Accompanying Alice (29 page)

Funny what one brown-eyed woman with a conscience and a family could do to you, and how little time it took her—and her relatives—to do it. What was it Alice had said to him about family?
Crash, bang, clatter, then suddenly silence.
And strange as it was, she’d said, she hated
the silence worst of all.

With more of a sense of irony than surprise, Gabriel realized that through his own experiences in law enforcement, and earlier at the missions, he pretty much understood what
Alice meant. The hoopla, however nerve-racking, made you feel necessary, part of something, as if you belonged. And for a man who’d never particularly felt as though he belonged anywhere, finding out that he could was both intimidating and calming. It meant that he might be good at
something besides stinging and arresting life’s sleaze, but it also meant risking something more than his life to keep on belonging.

He rubbed a hand across his mouth and folded last night’s bed back into a couch. What the hell, huh? he thought. Life wasn’t designed so you could hang on to your heart forever; eventually someone or something got to it. If he hadn’t known that before, Alice had certainly taught him that last night. Where she was concerned, his heart was well and truly hooked. It was the timing that bothered him, the insidious twist of providence that had led them to find one another when they were both most confused about who they were and what they wanted to happen next.

Well, he amended wryly, that wasn’t entirely true. He
did
know some of what he wanted to happen next. It was a matter of whether or not he’d stay alive long enough to see that it did. And that was probably the simplest way he’d ever thought about his job.

“Becky?” a voice at the half-open front door queried.

Gabriel felt his muscles flinch and tense with surprise, even as he kept his features blank. He turned on the balls of his feet and bounced slightly, ready from reflex to deal with an unscheduled intruder.

“Becky,” the voice said again. “Please, honey, talk to me.”

The screen door groaned open, eased shut. Gabriel got a profile look at a surfer-blond youth of about nineteen wearing blue hospital scrubs. He estimated the kid was at least a head taller and forty pounds heavier than he was, and was the kind of good looking athletic type Gabriel had found most teenage girls would drop their eyeteeth to date. This must be the husband, he thought.

“I don’t know what I did, Becky.” Michael’s voice was young and soft with approaching maturity. “Whatever it was, I’m sorry. Can’t we work it out?”

“She can’t hear you, Mike,” Gabriel said. “She’s not here. She and her mother went—”

He stopped when Michael jumped and turned, hands open and positioned in front of him, feet balanced wide apart in a martial arts stance. Eyes steady on Gabriel, he knocked the inside door all the way open, out of his way. Gabriel recognized instinctively that the stance was not a bluff; if he didn’t talk fast and move quickly,
one of them
was likely to find himself in a world of hurt.

He extended his hands wide from his sides, palms up, open and unthreatening. “Mike,” he said cautiously, hoping—not for the first time—that using a man’s familiar name would prove as disarming as police school said it would. “Take it easy, Mike, you don’t want to do this.”

“Where’s my wife and her mother,
dude
?” The little-boy-lost immature quality was gone from Michael’s voice, replaced by the hard edge of a man who meant business. “What have
you done with them?”

“Nothin’, Mike, really. They’re fine. Look, I’m Gabriel, I’m a friend of Alice’s. Becky came home about five-thirty this morning crying. She and Alice talked, but there were so many extra relatives parked here last night that Becky was having a hard time explaining to your mother-in-law what was wrong. They went up to Big Boy to see if they could get to the bottom line over a cup of coffee. That’s all. They’ve been gone a couple of hours. I imagine they’ll be back soon.” At least I hope so, anyway, he finished silently.

“Yeah?” Michael wasn’t convinced. “Well,
Gabriel,
if you really knew so much about it, you’d know Becky’s mom doesn’t trust any men friends to be in her house.”

Gabriel felt a tiny rush of pleasure sing through him at the announcement. He liked the idea of being the first man allowed in Alice’s home. However he’d gotten there. He touched his chest over his heart, raised his right hand like a man under oath. “God’s truth, Mike. I’m part of the wedding party and everything. I know all of Becky’s aunts, and I’ve met Skip and Phil. I spent the night here with Aunt Kate and Uncle Delbert, and George, Mamie and the boys. And this may be kind of low, Mike, but I also know how bad Alice felt when you and Becky ran off and got married, and then couldn’t face her in person with the news that Becky was pregnant.”

Michael’s hands wavered. “Man, that wasn’t my idea. She raised the woman I love single-handed and did a helluva job. I got a lot of respect for her. I wanted her blessing. But Becky... Some days she’s still halfway a kid. She’s a little immature sometimes. I guess after what she figures her dad must have done to her mother, she wanted us to have a little time to get used to the idea of what we’d done ourselves before we invited what she calls ‘open commentary’ from the families.” He shrugged, at a loss for excuses. “What can I tell you? I love the girl. I agreed.”

He dropped his hands, suddenly, surrendering to Gabriel’s presence, and rubbed a hand across his eyes. The face he presented to Gabriel was once again young, bewildered and
vulnerable. “Everything seemed fine yesterday,” he said. “We’re trying to save up some money, so I worked a double shift last night. She kissed me goodbye, happy as could be. I got home this morning and she was gone, and there’s this note:
“Mike, it won’t work, I’m sorry, I’m going home. I hope you have a good life. Love, Becky.”
”
Michael sat down on the couch and dropped his hands between his knees in defeat. “What the hell kind of Dear John is that?” he asked. “
“I hope you have a good life.
Love,
Becky”
? I don’t even know what it means, how can I fight it?”

“Do you want to?” Gabriel asked.

“Hell, yeah!” Michael was on his feet, jabbing the air with his hands for emphasis. “I was going to ask her to marry me after graduation no matter what happened. I didn’t want her to get pregnant yet—I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m real happy about the baby and everything, but it’d probably be easier for her if we’d waited. I mean I meant to, but—” he ducked his head apologetically “—things kinda got away from me. You know?”

“Yeah, I do.” Gabriel nodded. “I feel kind of the same way about her mother—like things are getting away from me before I want ‘em to.” He jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“No, you got any juice?”

“Dunno. Take a look.” Gabriel headed for the kitchen. Mike followed him. “Say, Gabriel—man, that’s a mouthful of a name your parents stuck on you, isn’t it?”

“Biblical. Named me for an angel. Should’ve saved themselves the trouble.”

“Yeah, man, parents do things for weird reasons, don’t they?” Mike agreed from the refrigerator. “I’m not doin’ that to my kid. He’s going to have a regular name—John, Pete, Tom—something nobody’s going to tease him about on the ball field.”

Gabriel poured himself the last of the coffee. “Yeah, if I ever have a kid, I think that’s what I’d do, too.”

“You think you might?”

“What?”

“Have a kid?”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel viewed him with surprise. “I never thought about it.”

“Well, you know you should,” Michael-the-expert said. “I mean if you’re gonna have one, you oughtta do it soon, right? Before you get too old to do it any good. I mean, you gotta play with it, teach it things, keep up with it. I’ll tell ya—” he took a long pull straight from the apple juice bottle “—it’s not just women got clocks ticking. Men got ‘em, too, only they’re in their knees. Which reminds me. You really feel the way you say ‘bout Becky’s mom, maybe you and I could do each other some good....”

Thirty minutes later, Alice pulled the station wagon halfway into the driveway, pausing to take a good look at the red
Mustang
parked in front of the house. Beside her, Becky shrank in her seat.

“Mike’s here,” she whispered, half-pleased, half-anxious.

“What are you going to do?” her mother asked.

“I don’t know. Talk to him, I guess?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alice said with a nod. She finished pulling the car up the drive and opened the door.

“Mom?”

Alice paused. “Hmm?”

“You-you’ll stay around while I talk to him, won’t you? In case I need you...”

Alice glanced at the porch where Michael stood poised in the doorway. Then she leaned across the car and gave her daughter a hug. “Of course I will,” she murmured. “Whoever else you become, you’ll always be my daughter, and I’ll always be here for you. Now go on, there’s Mike. He’s waiting for you.”

*

The early afternoon breeze blew hot across the backyard. Alice sat on the lower platform on the play structure. She linked her arms around a corner post and lifted her face into the wind and the heat, closed her eyes to the cool mist the wind tossed across the fence from a neighbor’s sprinkler. Beside her, ice cubes tinkled against glass like wind chimes when Gabriel swirled his tea.

“Do you think they’ll be all right?” she asked.

Gabriel shifted his weight off his legs, dangled them over the edge of the platform. “If Mike has anything to say about it they will.”

“They’re so young to think they know what will last forever.”

Gabriel nodded. “I envy them.”

Alice’s arms slipped from the post. “So do I.”

They were silent a minute.

“She’s not pregnant,” Alice said.

Gabriel’s hands tightened around the edge of the platform. “Are you glad?”

“I guess maybe. I dunno.” She fitted her hands down beside her thighs and stiffened her arms, making her shoulders rise. “If I’d had a minute to think about it, I might actually have gotten used to the idea of someone calling me Grandma by now. But lately I keep feeling like I’m running from one crisis to the next all the time. Seems like I never have time to stop and collect my thoughts. There’s a part of me that keeps wondering what would have happened if I’d thought about it before I let Michael drive us—”

“Matt,” Gabriel corrected.

“What?”

“Didn’t you mean “before Matt” drove you?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Uh-uh.” Gabriel shook his head. “You said Michael.” He watched Alice swallow. “He’s not Matt, Alice.”

“I know.”

“I think he’s afraid that’s why Becky ran home, because she suddenly got scared that he’d leave her the way Matt left you.”

Alice pressed herself up on the heels of her hands again, staring at the back of the yard and this year’s garden. “He came back,” she said softly.

“Mike?”

Alice shook her head. “No. Matt. Twice. Once the day the girls were born, once when he graduated from college. He asked me to marry him again both times. I didn’t love him anymore and I didn’t think I’d ever trust him, so I said no. When he started earning money, he tried to get me to take child support from him, but I was too proud and stubburn, so he set up a trust fund for them that I couldn’t do anything about. They’ll get it when they’re twenty-one.” She paused. “He’s married now, but he still calls about once a year to find out how they’re doing. I never call him. He’s never tried to contact them, but I think he used to pull by the grade school sometimes on his lunch hour, watch them playing at recess. He couldn’t miss them, I suppose. Except for the hair they both look like him. I was always glad about that.” She laughed wryly. “Funny. The one thing we ever did well together was make pretty babies.”