Bleeding Heart (35 page)

“T
hat was Franny,” Gwen said, dropping the receiver back into its cradle. “They ran into traffic on the West Side Highway. It was all jammed up from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. They’re hoping to get here by three.”

“Of course! Just in time to sit down and eat,” Olivia grumbled, shifting in her chair beside me at the kitchen table. She was at that point in her pregnancy where she was never comfortable in any one position for very long. We were peeling potatoes. Actually, Olivia was doing the peeling while I lent moral support and did my best to gather up scraps with my left hand. My right was still in a sling. Along with sustaining a fairly serious concussion, I’d fractured my elbow and broken my nose when I was thrown from the back of Tom’s pickup. But I’d been lucky. Tom had gone through the windshield, severing his carotid artery; he’d bled to death before the police could pry open the crumpled cab. I’d been lucky, too, in that I didn’t know about any of this until I woke up in the hospital the next day. Not only was I spared the horror of Tom’s final moments, but because of the concussion, I’d initially had
trouble remembering the hour or two leading up to the crash. Though eventually it all came back to me, when I first came to I could recall only a few jumbled moments. But those returned with nightmarish clarity.

“Tom pushed Mackenzie off the ridge,” I told Detective Erlander and Ron Schlott when they came to see me in the hospital a few hours after I regained consciousness. “Early in the morning. Before the Open Day even started. Tom killed him. Not Mara. She didn’t mean to hurt him. She was only—”

“It’s okay. We know,” the detective said with surprising gentleness. “Just take it easy. We knew from the autopsy report that Mackenzie died from injuries sustained during a fall.”

“So why did you keep after me about the digitalis?” I asked, trying to focus on the two men seated uncomfortably by the side of my bed. “Why that stupid raid?”

“It was a search,” Erlander said defensively. “The digitalis poisoning—though not that serious—seemed to point in a certain direction . . .”

“You thought I might have given him a push because the poison didn’t seem to be doing the trick?”

“Don’t get all worked up,” Erlander said. “It’s my job to pursue every angle. It takes time. But we were starting to home in on Mr. Deaver. We were just a step or two behind you.”

“And I could have been killed while you were out there pursuing your damned angles!” I said, glancing from Erlander to Ron, who looked appropriately abashed. “Did you know he killed his wife, too?”

“What?” Ron said. “No, Alice. She died from breast cancer.”

“She would have,” I replied. “But I think maybe she was taking a little too long about it as far as her husband was concerned. He
told me last night that he’d ‘set her free.’ I think he must have injected her with an overdose of morphine.”

“Jesus,” Ron said under his breath.

“We will, of course, follow up on this information,” Erlander said, his gaze moving from Ron back to me again. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked uncertain. “But why exactly do you think he confided all this to you?”

My shoulder and arm were heavily bandaged. My eyes were black and blue. I had enough stitches in my forehead to pass for Frankenstein. It seemed a little far-fetched to suggest that Tom had been blinded by love.

“I guess he thought I’d understand,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. I closed my eyes. “Because of the skeletons in my own closet.”

A nurse came by soon after that and shooed Erlander and Ron out of the room. I fell back into a fitful medicated sleep. Gwen was in and out. My daughters arrived later in the afternoon. Olivia, who stayed on to help after I was released from the hospital, designated herself my watchdog in terms of the press and the police, denying the former any access whatsoever and the latter only carefully supervised visits. So it wasn’t until my second meeting with Ron, who had come to take my statement the morning after I got home, that I finally understood just how close my brush with death had actually been. And, more important, who had saved me. In my confused state, I hadn’t given much thought as to how and why the police knew to pursue Tom down that dark country road in the middle of the night.

“Because the 911 call came in on a cell,” Ron told me, “we lucked out in terms of backup. The wireless carrier routed it to the highway patrol. And they alerted us as well as a couple of other nearby police stations.”

“What call?” I asked Ron, who was sitting on one of my upholstered armchairs in the living room. Olivia and I were facing him on the couch.

“The one from Mara Delaney,” Ron said. “I thought you knew. She saw you and Mr. Deaver by the roadside. She stopped, but she had her little boy in the back, and she didn’t think she could go up against Deaver on her own.”

“That was Mara?” I said, remembering the sweep of car headlights as I struggled to break free from Tom. Mara had come back after all. Just as she promised. And just in time. “But where is she now? Why hasn’t she been by?”

“Mom, you’re still in pretty bad shape,” Olivia said. “We’ve been telling everyone you need to take it easy for another day or two.”

I realized Olivia was trying her best to look after me, so I held my tongue until after Ron had taken down my full statement and departed.

“Mara isn’t
everyone
,” I told my daughter. “And without her showing up when she did—and making that 911 call—I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Could you call her for me and ask her to come over as soon as she’s able?”

“I can do better than that,” Olivia said. “I’ll run down to the office and get her. She insisted on keeping things going while you were out of commission.”

I’m not a particularly touchy-feely person, and Mara has always been physically standoffish. In all the many months we’ve worked together, I don’t think we’ve ever so much as shaken hands. But when she burst into the living room a few minutes later, her face flushed from running, and I stood up in a wobbly sort of way to meet her, she walked right over to me and let me hug her with my one good arm.

“I was so afraid he was going to kill you!” Mara said. “I didn’t know what to do!”

“You did great,” I told her as she began to cry. “You saved my life. I can’t begin to thank you.”

Olivia, who had started to follow Mara into the room, stopped, and took us in with a surprised look on her face. Then she quietly backed away.

I made it sound as though Mara would be doing me and my daughters a favor when I asked if she and Danny would consider moving in with me temporarily.

“Olivia should really be getting back to her husband and job in the city,” I explained a few days after our emotional reunion. Mara had taken to stopping by for lunch to go over office matters, and we’d quickly regained our terse, no-nonsense working relationship. “And, as you can see,” I said, looking down at my arm, which was still immobilized in its bulky cast, “I can’t really handle things on my own at this point.”

Mara had stared at me across the kitchen table with that intense, unflinching gaze I used to find so disconcerting. I sensed she was trying to figure out if my request was in any way an act of charity—or, even worse, pity. I’d never told her that I’d visited the trailer park when I was trying to track her down, or even that I knew she lived in such straitened circumstances, but I suspected she’d learned as much from Danny’s babysitter. I met her gaze head-on.

“You and Danny could have the downstairs suite that we put in for my parents years ago,” I went on. “It’s roomy and quiet. You’ll hardly even know I’m around.”

“How am I supposed to help take care of you,” she demanded, “if I can’t hear you?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out,” I told her.

Though I did initially have my doubts. Since moving back to Woodhaven, I’d managed to convince myself that I was happier on my own. I ate when I felt like it, went to bed when I pleased, watched old movies all night if I wanted to. It was great to be so independent, I’d told myself, so self-sufficient. But my close call with Tom and death had changed me in ways that I was only beginning to understand. With Mara’s and Danny’s arrival, I began to realize how self-indulgent my solitary existence had actually been. How good it felt to have others around me who demanded my time and attention. We were all a little wary of each other at first, but mealtimes, work, my physical therapy, and Danny’s half-day preschool in town soon helped us establish a comfortable, easygoing routine. Danny, who had been shy to the point of muteness around me for so long, slowly began to open up.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around and my daughters and sons-in-law came up to join us for the long holiday weekend, Danny had turned into a regular little chatterbox. Not just with me, but with everyone he considered a part of his new, extended family. While Olivia, Gwen, and I were working in the kitchen getting the dinner ready I could hear Danny’s high-pitched, excited voice in the dining room.

“Nemo is a fish who lives in the ocean,” he was telling Olivia’s husband, Allen, who was helping Danny and Mara set the table. “But he gets lost and his dad has to go on a venture to find him. . . .”

“An
ad
venture, bud,” Mara said. “And you’re supposed to be putting the spoons on this side of the knife. Like this, okay?”

“It’s great to have you here,” I heard Allen tell Mara in a lowered voice. “It’s been a big help to all of us.”

“Your mother-in-law’s almost back on her feet,” Mara said. “We should be moving on soon.”

It was something I wasn’t ready to think about, though I knew the time was coming. Mara was right. I wouldn’t really need the sling much longer. It was the emotional support I wasn’t looking forward to losing. And Mara’s brusque, undemonstrative concern was just the kind of help I wanted. During the few short months of their temporary stay, she and Danny had managed to take up permanent residence in my heart. And I believed the feeling was mutual, though Mara remained as carefully guarded as ever. I’d have to be careful about how I broached the subject of them staying on. Put it on some kind of financial footing, perhaps. Make it seem a mere convenience rather than something a lot more central to my sense of well-being.

“It’s going to be another hour or two before Franny and Owen get here,” I told Olivia after we put the potatoes on to simmer. “Why don’t you lie down for a while? Gwen and I can keep an eye on the turkey.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Olivia said, getting up with a sigh. “I think I’ll take a nap on the couch while Allen watches the game.”

“Do you want a little glass of wine to take with you?” Gwen asked. She was uncorking one of the bottles of Côtes du Rhône she’d contributed to the festivities.

“I’m
pregnant
, remember?” my daughter told her.

“I said ‘a little,’” Gwen replied. “I can’t believe a sip or two is going to hurt you.”

“It’s not just me I have to think about these days,” Olivia replied as she made her way out of the room.

“Oops!” Gwen said with a laugh as she handed me a glass of wine and sat down in the chair Olivia had vacated. “I guess I was being a little insensitive.”

“No, Olivia’s being
too
sensitive,” I said. “I’m afraid this last trimester is not bringing out her best qualities.”

“Well, I’m sure it can’t be easy for her,” Gwen said, raising her glass. “But here’s to us. Happy Thanksgiving, Alice!”

“You too,” I said as we touched rims. “I feel like I have a lot to be thankful for this year.”

“I can tell,” Gwen said. “I was worried for a while that the whole mess with Tom was going to turn you against the world again. But it really hasn’t, has it?”

“No, you’re right,” I said, taking a sip of wine. “And I’m not sure why exactly. But getting tossed off the back of that pickup knocked some sense into me. Life is just too short to waste on being angry, Gwen.”

“You still have a temper.”

“Yes, but I think the bitterness is gone. Mackenzie told me once that what Richard did is something I’ll never be able to put behind me. He was probably right. But I think I’m finally starting to learn to live with it.”