Second Chance Friends (9 page)

“The baby,” Karen said softly.

“Yeah. The baby,” Maddie repeated. “The baby is the whole reason we were waiting at that stoplight that day. The baby is the reason neither of us saw that school bus
coming. The baby is alive, but its father is dead. What kind of sense does that make?”

“I'm so sorry,” Joanna said, and Melinda could see that Joanna had tears in her eyes.

“Me, too,” Maddie said. “Because without Michael, I don't even know if I want it anymore.” She closed her eyes and dipped her head forward. “The bundle of joy,” she whispered, and gave another of those chuckles, a tear slipping out from under one of her eyelids.

Joanna reached over and tried patting Maddie's shoulder, but Maddie shrugged her off, and Joanna jerked back. “Sorry,” she repeated. “I was just . . .”

“Yeah, you were just,” Maddie said. She looked around the room at each of them. “You were all
just
.” She stood. “Everyone is
just
, and nobody is actually helping.” She closed her eyes, took a breath, opened them again, visibly steadying herself. “Look, I appreciate you all stopping by. But I'm not the best company right now. There's really nothing more you can do for me.” She stood, walked briskly to the front door, and opened it.

It took a second or two for the rest of them to catch on, but after a couple of awkward glances, they got up and followed her, spilling out onto the porch.

Karen was last out the door. “I'm so sorry for your loss,” she said softly, touching Maddie Routh on the elbow on her way past. “If you need anything, you can find me at the Tea Rose Diner most mornings.”

“Just pretend I died,” Maddie responded. “I do it all the time. I wish I had.”

“The offer stands,” Karen responded. “Come on,” she said to Melinda and Joanna as she walked past, the wood of her pumps clacking on the sidewalk with purpose.

•   •   •

“I never expected all that,” Joanna said when they got into the car. “I mean, I think I expected her to be confused about why we were there, but I didn't expect all of that.”

“She's very angry,” Karen added. “It's normal. We came at the wrong time.”

“To put it mildly,” Joanna said. “I'm a little worried about that baby.”

“Me, too,” Karen said. “I could see her being nervous about raising a child alone, or sad about the baby not ever knowing its father, but I didn't think she'd be so . . . against having it at all.”

“Right?” Joanna said.

“I actually think I get it,” Melinda said. And she did. A part of her really understood where Maddie Routh was coming from.

“But it's not the baby's fault that its father is dead,” Joanna said. “It's nobody's fault, really.”

“That's exactly the point,” Melinda said. “How do you bring a baby into a world where people end up dead and it's nobody's fault?” She pulled into the diner parking lot and shifted the car into park. She didn't realize until she felt Karen's hand on top of her own that she was trembling.

“You okay?” Karen asked.

Melinda thought about that morning. Paul had been chattering away, so hopeful after their second meeting at
the fertility clinic. He'd been like a kid waiting for Christmas. The guilt had eaten her up, so much so that she almost tossed her pill into the toilet, flushed it away.

Yet, in the end, she didn't. She'd stood in the shower and sobbed as she chewed.

“I don't know,” she told Karen, sitting in her car in the Tea Rose parking lot. “I thought I was, but now I'm not sure that I am.”

And for the first time, she told someone. The marathon lovemaking. The guilt-inducing doctor visits. The pills in the bottom of her tampon box.

She told Karen and Joanna everything.

J
oanna couldn't remember ever being this nervous. Not for any audition, not for any rehearsal, not for any opening night performance.

She stood in her kitchen, her knees shaking as she went over the checklist again. Dinner: saucy white chicken enchiladas, check. Movie:
The Fabulous Baker Boys
, double check. Confidence: not a check, not even close.

Joanna bent to the narrow cabinet that sat between the stove and the wall. Her mother had proclaimed it a perfect place to store cookie sheets, but Stephen had always called it her Fun Time Cabinet, because all Joanna kept in there was booze. She fumbled around inside until she found a dusty bottle of whiskey. It had been left in her apartment at the end of one particularly rowdy LaEats staff party. She
didn't like whiskey. Didn't like how boneless it made her feel. Pliable. Careless. But she needed a little bonelessness right now, a little pliability. What she wouldn't give to be without a care for just a few minutes.

She poured a hefty dollop into a juice glass and shot it, swallowing over and over afterward to keep her gag reflex from sending it right back up her esophagus. It burned, made her eyes water, but it also felt good the way it hit so hard. She poured, and shot, another.

Her mind tried to drift to Sutton, time and again. Sutton in her Adelaide costume, the dusk highlighting the smoothness of her skin underneath all the stage makeup. Sutton laughing, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear while she popped a green grape into her mouth. Sutton asking if she, Joanna, was okay, real worry behind her words. Joanna's gut thumped with every image, and with the whiskey rolling around in her belly, it was instantly harder to push those thoughts—which seemed to come more frequently after she'd called Stephen and set up this night—away.

She started to pour herself a third shot but was interrupted by a knock at the door. She quickly screwed the cap onto the whiskey bottle and shoved it back into the Fun Time Cabinet, then rinsed out her glass, and her mouth, with water.

“Sangria,” Stephen said, holding up an enormous jug of red wine, as soon as Joanna opened the door. “Well, it will be if you have Sprite to mix it with,” he added. “We are going to class this wine up.”

Joanna felt herself smile, and she was filled with a warmth that she was certain wasn't all from the whiskey. It came from deep inside her. “I've missed you so much,” she said. She hadn't realized how true that was until she'd seen him again.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, scooting through the door. “I watched the news every night to see if they said anything about your secret life as a hooker and how that led to your great demise in a seedy motel in Northeast.”

Joanna laughed out loud. “My shame is out,” she said. “And you have a very active imagination.”

He stopped next to her, looking deep into her eyes. Her heart thumped into hyperspeed, and all images of Sutton were wiped out of her mind entirely. “I'm exceedingly glad you're not stuffed into a barrel right now,” he said.

He bent to kiss her cheek, but Joanna surprised herself and turned her mouth to his. The kiss landed, soft and quick. Stephen jerked back.

“Wow,” he said. “You should go missing more often if this is the result. And this is terrible timing, but I've got to put this down. My forefinger has gone numb.” He held up the jug, and then went into the kitchen with it.

“About that, the missing thing,” Joanna said, shutting the door.

“I'll forgive you someday,” he called. “The good news is I got rich off of double tips while you were gone, so now I can afford to take you on a roaring tour of the city via the fabulous metro bus.” He poked his head around the corner. “You want yours over ice? Since we're going classy.”

“Yeah,” she said. She leaned back against the door. This. This felt good. Having Stephen back felt so good. She'd missed him. Maybe that was all she'd needed—a break, to figure things out. She'd gotten confused, but the answer had been in front of her all the time. She wasn't gay. She was just curious. But in the end, her love belonged here. With a man. With
this
man.

“It smells great in here,” he said, coming back into the living room, holding two glasses. Joanna took one and clinked it against his. “Pizza pockets have come a long way, from the smell of things.”

“That's because I actually cooked for you,” Joanna said. She took a swallow of her wine, which went down smooth and easy and joined the whiskey to fill her with warmth and happiness. “And we have Michelle Pfeiffer in the house,” she added, setting her glass down on the coffee table and picking up the DVD case. She waved it in front of him.

“Feelings is not parsley!” Stephen cried. One of their shared favorite quotes from the movie.

“It's less than parsley,” Joanna countered, as she always did, the Susie Diamond to his Frank Baker. They had a history, Stephen and Joanna. Relationships depended on history. How could she have not seen that before?

He put the case back down on the coffee table and picked up his glass again. “I say we eat, drink, and be fabulous,” he said, lifting his glass and then taking a sip.

“In a second,” Joanna said. She pulled the glass out of his hand and set it on the table. “I really want to apologize.”

“It's nothing,” Stephen said. “I'm sorry Leese didn't keep your job open for you.”

“Not just that,” Joanna said, and she found her eyes suddenly filling with tears. She wished briefly that she hadn't drunk the whiskey. She wasn't sloppy, but she was afraid she would never be able to convey all the things she was thinking and feeling. “I mean, I am sorry to leave you in the lurch like that, yes. But I'm also sorry about disappearing on you. And about the night with the wine.”

His head rolled back. “Oh, God, don't bring that up. I was such an asshole.”

She grabbed his wrists, pulled. “No. No, you weren't. You were being honest, and I . . . I was confused, is all. But I'm not anymore.”

He stopped pulling away. “What do you mean?”

Without thinking, Joanna did what she knew was the right thing to do. The only thing to be done. The only way out of this confusion and this hiding. She leaned into him and pressed her lips on his.

At first he was unmoving, stiff, and Joanna was bowled over by a sinking feeling that she'd made another mistake. That he didn't want her anymore and that she'd just made a fool of herself again. It had been over a month—what if he had a girlfriend now?

But when their lips parted, Stephen tipped his chin down and gazed at her warily. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

She nodded. “This is the way it's supposed to be,” she said.

It seemed like it was only moments before they were in
her bedroom. So fast Joanna wasn't sure she could entirely recall how they'd gotten there. There had been such urgency—such tugging and pulling and breathing words into each other's mouths. It had been gymnastic and feverish, and Joanna was as caught up in it as she'd ever been. She wanted this. She wanted him.

They fumbled their way to her bed, attached as if their lips fused together while their hands removed clothing and explored.

And then, just as they reached her bed, Stephen got still. He put his hands on each side of her head and stared into her face as if he were trying to memorize it. She could feel him breaching the distance between them, pressing into her thigh.

“I've wanted this for so long,” he whispered.

Joanna tipped her head up, parted her lips, and closed her eyes.

And as she fell backward beneath him, the images she'd been keeping at bay ever since calling him flooded her. Sutton, blushing in her Adelaide costume. Sutton, giggling as Joanna tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, feeding her a grape with her own mouth. Sutton's lips pressed against her. Sutton in her arms, skin creamy and warm as milk.

As Stephen shuddered and cried out against her, Joanna's eyes flew open. She gulped and gulped, flooded with guilt and shame and disappointment.

K
aren stood in the lobby by a row of spill-proofed couches for a solid ten minutes before she could gather enough courage to approach the information desk. She figured the elderly lady sitting there would never give her the information she needed, and even though she'd promised herself she'd come up with a plan by the time she got to the hospital, she still hadn't.

But she didn't intend to spend her entire Saturday standing in a forever-flowing river of hospital bustle. The weather had finally cooled a bit. She could smell the coming winter in the air. Neighbors were putting decorative hay bales and cornstalks in their yards, and soon the kids would be donning costumes for trick-or-treating. She wondered briefly if Kendall would bother to dress up Marcus—if she'd bring him to
Karen's house, disguised as Batman or a pirate—or if she'd be too into herself to worry about something as boring as Halloween. Karen needed to pull some weeds, to mow her lawn, to prune the smoke tree before it dropped leaves into her gutters. She probably needed to clean her gutters, too. She'd been lucky the cold weather had held off as long as it had.

So why she was standing in the hospital, unmoving, when she had so much to do was beyond her. She knew only that when it came to “had to do's,” this errand was at the top of the list.

Quietly, she ducked into the hospital chapel, a bare, cream-colored box that seemed afraid to commit to any actual representation of a god.
BYOF,
Karen thought.
Bring Your Own Faith.

There was a stand of candles in red cups next to the front door, along with a metal locked box. Karen rooted through her purse, tucked a dollar through the slot on the top of the box, and grabbed a match.

“Curt MacDonald, I don't know you, but I'm praying for you,” she said as she lit the match and touched it to a candlewick. “I'm praying like crazy.”

She had learned the name of her son's victim only the night before. Kendall had somehow ferreted it out of someone—Karen honestly didn't want to know whom or how—and had even managed to discover in which hospital Mr. MacDonald was recovering. It should have frightened her, the reach of Kendall's manipulative prowess, but at the moment she could only muster gratitude over finally knowing something.

Having his name somehow made the whole thing more personal to Karen. She'd called Antoinette in tears, and Antoinette had been the one to talk her into visiting him today.

“Oh, sure, just show up at the hospital. Hi, Mr. MacDonald, my son's the one who almost beat you to death. I thought you'd like to have a face to go with the shittiest mother who ever lived. Can I get you some ice chips?”

“No,” Antoinette had said. “You go and say a few prayers by his bedside. You tell his family how sorry you are and you make yourself feel a hell of a lot better. And you are not the shittiest mother who ever lived. The fact that you haven't disowned Travis yet means you have more patience than I would have. He's a grown man. He has to take blame for himself. This is about you living with what happened. And praying that Curt MacDonald lives through it, too. For all of your sakes.”

“You're probably right,” Karen had said.
And maybe the court will look on Travis more leniently if I've been to visit his victim,
she thought. But she would never articulate those words to anyone. She had the feeling that nobody would understand how she could possibly still be thinking of her son right now. She didn't entirely understand it herself.

“By the way, I ran into Marty Squire on the way to the parking garage tonight,” Antoinette had told her.

“Ugh, not now. I don't want to hear about it,” Karen whined. Why was this man suddenly everywhere?

“Oh, come on, Karen. He's so cute. And he's really, really into you. You want to hear what he said?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I'll tell you what. If Curt MacDonald wakes up, I'll let you tell me all about it.”

Antoinette had chuckled into the receiver. “Then if you don't get to that hospital and start praying, I will. I will not rest until I hear sloppy details about what Marty Squire wears under those suits of his.”

“Gross.”

“Oh, honey,” Antoinette had said on a sigh. “It's so sad that you think sex is gross.”

Now, kneeling in the chapel, watching the candle she'd just lit flicker in an unfelt breeze, Karen knew that Antoinette had been right about coming here, and it had nothing to do with Marty Squire. Her being at the hospital wouldn't help Curt MacDonald wake up, but it couldn't hurt. And maybe it would ease her guilt a little.

She tipped her eyes up toward the ceiling, which had a water stain right in the center. At least, she hoped it was a water stain. In a hospital, how could you ever be certain? She closed her eyes, licked her lips, clasped her hands together, and prayed for the life of a man she'd never met, and prayed for the soul of her son, whom she no longer believed in.

When she was done, she took a deep breath and marched to the information desk, hoping she looked more confident than she felt.

“May I help you?” the woman at the front desk—Beatrice, her name tag read—asked, fanning a novel out over her lap to keep her page.

“Yes, I need to visit someone,” Karen said. “Curt MacDonald?”

The woman consulted a printout, running her gnarled finger down a list of names until she came to the right one. She found it, and peered up at Karen through thick bifocals.

“He's in the tower. Room 502. Go all the way to the end of that hall and take the elevators up to the fifth floor. You should be able to find him from there.”

Karen blinked. It was really that easy? She'd expected to be grilled about whether she was family, maybe had been even a little concerned that, given how the man got his injuries, Curt MacDonald would be under some sort of protective custody. She'd expected the police to be worried that Travis, or one of his henchmen, would come finish the job to keep Curt MacDonald from talking if he should ever wake up. She supposed Travis didn't look like the kind of guy who could afford henchmen, and the police knew it.

She probably needed to stop watching so many crime dramas on TV.

“Thank you,” Karen said. The elderly lady smiled and nodded, her hands already reaching for the paperback in her lap before Karen even walked away from the desk.

She headed toward the hallway that the lady had pointed down, ducking into the gift shop on the way. She didn't know if Curt MacDonald was into flowers, but it couldn't hurt, right? Although after she bought them, she fretted about whom he'd tell his family and friends they were from. If he even knew.

God, this was so stupid.

Stupid, but necessary.

She chose a mostly yellow bouquet, thinking the color was vibrant and might stimulate thoughts of waking up, getting out of bed, heading outside. Of course, he'd first have to open his eyes to see them.

Twice, she set the bouquet on top of trash cans in the hallway, with thoughts of abandoning it. But twice she'd picked it up again, slowly making her way down the long corridor that would take her to “the tower,” which sounded medieval and torturous and deadly. Filled with trapped heroes and damsels in distress. A place where villains kept their victims locked away from the rest of the world. The image somehow fit Travis. She pictured her son, with his widow's peak and his pointy eyebrows, his face red and angry from fighting, foam caught in the corners of his mouth, as he stood over a drunk and enraged Curt MacDonald. She'd never seen Travis get into a fight, but the way she imagined it was indeed very villainous.

She was alone on the elevator, which meant that it was not nearly as long a ride as she wished it would've been. She felt her fingers begin to go cold around the vase she was holding. Dread began filling her, like water filling a bathtub—first shallowly shimmering in the very recesses of her, but quickly building upon itself until she was sure she would drown in it.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. Would Marty Squire be working so hard to get into her life if he knew her
life included visiting the deathbeds of her son's victims? And why the hell would she be thinking of Marty Squire at a time like this anyway? She shook him away.

The elevator doors opened, and Karen paused for so long, they began to close again. She briefly considered letting them go and just sitting cross-legged in the corner of the elevator car, pushing no buttons, going nowhere until someone else summoned the elevator. She would be surprised by which floor she ended up on. Perhaps the maternity ward, where she could look at the babies in the nursery and fantasize that she was starting over. Maybe with a do-over, she'd get it right.

But just as the doors began to close, a nurse stepped over the threshold, making them bounce back.

“You getting off here?” she asked. “This is five.”

Karen found herself nodding, and then stepping through the doors, which promptly shut behind her, abandoning her in the brightly lit, beeping hallway. She stood just outside the elevator, so glad she had the vase to clutch.

“Can I help you?” another nurse asked, from behind a large desk in the center of the unit. She was young, intense, giving the sense that she had other, much more urgent things to do than babysit some loon who'd just spilled out of the elevator onto her floor.

“Curt MacDonald,” Karen said, her voice feeling rough and small. She cleared her throat a few times, chasing away the nothing that was lodged there. “I think he's in 502?”

The nurse nodded and pointed down the hallway with a pen. “Last room before the lounge.”

Karen nodded and took a few steps, then turned to the nurse again. “Has there been any change?”

The nurse smiled—a bit condescendingly for Karen's taste—and tilted her head to one side. “And you are . . . ?”

“His aunt,” Karen lied, shocked to hear the words tumble out of her mouth so easily. Was it really this simple to completely violate someone's privacy?

The nurse didn't look convinced. “You're welcome to see him,” she said on another condescending smile. “I can ask the family if they'd like me to share updates with you.”

“No, no,” Karen said. “I'll just drop these off.” She held up the flowers, for the first time actually wanting to get to Curt MacDonald's room. She needed to at least see him before the hospital kicked her out.

Her shoes clicked loudly on the polished tile as she made her way to room 502. When she pushed open the door, which had been hanging half-ajar, she was surprised to see a very young woman—barely more than a teenager, really—sitting in a chair across from the foot of Curt's bed. The woman had been leaning forward, craning toward the door, surely tipped off to Karen's arrival by the sound of her shoes.

“Oh,” Karen said, stopping short.

The woman smiled warmly. “Hello,” she said. “Come on in. It's just me in here. Sandra went to grab some lunch.”

Karen stepped inside the room. She had no idea who Sandra was, but it seemed like a good idea to pretend that she did.

“Still sleeping,” the woman said. She smiled again, gesturing toward the form in the bed.

Karen finally turned to face him, her breath catching in her throat. She set the flowers on a nearby windowsill, hoping the movement would keep her from showing her shock too much.

Curt MacDonald was young. Impossibly young. For some reason, throughout all of this, Karen had imagined an older man, a haggard drunk who'd been dodging bar fights for decades. She'd imagined a ruddy alcoholic face, lined and spotted hands with tobacco-tarnished fingers. Someone who spent a lifetime looking for trouble.

Instead, she was faced with a man who looked no older than Travis himself, only softer, pinker. This boy looked like he'd never stepped foot in a bar. Had he not been lined with mostly healed scars, he would have had the perfection of youth.

“We thought maybe today would be the day. It's our anniversary,” said the young woman, and when Karen turned to her, she realized that the girl belonged with a boy this age. The girl shrugged. “Not wedding anniversary, of course. That's still upcoming.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring finger, which was bejeweled with a glittering solitaire. “It's the anniversary of the first time he asked me out. Three years—can you believe it?”

Karen shook her head. “Happy anniversary,” she croaked.

“Thank you,” the girl said, and smiled, showing off deep dimples and a brilliant whitening job. She was really beautiful. Way too beautiful to be sitting at her fiancée's hospital bedside. She should be out in the world, choosing
bridesmaids' dresses and squabbling over whom to put on the guest list and whether she wanted fondant or buttercream for her wedding cake. “I'm sure he's celebrating, even if he can't say it. Sandra's having a much harder time with it than I am. I know my Curt. He's coming back.” She gave Karen a curious look, then stood and offered her hand. “I'm sorry, I don't think we've officially met. I'm Katy.”

Karen took her hand and held on to it. It was so warm. “Karen,” she said.

“You look like the MacDonald side. Are you Craig's sister?”

“Uh, no, I'm . . . from a different side,” Karen said, as if there were multiples “sides” of a family to choose from. “You're engaged to Curt?”

Katy nodded, her face clouding over only momentarily before she pasted another hopeful grin onto it. “Technically, we were supposed to get married the weekend that this happened. He was at his bachelor party that night.” She took a few steps forward and picked up his hand, squeezed it between her palms. She let out a soft breath of affectionate laughter. “That's the funny thing. He never goes to bars. He doesn't like to drink. But his friend Amos insisted, and he went along because that's the kind of guy he is. Always pleasing other people. They tested his blood alcohol when they brought him in and it didn't even register. He had been drinking soda all night. Leave it to my Curt to be the designated driver at his own bachelor party.”