The Second Heart (33 page)

Meredith quickly supplied her name.

“Meredith Carpenter,” the receptionist
repeated into the phone. “Shall I give her your room number?”

“No,” Vi said hastily. “We’ll meet them down
here by the bar.”

The receptionist relayed the instructions and
hung up the phone, and Meredith and Vi went and settled themselves
into a pair of lounge chairs in front of the fireplace. There was a
low fire burning that gave the room a cozy atmosphere, and Meredith
enjoyed the mild heat that radiated toward them.

Even though Meredith hadn’t asked, Vi
explained, “I didn’t think it was a good idea to go to their room,
with how upset they were yesterday. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course. That was good thinking. If
you weren’t here, I probably would have gone up to their room alone
and ended up wrapped in a tarp in the trunk of their car!” Meredith
chuckled, but she was only half joking. She really was relieved
that Vi had come along.

Vi smiled and put her feet up on the coffee
table in front of them. The grouping of furniture was ideal for
talking to Miguel’s parents; a small sofa faced them on the other
side of the coffee table. They didn’t have to stare at the empty
seats for long, as Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez joined them a few minutes
later.

Meredith stood up as Miguel’s parents
approached them, not sure whether she should shake their hands or
offer a consoling hug. She clasped her hands together tightly
instead, deciding to wait and follow their lead.

The Alvarezes sat on the sofa in front of
them without a word, so Meredith sat back down with a strained
glance in Vi’s direction. The awkward silence stretched on for
several seconds while Miguel’s parents just looked at her with hard
eyes and clenched jaws.

Meredith’s discomfort mushroomed under their
intense stares, to the point where she wanted to physically remove
herself from their line of sight. Unable to stand it any longer,
she said, “I’m so sorry about Miguel.”

“Don’t you say his name,” Mrs. Alvarez
growled.

The silence resumed, and Meredith looked at
Vi pleadingly.

Vi cleared her throat. “Um, Mrs. Alvarez, you
told me yesterday that you wanted to talk to Meredith? So… here we
are.” She shrugged lamely.

“Why did you tell Miguel not to have the
surgery?” Mr. Alvarez asked.

Meredith considered how to answer. She’d been
expecting this question and had thought about it since she had left
Eleanor’s, but was still unsure what to say. The truth was so
outlandish, and Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez so volatile in their grief,
that Meredith didn’t know how they would react. She would have to
ease into the story carefully.

“I have the same thing that Miguel had,” she
said gently. “And my… medical provider told me that the surgery
would do more harm than good. I thought that having the surgery
would kill Miguel.”

Mr. Alvarez narrowed his eyes. “His doctors
told him that he would die without the surgery. Were they
lying?”

“Obviously not,” Mrs. Alvarez said coldly. “I
think Meredith is the one who lied.”

“Meredith doesn’t lie,” Vi said, coming to
her defense.

Meredith licked her lips nervously. Earlier,
she had been convinced that Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez deserved to know
that Miguel was murdered, but now that she sat before them, seeing
their grief firsthand, she wasn’t so sure. There was nothing that
she could say to ease the pain of losing their only son, and
telling them a story about a bloodthirsty magician would just
insult them. Meredith’s shoulders slumped sadly.

“I didn’t lie,” Meredith affirmed. “But I was
wrong. I thought that since I was okay, he would be, too.” Tears
filled her eyes. “Believe me when I say that I never would have
told him not to have the surgery if I had thought he needed
it.”

Mrs. Alvarez’s expression softened slightly.
She reached out and took her husband’s hand as she thought about
what Meredith had said. After a few seconds, she asked, “Did you
love him?”

Taken aback, Meredith didn’t answer right
away. She bit her lip and looked at her hands. “No,” she said
quietly. She looked up and met Mrs. Alvarez’s eyes. “But I was
finally on my way to loving him. I don’t know why I waited so long
to let myself open up to him, but then I did, and I thought
everything was going to be perfect. I could see a future with him,
I really could. Looking back, my hesitation seems so stupid--”

“Mere,” Vi broke her off with a warning
glance.

Mrs. Alvarez pursed her lips. “I’m so
relieved that you were finally able to convince yourself to value
my son,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Meredith
protested.

Mrs. Alvarez held up a hand to quiet her. “I
think I’ve heard enough. I know girls like you. Miguel’s heart was
just your plaything, but he loved you, so he would do anything you
asked him to. I’m sure it felt good to have such blind devotion,
huh? A nice ego stroke for you, I’m sure.”

“It wasn’t--”

Mrs. Alvarez plowed on. “So when you got
tired of playing with his heart, you moved on to playing with his
life. A silly, arrogant girl playing doctor for a boy that she
could barely even bring herself to care about.”

Meredith’s jaw dropped, unable to speak. How
had she managed to be so misunderstood?

“I think we should go,” Vi said firmly. She
stood and pulled Meredith up out of her chair.

“I think that’s a real good idea,” Mr.
Alvarez agreed with a frown.

Remaining seated, Mrs. Alvarez glared up at
Meredith. “Get out of my sight, you stupid girl.”

Meredith almost tripped over her own feet in
her haste to get away. Thankfully, Vi held a steady grip on her arm
as they crossed the lobby and pushed through the door to the
parking lot.

Once they were out in the sunshine, Vi
exclaimed, “Jesus, Mere! Do you always have to be so freaking
honest
?”

Meredith turned in surprise. “You’re the one
who told them that I don’t lie!”

“Well obviously
that
was the lie! Why
couldn’t you just have said yes?” Vi spoke in a higher pitched
voice, imitating Meredith, “‘Yes, I loved him with all my heart.
I’ll miss him just as much as you will.’ How hard is that?”

As they continued walking toward the car,
Meredith retorted, “I didn’t want to lie!”

They reached the CR-V and climbed inside,
buckling their seatbelts. Then Vi said, “Meredith, sometimes lying
is just easier for everyone. It wouldn’t have hurt them to think
that Miguel had known love from a woman before he died.”

Meredith gripped the steering wheel and was
quiet for a moment. “You’re right,” she said. “I should have
lied.”

“Thank you.”

Meredith backed out of the space and drove
slowly out of the parking lot. She wasn’t ready to go back to
Eleanor’s house and describe the painful scene they had just
endured. “Would it bug you if we didn’t go straight back?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I need to clear my head. Wanna hike up South
Mountain?”

“Ew, no,” Vi said, wrinkling her nose in
distaste. “Why can’t you just want to get drunk like a normal
person?”

“It’s ten in the morning!”

“So we go to the casino. Nobody ever knows
what time it is there.” Vi grinned impishly. “Come on, Mere. If
there was ever a time you needed a drink…”

Still shaken up by the confrontation, and
hurt by Mrs. Alvarez’s assessment of her character, Meredith felt
like doing something out of the norm--something
unlike
her.
“Okay, okay,” she said slowly. “Let’s go.”

* * *

When Eleanor woke up, she could hear low
voices in the living room. She took her time getting up, figuring
from the faint smell of coffee that Meredith and her family had
made themselves at home. She smiled faintly at the thought of
having a full house. It had been years since she’d woken up to the
sound of other voices.

Eleanor padded into the bathroom and looked
at herself in the mirror. She was gray now, but not frail. She was
sure she still had the strength to handle whatever came her way,
but how long would it last?

“As long as it has to,” she said out loud,
answering her own question. Her voice was scratchy from sleep, and
she cleared her throat noisily.

After she was clean and dressed, Eleanor came
out to the living room, taking in the scene with one sweeping
glance. Amelia and Rob were sharing the morning paper while Josh
fiddled with his cell phone. Meredith and Vi were nowhere to be
seen.

“Good morning,” she said briskly. “Meredith
and Vi?”

“They went to see Miguel’s parents,” Rob
grumbled without lifting his eyes from the paper, answering her
question.

More polite, Amelia folded the section of the
paper that she had been reading and set it aside. “I didn’t really
see the harm in it, and Mere thought it was the right thing to do.
They should be back soon.”

A wave of worry swept over Eleanor, but she
shoved it aside in her mind. “Huh,” she grunted noncommittally.
“Did you find something to eat?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m afraid we’ve cleaned you
out though. If you’d like, when the girls get back, I’d be happy to
go to the grocery store.”

“All right.” Eleanor went to the kitchen and
put the kettle on for her morning cup of tea. While she waited for
the water to boil, she thought about what their long-term
accommodations might be. Vi was right--they did need a bigger
house. However, the Carpenters were still processing a lot of
information from the night before, and she figured they needed time
to do that. She’d wait a day or two before bringing up the housing
situation again.

Her tea prepared, Eleanor returned to the
living room and sat down in her favorite spot on the loveseat. From
here she could see the flowers on the orchid tree in the
backyard.

“What would you like to do this morning?”
Amelia asked cheerfully.

“I’m doing it,” Rob said.

“I have to head out,” Josh said. “I had hoped
that Vi and Meredith would be back by now so I could say goodbye.”
He smiled wryly. “I called and told my parents what happened, and
they’re coming home early now. I’m pretty much screwed.”

“Well that tends to happen when you use your
parents’ house without permission,” Rob said unsympathetically.

“Rob! It was for our daughter’s benefit. Have
a little compassion,” Amelia chastised him.

“No worries,” Josh reassured her. “Can you
tell Vi that I’ll call her later?”

After Josh left, Amelia and Eleanor spent
some time straightening up the living room and making a trip to the
store in Eleanor’s car. They loaded up on several days’ worth of
groceries, returning to the house and putting everything away.
Amelia put together an enchilada casserole for that evening’s
dinner, leaving it in the fridge until they were ready to bake it.
Eleanor was impressed with how industrious Meredith’s mother was,
and she wondered if Amelia had that much energy when she wasn’t
trying to keep her mind off her daughter.

By two o’clock, they were all wringing their
hands with worry. Over the course of the morning, Rob had tried
calling Meredith and Vi several times with no luck.

“I’m going to call them again,” Rob
announced. They were all sitting at the dining table playing a game
of gin rummy with a deck of faded playing cards that Eleanor had
produced. He stuck the phone to his ear and listened intently. A
few moments later, he ended the call with a small shake of his
head.

Amelia’s eyes widened and she looked at
Eleanor earnestly. “Do you think they’re okay?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor answered
candidly.

“Perhaps we should go to the hotel,” Amelia
suggested. “I’ve got the name--” she was cut off by the sound of a
car door slamming outside.

Rob jumped to his feet, ready to run outside
and give the girls a thorough tongue-lashing.

“Wait,” Eleanor commanded, closing her eyes.
She reached out with her other sense, and could tell that it wasn’t
Meredith and Vi. “Hide,” she said urgently. “Go to my room and
don’t come out.”

Without question, Rob and Amelia did as they
were told while Eleanor hastily cleaned up the card game and looked
around the room for any other evidence of houseguests.

The doorbell rang, and satisfied that she
appeared alone, Eleanor answered it.

Meredith felt
more relaxed than she had in days. Vi had been absolutely right;
getting drunk was the best idea ever. After leaving the hotel, they
had driven down to the reservation to one of the casinos that
flanked the freeway. Meredith had downed three rum and cokes before
she stopped counting, and now she was draped over a nickel slot
machine half-heartedly pulling the lever every so often.

Next to her, Vi wasn’t faring much better.
She had gone straight to her own drink of choice, whiskey and soda.
She pulled down the lever on her own slot machine, watching as a
seven and then a second seven lined up on the screen. She sat up a
little straighter, waiting hopefully as the third wheel lined up.
It landed on a bar. “Freaking tease,” she grumbled, relaxing back
into a slouch. “Ya know what, Mere?” She looked at Meredith but
seemed to have trouble focusing on her friend’s face. Her eyes
settled somewhere over Meredith’s shoulder.

Meredith turned to face Vi, leaning sideways
and resting her cheek on the glass screen of the slot machine.
“What’s that, Vi?”

“Mrs. Alvarez is a bitch. She was so mean.
What’d you ever do to her?”

“No, she’s not,” Meredith said, shaking her
head vigorously. The movement made her dizzy, and she held onto the
side of the slot machine to keep from falling off her stool. “She’s
just sad, Vi.”

“Whatever. It’s not your fault that you
didn’t love her son. It’s not like you owed it to her to think that
he shat sunshine or whatever.”