Suddenly (9 page)

“Yes, please,” said a voice with a British accent. He gave his name and identified himself as a supervisor. “I’ve been trying to reach Dr. O’Neill, but I can’t seem to get an answer at the number she left. I understand that that was her home number and that this is her professional one, and I do apologize for disturbing her here, but I would very much like to speak with her.”

“May I ask what this is about?”

The fellow cleared his throat. “It’s a bit awkward. I have an apology to make, actually. Is Dr. O’Neill there?”

“No. But I’d be glad to take a message.”

“Oh, dear. I had wanted to speak directly with her.”

“That may be difficult. For the sake of expediency, perhaps I would do.”

The man considered that. “Yes. I suppose.” He took a breath. “You see, Dr. O’Neill phoned this office last Tuesday to check on the progress of a flight from Calcutta to Bombay. The agent who took her call is new with us and was a bit confused operating the computer system. I’m afraid he erroneously told her that the flight on which, I believe, she had a child, had crashed.”

Paige closed her eyes.

The voice by her ear continued. “Indeed there was an accident on one of our aircraft that night, but it was not the one on which the child and her escort were traveling. Unfortunately, what with trying to handle the calls we were receiving from those who truly did have parties on the ill-fated plane, our agent did not realize his mistake until week’s end. At that time, he verified that the child and her escort had landed safely in Boston, but he did relate to me what had happened, and responsibly so. We would like to apologize to Dr. O’Neill for any fright we may have caused. Air India does not make a practice of passing on misinformation. We sincerely regret having done so in this instance. I trust that Dr. O’Neill has custody of her child, and that all is well.”

Paige wrapped an arm around her waist. In a small voice she said, “Can you tell me what time it was when Dr. O’Neill called you?”

“It was four twenty-five. We had received news of the accident a mere ten minutes before that and were still trying to get the details, so you can imagine the pandemonium….”

Not pandemonium. Total despair. Mara had wanted Sami more than anything. She had shopped around for just the right adoption agency, had waded through the paperwork and the preadoptive sessions, laid bare her soul and her financial records, paid every appropriate fee, bought a crib, baby clothes, and food. She had regarded Sami’s arrival as the start of a new phase of her life.

“…again our sincere apologies,” concluded the Air India supervisor.

Paige managed a feeble, “Thank you.” She needed two tries to settle the phone in its cradle, unable to think of anything but the pain Mara must have felt.

“Dr. Pfeiffer? Is anything wrong?”

She looked up, startled to find Jill Stickley there, but only for the minute it took to return to the present. She recomposed herself and took a deep breath. “Nothing for you to worry about,” she said lightly, and gestured Jill toward the door.

During the drive home, she avoided thinking about that phone call. She settled Jill in with Sami—who recognized Paige, she was sure of it, though all the coaxing in the world couldn’t bring a smile—and headed for Mount Court, where she put the girls through a series of sprints, two warm-up loops around the campus, a three-mile run on the course, then more sprints. She ran with them, pushing them as fast as she could push herself, and when they grumbled all she said was, “It’s for a good cause.”

What she didn’t need was Noah Perrine, monitoring the final sprints from the stoop of the distant administration building, but there he was with his arms crossed over his chest and his glasses glinting in the late afternoon sun. Annoyed, she stopped where she was, folded her arms over her heaving chest, and stared right back until the girls collected around her.

“He sees everything—”

“Just waiting for us to slip up.”

“Sadist.”

Paige dropped her arms. “I’ll bet he isn’t in half the shape we are.”

“He runs, too,” one of the girls advised.

“He does?”

“Every morning—”

“Ten loops around campus—”

“Like he’s the lord of the manor policing his domain.”

Paige blew out a breath. “Then we can all feel a bit safer. Come on”—she set off for the field house—“let’s wrap this up.”

Moments later she was headed home again, but while she was preoccupied thinking of Jill and yet another addition to the house that had been so quiet and peaceful and
all hers
such a short time before, her car took her to Mara’s.

She sat in the driveway, trying not to look at the garage and think about the agony Mara must have been feeling when she had pulled the car inside. She slipped from her own car, let herself into the house, and closed the door behind her. The click of the latch was followed first by total silence, then by the sound of soft footsteps as Paige moved through the rooms. In time she climbed the stairs and found herself at the door to Mara’s bedroom.

A large Windsor bed dominated the space. The rest of the furniture—night tables, a dresser, a rocking chair—had been bought at the same time as the bed and matched it in style, but that was as close to coordination as Mara had come. The comforter was teal blue, the cushion on the rocker orange, the rag rug at the foot of the bed a cacophony of dissonant colors that would never show dirt, Mara had sworn. Given her aversion to cleaning, that had mattered, as had the fact that since the rug was a sampler done by a student from the local crafts collaborative, it had been a steal. Mara loved steals when it came to things like rugs. When it came to children, no expenditure—be it of money, time, or love—was too great.

Paige looked around the room. Her heart broke to think of the dreams that had been nurtured here, the long, lonely, dark hours when night thoughts had painted pictures of a happier life, pictures that had been dashed because…because…because why? Because Mara had had an abortion when she was sixteen? Because she had taken Daniel under her wing and failed to cure him, because Tanya John had been abused into a distrust of all adults, because a confused employee at Air India had passed on tragically wrong information?

She sank down on the edge of the bed, fingered the nightstand, slowly opened the drawer. Inside were the remains of a pack of Life Savers, two pens and a pencil, several crochet hooks, and wads of scrap paper with jotted reminders. Some had to do with work, some with mundane errands, but the majority, certainly the most recent ones, related to Sami.

A spiral-bound crossword puzzle book lay beneath the scraps. Paige flipped through it. Nearly every puzzle had several words filled in, never more than seven or eight before the puzzle had been abandoned. A few of the puzzles had a line scrawled diagonally across, suggesting frustration. Paige could imagine Mara pulling the book out in the middle of the night in an attempt to distract herself from the voices in her head and growing annoyed when the voices prevailed.

Why didn’t you say anything, Mara? I knew how much you wanted Sami. If I’d known she was coming so soon—if I’d known what the Air India fellow said—I might have helped.

But Mara had kept it all to herself—the excitement and the despair, along with the Valium, the abortion at sixteen, and God only knew what else.

“Damn it, Mara, that wasn’t fair,” Paige cried, shoving the puzzle book back into the drawer. When it wouldn’t go, she pushed harder. “You had no business keeping secrets. We were supposed to be
friends!
” She swore again, this time tossing the puzzle book aside and reaching into the drawer to see what was blocking the way. Her fingers closed on something and pulled, then continued to pull when that something kept coming. Moments later she found herself staring dumbly at her hand, spilling around which were a pair of paisley suspenders.

She had seen them before, many a time, though not lately, she realized, searching for the label. It, too, was familiar, high profile for cosmopolitan types. Only one person in Tucker wore paisley suspenders; only one person in Tucker was vain enough to value that particular label.

That person was Peter Grace.

A
NGIE WAS LATE. HURRIEDLY SHE MADE
several last minute notes of things for Dottie to see to first thing in the morning. Then she slipped into her blazer, took her purse from the bottommost drawer of her desk, and, with a quick look around to assure that all was in order, strode out the door and down the hall.

The office was silent, in stark contrast with the noise of the day. Angie thought Peter had left, too, until she passed his door and saw him inside. He was at his desk, pencil in hand, though the way he was slouching suggested he wasn’t doing much writing.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

He looked up, dropped the pencil, and kicked back in his chair. His eyes were tired, his voice tight. “We need help. This is the first time I’ve sat down all day. Something’s going on in this town. Asthma’s on the rampage. I know we’re into that season, but it’s never been as bad as this before.”

Angie smiled sadly. “We’ve never been without Mara before. How many of those asthma patients were hers?”

“Better than half.”

“Asthma attacks can be brought on as easily by emotion as by pollen. The patients of Mara’s who I saw were upset at being without her, and the parents were worse than the kids. They needed reassurance that the nebulizer would be here with or without Mara. Don’t worry, Peter. It’ll quiet down.”

He looked her in the eye. “This practice is designed for four doctors. Our caseload is based on four doctors.”

Angie held up a hand. “Can’t think of that yet. Too soon.”

“Christ, Angie, it’s six-thirty and we’re both still here. You think Ben and Dougie are going to like that for long?”

“Ben and Dougie will be fine. They know things are going to be tight for a while. I have a new schedule posted on the kitchen board.”

“If today was a preview of what’s to come, we’ll be here until six-thirty lots of nights. It’s either that or start turning patients away, and we swore we’d never do that.”

“We won’t. We’ll reorganize and be more efficient, and if that doesn’t work,
then
we’ll recruit a fourth. Relax, Peter. We’ll work things out. We can’t be functioning at full capacity right now, what with Mara’s death so raw. I spent a good deal of my day talking about her. But it won’t always be like that.”

He made a noise. “How easily people forget.”

“No. But after a while, when there aren’t answers to some questions, they stop asking them. Life does go on.” She caught sight of the clock. “I have to run. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll work things out,” she repeated, raising her voice as she went down the hall. If Peter answered, she didn’t catch it, and then she was trotting down the stairs to the door that opened onto the parking lot.

Five minutes later she passed under Mount Court’s wrought-iron arch, swung around the drive, and parked in front of the library. Students were sprawled in scattered groups on the lawn, but she didn’t see Dougie among them. She glanced at her watch. It was six-forty.

Two minutes later he ran up, tossed his books onto the backseat, and slid onto the front. “Sorry, Mom. Have you been here long?”

“No. I was a little late myself.” She knew enough not to lean over for a kiss. Fourteen-year-old boys didn’t kiss their mothers while their schoolmates were looking on. Instead she started the car. “Did you have a good day?”

“Sure.”

“Where were you coming from just now?” It hadn’t been the library, where she had expected him to be.

“The dining hall. I had dinner with the kids. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I do,” she said with a stab of disappointment. “I’m making dinner at home.”

“I know, but I was starved. Soccer practice stunk. We had to run around the field ten times, and then do it again when one of the guys said something the coach didn’t like. I was beat. I needed something to get me going again.”

“Oh, Dougie.” She sighed. She viewed dinner as an important daily family event. “So what did you eat?”

“Something with chicken. It was pretty good.”

Angie could imagine a sauce with the occasional piece of diced chicken, mashed potatoes, bread and butter, and cake. “Not quite the steak I was planning to broil at home.”

“I was
starved
. I don’t know if I can make it to seven for dinner every night. That’s late, Mom.”

“Only forty-five minutes later than usual,” she informed him, and turned onto the main road. “It’s just a question of getting used to it. Besides, I sent you with fruit.” She shot him a glance. “What happened to that?”

He scowled out the window. “I’m not eating fruit in front of the guys. Maybe Coke, or candy, but not fruit.” He turned to her and said with surprising force, “What’s so awful about my having dinner with the kids once in a while? If the food here is okay for them, it’s okay for me, and besides, it’s fun eating here.”

“It may well be, but you’re not a boarder in part because I like being able to talk with you over dinner. You’re one of the fun parts of my day.” She knew that time was limited, that Dougie would be increasingly independent, that too soon he would be going off to college, and that that was the natural order of things, but for now she wasn’t giving him up. “Dinner at home isn’t the same without you. Besides, I thought we agreed that you’d spend the extra time at the end of the day at the library. That way you could get a head start on your homework, so I wouldn’t be annoyed when the phone started to ring at night.” She had thought it a fine compromise.

“I was hungry,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

She smiled. “No great harm done. Besides, I’m running a little late. By the time the steaks are grilled, you’ll be hungry again. So, anyway, tell me what’s new. How did the Spanish quiz go?”

Travel time was quality time. Angie prized it, those few minutes when she had her son all to herself in the car, when he might share the small details of his life. The details this day, once he passed off the Spanish quiz as a snap, had to do with the new Head’s special project. “He’s building a house.”

“A
house
.”

“For alums, so that they have a place to stay when they come to visit. The kids who don’t do a sport have to work on the house.”

“Interesting.”

“It
sucks
. The kids are furious. Always before they could skip a term for sports, now they can’t anymore. They’re saying it’s child labor.”

“Sounds more like a community project to me.”

“That’s what he called it. He got an architect alum to donate the plans, and he got approval from the Board of Trustees for the cost of the wood and stuff, and he has a carpenter from town who’ll supervise the whole thing in exchange for his son coming to the school for free.”

“That’s a nice deal.”

“The kid’s a jerk. A real townie. He’ll never fit in.”

“Seems to me you were a townie two years ago.”

“You know what I mean, Mom. His dad’s a carpenter.”

“So?”

“So most of the kids’ dads can buy and sell him ten times over.”

“Most of those kids’ dads can buy and sell
us
ten times over.”

“There’s a difference.”

“Because your dad doesn’t work with his hands? No, Dougie, there’s no difference. This boy may be just as bright as any other child at Mount Court. He has a right to the same opportunity, and if his dad is clever enough to find a way to do it, I admire him. Who is it, by the way?”

“Jason Druart.”

Angie grinned. “I like Jason. Good for him. And good for the other kids at Mount Court. Building a house will be educational. It’ll give them an idea of what it takes to make something that they take for granted. You too. Will you help?”

“No way. I’m staying as far from the Head as I can. He’s trouble.”

“Funny, he looked nice enough to me.” Angie had met him at a reception shortly after he was hired the spring before. He had struck her as being a leader, which was what the school needed.

She pulled up at the house. Dougie hauled his book bag from the back and was out the door in an instant. She followed and found Ben in the kitchen with a damp paper toweling wadded around his finger.

“Uh-oh.” She set aside her purse and took a look.

“It was getting late,” he said in the grumpy way men had of doing when they botched things up, “so I thought I’d fix the salad. I was slicing carrots and missed. Does it need stitching?”

“Nah. The bleeding has pretty much stopped. A Band-Aid will do the trick. Dougie?
Dougie?
” When he didn’t answer, she stuck the paper toweling back on the cut, told Ben to press tight, and headed for the bathroom medicine chest. A minute later she had the cut neatly covered and the bloody paper toweling disposed of, and was finishing the salad Ben had begun.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said with a fond glance at Ben. He was leaning against the counter, wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt, looking endearing, albeit distressed, in his quiet way. “I told you I’d be home.”

“I was hungry.”

“Poor baby. You and Dougie both. But we’re not eating that much later than usual.”

“It sure seems it. The extra time is like an eternity when you’re tired and hungry.”

“Did you have a good day?” she asked, setting aside the salad and going to the fridge for the steaks.

“I faxed off a couple things.” He held the door open, closed it when she set the steaks on the counter. “I hate it when you’re this late. When are you guys hiring another doctor?”

“When we get around to it. Things are too busy right now, and too emotional.” Paige understood. Peter and Ben, typically male, putting business first, did not. “Mara’s still warm in her grave. It feels wrong to rush into replacing her.”

“Mara’s stomach isn’t the one that’s grumbling,” Ben said, and walked off.

Angie smiled and called after him, “You’ll survive. I’ll have dinner ready in ten minutes.”

And it was. Ten minutes later Ben was seated at the table and she was calling up the stairs for Dougie.

“I had dinner at school,” he called back.

“You had food there. This is dinner.”

“But I’m not hungry.”

“Come on, sweetheart. Just a little.”

“Mom, I have homework to do.”

“Five minutes with us, that’s all, then I’ll let you get back to work.” To Ben, as she poured Dougie’s milk, she said, “There were times when I worried because he was so agreeable. This sputtering is a relief. It’s so typically adolescent.” She bobbled a hot baked potato from the microwave to Dougie’s plate, then did one for Ben, then for herself. “The Harkins stopped by the office with their youngest this afternoon,” she told Ben. “Gerry was asking for you.”

“Is his daughter sick?”

“She’s having trouble in school, and apparently the teacher doesn’t know what to do. It sounds to me like an attention deficit problem, which can be easily treated once it’s diagnosed. I recommended that they have her tested—” She looked up. “There you are.” She nudged Dougie’s chair. “I even have sour cream for the potatoes.”

But Dougie didn’t sit. “I’m not hungry, Mom. I told you that.”

She smiled. He was a good-looking boy, had been as a child and was even more so now as a teenager. Given the rate he was growing, no amount of food was apt to make him fat. “Tell me again, once you’ve eaten that steak.”

“I’m not eating it. I had dinner at six. I was hungry then. I’m not hungry now.”

She set down her fork. Something in his tone went beyond the sputtering she had found relief in moments before. She could have sworn she heard an accusation. But that wasn’t possible. Dougie adored her. “Then have some potato. The skin is the best.”

“I’m stuffed.”

“But this is
dinner
. Come on, sweetheart. I told you this morning that we’d be eating at seven.” She gestured toward the bulletin board. “It’s right on the new schedule.”

Dougie made a face she’d never seen before. “I don’t like that schedule. It tells me to get up earlier in the morning and eat dinner later at night. It’s a pain.”

“It’s new,” Angie soothed. “That’s all. Give it a week, and you’ll forget we ever did anything different.”

“I doubt it.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she chided gently, and sat back in her chair, “you’re upset with the change because you’re upset about Mara. That’s natural, and it’s okay, but you have to give the new schedule a try. With Mara gone, things have been turned upside down at the office. This is the best I can do for now. Be patient—you’ll adjust.”

“I
always
adjust,” he complained.

“Once things quiet down at the office, once we hire another doctor, we can go back to the way things were—”

“I don’t want to go back to the way things were.”

Angie didn’t follow. “What do you want?”

He opened his mouth to talk, then shut it again.

She sat forward and urged, “It’s all right. You can say what you want. I’ll listen. I always listen. What
do
you want?”

“I want to spend more time at school,” he blurted out. “It’s lousy being a day student. Day students miss half the fun.”

“That’s the point,” Angie said on a note of amusement. “You get to enjoy the other half, and still be with your family.”

“But I want to be with the kids. I want to live in the dorm.”

The suggestion was absurd. “Sorry, but that’s out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not what I want for you. I sent you to Mount Court because I felt that you would be more challenged academically there than at the middle school here in town. Boarding is something else entirely.”

“Why can’t I try it?”

“Because you’re only fourteen. I don’t mind if you sleep over in the dorm once in a while—you did that last year—but I don’t think it’s necessary for you to move away from home.”

“It’s five minutes down the road!”

She shook her head again. “College is soon enough to board. You don’t need it now.”

Dougie stared at her for a minute, then turned on his heel and left the room.

Startled by his persistence, Angie looked at Ben. “Where did that come from?”

Ben finished chewing a mouthful of steak. “It’s been building.”