Suddenly (6 page)

She liked him better when he was worked up. He was more human that way. “Really.”

“You don’t believe me? I taught science.”

“I had pegged you for math. That’s always struck me as the most rigid of the disciplines.”

“I am not rigid.”

“You sure sound it to me. But, hey, if you want a rash of suicides at this school, kids who think it’ll be just fine to follow along in Dr. O’Neill’s footsteps, that’s your responsibility.” A tiny cry came from the baby carrier, erasing whatever satisfaction she had found in roughing up Noah Perrine. “Oh, my. She speaks.” Sami’s eyes were only half-open. She was crying in her sleep.

“Maybe she’s wet,” Noah suggested.

“Thank you. I might not have guessed.” She rocked the baby, with little effect.

“More likely she’s tired of being in that carrier. How’d you like to be squished against another person for hours?”

“At one time in my life, I’d have given anything for it.” She rubbed Sami’s back, but the small, broken whimpers only sped up.

“She needs to be put to bed in a proper crib.”

“I don’t have a proper crib.”

“And you’re telling me what to do with
my
kids?”

She didn’t need this. Not from Noah Perrine. She was too tired, too tense, too unsettled. “You’re right. The baby needs to be put to bed.” She started toward the door, calling out over Sami’s crying as she went, “But I do know something about your kids, and that something tells me they need help. I’d suggest you either bring in a professional grief counselor or let me and my partners talk with the kids who are upset. These kids are at risk. You and I can argue for hours, but nothing will change that fact.” She passed through the door and strode straight across the grass, which might have been against one of his precious rules but was the fastest way to reach her car.

“All right,” came a call from behind, then abreast, “you can come talk with them tomorrow. You already told them you would.”

She strode on. “Fine. But the baby will be with me. Where I go, she goes.” She swung open the car door and slid inside.

“You aren’t going to drive with her like that, are you?” he asked through the open window.

“The alternative,” Paige said dryly, “is to strap her onto the passenger’s seat. Since she has about as much muscle control as a sack of potatoes—and since she isn’t particularly happy right now—I don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s safer like this.” She started the car, shifted into gear, and pulled away from the curb.

“You need a car seat,” he yelled.

Ignoring him, she smoothly negotiated the curved campus road until she reached the iron arch. By then Noah Perrine was out of sight and Sami had stopped crying.

At the stop sign, she looked both ways, pulled out onto the main street, straightened the wheel, and headed home. She drove slowly, increasingly numb, as though her brain had finally hit overload and was temporarily ceasing to perform all but the most urgent of functions.

She might have liked it to stay that way a while, but she wasn’t so lucky. By the time she had laid Sami carefully in the middle of her own king-size bed and set about assembling the playpen, which was as close as she would come to having a crib until she had someone move the large one from Mara’s house to hers, her hands were trembling.

Somehow she managed to change Sami, give her half of another bottle, and put her down in the playpen to sleep. By that time her own advice was echoing in her ears.

The thing is that when something like Dr. O’Neill’s death happens, we have to learn from it—the lesson being to speak up when we’re upset.

Seconds later she was on the phone to Angie.

A
NGIE BIGELOW LIKED TO SAY THAT SHE HAD
spent the nine months of her earliest existence reading
Time
magazine through her mother’s navel, and though her mother claimed it was
Newsweek,
the detail was moot. Angie was a knowledgeable woman. She had a photographic memory and an overview of the human experience that enabled her to understand and apply every fact she read. All this gave her more than her share of self-confidence.

Her patients loved her because she was rarely wrong. When she diagnosed something as a virus that would run its course and be gone in two weeks, that was just what it did. If she determined that a limb was bruised rather than broken, it was bruised rather than broken. She read voraciously in the field and was familiar with every medical study that had been done, which meant that she knew what tests were worthwhile and what medicines appropriate. Her instincts were unrivaled when it came to reading between the lines of a patient’s concerns. She came closer to making medicine a science than many another doctor.

She ran her home in much the same way. She was organized, efficient, and thorough. Everything had its time and place—grocery shopping on Thursday afternoon, a load of laundry every night after dinner, house cleaning on Sunday afternoons. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have asked Ben to help with those things—he worked at home and had the time—just that she did them better herself. She liked the idea of being wife, mother, and career woman and prided herself on doing all three well.

That was why she went to the extra effort of making a full dinner—lentil soup, scrod, rice, and salad and the first of the Macoun apples from the local orchard, baked with honey and served à la mode—for Ben and Dougie that Friday night. Burying Mara had been the culmination of three long and emotionally draining days for all three of them. A pall lingered in the air. She was hoping to dispel it by reestablishing the norm.

Having finished washing pots and pans, she was wiping down the kitchen counter when the phone rang. She reached for it before Dougie could, half expecting it to be his little friend from Mount Court, who had already called twice, three times yesterday, and twice the day before. Young love was obsessive. It was also worrisome for the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy, who knew how advanced fourteen-year-old girls could be. Dougie wasn’t ready for this one. He wasn’t ready for
any
one.

But it wasn’t Melissa. It was Paige, sounding upset as easygoing Paige rarely was. There were high-pitched words, mention of Mara, a crib, and baby-sitters. Angie slowed her down, made her start again. When her meaning finally got through, Angie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Mara’s baby from India? You have to be kidding.”

“She’s lying right here beside me, big as a peanut but very real. And she’s mine for now, Angie. I’m all she’s got, and I have office hours tomorrow and double hours next week to fill in for Mara, and that’s not to mention five practices and a cross-country race at Mount Court, and that’s only
next
week.
What am I going to do?
”

Angie was still trying to deal with the fact of the baby having arrived. “Mara must not have known she was coming so soon.”

“She knew. The agency rep talked with her Monday.”

“How could she have killed herself, then? She was so excited about adopting a child. She looked on it as her saving grace. What went wrong?”

“I don’t know!” Paige cried.

“Why didn’t she tell us the baby was on her way?”

“I don’t
know,
” Paige wailed.

But words were coming back to Angie, mentions Mara had made of bad luck and a curse, more than once, in counterpoint to talk of a saving grace. Angie had assumed she was being facetious. Perhaps not. “She may have been superstitious. She may have thought that if she said the words, something would go wrong.”

“Damn it, if she’d said something, we might have been prepared.”

“That’s assuming she planned to kill herself.”

“Even if she didn’t. She should have told us, damn it. We were her friends. She should have told us when the baby was coming. She should have told us she was upset—she should have told us she was taking Valium—she should have told us she was losing it. Damn it, Angie.
Damn it.
”

“I’m coming over,” Angie said without another thought. “Give me five minutes to get things set here, and I’ll be on my way.”

Paige took a broken breath. “I’m okay. You don’t need to.”

But Angie did. Attempts at normalcy notwithstanding, she was sick about Mara. She couldn’t blot out the image of that deep, dark hole in the ground into which the casket had been lowered earlier that day. She kept asking herself what she might have seen or done to prevent it, and although she didn’t seriously think that Paige was on the verge of suicide, she wasn’t taking any chances.

She wanted to talk with Paige.

And she had to see the baby.

Ben was sprawled on the den sofa, flipping between CNN and C-Span. His sketch pad was beside him, at the ready should he see anything worthy of caricaturing, but Angie knew it was more habit than anything else. He wore a glazed look that said he wasn’t concentrating. Mara’s death had shaken him badly.

She broke into his distraction. “Hon? I’m running over to Paige’s. Remember the little girl Mara was going to adopt from India? Well, she arrived today.
Today.
Paige has her.”

Ben’s eyes reflected his surprise, though he didn’t move a muscle. “She wasn’t due for weeks.”

“So Mara said. But she’s here, and from the sounds of it, Paige is on the verge of panic.”

“Paige knows how to take care of kids. She’s a pediatrician.”

“Pediatricians are the worst, when it comes to their own.”

“You weren’t.”

“I was the exception. I also didn’t work for four years, so I could devote myself to Dougie. And I had the luxury of you. Paige doesn’t have a husband to support her while she raises a child.”

He came straighter. “She’s
keeping
it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find that out when I go over.”

“Are you arguing for or against?”

“I’m not arguing anything. I’m listening to what Paige has to say.”

He settled mutinously onto the sofa and looked at the television again. Angie knew he was angry about Mara’s death. She was, too. It had been a senseless loss of life, not to mention the loss of a dedicated doctor and a good friend.

“I’ll tell Dougie I’m going,” she said softly. “Do me a favor and grab the phone if it rings. If it’s the answering service, have them call me at Paige’s. If it’s Melissa, don’t let Dougie stay on too long.”

“Why not? The funeral was tough on him. He could use some cheering up. Besides, it’s Friday. He doesn’t have school tomorrow.”

“It’s the relationship. He’s only fourteen.”

“What’s being fourteen without talking to girls on the phone?”

“And your tux,” Angie reminded him. “You’d better dig it out of the attic and bring it down. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll take it to the tailor tomorrow.”

Ben sank deeper into the couch. “The awards ceremony isn’t for six weeks.”

“True”—she pushed off from the doorjamb—“but it’s been six years since you last wore that tux. Even if it fits, it may look ancient, in which case we’ll buy a new one. You’re getting national recognition with this award.” She was proud of Ben. He was a talented cartoonist. “I want you to look
great.
”

She climbed the stairs to Dougie’s room. The door was closed. She knocked, opened it, and poked her head inside. Dougie was sprawled on the bed, looking incredibly like Ben and aggrieved by the intrusion. He must have known the minute she had hung up with Paige, because he was on the phone himself.

He quickly covered the receiver. “You never give me a chance to say ‘Come in.’”

She smiled. “I’m your mom. I don’t need permission.” She paused, thinking of Mara. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“Who’re you talking with?”

“Kids from school.”

Angie knew how that worked. There might be half a dozen kids crowding around the pay phone in the dorm. “Melissa, too?”

He shrugged again.

“Not long,” she warned with what she thought was due indulgence, then added, “I’m running to Paige’s for a little while. Remember Mara’s baby? The little girl she was planning to adopt? Well, she came today.”

Dougie’s jaw dropped.

“Paige has her.”

“What’s she going to do with her?”

“That’s what we have to discuss. I may be gone a few hours. Why don’t you drag your father outside to shoot baskets? The floodlights are working again.”

“I thought I’d go down to Reels.”

Angie was immediately uneasy. The video store with the soda bar in back had been the hangout of choice for the Mount Court kids since VCRs had invaded the dorms. “Who’ll be there?” she asked gently.

He shrugged. “A bunch of kids.”

“Melissa?”

He shrugged again. “If she decides to go with the others. There won’t be any problem, Mom. They have to be back by ten.”

Angie sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t go, Dougie. Not tonight.”

“Mara wouldn’t mind.”

“Not tonight.”

He covered the phone more completely. “Why not?”

“Because groups of kids have ways of getting into trouble. I seem to recall an incident last spring when a bunch of kids were picked up for pitching beer cans at the war memorial in the center of town. The pitching was disrespectful, the beer was newly drunk, and the kids were all underage and tipsy.”

“But we’re going to
Reels
.”

“Which is on the same block as the drugstore, the card store, and, coincidentally, the package store.” All it took was a little cash slipped to a transient truck driver buying his own beer. “It makes me very uncomfortable, Dougie.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust some of the others.”

“They’re good kids.”

“I’m sure they are.” All kids were. Some were confused and rebellious, but they were basically good kids who occasionally conspired to do foolish things.

“Mom,” he complained, whispering now, “I’m fourteen. This is embarrassing.”

It was also the first year she had to face this kind of decision. Seventh-graders at Mount Court had to be back on campus by eight for anything but a chaperoned event, which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been a few cruisers among those innocent seventh-graders, simply that Dougie had never asked to be one.

She sighed. “Do it for me, Dougie? It’s been a difficult few days, and I’m feeling it. The last thing I want is to be worrying about you, and I will, if you meet the kids at Reels. Another time, maybe.”

“But—”

“Your dad could use some help. He’s feeling a little down.”

“But—”

She held up a hand, blew him a kiss, and left. Back downstairs, she put in a fast load of laundry, grabbed her car keys, called to Ben that she was leaving, and started for the door. But her mind was into organizing her thoughts, one of which was that life would be immeasurably easier for Paige if she didn’t have to work in the morning.

Saturday office hours were nine to twelve. With the time reserved primarily for acutes, of which there were rarely more than a handful, only one doctor had to be there. Who that doctor would be was always the source of much good-natured bickering and bartering.

Angie thought it would be super of Peter to take Paige’s turn for free. So she returned to the kitchen and gave him a call.

The Tavern had been the major watering hole in town for as long as Peter Grace could remember. His father had imbibed there, and his grandfather before that, and although rough-hewn benches and bare bulbs had been replaced by polished pine and Tiffany lamps, it was still rustic. To hear his three older brothers talk, a Tucker male wasn’t a man until he had staked out his booth at the Tavern. By that definition, Peter hadn’t achieved manhood until he was thirty years of age, which was when he returned to Tucker with medical school and a four-year residency in pediatrics under his belt. Only then had the onetime runt of the Grace litter had the courage to choose his booth.

It was the second one in from the front door and offered a visibility that the darker rear booths did not. Peter liked being seen. He was an important man, having been places and done things that few natives had, and he was a doctor. He was respected by the townsfolk, even loved by his patients. Their adoration was like a tonic. It was a sign of success that no amount of money could buy and went a long way toward compensating for the days when he had felt like a loser.

Likewise, there was something gratifying about watching his brothers file past to the obscurity of their booths farther back. Once upon a time, the three had been hometown stars, headlining the sports section of the
Tucker Tribune,
scoring touchdowns, swishing free throws, and hitting home runs, while Peter was fending off the taunts of his classmates. Small and uncoordinated, measured against unfairly high standards, he withdrew into a quiet world in which he read, studied, and dreamed of the day when his brothers’ knees went bad and he would shine.

He was doing that now. While his brothers worked construction, he played God. In counterpoint to their callused hands, beer bellies, and, yes, bad knees, he was in prime shape. Once skinny, he was now tall and firm. Once unruly curls had mellowed into dark auburn waves that were professionally styled. He dressed like a man who had known the sophistication of metropolis and successfully adapted it to hicksville.

Tonight, he was celebrating. He didn’t tell anyone that, of course. As far as the general populace of Tucker was concerned, he was nursing his beer in an attempt to lighten the sorrow he felt over Mara O’Neill’s death.

In fact, the sorrow had lightened with each clod of dirt that the cemetery workers had shoveled into Mara’s grave. Peter had stayed to watch long after the crowd of mourners had left. He had wanted to be sure that the job was done right, had wanted to see with his own two eyes that she was six feet under and gone.