But it wasn’t Melissa. It was Paige, sounding upset as easygoing Paige rarely was. There were high-pitched words, mention of Mara, a crib, and baby-sitters. Angie slowed her down, made her start again. When her meaning finally got through, Angie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Mara’s baby from India? You have to be kidding.”
“She’s lying right here beside me, big as a peanut but very real. And she’s mine for now, Angie. I’m all she’s got, and I have office hours tomorrow and double hours next week to fill in for Mara, and that’s not to mention five practices and a cross-country race at Mount Court, and that’s only next week. What am I going to do?”
Angie was still trying to deal with the fact of the baby having arrived. “Mara must not have known she was coming so soon.”
“She knew. The agency rep talked with her Monday.”
“How could she have killed herself, then? She was so excited about adopting a child. She looked on it as her saving grace. What went wrong?”
“I don’t know!” Paige cried.
“Why didn’t she tell us the baby was on her way?”
“I don’t know,” Paige wailed.
But words were coming back to Angie, mentions Mara had made of bad luck and a curse, more than once, in counterpoint to talk of a saving grace. Angie had assumed she was being facetious. Perhaps not. “She may have been superstitious. She may have thought that if she said the words, something would go wrong.”
“Damn it, if she’d said something, we might have been prepared.”
“That’s assuming she planned to kill herself.”
“Even if she didn’t. She should have told us, damn it. We were her friends. She should have told us when the baby was coming. She should have told us she was upset—she should have told us she was taking Valium—she should have told us she was losing it. Damn it, Angie. Damn it.”
“I’m coming over,” Angie said without another thought. “Give me five minutes to get things set here, and I’ll be on my way.”
Paige took a broken breath. “I’m okay. You don’t need to.”
But Angie did. Attempts at normalcy notwithstanding, she was sick about Mara. She couldn’t blot out the image of that deep, dark hole in the ground into which the casket had been lowered earlier that day. She kept asking herself what she might have seen or done to prevent it, and although she didn’t seriously think that Paige was on the verge of suicide, she wasn’t taking any chances.
She wanted to talk with Paige.
And she had to see the baby.
Ben was sprawled on the den sofa, flipping between CNN and C-Span. His sketch pad was beside him, at the ready should he see anything worthy of caricaturing, but Angie knew it was more habit than anything else. He wore a glazed look that said he wasn’t concentrating. Mara’s death had shaken him badly.
She broke into his distraction. “Hon? I’m running over to Paige’s. Remember the little girl Mara was going to adopt from India? Well, she arrived today. Today. Paige has her.”
Ben’s eyes reflected his surprise, though he didn’t move a muscle. “She wasn’t due for weeks.”
“So Mara said. But she’s here, and from the sounds of it, Paige is on the verge of panic.”
“Paige knows how to take care of kids. She’s a pediatrician.”
“Pediatricians are the worst, when it comes to their own.”
“You weren’t.”
“I was the exception. I also didn’t work for four years, so I could devote myself to Dougie. And I had the luxury of you. Paige doesn’t have a husband to support her while she raises a child.”
He came straighter. “She’s keeping it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find that out when I go over.”
“Are you arguing for or against?”
“I’m not arguing anything. I’m listening to what Paige has to say.”
He settled mutinously onto the sofa and looked at the television again. Angie knew he was angry about Mara’s death. She was, too. It had been a senseless loss of life, not to mention the loss of a dedicated doctor and a good friend.
“I’ll tell Dougie I’m going,” she said softly. “Do me a favor and grab the phone if it rings. If it’s the answering service, have them call me at Paige’s. If it’s Melissa, don’t let Dougie stay on too long.”
“Why not? The funeral was tough on him. He could use some cheering up. Besides, it’s Friday. He doesn’t have school tomorrow.”
“It’s the relationship. He’s only fourteen.”
“What’s being fourteen without talking to girls on the phone?”
“And your tux,” Angie reminded him. “You’d better dig it out of the attic and bring it down. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll take it to the tailor tomorrow.”
Ben sank deeper into the couch. “The awards ceremony isn’t for six weeks.”
“True”—she pushed off from the doorjamb—“but it’s been six years since you last wore that tux. Even if it fits, it may look ancient, in which case we’ll buy a new one. You’re getting national recognition with this award.” She was proud of Ben. He was a talented cartoonist. “I want you to look great.”
She climbed the stairs to Dougie’s room. The door was closed. She knocked, opened it, and poked her head inside. Dougie was sprawled on the bed, looking incredibly like Ben and aggrieved by the intrusion. He must have known the minute she had hung up with Paige, because he was on the phone himself.
He quickly covered the receiver. “You never give me a chance to say ‘Come in.’”
She smiled. “I’m your mom. I don’t need permission.” She paused, thinking of Mara. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“Who’re you talking with?”
“Kids from school.”
Angie knew how that worked. There might be half a dozen kids crowding around the pay phone in the dorm. “Melissa, too?”
He shrugged again.
“Not long,” she warned with what she thought was due indulgence, then added, “I’m running to Paige’s for a little while. Remember Mara’s baby? The little girl she was planning to adopt? Well, she came today.”
Dougie’s jaw dropped.
“Paige has her.”
“What’s she going to do with her?”
“That’s what we have to discuss. I may be gone a few hours. Why don’t you drag your father outside to shoot baskets? The floodlights are working again.”
“I thought I’d go down to Reels.”
Angie was immediately uneasy. The video store with the soda bar in back had been the hangout of choice for the Mount Court kids since VCRs had invaded the dorms. “Who’ll be there?” she asked gently.
He shrugged. “A bunch of kids.”
“Melissa?”
He shrugged again. “If she decides to go with the others. There won’t be any problem, Mom. They have to be back by ten.”
Angie sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t go, Dougie. Not tonight.”
“Mara wouldn’t mind.”
“Not tonight.”
He covered the phone more completely. “Why not?”
“Because groups of kids have ways of getting into trouble. I seem to recall an incident last spring when a bunch of kids were picked up for pitching beer cans at the war memorial in the center of town. The pitching was disrespectful, the beer was newly drunk, and the kids were all underage and tipsy.”
“But we’re going to Reels.”
“Which is on the same block as the drugstore, the card store, and, coincidentally, the package store.” All it took was a little cash slipped to a transient truck driver buying his own beer. “It makes me very uncomfortable, Dougie.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust some of the others.”
“They’re good kids.”
“I’m sure they are.” All kids were. Some were confused and rebellious, but they were basically good kids who occasionally conspired to do
foolish things.
“Mom,” he complained, whispering now, “I’m fourteen. This is embarrassing.”
It was also the first year she had to face this kind of decision. Seventh-graders at Mount Court had to be back on campus by eight for anything but a chaperoned event, which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been a few cruisers among those innocent seventh-graders, simply that Dougie had never asked to be one.
She sighed. “Do it for me, Dougie? It’s been a difficult few days, and I’m feeling it. The last thing I want is to be worrying about you, and I will, if you meet the kids at Reels. Another time, maybe.”
“But—”
“Your dad could use some help. He’s feeling a little down.”
“But—”
She held up a hand, blew him a kiss, and left. Back downstairs, she put in a fast load of laundry, grabbed her car keys, called to Ben that she was leaving, and started for the door. But her mind was into organizing her thoughts, one of which was that life would be immeasurably easier for Paige if she didn’t have to work in the morning.
Saturday office hours were nine to twelve. With the time reserved primarily for acutes, of which there were rarely more than a handful, only one doctor had to be there. Who that doctor would be was always the source of much good-natured bickering and bartering.
Angie thought it would be super of Peter to take Paige’s turn for free. So she returned to the kitchen and gave him a call.
The Tavern had been the major watering hole in town for as long as Peter Grace could remember. His father had imbibed there, and his grandfather before that, and although rough-hewn benches and bare bulbs had been replaced by polished pine and Tiffany lamps, it was still rustic. To hear his three older brothers talk, a Tucker male wasn’t a man until he had staked out his booth at the Tavern. By that definition, Peter hadn’t achieved manhood until he was thirty years of age, which was when he returned to Tucker with medical school and a four-year residency in pediatrics under his belt. Only then had the onetime runt of the Grace litter had the courage to choose his booth.
It was the second one in from the front door and offered a visibility that the darker rear booths did not. Peter liked being seen. He was an important man, having been places and done things that few natives had, and he was a doctor. He was respected by the townsfolk, even loved by his patients. Their adoration was like a tonic. It was a sign of success that no amount of money could buy and went a long way toward compensating for the days when he had felt like a loser.
Likewise, there was something gratifying about watching his brothers file past to the obscurity of their booths farther back. Once upon a time, the three had been hometown stars, headlining the sports section of the Tucker Tribune, scoring touchdowns, swishing free throws, and hitting home runs, while Peter was fending off the taunts of his classmates. Small and uncoordinated, measured against unfairly high standards, he withdrew into a quiet world in which he read, studied, and dreamed of the day when his brothers’ knees went bad and he would shine.
He was doing that now. While his brothers worked construction, he played God. In counterpoint to their callused hands, beer bellies, and, yes, bad knees, he was in prime shape. Once skinny, he was now tall and firm. Once unruly curls had mellowed into dark auburn waves that were professionally styled. He dressed like a man who had known the sophistication of metropolis and successfully adapted it to hicksville.
Tonight, he was celebrating. He didn’t tell anyone that, of course. As far as the general populace of Tucker was concerned, he was nursing his beer in an attempt to lighten the sorrow he felt over Mara O’Neill’s death.
In fact, the sorrow had lightened with each clod of dirt that the cemetery workers had shoveled into Mara’s grave. Peter had stayed to watch long after the crowd of mourners had left. He had wanted to be sure that the job was done right, had wanted to see with his own two eyes that she was six feet under and gone.
Mara O’Neill had been a dangerous woman. She’d had the knack of befriending a man, drawing him close, then stabbing him in the back. She had done it to her husband and nearly done it to Peter. A dangerous woman, to say the least. He was lucky to have escaped.
He took a healthy swallow of his beer and was setting the glass down when several men from the steelworks entered the Tavern. They passed his booth en route to theirs at the rear.
“Too bad about Dr. O’Neil.”
“Real loss for the town.”
“She was a trooper.”
Peter nodded, spared a response by the guise of grief, grateful when the men moved on. A trooper? Oh, yes, Mara was that. Once she set her mind on something, she didn’t give up, and yes, this was a loss for the town. But another doctor could be found, and in the meantime, he, Paige, and Angie could service their patients just fine.
Susan Hawes, who owned the Tavern, slid in opposite him. She was a born hostess, a natural talker. “Beautiful eulogy the minister gave this morning,” she remarked. “Makes it even harder to understand why a woman like Mara would take her own life. Of course, ministers don’t always talk about the down side of folks.” She grew reminiscent. “She wasn’t a regular here by a long shot, but when she did come in, she could drink with the best of them. She used to sit with old Henry Mills and match him beer for beer until he felt so bad making her drunk that he stopped. He was always back the next day, drinking again, but for that one time, at least, he went home sober.”
Peter cracked his knuckles. “She did have a different way about her.”
“I heard she was stone drunk in that car.”
He shook his head.
“Then what?”
He shrugged. Sure, he had known about the Valium. But he hadn’t dreamed she was taking so much. “Since I wasn’t with her, I can’t really say.”
“Was she seeing anyone local?”
“Nope.”
“No man in her life?”
“Nope.”
“Spud Harvey’s gonna miss her. He used to watch her coming and going around town. Nearly drove him crazy when she had that little fling with his brother a while back. Spud was in love with her, but don’t tell him I told you so.”
Peter might have made a pithy comment to the extent that Mara had been worlds above the Harvey brothers, intellectually and in every other way, had his beeper not sounded just then. Susan pointed to the phone behind the bar and left him to it. He dialed the number of his answering service, thinking all the while about Mara. He knew about the thing with Spud’s brother. It had been an impulsive weekend and had meant nothing. Mara had done things like that sometimes.
But death? Death was final. He still couldn’t believe she had done that.
“Doctors’ office.”
“Trudie, it’s Peter Grace.”
“Oh, hi, Peter. Dr. Bigelow just left a message asking you to cover for Dr. Pfeiffer in the morning. She said to call her at home later if there’s a problem.”
Peter sighed. “Thanks.” A problem? He supposed there wasn’t. He had hoped to sleep late, but it was probably just as well this way. He hadn’t slept late—hadn’t slept well—since he had learned of Mara’s death. Demons kept waking him up, reminding him of the last time he’d seen her.
It had been late Tuesday afternoon. Mara had sent the nurse to ask if he could see her last patients for her. Covering for each other was a way of life, one of the very purposes of a group practice; still, he had been tired enough himself to be annoyed. So he had stuck his head in at her door and found her standing by the desk.
“What’s the problem, Mara?”
She had looked at him in confusion. “Uh…”
“Are you sick?” he remembered asking. “You look like shit.”
She hadn’t said a word, had simply stared at him in that same confused way for another few seconds. Then, as though some spark inside had given her sudden momentum, she had bolted forward, pushing past him, running down the hall toward the door.
“Jesus, Mara,” he had said, but she hadn’t heard
that, any more than she’d heard the “Crazy bitch” he had muttered on his way back to work.
He kept seeing her running down the hall, kept seeing it over and over again. He wondered if she was haunting him.
Lacey arrived at the booth just as he returned. “Good timing,” she said with a smile. “Have you been here long?”
“Ten minutes,” he said, slipping a hand under his suspender as he settled down in the booth. He took a long drink, using the time to shift gears from Mara to Lacey.
Lacey was a looker. At twenty-eight she was thirteen years his junior, but the age difference didn’t bother him one bit. He was the knowing one, the experienced one, the one who called the shots—all the more so since he was a native. She had come from a publishing house in Boston four months before to help edit the biography of Tucker’s oldest citizen, who at the age of one hundred and two had put together a collection of stories about turn-of-the-century New England. Peter was showing her the local ropes. In return, she was an attractive and sophisticated feather in his cap. Squiring Lacey around, he was the envy of many a native, and he liked it that way.
“How was it?” she asked with a grimace.
Peter knew she was talking of the funeral. She hadn’t gone, hadn’t known Mara. He had worked hard to keep it that way. “Not bad.”
“Sad?”
“All funerals are. The turnout was surprisingly good,” he said, though in truth he hadn’t been surprised at all. Mara had been active enough in town to have touched the lives of nearly everyone there. What had surprised him was the high level of emotion, particularly given the way she had died. He would have thought there would be resentment, even anger, at her desertion. Instead the damned place had reeked of love.
“How were her parents?” Lacey asked.
He released his suspender with a snap. “I told them the usual, how good Mara was with her patients. They nodded stoically. Then I thought I’d be a good guy and tell them how fiercely she fought for what she believed in. Bad move. They don’t appreciate spunk. They wanted her to be a sweet little thing with a husband and babies.” He laughed. “Can you imagine it? That’s the last thing Mara could ever have been.”
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