Dance of the Rogue

by Cris Anson

  “But—”

  He grabbed Rolf’s upper arm and, walking backward, forcibly pulled him out of the room while Rolf tried to hear her, to watch Nonie’s mouth move with words she needed to say, words he needed to hear, to solve the puzzle of her so-called accident.

  “You already spent eight minutes more than allowed with my patient. You got her so upset all her monitors were jumping.”

  “But she actually started talking to me!”

  “That’s great. We’ll have the docs examine her right away. Why don’t you come back later,” Leon said forcefully. “Right now I have a message for you. You’re to go down to the lab. Fantine, that’s the pretty lady you were with the other day, isn’t it? Anyway, she’s gotten a phlebotomist to stand by for a short window of time because she lined up a bunch of folks to give blood for your favorite patient and mine. You can give blood right alongside her and be back in time for the next round of visitation.”

  Rolf glared at him a moment. Looked back into the ICU, where Nonie appeared to be resting peacefully. Then asked for directions to the lab.

  * * * * *

  It had been a big gamble, but it appeared they had won. Fantine was still lying on the gurney, holding her arm up to stanch the flow of blood, fingers pressed against the inner elbow of the arm from which the phlebotomist had just withdrawn a pint of her blood.

  And there he stood, Uncle Pearce, scowling at her, but here. He had actually fallen for it. Still wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but he was really here.

  “If you’ll just sit here, sir.” The phlebotomist gestured to a chair whose armrests each stretched about a foot in width. “We don’t need you to lie down just yet. I’ll only be taking a few drops from your finger while we do the normal pre-extraction testing.”

  With a scowl in Fantine’s direction, he sat. Fantine could barely contain the urge to glance at the screen hiding the other gurney. “Thank you, Uncle Pearce. This will mean so much to Nonie.”

  The tech smiled at her. “You can sit up any time, Fantine. Just be sure to get up slowly, you might find that you’re still dizzy. And there’s orange juice at the counter. You’ll need to drink some to replace the fluids and get your blood sugar up.”

  “I think I do need another minute or two.” She wanted Pearce to know it was logical that she should still be here when everything went down.

  “Fine.” The tech turned her attention to Pearce. “You’ll only feel a pinprick, sir.” She went about her business efficiently, pinching drops to the surface of Pearce’s middle finger then deftly catching them in the pipette.

  Pressing a gauze pad to the site, she said, “If you apply pressure for a few seconds, it will coagulate. I’ll be right back.”

  Fantine fought a sudden bout of nervousness. What if it wasn’t a match? What if they’d guessed wrong? She gave a mental shrug. If they had, the hospital would still be a couple pints of blood richer.

  The phlebotomist returned, a smile on her face. “It’s a match.”

  Pearce’s head jerked up. “A match for what? You’re not planning to give Aunt Rosalie a direct transfusion? Of my blood?”

  Fantine felt a surge of outrage that he sounded so indignant to be sharing his life force with Nonie.

  “No.” The voice emerged from behind the screen. It belonged to Officer Bowden, the man who had accompanied Pearce in his staged concern for Nonie, the police officer who had helped Judd comb the area of Nonie’s house, from her bedroom to the main foyer and beyond. “It’s a match for the blood taken from underneath the claws of a dead cat found at the scene of Mrs. Dwyer’s fall down the staircase.”

  “That freakin’ Hercules!” Pearce bolted out of the chair and lunged for the doorway. He stopped abruptly when he plowed into Rolf walking in.

  Grabbing Pearce by the upper arms to steady himself, Rolf bellowed, “What’s going on here? Where’s Fantine?”

  “Going somewhere, Pearce?” Judd asked lazily as he emerged from behind the screen, the gauze and patch on his inner elbow attesting to his own donation of blood.

  Still hanging on to Pearce, Rolf snarled, “Judd, Officer, arrest him! Nonie woke up from her coma and told me to beware of Pearce. She said he laughed at her. Laughed! Did you laugh when you watched her tumble down the steps? Or when you threw Hercules down after her?”

  “No! Don’t listen to him, he’s crazy! He’s just a gigolo looking to get a piece of Aunt Rosalie’s inheritance! He’s making it up. That old broad is supposed to be—”

  All at once Pearce shut up. His brain must have caught up with his panic. Officer Bowden twisted his arms behind him and clamped cuffs on him. “I think we should take you down to headquarters for a little chat.”

  “Before you go with the nice officers,” Fantine drawled, rising from the gurney and feeling like an avenging angel, “maybe you’d like to have your rosebush scratches looked at. They might have gotten infected.”

  The laser glare Pearce gave her might have cut down a redwood.

  At the sound of her voice, Rolf’s frantic gaze searched the room. When they came to rest on her, they lit up like a bonfire.

  “Fantine. I’ve been such a jerk. Can you ever forgive me? Do you think Nonie will?”

  “I think she’ll be as proud of you as I am. Come here, you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rolf sat alone in the limo, as nervous as a mouse in a roomful of hungry cats. In a few minutes he would come face-to-face with his greatest fear—the answer to why his mother had left him and his brothers, why she hadn’t loved them enough to stay.

  The dark-suited driver had parked in the short-term lot reserved for limo pick-ups and had gone into the arrivals building at Newark Airport carrying a “Thorvald” identification sign. Rolf glued his gaze to the sliding glass doors, eyeballing every passenger who walked through, his stomach jumping like a bead of water on a hot skillet at the thought of finally seeing her.

  Because Alana Thorvald Kronk’s health seemed so fragile, to say nothing of crazy connections, Magnus had broken the four-thousand-mile-plus trip to shorter segments, allowing her ample time in hotels to rest—Cold Bay to Kodiak by air rescue service the first day, then to Anchorage the next, then to Chicago the third day, and this afternoon to Newark Airport. He’d given them daily phone updates as to her condition, but had carefully refrained from asking any questions as to why she hadn’t tried to reach them for twenty-five years. He’d said the most important thing was to get her back home without complications that might result if she had to relive her past.

  So Rolf had tried to put his mother in her own compartment of his mind while he struggled to accept his relationship with Nonie. Nonie, who had regained consciousness for good the day Pearce had been taken into police custody. Nonie, who had, over and over again, told him how much she wanted him, her grandson, in her life. Nonie, who had been released from ICU earlier today and ensconced in a private room, still under twenty-four-hour guard.

  Yes, the DNA had come back positive—they had a direct blood link.

  And yes, the DNA beneath Hercules’ claws turned out to be Pearce’s. When confronted with that indisputable evidence, Pearce broke down and confessed his culpability in her tumble down the steps. A search warrant yielded a strand of wire in his basement that made the same marks as found on the balusters, and he’d been booked on an attempted murder charge. He’d refused bail, apparently feeling safer in custody than in the outside world.

  No wonder. According to Judd Matheson’s sources, Pearce owed close to two hundred grand to a loan shark and had been draining Nonie’s accounts to pay his gambling debts. With Rolf having surfaced as a threat to not only his siphoning efforts, but to his inheriting Nonie’s entire estate as her only living relative, he’d seen her death prior to making a new will as his salvation.

  Rolf closed his eyes and shuddered at how quickly life could be snuffed out—and for reasons totally unknown to the victim. At least Nonie was slowly healing. She’d had two-thirds of the tubes and mac
hines removed, and was looking forward to going home within the week. He vowed to spend as much time as he could with her, caring for her, loving her.

  But that left him feeling guilty, since he had no such feelings for his own mother.

  Talk about having to grow up.

  A moving streak of sunlight refocused his attention to the sliding glass doors.

  A blond giant, hair falling across his forehead, strode through them pushing a wheelchair, and stopped halfway to the curb. Magnus. Exiting behind him, the limo driver carrying two bags dashed toward the limo, obviously to bring the car around.

  Rolf focused on the small-boned husk of a body under loose-fitting pants and tunic top. He didn’t recognize that frail woman seated in the wheelchair, hair a wispy blondish-gray and mouth in a grimace of pain. Not from his own memory, and not from the photos Fantine had of her with Randolph Dwyer. But it didn’t matter. It was her.

  His mother.

  Without his conscious direction, his hand reached for the door handle and he stumbled out. Rolf found himself walking briskly, almost running, to that wheelchair. A hundred feet, fifty, thirty…

  The woman struggled to stand. Her arms opened. She spoke.

  “Rolf? Rolf! My baby!”

  She took no more than a single small step forward before Rolf reached her. He wanted to say, “Mom? Why did you leave me? I hated you. I hated everybody.” But that was for later. Now, he wanted nothing so much as to hold, and be held by, his mother.

  He stepped into her outstretched arms and closed his eyes when she wrapped her arms around his waist. His hands came slowly, hesitantly, up to clasp her shoulders. “I never stopped loving you, Rolf. Never stopped thinking about you, worrying about you. Oh my baby, let me look at you!”

  She loosened her hold and stepped back a pace, keeping her palms firmly on his waist as if to help her stay upright, and tilted her head up to him. Sharp bones poked out at her cheeks, her chin, giving her face a pinched appearance. “Look at you, all grown up, and looking so much like your daddy!”

  Then she crumpled.

  Instinctively Rolf swooped her up in his arms, one around her bony shoulders, the other under her bent knees. She felt so…breakable.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him with tears in her blue eyes. “I can’t stand for long periods of…”

  “I’ve got you, Mom.”

  And he did. He was holding his mother in his arms. The tears in her eyes were for him. The love she exuded was for him. Him! The black sheep of the Thorvald family.

  Family. It hit him then. Magnus and Soren had always been his family, had always shown him love and support, even when they’d thought he was different from them. How could he not forgive his own mother?

  “Here’s the limo,” he managed to squeak out as the black car pulled to the curb.

  Magnus opened the door and Rolf hesitated, working out the logistics in his head. If he set her down on the pavement, she might crumple again. Or Mags might take her in his own arms. But if he just moved his body—like so—he could aim her feet inside then lift one leg to step over…

  He felt Mags’ hand on the top of his head, guiding him under the frame so he didn’t bop himself, and he hung on, tight, to the precious burden in his arms as he fumbled his way into the seat. He settled in, loath to release her to her own space on the plush leather.

  But how inappropriate was that, to hold your own mother on your lap like you would a babealicious woman? With a small grunt of chagrin, he slid around until he had wedged himself into the corner and placed her alongside him, buckling her and then himself into their respective seat belts. Vaguely he noted that Magnus had come in behind him and sat on her other side, lodging her safely between them.

  The limo driver closed Mags’ door then stowed the remaining luggage in the trunk, and they were off.

  For a while Rolf was content simply to sit there, his arm around her thin shoulders, breathing in the scent of some flowery shampoo that no doubt came from last night’s hotel room. He glanced at Magnus, hoping he’d take the hint and get the conversational ball rolling.

  But Magnus’ eyes were closed. “I’m beat,” he said in answer to Rolf’s unspoken question. “You and Mom go ahead and get reacquainted. I need to take a nap. I haven’t slept much in the past week. I want to be semi-alert when I see my wife again.” He slumped down in his seat as much as the belt would allow, his long legs stretched the length of the limo’s space.

  Nonie had insisted that Alana stay in her home—after all, she was her daughter-in-law. So the brothers and Fantine had unanimously agreed to have the reunion there, since Rolf was staying there for the foreseeable future, and since Alana would be in no shape to travel to everyone’s home. Soren and Crystal had happily commandeered the RV, which they’d moved out of the garage and parked at the side of the house so they could plug it into an outside electrical outlet on the patio. Kat had arrived at Nonie’s and taken possession of the spare room. Alana, of course, was to have Randolph’s room.

  And everyone knew that Rolf spent his nights in Fantine’s room.

  He eyed Magnus. The slow rise and fall of his chest told Rolf he’d already zoned out.

  So it was up to him.

  He bent forward, kissed the top of her head. He could see pinkish scalp between the limp tufts of, he now saw, more white than blonde. “Mom.” He tested the word, tasted it on his tongue. He liked it.

  With great tenderness he pressed his palm against her cheek, turned her head toward him and drank in the sharp contours, the myriad wrinkles of her face. “Yeah. They have your eyes, don’t they?”

  Alana looked at him as though he was a king’s ransom and she the hostage being rescued. She reached out and touched his cheek. He’d never been more glad that he’d shaved this afternoon. “And you have your father’s eyes,” she whispered. “My son. My Rolf.”

  That was all it took. Tears stung his eyes. “Mom,” he rasped out. “Why? Why did you leave me?”

  A sigh escaped her, long and forlorn and filled with regret. “I took a huge gamble. And lost. But that’s getting ahead of the story. When Erik found out about Randolph and how I was planning to take you and run to Alaska, he gave me an ultimatum. I could leave and good riddance, but if I fought him about the children, any of them, even though he’d known he wasn’t your father, he’d fight and win. It was his way of punishing me.”

  Closing her eyes a moment, she seemed to be looking into the past. “He knew all the cops and judges and politicians and I was just a timid, stay-at-home wife. I didn’t know how to fight him. I didn’t know about Legal Aid. I certainly didn’t know of any battered women’s shelters within a hundred miles of Doylestown. And Randolph, and the strength of his love and conviction, was a world away. There was no way to communicate with him on an urgent basis. I had to make the decision myself.”

  She wiped a tear from her eyes. “I gambled that Randolph and I, together, could beat him at his own game and get custody. My darling son, I planned to get you back as soon as I could. Within a month, maybe less. Please believe that.” She looked into his eyes with such intensity that Rolf could do nothing but believe.

  “But fate has a way of throwing a kink into the best-laid plans,” she went on, a hitch in her voice. “Randolph was leaving his pipeline job with enough money saved up for us to buy a small house. We hadn’t decided yet whether in Alaska or on the east coast, but one thing was clear. He’d pay for my divorce and we’d fight for custody of all of you. Yes, all. Randolph loved me enough to accept all three of my children. He even wanted to adopt all of you.”

  She stopped speaking, choking on her thoughts. “He had arranged for me to go to a small lodge some miles north of Fairbanks, where he would meet me after he’d mustered out. It was small, it was secluded, romantic. He prepaid for three nights—a weekend, so we’d have time to decide where we wanted to go from there.”

  Tears spilled over her eyelashes. “But by Sunday, he still hadn’t shown up. Monday, Tues
day, I was beside myself with fear for him. But I refused to believe he’d jilted me. Not with the love that we had. His letters were full of plans and dreams for our future.”

  “What happened to those letters?”

  “Oh Rolf, they’re so tattered from me reading and rereading them. I saved them all. They’re in my suitcase. It’s—” her voice cracked. “It’s all I have left of Randolph.”

  A small smile made the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepen. “All I had. Until now. Now I have you. His son. Our son.”

  Rolf closed his eyes and took all of her warmth and love and held it close inside him. This was what had been missing from his life. A mother who loved him. A father who had wanted him.

  “Mom. I can’t imagine what hardships you’ve been through.”

  He felt a tremor go through her frail shoulders. Then her spine straightened. “But enough bad news. You’re so handsome. You look so much like him. Tell me all about yourself.”

  Rolf’s disposition soured. Hell. What could he tell her about his life that she’d be proud of? He was sure Mags had told her of his growing reputation as a sculptor, and that Soren owned a successful pub.

  And he himself? Well, Mom, I pose nude for art classes.

  Yeah right. How to make your mom proud.

  So he’d tell a half-truth. “I belong to the carpenters’ union.” Well, he did, but he didn’t work every day of the week. Hell, some weeks he worked only one or two. “I guess I learned about wood from Magnus. But right now, I need to know what happened to…my dad. You never saw him again?”

  Alana clasped her hands together, brought them to her lips as though she wanted to pray but couldn’t bear to say the words. “I didn’t learn what happened until much later. He was hopping one of the company planes from Pump Station Three to Fairbanks then planned to take a cab to the lodge. It was a six-seat puddle-jumper. First stop was Pump Station Five, no problem. Next was Pump Station Six, the pilot’s last stop before Fairbanks. Something happened between Five and Six, I never found out what. Whether the engine conked, or it ran into a flock of birds, or it was pilot error. All four people on board were…killed.”