A Quiet Neighbor (36 page)

I took a moment to process the news. I wasn’t
sure what my face said, but inside I crippled in pain. Everything hurt. Even
blinking, which I seemed to be doing a lot, was difficult. I didn’t know what
the meeting would entail, but I thought—or hoped—that he was going to tell me
that he thought of me and since seeing me again he couldn’t stop thinking about
me. I thought—or hoped—he felt something.

Tension mounted as the silence stretched from
one caramel macchiato order to three and then five. I never realized so many
people enjoy the sugary drink. Sometimes I laugh at people who order a caramel
macchiato without the caramel syrup on top. Don’t they realize there’s no
caramel flavor in the drink itself? Don’t they realize it’s not even a real
macchiato? Why don’t they just order a vanilla latte with whipped cream? People
never cease to amaze me.

“Walnut?”

“Yeah, after everything that happened, Tess and
I want to make our marriage work. We’re going to open a gastropub together and
we think Walnut would be a great place to start over. The kids would be near
their grandparents and we could be a family again. Anyways, Ky, I wanted to see
you before we left. I wanted to make sure everything was fine between us. So we
could both have some closure. Seeing you again, it made me realize I was
holding onto the past and maybe you were too. We need to move on.”

“Of course we’re fine. And you should move on,
I have. What happened was so long ago, it shouldn’t affect who we are today.”
My voice sounded strange to my ears but Brett didn’t seem to notice.

“Right,” he smiled, “water under the bridge.”

“Water under the bridge.”

After the meeting with Brett, I delved into
work as if it were the only thing keeping me sane. The department was concerned
but grateful, especially Declan. All the cases I was able to solve during the
past few weeks have directly boosted his rep in the Department.

Once he was promoted to lieutenant, Declan
became a nervous wreck, drowned in paperwork and responsibilities. His
grandfather, George Malone, retired as chief shortly thereafter, and the burden
to make his Granddad proud was eating away at him, marinating his subconscious
in stress hormones, slowly cooking his amygdala. Declan is a good cop—one of
the few in the department not to antagonize and ridicule me for being a woman
in a man’s profession—but he just needs to break away from the stigma of being
George Malone’s prodigy so he can relax and find his groove.

Pickering demanded I slow down. He cautioned
that if I wasn’t careful, he’d have to visit me in the hospital. Realizing he
was just worried about me as a friend and not as his partner, I cut him some
slack and didn’t go crazy on him. I knew he was being genuine; there were no
doughnut holes in it for him this time.

But I didn’t want to slow down. I didn’t want
time to allow myself to think. Even visits with Gramps shortened.

Last week, Pickering invited me over to have
dinner with his family. His wife was supposedly making her famous Chicken
Florentine Casserole, which she adjusted to halve the fat and sodium for Sean’s
ticker. I didn’t feel like pretending to enjoy a well-balanced meal with a
well-balanced family, so I politely declined.

Eve, on the other hand, stood by faithfully
without saying a single word. She let me suffer alone, because she knew that
interfering would only strain our relationship. But a few nights ago she
stepped into the Precinct after-hours, dropped a large tub of spumoni gelato
and two spoons onto my desk and demanded some face time. Being the good friend
that she is, she brought a plate to put under the gelato container so it
wouldn’t leave condensation marks on my desk.

That broke me. I had been on the edge for
weeks, my nerves getting more and more threadbare each moment. All it took was
Eve’s sympathetic gesture to open the floodgates, and a condensation catching
plate.

Cradling me on the cold cement floor, Eve
stroked my dark hair, smoothing out the strands that fell carelessly on my
tear-stricken face. With each swell of ugly sobs, Eve held me tighter. Eve
opened her ears and heart to me and tried desperately to absorb my pain.

After hours of listening to me explain my story
about all the years Brett had held the key to my locked heart and how my shame
and his absence chipped away at me each passing day, she yanked me up by my
shoulders, brushed the hairs and tears from my face, stared straight into my
eyes, and said, “Snap out of it, Ky. You wallowed, you cried, you broke. Now
it’s time to pick up the pieces and start over.”

Eve’s voice was calm and stern. She lowered her
face to intercept my downturned gaze, making sure I was coherent before
continuing. “Just listen and hear me out.”

I nodded.

“So there’s this guy I know—”

“Eve, I—”

Eve raised a hand, gripping my shoulder a
little harder. “Listen, Ky. I’m not going to sit back and watch you tear
yourself apart. I gave you your space and now I’m demanding your cooperation. I
want my best friend back. I don’t care if you despise the guy, love the guy, or
couldn’t care less about the guy, but you have to go on this date, and you must
come back with a full report. This is your assignment as my best friend. If you
don’t follow through, we’re through.”

That woke me up. “What?”

“You heard me,” Eve’s lips spread out in a
smirk, “we’re no longer friends if you don’t go on this blind date.”

Glaring through puffy eyes, I said, “You’re
crazy. You’re giving me an ultimatum?”

Meeting my glare head on, Eve smiled and said,
“Yes, I am. And yes, you aren’t the first person to ever call me crazy, but I’m
also dead serious. Don’t test me.”

“But—Eve, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay, spill.”

Sniffling, I shook off the tears and stared
squarely back into Eve’s eyes. “Eve, you have to promise me that what I’m about
to tell you goes into the vault. You can’t repeat it to anyone, not even to
Toki and Lulu. Got it?”

“You’re crazy too, but okay, I got it. Spill.”

“I’m a virgin.”

Eve smiled. “Like that’s new information. I
already knew that.”

“What?” Flabbergasted, I sank back into my
pity-me position.

“Consider the facts. One, you’ve been in love
with this Brett guy since you were eleven. Two, that day when you made your
proposition to him, he didn’t bite. Probably because you guys were caught
before he had the chance. I mean, getting caught by your mom and baby sister is
a bit of a mood-kill. If, on the other hand, you waited until he was alone in
the house first and then came over…then, well, he was seventeen, so you fill in
the blanks. And three, ever since then, you’ve been on a handful of first dates
and no juicy details. In conclusion, what do you get? One twenty-eight-year-old,
sexually frustrated virgin that desperately needs to get laid. Have you tried a
vibrator? Maybe you need to practice on one. Hmmm…maybe I should get you one
before this date. There’s this rule that you should never give up the goods on
a first date, but that’s a load of crap. Take it from me, doll, your first time
is always better with a guy you barely even know. If it doesn’t work out, hell,
who cares? Besides—”

“Eve! Stop it. I got it. No, I don’t need you
to get me a vibrator. No, I’m not going to sleep with this guy on our blind
date. And I’m not sexually frustrated.”

“Okay, sure. Whatever you say. It’s not like
I’m a badass homicide detective. I’m just the lady that handles the dead. And
do you know what the dead say to me when I’m cutting them open?”

I sighed. “No Eve, what do the dead say to you?”

“ ‘Man, I should’ve had more sex before I
landed on your table.’ That’s what they say to me. Think about that.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Eve…thanks.”

Getting up from the ground, Eve stretched,
rolling the kinks out from her back, neck, shoulders, and legs. “Heck. That’s
what friends are for.” Grabbing her purse, she headed for the door. Without
looking back, she waved her hand and said, “Ta-Ta. Get a good night’s rest,
hun. The instructions for the blind date will be waiting for you on your desk
by zero eight hundred tomorrow.”

Still crumpled in my back pocket are the
instructions Eve left me:

Dress hot. Smell fresh. Wear
killer heels. No undies.

Eight o’clock at Donovan’s.

Be ten minutes late.

When the note came attached to a plain brown
box, I had a sinking feeling there was going to be some unwanted paraphernalia,
but relaxed once I opened it and found a banana.

I ate the banana and went on with my day.

The guy was a meathead. Ate too much, talked
too much, and leered at me too long. Not my idea of a match made in heaven, but
I got the gist. Got me out into the mix.

At least now I have something amusing to share
with Gramps. Tightening my ponytail, I stride toward Room 301. As I cross the
threshold, my nerves fizzle and a lump of grief forms in its place. Gramps hasn’t
moved from his position since the last time I saw him, but the sunflowers I
placed on the lacquered birch table are gone. The flowers must have wilted
before I had a chance to replace them—the sour sickening smell of rotting
flowers still lingers in the room. I look down at my hands and they are empty.
How
could I forget the flowers?
I choke on a backlog of tears, the guilt
overpowering. I shouldn’t have left him alone.

Suddenly, an alarm goes off in the room and two
nurses rush in, commanding their stations on either side of the neighbor’s bed.
Chaos erupts in the tiny room. They fiddle with his tubes and change out his
bedding.

Giving them their space and the man his
privacy, I move toward the window and look out through the open blinds onto the
filled parking lot—handicap and visitor’s spaces alike. My gaze turns toward
24-Hour Fitness where hundreds of bodies writhe and swarm behind glass. There are
too many people these days. And all of them will need medical attention
someday, sooner or later.

The nurse with the light auburn hair and splash
of freckles hovers over the man’s bed, blocking him from my view. Strange, that
in all these months I have been visiting while he has been here, I have never
actually seen the man who occupies the bed next to Gramps. Absently I shrug my
shoulders. If I cared enough I could have walked right over and peered behind
the blue curtain, but I never had the curiosity to do so. I respect the man’s
privacy, especially when he is so ill and vulnerable. If the roles were
reversed, I wouldn’t want a stranger peering down at me.

The second nurse, with a crinkle of graying
black hair hanging like a nest from her flat head, rushes in and out of the
room, each time returning with a new object in her trembling hands. She must be
new, and this is probably the first distress call of her late-blooming career.
After the patient stabilizes, the strain on the second nurse’s face relaxes
considerably.

Understanding the toll a scare like that can
have on a green nurse, the nurse with the freckles straightens her rumpled
scrubs—green, the same color as the drab hospital furniture that surrounds
them—and turns to face the suddenly pallid nurse. “Candace, I’m thirsty. Would
you mind going on a coffee run?”

Candace’s eyes brighten in relief. “Sure. I can
do that. What do you want?”

“Get me a large iced caramel macchiato.”

Candace nods, eager to escape the suffocating
situation. “Anything else, Connie?”

Fiddling with the cords attached to the large
beeping monitor stationed beside the patient’s bed, Connie says, “Uh…tell them
to forget the whipped cream and syrup. I can do without the extra calories
today.”

Just as I smirk, I hear a loud hacking sound
coming from the patient behind the curtain. I could have sworn the patient was
laughing. The hacking sound gets Candace’s large body moving swiftly out the
door. Out of sight, out of mind—not her responsibility.

Connie hands the patient a paper cup filled
with water; he drinks it greedily. “There, there,” Connie says as she pats his
back and gives his pillows an extra courtesy fluff. “Feel better?”

The patient doesn’t say anything.

Connie adjusts the numbers on the screen and
finishes filling out the log on the patient’s chart before leaving. Finally,
she addresses my presence with a quick nod and closes the door behind her. This
time the blue curtain is left hanging loose near the head of the bed, exposing
the patient’s haggard and restless face. His eyes are closed and breath uneven.
His cue-ball head is liver spotted and protruding veins run beneath the surface
of his loose skin.

Embarrassed for staring, I turn away and grab
hold of Gramps’ limp hand.

“What, no flowers this time?”

The man’s voice startles me. I turn to face him.
His eyes are now parted open. A sliver of hazel shows through the crusty yellow
flakes that surround his heavy lids.

“You noticed?”

“Of course I noticed. Sometimes the smell gives
me a headache.”