The Night Remembers (21 page)

"Sounds like fun."

"Mack gone," Mollie said mournfully, standing up on the bed to lean against her mother's shoulder. Sunny reached up and absently patted the little hand that had snaked its way around her neck.

"How did that get you married?" she asked Daphne.

"When Adam realized that we couldn't keep our hands off each other he decided it was best that we get married, after all. So we decided to elope."

"And?"

"And nothing. You know the rest. We were divorced in less than two years." She shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. "Anyway, to answer your first question. The reason Adam and I are having this 'adult relationship' is because it's sort of a... a trial," she said, putting it into words for the first time.

"What?" Sunny's start of surprise sent Mollie tumbling back against the bed. "You mean like a trial marriage?"

"Yes, I guess you could call it that."

"And Adam agreed?" Sunny couldn't seem to believe it. "Old straight-laced conservative Adam?"

"We're doing it, aren't we?" Daphne responded, needled by Sunny's implication that Adam would be the one to object to such an arrangement. She was partly right; Adam hadn't actually agreed to it. Not in so many words, anyway. But Daphne told herself that was only because they hadn't gotten around to discussing or defining exactly what it was they were doing. They were living together, true, but to what end? Adam hadn't said and Daphne hadn't asked. It was beginning to tell on her.

"We both agree that there's something special between us," she said then, trying to explain it to herself as well as Sunny. "So we're taking this time to find out what it is and—"

"It's called love," Sunny interrupted dryly.

"And if it will last," Daphne went on, ignoring the interruption. "We're getting to know each other again, finding out if we can be friends as well as lovers. If we can live together without driving each other crazy. Which is exactly why I have to find some office space," she concluded, coming to her feet as she spoke. "Or this little arrangement won't last long enough for us to find out."

She put her hand out and hauled Sunny to her feet. "Come on. Pick up that child and let's go to this protest of yours before I get smart and change my mind."

* * *

There were already twenty or so people milling around in front of the research center when Sunny pulled her yellow Mercedes station wagon up to the curb. They were mostly housewife types: nicely dressed matrons and young mothers pushing strollers or holding a child by the hand, or both. There were a few earnest-looking teenagers sprinkled among the women, a few senior citizens, a few middle-aged men.

A far cry, Daphne thought, from the long-haired, jean-clad, headband-wearing young rebels she had marched with in her early protest days. Not a fanatic among them, she decided, except, of course, for the ever fanatic Sunny McCorkle in her designer combat fatigues.

"Now what?" Daphne said as Sunny turned the wheels and set the parking brake.

"Now, we pass out the signs." She gestured over her shoulder. "There's a card table back there, too, for the petition. Jason will set that up." She waved at a young man, motioning him toward the back of the station wagon. "Why don't you get Mollie out of her car seat while I get the signs?"

"Fine," Daphne agreed, twisting around in her seat to liberate the three-year-old from her safety restraints. "Looks like it's you and me, kid," she said, lifting the child into her arms as she got out of the car. She leaned against the shiny yellow hood, bouncing Mollie against her hip, and watched while Sunny organized her troops.

She was as good at it as ever. In less than five minutes the former Student for a Democratic Society had everyone, babies and children included, wearing black armbands—mourning for the deceased animals, Daphne finally decided—and marching in close-order drill in front of the medical research center. Most of the protesters carried one of Sunny's hand-lettered signs.
Stop Slaughtering Our Pets
and
Vivisection Is Killing Puppies
seemed to be the two favorites. A few carried placards with rather gruesome representations of puppies and kittens and baby monkeys who had apparently been the unfortunate victims of medical research.

It was an emotional, heart-wrenching scene—as Sunny had fully intended it should be—because no one, no matter what side of the question they stood on or how important they believed the results of the research to be, wanted to think of their own beloved pet ending up as an experiment.

Daphne certainly didn't. She had listened to Brian McCorkle argue the pros and cons of the issue with his hardheaded, softhearted wife; she had heard Adam's views on the subject and was aware of the vast amount of valuable information that animal experimentation supplied to the medical world; she even agreed that some of it couldn't have been gathered in any other way. But, still, to think of Mack or Queenie or Tiger suffering untold pain in a lab such as this? It was unthinkable.

And that was why, despite some reservations, she had agreed to come today.

"Here, let me tie this around your arm," Sunny said, wrapping a strip of black cloth around Daphne's bicep. "You, too, sweetheart." She tied another one around Mollie's plump little arm, letting the ends dangle down the sleeve of her pink sweatshirt. For the first time Daphne noticed that the front of Mollie's sweatshirt sported a grinning dog face and the legend,
I Love my Dachshund
. Mollie didn't have a dachshund.

"Have you no shame?" Daphne chided mildly. "Using your own child as propaganda?"

"Mollie'd love her dachshund if she had one, wouldn't you, sweetheart?" Sunny said, taking the child from Daphne's arms. She passed her along to the young man standing beside her. "Hold on tight to Jason," she urged as he lifted Mollie to his shoulders.

Mollie clutched the young man's hair with both hands. "Gid'up," she ordered gleefully.

Jason whinnied and galloped to his place in the picket line.

Sunny thrust a sign into Daphne's hands and hoisted her own. "Come on, the TV crew should be here any minute."

"The TV crew?" Somewhat reluctantly Daphne followed Sunny into the line of protestors and began to shuffle along with them. "You didn't mention any TV crew when you were talking me into this thing."

"Didn't want to get your hopes up. Jason only found out this morning that they'd be here for sure. His girlfriend works in the station's film library," Sunny informed her, flashing a grin over her shoulder. "Isn't that great?"

"Great," Daphne echoed faintly.

The police arrived before the TV crew but they were, it seemed, only there as a precaution. Aside from warning the protesters not to block the sidewalk to passersby and not to physically harass anyone going in and out of the building, the police merely watched. And waited.

Daphne waited, too, shielding her face behind her picket sign, and hoped Jason's girlfriend had been wrong. She wasn't. The TV crew arrived ten minutes later, their sky-blue van marked with the station's call letters.

At a signal from Sunny, the protesters began to chant louder, thrusting their signs into the air with increasing enthusiasm as the Minicam zoomed in on them.

"Excuse me, ma'am," a reporter said, thrusting a microphone under Daphne's nose. "Could you tell us what you hope to gain by this demonstration?"

Daphne shook her head and ducked behind her sign, pointing a mocha-tipped finger at the back of Sunny's head. "Ask her," she mumbled.

"Excuse me, ma'am..." The well-mannered reporter repeated her question, directing it to Sunny.

"We hope to arouse public concern for what's going on in that—" she gestured over her shoulder and shuddered dramatically "—that torture chamber there."

"Torture chamber? Could you elaborate on that, please?"

Sunny was glad to elaborate. Elaborating was one of her favorite things. "Helpless animals are being systematically tortured and mutilated in the name of medical research."

"Don't you think that's a bit strong?" the reporter questioned. "You make it sound like a concentration camp for animals when, in fact—"

"Isn't that what it is? A concentration camp?" Sunny interrupted, jumping on the reporter's choice of words with relish. "Tell me what else you would call it when perfectly healthy cats and dogs—
children's pets—
are being purchased from city pounds to be used in painful, crippling and unnecessary experiments."

"Poor puppy," Mollie said mournfully, her high childish voice clearly audible over the noise of the crowd. The reporter—and the Minicam—turned their attention to the adorable redheaded three-year-old sitting on Jason's shoulders.

"Do you have a pet, honey?" the reporter said gently, holding the microphone up to Mollie's lips. "What's your dachshund's name?" she added, taking her cue from the front of Mollie's pink sweatshirt.

"Poor puppy," Mollie repeated, her bottom lip out. "Poor, poor puppy." She was shaking her head sadly.

"Shame on you," Daphne hissed in Sunny's ear as the reporter turned to face the camera, wrapping up her story. "Teaching that child to tell lies."

"What lies?" Sunny hissed back, brown eyes wide and innocent. "All she said was poor puppy.' She didn't say she had one."

"...this is Karen Zachary, reporting live from the Hillman Medical Research Center." The Minicam was lowered, the reporter and her crew hurried back across the street to the blue van that was double-parked.

Sunny handed her placard to one of the other protesters and opened her arms, lifting Molly from Jason's shoulders. "Mommy's brilliant little girl," she said delightedly, nuzzling the child's neck.

"Poor puppy," Mollie said again, playing it for all it was worth. "Poo-oor puppy."

"Yes, poor puppy. But that's enough now, sweetheart. The cameras are all gone. Say goodbye to Jason."

"Bye, Jason," Mollie repeated obediently, throwing him a sloppy kiss over her mother's shoulder.

"Does this mean we're leaving now?" Daphne asked, following the energetic pair of redheads to the car. "That's it? Five minutes in front of the cameras is all the protesting you're going to do? Elizabeth McCorkle, I'm surprised at you."

"Why?" Sunny spoke over her shoulder as she strapped Mollie into her car seat. "I've done my part here today. Jason and some of the others will stay for most of the afternoon and try to get some more signatures on that petition."

"And just what was your part?" asked Daphne curiously, pulling open her own door as Sunny went around to the driver's side.

"Focusing media attention on an issue of vital importance," Sunny said promptly, speaking to her over the roof of the car. "By giving that reporter something more interesting to film than a bunch of people carrying signs, I've practically assured our cause a spot on the nightly news. That means public attention will be focused on this research center."

"And?"

"And maybe we can stop what's going on in there." She waved at Jason, giving him a smile and a thumbs-up sign and slid behind the wheel. Daphne scrambled into her own seat. "Now," Sunny said, gunning the engine to life. "Where shall I drop you?"

Chapter 11

Adam's forest-green BMW was already in the driveway when Daphne's taxi pulled up in front of his Russian Hill address.

Damn, she thought, as she opened her purse to pay the driver.
One of the few days Adam gets home from the hospital before six o'clock and I'm not here to greet him.
The perfect opportunity to show him what suitable doctor's wife material she had turned into down the drain because of a rental agent's faulty transmission.

Well, if she was lucky, she thought, he had only just come in himself. Maybe the evening could still be salvaged and she could begin her new campaign. Quick-like-a-bunny, she could change into one of her slinky at-home outfits, bring him a glass of wine while he watched the evening news, ask him about his day, make him a nice dinner, supposing, of course, that there was anything in the refrigerator to make a nice dinner with.

And so Operation Wife begins with a whimper,
she thought, frowning to herself as she pushed open the fanciful wrought iron gate at the end of the front walk.

She hurried up the uneven brick path, mentally reviewing the contents of said refrigerator, and inserted her key into the lock on the front door. Holding her breath, she pushed it open and peeked in. The living room was clean and tidy. Mrs. Drecker hadn't quit yet.