The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He’d soaked his T-shirt through, and his legs and lungs were on fire. He hadn’t run too often since his release from the hospital, certainly not this hard, never this far. And he hadn’t run at all over the past few days, not with the headaches he’d been having. Still, this should have been nothing. This was a garden party compared to the running he’d done regularly with Team Sixteen. Jesus, take a few months off, and it’s all over.

  The pounding in his head had moved to a very prominent place in the foreground, directly behind his left eye, in fact. Tom staggered slightly as the road in front of him seemed to shift and heave.

  He forced himself to keep his eyes on the dark-haired man. He’d slowed slightly because of the crowds around the entrance to the church parking lot, but Tom had to slow down, too.

  His ears were roaring and the world was spinning.

  One foot in front of the other. He’d done this before—he could do it again.

  Music was blaring from speakers, and barkers trying to draw the attention of the crowd were shouting over it.

  The bright lights, spinning dizzily with the carnival rides, only added to the chaos of the jostling crowds.

  Tom could barely focus, barely see.

  He searched for the dark-haired man, but he was gone. Completely swallowed by the crowd and confusion.

  He lurched forward, unwilling or maybe just unable to give up. The frowning face of a disapproving mother flashed into his line of sight as a wide-eyed boy was yanked out of Tom’s path.

  He needed . . .

  He wanted . . .

  He had to get out of this crowd, and he pushed his way to a clearing by the side of a food stand, desperate for air, but able to fill his lungs with only the cloyingly sweet scent of fried dough.

  Hands on his knees, he tried to catch his breath, tried to grab hold of his equilibrium, tried to make the world stop moving and the lights stop swaying.

  And there it was.

  A bike. Leaning up against the railing of the Tilt-A-Whirl. It was quite possibly the dark-haired man’s bike—although Tom wasn’t completely sure. He couldn’t seem to focus well enough to see it clearly.

  Tom moved toward it, back out into the crowd, searching for the dark-haired man. Christ, where were those blinding lights when he needed them? The people lined up to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl were standing in the shadows, and because of that, they all seemed to have dark hair.

  Tom looked instead for the tattoo. Right hands. Right—

  He saw it!

  But then he saw another. And another. And . . .

  There were dozens of them. He was standing here, literally surrounded by dozens of members of the Merchant’s secret organization.

  Pain knifed behind his eyes.

  Jesus, that didn’t make sense. That was wrong. It had to be wrong. He fought the haze, searching for the reason and . . . Cell size. Yeah. He knew for a fact that the Merchant never operated with a cell of more than ten, usually more like six or seven.

  Yet there it was. That round mark. The Merchant’s eye. Everywhere he looked, everyone had one. He tried to look more closely, tried to see it more clearly, but his vision was blurred. He had to sit down. He had to . . .

  One of the tattooed hands reached out to him. “Tom? Oh, my God, are you all right?”

  The hand was attached to an arm, which, by following it, led him to a face. A familiar, female face.

  Mallory. Angie’s daughter.

  No, it was two Mallorys. They were both looking at him as if from a very great distance. Since when had she been recruited by the Merchant?

  He grabbed her hand, pulling it closer to his eyes and . . .

  It wasn’t an eye or even a tattoo. “It’s a fucking clown’s face,” he said, his voice distant over the roaring in his ears.

  It was a badly smudged ink stamp of Bozo the Clown. Everyone had a fucking clown face on their hand.

  “You pay ten dollars for the stamp,” the Mallorys told him in eerie unison. How the hell could she sound so far away when he was holding on to her hand? “And then you can ride all you want until the carnival closes at one.”

  Tom sank to his knees.

  “Jesus, Tom!” Mallory crouched down next to him as he let go of her hand and dropped to all fours. He just . . . needed to rest. . . .

  “You know this guy?” Another voice—male, almost as young as Mallory—came from just as far away.

  “He’s my uncle,” he heard her say. “I think he’s completely shit-faced. Bran, do you have a car? I need to get him home.”

  “Um, no. Um, Mal, I, uh, I . . . think I have to go now.”

  “Oh,” Mallory said. “Well . . . sure.”

  “This is just a little too weird for me, you know? No offense, but . . . I’ll see you around sometime.”

  “Right. Sure. I’ll see you.”

  “Asshole.” Tom didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until Mallory laughed.

  “You got that right,” she said. “I’m sorry, but it would be a little too effing weird for me just to leave you here to get rolled. Or picked up by the police.”

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered through his haze of gray. “I’m not . . .” But he couldn’t remember what it was that he wasn’t. He focused on a sorry-looking patch of grass directly in front of him, focused on not giving in to the grayness. There was a reason he couldn’t just put his face on the ground and give up, wasn’t there?

  “Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “He was pretty much looking for a way to ditch me after I turned down his generous offer to jump my bones. Like that was my grand prize for going out with him.”

  “Last of . . . the romantics.”

  She laughed again. “Come on, Tommy, back on your feet. Do you think you can walk?”

  “Am I walking now?”

  “Not exactly.” She tugged at him and he tried to help her, but his body was uncooperative. “Come on, Tom, I’ll get you home. Just lean on me.”

  Kelly couldn’t sleep.

  She sat out on her balcony, pretending she wasn’t gazing at the dark windows of Joe’s cottage.

  She wasn’t gazing at just any windows. The windows she particularly wasn’t gazing at were Tom’s bedroom windows.

  She willed him to get up out of bed and turn on his light. She willed him out his door, out of Joe’s house, and across the driveway. She bet he could climb up onto her balcony effortlessly.

  And she’d been waiting almost seventeen years for him to do just that.

  She willed him to come to her rescue, to save her from this sleeplessness that haunted her, from her anger and her grief and her pain.

  It wouldn’t be the first time Tom had come to her rescue.

  She’d been fifteen the first time he’d saved her. She’d arrived home from school to find that her father had consumed his physical limit of evening martinis about five hours too early and had crash-landed in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  She’d searched for Joe, desperate to get her father to his bedroom before her mother came home—desperate to avoid the start of World War Three.

  But it was Tom she’d found, gleaming with sweat, at his pile of weights back behind the garage. And after he’d helped her wrestle Charles into bed, Kelly had started in on her litany of excuses.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “He must’ve slipped on some water in the kitchen. Maybe he’s not feeling well—the flu’s going around. Maybe he had the flu and he was dizzy and he slipped on some water in the kitchen and—”

  “Kelly, I know your father’s drunk.” Tom hadn’t let her get away with any of it. “I could smell the alcohol on him.”

  Kelly had been shocked. Charles Ashton was an investment banker. He’d never missed a day of work because of his drinking, but from the moment he came home till the moment he went to bed at night he always had a glass of something potent in his hand. He wasn’t a public drunk, though. He’d sit out on the deck or in front of the TV and just quietly fade away.

 
You were safe if you didn’t get too close. If you did, he would lash out with that acerbic tongue, that scalding sarcasm. Nothing was good enough, no answer was acceptable. There had been nothing she could say that wouldn’t warrant the response of some belittling comment from her father.

  So Kelly had learned to keep her distance. And she’d never, ever brought friends home with her. That was her rule number one.

  She followed it devoutly, especially when Charles went into semiretirement. He worked from an office in Baldwin’s Bridge from nine to twelve. And then he came home and sat in that same damned deck chair all afternoon, until he staggered off to bed shortly after dinner.

  “I know he drinks himself to sleep every night,” Tom had told her all those years ago, gently lifting her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. “I take the trash to the dump. I see the bottles. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

  Kelly was mortified. Someone besides her and her mother knew. Tom knew. “Don’t tell,” she begged, suddenly afraid that she might throw up, afraid she might make it even worse by bursting into tears. “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh,” he said quickly, “no way. You don’t have to worry about that because I wouldn’t. I won’t. That stuff’s private. You can trust me.”

  He was so kind, sitting next to her on the stone wall that framed one end of the driveway.

  And for the first time that Kelly could remember, she’d actually been able to drop her upbeat pretense of optimism. For the first time, she’d finally had a chance to unload a little of her despair and anger at her father. None of her friends knew her father drank the way he did, and it was such a relief to finally have someone to talk to about it, someone she didn’t have to—as he’d said—pretend around.

  And for a few weeks, in the magical evenings of the early summer, when Kelly went out in the yard to her tree swing after dinner, Tom would often appear and they’d talk. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes about her father, but mostly about nothing. Anything. Everything. Kelly’s friendship with Tom was based on a soul-baring level of honesty she’d never had before, and it was incredibly precious to her.

  For a while she even dared to hope he had a crush on her, too.

  But one day he just stopped coming out to the swing—about the time she heard from her friends that “that wild Tom Paoletti” was dating Darci Thompkins. Darci was a senior who owned a red convertible and had a reputation for taking her own top down as well on the deserted beach over by Sandy Hook.

  It hadn’t been until later that summer, that, once again, Tom had come to Kelly’s rescue. That had been one of Kelly’s precious, golden days.

  She’d fallen off her bike and skinned her elbow miles away from her house, up by Lennelman’s Orchards, coming home from a party at Ellen Fritz’s.

  Tom had come by on his motorcycle—probably on his way to Ellen’s. But he stopped when he saw her sitting on the side of the road, her front wheel irreparably bent.

  It was awkward at first, but it didn’t take long for them to fall into their old, familiar, easy conversation. They drove around for hours that afternoon and evening, first on his Harley, her arms tightly wrapped around him. God, that had been paradise.

  Later, they rode around in Joe’s station wagon, after going back to pick up her bike. They’d stopped to walk through an antiques fair that filled the streets of nearby Salem, and they’d shared a large order of fried clams and French fries from the Gray Gull Grill down by the water.

  And they’d talked and laughed for hours and hours.

  It had been a wonderful, magical day.

  And when it was nearly midnight, they’d been down by the marina, stopped at a traffic light. Kelly could remember gazing at Tom, her heart in her throat, wanting him to kiss her so badly. And when he’d turned to look at her . . .

  She didn’t remember moving, but she must have. Both of his hands were on the steering wheel. Still, somehow, it happened. She was kissing him—finally, finally kissing him.

  He made a low, desperate sound in the back of his throat as he pulled her closer, as he swept his tongue into her mouth.

  Kelly had never been kissed like that before, and in the back of her mind she thought she should probably be shocked, but she wasn’t. It was too perfect, too right.

  He tasted like the chocolate ice cream they’d shared, like the salty ocean air, like freedom.

  Kissing Tom was everything she’d imagined and more.

  Someone honked behind them, and Kelly looked up to see that the light had turned green. Tom hit the gas and with a squeal of tires pulled the station wagon into the bank parking lot, skidding to a stop. He killed the engine and pulled her back to him, kissing her again and again.

  It was paradise.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed, leaning back to look into her eyes. “Make me stop. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  His hands were in her hair and he was breathing hard.

  She didn’t want him to stop, so she kissed him the way he’d kissed her, deeply, fiercely, stroking his tongue with hers, sucking him with her lips.

  He made that same low sound, and she knew despite her inexperience, she’d kissed him the way he liked to be kissed.

  Still, he pulled away. “My God, you’re dangerous.”

  She was instantly uncertain. “Don’t you . . . ? But that was how you kissed me.”

  He made a noise that wasn’t quite a groan, wasn’t quite laughter. “How many boys have you kissed, Kelly?”

  She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know exactly. I don’t keep track.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just watched her.

  “One,” she whispered, “and it wasn’t anything like this.” She melted into the beautiful hazel green of his eyes. “Nothing’s ever felt like this. I want to kiss you forever.”

  “You’re so sweet,” he murmured, and this time when he kissed her, he was gentle, his mouth soft, almost delicate against her lips. It was the most wonderful sensation she’d ever known.

  “I really have to take you home now,” he told her quietly.

  “It’s not that late,” she dared to say. “We could go down to the beach.”

  That was where the high school lovers went to park, steaming up the windows of their cars. The bolder ones took a blanket and a dinghy out past Sandy Hook to Fayne’s Island.

  She’d never been there.

  “You really want to?” His voice sounded funny, tight.

  “Yes.” She dared to glance at him again.

  The muscle was jumping in the side of his jaw. She slowly reached out and put her hand on his knee.

  “God help me,” he said. “Lord Jesus, save me.” He started to laugh.

  At her. Kelly jerked her hand back, mortified.

  But he somehow knew what she was thinking and was instantly contrite. “Kel, no—I’m not . . . I’m laughing at me.”

  She didn’t get it.

  “As much as I want to, I can’t take you to the beach,” he explained. “You have no idea what goes on down there.”

  “Yes, I do.” He wanted to. His words made her bold again, and she kissed him, as sweetly as he’d kissed her. “And what I don’t know, you could teach me.”

  She heard Tom groan again.

  And then he pushed her back onto the passenger’s side, fastening the seat belt around her, and started the car. And for several heart-stopping moments, she was both terrified and elated.

  But instead of taking the road to the beach, he sped up the hill. Toward home.

  “Tom—”

  “Don’t,” he cut her off, his voice rough as he took the turn onto their street. “Don’t say anything else.”

  “But—”

  “Please,” he said.

  I love you. Kelly clamped her teeth tightly over the words.

  Joe came out of his cottage as soon as Tom pulled into the driveway.

  Her mother came from the main house, looking suspiciously from Kelly to Tom. “Where have you been? Do y
ou know it’s almost midnight?”

  “Meet me later tonight,” Kelly whispered to Tom. “In the tree house.”

  Her mother had swept her inside, but before the door closed, Kelly looked back at Tom. He was lifting her bike out of the back of the station wagon, but he looked up and directly into her eyes, and she knew from the heat she saw there that he’d meet her. She knew it.

  But by two A.M., she was finally ready to believe the scribbled note he’d left for her. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

  Still, hope won out over doubt, and she went to sleep believing that he couldn’t have kissed her the way he had unless he loved her, too.

  But the next day, Tom had left town for good. To Kelly’s complete shock, he’d gotten a buzz cut. He’d joined the Navy and was shipping out. She didn’t even get a chance to speak to him without Joe and her parents overhearing.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her quietly, as he shook her hand—shook her hand—and she knew it was true. He was sorry. He didn’t love her.

  She had been a fool even to think that he might.

  Kelly had kept her distance from him the few times he came home on leave that first year he was in the service. She pretended not even to notice he was in town, hoping desperately all the while that he’d approach her. But he never did. And then, a few weeks before she turned seventeen, her parents separated, and she and her mom moved out of Baldwin’s Bridge.

  Kelly’s visits to her father had never lined up with Tom’s visits home to Joe.

  Until now.

  Tomorrow night she was having dinner with him.

  With wild Tom Paoletti.

  And this time she was playing his game, by his rules.

  Charles drifted, dreaming about ice.

  Dreaming about frozen daiquiris, in big, wide-mouthed glasses filled with crushed ice. He and Jenny’d gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. The trip had been exorbitantly expensive—the entire week had probably cost more than Cybele’s house in Ste.-Hélène. The irony hadn’t escaped him, even back then—he’d paid big money to travel by plane from the ice and snow to a place that was hot, and then he’d paid still more for a glass of that very same ice that had probably been shipped on the plane with him.