Unfinished Business (12 page)

I padded barefoot down the stairs, and tried
not to think of doing the same thing yesterday morning, looking for
Rafe. For a second, when I first opened my eyes, I’d forgotten that
he was gone. Until I realized I was alone in bed, and remembered
what had happened, and that Mother and Dix were across the hall.
Or, as the case may be, in the bathroom on the first floor.

Downstairs was dark and quiet. The porch
light was on, shining in through the window in the front door,
laying an elongated, twisty rectangle on the floor. I glanced out,
and saw the dark bulk of Dix’s SUV and my Volvo in the driveway.
Nothing was stirring outside, not even the wind.

From down the hall came a tiny sound, like a
small trickle of water. Mother soaking a washcloth to wipe her
face, maybe. I headed in that direction, my feet noiseless on the
wood floor.

Most of the time, I don’t have a problem
living in the house where Brenda Puckett met a violent end. She
doesn’t haunt the place, and anyway, it looks and feels like a
different house now. Whenever I start to think about it—about
walking into the library and seeing her corpse sprawled there, in
front of the fireplace, with her throat slit from ear to ear—I
remind myself that a lot of good things have come from Brenda’s
death. Mrs. Jenkins got her house back, and found her grandson at
the same time. Rafe found his grandmother, his only living
relative. Or the only one he knew about at the time, anyway.

I found Rafe. And while it took me a while
to admit—to myself and to the world—that I wanted Rafe, that was a
very, very good thing. I won’t say that Brenda’s death was worth
it—that would be horribly cold-blooded of me—but I could still see
the good that had happened as a result.

Anyway, being here doesn’t usually bother
me. But I’m not usually walking around alone in the middle of the
night, either. I could feel goose bumps breaking out on my arms and
my scalp. My hair prickled, and I made very sure not to glance into
the library on my way past. Just in case.

The tiny splashes and tinkles continued from
the half bath, along with some weird moans and grunts. Under other
circumstances I might have been tempted to make fun of it, but I
felt too sorry for Mother: she must really be feeling bad to make
such very unladylike noises.

“Mother?” I reached for the doorknob. “Are
you OK?”

I turned the knob and pulled the door open,
squinting against the bright light. And fell back a step when I
realized it wasn’t Mother in the bathroom.

And then I saw the blood, and screamed.

Normally, Rafe would have caught me. This was obviously not normal,
because I went staggering back, bounced off the wall, and sat down
on the floor while he stood there. Vaguely, in the back of my head,
I could hear sounds from upstairs: thuds and footsteps as Dix and
Mother scrambled out of bed in response to my scream.

By the time they’d made it down to us, I had
made it back up on my feet, and was standing there ineffectually
wringing my hands and babbling.

“Oh, my God. What are you doing?”

It was a stupid question, and got the stupid
answer it deserved.

“Washing up,” Rafe said, with a bloody
washcloth dangling from his fingers and a sink full of red water
behind him. “Can’t get into bed like this.”

He looked and sounded perfectly lucid—apart
from the bloody cuts scoring his chest like some crazy cross-stitch
pattern, interspersed with small, irritated-looking red dots—but he
obviously wasn’t thinking straight.

“Have you lost your mind?” I demanded. “You
can’t get into bed at all. You have to go to the hospital!”

By now Mother and Dix had reached us, and I
heard Dix’s curse and Mother’s sharp intake of breath. She fell
back a step.

I couldn’t blame her. Part of me wanted to
wrap him in my arms and assure myself he was whole and here and
solid and not just a figment of my imagination. The other part
didn’t even want to look at him.

I took a breath and tried to keep my voice
even. “What happened? You look like you walked into a sausage
slicer.” Again and again and again.

His lips twisted. “It’s just a scratch.”

Sure. Try to be funny at a time like this.
“This isn’t a romance novel,” I said crossly, “and you’re not the
stupid hero. It’s not just a scratch. It’s a lot of scratches, and
some of them are probably going to need stitches.”

Rafe looked down at his own chest, and
nodded. “Prob’ly.”

“Are you drunk?” Mother asked suspiciously,
her nostrils twitching.

I turned on her. But before I could tell her
to leave him alone—what if he was? Wasn’t he entitled?—Dix spoke
up. “If he isn’t, he should be. D’you have any liquor in the house,
sis?”

“Cabinet in the parlor,” I said. “Next to
the room where—”

“I’ll find it.” He was already moving. “Go
get a glass,” he told Mother. “Kitchen.”

Mother’s lips tightened, but she went.
Padding barefoot down the hall with the hem of her borrowed
nightgown dancing around her thighs.

Rafe watched her. “That’s your mama,” he
told me.

“Yes, it is.” I took the wet washcloth out
of his hand and dropped it into the bloody water. “She came up for
the wedding, and stayed.”

I lifted a towel off the rack and began
mopping his chest dry. Bright red blood stained the white
terrycloth. “God, Rafe...!”

Looking at him hurt. And didn’t hurt
anywhere near as much as I was sure he must be hurting.

He didn’t try to be funny this time. Just
stood there while I wiped blood and water off his chest, looking
down at me. “Sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Clearly. Whatever
had happened to him—whoever had done this, because it certainly
hadn’t been an accident—was responsible for his not being here this
morning. Not he. “I’m just glad you’re...”

I faltered on the next word.
OK
wasn’t quite what I was looking for. He clearly wasn’t OK. He
wasn’t fine. He was alive, and mostly whole, and here—but he wasn’t
OK. Not by a long shot.

“God.” I blinked away the tears, but he must
have seen them anyway. His hand came up to cup my cheek.

“Darlin’...”

“I thought you were gone,” I told his chest,
my hand closing tight on the towel. “I thought you didn’t want to
marry me. And then I was afraid that you hadn’t left on your own.
That you did want to marry me, but that something... or
someone...”

His thumb stroked my cheek.

“I love you,” I said, and this time I didn’t
care that the tears overflowed and ran down my cheeks. “I was so
afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

“I’ll always come back.”

Sure. Except for the one time when he
couldn’t.

But that time wasn’t this time. I squared my
shoulders. “We have to get you to the hospital. Someone needs to
look at this. Someone other than you and me. You’ll need some
stitches, and bandages, and... and something... on whatever these
little marks are...”

“Cigarette burns,” Rafe said calmly, and
reached out a hand for the bottle Dix was holding. “Thanks.”

Dix blinked, and handed it over. By the time
Mother came back down the hallway with a squat glass in her hand,
Rafe was already swigging scotch straight from the bottle.

“Better go get dressed,” I told Dix. “We
have to take him to the hospital.”

“Shouldn’t we call 911?” Mother asked, as
Dix headed down the hallway to the stairs.

“It’ll be quicker just to drive there. It
isn’t far. And he’s not about to die.” Just in a lot of pain, I
imagined. Hopefully the scotch would numb some of it, at least long
enough for us to drive him to the emergency room where they’d get
some real pain medicine into him. He’d need that, once they started
working on closing up some of the deeper cuts. “He made it here.
I’m sure he can make it for ten more minutes until we get to the
hospital.”

Dix was already on his way up the stairs.
Mother nodded and followed.

“I need to put on some clothes, too,” I told
Rafe.

He nodded. “I’m just gonna sit down.”

And he did, right there in the hallway. Put
his back against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the
floor, his legs stretched out in front of him and the bottle of
scotch in his lap, with a hand wrapped around the neck.

I checked the wall, but there was no smear
of blood left behind. The damage seemed to be to his front. That
must mean something.

Like, the person who had done this to him,
had wanted him to watch what was happening.

Nausea crawled up my throat, and I swallowed
it ruthlessly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t think I could if I tried,” Rafe said,
his eyes closed and his eyelashes lying like fans against his
cheeks. “Didn’t think I was gonna make it here.”

“Where...” I shook my head. “No, never mind.
That doesn’t matter now. We’ll talk about it later. I’m going to go
throw some clothes on. Then we’ll go to the hospital. Two
minutes.”

He didn’t even open his eyes when I walked
away. He must be feeling awful. Usually he’d take the opportunity
to look up my nightgown, if only because he knew doing it would
make me blush.

By the time I reached the top of the stairs,
Dix was already on his way back down, buttoning his shirt as he
went.

“He’s on the floor in the hallway,” I said.
“If you give me a minute, I’ll help you get him up and in the
car.”

“Not sure you should be hauling him to his
feet, in your condition.” He brushed past me and headed down. “I
can manage.”

“Be careful with him,” I threw after his
back. “I’m not sure how much more he can handle.”

“I imagine he’ll handle whatever he has to
handle,” Dix answered, without pausing. I ducked into my own room,
where I stripped off my nightgown and pulled on the same dress I’d
worn yesterday afternoon. When I got back out into the hallway,
Mother was also dressed, and coming out of Mrs. J’s room.

She was pale, and looked a bit more rumpled
than usual. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair not quite its
usual smooth cap. I might even go so far as to say there were bags
under her eyes—although I wouldn’t say it to her face.

“You don’t have to come with us,” I told her
instead. “You can stay here, if you want. Try to get some more
sleep.”

Her voice was as crisp as ever. “No, thank
you, darling. I would prefer not to be left alone in the middle of
the night, in this neighborhood.”

“Then let’s go. I want to get him to a
doctor as soon as possible. He’s lost enough blood already.”

I headed down the stairs with Mother’s heels
click-click-clicking behind. Downstairs in the hallway, Dix had
managed to get Rafe upright. His arm was draped over Dix’s
shoulders and the bottle of scotch was in his other hand.

“I think we can probably leave that here,” I
said, and reached for it.

Rafe twitched it out of my grasp and lifted
it to his mouth for one more quick swallow before relinquishing it.
Further proof, if I had needed it, that he was in a bad way. He’s
not in the habit of overindulging in anything stronger than beer,
and only rarely overindulges in that.

I didn’t comment, just handed the bottle to
Mother and went to brace him on the other side. He was shivering.
Cold or shock or pain, or a combination of all three.

“Do you want something more to wear?”

He shook his head. “It’s warmer
outside.”

Yes, it was. Even in the middle of the
night, it was above eighty out there. It was just in here that cold
air blasted from the vents.

“No sense ruining another shirt.”

I guess not. They’d have him out of it at
the hospital, anyway. “Maybe they’ll put you into one of those
hospital gowns that leave your butt bare,” I said
optimistically.

“They can try,” Rafe answered, and draped a
heavy arm over my shoulders.

We lurched down the hallway and onto the
porch. Mother scurried ahead to open the door of Dix’s SUV.

“Let’s put him in the back,” I huffed as we
made our slow way across the porch and down the steps. “I’ll sit
with him.”

Dix nodded. “You go in first. I’ll push and
you pull.”

Good idea.

It didn’t quite come to that, though. I did
get into the backseat first, but Rafe was able to crawl in after me
with no pushing or pulling necessary. I thought about putting his
head in my lap, so I could run my fingers through his (practically
non-existent) hair, but in the end I figured he’d be just as
comfortable sitting up.

We pulled up in front of the emergency
entrance at Skyline Hospital less than ten minutes later.

Dix got out and opened the door for me.
Meanwhile, Mother looked around. “Isn’t this where—?”

“Yes.” This was where I’d had my second
miscarriage—the first had been while I’d been married to
Bradley—last November. The hospital had notified Mother, as my next
of kin, and she and everyone else had come rushing up to Nashville.
She’d walked in on me holding Rafe’s hand, trying to explain to him
why I hadn’t told him I was pregnant until I was almost three
months along.

He’d walked out of the hospital thinking it
was Todd’s baby I’d lost, and I hadn’t seen him for weeks after
that.

I wondered whether he remembered it too...
and then I realized that it was unlikely he remembered much of
anything at the moment. He had other things on his mind. Like the
fact that he was in pain, and a little bit drunk, and was in for
some rather uncomfortable patching up.

“We have to call Grimaldi,” I told Dix. “And
Wendell. Tell him to call off the boys.”

He nodded. “After we get him inside and know
what’s going on. It’s the middle of the night.”

It was. But I doubted either Grimaldi or
Wendell were sleeping well. They’d want to know what was going on
ASAP.

Nonetheless, my brother had a point. Rafe,
and getting him cared for, had to be the number one priority.
We—the cops and the TBI—could go after whoever had done this to him
once we knew he was comfortable and safe.