The Blackstone Chronicles (27 page)

Crossing the room first to the window on the left of the altar, then to the one on the right, Andrea pulled the heavy drapes back. As the bright daylight washed away the candles’ glow, the room seemed to change. The walls—once painted white—were grimy with the soot of the thousands of candles that had been burned in the chapel, and the upholstery on the prie-dieu was revealed to be stained and threadbare. The statues of the saints, their colors showing garishly in the daylight, were as grime-streaked as the walls. “Why wouldn’t I have
gotten out of here as soon as I could? What kind of woman would raise a child in a place like this?”

“But she loves you—” Rebecca began.

Andrea didn’t let her finish. “It wasn’t love, Rebecca! It was insanity. Don’t you get it? She’s nuts. Or isn’t it just her anymore? Has she gotten to you too now? Or was it the accident? Did it make you so stupid you can’t see what she’s like? God! Why did I come back here?” Throwing her cigarette onto the carpet, she ground it out with her heel, then stormed out of the room, and raced up the stairs.

Rebecca picked up the cigarette butt and did her best to scratch the burned surface of the carpet away, then hurriedly pulled the drapes, plunging the room once more into the gloom that hid its flaws. Blowing out the candles, she pulled the chapel door closed just as Andrea reappeared at the foot of the stairs, wearing a coat and clutching the keys to her car in her hand.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked.

Andrea’s eyes fixed darkly on her for a brief second. “Why would you care?” she demanded. Then, before Rebecca could reply, she was gone.

An hour later Rebecca had cleaned up the kitchen, her room next to the dining room, and Andrea’s room too. She’d been on her way downstairs to have a last cup of coffee before going to work, but when she heard the music in the chapel begin and realized her aunt was back from church, she changed her mind and started down Harvard Street toward the library instead. She was still half an hour early, though, and since Germaine Wagner had never given her a key to the library, she decided to go over to the Red Hen and have her cup of coffee there. She was just pulling the door to the diner open when she heard a car horn honk and turned to see Oliver Metcalf nosing his car into an empty slot in front of the movie theater next to the diner.

“If you sit with me, I’ll pay,” Oliver said after he’d parked and approached her.

“You don’t have to do that,” Rebecca replied. “I have my own money, you know.”

“Great,” Oliver said, holding the diner’s door open. “Then you can pay. How’s that?”

“That would be nice,” Rebecca told him. “Everybody’s always offering to pay for me, like I’m still a little girl. And it’s stupid, since I’m almost thirty.”

Oliver feigned shock. “I had no idea,” he said. “If you’re that old, then you can buy me a doughnut too.” They settled onto a pair of stools at the counter, and Oliver smiled at her. “How did Andrea like her present?”

Rebecca’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I thought she liked it when I gave it to her last night, but this morning she just seemed to be mad about everything.” As Oliver listened, she recounted everything that had happened since she’d seen him yesterday. “I just don’t understand,” she finished a few minutes later. “If she hates Aunt Martha so much and thinks she’s crazy, why did she come home?”

“It doesn’t sound like she had anyplace else to go,” Oliver replied. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about what happened this morning. She’s had a bad time, and it must seem to her like her life is nothing but problems. You just happened to be there when she had to blow off some steam, that’s all.”

Rebecca glanced at Oliver, but her gaze quickly shifted away. “But she sounded like she really meant it when she said I was so stupid I can’t see what Aunt Martha’s like.” She was silent for a second, and then, still not looking at Oliver, asked, “Is it true, Oliver? Am I stupid?”

As he had in the car the day before, Oliver turned Rebecca’s face toward him so she had no choice but to look at him. “Of course it’s not true, Rebecca,” he said, his voice gentle. “And I don’t think Andrea meant it. She
was just upset, and people say things they don’t mean when they’re upset. So the best thing for you to do is just forget it.” Then, acting on an impulse before letting himself think about it, he leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips. “You’re not stupid,” he whispered into her ear. “You’re a wonderful, lovely woman, and I love you very much.” Then, feeling his face flush with embarrassment, he quickly stood and looked at his watch. “I’m late,” he said. Dropping some money on the counter, and feeling every eye in the diner watching him, he hurried out the door.

O
liver pulled his car into the parking lot of the white building that had housed Blackstone Memorial Hospital for the last twenty years. There were only three beds, and even they were rarely used: anyone who needed long-term care went either up to Manchester or down to Boston. For the last few months, though, the hospital had been busier than usual; first with Elizabeth McGuire’s tragic miscarriage, then with taking care of Madeline Hartwick. Jules Hartwick’s body had been taken first to Blackstone Memorial too, but even as the ambulance carried it downhill, everyone knew it was only going there as a matter of legal formality.

Oliver was still haunted by that terrible night when he’d found Jules on the steps of the Asylum and seen him plunge the knife deep into his own belly. It seemed to Oliver as if his headaches had been getting even worse lately, and yesterday, when his hand reflexively jerked away from the cigarette lighter Rebecca had bought for Andrea at the flea market, he’d been far more frightened than he let on.

Perhaps, if he hadn’t been suffering from the blinding headaches, he might not have been so frightened by the false message of searing heat that his involuntary nervous system had received. But in combination with the headaches, an idea had begun forming in his mind, and though he told himself it was ridiculous, he hadn’t been able to shake it all night long.

Brain tumor.

How else to explain the sudden onset of the unbearable migraines—when he’d rarely suffered from even mild headaches his whole life? How else to account for the odd flashes of vision—hallucinations—that seemed to accompany the hammering pain, though he could never quite recall their content after the headache passed. And yesterday … When he touched the lighter, he hadn’t had a headache. Yet he could still clearly remember the searing heat he’d felt in the brief instant when his fingers first touched the object.

The searing heat that—impossibly—was no longer there a second later, when Rebecca put the lighter into his hand.

Well, Phil Margolis would undoubtedly have an answer for him. Getting out of the Volvo, Oliver went into the hospital.

“All this does is take a picture of your brain,” Dr. Margolis explained. The CAT scanner sat in a small room that had been renovated specifically to house it after the doctor succeeded in putting together enough funds to buy the used machine five years ago. Serving not only Blackstone, but half a dozen other towns, the scanner had brought in enough money to allow the tiny hospital to operate in the black for the first time in its history. “Lie down on the table, and I’ll strap you in.”

“Do you have to?” Oliver asked. The moment he’d stepped into the room, he felt a wave of panic begin to build inside him. Now, his eyes fixed on the heavy nylon restraining straps, and his palms went suddenly clammy.

“I have to hold you immobile,” Margolis explained. “Any movement of your head, and the images will be spoiled. It’s easiest if you’re strapped down.”

Oliver hesitated, wondering where the panic was coming from. He’d never been claustrophobic—at least he didn’t think he had—but for some reason the idea of
being strapped to the bed terrified him. But why? It couldn’t have anything to do with Phil Margolis—he’d known the doctor for years.

Could it be he was just frightened of what the CAT scan might show? But that was ridiculous—if there was something wrong with him, he wanted to know about it! “All right,” he said, lying down on the table. Fists clenched, he shut his eyes and steeled himself against the fear that instantly gripped him as the doctor began fastening the straps that would hold him immobile. His heart raced; he could feel the sweat on his palms.

“You okay, Oliver?” the doctor asked.

“Fine.” But he wasn’t fine; he wasn’t fine at all. A terrible fear was overtaking him, an unreasoning terror.

“Okay, we’re all set,” Phil Margolis told him. He stepped out of the room, and a moment later the machine came to life, the scanner starting to move down over his head as it began taking thousands of pictures from every possible angle, which a computer would then knit together to form a perfect image of his brain.

And anything that might be growing inside it.

Then it happened.

With no warning at all, a blinding pain slashed through Oliver’s head, and the room seemed to fill with a brilliant white light that faded to utter blackness in an instant. And then, out of the blackness, an image appeared.

The boy is in a small room, staring at a table to which heavy leather straps are attached. The man, looming above him, is waiting impatiently for the boy to get onto the table. In his hand, the man holds something
.

Something the boy has seen before
.

Something that terrifies him
.

Instead of getting on the table, the boy retreats to cower in a corner of the room
.

As the man raises the object, with two shining metal
studs protruding from a long tube at one end, the boy whimpers, already anticipating the pain to come
.

As the man advances toward the boy, the child, screaming now, starts to run. The man’s large, muscled arm reaches out—

“That’s it,” Philip Margolis said as he came back into the room. He unfastened the straps that held Oliver to the table. “That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”

Oliver hesitated. The fact was, he couldn’t really remember much of the scan at all. There had been a moment of panic, but then …

What?

A headache? One of the strange hallucinations?

Something—some kind of vague memory—was flitting about the edges of his consciousness, but as he reached out for it, trying to grasp it, the memory slipped away.

Oliver managed a grin as he sat up, the straps having released their grip. “Not so bad,” he agreed. “Not so bad at all.”

A
ndrea drove slowly, searching for the impossible: an empty parking spot in Boston. She’d already passed the red brick building three times, twice going this direction, once the other. Should she try the other side again, or give up hoping to find a spot within a few steps of the building, and try one of the side streets?

Or should she just turn around and drive back to Blackstone?

She rejected the last idea immediately. She’d thought it all through too many times to back out now. If she didn’t go through with it now, she never would. Her mother would start in on her, and this time there would be no escape. Sooner or later she’d give in. And whatever Martha decided, it wouldn’t be good for her, and it wouldn’t be good for the baby.

It would be good only for Martha Ward, who would then spend the next few years exacting emotional payment for having “gotten you out of that mess, even though I had nothing to do with getting you into it!” A three-way bank shot, the kind Andrea knew her mother loved best, leaving Andrea feeling guilty, grateful, and indebted, all at the same time.

But not this time. This time Andrea was going to take care of it—take charge of her own life. Her mind made up, she turned off onto a side street, resuming her search for a parking spot. She finally found one three blocks from her destination, pulled into it, and automatically
locked the rusting Toyota, even though she suspected it was worth more stolen than not. Hunched against the cold drizzle that had begun an hour before, Andrea trudged back toward the clinic, her steps heavy, her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her.