“That sounds bad.” He got up and poured her a glass of water from a pitcher on his desk. Handing it to her, he asked, “Have you seen a doctor?”
She drank the cool water, let it soothe her throat. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just . . . came here because I need a pastor to preach at my mother’s funeral at ten o’clock on Friday. I wondered if you could do it.”
“Of course I will,” he said. “In fact, if you need help putting the whole thing together, we’ll be glad to do it for you.”
“What whole thing?” Ashley asked.
“The program for the funeral.”
Ashley realized she was in over her head. That nauseous feeling swirled in her stomach again. She wished she’d eaten before she’d come. “I’ve never even been to a funeral since I was five. I don’t really remember what they do.”
“Then don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything. What time is the visitation?”
Ashley shrugged again. “The funeral guy asked me if I wanted one, but I told him that was okay. Just the funeral was fine.”
“The visitation is really for you, sweetheart,” Pastor Jack said. “It’s so you can talk to the people who knew and loved your mother and hear how special she was.”
“I know how special she was.” The words cracked in her throat. “The funeral’s enough.”
“All right, then. Do you want to have it here?”
“I already told the guy we’d do it there—at Finn and Banks. I don’t think it’s too late to change it.”
“With so many other funerals, maybe it would be better to have it here. We could seat more people.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“All right, darlin’, and we’ll take care of putting it in the newspaper so people will know. We’ll have it come out in tomorrow’s paper. Is that all right, honey?”
She wished he’d quit calling her by those terms of endearment, like he expected her head to blow off if he used her name.
“What about after the funeral? Do you want us to eat at your mother’s house, or should we try to get one of the other members?”
Ashley didn’t think she could make another decision. “What do you mean?”
“The gathering after the funeral, when people come by your house to give their condolences. Folks bring food. You’ll need someone to sit at your house that day to take what people bring. I can get ladies from the church to help serve.”
Ashley couldn’t think of anything that horrified her more. A party, after her mother’s funeral? Tears crescented in her eyes, and she held her face still to keep them from falling. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Well, certainly you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s all for the comfort of the family, after all. Of course, if you have relatives coming, they may like to do it.”
“I haven’t talked to any of my relatives,” she said. “I hardly know them. I don’t think they’ll come.”
“Well, darlin’, you need to let them know.”
Ashley started to cough again, and this time she couldn’t catch her breath. She doubled over, trying to clear her lungs. He came back around the desk and touched her back, as if that would help.
“Honey, are you sure you’re all right?”
Ashley swallowed and forced herself to stop. “Just a little smoke damage.”
“Oh, my word,” the pastor said. “You were in the Icon Building too?”
Ashley nodded and looked up at him. She saw the concern on his face, as if he thought she’d been through too much. She knew what that would mean. He would try to intervene in her life, maybe call the state to take her into their custody. They would hover over her, maybe force her into foster care.
She stood up and tried to steady her breathing. “Another victim took me in,” she said, hoping to head off his efforts. “I’m going to be staying at her house in Newpointe for a while. Her name’s Jill Nichols. She’s a lawyer.”
There, that ought to keep him from worrying about her custody, as if she hadn’t already been living on her own.
“Jill Nichols.” The pastor wrote the name down. “All right. Is it listed? Can we contact you there?”
“Yeah, it’s listed. I guess if I’m not there you can leave a message.” She started to the door. “I gotta go.”
Pastor Jack followed her, and when they got in the reception area again, the secretary stood up. She’d been crying. “You know, Ashley, your mother loved you very, very much. She had you on every prayer list that came down the pike. You were always on her mind.”
Ashley swallowed. Her throat felt raw. “I know,” she said. “I’ll be here Friday, before ten.”
“Nine-thirty would be good,” Pastor Jack said.
She nodded and took off out the door. Hurrying up the hall, she burst out into the cool, December air.
She didn’t cry until she was back in her car, pulling away from the church.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The nurse came to get Jill as soon as Dan began to come out of his sleep again, and she rushed to his bedside. He lay with his eyes closed, but the color in his face was good, and his hands were no longer as cold as they had been.
She took his hand and whispered into his ear. “Dan, it’s me. Wake up, honey.”
His eyes opened slowly, and he stared at her, as if waiting for her to come into focus. Then the very beginning of a smile curved his lips. “Hey, baby.”
She pressed her face close to his. “Hey, honey. How’re you feeling?”
“Beaten up,” he whispered. He took her hand, brought it to his mouth, and squinted up at her again. “Tell me about Icon. Tell me how you got out.”
She pulled a chair up to the side of his bed and sat down, leaning her elbows on his mattress. Carefully, she told him about the evacuation and Ashley and Gordon. “I got out just before the third bomb went off.”
“The one that got me,” he whispered. “How long did it take them to find me?”
“Until four the next morning,” she said. “It’s a miracle you’re alive. I don’t even know how you breathed all that time.”
“What about the others?”
The question startled her, for she had hoped to head off that question until he was stronger. Trying to evade, she said, “What others?”
“Brothers from Midtown,” he said. “Any of them missing?”
She couldn’t tell him that some of them had died, so she lifted her eyebrows and tried to smile. “No, no one’s missing.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes again, and she realized the questions had taken a lot out of him. He didn’t have the energy to think through her evasion.
He would have to know later that five of his friends had died. But he didn’t have to know now.
She sat with him, stroking his forehead as he drifted back into sleep.
Later that night, as Jill waited for Dan to wake again, she called home to see if Ashley had made it back in.
The girl answered instead of Clara.
“Ashley?”
“Yeah.” She could tell from Ashley’s voice that she’d been crying. She wished she could be there to comfort her. “I called earlier. Clara said you were out.”
“I had some errands to run this afternoon.” Her voice was dull, metallic. “Then I went to a movie.”
Jill wondered if that was true. “Did Clara tell you my news?”
“I haven’t seen Clara,” Ashley said. “She’s locked in her room, probably trying to protect herself from me.”
Jill knew the girl wasn’t exaggerating.
“So what’s the news?” Ashley asked.
“Dan woke up. He talked to me.”
Ashley caught her breath, then coughed. “That’s great, Jill. I’m really excited for you. Is he, like, all right?”
“I think so. The doctors are saying that he’ll probably recover fully from his head injury. He does seem to have some paralysis, though. It’s still early. . . .” She got quiet for a moment, realizing she shoul
dn’t transmit her heavy concerns to the girl. “Honey, we need to get together and make some plans about your mom’s funeral. We have to plan a program. Who’s going to preach, who’s going to speak—”
“It’s already done.” Ashley’s statement cut into her words.
Jill frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah, I took care of it. I went by my mom’s church. The pastor’s going to plan everything. All I have to do is show up.”
Jill felt a surge of relief. Of course her mother’s church would want to be involved in the planning. There were people who loved her there. “That’s good,” she said. “I’m glad they’re taking some of the stress off you. Are you okay with that?”
Ashley was quiet for a long moment. “Yeah, I didn’t really know where to begin. They know what to do, and they probably knew her better than I did. I never thought of her as having a life. But she had a lot of friends.”
Maybe the girl wouldn’t be quite as alone as she’d thought she was going to be in the beginning. She hoped Ashley would allow people to love her. “So are you going to be okay tonight? Because I’m not going to be able to come home. I need to be here every time Dan wakes up.”
“Sure, I’ll be fine.”
“I know I haven’t been much help,” Jill said. “One of the reasons you came to my house was so you wouldn’t be all alone, and now you are, except for Clara.”
Ashley chuckled lightly. “Actually, I’d rather be alone than be with her. But really, it’s not so bad.”
“I just wish I could be there for you.”
There was a moment of silence, and she heard the emotion quivering in Ashley’s voice. “I just needed a place to crash. You gave me that.”
Jill realized that the girl thought that was all she needed. She would give her more, as soon as Dan was completely out of the woods.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Clara had locked her bedroom door and shoved the chest of drawers in front of it, just in case Ashley decided to break in during the night and rifle through her jewelry. One could never be too careful.
She couldn’t imagine why Jill would open this beautiful home to a girl like that, even if she had lost her mother. She supposed deadbeats and hoodlums lost their parents all the time. That didn’t make them good people, and it certainly didn’t make them trustworthy. Jill was making a huge mistake.
She thought of her phone call with Jill earlier tonight. Dan was awake. He was going to be all right.
Relief had flooded through her, and then a sense of dread. She knew she should have rushed up there and insisted on talking to him. But the truth was that she didn’t know what she would say. It was easier standing over his bed when he was unconscious. Now to have an actual conversation with him . . .
She felt inadequate. She had never been good with sick people. She didn’t suppose Dan wanted to talk to her, anyway. In all these years, he’d hardly ever called unless there was some major life event that he needed to notify her of. He had called her when her brother died and, later, when he’d gotten engaged.
He had a lot to deal with if he was going to be crippled. She certainly wasn’t equipped to help.
Still, she couldn’t contain her overwhelming relief that he wasn’t dead and that he no longer needed the respirator.
She went into the bathroom adjoining her room, took a sleeping pill, then rummaged through her things for her eye mask. She climbed into bed, slid the mask over her eyes, and lay staring up into the self-inflicted darkness.
Maybe it was enough that he was alive. Maybe she should think about going back to Paris sooner than she planned.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was quiet, too quiet. Ashley wished she had a stereo in her room and could turn it up so loud that she couldn’t hear her own thoughts.
But Clara would freak and call the police.
Now that she thought about it, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, but Jill didn’t need the drama. And Ashley owed her more than that.
She pulled her mother’s journal out of her bag, then kicked off her shoes and slid onto the bed. Crossing her legs in front of her, she stared down at the journal. Her mother had written in it every morning, and sometimes at night.
She put you on every prayer list that came down the pike.
Her wayward daughter was, no doubt, the subject of many of these journal entries. Yet there was more. Her mother did have a life and friends and things other than Ashley to worry about. And now Ashley wanted to know what those things were. It was a way of being close to her mom, a way of pretending that she was still alive.
Her hands trembled as she opened the entry to one of the middle pages.
Another round of layoffs today. I wasn’t in the bunch—at least not this time. I guess as long as I’m Donald Merritt’s secretary, my job will be secure. The problem is, how long will his be secure? Sounds like he might be in some pretty serious trouble, if what the news reports say is true. But to look at him, you’d just think that everything was going along hunky-dory, like he did n’t have a care in the world. All those people losing their jobs, their stock, their retirement, and he’s still got women sneaking into his office for long, private lunches, flashing diamonds on their fingers, dragging their minks behind them. And him driving that Jaguar that probably cost a hundred grand, and his wife in that Navigator she flits around town in.
I should quit, but I don’t have any money saved, and my 401K is shot. I’m still putting money away for Ashley’s college, and I won’t stop doing that no matter what. Even if I have to sell the house, I’m going to keep funding her college account.
Yeah, I know that she says she doesn’t want to go to college.She’s said a lot of things. And it’s possible that I won’t be able to make her go. I can’t seem to make her do anything else, including live at home. But at least she’ll have options. Options are important things to have.
Someday, she might realize that the life she’s chosen is a dead end and want to turn around and go in another direction. You said you answered prayer if we had faith, didn’t you, Lord? I have faith that you’ll change her heart one day.
Lord, you’ve been a husband to me since Jim died eleven years ago. And you’ve promised to be a father to the fatherless.You know that Ashley needs a father. She’d never admit it, but I know that her father’s absence has created an empty hole right in the middle of her. She needs you, she just doesn’t know it.
Ashley’s throat tightened, and she stopped reading and closed the journal. Tears burned her eyes, and she pressed her lips together. Her mother must have been so disappointed in her.
It had seemed like a game before. Shock your mother, amaze your mother’s friends. Let them all know that you’re going to be anything but what they expect. Never do what she asks, and flee from what she wants.
Only now she was gone.
Ashley got off the bed, pulled a pad out of her bag, and opened it to a clean page. Lying down on her stomach and propping her head on her hand, she wrote, Dear Mom.
Her pen froze on the paper as she tried to formulate the words she wanted to say to her mother. But her brain seemed just as frozen.
I’d give anything if you were still here. I’d throw away my nose ring and cover my tattoos. I’d color my hair back to my natural color, if I could remember what it was.
Empty words, she thought. They hardly mattered now.
I wish I could go with you, be where you are. I’m too much of a coward to do anything painful. But if I could just fall asleep and never wake up . . .
She started to cry then, too hard to finish her letter, so she flung the pad across the room and smothered her face in her pillow to muffle the sound of her sobs.
Chapter Forty
In Dan’s dream, he was running the fifth mile, up Jacquard Street, past the Walgreens and Joe Sigrest’s Hardware Store, the Baskin-Robbins, and Louisiana Bank’s drive-through branch. Sweat soaked his head- and wristbands as he made the last block, past Sheri Hartman’s Dance Studio and
the Blooms ’n’ Blossoms. His side hurt and his thighs burned as he made the corner on Purchase Street, passed City Hall on one side, the Police Station on the other, and ran up the wide driveway to Midtown Station.
He came awake, still in the hospital. Monitors hummed beside his bed, creating a monotone score for this new phase of his life. He looked around for Jill, who had been there when he’d drifted off. He saw her at the doorway to his area, heard her talking quietly to someone. She turned and saw that he was awake.
Quickly, she came to his side. “Dan?”
“Hey,” he whispered.
She glanced back up at the person who stood at the entrance. “Dan, there’s someone here to see you.”
“The guys?” he asked.
“No. Your mother, Dan. She came all the way from Paris.”
For a moment, he thought he might still be floating in that twilight state between sleep and wakefulness. Not his mother. She wouldn’t have come. “My mother?” he repeated.
“Yes. She’s here, Dan.”
Jill stepped back, and he saw Clara take her place next to him. She was smaller than he remembered and had her hair up in one of those Hollywood styles, like something out of a magazine.
He stared up at her.
“Hello, darling,” she said.
Her voice was strange, unfamiliar. She sounded like Bette Davis in All About Eve. Cold and above-it-all. Even a little nervous.
He realized he had to say something. “Mother?”
Her smile was tight, strained. “I was in Paris when I heard the news,” she said. “I thought I’d never get a flight out. Then when I got here they wouldn’t let me see you except for a few minutes every few hours. How are you, darling? Do you feel like yourself?”
It was a crazy question, he wanted to say. Who else would he feel like? Instead, he said, “You look different.”
She smiled and smoothed her hair. “Do I? Younger, I hope.”
Younger? No, he wouldn’t say younger, though he had to admit that she carried her age well. She’d probably had as much cosmetic surgery as Michael Jackson. Sometimes people had more money than was good for them.
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