, and Katherine shifted her position, throwing him off balance. As he started to fall backwards, she sat up and pounded her fist into his side.
“Bitch,” Bill mumbled.
Johnny laughed. “Well, after she KO’d good old Bill here, Katherine called her dad. He found Bill on the floor, writhing in pain. Katherine had her dad’s pistol, pointing it at Bill’s head, daring him to get up.”
The entire group was laughing now.
“A real spitfire,” one guy said.
“The pistol was loaded and the safety was off.” Johnny cackled. “She was ready to blow him away.”
“I spent three days in the hospital. Two broken ribs.” Bill sighed. “If I hadn’t been buzzed—well, things would have ended really differently.”
“Yeah, Bill. We hear you.” Johnny laughed again. “Guys, you don’t mess with Katherine Jackson. Not without backup. Not if you want to live.”
***
“Birthday girl gets first shower,” Katherine called as they reached home. She slipped into her bathrobe and picked up a towel. As she tied the belt around her waist, she glanced at her desk, covered in medical books, papers, a couple of bills, and the novel she had been trying to read for over a month. There was a birthday card from Bill Wilson.
He was really a puzzle. He would tell anyone who would listen that he and Katherine would marry, but he visited her very occasionally, wrote seldom, almost never called. The birthday card wasn’t even really a birthday card. It was generic—a picture of a bowl of flowers on the front and Have a Happy Day printed inside. She wasn’t even sure that he had signed the card, and it had arrived a full week before her birthday.
She shrugged. It didn’t really matter. He could be fun on a date, if it was something he wanted to do and if he had not been drinking.
She recalled their last date. He had been drinking that night for sure, the night he’d tried to assault her. She supposed he had probably been outright drunk. That had been her mother’s explanation anyway. And afterwards, her mother had insisted that Katherine be nice to him, even if she refused to date him again. The Wilsons, after all, were friends of the family. Katherine wanted to please her mother, and she had been able to tolerate the occasional contact with Bill over the years.
As she started for the bathroom, she heard a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it.” Becky checked to see who was outside. “It’s Christa.” Christa and her husband lived across the hall. “She has a vase of flowers.”
“Hi, Christa, come in.”
“Hi. I can’t stay. I’m just playing delivery girl. The florist dropped these off right after the three of you left. They’re for,” she looked carefully at the card, “Katie Lee Jackson. Is that you, Katherine?”
That got Katherine’s attention. She paused to listen to Christa. No one called her Katie Lee—there was only one person. Her heart began to race. It was the summer before she went to college, ten years ago, that she’d last heard the name Katie Lee.
Steven.
Taking a deep breath to steady her hand, she reached out. “I’ll take them, Christa. Thanks so much for keeping them for me.” Katherine leaned in and inhaled their fragrance as she took the vase, holding it out to gaze at the blooms.
Whenever you see a yellow rose, think of me. His voice rang true in her mind. It was almost as if she heard the words spoken aloud.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” she asked.
“A dozen yellow roses in a crystal vase—what’s the occasion?”
“My birthday is Saturday, so I guess they’re a present.”
“Well, you be nice to whoever sent these. I would topple over if Ben brought me anything like this.”
“Ben is very nice to you.”
“He is. He is. But flowers? This vase?” She shook her head on her way out. “Well, have a nice birthday.”
Katherine turned to see Becky and Sara standing, hands on hips.
“After all of the things you’ve said about Bill Wilson,” Sara reprimanded her. “Those are so pretty. Why did he think of yellow roses, I wonder?”
Katherine’s hands shook as she placed the vase on the coffee table. She ran her fingers along the purple ribbon and fumbled with the card as she pulled it from the envelope. She had been looking for a sign for months, hoping for a call. The flowers—they couldn’t be, but surely they must be from Steven.
She stared at the card, her mouth open.
“What is it, Katherine? Who sent them?”
When she didn’t answer, Becky snatched the card and read it aloud. “Hi, Katie Lee. Can you believe it has been ten years? Remember, I promised to track you down. If you would like to talk, I have dinner reservations at Villa Antonia on Saturday at six. Saturday is your birthday, isn’t it? If you can’t make it, please let me know. I can’t wait to see you! Steven.”
Becky looked to Katherine, eyes full of questions. “Who is Steven?”
Katherine flopped onto the sofa, shock setting in.
“I said who is Steven?” Becky chided. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll call—there’s a phone number at the bottom you know.”
“Steven is…an old friend.” She pulled a single rose from the vase and held it out, studying the swirl of the petals. “Think of me,” he had said. “Remember I love you.” She looked up. “I…well, I had hoped to hear, but I never really expected to…I mean…Steven and I, we’re engaged to be married.”
Steven
“Tell us about Steven.”
Katherine twirled a strand of hair into a tight curl around one finger. “I told you about my trip to England, the summer between high school and college.”
“Of course.”
“There were a lot of kids, a lot of Americans, there that summer. You would meet people, hang out with them, and travel with them for a while. You know what I mean. If you were interested in the same things, you found yourselves together frequently. Steven was one of the other kids, and we wanted to see a lot of the same things.”
Katherine looked up at the ceiling, recalling that summer. She still held the rose that she had taken from the vase and she tapped it idly against the chair.
“He was an art student, a sophomore in college. He was going to spend the next year in Italy, painting. He was gorgeous—all of the girls thought so—smart, had a wicked sense of humor. He was also kind of shy, and most girls didn’t make the effort to get to know him.”
“But you did.”
“I did.” Katherine smiled, remembering a night at the youth hostel in York when she and Steven had stayed up talking and laughing, long after everyone else had crawled into bed. “A group of us went north, to Edinburgh, in Scotland, then on to Glasgow. Steven and I went different ways then. He went north. I went west, to the islands. I felt sad when we split up, but you know…that’s what we did. We wanted to see different things, we went our own ways.”
Sara moved to sit beside her. “But you got back together?”
Katherine nodded. “A couple of weeks later, I was back on the mainland. I’d been on the ferry with these three guys from Indiana. We had slept under a tree in a field on the edge of town. We were headed back toward Edinburgh in the morning. I woke up at sunrise. The guys were dressed, ready to go, and one of them was rummaging through my pack.”
She crossed her arms. “It still makes me angry. I had five hundred British pounds in my pack. Do you have any idea how much money that was? They took it all. I fought with them, hit them, scratched, kicked, but you know, three guys against one me. One of them smacked me in the face, busted my lip. The other two tackled me, dragged me back to the tree, and threw me against it. They told me not to fight back if I wanted to live.”
She started to cry. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I was so afraid. I stopped struggling, begged them not to hurt me, to take the money and not hurt me. They laughed at me, made fun of me. The one who searched my pack, he called himself Tom, acted like he was going to,” Katherine looked down and toyed with the hem of her blouse, “do something else, but finally, they tied me to the tree and just walked off. As they left, Tom looked back and told me not to follow them. ‘If we even see you again, well, we’ll definitely hurt you.’ He threatened me. That’s what he said. He said he’d definitely hurt me.”
“That’s horrible,” Sara exclaimed. “Did you go to the police?”
“It took me half an hour to get loose. Took me another forty-five minutes to get back to town, find the police station, and tell the officers what had happened. They were sympathetic—they took the report.”
Sara shook her head. “They couldn’t do anything else?”
“What could they do? Three America males, one tall, the others average. No last names. All had dark hair and eyes. My word against theirs. If they had hitched a ride, they could have been forty miles or more away by the time I made the report. The police offered to let me use the telephone and gave me directions to Western Union.”
“I wouldn’t have cared about their threats,” Becky shook her head. “I’d have gone after them.”
“I believed them when they said that I shouldn’t fight back if I wanted to live.”
“What did you do?” Sara asked. “Call your parents?”
“I didn’t know what to do. My mother never wanted me to go to England in the first place. I could hear what she would say. It’s not ladylike. You should have spent the summer at home, helping with Bible school, working at the soup kitchen with the ladies from St George’s. You shouldn’t have been traveling with strangers, should have stayed in a hotel, were lucky all they did was take your money. Irresponsible…I told you so—you know mothers.”
Becky nodded. “Sounds like my mother.”
“I guess she would have been partly right. I felt so stupid, so incompetent, so not in control. You know how I hate feeling like that.” Katherine clenched her hand on the arm of the chair.
“I walked around town most of the day, but I was afraid I’d run into the three guys. I had a little money, not all of it was in my pack, but not enough to last the two weeks before I was to meet my parents.”
Katherine stood and walked over to take a seat in front of the window. She leaned her head against the windowpane. “Late in the afternoon, I was sitting near the dock—dirty, crying, my hair was a mess, my face was bruised—and I heard Steven’s voice.” She traced a finger in the fog from her breath against the window.
“Katie? Katie, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
She wiped her eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“Right. I can see that.” He looked at her dirty clothes and face, her red eyes. “What happened?”
Slowly, she told him the story, told him why she couldn’t call home.
“What am I going to do?”
Steven paused. “You can stay with me tonight. I have a reservation at a hotel. Clean up, sleep well. Things will seem different in the morning.”
“Will they?”
“It’s what my mother always tells me.”
“I can’t stay in a hotel room with you. Sleeping under a tree is one thing, but a hotel room?”
“It’s just an offer. I’ll be at the King William Hotel. Just up the hill,” he pointed to a gray stone building, “if you change your mind. Anyway, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m heading back toward Edinburgh.”
Steven picked up his pack and started up the hill.
She watched him go, wondering what she should do. Steven was a nice guy. Surely he wouldn’t try anything. She decided she’d be safe. He was right…a good night’s sleep, someone she knew to travel with—
“Steven!”
He was a block away and didn’t hear her.
“Steven!”
She started to run, catching up just as he reached the hotel. “Steven, wait.” She grabbed his sleeve. “You really wouldn’t mind?”
“No, not at all. You can stay with me.” He smiled.
She had always liked his smile. Her face felt warm, and she looked away, hoping he had not noticed her blushing.
He started to go inside then he turned and led her to a bench.
“Look, Katie, it’s just an offer of a place to stay. I won’t attack you in the middle of the night or anything.”
She managed a weak smile. “I know. You’re really sweet. If my mother were to find out, though…”
“I won’t tell her!”
They both laughed.
“Another thing, though. I know it is nineteen sixty-seven and things are changing and all, but I don’t think they’ll give us a room together…unless we’re married. I’ll have to say you’re my wife.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’ll say we’re married?” She crossed her arms and turned away, feeling as if they were checking into a five-dollar motel in a seedy part of Richmond.
“I’ve seen them turn people away at other hotels,” he said.
“Okay.” Her voice was shaking. “Okay.”
She stood by the door while Steven registered. The clerk watched as they mounted the stairs. “He didn’t believe you, did he? He thinks—”
“He gave us the room.” Steven unlocked the door. The room was small, but it looked clean. Windows looked out over the water. “The sunset should be gorgeous.”
Katherine looked around the room and gasped. “Steven, there’s only one bed!”
“I had to tell him we were married.” He raised his empty hands in a gesture of innocence.
“Oh, yeah. That’s right.”
“The bathroom is two doors down. Do you want to clean up before dinner?”
“I look that bad?”
“Pretty bad.” He laughed.
“I’m not really very hungry.”
“I’m sorry. I was going to take you to the Red Lion. It’s supposed to be the best pub in town.”
“You don’t have to pay for my food.”
“Of course I don’t have to pay for your food. I was asking you for a date, Katie.” He looked away. “If you don’t want to go with me, that’s fine—”
She put her hand to his mouth to stop him. “I’m sorry, Steven. It’s been a really bad day. Until now. I’d love to go to dinner with you. Let me bathe and change.”
“So, that’s what happened.” Katherine stood and returned to where Becky and Sara were sitting.
“You spent the night with him?” Sara gasped.
“Two weeks.”
“Did you—”
“No! We slept in the same bed, not together.”
“What’s the big deal?” Becky asked. “Lots of people do that.”
“In nineteen sixty-seven? When you were in high school?”
“I wouldn’t!” Sara said.
“How about in Boston?” Becky teased.
“I told you. I’ll stay with Will’s sister. Anyway, we’re talking about Katherine.” She turned back to Katherine. “What happened next?”
“Like I said, we traveled together for two weeks. I had a little money, enough to buy lunch. Steven asked me for a date every night.”
“That so sweet,” Sara said.
“At one hotel, the clerk asked us to prove we were married. I thought we were going to be sleeping under the trees, but Steven told her we were on our honeymoon, so there hadn’t been time for a new license or passport.”
“You said you had hoped he would find you. What is that about?”
“I really liked Steven, and he must have liked me. I mean, I don’t think he would have treated just anyone like he did me, giving me a place to stay, dinner every night. Well, over those two weeks, we fell in love.”
She wiped her eyes, remembering the first time Steven had said I love you. They had stopped to rest on a little stone bridge before climbing the hill into town. It was the perfect setting.
“We ended up in a little town, not too far from Edinburgh, where I was meeting my parents the next day. I had just enough money for a bus ticket. Steven was going to London and then to Italy—do you know what handfasting is?”
“No.”
“It’s an old Celtic engagement ceremony. You make a formal agreement to marry.”
“You married him?”
“No, we became engaged. In the old abbey church. It was late at night.”
Katherine described their visit to the abbey. As she finished, she looked down at her hands and felt her lip begin to tremble. “I’ve never told anyone about this. I think I was happier then, more than any other time in my life.”
Sara was starting to cry, too. She put her arm around Katherine and hugged her.
“That’s really sweet,” Becky said softly as she reached over and squeezed Katherine’s arm.
“We had sense enough to know that we couldn’t get married then. We both had plans. I was going to UVA, then med school. He was going to Italy. He didn’t know what next—finish college, grad school maybe. We agreed that in ten years, we’d be finished with school and all, and he promised to find me, so we could be married.”
Sara sighed. “How romantic!”
“Now wait a minute,” Becky said. “You haven’t seen this guy in ten years, you know nothing about him—what he’s been doing, what he does, even what he looks like now—and you’re going to marry him? Come on!”
Katherine stood and walked around the room, still holding the rose she had taken from the vase. Finally, she turned back to Becky. “Yes, if we’re still in love.”
“How will you know?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to dinner with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder what he’s like,” Sara said.
“I don’t know!”
“You’re saying that a lot.”
“What do you want me to say? I always hoped he would track me down, but I had begun to doubt that he really could. I don’t know what to expect. He was going to be a painter…I’ll have to think about it. I’m going to bed.”
“Maybe he’s your Prince Charming!”
“Maybe he’s a starving artist looking for a rich doctor to support him. There’s this one guy who paints portraits in the park. He’s about your age—”
“Becky, you’re so cynical.”
***
Steven Richardson poured another cup of tea. Evening tea was a tradition he’d adopted while at Oxford, pursuing his degree in art history. The degree, followed by two years as a lecturer at Oxford, had led to his appointment as a curator in the Near Eastern Gallery, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Steven had pretty much given up any hope of finding Katie. He had written to her, and to her mother, simply addressing the letters to Hamilton, Virginia—the only address he’d had. They had not been returned, so he’d supposed that they had been delivered, but there had never been any response. He had tried the UVA alumni association knowing that Katie had planned to enroll there, but the association had not provided any useful information. He had not been sure what else to do. Driving to Hamilton and knocking on doors had seemed a bit extreme.
It was for the best, he had decided. He could not imagine that a girl like Katie would still be single after ten years. Then, too, she might have changed. He might not find her as beautiful, as interesting, as funny as he had a decade ago. Locating her after ten years had seemed such a good idea at the time. Probably not, though. He had stopped searching.
But about a month after he had mailed the last letters, Steven had been asked to consult with the Richmond Museum on an exhibit that was opening in late October. It would mirror one they were opening in New York and he had talked several times with Emma Middleton, one of the board members.
Early that same week, when Emma and her husband, John, were in New York on a short holiday, they had stopped to see Steven, who had invited them to lunch. As they had talked, he had learned that Emma lived in Hamilton. Their conversation after that was now indelibly etched on Steven’s memory.
“Emma, I once knew a girl from Hamilton,” Steven had told her. “I wonder if you know her, Katie Lee Jackson.”
They’d been alone in a small Italian restaurant near the Museum, Emma’s husband having gone to use the telephone.
Her response had been more than Steven could have hoped for.
“She’s my niece—of course I know Katie. Although we’ve never been allowed to call her that. She’s always preferred Katherine.”
Steven’s heart had pounded in his chest and he’d had to clench his fist to stop his hand from shaking.
“I was a Jackson before I married. Still am, if you want to know the truth. How do you know Katherine?” A look of concern had crossed Emma’s face. She’d reached out and patted his arm. “Steven, are you all right? You look pale all of a sudden.”
After a deep breath to steady himself, he’d replied.
“Yes. Oh, yes, I’m all right.” His voice had been shaking. “Uh, Katie and I, we met in England, in the summer, about ten years ago. How is she getting along? Married, I guess. Children?”
Again, Emma had spurred his hopes with her reply.
“No children. Not married. Not engaged—not dating seriously, as far as I know. She went to UVA, you know. Graduated with honors. Emory Med School. Internship and residency in Atlanta. You know Katherine—focused, goal directed, no time for anything except school, and then work.”
“Does she live in Richmond now?” he’d asked.
“Oh, no. Wanted to be completely independent. Lives here in New York, actually. Works in the emergency room at one of the hospitals. I’ll have to ask John which one.”
In spite of his excitement, he had tried to appear calm, casual. “That’s terrific. I’d love to call her sometime. Get reacquainted.”
That was when Emma had looked at Steven, as if the pieces of a puzzle were falling into place. “You spent a lot of time with her in England?”
“Well, off and on, I’d guess about five or six weeks.”
“Her final two weeks?”
“Uh, yes, about two weeks, right before she met her parents in Edinburgh.”
“Katherine told me about a young man who’d helped her a great deal during those last two weeks. A place to stay, food to eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Emma had reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “You were very good to her. She was quite fond of you. Told me you were going to get married, that you were going to track her down in ten years.”
It had sounded silly when Emma said it aloud, and Steven had admitted as much.
“I’ve heard sillier things.” She’d pulled a piece of paper from her purse and had written Katie’s telephone number and address. “As I recall her story, you’re to find her before her birthday.”
Shaking his head now, he still couldn’t believe he’d been so lucky. Steven looked at his watch. The flowers should have been delivered about three hours ago. He had given his office number in case she couldn’t make dinner. It was her birthday, after all, and she likely had plans. Or maybe she would not be interested. In any case, he’d been able to keep his promise.
***
Katherine lay in bed, unable to sleep, wondering what she should do.
They had promised to meet again, if they weren’t engaged or married. Actually, they had never really said if. They were handfasted, engaged, so, of course, the possibility of engagement or marriage to someone else would not have been issues. Steven had promised to find her—come hell or high water, as her father would say—in ten years.
She wondered how he had located her, how he had found her address. How would you do that? That was sort of scary itself. Maybe he was in the CIA.
She considered what he might look like, whether he was Becky’s “painter in the park.”
She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling. “Oh, what should I do?”
Often, when she had found herself unable to sleep, she would imagine what Steven might be doing. In her favorite scenario, she would picture him at his easel, painting a portrait of her.
“What might he be doing right now?”
She smiled. Unless he had changed, she decided he’d be doing the same thing she was—wondering about her, what she was like, what she was doing, if she will meet him for dinner. He’d be wondering if they’ll fall in love again.
It’s just dinner, she finally decided. Just dinner!
If I don’t like him, I’ll have spent an hour, maybe two. Big deal! If we like each other, she smiled at the thought, well…
He’d asked her to call if she couldn’t make it, but she would call to let him know she would. Hear his voice. Letting him know that she was coming would be the nice thing to do.
… Continued…
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–Romance Reviews TodayFrom award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Annette Blair comes this tender and passionate story…
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Amishwoman Sara Lapp, all but shunned for studying with the local doctor to become a midwife, is shocked that, after months of waiting, her first call comes from “Mad” Adam Zuckerman, a self-appointed outcast. Adam doesn’t want her to attend at a birth, but to tend to his children because his wife has died in childbed.
Adam wants to love his children, but he is afraid he will hurt them in the way his father hurt him. Without his late wife, Abby, to protect them, Adam must find someone else to care for the girls. He can think of only one woman brave enough, Spinster Sara Lapp, the little midwife whose passion for things beyond her control is greater than is good for her.
Though Sara knows the four little girls belong with their father, how can she leave them with a man who seems not to care for them? As much as she loves and wants the girls, she will only take them long enough to teach Adam to love them. Then Adam falls from the barn loft and Sara moves in to look after him. But in the Amish community a man and woman living together must marry or be shunned. The Bishop takes a stand and Sara and Adam are forced to face the greatest challenge of their lives.
Please note: This is a historical romance in an Amish setting with sexual content.
Praise for Butterfly Garden:
“…a tale of love, commitment, and family ties, told with tenderness and sensitivity…”
– NY Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs
“…a wonderfully insightful Amish historical romance starring two intriguing lead characters and four precocious little girls…”
an excerpt from
Butterfly Garden
by Annette Blair
Chapter 1
Walnut Creek, Ohio, 1883
Amish Midwife Sara Lapp stopped at the base of the farmhouse steps and tilted her head, as much to keep the autumn wind from slipping beneath her black wool crown-bonnet as to meet the eyes of the man towering above her on his porch.
Adam Zuckerman stood taller and more forbidding than usual in the eerie pitch of night, even barefoot and unflinching on a cold porch floor. One suspender crossed his open-throated union suit, the other hung in a loop at his side — an oversight that should make a man seem vulnerable. But Adam Zuckerman was as about as defenseless as a grizzly.
Sara swallowed and raised her chin, determined to say what no one else dared. “Abby should not be having another. You’re killing her with so many babies so close.”
Adam Zuckerman reared back as if struck, raising the hair at the nape of Sara’s neck, skittering her heart.
Even the wind howled a wild lament.
A moment of fury claimed the taciturn man, another of rigid control, before he raised his lantern high, and examined her, inch by slow insulting inch. “What know you, Spinster Sara,” said he, “of such things as should or should not happen between a man and his wife?”
A hit, dead center. Mortal — or so it seemed. Spinster Sara. And if she called him mad, like the rest of the world did, how would he respond?
Mad Adam Zuckerman, whose scowl could stop a man cold, whose presence could turn children to stone, even his own . . . especially his own. Why had this self-chosen outcast, of all people, called her to tend his laboring wife, despite the community’s stand against her?
No one could figure him out.
No one tried anymore.
Sara climbed to the porch, despite his defiant stance. “Time I looked in on Abby.”
But Abby’s husband stepped in her path. “Get out.” That flash of emotion appeared again and vanished again.
She was the lesser of evils, Sara knew. None of her people — man or woman — wanted a man around during labor and birth, doctor or no, but without care, childbirth in their Ohio Amish Community was too-often deadly. “If you have no need for my skill as a midwife, why did you send for me?”
“Skill or no, the right to judge is not yours.”
Given the accuracy of his statement, the catch in Adam’s voice disturbed Sara. “But the right to save lives is,” she said. “Leave Abby alone for a while after this.”
His eyes went dark and hard as flint, making Sara look away, and pull her cape closed against a sudden chill.
A newborn cry rent the air, forcing their gazes to collide, Sara’s born of shock, Adam’s of regret. “Move aside and let me in,” Sara said, but Adam turned, entered, and let the door shut in her face.
Raising an angry hand, Sara shoved it hard and smacked him good, taking no solace from the hit. Stepping into the farmhouse kitchen, she was assaulted by the lingering scents of smoked ham and cabbage. A kerosene lamp on the scarred oak table flickered and hissed, hazing the perimeter of the room, but Sara knew her way and made straight for the stairs.
“Wait!”
She stopped and rounded on him. “For the love of God, Abby could be bleeding to death!”
Adam paled, defeat etching his features with an unforgiving blade until emotion dimmed and none was left. “She’s not.” He hooked that forgotten suspender over his shoulder with slow, even precision.
Not his words, but his misplaced action and calm voice gone brittle held her. Sara shivered. “Did you deliver the baby, then? Before I came?”
Adam did not move so much as a muscle, yet Sara watched, mesmerized, as he struggled to tear himself from some agonizing place. “She delivered it.”
Despite the blaze in the hearth, cold assaulted Sara with knife pricks to her skin. “Then how do you–“
“She’s gone.”
Her denial as involuntary as her sob, Sara grasped a chair-back for support, but none was to be found. Her pounding heart took over her being.
The babe’s cry came again. Louder. Angrier.
The old walnut regulator clock grated in the silence — the commencement of eternity marked in counterpoint to the commencement of life.
As if from nowhere, and without acknowledgment, a grudging if temporary amnesty flowered between Mad Adam Zuckerman and Spinster Sara Lapp. She read it in his eyes as clearly as she knew it in her soul, and she was shaken, because deep in a place she tried to keep sealed, Sara feared she had been altered.
But panic was not to be tolerated. There was death to deal with, and life. She took the stairs at a slow pace, no more prepared for one than the other.
As she approached Abby’s room, Sara saw inside where a row of pegs lined the wall. One of Abby’s dresses hung beside Adam’s Sunday suit. If marriage had a picture, this would be it. On the floor below, an aged walnut bride’s box sat open, baby clothes spilling out.
The babe in its cradle had fallen into a fitful sleep. Sara covered it with a second blanket and it sighed and slept on. When she stepped to the big bed, a second unfettered sob rocked her.
Tired. Even with her pain-etched features relaxed in death, Abby Zuckerman looked too tired to go on. Sara smoothed hair the color, scent and texture, of stale straw off her only friend’s cool brow. “Time to rest, Ab.”
Abby’s bony arms above the quilt contrasted sharply with her swollen, empty belly beneath. Even as a child, Abby had been thin, but her skeletal form looked so much in keeping with death, of a sudden, that Sara wondered why she had never noticed it before.
Swallowing hard, whispering a silent prayer, Sara squeezed her friend’s work-rough hand for the last time.
Just like Mom, Sara thought, ignoring the pull on her heart.
If only there’d been a midwife for Mom.
If only she’d been sent for earlier tonight. If only…
Sara looked up, far beyond yellowed ceiling plaster and slap-patched roof, farther even than dark, scudding clouds gravid with snow. “Miss you, Mom. Meet Abby Zuckerman. Be friends.”
A sound from behind caught Sara’s attention. Adam must think her daft as him. Everybody knew her mother died with her brother at his birth fifteen years before. She raised her chin and turned to face her nemesis.
“A man needs sons to help on the farm,” he said, and waited, seeking understanding, Sara knew, but she did not have it to give. And after too long a time to be comfortable, he grunted and turned away. “Got to go milk. See to the babe.”
From the top of the loft ladder, Adam Zuckerman gazed down at the little midwife whose passion for things beyond her control was greater than was good for her. Sometimes life cost dearly, he thought, too dearly to be borne. Spinster Sara had not yet learned this. He almost hoped she would never have to. His girls could use some of that passion.
He, however, had learned, for good or ill and at a very early age, that in life there were no choices, no control, none. It was the hardest lesson his father had ever taught him, and the most painful.
Adam descended the ladder at a plodding pace, postponing the inevitable for as long as possible. He’d plotted his course before sending for Sara, yet to give his plan voice, set it in motion, was infinitely more difficult than he expected. This was another of life’s non-choices, however, and he must move forward with his intentions.
He’d heard once that a man raises his children the way he was raised, and once was enough.
No choice. None.
Adam led his silent way to the house, the would-be midwife’s disapproval stabbing between his shoulder blades.
In the dawn-lit kitchen, somehow emptier for the loss of its mistress, Adam turned to face the woman who would never be a midwife if he had his way.
“The children will be awake soon,” he said. “When they are, you take them.” His voice cracked with the words — words that would both save and damn him. Impatient with himself, he cleared his throat. “Keep them.”
Spinster Sara, never at a loss, stilled.
Time stood as if suspended.
“The children?” she asked. “Your children? Keep them?”
A lump, scratchy, choking, and big as a hay bale, caught in Adam’s throat. It swelled and tightened his chest. He could barely draw breath. For the sake of his children, he could not turn back. The nod he gave her was weak, but strong enough, because for the first time in his memory, the rebellious spinster looked as if she did not have all of life’s answers.
“What are you talking about?” Even her voice trembled.
Sending his children away was the only way to protect them; his father had taught him that at least. And it had not taken half the punishment the devil doled out for him to learn it.
Just remembering brought a measure of sanity. Adam shifted and squared his shoulders. “Take them home with you. Raise them.”
Sara’s flash of almost childlike wonder turned so quickly to shock, Adam doubted seeing it, but even the possibility gave him hope. “I’ll pay you.”
“Mein Gott, you are mad.”
“So they say.” Madness, he believed, ran in his family.
“You can’t mean till they’re grown.”
Forever, he prayed. “For a while . . . until I can make other arrangements.” Until you cannot bear to let them go, he thought. It would happen. He knew it would. He only hoped Sara’s strength and determination — misplaced though it was with midwifing — worked in his children’s favor, rather than in her ability to part with them.
“If this is grief,” she said. “You have an odd way of showing it. Those children are yours. You’re their father.”
“Abby wanted you to have them.” Adam hated the heat of embarrassment that consumed him — for the simple lie, yes, but more for the canker that created the need for lies. He wasn’t getting away with it, though. Sara’s expression demanded more. He sighed. “They need you,” which was truer than she would ever know. “They don’t need me and I don’t need them.” Not wholly true, but close enough so it didn’t matter.
“Right. They’re just babes, not good for much. They can’t help on the farm.”
“That’s so.” Adam turned to hide the agony clawing at his belly and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He was aware that Sara followed, because that knife slid deeper between his shoulders.
He watched her wrap the babe tighter and lift it from the cradle, the mighty hand of fate squeezing his chest, forcing the breath again from his lungs.
Abby would have been pleased to die giving him a son, but she would have thought she failed otherwise. He had not had the heart — beyond ascertaining that the swaddled babe in his dead wife’s arms lived — to discover whether Abby had died fulfilled.
“What is it?” he asked.
The woman touching a tiny hand to her lips, the one who thought she could save the world, looked sharply up and all but hissed. “A babe. An innocent.”
Another, he could not love. “A girl,” he said, covering defect with indifference. “I guessed as much.” He was almost glad. A boy would have made Sara stab him with the question of whether a son was worth the cost of his mother’s life.
It was not.
Adam knelt by his wife’s bed, lifted her thin, work-rough hand and turned it to stroke her callused palm with his thumb. When emotion threatened to swamp him, he reminded himself that grief and punishment must wait. Urgent matters needed settling.
Abby had promised to protect the children. Now he needed someone else to do it. Someone willful and single-minded to the point of stubbornness, someone strong — stronger than Abby. Someone who would fill their lives with butterflies and sunshine.
Spinster Sara.
Adam whispered a prayer for the dead and was surprised to hear Sara recite it with him, surprised she was still there. When he finished, he allowed his gratitude to show, but he could see she didn’t understand that he was grateful for so much more than her prayer.
Sara watched Adam stroke Abby’s cheek and turned from a sight too intimate to witness, her anger tempered by bafflement, her embarrassment by yearning. She had sometimes secretly longed for a husband’s touch, though never from such a husband as this.
“You think I killed her,” he said, surprising her, forcing her to gaze, again, upon the sight of a man grieving for his beloved wife, but Sara was too bewildered to answer.
“I think you’re right,” he said, and Sara knew, not the satisfaction she might have expected, but an astonishing need to offer comfort. Rather than give it, she reminded herself that this was the man who would give away his children.
Adam threw aside Abby’s blanket and cringed at so much blood. “Why? How?” he asked, his gaze locked on the gruesome sight, his question filled with torment.
Choked of a sudden with remorse over her earlier accusation, which now appeared horribly prophetic, Sara raised her hand toward Adam’s back. But she lowered it again without making contact. A man such as he would not welcome solace, not from anyone, but especially not from her.
She saw no sign of the afterbirth. Abby had bled to death. “It wasn’t–” Sara swallowed to soothe her aching throat. “Sometimes–” She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor, just a midwife. It might not … I mean it can happen with the first or tenth, close together or not. I am sorry for your loss, sorry for judging. I was wrong.”
As if he had not heard her feeble attempt at absolution — as if she had a right to give it! — Adam lifted his wife in his arms.
“What are you doing?”
Again, he seemed surprised by her presence. “Get out,” he shouted for the second time that night.
Her involuntary step back seemed to recall him to his surroundings. He shook his head as if to clear it, looked back at his wife, touched the sleeve of her bloody gown and sighed. “I need to wash and dress her for her final journey. Roman went for the casket after he fetched you.”
Sara stilled. Roman had dropped her at the end of the drive and kept going. Had he received the request for a casket before he fetched her? Had Adam sent for her after Abby died? It made no sense. No, she must be mistaken, as she could very well be about this man. Abby had once implied as much.
Adam placed Abby back on her bed. “Dress and feed the girls,” he said, sounding suddenly tired. “I hear them stirring.”
“Let me wash Ab. The girls will need you.”
“No! By God they won’t!” His fury was back with a vengeance, but it was nothing to his aversion. If he disliked his children so much, they would be better off with her. Was it because they were girls? Boys, he had wanted, to help with the farm.
“Go to them.” This was an order, and Mad Adam Zuckerman issued orders to be obeyed.
“I cannot take them.” Sara wondered why she refused to accept what she’d wanted forever, children, a family — however temporary — a treasure she had almost given up hoping for.
One of the two suitors in her life had said there would be no children for her. She was as bossy as a man, he said, too bossy to bed. The other had not been as kind.
Four little girls. Oh, Lord, she wanted them as dreadfully much as she wanted to be a midwife, but she could not take them. She could not.
They were his. Not hers.
“It’s because you’ll have to give up midwifing if you take them, isn’t it?” Abby’s angry husband asked. “Giving up would be hard for a stubborn one like you.” He looked her up and down in that icy way of his and Sara wondered how a look so cold could make her so hotly aware of her own shortcomings. “Well, what is it to be, Spinster Sara?” he asked. “Children of your own? Or a life of watching others bear fruit while you wither on the vine?”
Another hit, more direct, more painful. Sara squared her shoulders to hide the hurt. “Even if I could take them — which I cannot — I would not give up delivering babies.” Sometimes she felt as if she could do anything. Most times she knew better. But taking Abby’s girls away from their father was wrong. She could not help noticing that a barely-discernible discord existed between Mad Adam Zuckerman’s words and his actions, between what could be seen and heard, and what could not. Ab would have told her she wanted her to take the girls in the event something happened. Besides, Sara sensed that deep down Adam Zuckerman did not want to give away his children. So why was he?
Perhaps this was why they called him mad.
Adam sighed, in defeat or weariness, Sara could not tell. “Take them till after the funeral then. Please.”
Adam Zuckerman, pleading? “Why me?”
He considered for too long, she thought, as if he were choosing and discarding a series of possible answers. “You have no one,” he simply said. “No one.”
Unable to bear the pain in that truth, Sara silently took the newest Zuckerman to her fast-beating heart and into the kitchen to wash, and when the babe opened her big Zuckerman eyes, Sara was lost.
Before long, the mite was clean and soft in Sara’s arms, her tiny heart-shaped mouth pursed in sleep, her full head of chestnut hair a fluff of wayward curls.
Sara shut out the pain and absorbed the pure and simple pleasure of human contact. She rocked, hummed, and savored, until four-year-old Lizzie, ranked-and-professed big-sister, barefoot, hair in her eyes, dress on backward, entered the kitchen from the enclosed stairway and came right to her. “Hi Sara, what you got?”
Before Sara could answer, from the enclosed stairway came a bit of whining and some childish Penn Dutch chatter. Then three-year-old Katie, all smiles, curly hair and big eyes, dragged Pris over. Two-year-old Priscilla, eyes downcast, pouting as usual, companion-blanket in hand, stepped behind Katie.
Sara reached over and tugged on the blanket, drawing forth the shy, sullen Zuckerman who had just been displaced as baby of the family. Pris looked, not at Sara but at the floor. Sara lowered her head to see Pris’s face, and with a whine, the child lowered hers even more.
This continued until Pris was on all fours, whining for all she was worth, brow touching the floor. What had always seemed a game to Sara disturbed her more than she would like, though she’d never followed it through to this sad conclusion before.
“Pretty Pris,” she said, not daring to touch those dark curls. And she would be pretty, Sara thought, if she were not so sulky.
With nut-brown hair and storm-gray eyes, they were, all three, the image of Adam Zuckerman. Lord, and weren’t they the most beautiful little girls in the world. Sara wanted to gather them up, hug them tight, and protect them forever.
“Where’s Mommie?” Lizzie asked.
The pain in Sara’s heart might have come from a blade, it cut so sharp. They had no Mommie anymore. They had no one. She shook her head in denial and determination. Even if she didn’t take them home with her, they had her now. Sara held the baby forward so they could see her. “Look what you’ve got. A new sister.”
“What’s her name?” Katie asked.
“I waited for you to wake up so we could name her together. Let’s each say a name, then pick the one we like best.”
“Noodle!” Katie shouted on a giggle.
But Lizzie was, as usual, serious and wise. “Can we call our baby Hannah? Mommie said Hannah, if we got another sister.” She ran across the kitchen. “I’ll go ask her.” But Lizzie stopped in her tracks and stood stiff-backed and unmoving, because her father suddenly filled the entrance to the enclosed stairway.
For each of Adam’s steps into the kitchen, his oldest took one backward, never removing her gaze from his.
Sara feared he’d tell them their mother was dead in his cold, harsh way. But she needn’t have worried, he didn’t tell them anything; he just passed them by.
Katie ran after him, “Datt, Datt. My got a baby. My want Mommie, Datt. My’s hungry.”
He ignored his high-spirited daughter, the only one who did not seem afraid of him. “Sara will feed you,” he growled.
“We named the baby, Hannah!” Sara yelled at his back as the door slammed behind him. She was right. He didn’t care.
With Lizzie’s help, Sara got Katie and Pris dressed and fed, her need to weep having less to do with not knowing how to care for the girls and more to do with the joy Abby would never know.
Stooping down, Sara bundled Lizzie in her cape and bonnet to send her to the barn. “Go ask your Datt for a lambing bottle so I can feed Hannah some milk. I’ll watch you from the window.”
Shaking her wise little head, Lizzie placed her hands on each side of Sara’s face, as if she must pay strict attention. “No, Sara. Mommie will feed Hannah with her Mommie’s milk.”
Sara swallowed hard and blinked to clear her vision. She covered Lizzie’s small hands against her face with her own. “We’re going to try the bottle for Hannah. Cow’s milk will make her strong.”
That must have made sense to Lizzie, because she nodded and skipped off on her errand.
As Sara watched the child approach the barn through the window, she touched her cheek to baby Hannah’s and let her tears fall. Behind her, Katie giggled and Pris whined.
In the lower level of his huge bank barn, Adam paced. Cows lowed. A mule kicked its stall. Ginger ran to and fro barking needlessly. Even the sheep in their pens bleated; the stupidest animals God created, and even they knew something was terribly wrong.
Why had he let Abby talk him into trying again for a boy? Yes, he wanted sons. A man did need sons on a farm. Everyone knew that. But not at such a cost.
Dear God, Ab, what have I done?
She might have been content with the girls, but she thought giving him a son would make him love her. He never did succeed in making her understand that he couldn’t love anyone, for their own good.
“I do this because I love you.” He could hear the words in his father’s voice, words he could not, would not, say to his children, not to another soul, for the cruelty doled out in their wake was not to be borne. Love. He could never dare feel it.
Abby had known and said she accepted it. She had known enough to protect the children. Now she was gone and it was his fault. He hadn’t let himself love her, and still he destroyed her.
Adam punched a hay bale, over and over, until his knuckles bled. He wanted to hit something bigger, harder, throw his whole body into the fight, but he couldn’t. Not yet. His punishment for killing Abby could wait until after her girls were settled.
He couldn’t keep them. Not alone. Not without somebody who cared enough to keep them safe. Without Abby, no one was left who knew why but him, and he wanted to keep it that way. Neither he nor Abby had family. Ab had said that together, with their children, they were a family, but what was a family with no heart?
Broken.
Only one person in the district whose heart he knew, because she was the only one ever came close enough … Spinster Sara.
Sara visited Abby — not often — but when she did, usually when he was away, Abby chattered on for days after about Sara.
She’d damned near leveled him with a barn-board at Zook’s barn-raising, and that was the first time he set eyes on her. At fellowship meals after service, Sara often served him first. Looked him right in the eye, she did. Wasn’t afraid of anybody, that one. Spoke her mind.
Lord, she drove people crazy with speaking her mind. She was fractious all right. He’d often thought she served him just to prove she could handle anyone. Look at her trying to become a midwife. She was in for a fight with that. The whole district was set against her.
Spinster Sara. Midwife Sara.
Scrapper Sara, more like.
Bad enough she’d been earning her own living for years with her salves and remedies. Now she was trying to learn doctoring, something no woman should. Worse, she was going about it all wrong. Spending weeks in the company of the English doctor … it was scandalous, immoral, a man and a woman tending to the intimate needs of a woman in labor, sometimes overnight. Adam clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.
And, Sara, unmarried on top of it.
He’d once lost his temper over her foolishness, and Ab had laughed at him and– Adam stopped pacing, struck in an almost physical way with shock and remorse. Here he stood, consumed with fury at another woman, when his own wife had just died.
Ah, and here, in loud and rattling reproach, came the cabinet-maker with his spring wagon bearing Abby’s casket. His father was right. He was worthless. He’d failed as a son, and now as a husband and father. He was defective, body and soul. His children didn’t need him. They needed Sara. Already he’d seen her give them a mother’s smiles.
Sara would take good care of Abby’s girls.
When she’d drawn them to her, without extending so much as a finger, and let them name their sister, he knew he’d been right to send for her.
And Sara was right too. He’d killed Abby as surely as that empty casket sat waiting for her body. God he could still hear Ab weeping for a son. He’d hated himself for his weakness, had vowed if she weren’t pregnant after that one time, she would never be again. But she was.
And now she was gone.
“Datt?”
Adam looked down, toward the barest whisper of sound, and wondered when his oldest daughter had arrived to stand before him. Lizziebelle.
He fisted his hands at his side to keep from reaching for her.
“Why can’t Mommie feed Hannah with her Mommie’s milk?”
Adam leaned against the lambing pen, seeking balance in a careening world. Guilt. Hard. Raw. He swallowed and forced himself to take a breath, and needed two more before he could speak. “What did Sara say?” he asked in a voice that did not sound like his own.
“That you would give me a lambing bottle and we would feed Hannah cow’s milk to make her strong.”
Adam nodded and turned his back on his motherless child, because for the life of him, if he did not, he would gather her up and … condemn her to the punishment love enforced.
The girls played quietly in Abby’s sewing room while Sara rocked baby Hannah and fed her milk from the boiled bottle and nipple.
Abby’s body would soon be carried in an open box from her bedroom into her best room.
At the very thought, the sharp claws of anxiety clenched Sara’s every muscle, holding her captive in the same way it had fifteen years before.
Her mother’s labor had gone on for more than a day. Her father had set off in an ice storm for the doctor … and died in a ditch with a broken neck.
Sara had been fifteen when she’d taken that lifeless baby boy and placed him in her mother’s weak arms. Fifteen, when she’d pushed wadded towels between Mama’s legs to stop the blood … but watched her life drain away, instead.
The next morning, in a house gone silent, Sara had stepped into the best room to see three caskets — two large, and one too tiny to bear. Crude boxes with covers to smother.
She’d had trouble breathing then.
She had trouble breathing now.
Once again, panic rushed her. Abby’s girls were too young to see such a sight. But Sara couldn’t take them, not from their father. It would be the greatest cruelty to lose both parents at once; no one knew that better than her.
And yet, with such a parent?
Her mind scrambled for an answer, examining and discarding every possibility, until….
If she took the girls … for a time … and taught their father, somehow, to know and love them…. It seemed an impossible task, and yet Abby said there was something worthy hiding deep inside Adam Zuckerman, something he wanted to keep buried. Sara thought she had glimpsed a shadow of that something today. She was almost certain of it. Besides, what choice did she have?
She wasn’t sure which would be more difficult, reforming Mad Adam Zuckerman or letting his children go once she loved them. Except that wasn’t even a consideration, because she loved them already.
Sara rose and went to the window. The clouds were dark and angry still. She sought guidance from beyond the firmament, but neither faith nor entreaty would come, only anger, and in her heart, she gave it voice. I won’t let them lose both parents, she informed He who seemed to have abandoned them, almost expecting thunder and lightening in reply. Then she admitted that she could not do it alone and whispered, “Help. Please.” But neither comfort nor response was forthcoming.
“Fine then,” she snapped. “I’ll do it myself. And this time I won’t fail.”
Sara hurried to the bottom of the stairway. “Adam,” she shouted, angry with God for not listening, and with Adam for … everything. “Adam, come down here, now!”
Like a mule team spooked by a jackrabbit, he came, but he stopped when he saw her, his face pale and taut, his breath short.
“I’ll take them,” she said. “Until after the funeral,” she added in a rush. “And if I’m called to deliver a babe while I have them, I’ll go if I have to take them with me.”
Adam hesitated then nodded once, his relief so apparent, Sara thought she might have imagined the wretchedness that preceded it. “Shut Abby’s door,” she said. “I’m taking them upstairs to get their things. I’ll tell them about Abby later. It’s best they think of their mother smiling and happy in heaven, not cold and silent in a box.”
Another single nod, a hard swallow. “I won’t show her till you’re gone.”
… Continued…
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~ Allison Brennan, NYT bestselling author
From USA Today bestselling author and career army officer Jessica Scott comes this richly satisfying contemporary military romance. Can two wounded hearts navigating the battlefield of coming home from war find healing and love with each other?
Discover the deeply romantic Coming Home series while Book I is just 99 cents!
From the war-torn streets of Baghdad to the bittersweet comforts of the home front, two wounded hearts navigate the battlefield of coming home from war…
Keeping his men alive is all that matters to Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison. But meeting Jen St. James the night before his latest deployment makes Shane wonder if there’s more to life than war. He leaves for Iraq remembering a single kiss with a woman he’ll never see again — until a near fatal attack lands him back at home and in her care.
Jen has survived her own brush with death and endured its scars. And yet there’s a fire in Shane that makes Jen forget all about her past. He may be her patient, but when this warrior looks her in the eyes, she feels — for the first time in a long time — like a woman. Shane is too proud to ask for help, but for Jen, caring for him is more than a duty — it’s a need. And as Jen guides Shane through the fires of healing, she finds something she never expected — her deepest desire.
5-star praise for Because of You:
“Loved it…Well written, touching and so heartwarming…very well done in every respect.”
“Wow wow wow…the feelings…were so intense…”“…sexual longing bleeds from the pages…”
an excerpt from
Because of You
by Jessica Scott
Chapter 1
“What crawled up your ass?”
Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. “What part of no don’t you understand?”
Carponti—aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon—picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. “I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.”
“Piss off.”
“Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?” Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. “Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.”
Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his empty apartment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding shut two tiny holes in his abdomenal wall. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself—Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow they were leaving.
Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag then stuffed socks and more T-shirts in the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.
“The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.”
Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. “Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.”
Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. “God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.”
“Sissy.”
Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture. He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. “All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow . . .”
Carponti made the sign of a cross over his heart. “Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.”
Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if—scratch that, when—he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.
Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.
It was 2007 and they were deploying as part of the Surge to stabilize Iraq. He knew he would probably bury some of his men this year. He’d deployed too many times to entertain the naive hope that all of his boys would come back in one piece. He’d move heaven and earth to protect them, and it looked like that would have to start tonight, instead of tomorrow. He couldn’t promise they’d all come home from the war, but they’d sure as shit make it to formation in the morning.
That much he could guarantee.
***
“Stop touching it.”
Jen St. James jumped and dropped her hand from the edge of her blouse. “I wasn’t.”
She should have known Laura would catch her tugging at her clothes, which, with the addition of a triangular-shaped silicone form, now fit much better. And that was part of what made Jen uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to her blouses hanging properly anymore. But she couldn’t tell Laura that. It had been hard enough to convince her that she only wanted to buy one form and not the entire shop.
Laura couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that Jen didn’t need to feel sexy, that she wanted to be comfortable instead.
“Yes, you were. No one can tell and the more you play with it, the more horny GIs are going to check your boobs out.” Laura raised her glass, and then lowered it. “On second thought, keep playing with them.”
“Boob. Singular.”
“You still have two. Just not a full set. And honestly, no one can tell. So please quit worrying and relax. You look amazing.”
“Except for the silicone stuck to my chest.”
“That no one can see. Here,” Laura said, sticking a sweating green Heineken bottle into Jen’s hand. “Drink. Don’t argue. I finally got you out of the house to have a good time and damn it, I’m going to accomplish that mission if it kills me.”
“You sound like a soldier,” Jen said with a smile.
Laura took a pull off her drink. “I can’t help it. I spend all day every day around soldiers. I’m bound to pick things up here and there.”
It had been a long time since Jen had been around this many people. She felt the proximity of too many bodies, too much cologne and spilled beer. The smells bombarded her and reminded her of the life she’d had once upon a time. A time when she would have danced until dawn and then closed the night out with pancakes at IHOP.
Jen had not been inside a bar for more than two years, and she was no more comfortable today than she’d been the last time she’d been to out, her ex had made a point of announcing to everyone in the bar that she only had one breast. So the fact that she was here was amazing in and of itself. The loud music, the crowd, and the GIs mingling with the wannabe cowboys was not an ambience Jen typically sought out. The smoke grated on her lungs but wasn’t nearly as smothering in the seat she’d managed to snag at the edge of the bar. But anything was better than the sterile smell of the hospital, and she wanted to get back to feeling normal, really she did. Whatever normal meant nowadays.
Laura was the one saying good-bye to her husband for the fifth time in seven years. Jen was just here for moral support, so the least she could do was put her own demons to rest and have a good time. She lifted the beer to her lips.
“I can’t believe you dragged me here,” she shouted in Laura’s ear over the din of Kenny Chesney.
“I can’t believe I found a babysitter. Trent’s whole company is here tonight.” Laura smiled and nursed a Corona while Jen sipped on her Heineken.
“Shouldn’t you be molesting your husband? He’s the one leaving.”
“I don’t want to leave you hanging out here, teasing all these horny soldiers with your fake boob.”
“Ha ha ha. My fake boob and I are just fine, thanks. And speak of the devil.” Strong, wide hands slipped around Laura’s waist, yanking her back. Laura tipped her face up to her husband’s for a kiss and Jen offered Trent a mock salute with the tip of her beer.
“Will you please take your wife to dance?” Jen shouted with a smile.
“Gladly.” Trent pulled his wife into some convoluted line dance, leaving Jen alone at the bar where she was quite content to watch everyone else and sip her beer.
She discretely tugged at her blouse again. In a dark corner at the other end of the bar, a sensual flare of movement caught her eye. She looked closer and saw a couple kissing intensely, so engrossed in one another she couldn’t say where one person ended and the other began. They were completely absorbed in each other, lost in the heavy scent of lust and liquor. She looked away, studying the green bottle in her hand. She wondered if she would ever again know what it felt like to have warm, rough hands move over her flesh.
Jen had come a long way, and it had still taken all of Laura’s persuasive powers to convince her to buy the breast form. But it didn’t mean that her scars no longer bothered her. She’d hesitated for a different reason. The round shape beneath her blouse now was just false advertising. She swallowed and pushed aside a brief flicker of melancholy.
Someone solid and heavy knocked into her and sloshed beer down the front of her blouse. A strong vise latched around her arm to steady her. She glanced up into the lightest gray eyes she’d ever seen. Gray eyes that she’d seen before but never this close. In the dimly lit bar, they looked almost silver.
Shane Garrison. A friend of Trent’s. Jen had seen him around before, but had never actually spoken to him. He’d always seemed big, but up close he was massive. Black tribal tattoos twisted up both of his wrists, writhing up his forearms to disappear beneath the frayed edge of a green T-shirt. And who knew that bald could be so sexy in the right lighting? Had to be the rough jaw that did it.
“Sorry. You okay?” He leaned close to her ear so he didn’t have to shout. Jen shivered as his breath brushed across her skin. He stood closer to her now than any man other than a doctor had in over a year. The heat from his body caressed her skin and she could smell him, a mixture of spice and smoke and something entirely male . She swallowed and tried to find her voice.
. “I’m fine. Thanks. This place is crowded.” She knew better than this. She pulled her arm free and tugged the clinging blouse away from her skin, suddenly afraid that he would see the scars on her chest through the wet material.
As the words left her lips, someone jostled her into him again. He tried to steady her but she fell against him anyway. It was impossible to miss the hard angles of his body.
Time hung suspended and she stood in this man’s embrace, feeling protected and safe and deliciously unflawed. For one brief fantasy moment, she imagined what it would feel like if this dangerous and sexy man lowered his mouth to hers.
But the fantasy faded as quickly as it had come and Jen stepped back into reality. A reality in which a man like the one standing oh so close to her was just being polite to a woman he had met in a bar. Down girl.
He lowered his mouth to her ear again. “Since I nearly crushed you twice now, can I buy you a drink?”
She smiled and sipped the sweating green bottle. “I still have some of this one left. Thanks, though.”
“Jen, right?” He retrieved his own beer. “Are you here with Laura and Trent?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I’ve seen you around. How long have you known Laura?”
Jen ticked off numbers on her fingers. “Ethan is almost six, right? Almost six years. We met right after she had him.”
A shadow flickered across his face and was gone before she could truly say she’d seen it. Instead of letting it go, she chased it. “What?”
“I’ve known Trent a long time. That’s all.”
Why would that make him sad? She wondered at the man who scanned the bar, splitting his attention between her and the crush of bodies on the floor. With each question, he leaned in close to her, sending a shiver down her spine. A shiver that chased away her awkward discomfort and, for one brief moment, made her feel whole and feminine. There had been a time when she would have acted on impulse, and pursued this man, but those days were long gone.
“Yeah. Going away party and all that. Are you deploying tomorrow, too?” God but she loved how he smelled.
“Yeah.” He took a long pull from his beer.
“For how long?”
He shrugged. “A year, with an option for fifteen months.” She caught a glimpse of a black tattoo around the edge of his collarbone and wondered just how much of his body was covered by the twisting dark lines of ink. Tattoos didn’t usually do it for her. She wondered at people who would permanently color their bodies. But on Shane, they worked. They worked well.
She sniffed and sipped her beer even as Shane shifted, resting one arm on the bar behind him and angling his body slightly toward her so that he could see the dance floor. Jen turned in time to see Laura dragging Trent away from the Copperhead Road line dance. They wove through the crowd, heading toward her, and Jen felt a sense of guilt creep up the back of her neck like a flush. Laura was spending too much time worrying about her—she should be focusing on her husband instead.
Trent’s face split into a wide grin when he saw Shane. “Miracles will never cease. Carponti actually got you to come out?”
“Yeah.”
“Jen, you didn’t tell me you knew Shane,” Laura said, twining her arm with Jen’s.
“I don’t. He bumped into me.”
Laura leaned close, so that the men couldn’t hear her. “Shane is one of Trent’s platoon sergeants, but they’ve been friends for years. And he’s divorc—”
“Not another word. Not one.” It didn’t matter that she’d been wondering if he was single. Her friend’s words shattered her fantasy and brought reality into sharp, silicone-shaped focus.
Laura feigned innocence with widened eyes and a wicked smile that fooled no one. “What?”
“I know where you’re going with this, and it’s not even close to possible.”
Laura shrugged, a smile painted on her lips, and danced away with Trent, leaving Jen alone at the crowded bar with brooding, sexy Shane. She sipped her beer and studied him. He was watching the crowd, his jaw flexing in the shadows.
What did it feel like to know that tomorrow he was going off to war?
Chapter 2
Shane sighed and looked out over the crowd, checking on each of his soldiers. He felt the little blond shift against him and he leaned down so she wouldn’t have to shout.
There was something hot about the way she tried to keep her distance, like she thought he might bite.
“You’ve known Trent a long time?”
Shane nodded, inhaling the clean scent of her hair as he leaned toward her again. “We were privates together in Germany.” He looked into his beer. “Man, it’s been almost twelve years. He’s my commander now.”
He enjoyed leaning close to her ear. She had adorable earlobes and—man, he was pathetic. He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight, let alone talking to a beautiful woman, and he was going to blow it by being melodramatic and staring at her earlobes like a psycho.
Laura and Trent embraced in the center of the dance floor, slow dancing to Lonestar, and a pang of longing stabbed him in the heart. He had never had that kind of closeness with his wife. Laura and Trent looked like they’d been made for each other, they always had. What did that kind of trust and comfort feel like?
“Isn’t that weird with him being your boss now?”
Shane shook his head. “Not really. I don’t put him in a position to make it awkward.”
She raised her beer to her mouth, and his body tightened as her lips circled the green tip of the bottle. A bolt of clean, pure desire shot through him. He was no warrior monk by any stretch of the imagination, but watching her struck something different inside of him. Something he thought he’d shut down and buried long ago.
She smiled up at him. “That’s nice of you.”
“Nice is not exactly how most of my men would describe me.” He snorted, taking a sip of his beer. So far, he’d managed to nurse his one beer quite well as the party went on around him. He didn’t need to get distracted, no matter how sexy the distraction.
She leaned in and her breath brushed against his ear, stroking the skin of his neck. “Why would you say you’re not nice?”
“I’m an infantry platoon sergeant. I say jump, my guys jump, they don’t even ask where or how high. That doesn’t equal nice.” He sucked in a deep breath and found himself wishing he’d had more practice being, well, nice.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.” She turned and set her now empty beer bottle on the bar. “I’m going to run to the bathroom. Can you tell Laura if she comes back before I do?”
“Don’t females usually travel in packs to do that?”
“I’m a big girl.”
He watched her go, his blood singing with curiosity and something else. Just then, an elbow jabbed into his ribs, slamming right into the stitches he was doing his best to ignore. He didn’t have to guess who the elbow was attached to.
“Will you cut that out?”
“Who is that and why are you mooning over her?” Carponti’s speech was a little too smooth to be considered sober.
“I’m not mooning over anyone.”
Carponti snapped to the position of parade rest, slapping his hands together at the small of his back and spreading his feet. He swayed a little from the force of the movement. “Roger, Sergeant. My mistake.”
“Knock it off, asshole. I thought you were trying to have a good time tonight?”
“I am. I’m screwing with you, my number one pastime, Sarn’t G.”
Shane narrowed his eyes and studied Carponti, trying to decide if he was hammered. Anyone who’d been in the army for a hot second used the shortened sarn’t instead of fully pronouncing sergeant. He’d said it the right way, and without slurring, but that didn’t mean Shane’s suspicions about his level of intoxication were laid to rest.
Shane looked skyward, praying for a small dose of patience. Regardless of Carponti’s smart-ass ways, he was a damn fine infantryman. If he could ever get him to stop screwing off, he’d be one hell of a master gunner. But passing that course required studying and Carponti adamantly insisted he’d joined the army to avoid anything remotely associated with school.
“Where’s Nikki?” Shane asked, turning the conversation away from himself.
“The little girls’ room.” Carponti gestured toward the end of the bar, the same direction in which Jen had just disappeared.
Shane glanced over and his stomach tightened when he saw the one person who was more of a pain in the ass than Carponti could ever dream of being. Lieutenant Jason Randall—a thick-necked full bird colonel’s son—looked like he was lecturing one of Carponti’s boys near the latrine. Seeing it, too, Carponti stiffened. “Looks like Randall has his fan club with him,” he said.
Shane shifted to get a better look at Randall’s companions. “Isn’t that the female clerk we’ve got in the motor pool now?”
“Yep.”
“Wonderful. She’s one of the few women serving in a maneuver unit and Randall is already leading her down the path of self-destruction. He should know better than to hang out with enlisted.”
“Pot meet kettle.”
“I’m not a private and I knew Trent before he ever became an officer.”
“Whatever. I don’t care what he does or who he does it with.” Carponti took a pull from his beer, then set it roughly on the bar. “Things are getting a little rough in here. I’m going to go over there to grab Nikki.”
“I’ll go with you.” Shane finished his beer, following Carponti into the crowd, not so much to watch his back, but to keep his sergeant from starting any fights. Lieutenant Randall had a small group of soldiers—including the new clerk—who treated him like a god. Shane suspected it was because Randall’s father was a brigade commander up at Fort Carson. No one in Shane’s platoon was in Randall’s fan club, but that didn’t mean Shane could give Carponti a pass if he hit him. Lieutenant Randall frequently assumed that Daddy’s rank translated into Randall’s authority. Add in the fact that he didn’t listen to anyone, and that made him not only a dickhead, but a dangerous one. Officers like Randall got people killed.
Literally.
And the soldier Randall was currently chewing out belonged to Carponti, which meant he belonged to Shane.
Shane was determined that Randall was not going to ruin his boys’ last night in the States, whatever it took. He just hoped Carponti wasn’t as drunk as he appeared to be, because otherwise tonight just might turn into the fiasco Shane had feared—one he would
have to explain the following morning. He waded into the crowd and started coming up with a good story for the sergeant major.
Well, Sarn’t Major, what had happened was . . .
***
Jen stood in front of the mirror, studying her profile. She tugged at her blouse, and then squared her shoulders, seeing a full, equal-shaped silhouette. Why couldn’t she get used to it? She reached behind her to adjust the band around her ribs.
“Will you stop?” Laura said, stepping out of a bathroom stall. She moved to the sink to wash her hands. So much for going to the bathroom alone. And damn it, she’d gotten busted adjusting the form. Again. “You look great and the only one who doesn’t seem to know that is you.”
“I can tell.”
“Knock it off and have another beer, will you?” Laura reached for her, like she was going to plump her breasts together. Jen dodged with a horrified laugh, but ended up stumbling into someone else. Someone else turned out to be a beautiful strawberry blonde with brown mascara streaked down her cheeks and smeared beneath her eyes.
“Sorry!”
“Nicole,” Laura said at the same time. “Honey, what’s wrong? Carponti hasn’t been arrested again, has he?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. If he costs me my job interview at CID, I’ll kill him.” Nicole offered a watery smile. “I just hate that he’s leaving again.”
Jen bit her lip, unsure of what to say or how to act. Surrounded by army wives, she was seeing a sadness that was usually hidden behind smiling masks. She felt like she’d been granted access to a secret world, a special world filled with women like Laura, who spent as much time as single parents and deployment widows as they did with their soldiers. There was a deep discomfort in her as she watched Laura help Nicole repair her makeup, complete with emergency concealer and mascara.
“He’ll never know you’ve been crying,” Laura said, dropping the small cosmetics bag back into her purse. “We’ll get together with the rest of the family readiness group. Just like last time. Make sure everyone’s holding up okay.”
“Okay. Let me go round up my husband before he does do something stupid.” Nicole breathed deeply. “Sorry,” she said, turning toward Jen. “I’m Nicole and I’m not usually this melodramatic.”
“It’s kind of understandable,” Jen said, but Nicole waved her comment off.
“Doesn’t matter. Put it away and smile. I’ll cry once he’s gone.” And with that, she dashed her fingers beneath her eyes once more and pushed through the door.
Laura leaned over the sink and checked her own makeup.
“How do you do it?” Jen asked her suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Act like Trent leaving is no big deal.”
Laura shrugged, but her smile wavered, just a little—just enough for Jen to see through the facade. “It sucks. And I won’t lie and say I’m not tired and frustrated and irritated, either. But I’ve got to hold it together back here so he can go do what he has to do to come home to me and the kids.”
Jen didn’t know what to say. Laura’s strength and resolve awed her. Laura filled the silence with a smile.
“Come on. Let’s go find Shane and Trent.”
“Um, how about just your husband? Don’t pawn me off on Shane. The last thing he needs right now is to have to babysit the resident basket case.”
“How about you take care of him so he doesn’t spend the entire night worrying about his soldiers. That man never relaxes. He needs a distraction more than you do.”
Jen rolled her eyes and wished the thought of seeing Shane again tonight didn’t send a tiny thrill through her. It didn’t matter, anyway. Even if she was interested—which she wasn’t—he wasn’t available and neither was she.
He was leaving for Iraq. Tomorrow.
And she was damaged goods.
“Don’t pawn me off on him,” she said again.
“I thought I was pawning Shane off on you.”
Jen backed through the door and for the second time that night, plowed straight into Nicole Carponti . . . and into in the middle of a tense, awkward conversation.
“ . . . Nice to me, considering . . .” The guy running his mouth was dark and good-looking, but that didn’t prevent his drunken sneer from ruining his looks. Nicole was braced, feet apart like she was ready to fight. Or run. Jen wasn’t sure.
Laura’s smile was tight as she stepped up next to Nicole. “Lieutenant Randall, I’m sure you must have Nicole confused with someone else. Someone who isn’t married to a soldier in your company.”
Jen’s stomach pitched as her heart slammed against her ribs. It didn’t matter that Laura knew the drunk. The smell of beer on the man’s breath sent adrenaline pumping through her veins. Jen did not do confrontations. “Come on, let’s go.”
Carponti melted from the crowd and grabbed at Randall, shoving him toward the dance floor. “Get away from my wife, dickhead.”
Everything exploded into sudden violent action all at once. Fists and elbows descended and sounds like meat being beaten thudded to the beat of Toby Keith’s latest song. Chairs skidded across the floor and Jen found herself mesmerized by the absolute chaos bursting around her. She searched for a path through the melee, and then found herself pinned between a pillar and the dance floor, which churned now with bodies. Worse yet, she’d lost Laura and Nicole in the fray.
Everything turned to slow motion. She needed to get out of the way, but her feet suddenly felt like lead weights as Carponti and Randall grappled and stumbled toward her.
Strong hands yanked her hard to the right so fast her neck popped.
Shane. And ridiculous relief flooded through her, tingling over her skin.
He braced his hands on the bar on either side of her shoulders to keep from being jammed into her again. “Sorry. It looked like you needed a hand. You okay?”
The fight spun out of control around them, but at the moment, she was cocooned between his body and the solid wood of the bar pressing into her back.
His voice was warm and smooth over the uproar. “I’m going to drag Carponti outside and beat him.”
She almost laughed at the mixture of resignation and irritation in Shane’s voice. It sounded like he’d spent one too many nights saving Carponti from trouble.
It might have been half an hour or five minutes, but the next thing Jen knew, the crowd had parted and she was outside. She wrapped her arms around her belly and walked around Randall and Trent, who were arguing loudly in front of the soldiers and spouses who’d trickled out into the parking lot. Shane was busy stuffing soldiers into cars or cabs, depending on their sobriety level. Laura leaned against the hood of her car, next to Nicole, who had an amused look on her face.
“Is this how they always spend their last night in the States?” Jen asked.
Laura looked more like a centerfold than a mother of two who’d just escaped a bar brawl. Her friend was either halfway to well lit or furious. Or maybe a little bit of both. Jen couldn’t really tell.
Nicole laughed and brushed her hair from her face, sending a whiff of smoke and perfume floating through the thick Texas night air. “It is for me. Vic is constantly pulling stunts like this.” She shrugged. “I love him and I guess that doesn’t come with a but, you know?”
“Guess this is what I get for trying something different. The last two times Trent left, I was either pregnant or nursing, so no, bars weren’t really an option.” Laura’s voice cracked, and with it, Jen’s heart. She wasn’t really close to any of these men, and yet, a sudden sadness welled up inside of her that she could not understand.
“If he’s peeing in the bushes, I’m thinking this is the end of the night,” Nicole said, as Carponti stumbled from behind a parked car, tugging at his zipper. Shane and Trent bullied Lieutenant Randall into a cab. “And hey, no one went to jail. That’s always a plus.”
Laura cracked a wry grin. “Looks like he’s one of the last ones. Nicole, can you get Carponti out of here? I won’t be able to get Trent to leave until all his boys are home.”
“Sure. See you tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
Nicole snagged her husband and urged him toward their car in a backward waltz that was at once a drunken stumble and an erotic dance. The silence wrapped around them like the dark shadows at the edge of the parking lot.
“Are you bringing the kids tomorrow to see Trent off?” Jen asked.
“No.” Laura’s throat bobbed as she looked into the floodlit parking lot, her eyes settling on her husband. That single word nearly broke Jen’s heart. She wrapped her arm around Laura, who rested her head on her shoulder.
“I should be used to this by now,” Laura whispered.
“I don’t know how. It doesn’t get any easier no matter how many times you say good-bye.”
Laura sniffed and straightened as Trent slammed the door of Randall’s cab closed. “I don’t say good-bye. I say see you soon.”
Having shipped the last of the soldiers home, Shane and Trent finally approached them. Jen could see why Shane had stayed to mop up. He looked so different from Trent, whose black hair and wire-rimmed glassed made him look more like a warrior monk. Shane was pure fighter, all black ink and hard angles. There was no dichotomy to him, like there appeared to be with Trent, and she found herself curious about him.
“Ready to head home?” Trent asked, wrapping his arms around Laura’s shoulders.
“Absolutely.. You okay to get home?” Laura lips curled in pure wickedness. It took Jen all of two seconds to realize what she had in mind.
“Laura, don’t you dare,” Jen hissed as she scanned the parking lot, searching for a way out of her friend’s scheme. She wanted to entertain her curiosity from a distance, not up close and personal.
Shane hooked his hands behind his back, looking more relaxed than he had at the beginning of the night. Jen frowned and for a brief moment, thought that he’d actually enjoyed himself during the fight. “Trent, take your wife home. And I better not see you at the gym before ten. I’ll take accountability until First Sergeant gets there.”
“Thanks, man. See you in the morning.” Trent walked off, his wife’s arm wrapped around his waist. Laura leaned back, shooting Jen a half-drunken, enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Jen felt a pang of sadness overshadowed by something else. A feeling both awkward and intense that sparked to life when she looked up at Shane. All at once, it struck her that she was alone with him in a dimly lit parking lot.
And she wasn’t embarrassed or self-conscious or afraid.
For the first time in she couldn’t remember how long, she felt a pang of desire that wasn’t overruled by the constant heat of the scar on her chest. She let the awareness of her femininity coast through her veins, and she savored the feeling along with the man.
He was leaving for Iraq in the morning. She could hold on to this one moment.
What’s the worst that could happen?
***
When the fight had broken out, Shane had seen her standing in the path of the two fighters. He’d mentally urged her to move aside, but everything she’d done had only brought her closer to harm’s way. Finally, he’d surrendered to instinct, and stepped in to move her to safety. Looking down at her now, at her hesitant smile mixed with a hint of expectation, he felt it again. The same emotion he’d felt earlier that night. The urge to protect. To shelter. It flickered to life inside of him, something long dormant unfurling inside warmth. The feeling staggered him with its simplicity and power. Had he not been leaving for Iraq in the morning, he might have taken that single step forward and closed the gap between them. She was temptation bundled with a nervous tension—a combination he found absolutely sweet.
“I don’t bite,” he said, stuffing his hands into his back pockets.
“I’m not worried. You’re supposed to be one of the good guys, right?”
Shane chuckled quietly. “My men might disagree.”
She narrowed her eyes and peered up at him thoughtfully. “That’s the second time you’ve said that tonight. Why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?”
“I’m not nice. I’m effective. They’re mutually exclusive in my world.” Shane tried to keep the bitterness from his smile but gave up, surrendering to the truth with a sigh. She was easy to talk to. Something else he was out of practice with.
“Really? Is your world really all that different?”
“I’m a rifle platoon sergeant in a combined arms battalion. I was issued weapons, not baskets of flowers.”
“Can you translate that to nonarmy?” she asked.
“Infantry. I train my men to shoot things.” Shane felt like an awkward teen, unsure of what to say or do.
“Ah. Much easier to understand.” She tipped her chin. “But it doesn’t explain why Laura has such a high opinion of you if you’re such a bad guy.”
God but he needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere other than talking to this particular beautiful woman. Laura would unman him over this if he so much as blinked wrong.
“Can I, ah, make sure you get to your car okay?”
Her mouth was curled in the sweetest half smile, like she couldn’t quite figure him out. “Not going to answer?”
“Walking you to your car does not involve psychotherapy. At least, I didn’t think it did.”
She laughed quietly, the noise of the bar fading a little as they rounded the corner of the parking lot.
She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. He might regret this. But he wasn’t going to spend the next year wondering what it would have been like. A single beam of light slanted across her cheek and almost, he gave into the urge to trace his thumb over her skin. When she froze, her lips parted just slightly, he stepped into her space. Not close enough to scare her, he hoped. “Shit, I’m not good at this.”
“Good at what?” Her face was bathed in shadows now, and she rubbed her hands over her arms. He placed a hand on her shoulder, hesitating and unsure, but filled with a need he couldn’t explain.
“I’d like very much to kiss you good night,” he whispered and felt like an urgent seventeen-year-old for even asking. But the moment her lips parted and she lifted her chin, just a little, he was done.
“I’d like that, too.”
His breath caught in his throat as he lowered his mouth to hers. He hesitated, nudging her lips open before he curved his mouth over hers. It had been far too long since he’d kissed a woman simply for the sake of it. And now?
Now he felt like he was drowning in her.
A deep, hard ache rose within him. An ache that he would not, no matter how she might lean into him, satisfy tonight. Maybe in a year, if he came home, he might give her a call.
But for tonight, all he had was this kiss. This soft, yearning kiss that tugged at a passion within him that he’d thought long dead. Her sensual gasp against his tongue, the soft stroke of hers against his twisted up inside of him and made him want more, so much more than he could ever hope to have in a single night. He lifted his hand, brushing his finger over her throat and felt her heart hammering against her skin.
***
Jen sighed quietly as Shane kissed her, afraid this was just a dream. The taste of him flowed through her, singing through her blood. And then? Then she kissed him back. She slipped her tongue into his mouth, tasting beer and mint and everything sensual and arousing about kissing a man. She burned, a slow fire for this man lighting through her veins.
For Shane.
There was a delicious ache inside of her and she held on to it, clung to it. His arms were strong around her, his skin hot beneath her fingertips. He shifted and pulled her closer, until she was softness and heat pressed against steel.
She sighed and leaned into him. He traced his fingertips down her spine, his hand warm and solid against her lower back.
He was hard and rough, surrounding her with his kiss, his body. She tried telling herself this wasn’t what she thought it was. But she’d never lied to herself before, she wasn’t about to start now.
This man was attracted to her. Her.
She refused to argue with it, and instead gave herself over to the utterly arousing sensation of being desired. This was what she missed about her former life. That beautiful sensation of a first kiss, the delicious tug of first desire deep in her belly. She lost herself in his kiss, in the slide of his thumb over her back. His scent wrapped around her like spice and silk and urged her closer to something she hadn’t allowed herself to crave.
Arousal sang through her blood the moment his fingers brushed against the soft skin of her belly. She gasped softly at the power in his hands.
***
He felt her soften a little more with each moment. Shane had never imagined this and he was completely unprepared for the strength of his own reaction. For once in his life, he surrendered. To the moment. To the taste and feel of Jen. Just Jen and the feeling of being wanted.
He wanted to hear her gasp again, to hear the sweetness of that sound and to carry the memory of it into the darkness with him. He slipped his hand up over the arc of her ribs, swallowing each gasp, each sigh as she reacted to his touch.
He was not prepared for her to stiffen.
He froze immediately, stilling his hand at the edge of her ribs. Her fingers flexed against his forearms and she eased away. Shane rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, even as he brushed his lips over hers again, determined to ease the sudden awkwardness, if not erase it.
“I’d hate for you to think I’m one of those easy girls,” he said, his lips twisted in a grin. “You’ll have to at least buy me dinner.”
“I’ll still respect you in the morning.” She laughed, and just like that, the tension between them was gone. “It was really great seeing you tonight.”
He cupped her cheek, her skin so incredibly soft beneath his rough hands. She was tender and beautiful, and for once he truly wished he had more time before he left. He’d never know if tonight could have led to something more. “You, too.”
She blinked hard and Shane wondered at the sudden emotion he saw flicker in her eyes. “Be safe this year?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You do that.”
He kissed her then, sweetly this time and he was intensely glad that she didn’t stiffen or pull away. He hadn’t ruined this precious moment after all. “Good-bye, Jen.”
“Good-bye, Shane.”
He swallowed the bite of hard emotion that lodged suddenly in his throat. She’d given him one hell of a memory to carry with him into the desert.
He would hold the memory of that kiss with him even as he walked—willing and able—into a war. He’d volunteered to serve, but tonight, for the first time, he was walking away from something precious. Because of Jen, he had a reason for coming home.
… Continued…
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Tea Cups & Tiger Claws
by Timothy Patrick
First comes the miracle and then comes the madness. The miracle is the birth of identical triplets, and the madness is all about money, of course. The year is 1916 and the rare occurrence of identical triplets turns the newborn baby girls into pint-size celebrities. Unfortunately, this small portion of fame soon leads to a much larger portion of greed, and the triplets are split up—parceled out to the highest bidders. Two of the girls go to live in a hilltop mansion. The third girl isn’t so lucky. She ends up with a shady family that lives in an abandoned work camp. That’s how their lives begin: two on top, one on the bottom, and all three in the same small town.
Identical in appearance and with the same blood in their veins, the sisters should have also shared united destinies. Instead, those destinies are thrown to the wind, and the consequences will be extreme. Tea Cups & Tiger Claws explores wealth and poverty, jealousy and conceit, and is ultimately a story about deadly ambition and how it will once again throw the sisters together. It’s a journey that spans fifty years, three generations, and the perilous gulf between the rich and the poor. Along the way, you’ll marvel at the opulence of a mansion where presidents are entertained, and you’ll walk cautiously through a shanty town that harbors the forgotten. So get ready for the unexpected, and let “Tea Cups & Tiger Claws” take you down the crooked byways of this captivating family saga.
5-star praise for Tea Cups & Tiger Claws:
“A truly wild ride…a page-turning, can’t put down tale…”
an excerpt from
Tea Cups & Tiger Claws
by Timothy Patrick
Chapter 1
It started in 1916 when the newspapermen came to town to write stories about a local scamp who’d given birth to identical triplets. Truthfully, the whole thing didn’t look like much more than a new swatch on an old quilt, but they came anyway. Maybe it had something to do with all the gloomy headlines: German Zeppelins Bomb Paris; Summer Olympics Canceled; Special Dispatch From The Trenches Of World War. Gloom doesn’t sell. That’s what the newspapermen said. Scandal and depravity sell, and if those commodities can’t be found, out comes the human interest rainbow slapped across the dreary landscape of the front page. In this case the rainbow took the form of sixteen-year-old Ermel Sue Railer and her three baby girls. Her cornpone husband, Jeb, told wild stories and took a good picture, as did Ermel—when she covered her buck teeth—and her birthing of the first identical triplets born in the U.S. in over a year made for a story that promised to sell at least a few newspapers and magazines. Reporters, photographers, and sketch artists hopped into the town of Prospect Park, California like penguins at breeding time.
Of course the Town Council didn’t care for any of this. The fact that Jeb and Ermel lived there at all made the town look bad enough. Now the whole world knew about them and about their ratty home down on Pine Street. They lived in a development named Yucatan Downs, derisively known as Yucky D, which consisted of two-bedroom shacks surrounding a dirty courtyard where chickens, dogs, and neglected children scurried amongst broken down wagons and a couple of precariously leaning outhouses. The place had originally been a work camp, thrown up years earlier to temporarily house the carpenters who’d built the first mansions on the hill, but instead of getting torn down, a clever speculator slapped on the exotic name and filled it full of undesirables.
Other than the disgrace of having Prospect Park’s good name lumped in with the likes of Jeb and Ermel Railer, the articles in faraway magazines and newspapers didn’t cause any real damage; readers of the New York Times Sunday Magazine might’ve been captivated by the miracle of identical triplets but they didn’t hop a train to come see for themselves. In neighboring cities they did. Cooing, gushing baby lovers from miles around invaded Prospect Park and clogged the downtown streets with wagons and noisy mules. They chugged up the hill in smoky model T’s to ogle the mansions. They guffawed and said howdy and showered the town with the lowbrow familiarity of a bean picker on pay day.
Despite these aggravations, the good people of Prospect Park weathered the storm with their usual dignity. These things needed to be kept in perspective. The city of Santa Marcela had been plagued for decades by a whole colony of Railers. Prospect Park, on the other hand, had one little nest. All things considered, the good people seemed to be fortunate.
~~~
Ermel didn’t mind the steady stream of tearful women who took turns hovering over the bassinets, especially when they tucked quarters and half dollars into her hand. And when she sat for the artists, surrounded by babies, she kept an eye on Jeb to make sure he didn’t pocket any of the envelopes that some of the rich folks left behind. Along with the usual Bible tract, these envelopes often contained folding money of ones, fives, and even tens; folding money that soon put her into a lavender hobble skirt and shirtwaist and lace up boots. All in all, Ermel Railer found motherhood to her liking.
One afternoon two weeks after the birth, after the hubbub had died down, when sleepless nights and boiled diapers began introducing Ermel to a world of motherhood that didn’t include little envelopes filled with cash, a stern looking man with perfectly oiled gray hair knocked on the door. He wore a chauffeur’s uniform, and Ermel easily pegged him for just another uppity servant.
“The duchess wishes to see the babies,” he said, slowly and precisely, like someone who wants to be understood so he doesn’t have to be around any longer than necessary.
“Then tell her to come in,” said Ermel.
“She has instructed that the babies are to be brought to her in the motorcar one at a time, ten minutes each.”
Ermel’s toothless mother, Gurty, who’d moved in to lend a hand, laughed contemptuously from the bedroom.
“You tell Princess What’s-Her-Name,” said Ermel, “that this ain’t no café, and she can’t order up my babies like a plate of pork chops.”
He stared scornfully. Then he took a small envelope from his vest pocket and handed it to her.
“Wait here,” grumbled Ermel, as she hurried to the bedroom that she and Jeb shared with the babies.
“How much she give?” asked Gurty.
“Ten dollars.”
“She better.”
Ermel flung off the dress she’d been wearing and put on the new hobble skirt and shirtwaist. From a shiny red box she then lifted a giant hat with a wide brim and peacock feathers jutting out the back. She carefully put on the hat and tucked a few loose strands of black hair behind her ear. Then, after tracing red lipstick across her mouth, she admired herself in the mirror. Nobody showed up Ermel Railer, not even a duchess. She walked confidently to the front door.
“Mrs. Railer, you seem to be forgetting something,” said the man.
Ermel looked down at her outfit and said, “No, I got everything.”
“The baby, Mrs. Railer.”
“Oh yes. How silly of me.”
When Ermel saw the long, gray motorcar parked on the street, she placed the name: the Duchess of Sarlione, who used to be Jeannie Brynmar before she got herself a royal title by marrying a penniless Italian duke. A few of the local heiresses had gotten titles like that, but this one stood out because she came back from Europe with the title—for a price—but not the duke, and because she wrapped herself in pure white ermine and rode around town in a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost.
“You are to address the duchess as ‘Your Grace.’ Do you understand?” said the chauffeur as they approached the car.
“I think I know how to greet my visitors thank you.”
After opening the motorcar’s back door, the chauffeur said, “Your Grace, this is Mrs. Railer.”
“Hello Mrs. Railer.”
Ermel looked in and saw a picture right out of McCalls. The big brown eyes, perfect white skin, glossy red lips, and stylishly short hair looked like they belonged to an expensive porcelain doll that people like Ermel didn’t dare touch. Then her natural defiance kicked in and she said, “Hello lady. I like your motorcar. Might get one myself…now that I’m in the magazines and all.”
“This must be your baby daughter…one of them anyway,” said the duchess with a small, sad laugh. “Please get in.” She reached out and pulled down a jump seat. Ermel tried to step up to the running board but got hobbled by her hobble skirt, so she hiked it above her knees, and climbed in, baby and all, hitting her hat on the convertible top and knocking it catawampus across her head. She finally wiggled into the seat, which faced the duchess, and self-consciously put herself back together. The chauffeur closed the door.
“Can I hold her?”
“You paid your money didn’t you? Sure you can hold her.”
The duchess bit her lip and took the baby. She had tears in her eyes. The lady who had fur coats and servants and a motorcar that cost more than a house, cried over a baby.
“What’s her name?”
“Uh…uh…Abigail.”
“Hello Abigail.”
For the next ten minutes the duchess touched the baby, smelled the baby, hugged the baby, and rocked the baby. She did everything except change the baby’s diaper. And every time the baby made a goo-goo sound, she rejoiced as if the kid had just graduated medical school. Ermel alternated between eyeballing the Rolls Royce, the ermine coat, and the duchess, who seemed to be off her nut.
As she handed back the baby, a leg popped through the swaddling blanket. Unable to resist, the duchess grabbed the little foot and pressed it to her face. Then she noticed a tag tied to the ankle. She looked at it and then looked at Ermel. “It says Judith,” she said.
“Then it must be Judith.”
The duchess kept staring.
“We swap names all the time. They don’t know no better. Except for Dorthea. We don’t swap her name on account of her pale blue eyes.”
“Pale blue eyes? Aren’t they identical triplets?”
“Yeah…I’m not sure how all that stuff works. They all got blue eyes but Dorthea’s are kinda like steel blue. The doctor says she got an infection that caused her eyes to come out different than the others.”
“But she can see…there isn’t anything wrong with her eyesight, is there?”
“Nah, there ain’t nothing wrong…except if you stare at ‘em too long it kinda puts you in a trance.”
“Really! Bring me Dorthea next!”
As Ermel walked back to the house to exchange one baby for another, she saw her next door neighbor, Mrs. Krawiec, staring out her window. And in the next house over she saw Mrs. Duda, and her teenage daughter Aniela, staring out their window. Ermel looked back over her shoulder, across the street. Even there, in the normal houses, she saw eyes glued to windows, and she realized none of them had ever said two words to a real live duchess or sat in a duchess’s Rolls Royce. Ermel walked proudly back to her house.
Later, after Jeb came home from a night of spending the contents of one of the envelopes, she told him about the duchess. Of course he blew his top. “Our babies are good enough for her to slobber over, and you’re good enough for her to order around like a slave, but our house ain’t good enough for her highness to step foot into?” Nobody blustered better than Jeb Railer. He badmouthed the people on the hill in general, and cussed one family in particular: the Newfields. That’s what Ermel liked about him. That’s why she married him. And because of his handsome face…and she got pregnant.
So Jeb ranted and raved and made her promise to stick it to the duchess if she came around again. When Ermel showed Jeb the envelope, he calmed down and fell asleep grumbling.
The duchess did come around again—two days in a row. On the first of those days everything went as before: the uppity chauffeur knocked, Gurty sneered, Ermel carted babies back and forth, and the neighbors got bug-eyed. The next day, though, things changed.
“Hello Mrs. Railer,” said the duchess. “It’s me again. I hope you don’t mind another visit.”
Ermel tried to look put out as she climbed into the motorcar.
The duchess held out something in her hand and said, “I brought you a little present.”
The two ladies exchanged bundles. The duchess went to mush over the squirming one and Ermel expectantly unfolded the other.
“It’s a satin and chiffon evening dress,” said the duchess, between fits of adult baby talk. “I think it will look great on you. It’s by Lucile.”
“Oh…yes…Lucile,” said Ermel.
She gently stroked the silky material. The duchess gently stroked the baby’s downy head. Ermel pressed the cool satin to her face. The duchess pressed the baby’s pure face to hers. Ermel hugged the dress. The duchess hugged the baby.
Thanks in no small part to Ermel waiving the dress around like a crazy flagman as she walked back to the house, this time the neighbors didn’t try to control themselves. They came poking around before the big car’s smoky exhaust even had a chance to clear. The two Polack ladies, Krawiec and Duda, pretended to be just passing by but quickly small-talked their way into Ermel’s house. Vera Snyder, the white trash from across the courtyard who stole clothes pins from the neighbors, came in looking for a match to light her cigarette, which the Polacks thought scandalous, but not enough to make them leave. A Mrs. Barnes, from across the street, who’d never said boo to anyone at Yucky D, came over with a gift. Ermel tossed it onto the bed and concentrated on getting into the new dress.
The visitors surrounded the bassinets, paid their respects to the babies, and then followed like hound dogs when Ermel sashayed into the kitchen wearing the black and white dress. She stopped next to Gurty, who sat at the kitchen table, and held a sleeve out to her visitors. “It’s a gift from the duchess,” she said. “You may touch it if you want.” The Polack ladies wiped their hands on their aprons and held their breaths as they ran the shiny fabric between their sausage fingers. “It’s satin. Made from silk,” explained Ermel. “And looky here at the bow. It feels like velvet.” Mrs. Barnes, too dignified to fawn but too curious to abstain, touched the fabric also. Only Vera, who loudly puffed a cigarette in the back, ignored the offer.
“It’s by Lucile,” said Ermel.
“Oh yes. Lucile,” said Mrs. Barnes. Mrs. Krawiec looked confused and whispered into Mrs. Duda’s ear. She got a jab in the ribs by way of a response.
Ermel had never commanded such attention in her short and unspectacular life. She withdrew the sleeve and watched everyone’s eyes follow the simple movement with rapturous attention. She danced around the kitchen like a ballerina, watching their facial expressions rise and fall with every bend of the knee. She watched as they hypnotically shuffled toward her like moths to the fire, following, turning, inching closer, until they had her deliciously cornered.
From the table, Gurty coughed up a chuckle, but no one else made a peep. The Polack ladies didn’t want to barge forward when Mrs. Barnes, their social better, might want the privilege. Vera seemed content to look on like a hungry spider. Finally Ermel said, “Are you just gonna stand there staring or are you gonna talk?” And then the flood gates opened. “What does the duchess sound like?” “Does she have an accent?” “What do you talk about?” “Does she like kielbasa?” “What type of perfume does she wear?” “Does she like dumplings?” “Where’s the duke?” “Does she have a villa in Italy?” Ermel answered all the questions in a manner befitting the owner of an evening dress by Lucile.
And then Vera Snyder spoke. “Ya know why she keeps coming around, don’t ya?”
“I think she wants me to be her friend…since I’m famous and all.”
“She wants your babies. That’s what she wants,” said Vera.
The other ladies gasped.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Ermel.
“How many people have come two days in a row?” asked Vera.
“I don’t know. A few.”
“And how many have come three days in a row?”
“I got better things to do than count my visitors, in case you ain’t noticed.”
“None. That’s how many. I seen every buggy and motorcar that come through here.”
“That don’t prove nothin’. If she ain’t my friend, how come she give me this deluxe dress?”
“Because she knows it’ll unscrew your head, and you’ll start dancin’ around like a fool instead of keeping track of your babies.”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause my best friend is a duchess.”
“If she’s such a friend, how come she don’t never come in your house?”
The other ladies acknowledged Vera’s point with a quiet murmur. Ermel looked at her feet. “I’ll bet you five dollars,” continued Vera, “she won’t never come in here ‘till the day she takes your babies.” She reached over Gurty’s shoulder, snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and walked away. “Let me know,” she said as she swung open the front door, “I could use the money.”
Nobody showed up Ermel Railer, especially not the likes of Vera Snyder. The next day, when the chauffeur once again knocked upon her door, Ermel locked Gurty, who wasn’t fit for company, in her bedroom and went out to invite the duchess in to see the babies. She said they were sleeping and couldn’t be brought to the motorcar. The duchess politely declined and drove off. Still determined, Ermel went out that very day and bought teacups and a lace table cloth and pastries from the fancy bakery on Center Street. This finery proved to be no temptation whatsoever to the duchess. After the third try, when Ermel pushed too hard, the duchess stopped coming altogether.
Ermel knew envy. She knew the choking kind that turns its victim into a big talker who bristles and puffs but still goes to bed feeling small. She had no taste for hope or contentment or thankfulness, so she slurped a resentful gruel that numbed her heart and leached her soul. Yes, Ermel knew envy like a prisoner knows handcuffs, but for a few blessed days she’d felt the freedom of handcuffs removed when she, Ermel Railer, had been the big somebody; when the fawning, licking eyes had been glued to her instead of the other way around. She’d been the one with the duchess, and the dress, dishing out jealousy and serving up discontent like a flashy soda jerk. And she liked it, loved it, and now that it was gone, she felt devastated. Ermel fell hard off her pedestal and landed right back where she’d started: envious and small.
Fortunately, she’d married into a family that had been producing champion enviers for a century. In her hour of need, when she had the bile, but not the throat to deliver it, her husband stepped in to pick up the slack.
“You know what’s the difference between them hoity-toitys up on the hill and us down here? I’m asking you! Do you know?” hollered Jeb. “They’re better cheaters and liars! That’s it. And that duchess lady is worse than most ‘cause she went out and got herself an extra coat of paint to cover up her cheatin’ and lyin’. That’s what her title is, a cover up!”
And then he howled about the Newfields, calling them the biggest cheaters and liars of all.
“And if she’s a real duchess then I’m the King of Siam and my ass is Prince Charming! Anybody can get a title—it ain’t no harder than puttin’ down your name on a legal document—but most people don’t do it ‘cause they know it ain’t right. Why do you think nobody ain’t never seen the duke? ‘Cause he don’t exist, that’s why!”
And then he wailed about the hatchet job done to his family name and how no royal title on earth could repair it.
“And that motorcar ain’t hers neither. My friend up at the tannery told me so. It belongs to a motorcar salesman in Santa Marcela. She drives it during the day and he drives her at night, if you know what I mean.”
And then he drove himself crazy talking about the Newfields.
Jeb did a proper job on the duchess and made Ermel proud. Of course he got something out of the deal too. Up at the Wagon Wheel Tavern nobody listened to his stories anymore, unless he bought them a drink. Now he had someone who did it for free. As long as he took a break every now and then to commiserate with Ermel and complain about the stuck up duchess, she let him pontificate as he pleased. For a while she even laughed in the right spots, thought of cuss words when he ran low, and clucked her tongue when the shame of the Newfields called for it. That’s how it went for three days running, like it used to be before they got married, almost blissful.
Too bad Ermel’s hour of need didn’t last a week, maybe the bliss could’ve taken root, but she had a house full of babies and needed to figure things out, like how to pile as much work as possible onto Gurty without killing her. Besides, what good ever came out of Jeb’s tired old stories? They sounded daring, but he never got anything out of them, and now, after three days, all Ermel got was a headache. So she stopped listening, and Jeb went searching for an audience back up at the Wagon Wheel Tavern. Ermel could live with that. It was a routine she knew—even though they’d only been married seven months. He’d drink and argue and try to make loud speeches. He might get kicked out and have to try his luck at the bar across the street, or he might make it to closing time. After midnight he’d stagger home, barge in like a hurricane, and make another speech. And then the next day he’d do it all over again, unless the money ran out, in which case he’d go to his uncle’s in Santa Marcela to make a few bucks.
But this time it didn’t happen like that. This time Jeb came home earlier than usual and slipped through the front door like a cool summer breeze. Humming a happy tune, he moseyed up to the table where Ermel and Gurty had just started dinner, reached into his overall pocket, and pulled out a bottle of store-bought gin. He put it on the table with a wink. Ermel liked store-bought gin but usually got stuck with the rotgut sour mash from Jeb’s uncle.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked.
Jeb stared at her, started to say something, stared some more, and then said, “We’re celebrating our good fortune.” He swung his leg over a chair and sat down.
“If you’re talking about the money in the envelopes, there ain’t nothing to celebrate ‘cause you’ve spent every last dollar of it.”
“I ain’t talking about that. I’m talking about true good fortune, the good fortune of powerful friends in powerful places.”
“And what friend might that be?” asked Ermel suspiciously.
With raised eyebrows and a knowing smile, Jeb said, “We shall see.” He put a big piece of cornbread on a plate, covered it with sausage gravy, and picked up a fork.
“We shall see is right,” said Ermel, as she snatched away his plate. “What friend are you talking about?”
“The one that got me a job that pays ten dollars a day.”
“Ten dollars? For doin’ what?”
“Drivin’ a truck half day.”
“Some drunk in a bar says he’ll pay ten dollars for a half day’s work and you believe him?” snorted Ermel, followed by a bigger snort from Gurty.
Jeb tossed an envelope onto the table and said, “That’s for the first two weeks. Paid in advance. Cash.” He grabbed the plate from Ermel and dug in.
Gurty reached for the envelope, but Ermel beat her to it. After a quick count, she said, “There’s a hundred dollars in here!”
“Just like I told you.”
“What are you gonna to do with it?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. You’re goin’ up town tomorrow and spend every penny on yourself. You’re gonna buy jewelry and perfume and all the other whatnots. And when you run out of things to buy in Prospect Park, I’m takin’ you over to Santa Marcela.”
“Really?”
“It’s a celebration, ain’t it?”
With brown gravy dribbling down his chin, he smiled and chewed enthusiastically.
After dinner, Gurty ran from one fussy baby to another while Jeb and Ermel sat at the kitchen table and downed big glasses of gin-lemonade. When that ran out, they poured rotgut whisky and talked loudly about the big motorcar they’d buy, and the big house—maybe even a big house at the base of the hill. Why not? It’d been done before. After all, they were the famous Railers who owned the newest set of identical triplets in the country, maybe even the world.
While Ermel might’ve been a simple, dirt-poor sixteen year-old, she possessed the suspicious nature of a purse-clutching old lady. Gin-lemonade and rotgut whisky applied to an unsuspicious mind can smooth the jagged edges of apprehension down to harmless nubs. On a mind like Ermel’s, it didn’t work. Even at the height of their boisterous revelry, when numb lips impaired speech and floating brains turned rational thoughts into bobbing apples, those jagged edges called out to her. Why had Jeb forked over the money? He never did that. The rent got paid only when the landlord parked his motorcar outside their front door and caught Jeb off guard. Ermel kept food on the table only because she foraged his overalls for loose change and the odd dollar. Now he was tossing around packets of money and telling her to spend it all on herself. And who was this powerful friend that passed out high paying jobs to the likes of Jeb Railer? Too many jagged edges.
In her quest against these suspicious happenings, Ermel had a secret weapon: Jeb’s big mouth. He knew how to talk, and more often than not, talked himself into trouble. She just needed to wait.
And sure enough, after a while his head tipped to the side, and the words started running wild. He raised his glass and hollered, “Here’s to the duchess! I take back half the stuff I never said about her!”
Ermel put the brakes on her spinning head.
“It just goes to show you can’t judge a cook by its cover…a cook by its…a…you know what I mean,” he said.
“What are you saying, Jeb?”
“I’m…er…saying what I’m saying. What do you think I’m saying?”
“Jeb, what are you saying about the duchess?”
“Oh yeah, the duchess. She must want kids real bad.”
Ermel sat up straight and said, “You better not be talking about my kids, Jeb Railer.”
He tried to likewise straighten himself up and meet her glare. “Well maybe I am, and maybe I ain’t.” He leaned forward and studied her face. “Your mouth is wadded up like a horse’s butthole. That means you’re mad. But I got a secret that will make you happy…and then the horse’s butt will go away. Come here and I’ll tell you…but you can’t tell no one ‘cause the man said so. Come here.” She leaned in close and he said, “We’re gettin’ three thousand dollars for ‘em.” And then he sat back and beamed like a man with a gold mine.
The horse’s butt didn’t go away.
“You snivelin’ son of a bitch! You sold my babies to that…that two faced, stuck-up duchess!”
~~~
Nobody ever accused Jeb of having any sort of a military bearing, but on the night when Ermel figured out his little scheme, he would’ve made a terrific soldier. With his wife bearing down like a frothing charger, instead of indulging his appetite for drunken combat, he fortified his wobbly legs with sheer gumption and quickly affected a strategic retreat. He saved himself. He saved the day. He saved the cause. Then again, maybe it hadn’t been anything quite so noble. Maybe it had been the power of money. Like a rat following its nose to the dumpster, maybe the smell of money raised Jeb up and safely guided him through the alcoholic fog and away from his raging wife. It didn’t matter though because it ended with the same results: he had indeed saved the cause and would fight again.
And lose repeatedly.
First, when Ermel had calmed enough for Jeb to risk proximity, he attacked with love. With a bowed head and a lump in his throat, he offered up his own tender heart to be cracked like a melon. Didn’t his little girls deserve the best? Didn’t they deserve fancy dresses and shiny leather shoes and nannies and maids and…and…banjo lessons and all the other whatnots that went part and parcel with being rich? Yes they did, and he’d be a darned sorry father if he didn’t give it to them. Yes, it was true he’d never recover from the loss, but he had to do it because he loved them that much, and, he knew, Ermel loved them that much too. They had to let their babies go to the duchess.
This argument didn’t go anywhere, but it seemed like a good place to start.
Next he tried greed. Everyone is greedy. It’s like hair, everyone has it to some extent, and Ermel’s endowment fell on the bushy side of the scale. Besides the money from the new job, he’d agreed to a thousand dollars for each baby. Now the lawyer, a serious, frowning man named Mortimer Pugh, said buying and selling babies went against the law so the thousand dollars had to be what he called a “one time re-imbursement of expenses material to the birth and sustenance of each adoptee up to the point of adoption.” Let him call it what he wanted, it still added up to three thousand dollars. Jeb begged Ermel to think about all the things she might do with that kind of money. Responding with a hateful glare and the brevity of a corpse, she told him she’d never sell to the duchess. Jeb pressed on, dangling the dream house in her face, the dream house at the base of the hill that three thousand dollars might just buy, the dream house that might just turn her into a lady…unless, of course, she liked being white trash. Ermel threw a plate at his head.
Jeb threatened and screamed. He put a big dent in the wash tub and almost broke his foot. Each and every time Ermel stared him down and backed him out of the house, where he trudged up to the Wagon Wheel to convalesce, or sometimes strategize with Mortimer Pugh.
Only a few lousy signatures stood between Jeb Railer and more money than he’d seen in a lifetime. A few squiggles of ink. That’s it. It’s one thing when the money sits in a vault underground, or behind the cold stare of armed guards, but when your own spiteful wife is the one slamming the door in your face, that’s more than a man can take. He’d have been the first to admit the sinfulness of it, but murder even crossed his mind, or at least a sturdy coma. He also thought about forgery, but didn’t see a way past Pugh, who said things had to be done up proper.
But what about lying? Husbands lie to their wives on occasion. They have to, unless they like walking around in an apron. Wives think faster and scheme better, so husbands lie. It levels the playing field. So Jeb changed his strategy.
“It’s too bad,” he said one day, with a sigh, “‘cause I guess the duchess really did like you after all.” Maybe Ermel told him to shut up, maybe she didn’t. Jeb concentrated on dangling the worm and didn’t really care. The fish won’t bite if it doesn’t see the worm. “I’m to blame more than anyone I suppose, the way I turned you against her, but how was I to know she wasn’t a phony like all the rest?”
She ignored him.
“Yep. I done wrong and knew it for certain today when I give the lawyer your answer. Instead of getting mad, he said it was a shame things didn’t work out ‘cause the duchess missed her get-togethers with you and wanted to invite you up to her mansion for tea—after all the adoption business got settled.”
“You’re a liar Jeb Railer,” said Ermel.
And then a faint smile crept across her mouth, and she tilted her head almost imperceptibly to the side. She’d seen the worm.
“That’s probably why she give you the dress…to get you started with all that fashion stuff—so’s you fit in with the ladies on the hill.”
No response.
“Wouldn’t that be somethin’? Picked up for tea with the duchess in that fancy motorcar and delivered up the hill in style? I can see the smoke comin’ outta Vera Snyder’s ears right now.”
“It ain’t gonna work, Jeb.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“I’m just makin’ conversation. Last I heard that weren’t no sin.”
“Well you can just give it up.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine….But it ain’t a hard thing to prove. All you gotta do is ask the lawyer. Do you got somethin’ against that?”
No response.
“You should ask him. The duchess said every word I just told you, and he’ll tell you himself—and them fellas ain’t allowed to lie or they get what you call de-burred.”
“De-burred. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about…. What else did he say—not that I believe a word of it?”
“Nothin’. The duchess likes you and wants to invite you to a tea party. That’s it.”
“Jeb Railer you won’t get away with it if you’re lyin’ to me! You know that don’t you?”
Jeb did get away with it, at least long enough to get Mortimer Pugh into his house, up to his kitchen table, and sitting face to face with Ermel. And it turned out the lawyer knew a thing or two about lying himself, hard as it is to believe, given his noble profession and all.
A bad liar presses too hard and spit-shines the lie until it blinds. A good one throws it out like yesterday’s news and shrugs at the wonder of it. A bad liar hovers over a syrupy-sweet concoction of impossible dreams. A good one boils the dream in a sludge of boredom or contempt or, in Mortimer Pugh’s case, frustration. He bemoaned the time wasted by the duchess planning a tea party when she had important business matters to tend to. Then he asked forgiveness for speaking out of turn. When pressed on the issue by Jeb, on account of his wife’s unbelief, the lawyer made a show of irritation as he dug around in his leather bag and produced a personal invitation from the duchess. He handed it to Ermel and then drummed his fingers and looked impatiently at his pocket watch. Ermel tugged on the lavender ribbon that bound the folded, cream-colored card. Inside, she read:
The Duchess of Sarlione wishes to extend her cordial invitation to a tea party on Monday, the second of October at one o’clock in the afternoon at Toomington Hall. RSVP Toomington Hall.
“It ain’t no good. The second of October has come and gone,” said Ermel.
“Yes, it’s my understanding that the duchess had expected a speedy arrangement with you—based upon your friendship—after which I was to present this invitation. Unfortunately the arrangements have not been speedy.”
“Is she plannin’ another one?”
“It’s my understanding that she thinks of nothing else.”
Jeb watched the smile creep across Ermel’s face.
“Er…Mrs. Railer, may I have the invitation back please, as it is expired…and no doubt the duchess has a new one for you…provided there are no further delays.”
The next day a motorcar picked up Jeb and Ermel and drove them to Mortimer Pugh’s office in Santa Marcela where they sat in high-back leather chairs around a giant table and signed papers. A notary sat at the end, ramrod straight, and clicked his teeth twice each time he placed a new page on his stack of papers. He acted finicky and precise, like a champion librarian.
After two of the three sets of documents had been signed, Ermel excused herself to the powder room. The men stood as she left and then sat back down with smiles all around. Everything looked good. The lawyer had tamed the wild pony without her even knowing it; the notary proudly hovered over his parchment kingdom; and Jeb had a pile of money coming his way. One more little push and it would be over. They leaned back in their executive chairs and waited. But Ermel didn’t come back. Not after five minutes. Not after fifteen. Jeb went to investigate. Through a locked door she told him to go back and wait. “And keep your mouth shut,” she added. Not wanting to raise her ire at this critical juncture, he meekly followed orders. After thirty minutes the notary started processing the documents that had already been signed, which took about five minutes, and then said he had to go. Pugh talked him back into his seat with a promise of future business and a direct order for Jeb to go get his wife, even if he had to drag her back to the meeting. Jeb knew better than that, so he begged instead.
“Is everybody good and mad?” asked Ermel.
“Yes.”
“Mad enough to quit the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now go back and keep your mouth shut.”
When Jeb returned empty handed, the notary packed his bag and announced his departure, future business or no future business. That’s when Ermel entered the room, looking innocent and refreshed. And what did they say? Nothing. She’d been in the powder room, and they were men who knew better than to talk about such things. So they picked up where they left off, this time without the smiles. The notary clicked his teeth faster than ever, slapped each page down with barely a glance, and in five minutes had the job done.
Now the time had come to arrange handing over the babies, a topic Ermel had been cleverly avoiding. Jeb knew she didn’t mind giving up a few signatures, but she’d never give up anything that mattered until she got something in return, something more than fancy words and an old invitation to a tea party. What she didn’t understand, though, was that the duchess had already been to court, and the adoption had been set. All that remained was what Pugh called, “a properly executed Consent to Adopt,” the same Consent to Adopt that Ermel had just signed. She didn’t have a bargaining chip. She had someone else’s property and it couldn’t be bargained with at all. She’d signed over the babies and nothing but a knock on the door kept her from knowing it.
Of course Mortimer Pugh had a dozen different ways to take the babies from Ermel. A phone call to the sheriff, a mention of his client’s name, and he could have the babies tucked away at Toomington Hall by that very afternoon. But since Pugh didn’t want to make a nasty scene at Yucky D that might cost him business on the hill, he insisted on playing Ermel for one more round.
After the notary left, the lawyer made his horseshoe frown look something like a smile and said, “Now let’s turn to more pleasant matters. The duchess is hoping that you’ll deliver the babies yourself, Mrs. Railer, that way she can personally deliver your invitation to the tea party—a tea party, I might add, which is being given in your honor, and will be attended by only the best people from the hill. You are very fortunate, I must say, to have made such a friend as the duchess. Shall we say day after tomorrow then? Of course she’ll send her motorcar for you. Is that agreeable?”
~~~
Ermel had less than two days to get ready for the biggest day of her life. She spent a good part of that time telling her story up and down Pine Street. She didn’t doubt that some of the neighbors might turn out to see her off, maybe even wave their hankies as she drove by. She also tried putting a shine on Jeb’s social graces but eventually realized two days wasn’t long enough—or two years—so she made him promise not to pick his teeth with a pocketknife or say the word “reckon.” She also did some shopping for a particular item.
On the appointed day, at the appointed hour in the afternoon, Ermel watched out the window as the gleaming Rolls Royce pulled up to Yucky D, not just to the street in front, but into the actual courtyard, next to the outhouses. It’s safe to say this had never happened before. The Chauffer, just as starched as before, knocked on the door, announced his presence, and offered to be of service. Ermel put him to work loading bags and travel bassinets into the motorcar. After this he held open the motorcar door as Jeb approached wearing a top hat and tails and britches that needed lengthening. Not used to the duds or the motorcar, it took some doing getting him loaded into the back seat.
And now the moment had arrived. Ermel emerged. Actually the bow of her giant hat appeared first, jutting through the doorway like an ocean liner cresting a wave. But sure enough, there was Ermel too, underneath the ocean liner. She struck a pose of dignity and substance and strolled solemnly toward the Rolls Royce. A cry of “yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo” interrupted the silent procession. The Polack ladies, locked arm in arm on a nearby porch, called and waved to her. Ermel stopped, looked at them as if she’d never made their acquaintance, and nodded her head oh so slightly. Then, in case they’d missed it, she stroked the white ermine stole that draped her shoulders, the special item she’d bought for herself. It had taken a fifty dollar down payment and a six month payment plan, but she had to have it because in her new world a lady needed more than fancy hats and high button boots. She looked across the courtyard at Vera Snyder’s house and saw the curtain move. Across the street she didn’t see any well-wishers but saw plenty of eyes glued to windows. With a quick look back at Vera Snyder’s, she caught her staring like all the rest. Poor, unfortunate little people, too jealous to come out and send her off properly. With a hand extended to the chauffer, she slid into her seat with impeccable grace.
At Ermel’s command, the Rolls took a lengthy, circuitous route to the base of the hill, giving her many pleasant opportunities to get stared at by people on the street. It would have been more pleasant had she been able to watch them stare, but that didn’t seem right, so she captured as much of their envy as possible by looking out the sides of her eyes and stealing occasional glances.
And then the motorcar turned left on Center Street and started climbing the hill.
Ermel watched manicured hedges and expansive lawns sail past her window, and the higher the motorcar climbed, the more manicured and expansive they became. She saw long driveways at the base of the hill give way to long, meandering driveways, which gave way to driveways that meandered farther than the eye could see. She counted chimneys. Three chimneys, three chimneys, three chimneys, four, five chimneys, five chimneys, five chimneys, more. Her eyes rolled from rooftop to rooftop, hopscotching across the tops of the modest mansions, frolicking at length across the tops of the fairyland estates. And then the motorcar stopped in front of a giant wrought iron gate. They had arrived at Toomington Hall. The top of the hill. Almost the very top.
Next to Sunny Slope Manor, Toomington Hall was the most famous mansion on the hill. Only those two sat on the north side of Sunrise Way, with Sunny Slope crowning the top, and Toomington off to the side. Every other house in town sat below, like servants. Toomington also shared a Queen Anne architectural style with its fancy neighbor, a fact which the Chamber of Commerce trumpeted in their brochure: “When gazing to the top of our fair town, you will be inspired not by flat-roofed moderns that mingle politely with the mountainside, but by two majestic Victorians towering audaciously and piercing the blue sky with their razor sharp peaks.”
An old man in a blue uniform came out of the gate house, nodded to the chauffer, and pulled on a metal bar sticking out of the ground. From inside the gatehouse came a loud clank and a buzzing, whirring sound. The giant gate started opening. In the middle it had a fancy brass plaque with the letter “T” on it. Ermel’s eyes followed the brass plaque as it moved from right to left. Then the engine revved and the motorcar began the final climb to the top.
Jeb stared out the window with an open mouth. Ermel jabbed him with an elbow and then took inventory of herself. Holding a pocket mirror to her face, she turned to the left, almost hitting Jeb with the ocean liner, turned to the right, smiled, squinted, and rubbed a blotch of lipstick off her tooth. She tucked the mirror back into her black handbag and turned her attention to the ermine stole, gently, evenly running her hands over the top until all the hairs pointed obediently in the right direction. She looked at her gown, at her boots, at the babies. She told Jeb to wipe their faces with his hanky. She was ready.
The multiple peaks of Toomington Hall’s roof rose and fell above the trees that lined the driveway. Every few seconds, when the landscaping allowed, bigger sections of the mansion broke into view. Fleeting glimpses of a sunburst carved into a gable, of fancy wood siding shaped like fish scales, of a porch big enough to get lost in, brought Ermel to the edge of her seat. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Then the motorcar entered a clearing, and she realized she hadn’t been admiring Toomington Hall at all. Those grand peaks had belonged to Sunny Slope Manor, which now towered before her very eyes. She lowered her gaze—and her expectations—and found Toomington Hall in the shadow of its neighbor. Funny how a twenty room mansion could look so small. No matter. She didn’t come to worship Sunny Slope. Everyone did that. She’d come as the specially invited guest of a duchess. Besides, if everything went well, the Newfields might just invite her to Sunny Slope as well.
She grabbed Jeb’s arm and looked into his eyes for reassurance. He looked out the window. She looked out the window too and saw two motorcars parked up by the house, a big one and a small one, both plain and humble, not the motorcars of a duchess. A group of men stood around the motorcars. Ermel stared intently and got a good look at everything when the Rolls turned into the circular drive in front of the house. The big motorcar especially caught her attention. Topless, it had long bench seats facing each other in the back and the words “Police Squad” painted on the side rail that enclosed the seats. All but one of the men, of which there were six or eight, wore police uniforms and shiny badges. When they came to a stop, the policemen spread out and surrounded the Rolls. Ermel looked at Jeb and said, “You dirty dog.”
“Ermel, it ain’t like that. I can explain.”
“Shut up.”
They’d arrived but nobody moved. The chauffeur sat like a stone in the front seat, and the policemen outside stood motionless, alternating their stares between Ermel’s face and their shoes. Some commotion up on the front porch caught everyone’s attention. Mortimer Pugh and three women had just come out of the house and were now scrambling down the steps. Ermel looked at Pugh’s disagreeable face. He didn’t bother trying to crank that big frown of his into something more pleasant. No need. He had her right where he wanted.
He flung open Ermel’s door and said, “This is Mrs. Vigfusson, the nanny, and her assistants. They will be taking the babies now.”
Ermel looked away from Pugh, held her head high, and said, “I think not Mr. Pugh. That ain’t what we agreed to.”
“And what agreement is that Mrs. Railer? Is it in writing? Can you show it to me?”
She didn’t answer.
“This is Sheriff Fowler, Mrs. Railer,” said Pugh, pointing to the man without the uniform. “If you don’t honor our agreement, the sheriff and his deputies will make you honor it. And then I’ll sue you for breach of contract. You’ll lose the re-imbursement money, and, though your husband’s new job is in no way related to the adoption agreement, I wouldn’t be surprised if that disappeared too. You have a lot to gain Mrs. Railer…if you cooperate.”
“Ermel, please. These people ain’t for us anyway,” said Jeb.
“Shut up Jeb! You’re a liar! And so are you Mr. Pugh. And not no accidental one neither, but a rotten one that lies on purpose.” She turned away and stuck her nose back into the air.
“Obstinate little tramp!” huffed Mrs. Vigfusson, who then marched around the motor car and opened Jeb’s door.
“No! No!” said Ermel. “I’ll give them to you! Just give me a minute.” She looked at the three bassinets by her feet. “Hand me that one, Jeb,” she said, pointing to the one farthest away. Jeb picked up the bassinet and started to give it to Mrs. Vigfusson.
“Not to her you idiot!” said Ermel.
Jeb passed it to Ermel, who passed it to Pugh, who passed it to one of the assistants, who walked briskly away and into the house.
“That’s a good girl, Mrs. Railer, a very wise decision,” said Pugh.
“That one next,” said Ermel quietly, pointing to a bassinet.
“Very good Mrs. Railer, very good,” said Pugh, as he handed the bassinet to the other assistant. He then turned and held out his hands for the last baby.
“That’s all Mr. Pugh. That’s all the duchess is getting.”
“Come Mrs. Railer. You know that isn’t our agreement.”
“And what agreement is that, Mr. Pugh? Is it in writing? Can you show it to me?”
Pugh dropped his head and sighed. “Do you know what irrevocable relinquishment means Mrs. Railer? It means that once you say ‘yes,’ and sign the papers, you can’t change your mind and say ‘no.’”
“That’s fine Mr. Pugh, just so long as you can show me in writin’ where I said ‘yes’ in the first place.”
“Sheriff Fowler, I’m afraid your assistance is needed over here,” said Pugh.
The sheriff, an older man with a sagging stomach and two chins, stepped up to the car door. He looked down at Ermel, and she looked up at him. He cleared his throat a few times and said, “Mrs. Railer, you don’t want to go and make a scene. Just think about it for a second. If you make a scene, and there’s a scuffle, the baby might get hurt. You don’t want that now do you?”
“No sheriff, I don’t, and I’m ready to give over the baby just as soon as Mr. Pugh proves that I agreed to it. That ain’t so difficult. It’s all put down on paper, ain’t it?”
“Yes it is, and I’ve seen the papers. Everything is in order.”
“I want to see them too.”
“Mrs. Railer, I’m only going to warn you—”
“No, no, sheriff. If she wants to see it, I’ll show it to her. It will only take a moment.”
Pugh walked briskly back toward the house, leaving behind the fading sound of gravel crunching beneath his feet. The sheriff backed a step away from the motorcar and looked around at nothing. The policemen went back to shoe watching. After a minute, the crunching gravel returned and Pugh stood with a document in his outstretched hand. Ermel took it from him and flipped through the pages.
“Sheriff Fowler, can you help me please?” said Ermel. “What did I write at the bottom of this page?”
“Your name, just like Mr. Pugh said.”
“That’s right. I put my name, and I give my signature, quite a few times if you care to look. That’s for baby Judith. Now look here. What’s that say?”
“‘Ermel Sue Railer.’”
“That’s right. I give my signature all over the place for baby Abigail. Ain’t that so?”
“Yes, Mrs. Railer.”
“Now tell me sheriff, what’s it say right there?”
The sheriff glanced at the document, started to say something, then bent forward and looked again. He stood up straight and looked at Mr. Pugh.
“I know you can read it sheriff ‘cause I wrote as clear as can be. What’s it say?”
The sheriff didn’t say a word.
“‘I say no.’ That’s what it says,” said Ermel. “And here, where it says to give my signature, I said ‘no’ again. If you count ‘em all up I said ‘no’ six times and never once said ‘yes.’”
Jeb groaned. The young cops standing around the motorcar looked at each other. Mrs. Vigfusson hissed something under her breath and ran into the house.
“Give me that,” said Pugh, as he leaned in and grabbed the document from Ermel. “I saw you sign it with my own eyes.” He flipped quickly from page to page.
“No, Mr. Pugh. You saw me sign the other ones, but when I come back from the powder room, you and that tight-ass clerk stopped payin’ attention. I coulda done a finger painting if I’d had the hankerin’.”
“This is deceit! We had a verbal agreement, and that proves your deceit! Your own husband is a witness to that agreement. Jeb, are you just going to sit there and lose everything you worked for. Stand up and take charge! Get control of your wife before it’s too late!”
“Him?” said Ermel with a laugh. “It was too late the day he was born. Now you run along and tell the duchess she ain’t gettin’ Dorthea, the one with the pale blue eyes. She’ll especially want to know that.”
From inside the house came the unmistakable sounds of distress. Mr. Pugh’s head jerked up as he tried to make out the words. After some garbled emotional whispering and hissing, everyone heard, “…didn’t sign the papers? How can that even be possible? That’s his job. You go and tell him to get me that baby, like he promised. And tell the sheriff to do his job!” A few moments later, Mrs. Vigfusson came scampering down the porch steps.
Pugh turned back to Ermel and said, “Let’s just stop for a moment. We can work this out. I just know we can. We’ve come so far, there was bound to be a little hitch along the way. Isn’t that so?” He laughed nervously. “Let me have a word with the duchess. She really is quite fond of you, and I know she’ll want to make you happy. Can we do that? Can we just take a breath for moment? Sure we can. Of course we can. I’ll be right back.” He turned and dashed into the house.
“Sheriff,” said Mrs. Vigfusson, “Her Grace wants you—”
“I heard.”
The sheriff leaned over and poked his head into the motorcar. He cleared his throat a few times before saying, “I hope you know what you’re doin’ girl, cause it ain’t real smart messin’ with these people. They get their way. That’s the way it works. They get their way.”
“But they can’t take her from me if I said no. Can they?”
The sheriff looked up at the stern-faced nanny, back down at Ermel, cleared his throat repeatedly, and said, “No, not today anyway, but like I said, I sure hope you know what you’re doin’.”
Jeb held his head in his hands and moaned. Mrs. Vigfusson ran back into the house, hissing all the way. Pugh dashed out of the house, the opposite direction, and passed her on the way.
“Ok, ok,” said Pugh with a red, wet face. “It’s my fault. My fault completely. I misunderstood Her Grace’s instructions. But it’s all fixed now. Mrs. Railer, the duchess of Sarlione wishes to extend to you her most cordial invitation to a tea party.”
Ermel watched him strain to make his solemn jowls look jovial.
“It’s all prepared, as we speak, in honor of you, Mrs. Ermel Sue Railer. Just like you wanted.”
“We’re leaving now, Mr. Pugh. I’m not interested in that woman’s tea party, and you can tell her so. Driver, take us home.”
“No! Driver! Stay where you are! You’re not going anywhere Mrs. Railer until you hand over that baby!”
“Sheriff, will you be so kind as to inform Mr. Pugh that he can’t have my baby and he can’t make us stay here neither.”
Pugh looked at the sheriff with pleading eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Pugh. The court order says you need a proper agreement. You saw it yourself. That ain’t proper. As it stands today, I can’t make her give up the baby. You work things out in court, and I’ll take care of it, but not the way things stand today. Driver, take these people home.”
“I’m warning you,” said Pugh, “if you leave without handing over that baby, I’ll take everything from you! I’ll take everything!”
Ermel smiled, looked him in the eye, and said, “But you won’t get the thing you want most, now will you? Dorthea belongs to me.” Then she closed her door and told Jeb to close his. As the motorcar rolled down the hill, she lowered her window and said, “Remember, Mr. Pugh, nobody shows up Ermel Railer. Not a two-bit lawyer and not even a duchess.”
Chapter 2
Within days of the baby exchange, every adult in town, up the hill and down, had heard the story. It made its way around the grapevine a few times before coalescing into a tale about the ignorant white trash wife of Jeb Railer who’d insulted a duchess and selfishly condemned her own child to a lifetime of misery. Babies Judith and Abigail had been spared; good fortune had prevailed, and they’d won a reprieve. Dorthea, on the other hand, had won the Railer surname and all the shame that came with it.
It didn’t end with that, though, because in that one day, without a word or an action of her own, Dorthea not only became a Railer irrevocably, but became the most pathetic and pitiable Railer of them all. She had literally made it to the threshold of a miraculous redemption only to have it snatched away at the last second in a freakish turn of events. For the rest of her life she’d lug not only a sorry name, but a pathetic story as well. That story would make her known to most everyone in Prospect Park: “There goes the rejected triplet. It hurts to even look at her”; “That’s her! I can tell by the eyes. And to think, she could’ve had everything”; “My goodness! The spitting image of her sisters, except, of course, they don’t live like animals.”
There is no denying that babies are born into bad circumstances every day of the year, but, seeing Dorthea’s life from beginning to end, a person still has to wonder how these things worked. How come one daughter of a mean alcoholic grows up to be temperate and well-adjusted while another turns out dissipated and troubled? Why does one grown son of a prostitute feed the poor and help the needy while his brother stalks the shadows, indulging dark impulses? Dorthea could’ve played a part in one of these enigmas had she turned out differently. She could’ve been good water from a bad well and left everyone scratching their heads. It could’ve happened, but nobody expected it. They expected Dorthea to turn out like all the others in her family. But what about a third possibility? What about the possibility that she’d turn out much worse?
Better or worse didn’t matter in the early years, though. If anyone had cared to look, they
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JUMP
by Stephen R. Stober
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Jeremy Roberts is suddenly a stranger in his own body with no memory of his life. When he discovers he’s entangled in an unsolved tragedy, he must mount a high-stakes investigation to rescue someone he can’t remember.
Jeremy Roberts’ life is reset one morning in Boston’s Quincy Market when an inexplicable event leaves him a stranger in his own body. He quickly relearns his name and his place in the world, but can’t explain the heavy feeling of grief that pervades every moment of his day.
Hiding his complete lack of memory about his life, he sets to work finding the source of his emotional anguish. Uncovering files from his own computer, he learns that a terrible tragedy has befallen his family and its mystery remains unsolved.
Calling on a crack private investigator and a computer security expert, Jeremy delves deep into the case. After piecing together a startling theory, he plunges into a daring plan to rescue a woman he can’t remember… before it is too late.
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an excerpt from
Jump
by Stephen R. Stober
I do not know what I am.
Chapter 1 – Jeremy
This time it happened without much warning. I had to jump quickly in Quincy Market, at a shoe store. The switch was much faster than usual. I didn’t have much time to choose.
It’s been about a minute since the transition. I feel dizzy and a little off balance as I stand among shoppers who are focused on a man lying on the floor. Damian Murdoch had lost consciousness and collapsed. His wife, Carrie, is frantic and screaming for someone to call 9-1-1. There’s chaos in the store.
I feel something in my back pocket; it must be a wallet. The distraction gives me time to quickly take it out and look through its contents. There’s a Massachusetts driver’s license in Jeremy Roberts’ name with a home address shown as Heath Street in Brookline. There are some credit cards, cash, a few business cards, and an emergency contact card with a name, Jennifer Roberts, her phone number, and an e-mail address containing the name Jen.
The ambulance arrives in minutes, followed by the police. The woman standing beside me must be Jennifer, or maybe she calls herself Jen. Before the switch, she and Jeremy were talking to each other in a way that couples do in stores. I had sensed a profound grief within them.
The paramedics ask for everyone to clear the area as they tend to Damian. As he starts to come to, he mumbles something to Carrie, who is bending over beside him, crying. I had loved Carrie deeply. Damian will be okay.
Jennifer whispers to me, “Come on, let’s go home.”
I hesitate. I don’t want to leave Carrie. I won’t see her again. Jennifer takes my numb hand and starts to lead me away. I stumble, almost falling to the floor as I experience initial coordination problems. Jennifer tries to grab me as my hand slips from hers. She calls out my name with a gasp. I regain my balance and reach for her hand.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“I’m not sure, I feel a little dizzy.” In actual fact, much of my body has no feeling. As usual, for the first few moments of a transition, the neural messages being exchanged between my body and brain are not fully engaged.
“Do you want to sit down for a bit?”
“No, it’s ok, I don’t think it’s anything, Jen. Maybe that guy falling to the floor got me a little woozy.” Hopefully, she is Jennifer.
“Why are you calling me Jen?” She seems surprised.
I have nothing. I often have nothing at the beginning. I’ve learned that silence gets filled with information. Silence is powerful. Moments pass. Jennifer gives me more information.
“You haven’t called me Jen for years. What’s with you?” It is her.
I remain silent. Jennifer continues. “Are you okay? Do you think another migraine’s coming on?”
The opportunity. “Yes.”
“I better drive home,” she says firmly.
I’m relieved. At this point, I wouldn’t know where to go. She puts her arm around my waist, trying to give me support as we start to slowly walk out of the store. With each step, the neural pathways are connecting and I’m beginning to feel sensations in my limbs.
“I think I’m okay now,” I say as we reach the street. I concentrate on each step as I awkwardly place one foot in front of the other, trying to keep my balance.
I take her arm from my waist and hang on to her hand as she walks slightly ahead of me. As she proceeds, she looks back at me struggling to walk in a straight line.
“Jeremy, what’s wrong? You look drunk!”
“I’m just a little woozy. Let me sit down for a bit.”
We go to the curb where I sit. As the moments pass, I can feel sensations growing throughout my body. A few more minutes and it will be complete.
“The paramedics are still in the store. Do you want them to have a look at you?”
“No, I’m sure I’ll be all right in a minute or so. It’s probably just this migraine thing coming on. Let’s give it a couple of minutes. If I’m still dizzy, we’ll go see them.”
My new voice is deeper than Damian’s. It sounds odd as I talk. I clear my throat to hear the sound again.
After a couple of minutes, I feel complete and stand up. “I’m alright, let’s go to the car.”
Jennifer leads the way. I study her as she walks ahead. She’s a beautiful woman, five feet seven or so, high cheekbones, straight black hair formed into a ponytail threaded through the back of a pink Nike ball cap. Her aqua blue eyes, tanned skin, blue denim shorts, pink tank top, and immaculate white sneakers with the pink swoosh is a look that you’d see on a Nike commercial. She must be in her early forties, a very feminine woman in perfect shape.
I watch her every move and take in all of the cues that she’s unknowingly sending as she walks. To me, these signals are giant billboards indicating intention, feeling, and even thought. The way someone walks, how they move their feet, swing their arms, position their head, and even move their eyes can clearly reveal their level of comfort or stress, confidence, and their emotional state. My success has depended on my ability to read these nonverbal cues.
At first glance, Jennifer seems to walk like a confident woman. However, with a closer look, I can detect that she’s unsettled. Her overall posture, expressions, hesitations, and the way she touches her hair, suggest that something emotionally significant is happening within her. Is it related to the grief feelings I felt in both her and Jeremy before the transition?
Jennifer walks toward a white Mercedes SL, presses one of the keys, and the trunk lid pops open. She places the Nine West bag inside and closes the trunk. With another press of the key, the doors unlock. As I struggle to coordinate my limbs to get into the passenger seat, she asks, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, my back’s a little stiff, that’s all.”
“Can I put the top down?”
I nod. She presses a button and the trunk cover whirs to attention, gradually lifting open. The roof begins its folding dance and gently places itself into the front part of the trunk. The cover silently closes with no hint that the entire metal roof is hidden within. I watch as Jennifer adjusts the mirrors and seat. In one smooth movement, she belts herself in and starts the car with the push of a button. Her hands are beautifully manicured—clear polish on firm nails. She moves the car confidently away from the curb, narrowly missing the bumper of the Honda in front of us.
As she drives away, she says, “That poor man. I wonder whether he had a heart attack. Why didn’t anyone give him CPR?”
“I think I saw him breathing; it didn’t look like he needed CPR.” I knew exactly what had happened. “I’m sure he’ll be okay.”
“How can you say that? It could have been a stroke!”
I respond with a shrug.
“It’s interesting that it took no time for the police to arrive. I wish she had gotten such quick attention,” Jennifer says with a sarcastic tone.
Not sure what she means by that. I stay silent.
I close my eyes and place my hand on my forehead, feigning a migraine as Jennifer drives us home. I take this time to think about my new life. What lies before me? How quickly will I figure out my objective? Do Jennifer and Jeremy love each other? Do they have children? What’s the nature of the grief that I had felt within them? These are all pieces of the puzzle that I will have to figure out to help them navigate through their despair.
***
I do not know my name; I do not know how old I am. I have memories of thousands of people from countries and cultures around the world, but I can’t remember anything about me. As I often do at the beginning of a transition, I start asking the questions that I can never answer. How did all of this start? Who am I? Where is home? Where is my family? Do I even have a family? It’s all a puzzle and I am no closer to the answer than I ever was.
The one thing I do know is that today, and for some time to come, I am Jeremy Roberts. This morning, the tingling in my hands was the sign that the process was beginning. As always, I was not sure when or where it would occur, but I knew I had to act quickly. I needed to get to a busy place with many people. I asked Carrie if she wanted to go with me to the market.
For some reason, this time I felt that I wouldn’t have much control over timing. As soon as we arrived, it began. Carrie wanted to go to the shoe store. I followed her in. As she was paying for her sandals, the tingling—which feels like a very mild electrical shock that starts in my hands—encompassed my entire body. It can happen very quickly.
During a transition, for a brief period of time, I feel compassion for everyone physically near me. The feeling takes over my mind and body as if I’m in a thousand places at the same time. This morning I could clearly hear all the noise, conversations, and even whispers around me. I could see everything in my surroundings and smell the scents of Quincy Market: the food, perfume, body odor, garbage, Boston harbor, and even the rotting spills on the sidewalk. I took it all in.
I sensed all of the emotion—all of the pain, happiness, frustration, and sadness—within the people at the market on this Saturday morning in June. My transitions last for seconds only, yet it always seems much longer to me. It ends when I land. Jeremy and Jennifer were nearby. I felt a deep sense of sorrow and grief within them. I had to make a decision. I targeted Jeremy because of his anguish. It had to be him.
Then it happened. I jumped from Damian to Jeremy.
The sunlight strobes through the trees as Jennifer drives up Huntington Avenue. Billowing cotton clouds form in the summer’s blue sky. It’s a beautiful day for the beginning of this new life experience. Jennifer’s cell phone rings. She picks it up to her ear.
“Hi, sweetie. Hold on for a sec. Let me put in my earpiece.”
She puts in the Bluetooth ear bud and continues the conversation. “Where are you? Is Jeff with you? Are you coming home for dinner?”
It sounds like she’s talking to one of her children. As she continues the conversation, I discreetly reach for Jeremy’s wallet. I look through the contents once again, searching for more clues. I find his business card—Roberts & Levin Consulting Company, Jeremy Roberts, CPA, President—with phone number, address, e-mail and website. Jeremy is an accountant.
As I look through the wallet, I notice my hands—Jeremy’s hands. It’s strange when first looking at my hands in a new host. They always look and feel odd at the beginning. I can sense them as if they’re mine, but they look like someone else’s. They’re larger, a little rougher, and seem older than Damian’s. As I stare at them, I’m having difficulty controlling their movements while going through the contents of the wallet. Manipulating the papers and cards is awkward. If I look away and allow my hands to feel through the wallet, my dexterity returns. It will take me some time to coordinate what I see and how I feel in this new body.
I take out a photo from the inside pocket of the wallet; a frayed, worn picture of four people sitting on a sofa next to a Christmas tree. It looks like a younger Jennifer and Jeremy with two children. I put down the sun visor and look into the mirror. It feels like someone is looking at me but it’s my image being reflected back. Jeremy’s piercing blue eyes are staring at me. Even now, after so many transitions, it still feels unreal to look at a new ‘me’ in a mirror. I put back the visor.
I focus on that family photo again. The two little girls are maybe ages eight and ten. I assume they are Jeremy and Jennifer’s daughters. There are two other pictures in the wallet, one of a girl in her early twenties, wearing a cap and gown. She looks very much like a grown-up version of the younger girl in the family photo. She’s very pretty, with blonde hair and a huge smile. She looks so proud.
The other picture is of another young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, dark hair, standing in front of what looks like Niagara Falls. There’s some resemblance to the older child in the Christmas family picture. She looks remarkably like Jennifer and quite beautiful as well. On the back, there’s some writing: I love you, Daddy. Thanks for all of your help. – Jessie.
Jennifer continues her conversation as I pretend to organize the wallet. I listen carefully to her words. There’s some tension in how she’s speaking. Her intonations, mannerisms, and how her thumb plays with her wedding band confirms that she’s talking to one of her children; one of the girls in the pictures?
I take a chance. “Is that Jessie?”
She glances over at me with a surprised look and narrowed eyes that seem to be screaming. “It’s Sandy, Sandy, for God’s sake!”
Now that was a mistake. I should have known better. All these years have taught me to wait and take in much more information before offering anything other than a neutral statement. Something is terribly wrong. Why such a negative response? I look away from Jennifer, but listen intently over the noise of the wind blowing through my hair.
Jennifer lowers her voice and says, “He asked if you were Jessie. Can you believe it? I know, I know, but still…”
Jennifer stops talking about me while continuing the conversation. It’s hard to hear, but I think they’re talking about plans for the weekend—shopping and various topics. She’s not offering me any more clues.
Through my closed eyes, the bright pulsating sun creates flashes of light, and abstract images race through my mind. I think of Carrie. I didn’t know it at the time, but last night would be our last time together. It was late, maybe one in the morning. We were in bed talking, sipping wine, and listening to an Al Jerreau CD. After making love, we were still locked onto each other, our legs intertwined. With her head on my chest, Carrie looked into my eyes and whispered, “I have never loved you more.” We kissed and fell asleep.
I will miss her dearly. A wave of heavy sadness and apprehension washes over me as I find myself awkwardly sitting next to this new stranger, Jennifer, in the body of her husband Jeremy, whom I know nothing about.
After Jennifer finishes her conversation with Sandy, she turns to me and says, “What the hell were you thinking?”
I don’t respond. I wait for more information. None comes forth. We are quiet for the rest of the drive to the house. I hold my hand to my head, hoping that my error will be perceived as a result of my supposed migraine. I feel tension with Jennifer. I don’t know enough yet to begin any conversation with her.
***
I do not have Jeremy’s memories or his expectations, worries, realities, dreams, or ambitions. I do not know any of the people in his life, their history, or their connection to him. I know nothing about his work or his finances.
For now though, I am him. I will be living in his world for some time. Although my life as Jeremy is now an empty canvas, his family, friends, and colleagues will soon paint it with colorful and intricate images. Their conversations, nonverbal cues, and even their touch will reveal their expectations of me. And from that, I will learn much about him.
I will have to learn all about his world quickly. Jennifer’s interaction with me is already giving me clues and is kick-starting my quest for information. When I arrive at their home, there will be a wealth of information about Jeremy and Jennifer’s lives that I will gather from their files, computers, and other clues that I will discover.
It will be my starting point towards understanding his life, and discovering my objective.
Chapter 2 – Home
Jennifer drives down Heath Street, in a beautifully area that contrasts with the high-density neighborhoods that we drove through from Boston. We pass entrances to large estates and barely visible mansions in this wealthy enclave. We turn onto a long driveway of a contemporary home set back from the street. Perfectly placed old oak trees line the crushed-stone drive. Curiously, there is a yellow ribbon on the first oak tree. I look at it as we go by.
The driveway splits into a circular turnaround passing in front of the entrance. A sculpture of a child with water cascading over a protecting umbrella is at the center of a well-manicured lawn. The fountain creates relaxing white noise as we approach. We stop at the parking area on the left side of the entrance. Jennifer parks next to a black Lexus.
I look at the construction of the stone and brick building and presume it has replaced an older structure. The mature oaks give away the property’s history. The new building seems to have been erected in the footprint of the old home. It fits the setting perfectly.
As we get out of the car, Jennifer coolly says, “I want to finish the conversation that we started this morning.” She seems emotionless and dry, like she’s reading the news.
“Sure, but I’d like to lie down for a few minutes first.” I’m hoping to buy some time to look around the house.
“Remember to take your Maxalt, I’ll meet you on the patio in a half hour. We’ll have a light lunch before my appointments this afternoon.” I nod.
We enter through the large oak double front door, which opens onto an impressive foyer. I quickly glance around to get my bearings. Light-colored birch floors lead to a majestic staircase just ahead on the left. I take in all of the images and create a mental map of the home. A central floor plan—living room to the left, dining room to the right, the kitchen must be just off to the right, behind the dining room. I can see a den just ahead beyond the staircase. There must be a study or library to the left of the den. The house is eight to ten thousand square feet, vintage 1990s, high-end.
There are probably five bedrooms upstairs with a large master bedroom overlooking the backyard. If there’s a bedroom for each of Jeremy and Jennifer’s two daughters, I suspect that one of the remaining rooms will be an office. Hopefully that’s where I’ll find the family’s files. If not, they’ll be in the master bedroom, in the study next to the den downstairs, or possibly in the basement. Files are key. I have to find them to learn more about my new life.
The house is immaculate, and understated yet elegant. A Latina woman greets us.
“Good morning, Señor Roberts.”
“Morning,” I respond, then wait to take my cue from Jennifer.
Jennifer asks, “Carmella, could you please make us a salad with a scoop of tuna?”
“Si,” Carmella responds.
I look at Jennifer. “I’m going to lie down upstairs. See you in a half hour.”
She walks off toward the kitchen with no response. She isn’t happy. I suspect that the upcoming conversation will reveal what’s bothering her. I hope that I’m able to find something during my preliminary search to help me through that discussion.
I walk upstairs and instinctively know where I’m going. I enter the large master bedroom to the right of the stairs. It’s painted a muted green with a dark blue accent wall that’s a backdrop to the king-size four-poster bed. It’s a very large room, and it too is immaculate.
There are night tables on either side of the bed, a large plasma TV on the opposite wall, and a matching lounge chair and sofa in the corner of the room, positioned to view the TV. A large blue-green modern art painting hangs above the bed. I walk through the glass doorway to the master en suite. The ultra-modern bathroom leads to a balcony overlooking a large backyard, which has a pool and tennis court. I can see the balcony stretching along the back of the house.
I leave the bathroom and go back into the bedroom. An open door between the TV and bathroom leads me to a huge wardrobe room, which I suspect was a converted bedroom. The back wall has floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors leading out to the back balcony. The room is painted to match the bedroom and consists of built-in closet doors that are tinted in the same colors as the corresponding walls but in a high-gloss finish. The doors respond to a slight push of the finger. They open smoothly and silently, as if by remote control.
I push one of the green doors and it reveals drawers of women’s underwear, hosiery, and scarves. As I search for documents, I open and close all of the closet doors, which conceal many drawers, hanging clothes, and cupboards. There must be fifteen green closet doors. There are fewer doors in the blue area, and they open to reveal men’s clothes—Jeremy’s clothes.
There’s a makeup area in the corner of the room, complete with a large white desk, upholstered chair, and a mirror framed by round white light bulbs, Hollywood style. A set of stand-up mirrors next to the desk are set at oblique angles to view all sides of one’s body, similar to what you would find in a clothing store.
Positioning myself in front of the stand-up mirrors, I take a long look at my new image and study my features. Jeremy is about six feet tall and fit—a good-looking man with a solid jaw, and a full head of light brown hair that is graying at the temples, combed slightly off to the side, with a part. His looks remind me of President Kennedy. I touch my face and hair. I smile, stretching my lips to see this new image respond. Like always, it feels awkward at the beginning.
I move an arm and reposition my body. I watch the image in the mirror move. It looks like someone else in the mirror is copying me. Eventually I will see me in the mirror, but now I’m seeing a stranger. Right now, I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience—which, of course, is exactly what’s happening. It will take time for me to feel one with my new body.
I turn away from the mirror and move on.
I go back to the closets and open more doors, looking for files, notebooks, papers, or anything that I can use for information. I find nothing, but that doesn’t surprise me. Jennifer and Jeremy’s home is obsessively neat. Everything seems to have its place, and this room is clearly designated wardrobe only.
I leave the dressing room through a door that leads me back to the hallway. A quick glance around reveals a bedroom next to the dressing room. Across the hall, there appears to be two more rooms on either side of a bathroom.
I enter the bedroom next door, which is obviously a girl’s room, painted in pink with purple linens. There’s an adjoining bathroom, which, like the bedroom, is very messy. Sliding glass doors on the far wall also open onto that long connecting balcony. I scan the contents of the room, taking in as much as I can. I see a B.A. diploma from Boston University in the name of Sandy Roberts, hanging on a wall. There are a few unopened letters on the desk addressed to Sandy. Pictures of friends are randomly scattered on the walls.
At the top and stretching along the length of one wall, there’s a red Boston University banner that reads, “Go BU!” There’s also a single large photo just over the bed. It’s the same image that I have in my wallet of Jessie in front of the falls. A large yellow ribbon is taped to the window.
I leave Sandy’s room and cross the hall to one of the rooms on either side of the bathroom. The yellow room is immaculate, as if no one sleeps there. The queen bed is covered with a green patterned comforter and loaded with neatly placed colorful pillows and stuffed animals. Awards and diplomas in Jessie Roberts’s name are on the walls of the bedroom. A Cornell University banner with large lettering saying, “Go BIG!” is hanging along the top of one wall, just like the banner in Sandy’s room. I smile. There must be quite a school competition between the girls.
There are pictures of high school and college kids perfectly aligned on the walls, as well as many pictures of dogs and cats. There’s a large National Geographic poster of a male lion hanging over the bed. It is sitting under a tree on a grassy area, with its large, beautiful green eyes staring into the camera, as if posing.
There are two long shelves mounted on the wall between the entrance and the bathroom door. Each shelf is dedicated to a different sport. On the top shelf are ten or fifteen trophies of different sizes with little metal images of people in karate positions. Most say first place, and a few say second. Just below that shelf are two certificates in Jessie’s name: Karate Black Belt, First Dan and Karate Black Belt, Second Dan. The second shelf is full of similar trophies for fencing. Pictures under that shelf show someone, I presume Jessie, in various fencing positions, wearing a protective helmet with a full-face screen cover.
I feel odd in this room; something’s just not right. I experience a deep sense of sadness. I look around and can’t get a handle on what’s causing my unease. I leave the room feeling quite uncomfortable. I know I will soon find out why.
As I had expected, the room on the other side of the bathroom is an office. It’s very neat. There’s a large mahogany desk with two drawers on either side of a leather chair. A silver MacBook laptop computer is sitting in the center of the desk. A notebook-sized calendar is lying just to the right of the laptop. The only other items on the desk are a green glass and bronze banker’s light and a wireless phone in its dock. I open the drawers of the desk. They are neat and contain some pens, paper clips, and odds and ends; nothing of significance.
There’s a comfortable reading area in the corner of the room, with a leather armchair and a brass stand-up reading light. Modern artwork adorns the grey wall behind the desk, as does a CPA certificate. Jeremy’s degree in economics, from Boston University, issued in 1984, and his MBA degree from Columbia Business School, 1987, are hanging on the opposite wall. Beside them, there’s an award of recognition in Jeremy’s name, dated 2009, issued by the Big Brothers and Sisters of Massachusetts, acknowledging Jeremy’s “hard work and dedication” to the organization.
As I open the closet, I hear Jennifer calling me. “Jeremy, did you take your Maxalt yet?”
“No,” I call down. “Just about to.”
No response.
I see a large four-drawer file cabinet in the closet and a standing safe on the floor—a treasure trove of information. I open the top drawer of the file cabinet and take out the first file. They’re all alphabetized. Automobile Association of America is the first one. I scan its contents, and, within seconds, it’s memorized.
***
Over the years, I have jumped thousands of times and explored the minds of people from all over the world. I’m continually astonished at the distinctive nature of an individual brain, which is as unique as a fingerprint. I have come to understand that our sensations, experiences, and thoughts are unique to each individual. The perception of color for instance, is a subjective experience, different from one person to the next. The color of red does not look the same to everyone. Although we associate a particular visual image as red, the actual sensation of red that we experience is uniquely different for each person.
Our sensation of smell is also subjective. The smell of a rose can be very sweet to one but less sweet or even pungent to another. The perception of the sound of music can be so dissimilar between people, that when I’ve heard the same song in the minds of more than one person, the song can sound completely different. I can identify the song by its melody, words, and beat, but the actual sensation that it creates in my mind is entirely unique to the brain of my host.
This diversity of neural processing may explain why people are so different in terms of their approach to the world. What is beautiful and emotional to one may not create the same impact to another. These differences may explain why some people are artistic while others are athletic, why some can learn languages easily while others cannot.
Mind jumping has given me a gift. I am able to use my experience dealing with the diverse brain patterns and neurological processing that I have experienced to create an optimum way of using my host’s brain.
Examples of this are the encyclopedic and photographic memory capabilities that I have developed over the years. My encyclopedic memory allows me to remember every detail and image that I have ever seen or experienced. My photographic memory enables me to scan and store images holistically, and only when I want to see the details of an image, are those details processed by my brain. It’s my version of data compression. It’s like looking at a downtown street scene, taking a snapshot of it in my mind, and then, at a later time, bringing up that image to look for the smallest details.
I can scan documents extraordinarily fast—many times faster than an electronic scanner. I’m able to take in and process information on a written page at a glance, and when I quickly scroll down a website on a computer, I can take in all of the information instantly in real time, without pausing. I’m able to cross-reference information from my scans immediately. These abilities enable me to quickly absorb details of my host’s life and ultimately help me achieve my objective.
***
Over the next five minutes I scan the first file cabinet drawer—files A through F—thoroughly. As I usually do after a scan, I sit down silently for the same amount of time to permanently store the information I’ve just viewed into my active memory. During this meditative state, my mind randomly explores and reviews all of the images and data that I’ve scanned. To finish off, I usually start to explore my memory with one bit of data to ensure that I have successfully transferred the images. This time I choose a random date to see where my memories of Jeremy take me.
February 15, 2011. Using information from his American Express Platinum card statements, I can now recall that on that date, Jeremy purchased lunch at Charley’s Crab in Palm Beach, Florida. I cross-reference this information with any file I’ve scanned that refers to that Palm Beach trip.
Connected images from the scan immediately become available. Jeremy flew business class on Delta Flight 2123 from Boston to Palm Beach International at 6:40 AM on February 11, and returned on February 17, leaving PBI at 8:05 AM on Delta Flight 1184. He rented a luxury car from Avis, picking it up on his arrival and returning it to PBI an hour and a half before the scheduled departure.
There are many other charges made during this time period shown on his AMEX statement, including his hotel stay at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, where he paid $999 a night for a premier ocean-view room. In addition to a number of room service and mini-bar charges, there were two charges for in-room movie rentals. The value of the rentals suggests that one of those movies was X-rated. It looks like Jennifer was with him on this trip, as the airline tickets were in his and her names and the hotel reservation was booked for two people.
I don’t have time to go through the other files. It’s been fifteen or twenty minutes and I have to get down to Jennifer before she finds me in the study rather than lying down taking care of my ‘migraine’. Before I head downstairs, I scan through the calendar on the desk.
Chapter 3 – Discovery
The kitchen is a large, bright room that seems to have been recently upgraded. A sliding door opens onto a patio overlooking the backyard. I can see Jennifer sitting at a table that’s been set up for lunch. She seems to be waiting impatiently.
“Hey there,” I start.
She looks unsettled and asks quickly, “How are you feeling? Did you take your Maxalt?”
“Yes, I feel a little better.”
As she straightens up in her chair she asks angrily, “Why the hell did you ask me if that was Jessie on the phone?”
“I don’t know. It just came out. It must be the migraine.”
She shakes her head slowly, rolling her eyes “What did you mean this morning?”
Not knowing what to say, I probe, “Uh, this morning?”
She squints her eyes. “About your plans for next weekend?”
I quickly think about next weekend’s dates from the calendar on the desk that I scanned and an image comes into memory. There’s an entry that says “Palm Beach” next Friday, June 17. There’s another entry that says “Back from PB” on the following Monday. I don’t know anything more.
“You mean the trip to Palm Beach?”
“Yes!” she blasts with her eyes boring into me.
I touched a nerve. She is clearly unhappy about this trip. I take a chance.
“Do you want me to stay home?”
“Yes, of course I do. You know that!”
With nothing to lose that I know of, I reply, “Okay, I’ll cancel my reservation.”
She seems bewildered. “What? You’d cancel your trip with Vince and Gary just because I asked you?”
“Absolutely. I didn’t think my trip would have such an impact on you. I’m not going to go if it makes you feel like this. Consider it cancelled.”
She looks at me with a confused expression. She’s silent. I can see her cheeks start to flush. I can sense her skin radiating warm energy. The hairs on her arms are standing on end. She’s unsure of my response, yet her body position, eye movements, and energy level suggest that her anger is being replaced with warmth.
She moves her fork randomly through the salad that is before her. She seems to be thinking of what to say. A few moments pass. She breaks the silence.
“I’m sorry that I screamed at you in the car. I just can’t hear her name without reacting.”
I stay quiet.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asks with a sly smile. “Why are you being so damn nice?”
“Um, I’m not sure. The migraine?”
Jennifer responds with a cute wrinkle of her nose and a smile. Her mood has lifted. She seems less burdened. She finishes her lunch and asks if I want to go to the mall with her. I tell her that I had enough shopping at the market this morning and that I’d like to try to rest.
As she leaves, she touches my hand, smiles, and kisses my cheek.
I hear the Mercedes start up and begin to leave, and then the car engine stops. I hear the car door open and shut, and see Jennifer walking back through the kitchen to the patio. She hands me my iPhone. “You left it in the car.”
She waves as she turns around and heads back to the car. I watch her walk back through the kitchen and wonder how our relationship will unfold. What’s the nature of their grief that I felt in Quincy market? How will I help?
As I hear the engine restart and the car drive away, I turn off the iPhone. I wouldn’t know what to say if it rang.
***
My overall objective, as always, is to bring calm and peace—what I like to call balance—to my host and his or her family. I will try to understand the nature of the grief that I felt within Jeremy and Jennifer at the market, and then try to help the family through whatever difficult time they are facing.
When I leave, Jeremy will not know that during my visit, I took control and made decisions that may have changed his life forever. He will remember everything that happens while I am here as if he was present and in control, even though he was not. Although he was absent, he will not remember his absence and he will not be aware of my presence.
While I am managing his life, Jeremy will be in a suspended state until I gradually pull him back. As he returns, he will take control and I will fade into the background of his mind, watching until I leave. I will still have an influence on his behavior, as I did this morning with Damian when he decided to go to Quincy Market to satisfy my need to jump.
There will be one aspect of this extraordinary experience that he will also remember: he will know that something special happened during the time that I was visiting. He will remember having clarity of thought, a rush of creativity and insight that he had never experienced before and does not have on his return. He will look back at this time as being very special and life changing, but not know why. It will seem like a dreamlike memory to him, yet he will not feel comfortable discussing it with anyone—unless I contact him in the future.
***
I run upstairs to continue the scanning process. I begin to consume all of the information in Jeremy’s file cabinet. I go over everything: financial statements, cancelled checks, credit card charges, bank files, bills, invoices, warranties, insurance documents, birthday cards, letters, work files…everything. I finish scanning the three remaining drawers in about thirty minutes and begin my meditation for another thirty. I test out another clue to complete the process.
I sit down at the computer to continue my search. I open up the MacBook, and a screen lock appears. A password is needed to get into Jeremy’s computer. From the memories of my scans, I quickly retrieve anything related to the computer in that file cabinet. I recall a computer security file; there’s a list of phone numbers, memberships, account names, and what appear to be passwords.
I try the first password to unlock the computer. It’s a combination of letters from Jeremy’s immediate family, “jessjensan”— that must be it. Most people create passwords using embedded loved ones names, birthdays, and even their home addresses. I get lucky. As soon as I type in the password, the home screen jumps to life.
I scan the Mac and look through all of Jeremy’s e-mails in the inbox and sent box, as well as deleted files. I review his address book and calendar, and go over files that are easily available. Later, when I have time, I will run a program that will search for any hidden or locked files. I learned that particular technique when I was visiting Daniel Sloan, a computer scientist who works at an IBM research center in Westchester County, just north of New York City.
It’s now around five and I’ve finished scanning everything in the office, the filing cabinet, much of the Mac, and the iPhone. I still have to get into the safe and visit the other rooms on the main floor. Then, of course, there’s the basement, where I’m sure there will be many more clues to uncover.
I expect Jennifer to arrive home soon. Seeing as I don’t have much more time to search, I decide to sit back in the leather office chair to actively think about what I just processed in order to move as many of these scans into my active memory.
I first think about Jessie. What was that feeling about that I had in her room, and why did her name spark such a negative reaction from Jennifer?
Within a minute, I know. I feel a surge of anxiety and panic emanating from Jeremy’s soul. My head is spinning and I begin to feel sick for the first time as Jeremy.
… Continued…
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