By the Book

by Mary Kay McComas

  He held her, rocking her gently, feeling an overwhelming gratitude for he knew not what.

  He moved his hand from her back to the side of her head, to hold her close. She cringed.

  “What? Are you hurt? I saw them bring Felix in from upstairs, then you arrived in the cop car. Are you hurt?” He held her away to check for himself. There were bruises, on her arms and legs, and a few minor scratches. “They wouldn’t let me in to see you and then they said you were over here, that Felix was in surgery. Ellen, what’s happened?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, palming his cheek to ease his concern. “I banged my head, but I’m fine. Felix is in surgery. He has a broken nose and mandible, a fractured arm, and some cracked ribs.” She shook her head. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Were you in an accident?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I wish we had been,” she said, taking his hand as she turned back to Bobby Ingles. She made introductions and gave a brief explanation of what she knew. “Felix told me they’d kill him, but I didn’t believe him. I made him go and now ...” She held out her hands to show that she’d gotten Felix worse than nothing by making him go.

  “Actually, that worked out pretty well,” Bobby said, picking up the tale. “On Wednesday, when your mother told him you’d gone to Krane and gotten him a job, Felix must have figured he was going to lose this one, one way or another. With you or with Krane. So he called me. I’d told him that morning that if he was willing to wear a wire and testify against Krane, we could put the guy away for a good long while. Shut down his operation. Felix called that afternoon and said he would.”

  “But we had dinner with him that night,” she said, glancing at Jonah for confirmation. “He didn’t say a word about it.”

  “He couldn’t. Krane isn’t stupid and he knew we were onto him. One slip and we’d have him. The way you interceded for Felix was a perfect setup, and Felix said if you knew the truth you’d never let him go.”

  “Well, of course I wouldn’t have. Walking in there like that was suicidal. What I did was stupid, but what he did was—”

  “Pretty gutsy, if you ask me,” Bobby said. “He actually planned most of it himself. Told us to come wire him up in your mother’s backyard while your mother was inside taking her afternoon nap. Told us we had to let you drive him over, so that Krane wouldn’t get suspicious. But you had to leave before we could do anything. That waving and telling you to go home was our signal that things were going sour, that Krane had no intention of giving him a job. And it was perfect except ...”

  “Except that I didn’t leave on cue,” she said, not too sure how she was feeling anymore. She didn’t know if Felix was just plain stupid or brave beyond her dreams. Krane’s arrest was a good thing, but she wasn’t too sure the price Felix had paid was worth it. She was only half mad that no one had told her the plan—the other half understood completely.

  One thing she was sure of was that if she hadn’t been so puffed up with attitude, if she hadn’t thought herself all powerful and capable of handling Felix’s affairs without any help from anyone else, if she hadn’t been so impatient to have her life the way she wanted it—including a quick cure for Felix—none of this would have happened.

  “No, you didn’t leave on cue,” Bobby said, standing to leave. “But if you had, Krane wouldn’t have that huge hole in his neck.” He grinned at her. “Cops can’t do that sort of thing, but we sure do enjoy it when someone else does it.”

  Jonah passed her a confused frown, and she shook her head indicating she’d explain it later. He watched her stand and offer a friendly hand to the officer and thank him. She looked exhausted, but beyond that she was remarkable. Bobby Ingles’s story filled in most of the pieces to his puzzle. He thought of the courage it had taken for her to go to the junkyard in her brother’s name, to face down men like that to protect him. He couldn’t help wishing to know that kind of love someday.

  Before Ingles could make a clean getaway, Ellen’s mother and sister and brother-in-law arrived in an anxious, confused state. Ellen told them what had happened, and while the young police officer filled in the blanks and answered their questions, she turned back to Jonah. She came to sit beside him and, sliding her arm between his and his rib cage, lowered her head to his shoulder with a sigh.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, closing her eyes, taking in the clean masculine smell of him, feeling the warmth of his body seeping into hers through two thin layers of cloth. “Where did you come from?”

  He sensed she didn’t mean it literally and gave her a squeeze. “Do you want to stay until Felix is out of surgery or can I take you home? You look exhausted.”

  “I am,” she said, feeling it in every inch of muscle she possessed. She didn’t know if her brain was a muscle, but she was feeling it there too. Every effort to think was painful and aborted for a limbo where she didn’t have to bend over backward trying to decide if what she’d done—what she’d forced Felix into—was a good thing or bad, if her motive was selfish or sisterly, or if she could live with what she discovered. “I really am. But Mom and Jane want to meet you, and I should hang around to make sure Felix is okay.”

  “How about I meet Mom and Jane, briefly, and they call you at home when Felix gets out of surgery, to let you know how he’s doing? I think you’ve had enough for one day, don’t you?”

  “If only you knew ...” you wouldn’t be here being so sweet to me, she thought, and it hurt so much, her mind limped back to limbo. It was easier and safer and a lot less painful to let him do all the thinking right now. “That’s a good idea.”

  Though he’d had her heart for some time she relinquished the rest of herself, body and soul, into his keeping. He handled them with the same quiet, authoritative gentleness her heart had come to recognize as his innate nature—that which the too-nice person inside her, what was left of her anyway, had bonded with the first time she’d seen him.

  He did it all. Introduced himself to the rest of her family, made arrangements with Bobby to have her car and the clutch wallet she’d left inside returned to her house, asked her mother to call when Felix was out of the woods, whisked her out of the hospital, and drove her home before she could think twice. When he reached for the spare key she kept hidden over the door, she came out of her daze enough to ask how he’d known about it.

  He laughed, and, pointing to the trash bag on one side of the door and the bare floor on the other, he said, “No flower pot, no rock in the garden, no mat in front of the door. So unless you keep it under your trash, where else would you keep it?”

  He really knew people. He’d studied them for so long, their actions and reactions—maybe that was why not knowing his father had left him with such an overwhelming passion to figure him out that it often superseded the resentment he felt. And why hadn’t Eugene taken the trash down yet? These thoughts passed through her jumbled mind like roadside billboards and were immediately forgotten.

  Once inside, he shooed her off to the bathroom, leaving her to choose between a soak in the tub or a good hot shower while he rifled through her medicine cabinet for the aspirin she kept in the kitchen.

  Okay, so maybe he didn’t know her very well. ... He thought she was a confident, tough, not-so-nice woman who knew what she wanted from life and didn’t have any qualms about reaching out and taking it. He thought she was impulsive and blunt. He liked her attitude. In fact, most of what he knew and liked about her was ... experimental.

  He passed two white tablets and a glass of water around the shower curtain, and a few minutes later, a towel when she turned the water off. He was gone when she pushed the plastic aside, but the terry robe and the long cotton T-shirt she left hanging on the bathroom door were looped over the towel rack within easy reach. When she and the steamy mist emerged from the bathroom, she found the bed she hadn’t made that morning turned down, the sheets smoothed and straightened. Looking like a haven for the beaten and weary.

  Jonah was waiting for her. And h
e did know people, her tired mind insisted. He just didn’t know the real her.

  “Feel better?” he asked, his smile hopeful. She nodded.

  “I never make my bed,” she said impulsively, feeling an urge to tell him one true thing about herself that wasn’t part of the well-balanced woman she was pretending to be. “I never have time in the morning and by the time I get home at night I figure I’m going to be crawling back into it in a few hours anyway, so what’s the point?”

  “Exactly. You’d think someone would come up with a sleeping arrangement that did away with all the paraphernalia. The blankets and sheets and pillows ...” his voice trailed off when she untied the robe and shrugged it off, but she didn’t notice. She threw it over the foot of the bed and climbed in.

  She didn’t notice his smile either, or the blend of humor, sympathy, lust, and affection in his eyes. He’d seen battle-weary fighter pilots on the aircraft carriers he’d been assigned to with the same flat, dazed expression on their faces, from too much stress and too little sleep. It broke his heart to see her this way. There were bruises and scratches all over her arms and legs—and the rest of her torso, too, he wagered. And not one complaint had she uttered. She was a real trouper.

  “Your mother called while you were in the shower,” he said, watching her shake her damp red hair aside so she didn’t have to lie with it against her face. She lay down on her left side, felt the lump on her head, and rolled over to her right side, facing him. “Felix is out of surgery and heading up to his room. She said he was groggy, but not in any pain. Sleeping mostly. She thinks you should do the same.”

  “That’s good,” she said, to both Felix’s condition and her mother’s recommendation. She closed her eyes, reached out for the darkness that was waiting to consume her. She felt his lips at her temple and opened them again. “You’re not leaving, are you? Or maybe you should. I don’t know. You decide. Jonah?” she said, an urgency to her voice as she tried to shake the apathy and fatigue from her brain. “We need to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “No. I’m too ... tired, right now. It wouldn’t come out right.” She closed her eyes again. There was an ache in her chest, around her heart, as she realized how good it felt to have him there with her, caring for her, caring about her. Her little apartment felt more like a home with him in it. A peaceful place. A perfect place—except for one thing ... “But soon. There are things about me you should know.”

  “Just don’t tell me you’re a mercenary, okay?” he said, repeating words she’d once used on him as he tucked the sheets and thin summer blanket around her. “I’m not at all sure how I’ll react to that.” It almost hurt, but she chuckled anyway. “I’m going to stay awhile, until I know you’re asleep. Does your cat stay in or go out at night?”

  Too sleepy to explain about Bubba, she muttered, “Out,” and started to drift off—except for the one part of her that held tight; that heard him clear out and settle into the chair across from the bed; that could picture him watching over her like a guardian angel. That part of her that couldn’t drift—wouldn’t rest until she murmured, “Thank you, Jonah.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  STEP NINE

  Act the part and you will become the part.

  —William James

  They say you are what you eat. But that doesn’t mean that if you eat a banana you become a banana. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the same cannot be said of who you are and how you act, because more often than not, how you act is who you appear to be. So show the world who you are.

  ELLEN WOKE TO THE sight of a single yellow rosebud on the pillow beside her, its sweet scent in the air around her. Her lips slipped into a lazy smile as she realized Jonah had snitched it from Mrs. Phipps’s garden for her. She knew he was gone even before her gaze focused on the chair he’d settled in the night before—it was that quiet and empty in her little apartment. She sighed. Her little apartment had never felt empty to her before. Come to think of it, she felt empty too. She pulled the covers tight about her, pulling all her energy inward, trying to fill the hollowness inside her.

  It didn’t work. She huffed out a frustrated breath and rolled onto her back. She stretched muscles that felt as if they’d been run over by a train, and sought a positive perspective. The sun was up and it was another bright, glorious summer day, she told herself, throwing the covers off, then scrambling to retrieve them before they lost all their heat to the chill of the air. Okay, so the sun was barely up, she noted with a glance at her alarm clock, and thinking positive wasn’t going to make it any warmer. She quickly abdicated to the truth. She was going to feel hollow and cold until she was truthful with Jonah.

  She tiptoed hurriedly to the bathroom, grabbing her robe and slippers on the way, and ten minutes later she had the phone tucked between her shoulder and chin while she made coffee, checking on Felix. He’d spent a quiet night and was doing fine, the nurse told her. She left a message that she’d be in to see him around noon—simultaneously deciding that she’d go to work that day in spite of bruises and aching muscles. After all, the whole world didn’t need to know what an idiot she was, or how dangerously close she’d come to getting her brother killed, did it?

  She’d go to work and act as if nothing were out of the ordinary and maybe it would appear that way.

  Rising early proved to be convenient when one felt like the kink in the middle of a pretzel. Another long shower limbered her up a little. And a long skirt with a long-sleeved blouse, cuffs rolled up to the elbows, did much to hide all the scrapes and bruises. And though she wasn’t quite feeling it, she did think she looked halfway human when she left her apartment—and found the trash bag Eugene still hadn’t taken to the dumpster. Casting a perturbed glance at her neighbor’s door, she decided to leave it until after work, not at all sure she’d be able to tote her trash and maneuver the stairs at the same time.

  It was slow going, but she made it to her car. She’d found her keys and wallet on the coffee table and her car parked out in front of the house, instead of the rear. Getting into it was an exercise in pain management that she didn’t look forward to repeating when it came time to get out again.

  As it happened, however, she had enough pride left in her to walk into the bank standing tall, and if she sat down at her desk a bit gingerly, no one seemed to notice. She turned on her computer, put her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk, removed a fresh notepad from her top drawer, smiled at Joleen Powers and Mary Westford when they came through the door, and then she frowned.

  Something was wrong. She could feel it as surely as she felt the pain in her left hip and shoulder and the nagging stiffness in her neck. Something was very wrong. She could see it in their faces, sense it in the polite smiles they returned—smiles that held none of the friendship and fondness she’d come to expect from both of them.

  Perhaps the paranoia she’d felt the day before wasn’t just in her head. Maybe she’d been so distracted lately, she’d inadvertently offended one of them. Maybe she’d made a mistake or an error. No, they would have said something about it, if it were that simple. Maybe she’d forgotten someone’s birthday? No, no birthdays until next month, she noted on her calendar.

  When Vi arrived moments later and gave her the same insincere smile, her heart sank to her feet.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Morning,” Vi replied, going directly into her own cubicle without stopping at Ellen’s.

  “Did you do anything fun last night?”

  “Nope.” No in-depth report of her latest conquest? No jolly anecdotes about the women on her bowling team? No gossip? No new fashion tips or self-improvement advice?

  Ellen tapped her thumbs together nervously. “Anything new with you?”

  “Nope.” There was always something new with her.

  “Have you heard—”

  “I’ve got work to do, okay?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  One by one, she received the same cool, polite treatment from the res
t of the bank’s employees, except for Lisa Lee. Her smile was as warm and broad as ever, and Ellen was grateful for it. She went back for seconds and thirds, as a matter of fact, she was so desperate for the friendly camaraderie she was used to receiving from her fellow workers. Especially when she hurt and felt so much guilt for what she’d done to Felix—and for what she hadn’t told Jonah.

  Jonah ... For the hundredth time she looked over at the camera shop to see the Closed sign dangling on the door and wondered where he was. Visiting his father was her most likely answer, but he rarely stayed so long. And he hadn’t called her to see how she was, or Felix was, or to report that his father wasn’t doing well.

  She waited till ten before she called to check on both Felix and Earl Blake, who were both stable, the nurses told her. She asked if Jonah was visiting with his father, only to be told he’d been in earlier and left already. So where was he?

  And all the while the furtive glances and chilly demeanor of those around her ate away at her dwindling confidence and sense of well-being, so that when Vi left the window a little before noon to use the ladies’ room, she gathered up what she had left of her courage and followed her.

  Vi was washing her hands when Ellen entered. Vi gave her a quick look in the mirror and muttered, “It’s all yours. I’ll be out in a second.”

  “I don’t want it. I want you to tell me what’s going on around here. I want you to tell me why you’re acting so weird.” She threw up both hands. “Why everyone’s acting so weird.”

  “We’re acting weird?” Vi grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and wadded it in her hands. “What about you? You’re the only one who’s acting weird around here.” She tossed the paper into the trash. “And if this is what dating a hunky camera salesmen does to you, well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.”

  “Is that what this is about? You’re angry because I’m dating Jonah? Because you wanted him? I didn’t—”