“Is she….” Harkless began.
“Start the car,” David said, and moved down the steps.
Chapter Forty-Three
Because activity at the hospital had been light that day, they were given a room next to Jessica’s in intensive care.
Harkless sat in a green recliner alongside David’s bed, Ivy on a single bed they’d wheeled in, Mike Jr. asleep on a cot, his scrawny limbs buried under a spill of white blankets.
It was 7:14 in the morning.
David hadn’t slept since being admitted, and though he and Harkless had fought to see Jessica, thus far the doctors had not relented. Memories of Judson hoisting Ralph into the air kept flitting through David’s head, and no matter what he’d glimpsed within the Alexander House, he couldn’t permit himself to believe that the terrible spectre was truly vanquished.
“Will you check on her?” he asked Harkless in a voice he hoped wouldn’t awaken the kids.
“Trying to get me thrown out?” Harkless asked. “Wasn’t ten minutes ago I was over there getting the stink eye from her nurse.”
David licked his lips, couldn’t bring himself to utter Judson’s name.
Harkless stared back at him, not unkindly. “It’s over, David. All we can do now is pray for her.” Her look soured. “Or whatever it is you’d rather do.”
David said nothing.
Six feet away, Ivy moaned. Harkless was on her feet instantly. She stroked Ivy’s hair, murmured soothing words. Ivy’s forehead unfurrowed. She let out a tired sigh.
David turned and discovered that Mike had flopped over onto his stomach. The cot, which was navy blue, was darker around Mike Jr.’s mouth, the boy drooling in his sleep. The position looked incredibly uncomfortable, but with all the wires and tubes connected to David’s arms, he couldn’t roll the boy over if he wanted to. Mouth open, Mike Jr. snored softly.
“Poor Ivy,” Harkless said, moving to stand beside David. “I wonder if they’ll do anything about her stomach…or just let her pass what’s in there.”
David blanched, thinking of what Ivy had done to Templeton when under Judson’s spell.
He looked up at Harkless. “What have you told them?”
Harkless pursed her lips. “A load of bullshit. Detective Baldwin insists the investigation is his, but this was my show from beginning to end, and I’m gonna control the narrative.”
“Which is?”
“The Shelbys and Chris and Katherine were part of a sinister cult.”
At David’s look, Harkless’s eyes widened. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? They’re the ones who killed Templeton, the ones who shot you and Jessica and tried to kill me and Mike.”
David glanced at Ivy. “How do you…?”
“The bite marks on Templeton are gonna be hard to explain, but if I can talk to Ivy…you know, coach her a little….”
Ivy twitched in her sleep.
Harkless said, “She doesn’t remember a thing. Not after she went missing.”
David sat up. “Nothing?”
“She said she had some nightmares…mentioned a big man taking her by the hand…she described those creatures.”
“The leering things.”
“Enough.” Harkless shivered. “I don’t think she’ll incriminate herself. After all, she’s only four. It’s not like they’re gonna be predisposed against her.” A humourless laugh. “Then again, Baldwin is a complete peckerwood. He’ll do anything to cause me trouble.”
The door opened and a doctor and nurse entered. The nurse was blond, short, and very young; the doctor appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. His badge said ‘Anayat Wardag.’
“Is she okay?” David asked.
Wardag put a palm up. “I just came on a few minutes ago. Let’s check you first. You sustained serious trauma. Your back, your throat, arms, shoulders— What are you doing?”
David was climbing off the bed, but the nurse was there before David could get up, her small but strong hands already pushing him back. “You pull that out,” she said, nodding at the needle piercing his wrist, “and you’ll spray blood all over.”
“You think that bothers me?”
“It should,” Dr. Wardag said. “You’ve lost too much blood already. We don’t want to have to transfuse.”
David compressed his lips. “I was just grazed.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Wardag agreed. “And bitten. By…what did you say?” He leafed through the pages of a clipboard.
“A cult member,” Harkless supplied. “Her name was Honey Shelby.”
Wardag eyed the sheriff. “I think Mr. Caine can answer on his own, Sheriff Harkless.”
“Honey bit me,” David said. “How’s Jessica?”
Wardag stored the clipboard against his side. “Miss Green has suffered severe trauma. She will live, but her recovery will be slow.”
“She awake?” Harkless asked.
Wardag grunted noncommittally. “She was able to answer some of my questions. Others, she had no answers for.”
“You’re not a cop,” Harkless said. “You have no business conducting an investigation.”
Wardag’s tone remained patient. “I asked her questions pertinent to her injuries. She was able to tell me she was shot by Michael Shelby.” He looked at Harkless. “Mr. Shelby is now deceased?”
“That’s none of your business,” Harkless snapped. “And yes, he’s very deceased.”
Wardag appeared to consider. The nurse had gone over to attend to Ivy.
Wardag nodded. “Miss Green is responding well to transfusions. She will have severe scarring on her side. The spleen was perforated but not damaged egregiously by the slug. She shouldn’t lose any functionality.”
David’s muscles unclenched a bit.
“The muscles of your forearms,” Wardag continued, “were damaged. They’ll take time to heal.”
“And Ivy?” Harkless asked.
Wardag’s face clouded. He flipped the pages on his clipboard. “I understand she’s suffering from severe shock.”
“Why don’t you look at her?” David said with some heat.
Wardag glanced at Harkless. “It’s irregular to have so many patients in one room.”
“Being attacked by crazed cult members is irregular too,” Harkless said. “No way that girl is getting out of my sight again. Hey,” she said, stepping closer to Wardag. “That reminds me. When do we get to see Jessica?”
“She’s sleeping, Sheriff Harkless.”
“That’s not what I asked, Dr. Wardag.”
The doctor held Harkless’s stare a long time. Then he sighed. “She was awake when I first came on. She asked for Mr. Caine and became agitated when I told her to rest. We sedated her.”
“Then I won’t be hurting anything by looking in on her,” Harkless said.
Wardag cocked an eyebrow. Finally, he grinned ruefully and gestured toward the door. “Five minutes.”
Harkless winked at David and went out. The doctor and nurse followed.
He’d lain there for a couple minutes when a small voice said, “What’s severe shock?”
Mike Jr. was lying on his side on the cot, only his pale face showing between the white blanket and pillowcase.
“It means Ivy’s been through something terrible, and it’ll take a while for her to feel normal again.”
“How long?”
David auditioned several lies but decided Mike had been deceived enough. “There’s no way to know.”
Mike’s bottom lip quivered. “Are they gonna split us up?”
With a pang of self-recrimination, David realised how selfish his thinking had been over the past several hours. While he cared about the kids’ wellbeing, his thoughts had chiefly tended toward Jessica.
But studying Mike now…God, the kid had lost everyone but Ivy, and he was t
errified of losing her too. In the pale, lost face on the cot, David saw none of the petulance he’d glimpsed that first day on the peninsula. Only a heartbroken, orphaned child who needed comforting.
“Hey,” David said and had to clear his throat. “Hey, Mike, why don’t you come over here?”
Automatically, Mike climbed off the cot and wandered over to David’s bedside. With an effort, David scooted over. “Get in,” he said.
Mike frowned. “What about all those wires? I don’t want to unplug you.”
“I’m not a microwave.”
Mike bit his bottom lip. “Will it kill you?”
“You’re not going to kill me. Now are you coming up or not? I’m tired.”
Wordlessly, Mike crawled onto the bed, his eyes never leaving the wires and tubes connecting David to the monitors and drip bag. Mike lay back, and with some fuss, David lifted the hospital blanket so the kid could slide under.
They were lying there, David half dozing, when Mike asked, “What’s in the sack?”
“Huh?”
“That one,” Mike said and nodded toward the dangling drip sack.
“Oh, that. It’s super-soldier serum. Like they gave Captain America.”
Mike looked at him blankly. Then he scowled. “You’re full of shit.”
David laughed softly. Within a minute or so, Mike fell asleep.
David had begun to drift off when he became aware of someone staring at him. He sucked in breath, turned, and saw Ivy watching him at his bedside.
“I had a nightmare,” she said.
Your life has been a nightmare, he thought.
“Wanna join us?” he asked.
She climbed in. She burrowed into his side, bumping one of his arms in the process, and though it revived a throbbing pain, he didn’t mind.
“Mr. Caine?” she said.
“Yeah?” he whispered, trying not to wake Mike.
“I’m scared.”
David drew her closer, caressed her skinny arm. “The bad man is gone, Ivy. He won’t hurt you again.”
Ivy was silent so long he thought she’d gone to sleep. Then she whispered, “I’m scared of myself.”
He saw her gazing up at him with wide eyes. “I trust you, Ivy. You’d never hurt anyone.”
Her face started to crumple. “I think I did.”
Her sobs were nearly noiseless, but her body shuddered with them. He clutched her tighter, his throat burning, and when she’d gotten some of it out, he said, “Ivy?”
She looked up at him, her face shiny with tears.
“Can I tell you the truth?”
She nodded.
He took a breath. “Some people should never be parents. Mine were like that.” He swallowed. “Yours were too. But that doesn’t mean that you and I don’t deserve to live, right? We deserve a chance, don’t we?”
Her eyes were huge in the near-darkness of the hospital room.
“Don’t we?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his.
“You’re a great kid, Ivy. You’re going to have a happy life. Me, Jessica, Sheriff Harkless…we’ll make sure of it.”
Her mouth twitched. “You will?”
“None of it is your fault, Ivy. None of it. But it’s gonna be better now. I promise.”
She watched him for a long time. Then, evidently satisfied by what she saw, she relaxed and placed her head on his chest. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
Soon, they joined Mike in sleep.
* * *
They kept David two days. In that time, both Mike and Ivy returned to their normal personalities, more or less. Harkless and Tina, the CPS woman, decided that Harkless would take temporary charge of the kids, and Mike and Ivy didn’t seem to mind. On the day David was discharged, they ate lunch with him – an almost indigestible combination of tepid soup and dust-dry peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
When David was finally allowed to see Jessica, he was awed to discover her sitting up in bed, looking a trifle wan but otherwise beautiful in the early afternoon sunlight. Crossing to her, David realised with a start that she’d been given the same room in which Ralph Hooper had been murdered. He was sure she’d noted the coincidence too but had opted not to mention it.
What she did say was, “Georgia overstated how bad you look.”
He grunted laughter. “That was kind of Georgia.”
He took her hand. Her fingers accepted his, and he thought, What if….
“Where will you go?” she asked. Her expression remained calm, but there was something raw, something naked in her voice.
“I’ll stay in one of the motels, work on my book.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He lowered his gaze. “I know. But it’s a complicated question.”
“David?”
He looked up at her.
“The time for messing around is over,” she said.
Despite the directness of her gaze, her hand in his was relaxed, her thumb slowly stroking one of his bandages.
He swallowed. “I’d like to stay with you.”
Whatever she was looking for, this seemed to satisfy her. “The spare key is taped under the café table by the pergola. Sebastian’s food is in the pantry. Georgia will be glad she won’t have to feed and walk him any more. With Mike and Ivy, she already has her hands full.”
He nodded. “That’ll be better than a motel.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Pick up after yourself. I don’t want my house looking like a frat party when I come home.”
After
He drove Jessica home twelve days after she’d been admitted. Her surgery had gone well, and she was expected to make a full recovery. As June wound to a close, David spent time with her when she was awake and worked while she rested. He’d titled his book The First Haunting: The True Story of the Alexander Spectre, and though reliving the nightmarish events proved emotionally taxing, shaping the story to fit the lies they’d told the authorities proved a stimulating challenge.
“How do we explain Georgia not entering the house when Chris and Honey held you at gunpoint?” Jessica asked.
She was reclined on a cushioned gliding lounger he’d purchased for her. After her surgery, sitting in a traditional chair awakened a glancing throb in her side.
He tapped a pencil on his notebook. “She was protecting Mike Jr. by keeping him away from the gunfire.”
“While Ivy remained in harm’s way?”
He frowned, then snapped his fingers. “Ivy went with Sheriff Harkless to the car too. She wasn’t in the house when Judson made his appearance.”
“That could work. But it diverges from the story you told.”
He paused. “You sure you want me to finish this project?”
“People need to know how my sister died. For twenty-two years everyone’s believed she killed herself.”
David gazed down at his notebook.
Jessica swung her legs around and placed her bare feet on the deck. “It isn’t just vindictiveness, David. It’s…you…John Weir….”
He nodded. In a way, the book was to be David’s apology. He’d erected a career on skepticism, and despite the pride-swallowing it entailed, he felt an obligation to admit to the world he’d experienced a conversion to the side of belief. Belief in what, he could work out in time, but at the very least, he had to accept the fact that there were powers he would have never dreamed possible.
His editor and agent were giddy about the project. His agent kept hinting that maybe they should open up the book to other bidders, and while the prospect was tempting, David had come to appreciate loyalty more than ever before. His current publishing house had treated him well and paid him handsomely even before his books started making money. The First Haunting would return their investment tenfold.
He looked at Jessica.
“What?” she asked, smiling a little.
“I’m falling for you.”
The smile disappeared.
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
She fidgeted with her beige shorts. She wore them low on her hips, not to be alluring, but so the fabric wouldn’t irritate her stitches.
“How do you think John Weir would feel about the project?” she asked.
“Nice subject change. I think he’d be happy the truth was being told.”
She looked at him then. “What is the truth?”
“About Weir? I think Judson got him. Or the leering things.”
“Isn’t that what The Last Haunting claimed?”
David reached down, scratched Sebastian’s belly. The dog’s forepaws extended, like a cartoon sleepwalker. “It isn’t what Hartenstein wrote, it’s how he wrote it. Like he was delighted by Weir’s death.”
“Weir deserved better,” she said.
“We’ll give him better. We’ll include parts of the diary that The Last Haunting left out. We’ll—”
“David?”
“Yes?”
“I’m falling for you too.”
At length he said, “Well, that changes things.”
The ghost of a smile. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to ask my department head if I can take a semester off.”
“Will she go for it?”
“I think so. Either way, I’m staying.”
Her smile grew, then faded. “What then?”
He shrugged. “Then we’ve got decisions to make.”
“Sleep in my bed tonight.”
It knocked his wind out. “Okay.”
“We can’t have sex yet,” she hurried on. “You know…the stitches.”
“Right. The stitches.”
“But I’d like you to hold me. Kiss me some.”
He smiled. “I kiss you every day.”
Her eyes held him. “Not in my bed.”
* * *
They did make love that night. They began almost shyly, but in the end she’d moaned into his ear, licked and bit his lobe, and it had taken all his self-possession not to devolve into animalistic thrusting. Just before David climaxed, Sebastian somehow clambered onto the bed and began sniffing at David’s butt crack. He reached back to push the dog away, but Sebastian had begun to lick the backs of his legs, at which point David knew there was no salvaging the moment. Laughing along with Jessica, he rolled off her and vigorously scratched the dog’s forehead. Sebastian bounded between them, happy to be included in the festivities.
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