Malice (30 page)

“… What … letter? …” she croaked through bruised swollen lips as her eyes closed again, and this time he did cry. The tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked at her. She had heard him. And then the doctor came, and Charles explained what had happened. They did another EEG on her, and her brain waves were still normal, but now her reactions were slowly returning. She turned away when they tried to shine a light in her eyes, and she moaned and then cried when they touched her. She was in pain, which they thought was a great sign. Now she would have to move through various stages of misery in order to improve.

And at midnight, Charles was still there with her, he couldn't bring himself to leave her. But it appeared now that her brain was not damaged. They would have to do more tests, and they had to be sure that there was no further hidden trauma, but it looked as though she would in fact recover and be all right eventually.

Father Tim had come back by then, and he was in ICU too when the doctor told Charles that the prognosis looked pretty good. And then the two men went out into the hall to talk while one of the nurses attended to Grace and gave her a shot for the pain. She was in agony from all her bruises and the operation, and the damage to her head and face.

“My God, she's going to make it,” Father Tim said with a look of joy and excitement. He had prayed for her all day, and had two masses said for her. And all the nuns were praying for her that night. “What a great girl she is.” They had also caught Sam Jones earlier that night, and charged him with the murder of his wife and two children, and the attempted murder of Grace Adams. He had admitted mugging her, because she was the first one he saw come out of St. Andrew's, and he felt that that was where all his troubles began. “You don't know how much she's done for us, Mr. Mackenzie. The girl is a saint,” Father Tim said to Charles in the hallway.

“Why does she do it?” Charles looked puzzled, as the two men sat drinking coffee. They suddenly felt like brothers, and they were both relieved that Grace was going to recover.

“I think there's a lot about Grace that none of us know,” Father Tim said quietly. “I don't think the life of battered women and children is new to her. I think she's a girl who's suffered a great deal and survived it, and now she wants to help others do the same. She'd make a great nun,” he grinned, and Charles pointed a finger at him.

“Don't you dare! She should get married and have kids.”

“I'm not sure she ever will,” Father Tim said honestly. “I don't think that's what she wants, to be honest. Some of them heal, the way she has, but many of the children who suffer like the ones we see can never cross over into a life where they can trust enough to be whole people again. I think it's miraculous if they come as far as Grace has, and can give so much to others. Maybe wanting more than that is too much to ask.”

“If she can give to so many, why not to a husband?”

“That's a lot harder.” Father Tim smiled philosophically at him, and then decided to admit something to him. It might give him an insight. “She was desperately afraid to go to California with you. And eternally grateful when you didn't hurt her, or use her.”

“‘Use’ her? What do you mean?”

“I think she's seen a lot of pain. A lot of men do unspeakable things. We see it every day. I think she fully expected you to do something unsuitable to her.” Charles Mackenzie looked embarrassed at the mere idea of it, and he was horrified that she would think that of him, and even say it to another person.

“I guess that's why she was so upset when she first came to my office. She didn't trust me.”

“Probably. She doesn't trust anyone a great deal. And I don't suppose this will help. But at least this wasn't personal. That's very different. It's when someone you love really hurts you that it destroys the soul … like a mother with a child, or a man and a woman.” He was a wise man and Charles listened to him with interest, wondering how much of what he said applied to Grace. It sounded like he wasn't sure of her history either, and Charles wondered if he could be wrong about her. But he seemed to know Grace a lot better than Charles did. And the things he said about her tore at his heart. He wondered what terrible things had happened to her to leave her so badly scarred as a woman. He couldn't even begin to imagine what lay behind her cool facade and gentle manner.

“Do you know anything at all about her parents?” Charles was curious about her now.

“She never talks about them. I only know they're dead. She has no family at all. But I don't think that bothers her. She came here from Chicago. She never talks about relatives or friends. I think she's a very lonely girl, but she accepts it. Her only interest is working for you, and coming to St. Andrew's. She works twenty-five or thirty hours a week there.”

“That doesn't leave much time for anything else except sleeping. She works forty-five or fifty for me.”

“That's the whole of it, Mr. Mackenzie.”

Charles was dying to talk to her now, to ask her questions about her life, to ask her why she really worked at St Andrew's. Suddenly she wasn't just a girl he worked with every day, she was a great deal more interesting than that, and there were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her.

The nurse let them back in then. And Father Tim stood a little apart to let Charles talk to her about trivial things. He sensed that there was more interest there than the man knew, or than Grace suspected.

She was fuzzy again when Charles sat down at her bedside, the shot had made her woozy, but at least she wasn't in as much pain.

“Thank you … for coming …” She tried to smile but her lips were still too swollen.

“I'm so sorry this happened to you, Grace.” He was going to have a talk with her about working at St. Andrew's, but that would come later, if she'd listen. ‘They caught the guy who did it.”

“He was … angry … about his wife … Isella.” She would remember the woman's name forever.

“I hope they hang him,” Charles said angrily, and she opened her eyes and looked at him again. And this time she did manage a small smile, looking very dizzy. “Why don't you sleep … I'll come back tomorrow.”

She nodded, and Father Tim spent a few minutes with her too, and then both men left to let her sleep. Charles dropped him off at the shelter in a cab, and then drove uptown, after promising to stay in touch with the young priest. He liked him. And Charles had also promised to come and visit the center. He was going to, too, he wanted to know more about Grace, and that was one way to do it.

Charles went back to visit Grace for the next three days, canceling his lunches to be there, even one with his producer friend, but he didn't want to let Grace down. When they moved her to a private room, Charles brought Winnie to the hospital with him. She cried when she saw Grace, and wrung her hands, and kissed her on the only tiny patch of her face with no bandages or bruises. She looked slightly better by then. A lot of the swelling had gone down, but everything hurt, and she found she could hardly move, between her ribs and her head, and her pelvis. Her kidneys were healing well, and the doctor said she wouldn't miss her spleen, but she was pretty miserable, every inch of her ached and felt as though it had been shattered.

On Saturday, almost a week after the accident, the nurse Charles had insisted on hiring for her coaxed her out of bed and made her walk to the bathroom. It hurt so much to do it that she almost fainted, but she celebrated her victory with a glass of fruit juice when she got back to bed. She was sheet white, but smiling, when Charles arrived with a huge bunch of spring flowers. He had been bringing flowers for her daily, and magazines, and candy, and books. He had wanted to cheer her up, and he wasn't sure how to do it.

“What are you doing here?” She looked embarrassed to see him, and it brought a little color back to her face when she blushed. “Today's Saturday, don't you have something better to do?” she scolded him, sounding more like herself than she had in days. She looked more like herself too. Her face looked like a rainbow of blues and greens and purples, but the swelling was almost all gone, and the stitches were healing so well you almost couldn't see them. The only thing Charles wondered about now was her spirit, after his conversation with Father Tim about what must have led her to St Andrew's in the first place. But it was too soon to ask her how she felt about that.

“Aren't you supposed to be going away for the weekend?” She remembered making arrangements for him to attend a regatta on Long Island. She had rented him a small house in Quogue, and now it was wasted if he stayed in New York.

“I canceled.” He was matter-of-fact, and watched her face carefully. “You're looking pretty good.” He smiled and handed her some magazines he had brought her. All week he had sent her little trinkets, a bed jacket, some slippers, a pillow for her neck, some cologne. It was embarrassing, but she had to admit, she liked it. She had mentioned it to Winnie on the phone, and the older woman tittered like an old mother hen. Grace had laughed at her, and told her that she was outrageous, she never gave up on romance. “Of course not,” Winnie confessed proudly. She had promised to come and visit Grace on Sunday.

“I want to go home,” Grace said to Charles, looking mournful.

“I don't think that's in the cards for a while,” Charles said with a smile. They had said three weeks the day before, which didn't appeal to Grace at all, and meant she'd still be in the hospital on her birthday.

“I want to go back to work.” They had told her she'd be on crutches for a month or two, but she still wanted to go back to work as soon as she got out of the hospital. She had nothing else to do. And she also wanted to go back to St. Andrew's as soon as they'd let her.

“Don't push yourself, Grace. Why don't you take some time off when you get out, and go have some fun somewhere?”

But she only laughed at the idea. “Where? Like the Riviera?” She couldn't afford the time to go anywhere for very long. Maybe a weekend at Atlantic City. She didn't have any vacation coming. She hadn't worked at the firm long enough to qualify for a week off. She knew she had to work there a year before she could take two weeks off. It was already too much that he had told her the firm would pay for everything her insurance didn't Her whole three weeks at Bellevue and everything they had to do for her would probably cost close to fifty thousand dollars.

“Sure, why not go to the Riviera? Charter yourself a yacht,” Charles teased her. “Do something fun for a change.” She laughed at him, and they sat talking for a while. She was surprised by how easy it was to talk to him, and he didn't seem to want to go anywhere at all. He was still there when her nurse went to lunch, and he even helped her hobble to the chair clutching his arm, and gently propped a pillow behind her when she got there, victorious but pale and exhausted.

“How come you never had any children?” she asked suddenly, as they sat and chatted, and he fussed over her and poured her a glass of ginger ale. He would have made a great father, she thought, but didn't say so.

“My wife hated kids,” he smiled. “She wanted to be a child herself. Actresses are like that. And I indulged her,” he said, sounding a little embarrassed.

“Are you sorry? That you didn't have kids, I mean?” She made him sound very old, as though it was too late now, and he laughed as he gave it a moment's careful thought.

“Sometimes. I used to think I'd remarry and have children after Michelle left me. But maybe not. I think I'm too comfortable like this to do anything dramatic now.” In the last couple of years, he had gotten lazy about finding a serious involvement. He liked his temporaries, and his freedom and independence. It was tempting to stay that way forever. But the question she had asked him opened a door for him as well. “What about you? Why don't you want a husband and children?” He knew a lot more about her now, but the question surprised her. It came out of nowhere.

“What makes you say that?*’ She looked away from him uncomfortably, afraid of his question. But when she looked back into his eyes, she saw someone she could trust there. “How did you know that's how I felt?”

“A girl your age doesn't spend all her time doing volunteer work, and with sixty-year-old spinsters like Winnie, unless she's got very little interest in finding a husband. I assume that I'm correct?” he questioned, looking at her pointedly with a smile.

“You are.”

“Why?”

She waited a long time before she answered. She didn't want to lie to him, but she wasn't ready to tell him the truth either. “It's a long story.”

“Does it have to do with your parents?” His eyes bore into hers, but not unkindly. He had already proven that she could trust him, and that he cared about her welfare.

“Yes.”

“Was it very bad?” She nodded, and he felt a deep grief for her. It hurt him to think of anyone hurting her. “Did anyone help you?”

“Not for a long time, and it was too late by then. It was all over.”

“It's never all over, and it's never too late. You don't have to live with that pain for the rest of your life, Grace. You have a right to be free of it, and have a future with a decent guy.” He felt proprietary now and wanted her to have a good, solid future.

“I have a present, which means more to me. Used to be I didn't even have that. I don't ask too much of the future,” Grace said quietly with a look of sorrow.

“But you should,” he tried to urge her forward. “You're so young, you're practically half my age. Your life is just beginning.”

But she shook her head, with a smile that was full of wisdom and sadness. “Believe me, Charles,” he had insisted she call him that now that she was in the hospital, “my life is not beginning. It's half over.”

“It just feels that way. It won't be over for a long time, which is why you need more in it than just working for me, and at St. Andrew's.”

“You trying to fix me up with someone?” She laughed, stretching her long legs before her. He was a kind man, and she knew he meant well, but he didn't know what he was doing. She was not an ordinary twenty-two-year-old girl with a few rocky memories and a rosy future. She felt more like a survivor of a death camp, and in some ways she was. Charles Mackenzie had never encountered anything like that, and he wasn't sure what to do for her.