Smoke (50 page)

“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, looking down at the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. It wasn’t an apology; more an expression of regret for the way things were.

“No,” said Este, softly. “Let’s not be sorry for all the things neither of us can change. We’ll just go forward from here.”

She looked into the warmth of Este’s eyes. In the bright, cold day with the sound of children and the promise of snow in the air, Lydia believed they could.

Epilogue

C
ome on, Mom. Let’s go.”

She rested her hand on Ben’s head for a second and then put the last of her stuff in the suitcase. “Get your dad,” she said. “I can’t close this with one arm.”

“I can do it,” he said. He reached up onto the bed, closed the top and easily closed the zipper, pulled it down onto the floor. “Let’s go.”

She smiled at him; he seemed to have grown two inches in the three weeks she’d been in the hospital. “You’re such a big boy.”

He rolled his eyes. “Mom.”

“Sorry.”

He pulled the suitcase toward the door where Dylan appeared. He reached for the suitcase and Ben reluctantly handed it over.

“I can get it,” he said sullenly.

“No doubt, champ. But I want to help Mom, too.”

“I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” she said. “I want to spend a few minutes with Mount.”

Dylan looked at her uncertainly, then nodded and took Ben by the hand.

“Hurry, Mom,” he threw over his shoulder. “You said we could have pizza. And I’m hungry.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Mount was sitting up in bed reading one of Lydia Strong’s true crime books,
With a Vengeance
, about the man who murdered her mother. He was very thin, gaunt about the face, his collarbone protruding through his gown. He had charcoal circles beneath his eyes. But
there was more color to his cheeks than there had been in weeks. And he was sitting up. So that was something.

“She’s had a hard life,” said Jesamyn, entering the room and pulling up a chair beside him, nodding toward the paperback in his hands.

“It just made her tougher.”

“And sadder.”

“You think she’s sad?”

“Yeah, I think she’s a little sad inside.”

“Hey. Who isn’t?”

She nodded and gave him a smile. “You a little sad, Mount?”

He gave her a wide warm smile that she didn’t expect. “Not today,” he said. “Looks like you’re going home. So I won’t have you breathing down my neck every minute, nagging me during rehab, ‘That all you got, girly man?’ ” He finished the sentence with an unflattering mimic of her taunts in the hospital gym.

“I’ll be back for rehab, Princess. Don’t you worry.”

He reached for her hand. “Seriously, partner, I wouldn’t have wanted to be laid up here with anyone else.”

“Don’t get all mushy,” she said, giving his big hand a squeeze. “We’ll be back on the job in six months tops.”

She wasn’t sure of that and she could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t either but somehow he looked happier than she’d seen him … well, ever.

“What’s going on?” she asked with a smile and a cock of her head.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. Then he changed the subject.

“Hey, did you hear they picked up Michele LaForge in Vegas? Speeding in a brand-new Testarosa.”

“I heard,” she said. “I guess she didn’t spend too much time grieving for Mickey Samuels.”

“We all handle our grief differently, Jez. Don’t judge,” he said with mock sternness.

There was a light knock on the door then and she turned to see a face that was too familiar to her, a face she’d only seen in photographs and in her dreams. She stood up.

“Lily,” she said.

The young girl approached her and held out her hand. She looked older than her pictures or Jesamyn’s imagining of her; she looked fatigued. The youthful prettiness, the joyful innocence of her photographs was all but gone from her face. But there was a graceful beauty to her still.

“You must be Jesamyn Breslow,” Lily said. “I recognize you from your pictures in the newspaper.”

Jesamyn nodded, not sure of her voice.

“Thank you,” Lily said, embracing Jesamyn carefully. “Thank you for all you did for me. I can’t express my gratitude. And I’m so sorry—for everything.”

Jesamyn looked over at Mount, who had the biggest smile on his face she’d ever seen. He looked beautiful—
goofy
—but beautiful.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Lily. And you’re welcome,” Jesamyn said, putting a hand to the girl’s face. “But Detective Stenopolis really deserves all the credit. He never gave up.”

Lily walked over to Matt then and took his hand, sat in the chair beside him. Matt looked like he was going to float away. Jesamyn felt something in her chest lighten and shift.

“I’m so sorry for everything you had to go through,” she said to him.

“Seeing you here, Ms. Samuels, it was worth it,” he said softly.

“Please,” she said. “Call me Lily.”

Jesamyn slipped from the room, looked back at Matt for a second, then looked down the hall. She saw Dylan and Ben sitting on the benches over by the elevator. Dylan stood as she approached.

“You guys didn’t have to wait. I could have met you downstairs.”

“We couldn’t let you walk out of here alone,” Dylan said.

She smiled up at him and let him put his arm around her as she waited for the elevator. She turned around a second and saw the door to Mount’s room close. She felt a little joy and a little pain. That was life, she guessed.

I
’m not sure it counts if you have it catered,” said Jeffrey with a teasing smile.

“Trust me. Nobody needs me to be cooking a turkey.”

He held his stomach and nodded his agreement.

“Just help me set the table,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder.

The kitchen around her was littered with white and orange bags from her favorite gourmet shop and the air was rich with the aromas of ham, turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie, and everything else she could order. There was enough food for twenty people, though they were only expecting five: Lydia’s grandparents, her half-sister Este and Este’s boyfriend Jones, as well as Este’s mother. Dax was incommunicado; Lydia hoped he might retrieve her messages and show up at the last minute. It was going to be an odd grouping of people linked only by their connection to Lydia and her father. Lydia couldn’t begin to imagine how it was going to go.

“Hey,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Are you nervous?”

“Jeffrey.”

He let out a whooping laugh. “You
are
nervous. I don’t believe it,” he said. “I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve seen you nervous.”

She breathed against the flock of butterflies in her middle and smiled at her husband.

“Remind me again why I married you,” she said.

He took her into her arms and held her tight. “Because you adore me,” he told her. “Couldn’t make it a day without me.”

She laughed. “It’s true,” she said, looking up at him and kissing him quickly. He tasted like the pumpkin pie he’d been eating.

“I don’t know,” she said into his shoulder. “It’s like we have a—family.”

He pulled her back and looked at her. She was half frowning, half smiling.

“That’s a good thing, right?” he asked with a light laugh.

“I guess we’ll see,” she said.

He kneeled before her and rested his head on her belly. It was still flat and firm. But she figured not for very long, if all went well this time.

“What do you think, little guy?” he asked.

“How do you know it’s a boy?” she said.

“I can tell,” he said, rising. “Very masculine energy.”

As if in agreement, the buzzer rang announcing visitors downstairs.

“Ready, my love?” he asked.

She gave him a bright, full smile that belied the flutter in her heart.

“Bring it on,” she said. And they walked toward the elevator doors together.

Acknowledgments

I
am most thankful to (and for) my husband,
Jeffrey Unger
, whose tremendous talents as my publicist, webmaster, editor, reader, and fan are only surpassed by his being the most wonderful husband and my very best friend.

As always, thanks to my fabulous agent,
Elaine Markson
, and her indispensable assistant,
Gary Johnson
. Their faith, advice, guidance, and enthusiasm are all priceless.

I am so grateful to
Kelley Ragland
for her wonderful editing. Every book I have written has been enriched by her talent and guidance.

I have been blessed with an amazingly loving and supportive network of family and friends who have each offered their own special brand of encouragement and support in my career and in my life. I am eternally grateful for each and every one of them.

And very special thanks to
Master Nick Scrima
of the Chinese Martial Arts Center in Dunedin, Florida. He knows why.

an excerpt from

darkness,
my old friend

BY
LISA UNGER

available in paperback May 2012

Prologue

F
ailure wasn’t a feeling; it was a taste in his mouth, an ache at the base of his neck. It was a frantic hum in his head. The reflection of failure resided in his wife’s tight, fake smile when he came home at the end of the day. He felt the creeping grip of it in her cold embrace. She didn’t even know the worst of it. No one did. But they could all smell it, couldn’t they? It was like booze on his breath.

Traffic on the highway stuttered. He tried to breathe through the trapped-in-a-box feeling that was expanding in his chest, that too-familiar tightness of frustration. He looked around at his fellow commuters, wondering why none of them had taken to screaming, or banging on their dashboards. How did they do it day after day? Killing themselves for pointless jobs that ultimately lined someone else’s pockets. Then they sat in an endless snaking line only to get home to a ceaseless litany of needs. Why? Why did so many people live like this?

This weekend is your very last chance to take advantage of the absolutely rock-bottom prices at Ed’s Automart. No job? Bad credit? Nothing to trade in? No problem. We can help!

Kevin Carr snapped off the radio, that schizophrenic rant of criticism and demands.
Eat this. Buy that. Need to lose weight? Whiten your teeth? Bacon double cheeseburger. Personal trainer. Foreclosure auction on Sunday
. But the silence that followed was almost worse, because all he could hear then was the sound of his own thoughts—which sounded suspiciously like the radio, only there was no “off” button.

Around him the herd of commuters—some carpoolers, but mostly solitary drivers like himself—gripped their wheels and stared ahead. No one looked happy, did they? People weren’t singing along with the radio
or smiling to themselves. Plenty of people were hands-free talking, gesticulating in their conversations as though there were someone sitting beside them. But they were alone. Did people look gray and angry? Did they seem unhealthy, dissatisfied? Or was he just projecting? Was he simply seeing in the world around him a portrait of his own inner life?

He pulled into the right lane quickly, without signaling, cutting off some asshole in a late-model BMW. The other driver made a show of squealing his brakes and leaning on his horn. Kevin looked into the mirror to see the guy flipping him off; the man in the Beemer was yelling, even though he must have known that no one else could hear him. Kevin felt a rush of malicious glee. It was the first time he had smiled all day.

The phone rang. He pressed the button on his steering wheel to answer, though he didn’t like to take calls when he couldn’t see the ID screen. He had so many balls in the air he could hardly keep track of them all.

“Kevin Carr,” he answered.

“Hey.” Paula. “On your way home?”

“Almost at the exit,” he said.

“The baby needs diapers. And Cameron feels a little warm. Can you get some Motrin?”

“Sure,” he said. “Anything else?”

“I think that’s it. I did manage to get us all to the grocery store today.” He heard water running in the background, the clinking of dishes in the sink. “
And
we got through it without a meltdown—if you can believe it. Cammy was such a good boy. But I forgot the diapers.”

He could see them there. Claire still in the baby carrier mounted on the cart, Cameron trailing behind Paula—pulling stuff off the shelves, clowning around. Paula was always together, with her hair brushed and her makeup done. She wasn’t like the other mothers he had seen the few times he’d dropped Cameron off at preschool—circles under their eyes, stains on their shirts, hair wild. He wouldn’t allow that.

“Make a list next time,” he said.

In the silence that followed, he heard the baby start to mew. The sound of it, that wheedling little cry that would turn to screaming if
someone didn’t figure out what in the hell she wanted, made him cringe. It was an accusation, an indictment, and a conviction all at once.

“Okay, Kevin,” Paula said. Any initial brightness had left her voice completely. “Thanks for the advice.”

“I didn’t mean—”

But she’d hung up already.

I
n the grocery store, Elton John thought that it was lonely out in space. Elton sang about how he was not the man they think he is at home. Kevin knew too well what he meant. He wandered the massive aisles. They were stacked with garishly packaged, processed promises—low-fat, no carbs, sugar-free, no trans fats, no cholesterol, ultra-slimming, buy-one-get-one-free, all-natural. In the baby aisle, everything went pink, blue, and yellow, little ducks and frogs, Dora the Explorer, Elmo. He searched for the green-and-brown packaging of the diapers Paula liked for the baby—organic, biodegradable. This was his personal favorite, the whole organic thing. Corporations had been raping and pillaging the environment since the industrial revolution—spewing waste into the air and water, mowing down the rain forests, poisoning the earth. And now, all of a sudden, it was up to the
individual
to save the planet—by paying twice as much for “green” products, thereby increasing the profit margin of the very companies that were responsible for global warming, the almost-total depletion of natural resources, not to mention obesity and all its related diseases. It killed him, it really did.