Flirting With Pete: A Novel (47 page)

That said, there were other reasons why Casey wanted to help Meg. Gratitude was one— Casey appreciated all that Meg had done for Connie. Compassion was another— Casey ached at what Meg had experienced growing up, and wanted to help make things better now. Yet another was a growing affection— Meg was eminently likable, in her innocent, agreeable way. And then— the kicker— they were cousins. Casey suspected she would forever feel protective of Meg, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

Holding her arm, Casey led her down the stairs.

A pair of EMTs had already arrived and done enough of an examination to deem Darden beyond help. Having covered the upper half of his body, they were talking with one of the policemen. The other three, along with Jordan and Gregory, were with Sharon Davies. The lawyer was talking, using terms like “necessity defense” and “defense of another.” Casey caught enough of it to understand that since Sharon had shot Darden to stop him from shooting someone else, she would never be charged with his death.

Slipping her arm free of Casey’s, Meg went to her father’s body. She knelt, pulled back the sheet with a shaky hand, sat back on her heels. “I haven’t seen him in seven years,” she told Casey in a small voice.

“You had no choice.”

“He loved me.”

“Yes.”

“Too much.”

Casey was surprised that Meg could put it so well, given the storm of emotion she had to feel at that moment.

“Maybe it’s better this way?” Meg asked.

“I think so,” Casey said. She couldn’t imagine another scenario in which Darden knew where Jenny was and would leave her alone. His need for her had become an obsession that wasn’t about to ease on its own. Death was the only scenario in which Jenny’s fear ended for good. Jenny had known that seven years ago. It had taken this long, with an unexpected twist, for it to come to pass.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Meg asked Casey, still looking at Darden.

Casey was about to say no, which was surely what Meg needed to hear. But she hesitated. She had felt Connie’s presence more than once. She could even argue that Angus carried a bit of Connie’s spirit.

Meg looked up at her. “Will he hang around here and haunt me?”

She sounded so frightened that Casey said a conclusive, “No. We’ll make sure of that, you and I.” The EMTs returned. She took Meg by the arms and gently led her away from the body. “He’s dead,” she repeated, close by her ear. This was exposure therapy at its most opportune. “You’ve seen it right here with your own two eyes. Is he yelling at you now?”

“No.”

“Is he scowling at you?”

“No.”

“Is he touching you?”

“No.”

“He was an angry, unhappy man. Maybe now he’ll find peace.”

Meg’s eyes were bright with tears. “I’d like that. I don’t want him angry and unhappy. He was my father.”

The police had questions, and there were arrangements to be made for returning Darden to Walker for burial. Meg decided— wisely, for her emotional well-being, Casey thought— that Jenny should remain dead. She had no desire to return to Walker. She was Meg now, and she liked her life.

The official story, as told to Edmund O’Keefe by Jordan in a phone call later that afternoon, was that, overcome with suspicion, Darden had come after Jordan with a gun, there had been a struggle, and Darden had been shot.

Sharon was the only one from Walker who had seen Jenny, but she empathized strongly enough with Jenny’s situation to keep her name out of it. In so doing, of course, she also kept her own daughter’s name out of the story, which was an important factor.

By late afternoon, the Court had been cleared. Casey and Jordan returned to the garden and insisted that Meg stay with them there. It was a peaceful place, separate even from what had happened in the front of the townhouse. There was hope here. There was growth here. Jordan pointed that out, freely naming the flowers this time. He showed Casey the hydrangea buds, the early peonies, and the last of the sweet woodruff. He explained that the heliotrope would bloom in tight little clusters through most of the summer, that the agapanthus and viburnum, both white, were excellent as cut flowers, that the bluebells would soon go dormant and that he would plant petunias in their place. He told her which plants were perennials, how they bloomed fresh each year, the same in some ways but different in others. He knelt by the gardenias, seeming especially fond of those. They were just at the start of their bloom, yet their fragrance was rich.

Listening to him talk, Casey was charmed. She followed him from flower to flower, while the birds flew in and out, and the bees flitted around. The fountain trickled endlessly in a steady, soothing stream.

Meg didn’t say much, nor did she sit still for long. She was jumpy, out of her chair at the slightest noise. She calmed when Jordan gave her little chores to do, such as deadheading the rhododendrons, removing lilac blossoms that were past their prime, and pulling the beginnings of weeds from between the stones on the path. She was clearly happiest when she was active. Idleness allowed her to remember and to worry.

Casey identified with that. When she was busy, she didn’t dwell on Caroline’s condition. So, after Jordan’s lesson, she spent a while doing paperwork for insurance claims and, when that was done, went inside to phone the next batch of her clients and tell them that her office had moved.

She was about to return to the garden when Jordan sauntered inside, bringing a warmth into the cool room. He had a pencil behind his ear and a hand behind his back. He seemed pleased with himself.

She gave him a puzzled little smile.

The hidden hand came forward and put a paper napkin on the desk. On it was a pencil sketch of a gardenia blossom, like those starting to open outside. No, she realized, lifting the napkin in amazement. It was more than a gardenia. Embedded in the petals were Casey’s own features, so subtly placed but true-to-life that she was stunned. Eyes, nose, mouth— he had captured them all, even the shape of her face in the heart of the flower, rimmed by her hair, wildly curling round and about the elegant spray of the petals.

So simply drawn, so beautiful. She flattened the sketch to her thudding heart. “I’m going to frame this.”

His cheeks grew red. “Don’t frame it. It’s just a fun little thing. I wanted to make you smile.”

“You’re very talented,” she said, and felt a moment’s awe. “Artist. Gardener. Savior. I haven’t thanked you for rescuing me from my latest blunder.”

“What blunder?”

“Rushing to Walker. Giving my business card to Dudley Wright. Bringing Darden here.”

“Was that a blunder?”

“It sure would have been if you’d been killed. It sure would have been if
Meg
had been killed.”

Leaning across the desk, he curved long fingers around her neck. “Hey, neither of those things happened. What happened,” he said as his smile turned admiring, “is that you forced the issue. By going up there, you brought things to a head. Meg’s free now. So, apparently, is Sharon Davies’s daughter. You did good, Casey Ellis. Connie would have been proud.”

The warmth inside Casey swelled. He hadn’t had to say that. He certainly hadn’t had to say it with such conviction. But he seemed to know that it was what she needed most to hear. She could love a man capable of that kind of caring, could love him in a heartbeat.

That realization was jarring in its suddenness. But Casey couldn’t shed it. It settled inside her— nestled there, germinated and grew— giving her cause for thought as afternoon became evening. Shortly before nine, when the nursing home phoned to say that Caroline was seizing again, Casey couldn’t have turned anywhere else.

Casey hadn’t been so jittery since the first days after the accident, when Caroline had hovered between life and death. This wasn’t much different, a stubborn little voice in her said. Caroline had always managed to pull through. Contrary to the doctors’ expectations, she had stayed alive for three long years. A few more wouldn’t hurt. A few more, and a cure might be found— a miracle waker-upper, a breakthrough brain-damage mender, something,
anything
.

Casey didn’t want to be frightened. She certainly hadn’t given up hope. But all the stubborn little voices in the world couldn’t soothe her as they used to. The violence of Darden’s death earlier that day hadn’t helped.

Jordan drove. Casey sat in the passenger’s seat. Meg slipped into the back before either of them could suggest she stay at the townhouse— not that Casey would have suggested it anyway. She was filled with a sense of dread, but it was different from the hollowness she had lived with these three years. Having people with her seemed to help.

They rode in silence and were quickly at the Fenway. Casey was met at the third-floor desk by the doctor on call. He was somber.

“Frankly, I’m amazed she’s still with us,” he said in a hushed voice as they walked quickly down the hall. “These seizures are stronger than the ones she’s had. We have your do-not-resuscitate order, so we didn’t take any invasive action, but we did sedate her. The seizure ended, though it took a far larger dose this time. That brings an additional danger.”

Casey had an inkling of that. She knew enough about medicine and its effects. Still she had to ask. “What danger?”

“Her system is slowing down on its own. If we slow it down too much with medication, she dies.”

“But if you don’t stop the seizures, she dies anyway.”

“Yes. And with a struggle. We call that a ‘bad’ death. We’d much prefer that she be comfortable. Then it’s a ‘good’ death.”

“Hence the sedative.”

“Yes.”

Ann Holmes was with Caroline, bringing Casey a small measure of solace. Of all of the nurses, she was the one Casey trusted most. As they entered the room, she was adjusting one of two drips that hung from the IV pole. The oxygen tube was in place. The heart monitor beeped.

Caroline’s breathing was loud and coarse, but she looked much as she always did at night— on her back now, with her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and her hands fixed on the sheets. The only signs of a recent disturbance were her hair and the bedding, both of which were mussed.

Going to the far side of the bed, Casey smoothed wisps of still-beautiful silver hair behind Caroline’s ear. Taking her mother’s hand, she pressed it to her heart. She didn’t speak. Her throat was thick with emotion.

“She’s had a rough time of it,” Ann said softly.

Casey nodded.

“Nurses sense things,” Ann went on in that same low and gentle voice. “We can’t tell you how or why, but, even aside from physical changes, we know when a patient like Caroline is making a statement. You need to help her, Casey. You need to let her know it’s okay.”

Casey’s heart clenched.

“She’s ready,” Ann whispered.

“I’m not,” Casey whispered back. She had been warned of this moment. She had been walked through the ways in which patients approached death, the things they did, the things they needed— and she would have been ready for it all, had it happened within a month or two of the accident. But when Caroline didn’t die, Casey had grown complacent. She told herself that recovery would simply take time. She had gotten used to living with hope.

Now Ann was saying it was time to let go. They had definitely reached a different place. How to accept that?

“Is she sleeping?” Meg whispered from close by Casey’s shoulder.

Casey cleared her throat. Quietly she replied, “In her way.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

“Mmm,” Casey hedged, then, without looking at Ann, admitted, “I’m not sure. Probably not.”

“Why is she making that noise?”

Casey darted a look at Jordan. He stood at the foot of the bed, a solid comfort. Taking strength from that, she told Meg, “There’s stuff that gets in the way of her breathing. She doesn’t have the strength to clear it, so it just stays there.”

“Is she in pain?”

“No.”

“I’m glad.” Meg was quiet for several minutes, then added, “She’s very pretty.”

Casey smiled. Throat knotting again, she nodded in agreement. Caroline was indeed very pretty. She would always be so in Casey’s mind.

Taking her mother’s hand, she gently extended the wrist and straightened the slender fingers, one, then the next, and the next. Interlacing them with her own, she turned Caroline’s hand over. In the process, she got a look at the underside of her arm. It was darker in color than the top.

She looked in alarm at Ann, who said, “It’s a circulatory thing.” What she didn’t say was that it was not a good sign, but the regret on her face sent the message— and, besides, Casey had known what it meant. Well beyond what she’d been told at the start, she had read most everything there was to read about complications and signs and prognoses of people in Caroline’s condition.

Everything was pointing one way. Casey’s heart was heavy with that admission. She rubbed Caroline’s arm, thinking it might help with the “circulatory thing,” knowing it wouldn’t, needing to do it anyway.

“Will she wake up?” Meg asked.

Casey wanted to say yes. Desperately, she did. But she couldn’t get the word out.

Jordan shifted position, drawing Casey’s eye. He made a tiny movement, asking if she wanted him to take Meg out to the hall. Casey gave a quick shake of her head. She didn’t mind having Meg there. Like Jordan, Meg was a reminder of her life now. That reminder helped ground her in reality. It was probably what she needed most.

“I hope she’ll wake up,” she finally told Meg, “but it’s not looking good.”

It didn’t look any better two hours later. Caroline’s breathing had grown even louder. No sooner had the doctor suctioned out fluid than it was replaced by more. Her head was already elevated; they raised it again, with negligible effect. Likewise, none of Casey’s arm rubbing, face touching, and soft talking appeared to make a difference.

She had never been more frustrated. Watching Caroline mark time, as she’d done these three long years, had been hard, but sitting helplessly by while she deteriorated was an absolute agony.

Meg was dozing in a chair. Jordan stood near Casey, who sat on the bed by Caroline’s side.