My Sister's Prayer (25 page)

I was just pulling her curtain closed when my phone rang from my purse in the kitchen. I didn't recognize the number on the screen.

“Hello?” I said softly as I climbed the stairs.

“Maddee? Hey. It's Austin. Austin Hill. Is this a bad time?”

I replied that no, not at all, this was fine.

“Great. Well, listen, it was nice running into you today. I was just calling to see if you might be free for dinner on Friday.”

“This Friday?”

“No, the third Friday in August.”

It took a moment to realize he was teasing me. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”

“So what do you say? There's a new Cuban place I've been wanting to try. If it's a warm night, we could eat outside.
Tostones
with
mojo
sauce?
Camarones a la plancha? Pastelitos
for dessert?”

“Well, I don't know a
pastelito
from a
plancha
, but it sounds wonderful to me.”

He chuckled. “Super. How's seven?”

I was about to say perfect when I remembered Nicole and realized it was out of the question. Disappointed, I reminded him of what I'd told him earlier, that my sister was living with me now. “I'm tied up with her every evening and on weekends. I'm sorry.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked if Saturday night might work any better. I thought about it and decided that as long as I could get her to an earlier meeting that day, I should be free to go out in the evening. I hated the thought of leaving her home alone on a Saturday night, but I felt sure I could find someone to keep her company while I was gone.

“Why not? I'm sure between now and then we can figure something out.”

“Excellent. Saturday it is.”

We made the arrangements and ended the call, and then I immediately went about setting a ringtone for his number. It didn't take much thought. I was just downloading the song I wanted, “He's a Dreamboat” by Shirley's Girls, when I realized Nicole was saying something.

“Maddee? Who was that?”

Phone still in hand, I headed down the stairs. “I thought you were asleep, nosy,” I replied as I came around the curtain.

“How's a girl supposed to sleep when her sister is right upstairs, talking all mushy-gushy to some guy? Who was it? Spill the beans. I didn't know you were seeing anyone.”

“All right, all right. Just give me one sec.” The download complete, I assigned the new ringtone to Austin's contact page and then I tucked my phone away, plopped in the wheelchair, and rolled close to the bed. For a moment, as she leaned in toward me, it felt as though we were teenagers again, ready to gossip about the cute boys in youth group.

“That was Dr. Austin Hill,” I said, a big grin growing on my face. “He asked me out. We're going to dinner on Saturday night.”

Nicole's smile faded. “Dr. Hill?
My
Dr. Hill?”

I nodded, realizing I probably should have run this past her first to make sure it was okay. Ethically, he and I were free to date despite their doctor/patient relationship, but if my going out with him made her uncomfortable, I would need to respect that. “Is it a problem?”

Eyes narrowing, she stared at me for a long moment. “Well, no. But…yeah.”

Oh, boy. “What do you mean?”

She grunted. “I mean, I don't care if you go out with him. I've only seen the guy two or three times since the operation. Once he takes the casts off, I can't imagine ever seeing him again.”

“Okay. So…”

She shook her head. “So, no. You shouldn't go out with him.”

“Why not?”

“He's too…perfect.”

My head jerked back, as if struck. “Too perfect?” I asked, incredulous. Where had that come from? How could she say such a thing to me, especially knowing my history?

She shrugged. “I don't know how to explain.”

“Wow.” I pushed myself away from the bed. “That's harsh.”

“You don't get it—”

“Oh, I get it. Leave it to you to turn something good into a negative.”

“That's not what I'm trying to do,” she said defensively. “Just forget I said anything. Never mind.”

With that, she turned away and pretended to be asleep. I got up and left the room, not even bothering to close the curtain all the way.

Was she jealous? Was that it? I didn't know. I stomped back up the stairs to my room. What I did know was that even after a wonderful day of bonding, Nicole was capable of being cruel, of striking out in the exact way that would cut me to the quick. So I wasn't good enough for the handsome doctor? Of course I wasn't.

Once an ugly duckling, always an ugly duckling, right?

I dreaded the thought of dealing with my sister the next morning, but fortunately Inez arrived before Nicole was awake. Quickly but quietly, I showed the woman around and told her what she needed to know, and then I slipped out without ever having to interact with the patient.

It wasn't a good day. As I worked, I kept going over our weekend, wondering what I could have done to make my little sister say something so hurtful. By the time five o'clock rolled around, I wasn't ready to go, but I didn't really have a choice. The invalid with the razor sharp insults was depending on me.

I pedaled home in the gathering darkness and was out on the patio, locking up my bike and helmet, when I realized I could hear a man's voice coming from inside the carriage house. For a moment, panic seized me. This happened sometimes when I was greeted by unexpected things. A flashback to the cabin in the woods, the body on the
cot, the horror of knowing, even at so young an age, that something was terribly wrong, that things would never be the same again. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was an adult now, that the murder was in the past.

Unless Nicole was entertaining an unauthorized guest in my home, in which case she'd be in big trouble.

“Hello?” I called sharply as I opened the door.

“In here,” an unfamiliar voice said from the living room. A male voice.

I swung the door wide to see a man bending over Nicole. She was in her wheelchair, and he was doing something to her arms.

“Good,” he told her. Then he released her wrists and gave her shoulder a pat. Looking up, he rose and extended a hand to me.

“Greg Fremont,” he said. “You must be Madeline?”

“Maddee,” I replied, taking in the logo on his navy polo shirt and realizing he was the new physical therapist Nana had arranged for Nicole. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd been so worked up about last night that I'd completely forgotten he was coming today.

“I'm still doing my evaluation. But once I'm finished, I'd like to discuss her treatment plan with both of you.”

“Sure. Just let me know when you're ready.”

Turning, I spotted Inez in the kitchen, just pulling on her coat. I could tell she was tired and ready to go, so I resisted the urge to ask all about the day. Instead, I saw her to the door, whispered a quick thanks, and headed for the stairs.

Though I usually dressed to impress, tonight I wanted nothing more than to be comfortable. As they continued working downstairs, I changed into a long sweater and a pair of yoga pants and then pulled my hair into a ponytail.

I headed back down after that, trying to be unobtrusive in the kitchen as I heated up what remained of the chicken casserole Inez had made for dinner. It was delicious, and I ate quietly, observing them work and trying not to flinch as this man put my sister through her paces.

I had finished and was just washing up my dishes when Greg said they were ready for me. The three of us convened at the kitchen table, and
though Nicole looked exhausted and in pain, she also seemed encouraged. Almost upbeat.

Greg launched right in, explaining that they would start by focusing on range of motion and lung health, including exercises to help prevent pneumonia, which was always a danger with excessive immobility. In two or three weeks, once the casts came off, Nicole would be moving around more, and their focus would shift to leg work and all-over muscle strengthening.

As Greg talked, I glanced at my sister and saw that she was gazing at him with rapt attention. He was terribly cute, all dark, wavy hair and deep-blue eyes, and it struck me as I looked from one to the other what Nana had meant when she called this particular therapist “special.” Yet again, she was playing matchmaker for one of her granddaughters—only this time it was for Nicole.

Frustration swelled in the pit of my stomach at the very thought. Unlike me, Nicole was in no way ready to date, much less form a relationship with anyone. She had to get well first, both physically and emotionally. Until she did, a romance was the last thing she needed.

I couldn't believe it. I could tolerate Nana meddling in my love life, but to pull this with a recovering addict? Our grandmother should have known better.

Somehow, I managed to make it through the rest of the session, but by the time Greg was gone, I felt ready to explode. Nicole, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to my roiling emotions.

“I can't
wait
to walk again,” she said as I went to the sink to dry my dishes and put them away. “You have
no
idea.”

I took in a deep breath, held it for a long moment, and then let it out slowly, telling myself I could deal with our matchmaking grandmother later. For now, I would focus on my sister. She may have forgotten all about her hurtful comments last night, but I hadn't. We needed to clear the air. I set down the dishtowel and turned toward her, ready to speak my mind. But before I could say a word, we heard a knock at the door.

What now?

I swung it open a little too forcefully and then took a step back
when I saw who it was, Detective Ortiz, here at the time we'd arranged the other day, yet another of tonight's appointments I'd forgotten all about.

She had come to share with us what she could of the file, to tell us more about the cabin in the woods, the disappearing victim, and the day that changed our lives forever.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Maddee

F
or the next hour, Detective Ortiz, Nicole, and I sat and talked about the case over decaf coffee and yesterday's rugelach. In the face of more important matters, I decided to put my anger with my sister aside.

The detective started by explaining how one goes about attempting to solve a crime that happened twenty years ago. “First you review the existing information, which in this case wasn't very much. Just the single police report written up by one of the responding officers to the initial incident.”

We were allowed to have a copy of that report now, which I skimmed eagerly. It had been written when I was just eight years old, yet here I was at twenty-seven holding a copy of it in my own hands. Reading it through, I didn't see that it told us anything new, but it still felt validating somehow.

I passed it over to Nicole and took the next item from the detective, which was a copy of the more recent report, along with our statements, which we'd given to police in July after the four of us returned
to the cabin—this time as adults—and tested it successfully for blood evidence.

Ortiz went on to talk about that evidence, how their luminol tests had validated ours and how, by bringing several of the floorboards from the cabin into the lab, they had been able to extract enough DNA to run a profile. She let us see a copy of that profile now, though we weren't allowed to keep it. That didn't matter. It was mostly just numbers and terms and graphs, all of it meaningless to the untrained eye. The only part I understood was in the summary at the bottom, which identified the blood as having come from a “single source, male.”

I handed that page to Nicole as the detective continued, explaining how that profile had been checked against all of their various databases but had come back without any hits. Meanwhile, she said, they had investigated in all the other ways she'd already told me about last week, to no avail.