Matters of Faith (29 page)

I had never met anyone who worked for the FBI before. I thought they would be different, more . . . streamlined. A piercing, intelligent gaze, edgy, clever dialogue, sharply parted hair. What they looked like the most, to me, was someone Marshall might have grown into.

Except now Marshall's future was going to be limited in a way I'd never even considered before. Working for the FBI was quite likely out of the question, as were many things now. Even had this happened before Marshall was eighteen, they'd found Ada's sealed juvenile records. This would follow Marshall for the rest of his life. It would follow them all for the rest of their lives, though, so why should he be spared?

We retreated from these meetings to Meghan's room, now moved to the end of a hallway after our meeting with hospital administrators about the media interest in the case. Tessa came with us for everything. I was sometimes surprised to find myself in the bathroom without her. Hernandez and Rhoades kept their distance, as did Mingus, and once Marshall missed his court appearance he had little to say, but shook his head often. He had not, of course, been paid, and Cal wasn't yet about to offer to take on more of Marshall's mistakes.

Our tenuous connection lasted only in Meghan's room. We came together over our daughter. He continued to bring in movies, and I continued to demand that she open her eyes. We each supported the other's methods, and the doctors did too. The neuropsychologist came over from Miami again, and continued to say the same things the neurologist in the hospital said:
Good brain activity, there is hope here, hang on, keep doing what you're doing
.

But they also continued to say the same things the nurses and other doctors said:
We don't know, so much we don't know, don't know, don't know, don't know
.

Cal continued to track Marshall's phone usage, but no outgoing calls were made. I continued to try him, but his message box had filled quickly with the messages from me and Mingus and Cal, and all we got was a recording that the mailbox was full.

Cal also had the idea to track Marshall's credit cards, the two we'd given him for emergencies and necessities at school, but he'd not used either of them. I got the feeling that Cal at least had a grudging respect for the fact that Marshall wasn't so stupid as to have used anything that could lead anyone to his whereabouts, combined with absolute fury that he was one of the people who couldn't find him.

He continued to go back to the
Trill
each night. That had not changed. Perhaps more significantly, the day after Marshall missed his court appearance, I went home.

Sandy met me there. She had a basket of vegetables and fresh bread dangling over her arm as she got out of her car and followed me up the steps. I had been home, of course, to retrieve clothes, personal items, more of Meghan's things to decorate her room. But this was different. I was going to sleep in my bed.

Everyone had an opinion on it. Everyone agreed it was time. One nurse had even suggested that Meghan was waiting for me to leave to open her eyes, that she was waiting for a quiet time, to come to terms with what she would find by herself.

Of course, I knew that was a load of crap. But I knew what people were trying to do. Cal made me step on the digital scale by the nurses' station one day, and I was shocked to find that I'd lost almost twenty pounds. I'd noticed my clothes were loose, but it simply didn't register as important.

As Sandy followed me into the kitchen I said, “Oh, watch the—” But it was too late. She yelped as the screen door caught her heel, and for a moment I closed my eyes and wanted to cry. It felt like a bad omen, but then she laughed and I opened my eyes in surprise. She plopped her basket on the kitchen table, obscuring my view of the blue ceramic bowl I'd placed back on the table after contemplating giving it to Ada, and she never noticed my momentary lapse.

“Don't worry about it,” she said, reaching into her basket and pulling out beautiful tomatoes still on their vine and arranging them in the bowl as if she'd been here a hundred times before. “I love those old wood screen doors. I hate the new ones, all plastic and metal. Snagging my heel is just part of the character. Mine does it all the time too.”

I looked at it skeptically. “You don't think we should replace it? It doesn't hold tight, it lets bugs in, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what a screen door shouldn't do.”

Sandy looked up at me in surprise at my serious tone. I wasn't sure why it was important, but that damn screen door had played too large a part in my family, if only in my own mind, over the last couple of years for me to allow her comment to pass.

She must have seen something on my face because she took me seriously and placed the two jars of preserves she'd pulled from the basket on the table. She turned and gazed at the screen door, walked over and pulled it shut by its center bar, and secured it with the hook and eye, pulled once or twice on it, inspected where the edges met the doorframe.

“Well,” she said, “it's your door, of course, and if you want a new one you should get a new one. It's a little warped, but overall it seems sound, and it mostly does what it's supposed to do. And I guess I feel like sometimes people get rid of things too easily now, even when they're perfectly good, even when they're better, because they're just tired of them and have stopped seeing the beauty in them, or seeing them at all. And maybe when they catch your heel, hurt you a little, hurt the ones you love, you just want to get rid of the whole thing, rather than fix the little thing.”

She turned around and looked at me with a troubled and questioning twist to her mouth. “Just my opinion,” she said quietly.

I nodded, took a deep breath, and smiled at her. “Peach?” I asked, touching the preserve jars. “They're beautiful.”

“These were my mother's jars,” she said, holding them up to the light, the preserves within glowing like topaz and amber.

“I'll get them back to you,” I assured her, but she looked at me quizzically.

“That's okay,” she said. “So, why don't I put a little something together to eat while you go have a nice, hot shower? Take your time, I'll find my way around. You know, Stacey's home alone tonight while Kevin and the kids are up at his folks. Want me to call her?”

I didn't, not really. But then I didn't think I had wanted Sandy here, and yet I was almost desperately relieved that she was. I tried to sound casual as I said, “Sure,” but my voice broke when I said it, and Sandy smiled at me encouragingly.

“Okay, go on then. You're going to feel so much better.”

I didn't know how that would happen, but I trailed my way through the house, taking in the dust and the stale air. I didn't lapse into a morose study of our family pictures the way I had the last time I was here. I didn't go smell Meghan's peony sheets, I didn't try to decipher clues in Marshall's room, I didn't agonize about Cal when I walked into our master bedroom.

Instead, I looked at our bed and almost swooned. Yes, I wanted to get clean in my own old, subway-tiled shower. I wanted to take the time to condition my hair and shave my legs (my God, my legs hadn't felt like this since I was eleven, and maybe not even then). And I wanted to slide open my dresser drawer and pull out and pull on my softest jammies. But what I wanted, most of all at that second, was a
bed
.

I pulled the comforter off, ripped off the sheets and pillowcases, and jammed them in the washing machine in the hall closet with an overloaded cup of detergent and four glugs of bleach. I would run it on an extra rinse cycle, dry them with extra dryer sheets, and sink into them later with the fitted sheet taut beneath me and the comforter pulled up to my ears.

The shower was better than I expected, even with the loss of water pressure and shortened hot water cycle from the washing machine running. By the time I managed to fight my way through the thickets on my legs, the water was running cold, but I was happy for that, too, because it energized me enough to not just crawl onto the bare mattress right out of the shower.

By the time I got downstairs, Stacey had arrived with a bottle of wine and some grocery bags that were piled on the floor of the kitchen. She smiled shyly at me as I came through the swinging door, my wet hair wound up into a clip, dressed in pajama pants and a tank top, and my face shiny with moisturizer.

I didn't know Stacey very well. Kevin and Cal were friends, but friends the way men were often friends, at work, talking fish, gas prices . . . fish. Of course Stacey and I knew of each other, the way wives are aware of other wives, curious about each other, but enough time had gone by without making a concerted effort that we had grown content to let the opportunity fade.

Now that contentment was a bit embarrassing. Her husband had worked overtime to take care of my husband's business when we needed it, and yet she'd never been to our home, and we'd never exchanged more than polite greetings.

“I'm so glad you're here,” I said, trying to sound warm, certain I simply sounded tired.

“I'm s-s-sorry I d-d—” She stopped and took a deep breath, and Sandy laid a hand on her arm.

“Just take your time, honey,” Sandy said cheerfully. “Chloe's a friend.”

Stacey nodded. “I-I know. I'm sorry, I didn't, come, to the hospital.”

I am sure that I loaded my karmic scale so heavily at that moment that I am doomed to come back forever more as some dirt-scuffling, vermin-eating, low life-expectancy cur on the outskirts of Hell. Forgive me: I laughed.

I did. I laughed. But I suddenly realized that everything wasn't about me. For the first time in weeks, maybe years, yes, very possibly years, I didn't need to take on all the blame for something. Maybe I didn't know Stacey well because
Stacey
had been too uncomfortable to meet strangers without a compelling reason. Shame on me for not knowing, but... it wasn't me.

Stacey and her stutter suddenly and swiftly decapitated my inner martyr, and, oh, how I enjoyed seeing her die, even if she was a Hydra and would come back with a vengeance tomorrow, for right this second I felt freed.

They both looked at me, stunned for a moment as my laughter went on, but Stacey's arms rose around me as I threw myself at her and held her tight. What had it taken for her to get in the car and come over here? To support a woman she'd met once and said a few well-rehearsed words to?

“I'm so glad you're here,” I said in between my gasps for breath. “Oh, I'm
so
glad you're here. Thank you.”

“Okay,” she said. “Th-thank you.”

“All righty, I think we could all use a glass of wine,” Sandy said, pulling a chair out for me and raising her eyebrows at Stacey as I sat and caught my breath.

“Please, let me,” I said, pulling the wine toward me and grabbing the corkscrew—not mine, I noted—lying on the table. I stuck the sharp tip right through the foil and threw my newfound energy into getting the cork out.

Sandy and Stacey bustled around, and as I poured the third glass of wine they had plates of fresh bread, fruit, preserves, and cheese on the table and were making small talk about the condition of the church steps. They finally sat down in the chairs to each side of me and wrapped their fingers around their wineglass stems, and we immediately all got shy.

“Really,” I said, “thank you so much for being here. I'm not sure I could come back here alone.”

“You n-n-needed a... break,” Stacey said, not looking at me.

I took a sip of the cool chardonnay and folded my hands around the bowl of the glass. I know that wine enthusiasts would shudder, but I preferred my wine, both red and white, warmer than the recommended temperatures. I rarely drank to excess, mostly because I drank slowly, and if white wine was cold I seemed to mistake it for water and downed it as if I'd just gone for a run.

I had no interest in getting drunk. I'd not forgotten Meghan and had no plans to, and I needed to remain alert in case the hospital, Cal, Marshall, anyone called. So I warmed my wine and formulated an apology.

“Stacey, I wasn't laughing at you—”

“It's okay,” she said quickly.

“You must think I'm losing it,” I said ruefully. “I am sorry, Stacey. I don't know what came over me. I was just feeling badly for not having had you over before, and then you came out with your stutter, and I guess I realized that maybe you were just shy. It felt . . . good, I know that sounds awful, but it felt good
remembering
that other people had problems, and I felt like an ass for forgetting that. And it felt good just to feel something different for a minute.”

Stacey nodded, but Sandy shook her head. I sighed. “I had been thinking that Stacey thought I was a jerk and didn't like me for being distant. But I don't know her at all. And maybe I'm not the only distant one.”

“I am,” Stacey said.

“But—” Sandy started.

“It's t-true,” she insisted. “You're not. You take . . . over.”

I grinned at Sandy, who looked slightly affronted. “In a good way,” I added, and Stacey and I smiled at each other in understanding. I slathered a piece of bread with preserves and moaned as I took a bite. I couldn't remember ever tasting anything so good in my life.

Sandy drank faster than Stacey and I and kept pushing me to eat more, and by the time the buzzer on the dryer sounded for my sheets, we were talking like friends. Maybe not old friends, but there was something to be said for the conversation of new friends, with the subtle probing questions, the quick retreats from noticeably sensitive subjects, and the gentle competition to be clever.

They followed me up the stairs, and grew quiet as they passed the pictures along the wall. I gave them a very short tour: “That's Marshall's room, Meghan's is there, and here we have the laundry.” I pulled out the warm, sweet-smelling sheets and headed toward the master, Stacey trailing behind me with a dropped pillowcase and Sandy behind her, peering up the stairs to the third floor.