Robards, Karen (5 page)

“Oh, God, Mom, don’t fuss. You always fuss.” JessicaIs eyes closed again, and her voice was weary. She tried to tug her hand from Grace’s.

Grace broke off in midsentence, then clamped her lips together. Hurt swelled inside her. Her eyes closed as her fingers clung tenaciously to Jessica’s. What could she say that would get through to her? If only Jessica would listen! She had to be made to understand… .

But this was not the time, or the place, for the discussion she and Jessica needed to have.

When she felt better, they would talk. And more than talk. Guidelines had to be laid down. Consequences had to be imposed.

Being a mother was a hundred times harder than Grace had ever imagined it would be. The responsibility was enormous, and the rewards were few. Even the

40

KAREN ROBARDS

endless, boundless love she felt for her daughter was in itself a painful thing.

“You in there?” The other cop, Dominick, stuck his head through the curtain. His voice was loud, inappropriately hearty, and caused Grace’s eyes to pop open at once.

Her gaze flew from him to his partner, who was once again leaning impassively against the wall. For a few moments, she had forgotten he was there. He looked almost pale beneath his tan, much paler than she reinembered him being when they had entered the hospital, and she wondered if the sudden gray cast to his skin could be attributed to the harshness of the overhead lighting, or the sight-or smell-of Jessica being sick.

Savagely she hoped it was the latter.

For an instant, their gazes met. Again Grace got the feeling that he was judging her and finding her wanting.

Seeing at a glance that he was indeed in the right place, Dominick came on through the curtain. His size made the small cubicle seem suddenly crowded.

“How’s the little girl?” he asked in that same mapice.

propriately hearty voi His partner shrugged.

“They’re waiting for the results of a blood test,” Grace said.

The two cops exchanged glances, then, as if one, looked at Grace. She’d had about enough of those weighing looks, she decided.

“Don’t let us keep you,” she said politely. “I know you must have things you need to do.”

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

41

Again the cops exchdnged glances.

“Yeah, we oughta be going,” Dominick said, and Grace got the impression that he was talking more to his partner than to her.

“YOU Sure there’s nothing else you need us forThis was Mr. Obnoxious. His gaze met hers.

“Fin sure.” Grace looked from one to the other. Standing side by side, they shared an obvious resemblance. Both were’ tal], dark, and disapproving. Were they related? She neither knew, nor cared. Common I

civility plus a healthy dose of honesty prompted her to add, “Thank you for all you’ve done. Both of you.” They had found Jessica, after all, and she was grateful.

She just didn’t much care for their bedside manner. “You’re welcome.” Her thanks must have lacked something in the way of graciousness, because Mr. Obnoxious s acknowledgment was clipped. Dominick nodded, and fixed his partner with a meaningful look. Mr. Obnoxious’s shoulders came away from the wall, and he headed toward the curtained exit with Dormnick behind him. As an obvious afterthought, just as he was getting ready to exit the cubicle, Mr. Obnoxious added over his shoulder,

“If you need a ride home …”

“We don’t. Thanks.” With hirn and his partner? He had to be kidding. She’d sooner ride with a pair of investigators from the Spanish Inquisition. “There’s someone I can call. But thanks.”

“You’re sure?” Still he hesitated.

“]’in sure.”

“We’ll be in touch, then.”

42

KAREN ROBARDS

They left, the curtaMs fluttering in their wake. Grace was glad to see thern go. Ever since the first one had arrived on her doorstep, their poor opinion of her as a mother had been a palpable thing.

She didn’t need it. She felt bad enough about her mothering skills on her own.

Grace sighed. Looking back at her daughter, who to all appearances was now truly asleep, she had to ask herself again: where had she gone wrong?

Jessica looked like her, Her face, with its high cheekbones, wide mouth, and-the bane of her existence-long nose with the slight bump in its bridge, was identical enough to Grace’s so that casual observers had no trouble determining that they were mother and daughter. Her alniond-shaped, thick-lashed blue eyes were Grace’s to the life. The pointy chin was her own, though, as was the scattering of freckles across her nose.

With aching fondness, Grace’s gaze traced the butterfly pattern they made. Angel kisses, was how Grace had described them not so many years ago to a little girl who had come crying to her mother over what some other little girl had tauntingly called dirty brown spots all over her face.

Jessica had been entranced with the idea of angel kisses. She had gone back to the other girl and told her, smugly, that the brown spots meant she was special, because the angels loved her best of all.

Grace had secretly agreed.

But the face Grace knew better than she knew her own was that of a young woman now. Grace could not kiss all her hurts and make them better. Grace could

THE MiDNIGHT HOUI

43

‘lot spill falry tdes to keep the sometimes harsh realities of libe at bay,

She couldn’t make the diabetes disappear, or take it on herself. In that regard, all the mother’s love in the world did not change a thing.

What she could do was remind herself that the specters of kidney failure and blindness and I imb amputations that so terrified her were just that-specters. Grim ghosts of frightening future possibilities that did not have to be.

Jessica had the power to prevent them from becoming reality. Grace couldn’t do it for her. Jessica had to do it for herself.

So the question became, would Jessica take care of Jessica Sometimes it seemed that she d

eliberately went out of her way to do the opposite. Until now, Grace had thought that the incidents that had brought on the various crises Jess had experienced since being diagnosed were the result of youthful carelessness.

Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. I For the first time occurred to Grace to wonder:

was defying the restrictions imposed on her by her illness the ultimate act of teenage rebellion against her mother?

Oh, God, she hoped not,

Jessica stirred and her fingers moved trustingly in her mother’s hold, Watching her, Grace’s throat ached with the pain of unshed tears.

The curtains parted, attracting her attention, distracting her from her daughter and her thoughts. A thin, bespectacled man in a white lab coat entered the cubicle. A stethoscope hung around his neck, and he

44

KAREN ROBARDS

carried a manila file folder that almost certainly containedJessica’s medical chart.

“Mrs. Hart?” Grace nodded.

“I’m Dr. Corey. It looks like we have quite a problem here.

Cbapter

6

L OU OKAY, MAN?- Dominick Marino asked, clap—

lping a hand on his brother’s shoulder as they stepped through the hospital’s wide double doors into the blessed freshness of the night. The moon, small and pale at such a distance, floated high overhead, veiled by moving wisps of clouds. Tiny stars pocked the midnight blue of the sky.

“Yeah.” It was a brief answer, but the best Tony could manage under the circumstances. The sick nausea that had been churning in his stomach was only just now beginning to recede. The crisp breeze felt good against his damp skin, reviving him. He’d broken into a cold sweat in that treatment room; he couldn’t believe he’d done that, that just being in that damned hospital had affected him so, but it had.

He’d thought he was over it, by now.

Correction. He had hoped he was over it, by now. He was never going to get over it.

“The mother was a real ball-breaker, wasn’t she?” Dominick’s hand was on his arm, steering him unob-

46

KAREN ROBARDS

trusively toward the parking lot when Tony would have walked blindly off into the night. He allowed his brother to guide him, concentrating on getting his body back under control.

“Yeah.” It had been the smell that had done it, he thought, that unforgettable, indescribable hospital smell.

That, or watching the suffering of another sick little girl.

The halogen lights in the half-empty parking lot closest to the emergency room gave off an eerie yellow glow. Insects by the dozen fluttered in the vapory illumination.

A small white moth flew directly toward him, targeting him with the precision of a kamikaze bomber. Tony dodged and felt its soft wings brush his cheek.

“Damned bugs,” he said, swatting at it and missing. The moth circled back up toward the light.

“You gonna go see the mother tomorrow, or you want me to?” Dominick asked. They had reached the Camaro, and Dom automatically walked around to the driver’s side. Ever the big brother, he thought it was his birthright to drive.

Not that Tony Iminded. Dom had basically pulled him from the darkest pit in hefl, sobered him up, kept him alive. Dom could drive if he wanted to.

“I’ll do it.” “You sure?” “Yeah. “

They got into the car. Its interior was stuffy, and Tony could still faintly recaH the nauseating hospital

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

47

smell. He didn’t know if it was in his mind or on his clothes, but it had to go or he would be sick for sure. He rolled down the window, breathing deeply, inhaling the murky smell of the nearby river and the acrid scent of some fresh-laid asphalt and the lingering gaseous exhaust of an old clunker that had chugged out of the parking lot two rows over.

It didn’t matter what the smell was. Raw sewage was better than hospital.

“You okay?” Dominick asked again.

“Yeah,” Tony answered, with greater truth this time. As the car moved out of the parking lot, neither of them noticed the white moth make another dive, this time soaring right through the open window.

For a moment, after that, the shape of a young girl appeared, sitting in the back seat. She was about eleven years old, small and thin, with straight black hair that reached her waist. She wore a frilly white dress, white ankle socks, and black Mary Janes. Her hands were folded prirrily in her lap.

Her eyes, wide and dark and haunting, were fixed with a kind of sadness on the man in the front passenger seat.

She was there for no more than a pair of seconds before she faded, becoming no more substantial than a shadow in the length of time it took to draw a single breath. Then she disappeared altogether.

Neither man saw her.

Tony took another, ineffectual swat at a small white moth as it flew past his cheek and out the car window, then soared upward into the great dark vastness of the night.

T WAS APPPOXIMATELY FOUR-THIRTY in the afCcernoon. Grace was so tired she could barely move, so tired it was an effort to focus on what was, fortunately, her second to last case of the day. The courtroom was overwarm and smelled of Lemon Pledge, musty carpet, and stressed-out human beings. The fluorescent lights concealed behind the translucent ceiling overhead were so bright as to be blinding. The combination did nothing for her incipient headache.

“My grandma died, see, and I couldn’t get to school, and—

“Just a mmute, Mr. Boylan. I fail to see what your grandmother’s dying or your inability to get to school has to do with your stealing a car.” Grace’s voice was dry as she interrupted the sixteenyear-old boy who stood before her. He was a big boy, close to six feet call and two hundred pounds, she guessed, although it was hard to be certain of his height, at least, from her elevated seat at the front of the courtroom. He was dressed in an oversized white T-shirt with a blurry

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

49

silkscreen of some rock band on the front of it, baggy jeans, and untied sneakers. His greasy blond hair hung limply to his shoulders.

My grandma died was the equivalent of the dog ate MY homework, excusewise. She had heard that one so many times in her three years on the bench that it held no water with her at all.

Under her stern regard, he licked his lips and cast the lawyer standing at his side, a young black woman named Helia Shisler, a nervous glance.

“Robert was very close to his grandmother-” Ms. Shisler began.

Grace shook her head. “I want to hear it from him. Mr. Boylan? Would you care to explain how your grandmother’s death and your inability to get to school are related, and how they forced you to steal a car?”

The kid chewed his lower lip before speaking. “Well, uh, my grandma, she drove me lots of places, and when she died she wasn’t there no more and I needed to get to school, see. “

The pause as Grace considered the logic of that lasted no longer than a few seconds. There was no logic.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Boylan, but didn’t you steal the car on a Saturday night? I wasn’t aware that schools were in session then.”

“There was a dance,” the kid said. His lawyer looked pained.

“It was his stepdaddy’s car, Your Honor. It weren’t stealing, exactly. He just forgot to ask pernuission before he took it, and it made his stepdaddy mad, and he called the police. It shouldn’t’ve happened.”

50

KAREN ROBARDS

Grace looked past the boy to the woman who had risen to her feet just beyond the railing. Heavy-set, bottle-blond, with a ruddy, jowly face, she was perhaps thirty-five. Her black polyester pants and pink flowered blouse were a size too small. The blouse gaped open a little between the buttons securing it above and below her ample bosom, afFording Grace a glimpse of a sturdy white bra. She looked worn down, and her eyes were red-rim-med and bloodshot. From crying over her son? Grace wondered, then caught herself it was just as likely to be from a totally unrelated cause, like allergies, or a need for glasses, or a late night and too much beer.

“You’re his mother?” The resemblance between the two was unmistakable.

“Yes, ma’am, I am.” The woman’s voice was so soft that Grace had to strain to hear. “He’s a good boy, Your Honor. He shouldn’t’ve taken Gordon’s-my husband’s-car, but it wasn’t really stealing. Honest it wasn’t.