Something True (24 page)

W
hen Tate opened her eyes, Laura was standing in front of Sarah. Both women held the gun, its muzzle pointing toward the empty kitchen.

“Tate!” Laura called.

Tate staggered to her feet, grasping the banister for support.

“What have they done to you?” Laura ripped the shotgun from Sarah's hands and pushed her with the butt end. “If you hurt her, I'll kill you.”

“Stop. She's my friend,” Tate said, lurching forward. She wasn't sure who she was referring to. It really wasn't true of either one of them. “Sarah, she's not here to hurt you. Laura, put down the gun.”

From the top of the stairs Krystal called out, “Oh my God! What happened?” She hurried down the stairs, her footsteps echoing in the sudden quiet. When she got to the bottom, she asked, “Is that Hillary Clinton? It is! What's she doing here?”

“Just leave us alone.” Sarah sagged into a kitchen chair, her hands displayed in protest. Her eyes darted from Tate to Laura. “Please. Take whatever you want, just leave me and my family.”

Laura looked around the room. “Take what? I only came for Tate.”

“I knew you'd be back.” Krystal bounded down the stairs. “Because of the videos.”

“You said no loose ends,” Sarah said.

Tate saw the Krystal she knew reassert herself. Krystal put her hands on the hips of her long dress.

“They're not
my
loose ends. It's not
my
fault those two can't figure it out. I told them. They're in love, and they won't admit it. No one ever listens to me. Sheesh!”

Sarah opened her mouth and closed it without a word.

Laura grabbed Tate's arm.

“We're getting out of here.”

She still held the gun.

Sorry
, Tate mouthed to Sarah, allowing Laura to pull her toward the door.

Outside, Laura hurried Tate to the door of an enormous black SUV.

“Quick. Get in.” Laura glanced at the house as she closed the door behind Tate. Then she hurried over to the other side. “Is she going to come after us?”

Tate shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

“She's harmless.”

Laura took the shotgun and tossed it, muzzle first, into the underbrush. Then in one incredibly graceful and authoritative movement, she swung up into the enormous vehicle, started the engine, and roared out of the clearing with a burst of speed that knocked Tate's head back against the headrest.

“My God, look at you,” Laura said as the SUV bumped along, crushing the small saplings and blackberry vines that lined the narrow path. “What did they do to you? You're limping. Your face!” Laura reached tentatively toward Tate's face, but even the SUV's massive suspension system could not smooth over the rocky path Laura had cleared through the underbrush, and her hand bounced away before she could touch Tate.

“I'm fine,” Tate said.

They reached the logging road, which was much closer when one reached it by crushing everything in the way with a vehicle the size of a tank.

Laura said, “How long have you been up there?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“They beat you.” Laura's voice was strained, and she looked at Tate so intently Tate pointed to the road to remind her of the trees they were coming close to hitting.

“They didn't beat me. I'm fine.”

Eventually, they reached the bottom of the road, where Lill's van was still parked and Lill, Maggie, Vita, and Janice were still milling around like bystanders waiting for a traffic accident to clear.

Laura turned off the SUV. She made no move to get out or roll down the window. For a long time, she looked at Tate, then very tenderly she brushed her cheek.

“What happened, baby?”

The term of endearment and the tenderness in Laura's voice nearly broke Tate's heart. It would be so easy to fall into Laura's arms, to forget that they were entirely wrong for each other, to forget what she had known lying on the Hawthorne Bridge surrounded by the Portland Gay Men's Choir: that she might be able to steal another kiss, but in the end she was careering toward heartbreak. It was up to her to look, clear-eyed, into the future and protect herself from ruin.

And then she was in Laura's arms.

Her body betrayed her. Laura reached across the gap between the seats, and, a second later, Tate's head was cradled against her shoulder. Laura was stroking her hair with one hand, pulling her close with the other. The warmth of Laura's body and the comfort of her touch were too much. Tate heard a soft moan escape her own lips.

“Talk to me,” Laura said. “What happened?”

Tate didn't trust her own voice. She felt exhausted, as though the weight of the past three days had crushed her.

“You're shaking.” Laura held her tighter, and Tate winced. “How did you get this bruise? I need you to tell me.”

“My bike. I lost control on the bridge. What are you doing here?”

Laura's fingertips grazed her side, lifting the hem of her shirt.

“Oh, God, you're bruised all over.” She released Tate from her embrace as though suddenly afraid to break her. Then very gently she pulled her shirt up, exposing the whole blue-and-purple expanse of Tate's ribs. Laura drew in a sharp breath. “What happened? Why didn't you call me? You shouldn't be up here. What did the doctors say?”

Tate pulled away, wiping the threat of tears from her eyes.

“I can't afford a doctor. You know that.”

Tate pushed the car door open and stepped out. She was reeling, trying to take in the strange juxtaposition of people and events. Sarah waving a shotgun. Krystal standing over the bed of her murderous father, now reduced to a husk of a man. She turned back to Laura, who was getting out of the car too.

“Why are you here?” Tate asked.

She did not get to hear the answer. Maggie was at her side.

“Where is she?” Maggie asked. “What happened? Why didn't you get her? She's not there. She's dead, isn't she? This is all her fault.” Maggie pointed at Laura.

Tate walked over to Lill's van. The sliding side door was open. She sat down on the running board of the van and rested her chin in her hands.

Vita was trying to explain something about Laura. Lill was talking very quickly. Tate caught a few snatches, like “carbon footprints” and “…rare species of trillium crushed into nothing!” Maggie leaned in close.

“What happened? Who's up there? Why didn't you get her?”

Tate did not know what else to do, so she started at the beginning.

When Tate was done with the story, Maggie said, “You have to go back.”

“What?” Tate looked up.

“Krystal's alone up there, with some crazy woman and drug dealers trying to kill her. Laura!” Maggie called out. “Laura, take her back up there.”

Laura still had not explained how she came to be charging up a hill in a rented SUV, nor had she added anything to Tate's telling of the story. Now all eyes turned to her.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “We have been here too long already.”

“You have to!” Maggie pleaded.

“Honestly, I don't think she wants to come back,” Tate said.

“She doesn't know what she wants,” Maggie said.

Tate shrugged. “He's her father. He's dying. And he's here. She's desperate to have him in her life.”

“She has us!”

“It's not the same.” Tate felt very tired.

“But it's better,” Maggie said. “This is the family we choose.”

“I know.” Tate dropped her head into her hands. Her foot throbbed, and she felt like she might faint. “But this is a gift. That's the whole point. You took her in when no one else would.”

“So why would she leave?”

“She feels like she owes you. She'll always owe you, and even though you
never
would, you could take it all back. But these people…”—she shrugged weakly—“…for better or for worse, they will always be her family. No one can take that away, and she never has to pay that back.”

Tate looked up. It was a miracle, that kind of gift. When she looked back on her own life, she saw it clearly. There was no getting out from underneath that kind of debt.

“She doesn't owe me anything,” Maggie said.

“She owes you everything.” She did not know if she was speaking for Krystal or for herself.

A second later, she felt Laura's hand on her shoulder. She stared down at the ground. In her peripheral vision she caught Laura's slender ankle and her gold-tipped heels.

“But what am I supposed to do?” Tate heard Maggie's voice as if from a great distance. “You're gone. Lill's gone. Out Coffee is gone. Krystal's all I've got. I'll be all alone. Tate, go back there.”

Somewhere in the outer atmosphere, Vita said, “Maybe Maggie's right.”

Tate stared at the ground again. She was very, very tired. For a second her vision went black. The conversation above her head blurred into a murmur from which she caught only phrases.

“Those people…”

“…if he's dying.”

“Tate won't mind.”

“I mind.” That was Laura. She spoke again. “Look at her!”

It took Tate a moment to realize Laura meant her.

“She can barely walk. She has a black eye.
Look at her
.”

Tate rather wished they wouldn't.

“Oh, Tate.” Maggie clasped her hands to her chest.

“What the hell did they do to you?” Vita asked. “Those bastards!”

“She had a black eye when you dragged her up here,” Laura said. “You just didn't notice.”

It wasn't really fair. The bruise on her face had faded to a pale yellow. It was just a shadow now.

“Tate, is that true?” Maggie asked.

Tate nodded wearily.

Laura said, “I'm taking her to the hospital, which is what
you
should have done before you came charging out here.”

“I'm fine,” Tate mumbled as Laura slipped a hand under her elbow and lifted her from the running board.

“Wait!” Maggie called after her.

But the doors to the SUV were already closed, and Laura's hand was on Tate's knee.

“I'm sorry, Tate. I'm so sorry.”

Tate slept most of the way back from Eddyville, both because she was exhausted and because she feared that speaking might bring on a deluge of tears.

When Tate finally opened her eyes, they had pulled into the parking lot of a hospital off Highway 217.

“Laura, I can't afford a doctor, and I'm fine,” Tate said.

“I'll take care of it.”

“You don't have to.”

“Yes, I do,” Laura said.

Inside, the urgent care clinic was blessedly quiet. Tate let Laura lead her into the building and usher her into a seat like a child.

“Stay here,” Laura said gently.

Tate tried to muster the energy to say something, but she could not think of anything.

At the front counter, the receptionist asked Laura, “What's the patient's name?”

Standing at the counter in her navy suit, clutch purse, and gold-tipped heels, Laura looked more like a CEO than a woman bringing someone to the hospital. It occurred to Tate that if Vita had taken her to the clinic, or she had taken Maggie, or Maggie had taken Lill, the receptionist would have asked,
What's your friend's name?
But Laura did not have friends like Tate. Everyone could see that.

Laura said Tate's full name, and then spelled it.

“Amber Tatum Grafton. A-M-B…”

Tate wondered how Laura had learned her first name. For that matter, how did she know Tate's birth date and address?

“Insurance?” the receptionist asked.

Laura glanced over at Tate. Tate shook her head.

“I'll pay,” Laura said.

“Just for the intake examination?”

“Whatever she needs.” Laura placed a credit card on the counter.

The receptionist disappeared behind a cloth-covered cubicle divider.

Laura turned to face Tate, leaning her back against the counter.

Tate stared at her. She was so beautiful. Maybe, Tate thought, rich people were born prettier. They did not get stuck with archetypal noses. Or maybe they just bought the right features. Maybe Laura's mother had handed over the same credit card when Laura turned eighteen and had some surgeon smooth everything over. That was surely what Laura was doing now. Smoothing things over. Avoiding a scandal. Tate wanted to believe it was love in Laura's eyes. When Laura sat down beside her and gently put her arm around Tate's shoulders, Tate's body told her it was love. But her mind knew better. She knew from experience.

“Please don't,” she said very quietly, pulling away from Laura's touch.

A few minutes later, she followed an orderly past a thin curtain, into the back of the clinic. He took her weight, her blood pressure, and a short version of her life story. Then a young man in scrubs x-rayed her foot and her chest. An hour later, a doctor in a yarmulke sat down across from her and explained that she had hairline fractures in three of the bones in her right foot.

“Nothing else. Just some bruising. You got off lucky. These things are more painful than they are dangerous,” he said kindly. “Crutches for three weeks and you should be fine. Come back for a follow up x-ray just to be sure. I'll give you a painkiller for the next couple days.”

“Thank you,” Tate said, although she knew the pain in her heart would outlast any pill the doctor could give her.

Tate was relieved when they finally arrived at her apartment. It was after midnight, and even Pawel and Rose had given up their sentry post.

“Thank you,” Tate said because it was the right thing to say. “For taking me to the hospital.”

She opened the car door. The dome light threw a faint glow on the peeling-paint exterior of her apartment building. It was such a far cry from the desert mansion, just a box with windows and a spider-web-encrusted stairwell. There wasn't even a light fixture on the bare bulb that hung over the foyer. Still, it was home.