The Sparrow Sisters (20 page)

A
FTER THE
S
ISTERS
had put Patience to bed upstairs, Sorrel drove out to the Nursery to make sure the big white gate was locked. It was, as always. It was just that she didn't want to linger at Ivy House. It was too cold there and Patience hadn't stopped shivering, even after Nettie piled three eiderdowns over her. By noon it was 82 degrees at the Nursery, yet Ivy House was still so cold that when Sam walked in, Nettie took him straight out to the garden. He looked terrible, short on sleep and ill from what he'd seen and heard already. If Patience saw him, Nettie thought, she'd have just the thing for Sam. But of course, Patience wasn't in the garden where she belonged. And she was completely incapable of helping anyone, including herself. The only reason Patience wasn't still throwing up was because Henry had finally gotten some Compazine into her before she left his apartment—that and because her stomach muscles had simply worn out.

The Sisters and the three men on the edges of their lives weren't the only ones interested in what was happening to Patience. News had spread outward from the bakery like a still puddle hiding a bit of broken glass. On the surface everyone was concerned about Rob Short, devastated by little Matty's
death, distressed by Patience's collapse. But beneath there was a frisson of dark excitement, the thrill that comes with actually knowing someone at the center of a drama. Already the chief's visit had gossiped into an interrogation, and Henry's careful transfer of Patience to the car had twisted into a staggering, drugged parade. By lunchtime, Pete Markham stood in front of his liquor store, chin tilted toward the sky. He was not the only Granite Point resident who was scenting the air, waiting for a clue to Patience's state.

When Henry couldn't stand to be in his own skin anymore, he showered and walked to Ivy House only to find Sam Parker already there, sprawled in the shade of the crab apple tree in the center of the garden. The scent of the tissue-thin blossoms was as strong as Henry's longing for Patience. Henry went up to check on Patience, to read her as she did her clients. As soon as he checked on her, sure that she wasn't dehydrated (he'd brought an IV kit and banana bag just in case), he planned to track Rob Short down wherever he had ended up and sift through what had happened. Someone had to tell Rob to leave Patience out of his wholesale blame game.

Patience was so small and flat beneath the covers that Henry turned back to look for her downstairs. But then she sat up, her eyes wild with horror, and he knew she woke to recall what had happened, new again. He came to her side, afraid to touch her because she was so disoriented. The still gray room was cold and airless, the curtains drawn, a glass of water swirling with dust on the bedside table. It was nothing like the room
Henry had shared with Patience. The sweat cooled on his skin as he stood beside the bed until he too shivered.

Once she could focus, Patience put her arms out to Henry and he realized how frightened he'd been, how terrified she still was. He leaned down and pulled her into his chest. She was freezing; he could feel it straight through his shirt. And her thighs pressed so hard against his jeans that Henry had to fight to keep from pushing her back so he could rub the cold away. Without thinking he put his hand to the pulse at her neck and felt its rapid tap against his fingers. He moved it down until it rested over her heart, stroked her side. Her ribs were apparent under his palm; he was certain they hadn't been so the night before. Patience was reduced by Matty's death. Henry let her hold onto him for some minutes, her fingers pulling at the back of his tee shirt until the neck line left a mark on his throat. Finally, she loosened her grip.

“I'm sorry about this morning,” Patience said into Henry's chest. “I am a barfer by nature.” She laughed a little, and Henry heard her teeth chatter.

“I got that,” he said. “I think you need to control the nausea before you get up again. In fact, I'd like you to stay put until I'm sure you're not going to barf again. Will you do that?”

“No,” she said and let him go. “I need to clean up.” She swayed once on the way into the bathroom. But the look she gave Henry shut his mouth before he could scold her.

Henry left Patience to shower. He dared to think that maybe, as horrible as everything was, things might turn out fine after
all. Surely he could be of use in the days ahead; he could console her, that much he knew. He remembered how he himself had behaved in the hospital in Germany. The pain was terrible, but it was the memory of his failure that made him irrational with agony. It was the image of the girl's face, blood pooling in her ears, her eyes first pleading and then empty, that turned his days into waking nightmares.

After the second surgery he'd completely shut down. He'd taken the painkillers with silent acceptance. If he hadn't been a doctor, he was sure the standard psych evaluation would have been marked not just unfit for service but also most likely to explode like the bomb that had taken him out. But as soon as he could walk with nothing more than a cane, Henry was on the ward at the VA hospital and then back to Mass General with an honorable discharge. Henry felt sick himself at the thought of those first weeks. He resolved that, if nothing else, he was uniquely fit for helping Patience through the worst of it. It simply never occurred to him that anything more could happen.

While Ivy House gathered her wounded close, Sorrel stood in the Nursery shed and looked at Patience's cupboard. She turned her back and rinsed out her little harvest, but she couldn't ignore the dread that nudged at her shoulders. Sorrel ran her fingers over the unmarked drawers, pulled one open, sifted through the labels on the counter. What did Patience make, really? She thought. How did she know what was wrong, how to make it right? What if
Patience
was wrong?

Sorrel drove back from the Nursery with a basket full of lettuce, nasturtiums, broccoli rabe, and radishes. She carried with her the insistent seeds of doubt.

Nettie lined Sam and Henry up in the shady part of the garden and brought them glasses of tea and an ice-filled bowl of cherries. When Ben appeared at the back door, Nettie went nearly airborne with surprise. Patience came just behind him and served to deflate Nettie's excitement so that she looked merely welcoming instead of incandescent with delight. Ben opened the screen and held Patience's elbow as she took the three steps carefully. No one had ever seen Patience move so gingerly. Henry leapt to his feet and bent in an awkward, crouchy stance as he tried to check her reddened eye and sniff her breath for ketosis. Patience tapped his head lightly as she passed him.

“Would you stop,” she said and folded shakily onto the cool grass beneath the crab apple tree. Nettie handed her a glass of pale mint tea and Henry couldn't see a reason to argue with any of it. Patience rested her head on Nettie's lap, Ben sat next to Nettie, Sorrel cleaned the vegetables in the kitchen sink, Sam tied up the clematis, and Henry perched uselessly on the kneeler the Sisters used to weed. From the outside this tableau might have looked charming, like nursery children scattered about a summer lawn, resting before the next game took them scampering around the flowerbeds.

“I wanted to hydrate you properly,” Henry said to Patience with as much authority as he could muster on her turf. “I
brought an IV kit . . .” He trailed off weakly as the women grimaced. “But you seem to be in good hands.” It was ridiculous that Henry felt put off by the Sisters, but he did. The fact that Sam and Ben were so comfortable, so slotted in at Ivy House, really bugged him. How did that happen, exactly? Everyone turned to Sam when Henry suggested an IV, as if they needed the paramedic's input. Henry was irked enough to consider leaving. But he didn't because he needed Sam too.

“Could I talk to you for a minute?” Henry asked Sam. The two men went back into the house, which had warmed considerably since the morning. Sam waved his hand through the air in the kitchen and looked at Sorrel standing at the sink. They both nodded.

“Patience is better,” Sam said.

Henry nodded too though he couldn't think why. “What happened, Sam?”

“Fuck if I know,” Sam said. “It was awful. Matty was at the kitchen table.” He shook his head as if to clear it of the image. “He'd been there all night, I guess.”

“Could you tell what the cause was?” Henry asked. “Was he beaten?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Sam answered. “We'll have to wait for the postmortem but if I had to guess, I'd say some kind of anaphylactic reaction.”

“Swelling, rash, petechial hemorrhage?” Henry drew closer to Sam and lowered his voice. “Was there anything on the table with him, food, drink, meds?”

Sorrel looked up from the sink. “What are you asking, Henry?”

“I'm asking if Matty had a reaction to something he ate or drank,” Henry said.

“Or something Patience gave him?” Sorrel bowed her head. “You're asking if Patience did this.”

Until Sorrel spoke, Henry could almost convince himself that he didn't consider Patience a factor in Matty's death. After she gave voice to his fear, there was no point denying it. Sorrel's seeds of doubt had just been watered. Right then he knew that, in fact, things could get worse.

“Sorrel, the police have already come. They'll be back, and that's what they'll ask too,” Henry said.

“Patience would never hurt Matty,” Sorrel said.

“Don't you think I know that?” Henry said. “I would rather hear it from Patience now than in front of Chief Kelsey.”

“There's not a person in Granite Point who would accuse Patience of such a thing!” Sorrel's voice rose. “Whatever Patience's unusual abilities are, everyone knows she only uses them to help.”

“Henry's not saying she did anything to harm Matty,” Sam said. “But we have to be realistic. The minute Rob Short brought Patience up, she got in the middle of this thing.”

“Do you think she knows that?” Sorrel asked.

Henry and Sam looked at each other.

“I think there's very little Patience doesn't know,” Sam said.

Sorrel made a salad from the Nursery produce, and Henry
got out cold cuts and a loaf of bread from Baker's Way. Claire Redmond had left it on the Sisters' porch that morning as if she knew they needed simple sustenance. He helped Sorrel carry the tray out to the garden. Patience was still in Nettie's lap, but she was crying again, and Ben looked uncomfortable and felt worse. Henry knew that one look at food, and Patience would be sick again. He pulled her to her feet and led her back inside.

It was stuffy and hot in Patience's room. Again, nothing like the place where Henry had spent hours in the weeks before Matty's death. He peeled Patience's shorts off and left her in her underpants. She was as limp and compliant as an exhausted child. She stood, weeping silently as he pulled back her covers.

“This is my fault,” she said, and Henry turned around to look at her. She wiped her nose with the palm of her hand. “I did this.”

“You did not,” Henry said and held out his hand. “Come here.”

Patience walked the few steps to him, and he saw that there were bruises along her ribs, as if she had been battered from the inside, her grief fighting to get out.

“Jesus, Patience,” he said as he took her into his arms. She was shivering again even though the air around them was heavy with heat. He felt her breasts press against his shirt, the nipples tight as if she were freezing. She was.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I can't seem to stop crying.”

Henry settled her in the bed and lay alongside her on top of the covers.

“Why do you blame yourself?” he asked.

“Because if I'd listened to you the first time, you could have saved Matty.” She began to weep in earnest. “I promised I'd take care of him.”

“None of this is your fault,” Henry said as he stroked her hair away from her teary face. “Whatever happened to Matty—and we'll find out from the police—it had nothing to do with you.”

Patience twitched at the word “police.” “I should talk to Rob,” she said.

“No, you shouldn't,” Henry snapped. “You should stay away from him and everything else to do with this terrible thing.”

Patience finally drifted off to sleep, one hand fisted under her chin. Henry left Ivy House with a promise to return in the evening. Sam had already gone home, and Ben and Nettie were still in the garden. Only Sorrel said good-bye, and as she watched Henry leave, she felt a sudden shiver herself and wondered if he should come back at all.

Down at Clear Lake that afternoon, Henry slid his shell carefully off the roof of the car and carried it over his head to the water. He had to thread his way through the children who clustered like birds on the shoreline. Balancing the shell at the end of the worn wooden boat ramp, Henry settled in with one oar out to steady him. He rowed gently around the teenagers who bobbed in clumps in the deep water. They splashed each other and laughed and jostled closely in a game designed purely to allow the boys to graze the girls' bodies with their own.

Henry didn't notice the silence that fell over the mothers as
he walked by. On any other Saturday the women might have paused in their conversations to appreciate the doctor's long tan torso as he carried his boat. They might have sucked in a breath as his scarred thigh passed close enough to touch. But today they closed their mouths over the urge to ask him what had gone on in Rob Short's kitchen, what had happened to Patience that had turned her into something more than the local adept and less than a member of their community.

Henry rowed until he reached the far side of Clear Lake. He was as light and graceful as a mayfly skimming the surface, his wake merely a ripple, thin as a knife's edge. There were no houses there, only an abandoned, rickety float left from the boys' camp that had closed in the seventies. Wedging the shell with an oar against it, he pulled himself up the gap-toothed ladder and lay down on the hot wood. He was still stunned by how quickly everything had gone wrong. One minute Henry had stood on the threshold of happiness for the first time in his life, really, and the next he was surrounded by rubble and destruction. It brought to mind, reluctantly, the day he'd been wounded, the crush of children laughing and shoving as he held a fistful of American candy over his head, a reward for their bravery in the face of syringes. And a moment later, there was the slam of pressurized air and the feeling of gritty concrete under his cheek. A tangle of bodies and blood and dust. Nothing but chaos and pain and fear, the bitter taste of airborne plaster, melting plastic, the hideous smell of burning flesh.