The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (17 page)

“Can I help it if you’re getting elderly?” she teased him. Turning to to smile at Nate again, she added, “Hi, Nate. My father and sister have both told me about you. I’m Rory.” She frowned then, and looked at the sensible watch on her wrist. “Um, shouldn’t you actually be in school now?”

“Uh...well, I’m-” Nate couldn’t believe that he, the reigning master of lies and cover-ups, hadn’t prepared a story for this moment.
 

“Taking a mental health day?” Lena’s father supplied.
 

Nate grinned in relief. “Um...yeah.”
 

Rory opened her mouth, as if to say something else, but Nate saw Peter Dane shoot her a look that clearly said “shut up” in a loving, parental way. Tom gave him that look all the time.

“Well, Nate,” Peter continued genially, “What are your plans for the day?”

“I hadn’t really gotten that far,” Nate admitted. “I just kind of came here first.”

“I’m glad you did,” Peter looked up at Rory. “Rory, Aaron has a midterm tomorrow. Call him and tell him he can have the afternoon off after all.”

Nate spent the rest of the morning helping Peter with inventory. They carried around price guns and scanned item after item, with Peter checking each shelf section off a computer-generated lists. And all the while, Nate was learning more and more about comic books, as Peter kept up a running commentary on the comics they were handling.

“Now, Superman, he has a lot of problems as a comic book,” Peter lectured, as they went through an entire shelf of Superman trade paperbacks. “But as a hero he represents the heart of what makes these stories great: a character who uses his strength and innate goodness to try to heal the world, to make it better.” Peter paused in his scanning, smiling fondly as he stared at something Nate couldn’t see. “Lena’s mother was like that, come to think of it. Cassandra was just...
good
. She was a police officer so she could put more good out into the world. I think that’s why I fell in love with her.” He smiled, a little sad. “She was my hero.”

Nate thought that was kind of heartbreaking. He wondered if Peter had dated anyone after Lena’s mom. Tom had seen a couple of women in the years since Nate’s mom had died, but he’d never even gotten serious enough to introduce them to Nate. And then he’d gotten sick.

“Dad?” Rory called from the register. “I’m gonna run out and get us some lunch, okay?”
 

“Sure,” Peter replied. He quickly finished the shelf he was on and laid the last book he’d scanned down sideways, so it stuck out from the shelf. “Come on, we’ll go up front until she gets back.”

“Okay.” Nate turned down his last book, too, and obediently followed Peter towards the cash register.

Before Peter had even sat down, the phone that was bolted to the wall above the counter began to trill. Peter picked it up. “Great Dane Comics.”

Nate wasn’t paying attention at first; he’d started fiddling with some of the novelty toys near the register, but when the silence stretched out, he looked up and saw that Peter’s face had gone pale. The older man clenched the counter for support.
 

“Peter? What happened?” Nate asked, panicked. For a second he thought it was Tom, that something had happened and they’d tracked him down, but Peter moved his mouth away from the receiver and whispered, “Lena was just brought into the emergency room in Los Angeles. She’s critical.”

Nate’s mind jump-started, putting it together. Another boy might have hesitated, but hospitals and doctors were Nate’s home court, and without even thinking about it he reached over and took the phone out of Peter’s hand.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Nate’s voice was urgent, but still calm and even. “Listen, you need to get a message to Lena’s doctor right away.” Nate looked up at Peter, still bent over in shock, and prayed that he was doing the right thing. “She’s pregnant.”

21. Out There for the Taking

Surely she should be awake by
now
. What did the doctor say?”
 

Cristina’s voice was demanding and worried.
Why is she so worried?
I wondered idly as my vision drifted lazily into focus. I saw Cristina on my left, looking at another figure in the room. It seemed to take forever to get my eyes to go over there. Toby. Oh...fuck.
 

I opened my mouth to speak, to draw their attention, but nothing came out, and as soon as I started paying attention I realized how much I hurt...everywhere.
 

“Did you see that?” Toby said suddenly. I couldn’t follow moving things so well yet, so his four steps over to my bed looked like a blur.
 

When my eyes focused on my husband, he had no expression on his face. “How bad?” I whispered.

“Two broken ribs, deep contusions all over your arms and legs, a mild concussion, your throat was damaged, and your shoulder was dislocated, but they put it back already.” Toby told me, his voice flat and cold. “And your face is a mess.”

“Permanent?”

“No. But your nose was broken again. They reset it.”

“‘Kay,” I managed to say. Whispering still seemed possible, although my throat burned from where he’d punched me.

I hesitated, afraid to ask. My eyes slid desperately to Cristina, but Toby saw right through that, contempt on his face. “The baby,” he said coldly, “is fine. Somehow.”

I sighed in relief, and immediately gasped again at the pain in my ribs.
 

“Lena,” Cristina said gently, “what happened?”

Tears welled in my eyes. “I went for In-N-Out,” I whispered. “I just-I thought the case was over for me, I didn’t expect—” My voice broke, and I cried through the pain in my ribs. “I was so stupid.”

Her face softened, and she took my hand in both of hers. “It’s okay, Baby Girl. Do you remember what he looked like?”

I automatically started to shake my head, winced at the movement, went back to the whisper. “He was wearing a ski mask, and he talked really low, like he was disguising his voice.” I tried to concentrate. “White skin, a little lighter than mine. Brown eyes. Brown eyebrows. Gravelly voice. Maybe five-eleven or six feet.”

Cristina was in professional mode now. “Anything else? Tattoos? Accent?”

I shook my head slightly, wincing at the pain. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Baby Girl.” She squeezed my hand gently and stood up. “I have to take this description the officers.”

“Cristina-” She turned to look at me inquiringly.

“He knew.” My eyes darted to Toby, still seething, and back to my friend. “About the baby. He knew.”

Her brow furrowed. “How?”

That was one thing I’d had time to think about as I laid in the parking lot, waiting for the ambulance. “The restaurant last night...does it have security cameras?”

Cristina went to talk to the other cops, and a nurse came in to check my vitals and give me some orange juice to sip. As she fussed over me Toby paced back and forth on the other side of the small room, arms clenched to his sides, fingers driven into fists. Then the nurse left, and I was alone with my husband.
 

Toby is a pretty contained guy, and I had never seen him like this, so close to losing control. After a long, gut-wrenching moment he wheeled to glare at me. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and nearly throbbing with the effort not to shout at me.

“What, in all of hell,” he said quietly, “did you think you were doing?”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably, close to tears. I had no defense. This one time, I knew with absolute certainty that he was right and I was wrong.
 

“Is it me?” Toby continued matter-of-factly. “Do you not want to be with me, to have a family with me?”

“No!” I said, shocked. “That’s not it!”

“Well, God help me, Selena, I don’t understand you. Why you would lie to me and then take our baby into combat without a second thought. What were you
thinking
?”

“I wasn’t.” That was just the plain truth, wasn’t it? I’d been working overtime to not think about the baby, not remember the pregnancy test or Matt Cleary.

“That’s not good enough,” he snapped. “I don’t get the way your brain works, I really don’t. You told your fourteen-year-old client before you told your husband? Who does that?”

I blinked in surprise. “Can we leave Nate out of this? It’s not his fault.”

“Oh, I’m not mad at Nate,” he retorted. “On the contrary, that kid seems to be the only one who gives a shit about our kid.”

“Huh?” I said stupidly.

“You still have your dad listed as your emergency contact, in your wallet,” Toby explained, his anger just a little more subdued. “Nate took the phone at the store and told them about the baby. They completely changed your treatment because of it, and they did an ultrasound to check on the baby. Nate might have saved its life.”

“Oh.”

He glared at me, taking in the bruises on my face. I swear, I wasn’t trying to manipulate him with how I looked—I didn’t have the energy, even if I’d wanted to—but suddenly a little of the fight went out of him. He sighed and finally sat down in the visitor’s chair next to my bed. “I just...don’t understand how you could keep something like this from me.”
 

I struggled for words. “I didn’t want to be just...someone’s mommy. I want to be more than that with my life.”

“Bullshit, Selena,” he spat back. “Maybe that’s part of it, but that’s not enough to stop you. You know better than to think you will ever be anything less than extraordinary.”

Tears began to trail a slow path down my cheeks.
 

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“Well, God, Selena, I would fucking hope so,” he said tiredly.
 

We sat in silence for a time, while tears continued their slow course down my cheeks. Finally Toby cursed, sliding carefully onto the bed to take my face in his hands. Mindful of my bruises, he gently pushed my hair out of my eyes with a warm thumb.

“I need to know why, Selena,” he said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t you want this?”

It was time. Of course I knew it was time. I took a deep breath. “Five years ago,” I whispered, “The morning of Matt Cleary. I took a pregnancy test.” I explained the whole thing; the positive test, the way Cleary had hit me in the stomach, the blood test at the hospital.
 

As I spoke Toby’s eyes got bigger and bigger. When I was done he hugged me tightly. It hurt, but I didn’t make a sound. “Why didn’t you tell me this?” he said into my hair.

“What would be the point?” I sniffled. “It would have just hurt you.”

“I could have been there for you,” he reminded me.

“You were,” I told him, sitting up straight so I could look at him. “Things were so crazy after Cleary, remember? And then with me quitting the department, and you followed me, and that was so sweet—” my voice broke, and it took me a second to start again. “And it wasn’t like it was even a real baby, it was just a stupid fucking test, a
maybe
.”

Toby didn’t respond, just held me for a long time, waiting me out. We’d been together long enough for him to know when I had more to say. “I can’t keep it safe,” I whispered finally.

“What do you mean?”
 

My voice shook, and I fought a losing battle for control of it. “I can’t keep it safe. Safe from armed robbers or, or child molesters or city buses or– or–” I sobbed, “or growing up without a mom. I can’t promise a child safety from any of those things.” The dam went from a steady leak to an all-out burst, and I cried openly, harder than I had in years. Tears rained down my face and slid into my the neck of my hospital gown, making me shiver.

“Oh, Selena.” He reached across so he could take both of my hands, warming them up. “What happened to Amanda and Carrie and those teenage girls, and you, when Cleary came after you—that won’t happen to our baby.”

“No?” I suddenly needed space more than anything, so I disentangled myself and carefully stood up on the other side of the bed, trying to get my anger back, trying to feel anything but this desperate fear for our baby. Toby watched me struggle to rise and didn’t try to stop me. Bully for him. “You don’t know that. We can’t promise it. And now wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll be vulnerable. People can hurt the baby to get to me, and hurting me will always hurt the baby. When it’s born my heart will be
out there
, for the taking. How can I live like that and be who I am?”
 

“Maybe you can’t,” he conceded. “Maybe you’re going to have to...evolve.”

I looked away, out the window. My hospital room was probably on the sixth or seventh floor. I could see a busy intersection below me, bathed in sunlight and framed by palm trees. What a strange city.
 

“I don’t know if I want to evolve,” I said softly. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

Behind me I heard Toby circle the bed so he could stand next to me, not touching me yet. He really did know me. “We’re pregnant
right now
, Selena,” he said, not unkindly. “Ready doesn’t matter anymore.”
 

I sniffled and nodded. Very gently, he came up behind me and wrapped an arm around my good shoulder, kissing my hair. “Between the two of us, we will keep this baby safe,” Toby said, his free hand playing with my matted hair. “After all, I’m not entirely useless myself.”

I sniffled again, wiping the sleeve of my hospital gown across my beat-up face. Classy. I turned around to face him, putting my back to the city. “Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far,” I said gravely.

He smiled as if he was surfacing from deep underwater, a smile of relief. “See, that’s the abusive wife I know and love.”

“Shut up.”

Toby threw his head back and laughed, and when he was done his face turned serious. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. But we will figure out how to do this, Selena, I promise you. First, though,” he dropped to his knees, kneeling in front of me, “I want to say hello to my kid.”
 

He smoothed out my hospital gown, and laid his warm head against my belly. My fingers tangled into his hair, and we stayed like that, him listening to the mystery inside my body, until I remembered how to breathe.