I made it to the road in under a minute and headed west. Even the roar of the traffic wasn’t as cutting as the noise back at the country club. The tux was soon soaked, but it felt pleasant. The rising wind left me chilled, but an inner heat kept me moving. Only my hands, thrust in my jacket pockets, stayed dry.
My gaze remained fixed on the shiny rented shoes and the uneven ground, bereft of sidewalk—and away from the headlights that tried to punch through my brain. Water sloshed around my toes. The rain wasn’t doing the rented tux any good, either. Well, what could they charge me for it? A hundred? Two? Who cared if they wanted a grand.
But the evening hadn’t been a total loss. I’d seen my beautiful Maggie. Okay, so she’d been on someone else’s arm, not mine. And my so-called date had been too busy looking after her career to even think of me.
Nobody wants you. Stupid ugly jerk.
The hell with Krista. Let her find some other sap to study.
Why would anyone want you?
Walking. One foot in front of the other.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I turned onto Harlem Road, passed houses, businesses, and found myself avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
I’d never done anything to hurt my mother . . . except maybe look like my father.
I was a fine son. I had a card to prove it. But she’d still loved Richard best.
Everyone loved Richard best.
I was halfway home when Richard’s Lincoln pulled up along-side me. The power window on the front passenger side slid down.
“What on Earth are you doing?” Brenda hollered, taking in the mud-spattered tux plastered against me like a second skin. My hair hung in my eyes; rain rolled down my cheeks.
“Go back to the party.”
“Get in.”
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t.
“Get in the car, hon. I’m taking you home.”
“No can do. I’d ruin Richard’s upholstery.”
“Jeffy, you’re soaked—you’ll catch pneumonia. Please, get in the car!”
I took in the darkened, empty sidewalk ahead of me. Pools of light illuminated the concrete every twenty or so feet, the rest bathed in shadows. Like stepping off the end of the earth.
“Jeffy, please!”
“Only if I can sit on your coat. I won’t ruin Richard’s upholstery.”
Frustrated, she swore, but yanked the belt at her waist, struggled out of the coat, and then settled it on the passenger seat. “Now will you get in?”
I got in.
She put the car in gear and we took off. The heater blasted; the windshield wipers thumped, streetlights strobed overhead, and I felt like ten variations of stupid. I wiped the droplets from my chin, unable to look at her.
“Jeffy what’s wrong?” Brenda tried again, her voice gentle, worried.
“Nothing. I just . . . had to get out of there. Krista wasn’t ready to leave. I couldn’t ask you and Rich—this is his night.” I lowered—flattened—my voice. “His night.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride back to the house. In minutes she pulled up the drive and put the car in park outside the entrance to my loft apartment.
“I’ll come up with you.”
“No. Rich is probably pissed as hell. You’d better get back.”
She glanced at the clock on the dash, then back to me. “You go straight to bed. No more drinking tonight. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I meant it, too.
She gave me a quick hug. I caught the sweet scent of her perfume. Closing my eyes, I held her tight, her body heat warming my frozen soul. I sensed her turmoil. Anger—though not at me—laced with worry.
Why couldn’t she be Maggie?
Brenda pulled back and darted forward to kiss my cheek. Richard was so damned lucky.
I got out of the car and headed up the steps, knowing she wouldn’t leave until she saw the light go on upstairs. I was already peeling off the tux when I heard the car head down the driveway.
I tossed the wet clothes in the shower stall, grabbed and donned my robe, then opened the medicine cabinet and saw all my old prescriptions. The plastic amber bottles seemed to glow in the faint light.
Asshole.
Herschel appeared and wound around my feet, crying.
“You’re a bottomless pit.” I shuffled into the kitchen and dumped dry food into his bowl.
My mother’s card stood on the counter.
This birthday was no worse than most of the others. Years ago, Mom had bought a couple of cupcakes and sang a chorus of Happy Birthday. A couple of times she’d even stayed sober.
The year Shelley left I celebrated alone at a diner on 84th Street. Meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes.
Last year, two months passed before Richard realized he’d missed it.
I wandered back into the bathroom, switched on the light, then hung the tux on hangers, and tried to smooth out some of the wrinkles.
The medicine cabinet door still stood open.
End the suffering.
All those bottles of pills.
What if I just?
Do it. Do it. Do it!
I slammed the medicine cabinet’s door shut.
No!
But how much more was I supposed to endure?
Trapped in a useless, unattractive body.
I stared at my reflection. Grace seemed to be living in my brain. Poor pathetic Grace. I thought of her with pity, not compassion.
Pitiful.
Is that how people saw me? Poor old Jeff—Richard’s liability. Rich had spent untold thousands bailing me out after the mugging: the hospital, all my debts, the apartment’s renovations. I’d never be able to repay him.
What about everything he’d endured?
The murderer who shot him. All that blood soaking into his best suit on Easter morning.
If another killer hadn’t been so preoccupied with enjoying himself, Rich might’ve died on that mountain in Vermont, too.
Then Brenda lost their first child . . . .
All of it my fault.
Why the hell did Richard even bother with me?
A liability.
It was guilt, of course.
Totally unlovable.
Poor pathetic Jeff—er, Grace.
The medicine cabinet called to me again. Scores of pills, looking like candy. Bitter medicine to deliver a blessed release.
The ache in my head flared. Snapping off the bathroom light, I crossed the darkened apartment. Crawling into bed, I wrapped myself in the covers, willed myself to stop thinking. Tried to replace dark thoughts with mundane crap. Concentrated on counting my blessings.
But that shiny wheelchair had taken root in my mind. Everything was fucked up and wrong and would never get any better.
Ugly and useless and unlovable and . . . .
It all led back to Grace.
Chapter 16
The Lincoln sailed through a red light. Brenda made no attempt to even slow down.
“What’s the hurry?” Richard asked, hoping there wasn’t a cop nearby.
She didn’t answer.
“I could’ve driven, you know. I’m not drunk.”
Still no reply.
“Just tell me what’s wrong?” Richard tried, waiting for the opening salvo that would start the inevitable argument.
“Congratulations. You got the job.” No mistaking the disapproval in her voice.
“It won’t be like California,” Richard insisted.
“That’s what you say now.”
“Pasadena was golden and you know it. If money hadn’t gotten tight, I’d have been in line for—”
She held up a hand to stave off that argument. “That’s all in the past,” she said. “We were let go and now we’re here and you’re still looking to be top dog of something so you can—”
Brenda cut herself off, sighed, and he knew there’d be tears in her eyes.
“We’re
going to have a baby. You’ve got Jeffy back. You’ve got your volunteer job. What more do you need?”
After all these years, she still didn’t understand him. And now all that he’d worked for in the past few months had been reduced to a problem to fester between them, at a time when they were supposed to be so happy.
Brenda began her turn onto LeBrun and yelped. “Damn this steering?” She wrestled with the wheel, straightening the car.
“What?”
“It went out again. Couldn’t you tell?”
“It only seems to happen when you drive.”
Brenda said nothing.
She pulled up the drive, stopping by the back door. She got out, slammed the car door, and stalked through the light drizzle to the house.
Richard parked the car, closed the garage door, then paused to look over his shoulder at the darkened apartment over the garage. Brenda wasn’t angry about the job, she was upset over Jeff.
Richard let himself in, set the security system, then headed upstairs. Entering the master bedroom, he found the lights ablaze, but no sign of Brenda.
“Why are you so angry?” he said to the empty room.
“That woman,” came Brenda’s voice from the bathroom.
Richard removed his bow tie. “Who?”
“Dr. Marsh.”
So, that was it.
“What about her?”
Brenda turned out the bathroom light and entered the bedroom, heading for the bed. Her silky nightgown clung to her abdomen. “Oh, come on, she ignored Jeffy the whole night.”
Richard had been too caught up in his own world to notice, but of course Brenda had. Jeff and Brenda had a rapport that . . . damn, whatever it was they shared sometimes made him so achingly, shamefully . . . jealous.
“She’s bad news,” Brenda continued.
Richard thought about it. Jeff had been in one of his pathetic moods. His headaches were also a good excuse to be anti-social—a convenient way for Jeff to withdraw from difficult social situations. Richard suspected his brother’s so-called ‘skullpounders’ were more psychosomatic than physical in nature. Not that he dared voice that opinion.
“We already figured that,” Richard said, watching as Brenda drew back the spread, then slipped beneath the sheets.
“She’s using him. To get to you and anyone else you might know.”
“Oh come on. What can I do to?”
“You’ve just been made chairman of the capital campaign. Jeff’s your brother. Think about it.”
She did have a point. Richard had only met Krista a few months before. Until recently he’d only spoken to her sporadically. Now suddenly she was dating his brother, a man who couldn’t possibly interest a woman like her.
Except . . . Jeff had that damnable empathic sensitivity, something Krista had been inordinately interested in, even before she meet Jeff.
Tonight Krista had asked if Richard would have influence on how the foundation funds were to be spent.
“Why would she want to use him?” he asked
“You mean, besides riding your coattails? That’s a good question.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Protect him.”
“Jeff’s a big boy. He can—”
“He cannot fend for himself,” Brenda said, her voice rising. “Not now. Not when he’s so vulnerable.”
“You don’t give him much credit,” Richard said, shoving his hands in his jacket pocket.
Brenda got out of bed, marched toward him. “And you’re so self-involved you can’t see the danger to him.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
Brenda glowered at him. “Go away!” She pushed him toward the door.
“What?”
“You heard me. Until you can listen to reason—just go away.” She pushed him out of the room, slammed and locked the door.
“Brenda!” he shouted at her, for the first time in the ten years he’d known her. “Brenda!”
He punched the door. It stayed closed.
Richard turned, heading down the stairs. In the kitchen, he flipped on the light switch and stared at the immaculate counters.
Now what the hell should he do?
After all his behind-the-scenes work, the big announcement had come and now his wife had picked a fight because his brother was a basket case. Just what in hell was he supposed to do about it? And who could he even talk to?
Suppressing the urge to kick the fridge, Richard suddenly thought of someone who might listen. Yanking his car keys from his pocket, he unlocked the door and headed for the garage.
Richard pulled up the collar of his tux against the rain and studied the bakery sign over the door. Was it the same as it had been earlier in the week when he’d driven by? He couldn’t remember. Maybe that was good. Maybe that meant he could enter whatever world Jeff found himself in when the psychic crap took over his mind. But feeling foolish for being there didn’t stop him from ringing the bell.
Pure lunacy.
There was no way the old woman would be there.
No way.
A light snapped on in the back of the shop. A portly figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Richard stared in disbelief—anticipation.
Slowly the figure advanced. An old woman, dressed in a faded housedress, a maroon sweater, and a frayed white, full-front apron, stopped in front of the door, studied him in the dim light cast from a lamppost in the parking lot.
“Are you Sophie? I’m Jeff’s brother,” he shouted, hoping she’d hear him through the plate glass.
She didn’t say anything, but continued to study his face, as though looking into his soul.
He tried again. “Can we talk? Jeff’s in trouble.”
The old woman’s brow furrowed. Indecision darkened her worried eyes. There was a familiarity to them. And to the set of her jaw—a profile he was well acquainted with.
At last Sophie unlocked the door. “Come in, you’re getting soaked.”
Richard stepped inside and wiped his feet on the mat.
“Do you like coffee or tea?” she asked.
His turn to size her up: she looked more like an orange pekoe fan. “Tea.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “You lie beautifully. But you better not lie to me about my boy.”
Her boy?
“No, ma’am.”
Richard followed her through the bakery and into the back room crowded with sacks of flour, flattened cake boxes and stacks of white paper sacks. Amidst the chaos was an island of order.
“Sit, sit.” She indicated a battered metal folding chair beside an old scarred card table. She filled a pot with water and set it on an electric burner to heat.
What the hell am I doing here, Richard wondered. How could this woman know Jeff? Then again, there were whole chunks of Jeff’s life—past and present—he didn’t know about.
Richard broke the silence. “Why did you call Jeff your boy?”
She turned. “He’s special to me. To you too, eh?”
“Yes. My wife says I need to watch out for him. He doesn’t do a very good job of it, I’m afraid.”
“For many years he was very good at it. He took care of others. He had a lot of responsibilities. Since he got hurt—” She shook her head. “That’s why you’re here.”
Richard nodded. “Jeff doesn’t trust many people. He trusts you.”
Sophie looked at him with suspicion. “What did he tell you about me?”
“He never speaks of you.”
“Then how did you know where to find me?”
“He brought me here once. But they said you didn’t live here.”
She shrugged, looking thoughtful. “What else?”
“I always know when he’s been to see you, because he seems—different. Like he’s gotten a dose of common sense. But he hasn’t been here lately, has he?”
She shook her head sadly, fingering the cuff of her sweater. “He’s going through a difficult time. Which is why you’re here, eh?”
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Richard nodded. “He’s not acting like himself.” That was an understatement. Jeff didn’t seem to have a normal state of being. He never talked much about himself, never gave too much away. To most people, his isolation made him seem uncaring. Richard saw through that facade, knowing he was just the opposite—a man of deep feeling.
“It’s a woman,” Sophie said with certainty, her eyes pained.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Maggie left him, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, knowingly. “He knows she’ll be back. What’s the problem?”
“How could he know that?”
“They’re destined to be together. He’s known that since the day they met.”
Richard wasn’t sure he believed that.
“Who is this other woman?” she asked.
“A doctor—a psychiatrist,” he clarified.
“Bah—she’s no good for him. He knows it, too. But men have needs. It makes them do foolish things sometimes.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I don’t have psychic insight like Jeff does, but I don’t trust her, either. And I don’t think he’d listen to me if I asked him not to see her any more. I was hoping you’d have more influence with him.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I don’t know why I’m here. I didn’t even know if you’d be here. But I had to try something. He’s in way over his head. I don’t want to see him get hurt again. He’s not acting rational. He’s—” Richard stopped himself, suddenly aware he was telling far more than he should to a complete stranger.
Sophie set a chipped mug of tea in front of him, offering no sugar or milk. “Your work has made you an investigator, like Jeffrey.”
“I worked in research for many years,” he agreed.
“Then you know how to unravel a mystery. You should look at this woman as though she is an enemy. She is Jeffrey’s enemy. She hurts him in ways you and I can never understand. But there may not be time to stop her before the worst happens.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
Sophie shrugged, her frown conveying her concern. “When I think of this woman, I see blackness—death.”
“Jeff’s death?”
“I see death. He’s in terrible danger. You’re the only one who can save him. From this woman, from himself.”
Bound by Suggestion Page 18
