Final Breath (24 page)

There was a polite smattering of applause from the audience while the orderly whisked the mike away from Rikki and set it in front of Aidan again. He nearly banged the thing against Sydney's halo-encircled head in the process.

Once again, Aidan seemed intimidated by the microphone. "Please, be a hero, and give what you can," he said meekly.

The audience applauded again.

Sydney suddenly didn't like any of this. The poor kid had been fed those lines ahead of time. He was obviously in horrible pain, and yet they'd wheeled him under these hot stage lights to perform--all so his mother could raise money to pay their hospital bills. Sydney realized desperate times called for desperate measures, but her heart broke for Aidan and she felt like a pawn in this whole venture.

The hospital bigwig started speaking again. Sydney waited until they moved the mike away from Aidan. "I don't know about you, but I'm awfully tired," she whispered to him. "How are you doing, Aidan?"

"Everything hurts," he murmured. "I just want to go back to my room."

Sydney still felt the need to rescue him. She touched his cheek, and it felt hot.

"...I'm sure you'd all like to hear from Sydney Jordan,"
the hospital's representative was saying. The orderly set the mike down beside her, and readjusted the height level.

She waited for the applause to die down. "Hi," she said into the mike. "I want to thank Aidan and Rikki Cosgrove for coming," she said. "It's wonderful to see Aidan again. He's an incredibly brave young man. I understand his doctors want him back in his room right now. So we're saying good-bye to Aidan and his mom..."

Blinking, Rikki Cosgrove appeared confused--and a bit perturbed--for a moment. But Aidan gave Sydney a furtive, grateful smile. No one on the stage moved.

"So--
good-bye
for now," Sydney repeated. "I hope we can get together again very soon."

Finally, the orderlies got the hint and started to move Aidan's bed toward the right curtain. With a pinched smile, Rikki waved to the crowd, then turned her wheelchair around and trailed after the orderlies.

"I'm unable to applaud," Sydney said, moving her one good arm. "But I hope you'll give Aidan and Rikki a hand for me--in more ways than one."

A few people in the audience chuckled at her lame pun, and everyone applauded as Aidan and his mother made their exit together.

Once the clamor died down, Sydney made a brief, off-the-cuff speech, thanking everyone for their cards, encouragement, and prayers. She still desperately had to go to the bathroom, so she announced that she was very tired, and quickly wrapped it up.

As the orderly rolled her out stage left, a thin, balding man she'd never seen before approached her. Wearing a cheap pale blue suit, and carrying a clipboard, he blocked their way. "That's not how the program was supposed to go!" he hissed. "Rikki still had another speech to give, and the kid had some more lines. You screwed up the whole thing!"

Sydney just glared at him. "Get the hell out of my way," she growled.

And he did.

She often thought about that guy, though she never saw him again. She wondered if Rikki had hired him to help raise money. That was the only misgiving Sydney had had about donating $25,000 of her book advance to the Cosgroves. Were the funds being well managed?

Though she never got to spend any time with Aidan alone, Sydney could see they were taking good care of him in the hospital. So she recorded a thirty-second radio spot for their charity, the Aidan Foundation. She also--rather stupidly--signed some document allowing them to use her image for the charity. Sydney cringed at what Rikki Cosgrove's reps came up with: a heavily retouched composite, showing her and Aidan. She hovered at his bedside, but they'd altered a photo taken at the Harborview visit-turned-press-conference. Smiling bravely, Aidan was shirtless and scarred. Beside him, Sydney was no longer in a wheelchair. They'd airbrushed out her halo contraption. They also put her face on someone else's body--a model in a figure skater's leotard with miniskirt. It appeared as if she'd briefly stopped skating to pose for a minute with this poor, mangled, crippled child. It was a ridiculous image, and so airbrushed, she almost looked like a cartoon. Sydney had to tell herself if the stupid ad-photo made money to pay for the Cosgroves' medical expenses, why should she care?

While still in the hospital, Sydney worked on her autobiography with a ghostwriter named Andrea Shorey. About fifty, with glasses and wild, curly gray hair, Andrea was very thorough in her research. She discovered that for a while Aidan Cosgrove was a child model, and a successful one, too. "You know the picture of that cute toddler in all the ads and on the sales tags of those kids' clothes,
Toddels
?" Andrea asked, during one of their editing sessions in the hospital's lounge. "Well, that's Aidan. He's the
Toddels
toddler. He was a moneymaker for Rikki until the modeling agency called child protective services on her. During a photo shoot, the photographer's assistant helped Aidan change shirts and noticed all these bruises on his back. Rikki's boyfriend at the time was beating him up. It says "father unknown" on Aidan's birth certificate. Rikki's had a history of bad relationships and lousy taste in men. She has also had problems with drugs and booze. Oh, and did I mention that she's still smoking--even with all her respiratory ailments from the fire? Anyway, Mother of the Year, she isn't. Though I understand from the friends and neighbors I interviewed she's been trying to turn her life around these last few months. Do you want any of this in the book?"

"My God," Sydney murmured, "that poor kid."

She felt so horrible for Aidan Cosgrove--and couldn't help being angry at his mother. She hated thinking this way, but if that stupid woman--
that crummy mother
--hadn't fallen asleep with a cigarette going, none of this would have happened. Sydney wouldn't have ended up in this wheelchair with this halo contraption screwed into her skull.

"Well, do you think we should use it in the book?" Andrea pressed.

"We're going to have to check with Rikki, first," Sydney answered with a sigh. "Painting that kind of picture of her could really sink the Aidan Foundation, which I know is legit. I don't want to be responsible for that."

Rikki allowed them to divulge her struggles with alcohol and drugs, and even provided some candid quotes about those
dark days
. But she drew the line when it came to any discussion of child abuse, which she insisted
never happened
.

While the TV movie
Making Miracles: The Sydney Jordan Story
was in production, Sydney heard from Rikki's lawyer. Rikki demanded a share of the movie-deal money. Sydney's dad was furious.
"The nerve of that woman!"
he protested.
"I can't believe she's asking for another handout. She's got more balls than a Christmas tree, considering her antics are what put you in the hospital for so long."

Sydney settled with Rikki's lawyer, even though Rikki was merely mentioned in the film. As far as Sydney was concerned, it wasn't worth the hassle. The network asked her to make some promotional appearances with Aidan, but the boy was still in and out of the hospital for surgery on his back and skin grafts to repair the scars. Sydney didn't want to put the poor kid on display. Besides, any association with Aidan meant dealing with Rikki, and Sydney was pretty tired of her. She was always
seriously ill
or
in pain,
and always needing money.

Sydney wrote to Aidan, but the responses always came from Rikki, usually hitting her up for a favor or more money. Sydney never got a chance to sit down and talk privately to the boy whose life she'd saved.

After marrying Joe and moving to Chicago, she was glad to have Rikki Cosgrove out of her life--even though it meant losing touch with Aidan. But in truth, she'd never really been able to get together with him anyway. Rikki had always been there, running interference.

"...and as you know, my lungs haven't been the same since the fire." Sydney listened to Rikki's weak, nasally drone. "Aidan's coming up from San Francisco to visit me tomorrow. He's been up the last several weekends. I truly think this will be our last visit. I just can't see me hanging on for another week. I'm so--tired..."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Rikki," Sydney said. Ordinarily, she would have asked the person, "Is there anything I can do?" But this was Rikki Cosgrove, perpetually ill, perpetually manipulative.

Sydney was now sitting on the front stoop with the phone to her ear. A few neighbors had come through the gate and passed by. She'd worked up a smile and nodded at them. But there was still no sign of Eli.

"Sydney, I really need you to do something for me..."

Well, here it is
, she thought. "Um, what is it I can do for you, Rikki?" she asked.

"Could you come by my apartment tomorrow? I'd really like you to sit down and talk to Aidan while he's here. I'm so worried about him. He--he says he's doing all right down in San Francisco, but I honestly don't know..."

"How's he feeling? How's his back?" Sydney asked. He'd had two corrective surgeries fourteen years before.

"Oh, his back's much better. He met this woman in San Francisco. She's older. She's become his
sponsor
or something." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then some labored breaths. "Um, this woman, she paid for an operation on his back last year--and skin grafts, too. He doesn't have the scars anymore. He--he's his old handsome self--from before the fire, I mean." There was another pause--with some sickly coughing this time. "Anyway, he wants to be an actor. He's already done a play and some TV commercials. I don't know how steady that line of work is. He could probably use some advice, some kind of direction. I was wondering, since you're on TV...."

"Of course, I'll talk to him, Rikki," she heard herself say. This was one favor she wouldn't mind doing for Rikki Cosgrove. It would be her first real opportunity to sit down and talk with Aidan. "I don't know how helpful I'll be, but I'd be happy to answer any questions Aidan might have."

"Oh, that's wonderful..." Sydney heard some wheezing. "Are you--are you free around one o'clock?"

"Um, I'm not sure yet." She ducked back inside the house and hurried into the kitchen. She glanced around for her address book. "Let me get your phone number, Rikki--and your address while I'm at it." Taking the cordless into her office, she saw her purse by the computer monitor. She fished her address book out of it, then sat at her desk and wrote down Rikki's contact information. As long as she had the book open to the C's, she asked for Aidan's address and phone number, too. Sydney figured it would be nice to connect with him some time--without his mother being involved.

There was a frail sigh on the other end of the line. "Oh, it's a new address, and I'm honestly too weak to get out of bed and look it up right now. You can get it from Aidan tomorrow, when you come by. I'll expect you around one."

"Um, like I said, Rikki, I'll call you back and confirm with you."

Sydney glanced at the clock in her office: 3:20. Still no Eli.

"Rikki, I need to scoot," she said into the phone. "It--it was nice to reconnect with you. I hope you feel better. I'll let you know about tomorrow. Okay?"

"All right, and I do hope to see you tomorrow, Sydney. It's very, very important."

"I'll let you know," she said. "Good-bye, Rikki."

Sydney clicked off the phone; then she closed her address book and stuck it back in her purse. She would give Eli ten more minutes, then she'd go to the beach again and have the lifeguard make another announcement.

There was no point in calling Kyle back just yet. She glanced at the e-mail she'd been writing to Angela's sister. She reread the second paragraph:

I got your kind e-mail today. I'm glad the flowers arrived. Do you by any chance know the name of the florist who delivered them? I'm sorry to bother you with this during such a difficult time, but...

If no one from the network or her crew sent the flowers in her name, who had? Who would have had access to the addresses of Leah and Jared's parents as well as Angela's sister?

Sydney gazed at the address book sticking out of the top of her purse. She remembered the newspaper article about Angela's death. They'd found her purse by that open window on the fourteenth floor of that office building in Chicago. Was Angela's address book or Blackberry in her purse?

Jared and Leah had been murdered in their home. It couldn't have been too difficult to find Leah's parents' address--in a notebook or computer somewhere in their apartment.

Until then, Sydney had clung to the notion that someone she knew had meant well by sending those flowers in her name. But the person sending those flowers must have been with the victims at the time of their violent deaths, and he hadn't meant well at all.

Eli knew his mother was probably worried about him.

The next Number 11 bus left at 3:26 from a bus stop not far from where he was right now: the Seattle Public Library on Fourth Avenue.

He'd always thought the ultramodern glass and steel building was cool looking from the outside when he went on trips downtown with his mom or Uncle Kyle. But he'd never stepped inside its doors until an hour ago. The bus from North Seattle had dropped him off downtown, and he'd decided to try the library to look up Loretta and Earl Sayers on the Internet. He didn't want to use his mom's computer for this kind of research.

Eli was temporarily distracted--and fascinated--by the angles and grids of the library's interior, the high ceilings, and the way the sun reflected off the glass walls. He took a tall escalator up to the computer room, where a librarian helped him get online. She was a pretty young Asian in her late teens with short black hair that had a pink streak in it. "This place is awesome," he murmured to the librarian.