Accompanying Alice (5 page)

Alice felt like strangling someone. It didn’t matter who, as long as she was an eighteen year old, hazel
-
eyed brunette named Meyers. “Me.”

“Oh, right. Like, tell the person who’ll have the biggest hissy fit. Get real—”

“God bless it, Allyn! I was seventeen when you were born and I am as real as it comes. You don’t always know how I’m going to react. Sometimes you’ve got to ask the questions before you give the answers. I’m concerned about Becky, period. Has she been to a doctor, is she really pregnant, is she taking vitamins, does she have morning sickness, does she…does she need anything, is she all right, is Mike…” She tucked her tongue behind her bottom lip to still its sudden trembling. “Is Mike good to her…?
”

“Ma—”

“I just don’t want you girls to make my mistakes.” Oh, good, now she was criticizing them for not having hindsight. Her mother had certainly trained her well. “Look, I know that’s an awful thing to say. It’s a burden, and I hated it when your grandmother said things like this to me, but—”

“Save the lecture, Ma. I’m up on the consequences of carelessness. I haven’t needed ‘em yet, but those were my condoms I was trying to get Becky to use.”

“Allyn—”

“No. No. Let me go. Get your own life, Ma, and leave me mine.”

“Allyn. All—” The phone clicked hard in Alice’s ear. She hung up slowly, furious with herself for digging her heels into an argument with a daughter who was so far from home. Who did she think she was, anyway? Mother, rival, confidant
e
, counselor—all and none in more or less equal amounts. They were too young to bear the crushing weight
of daily life on their own, but she couldn’t—shouldn’t—protect them from it anymore. Alice punched the wall lightly with her fist. How was she supposed to let them go without dying a little inside, without wanting to smother and protect them from themselves and from each bent heart, broken trust, betrayed dream? She settled her fists on the dining room table and made a sound somewhere between a sob and a whimper, hoping semi-silent agony was what courage really was.

Without thinking, Gabriel touched her shoulder. “Can I help?”

“No.” Alice shook her head. “All they want me to do is get my own life and let them start theirs and I’m not ready to. I don’t know how.” She moved around the table settling already settled chairs in place. “Even if you were a single parent with twin daughters exactly like mine, the only thing you could do is commiserate with me for a while. I’d still have to deal with the worry on my own.” She glanced at him suddenly. “You’re not, are you? A parent with teenagers? I don’t know why I assumed—”

“It’s all right. Most people assume. And no, I don’t have any kids. Never been married.” He gave her a story-of-my-life shrug. “An undercover cop can be tough to live with—one track mind, makes up his own rules as he goes, gone for months at a time, character compatible with the scum of the earth...”

“Is that what you really think?” Alice swung on him abruptly, eyes flashing. “Is that what you want people to think? Because they will if you let them.”

Surprised by both the passion and the challenge, Gabriel stood mute, watching her struggle with demons he could only imagine.

Alice looked at her hands. “I guess that wasn’t my call to make, was it? Sorry. Your life, my life, cars on the expressway—they all look alike, don’t they?” Uncomfortably she smoothed her wet skirt over her hips, eyed the filthy
T-shirt sticking to his skin. “Oh, gee, look, some hostess,
huh? Here I am keeping you standing around in wet clothes when what you really need to do is change your life…” She rubbed her forehead. “Sorry, Freudian slip, long morning. It’s
my
life that needs to change. Urn, look, let me get you some towels and, um, what, a razor, some sweatpants, sweatshirt...” She moved through the tiny house as she spoke, collecting items as she came to them. “I think I’ve got some fat pants left from before my diet last year—yeah, here they are, these should do.” She piled everything into Gabriel’s arms. “Anything else? Scissors, shaving cream? If you don’t mind the stuff I use for my legs there’s some in—”

“Alice.”

She ducked her head, not wanting him to see how close to folding she was. He saw, anyway. He was trained to see.

“If you give me your clothes, I have to do a load of dark laundry, anyway. I can just throw yours in—”

Reaction set in without warning. He’d seen it happen this way often—people strong through the most extraordinary circumstances falling apart afterward. His heart knotted. Her hands shook, and her lips trembled, but she was still in there, pitching; still hanging in, striding forward with life despite the curves it had thrown her. From listening between the lines, he knew there was nothing as simple about her as he’d imagined. She had a life as complicated as his own, just on an entirely different scale. And here he was adding to it. He wanted to say something, offer her something, some kindness. Thank you. But he knew without being told that she was the kind of person who’d pull herself together best if he left her alone. As he would.

“That’d be great,” he said. “I’d appreciate that. You said scissors and shaving cream were in the bathroom?”

*
**

Standing in the center of her too small kitchen, Alice shoved damp hair out of her eyes and pulled her old blue
terry robe tighter. It had stood her in good stead over the years, kept her warm, caught her tears, weathered late nights full of panic while she waited for the girls. It somehow managed to give comfort when she needed it—a “blankie” for a grownup who had no other sense of security to depend on. Everyone needed a security blanket once in a while. There was no shame in that. Except today it wasn’t working. She’d put the robe on to find some sense of safety, lost this morning at the side of the road—or was it last week when she’d turned thirty-five, or been given notice on her job, or watched Allyn and Rebecca share the commencement address, or learned she was going to be a grandmother? When exactly didn’t matter, she supposed, only that safety was gone and the old blue robe couldn’t retrieve it for her anymore.

Instead she felt restless, frightened, unraveled, on the verge... Confused. For eighteen years she’d known exactly who she was and what was important. She’d been mother, father, provider, drill sergeant and safety net, and Allyn and Rebecca had been everything. She hadn’t had to think about herself,
for
herself. Everything had been about them, for them—and through them, somehow, for her. Somehow. Now they were gone, the bookstore was gone, there was a
hairy, aqua-eyed fugitive in her bathroom, and she didn’t know anything anymore.

Sighing, she surveyed the cream-and-slate portion of her domain, looking for answers where there didn’t seem to be many. Something sticky made tacky noises underneath her slippered feet, and she reached across the counter for the damp rag hanging on the towel rack to clean it up. A bottle of light rum, two bags of nacho chips and the can of nuts she’d bought from one of her nieces at Easter caught the comer of her eye as she did so. Oh, rats, she’d forgotten. It was pre-wedding-and-Christmas-traditional “sisters, sisters” night here tomorrow. That meant no children, no mom, no men, just the seven original Brannigan girls, a
pitcher of Bacardi and soda, a lot of pizza, the movie
White Christmas
and a command performance of the Rosemary
Clooney / Vera-Ellen duet “Sisters” sung with heart.

Her lips twitched. Trust thinking about her sisters to put life in its proper perspective.

“Still feeling pretty martyred, aren’t you, Allie?” she kidded herself aloud. “Better perk up, be positive. Be as corny as Kansas and as cockeyed as the optimist, or they’ll take
White Christmas
out of the VCR and sing every song from
South Pacific
to you, and then go on to
The Sound of Music
and finish up by tying you to a chair while they act out the prism scene from
Pollyanna
.
You do
not
want to sit through that, so buck up, girl!”

She turned, changing places with herself to make the conversation two-sided. “Oh, shut up,” she told herself now.
“I’ve been corny, I am cockeyed, and this is only a temporary aberration, so hop off and let me wallow in peace, hmm?”

“Can’t do that, Alice.” She switched places again. “You don’t have time. Can’t let you—”

She glanced around at a sound from the doorway. Gabriel cleared the chuckle from his throat. “Sorry,” he said solemnly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation. It was
fascinating.” He hitched her too big gray sweatpants higher up his waist and finished wiping shaving cream off his cheek with the pink towel she’d given him for his shower. “Do go on.”

Alice stared. Beardless, shirtless and clean, he hardly looked the same bedraggled biker she’d thought mostly dead less than three hours ago. Her cheeks pinked slightly. Really, why hadn’t she called the police and turned him in while she’d had the chance? Clearly the teenagers she’d so recently lived with were right.
TSTL
—Too Stupid To Live—didn’t begin to cover what she was.

“Can’t,” she croaked, trying to concentrate on what she was saying and not on admitting that Gabriel Lucas Book looked a darn sight better in her fat pants than she ever had. Or wanted to. “It was private.” Sharply she warned her pulse to quit bouncing as if it belonged to someone younger and more foolish.

Oh wait. Aside from impending grandma-hood, she might still
be
someone younger and more foolish.

“Too bad.”

Again he gave her that grin, the contradictory, not-quite-sly one that had somehow connected her to him before. The
one that had let her see that appearances with him might not always be what they seemed. Oh, sweet heaven, just what she needed now, a schoolmarm crush on a desperado.

To distract herself she picked a piece of antique lace off the back of a kitchen chair and examined it critically. Laid it down again. “I’ve got two hundred seed pearls left to put on
this before Saturday,” she said abruptly, “and it makes me nervous having someone like you in the house, so I’d appreciate it if you’d quit grinning at me and just do what you came here to do.”

“Not much I can do right now. Tonight I can make a phone call, but...” He paused, looking as though he had more to say, but thought better of it. He gestured awkwardly at the lace. “Is this what you do? Are you a seamstress?”

“No. Well, sometimes by necessity. This is just... My sister’s wedding veil. I offered, and...” She smiled slightly, shrugging, and the wealth of love and exasperation in the movement
said it all. “Things escalated. You know family—they expect the world. Both for you and from you.”

“Don’t they just.” Gabriel’s chuckle of commiseration ended on a note of regret. “So do friends,” he said sadly. Expected you to lie for them, turn a blind eye to what they were doing, cover up evidence... He dropped his gaze to the floor and fingered the medal sticking to his chest, suddenly more ashamed of than angry at the people he’d called friends.

Alice looked at him. Understanding struck without warning, an ice ball in the pit of her stomach.
Only three people knew where I was. One of them is dead and the other two are friends.
He’d said it in the car. He’d been called into this investigation by a friend, one who might expect more from him than he could give. A friend who had almost certainly ordered Gabriel and his partner killed.

Shock registered as quickly as awareness. Brown eyes met azure, read grief in the truth. “Oh, Gab—”

Gabriel shushed her with a shrug and a shake of his head, a desire not to believe it yet. “No proof.”