Kendra sighed and sagged back in her chair. “Well, that’s something that she mentioned Michael, that she even said his name, to be honest with you. I guess from your reaction to Forrester, though, she never said anything about Matthew Manning or how her husband, Stephen, went off the deep end during Manning’s trial?”
“What do you mean
went off the deep end
?”
Kendra grimaced. “I’m not saying it in the figurative sense, Vic. Stephen started drinking heavily after Michael’s murder and eventually vacated the world of reality and moved to an insane one. He’s been there ever since, and as far as I know, he doesn’t appear to have any plans on returning,” Kendra added sarcastically. “Sorry,” she amended after a moment. “I don’t mean to be judgmental against someone who is obviously mentally ill and can’t control his actions, but if you had seen the hell that Niall’s been through . . .” She shook her head.
“I remember what Niall said to me once when I was mouthing off in a particularly bitter fashion about Stephen’s reaction to Michael’s murder. She said, ‘No one really knows how they’re going to react when something awful and unexpected happens to them. Stephen has reacted in the only way that was available to him.’ ”
“She defended him?”
Kendra nodded. “Always. Even though Stephen became so whacked out that he was violent toward her on several occasions. Niall has never said anything to me—not that she would—but I suspect he tried to kill her, maybe more than once. He’s suicidal in addition to being homicidal, so at least he’s an equal opportunity lunatic,” Kendra said, anger lacing her tone despite what she’d said about Niall’s defense of her ex-husband.
Vic leaned forward in his chair as the ringing alarm bells in his brain notched up to a clanging clamor. The idea of Niall—
his
Niall, that warm, honey-voiced, delicate-seeming woman with a backbone made of steel—being subjected to all of this meaningless violence and horror had him feeling cornered and desperate.
“I want to know it all, Kendra. I want to know everything about Niall that you have to tell me. But before you go into it, just tell me this. Do you think there’s a chance that Niall is at Joliet to attend Matthew Manning’s execution today? Because there’s no way in hell I’m gonna let her go through something like that on her own.”
Almost an hour and a half later Vic finally turned onto I-80 West, toward Joliet. He checked the digital clock anxiously before he pressed the accelerator to the floor. He’d stayed around long enough to pluck the relevant highlights of Niall’s history out of Kendra before he’d grabbed a newspaper, gotten in his truck, and left town in a hell of a hurry. Traffic had been bad only around the city, thank God, or else he’d never have had the slim chance that he wobbled on precariously at the moment.
Kendra had been shocked by his question about whether or not Niall would attend Matthew Manning’s execution. She apparently didn’t read the paper as meticulously as Forrester, because she hadn’t even realized that it was scheduled for today. Vic had found out by reading the paper at stoplights while he was still in the city that Manning’s execution by lethal injection was scheduled for three o’clock that afternoon.
Vic only had about forty-five minutes to make it to Joliet Prison. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do when he got there. He doubted they’d allow him to enter the maximum security prison, but he had to do
something
. The idea of Niall being there all by herself on such a god-awful errand was just untenable. For what felt like the thousandth time that day, he tried to call her cell phone, but for the thousandth time was thwarted by the sound of her recorded voice.
All of his doubts about how useful he was going to be once he got to Joliet Prison were immediately reinforced once he arrived. If he’d been speaking Swahili to the stony-faced guard at the single entrance gate, he’d have been just as effective in gaining admittance. Vic couldn’t even get the uniformed stiff to say if Niall Chandler had recently entered or if he’d ever
heard
of Niall Chandler . . . or Matthew Manning, for that matter.
Vic found himself waiting in the small parking lot outside of the prison, wishing he could see through walls so that he might at least be able to locate Niall’s car and know if she was there or not. Sitting all by himself in his truck certainly gave him time to think about what he wanted to say to Niall when he saw her. But just like a plague of writer’s block, nothing came to him. The only thing that he experienced at that moment was an overwhelming need to hold her . . . to protect her.
The feeling was a familiar one. It had cropped up often enough last year, all those times when he saw the sadness in Niall’s eyes, every time she awoke from her nightmares, trembling and damp with sweat. He closed his eyes briefly in remorse when he considered what she must have been dreaming about . . . seeing Michael shot down in cold blood as if they were soldiers on a battlefield instead of a young mother sending her four-year-old boy off to preschool with a cheerful good-bye.
Stuff out of nightmares all right, except that for Niall the dream never ended.
He cringed inwardly with guilt when he recalled how he’d admonished her just yesterday for being dishonest with him.
You said that you wanted to tell me back then, but you didn’t, despite the fact that I wanted to be there for you. I wanted it a
hell
of a lot, Niall! Now you want to talk, but I’m no longer ready to listen
.
“Sanctimonious asshole,” Vic muttered under his breath.
He knew all too well that there were times in the beginning of their relationship that he had consciously chosen to ignore Niall’s emotional wounds, preferring to focus on the sexual aspect of their relationship.
Sure, toward the end he’d changed his mind about that. He wanted to have her trust by that point. But it had been his own distrust . . . his own scars from his relationship with Jenny . . . that had made him initially pull away from her when he witnessed her pain.
Wasn’t it likely that on some level Niall had sensed his unwillingness to share her history and grief? Kendra had told him today how Niall’s parents had judged her for finally choosing to divorce Stephen. Hell, there were probably loads of people who would do the same thing without understanding the circumstances, without comprehending the fact that in his own way Stephen had abandoned Niall when she needed him most—and long, long before Niall made the decision to end their marriage.
Vic had been one of those judgmental people.
The expression on Niall’s face that evening in her apartment when Alexis Chandler had dropped the bomb that Niall had a husband suddenly flashed before Vic’s eyes like a perfectly intact film—the sagging shoulders, the sad, deflated expression on her lovely face, as if he’d just done the inevitable . . . as if he’d just condemned her with a look.
Which he had, of course.
Vic realized with a feeling of creeping dread that that was precisely the reason why Niall hadn’t told him about her history. Because she was scared, afraid that he would judge her harshly.
Then she had gambled everything and come to the farm to try to explain. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself, too involved in licking his own flesh wounds to bother to notice Niall’s gaping hole.
The thought caused such a profound pain to stab through him that he jerked reflexively in the driver’s seat.
He’d make it right. He
had
to. The alternative just wasn’t viable.
Meg sounded glad that Vic answered his cell phone on the first ring but her joy quickly altered to anxious irritation.
“Thank God I caught you. Where’ve you been all day?” she demanded testily. She plowed ahead without waiting for an answer. “You’ve got to get over to Mercy Hospital in Bloomington right away.”
“What the hell kind of ‘hello’ is that, Meg?” he asked sourly. He already felt helpless enough as he sat there in the outer parking lot of the enormous, depressing fortress of the prison without having Meg pull her big sister act on him, making him feel like a twelve-year-old kid caught out of bed past his bedtime. “I can’t go to the hospital right now. I’m outside of Joliet Prison. Damn guards won’t let me in but—”
“Yeah, right. You’re trying to get
into
Joliet Prison. This ought to be good,” Meg scoffed as if he’d started to tell an obviously moronic joke.
“Niall is in there.”
Meg snorted. “Quit kidding around, Vic! This is serious. Damn that Errol Farrell. I knew he was going to stir up a hornet’s next over there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sheriff Madigan just called. Donny was caught in the cross fire of a shoot-out at the Farrell farm earlier today.”
Vic sat up ramrod straight. “Is he okay?”
“Madigan didn’t know for sure,” Meg replied worriedly. “He only said that he was one of the ones they took away in an ambulance.”
Vic shook his head in rising disbelief. The events of today might have been following a schedule from Hell’s Daily Planner. He glanced anxiously from the one road from the prison to his fuel gauge and back to the road.
“I can’t leave right now. Can you go check on Donny and call me as soon as you know anything? I’ve got to wait for Niall.”
Several seconds of silence followed. “Were you
serious
about that Joliet Prison thing?”
“Why would I joke about something like that?” Vic thundered.
“Calm down, Vic,” Meg exclaimed, half in concern and half in exasperation. “Niall isn’t in
Joliet Prison
, for God’s sake. Why
would
she be? She’s on her way to Mercy as we speak. She just pulled into the driveway a minute before I called you, and she went ahead to the hospital when I told her what happened. I’m waiting for Tim to get back from the fields—”
Vic had already turned the ignition and was in the process of backing out.
“We really need to have a conversation about the way we communicate, Meg.”
He peeled out of the parking lot, completely oblivious to the high concentration of police in the vicinity of the prison. The last thing he was thinking about at that moment was getting a ticket.
Surely this day couldn’t get any worse.
TWENTY-ONE
Donny Farrell determinedly attempted to switch channels on the television set in his hospital room with a remote control, but his right hand clearly wasn’t cooperating the way he wanted. His lack of coordination and the pain that shadowed his youthful features related to his heavily bandaged right arm.
“Use your left hand,” Tim instructed calmly. “You’re going to have to get used to using it for a while anyway, while your arm heals.”
Donny grimaced in irritation more than in pain. “The doc said the bullet didn’t even hit the bone. It’s not serious,” Donny insisted when he met the gaze of the brooding man who sat on the window-sill, the brilliant late afternoon sunlight casting his body and face in shadow. “Seriously, Vic.
Clean shot
—that’s what she called it—right through the muscle,” Donny explained matter-of-factly as he waved the remote control. “Doc said that they were just keeping me overnight to check on the results from some tests. I feel fine . . . maybe a little weak from losing so much blood.”
Vic didn’t say anything. Meg must have thought her brother’s silence implied that he thought Donny should go toss a football out on the lawn right this second.
“Well, I, for one, am glad they’re keeping you overnight. I don’t know what’s become of hospitals when a person gets shot—
shot!
—and they discharge him the following day, like he just had his tonsils out or something.”
She shook her head in disgust. Niall, Tim, Vic, and she had been Donny’s only visitors since he’d been admitted to the hospital. Meg had noticed how exhausted Niall appeared earlier, and both she and Donny had encouraged her to go back to the farm for a nap. Vic hadn’t looked too pleased about the fact that Niall wasn’t there anymore by the time he arrived, but all in all, Meg thought he was restraining himself from going after her with admirable control.
If Donny’s spaced-out mother had been to the hospital at all, Meg wasn’t aware of it. If she had been here, she’d likely be focusing her attention on Eric Farrell, another of Donny’s brothers, who had also been shot in the fray. Eric was reportedly stable, but his condition was much more serious than Donny’s.
Still, it made Meg feel heart sore that Donny had never asked where his mother was or even seemed to expect that Deloris Farrell would visit him.
Meg guessed that Donny had been riding on the natural pain-killers of shock and adrenaline since the incident at the Farrell farm, which had culminated in one of his brother’s being seriously wounded, another man almost being killed, and Errol being charged with the latter shooting.
As Donny’s principal, Meg felt obligated to report his situation to the Department of Children and Family Services if the police already hadn’t. She doubted Donny would thank her, but Meg had not only a professional but also a moral obligation. It just wasn’t right that a young boy should be forced to live in such an unsavory, blatantly dangerous place as the Farrell farm.
And Meg could tell that Vic was thinking the same thing as he watched the boy fumble with the remote control.
Her heart went out to her brother in that moment. His expression and posture gave next to nothing away as he sat there, but Meg heard his suffering with the invisible sense organ that siblings often acquire in regard to each other.
“Vic, can I talk to you for a second in the hallway?” Meg asked as she stood.
Vic gave Donny a wry glance as he stood up, communicating to Donny with the speed of lightning the message, “Uh-oh, I’m in trouble with the principal.”
Meg didn’t mind, because Donny’s sudden snort of laughter did them all a world of good, worried as they were about the boy. She sighed as she walked out to the corridor with Vic behind her. Her and Vic’s invisible connection had been built over a lifetime. Vic and Donny’s connection, on the other hand, had seemingly sprung up full force the first time they had met.