By Your Side

by Candace Calvert

“Not that I’ve ever seen. Abe was a widower. Only the one child.”

  “Did Ned say where he was going?” Charly asked, resting her hand on the porch post.

  “Staying with a friend, he said. Modesto, maybe. I’m not sure.” The neighbor’s brows drew together. “I’m sorry I don’t know more.”

  “You’ve been a big help,” Taylor assured her. “Really.” She handed the woman a Crisis Care card. “If you see Ned again, would you give this to him, please? We’d like to help him in any way we can. It sounds like he’s having a tough time.”

  “Thank you.” The neighbor looked from Taylor’s face to Charly’s as she took the card. “We all need help sometimes.”

  They watched as the woman made her way across the patch of dying grass to her home next door.

  “You did well with that, Taylor. Not exactly what we were expecting, but you handled it nicely.” Charly closed her eyes for a moment and then eased herself down to sit on the porch railing.

  “Are you all right?” Taylor stepped forward. “You look pale.”

  “I get a little light-headed standing in one spot too long.” Charly managed a laugh, fanned herself with her hand. “Sitting on one’s behind for weeks watching Iron Chef reruns is not exactly an athletic endeavor. I’m okay.”

  “I don’t know,” Taylor told her, noticing a faint sheen of perspiration. “I’ll go get that water from the car and—”

  “No. Please don’t,” Charly insisted. “I promise I’ll drink the whole bottle once we get out there. I’m perfectly fine, cross my heart. Let’s not do anything to alert the watchdog.”

  “Dog?”

  “He just passed by, going really slow. Sheriff’s patrol car.” Charly gave a withering sigh. “My overprotective son—pretend you don’t see.”

  Taylor started to laugh and then stopped, stared. “Charly, your nose is bleeding.”

  12

  “I’M NOT SURE WHY,” Macy explained, watching Leah’s expression on the laptop screen. Her sister had finally been allowed computer privileges at the rehab center. If only Skype would figure out a way to let her hug Leah close. There had been too many years without hugs. “But this little house in Tahoe Park reminds me of Nonni’s place. Maybe it’s the big tree out front or the window boxes, those stepping stones. The whole feel of it. Sort of welcoming. And happy. You remember.” How could Leah forget? It was the one foster home in far too many that had felt like a real home. To both of them.

  “I remember.” Leah tugged at a strand of her curly auburn hair, closing her eyes for a moment. Maybe it was the video cam, but she looked paler, more drawn. Definitely distracted. “I’m worried about Sean. He isn’t sure his boss will hold his job, he’s afraid we’ll lose the apartment, and—”

  “He got you involved in prescription fraud. It’s because of him that you got arrested.”

  “It’s my fault, not his,” Leah insisted. “I told you that. I’m the one with the drug problem. Sean can take it or leave it. That prescription thing . . . He was doing it for me.”

  What a guy. Macy took a breath, willing herself to be tolerant and understanding for her sister’s sake. Getting angry wasn’t going to help. “I’m only saying that depending on Sean might not be your best option.”

  “But . . .” Leah pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “I love him. He’s my everything.”

  Macy had no clue how to respond. In her whole life, she’d never felt that way about any man. Anyone. Anything. How could someone ever trust that much? “I think,” she offered carefully, “you should have a plan B. Just in case.”

  “I do—I did.” Even via video, Leah’s tears were visible. “I always said I’d take those classes to become a phlebotomist. To work in a hospital and take blood samples.” She wiped her eyes. “After that I thought I could register at the community college and really make something of myself. Maybe even become a nurse like you. But somehow I keep getting off track. You know?”

  “Yes,” Macy managed, throat squeezing. “But you can do it; I know you can. And this—getting clean, staying that way—it’s the way to start. You’re beginning a whole new life.”

  “You sound like Nonni. She was always saying things like that.” Leah’s smile turned grim. “I’ll try to remember it. When I can’t sleep and my head’s pounding. And I have to make another dash for the toilet.”

  The hydrocodone withdrawal. “Still pretty bad?”

  “Like the stomach flu—while being hit repeatedly by a truck. With a side order of spooky jitters.” Leah shrugged, the look in her eyes almost mirroring Annie Sims’s as she clutched that hospital tote bag. “I’ll be okay. I’ve been through worse than this.”

  She had. Living on the streets . . . rape.

  “I should go.” Leah glanced over her shoulder for a moment. “They expect us to show up for lunch. Hungry or not. I’m glad I caught you before you had to go into work, and . . . I’m glad I found you again.” She leaned closer to the screen as if she might plant a kiss on Macy’s cheek like she had so many times as a kid. “Are you going to buy that house that reminds you of Nonni’s?”

  Macy’s stomach did an elevator drop. “No. I can’t afford that. I only told you because I thought remembering might make you feel better.”

  “Oh.” Leah sighed, the distracted expression there again. “I’d better go. Love you, Macy.”

  “You too.”

  Macy closed down the screen, struggling with the same mix of feelings she’d had since Leah first called her. Knee-weakening relief, concern for her sister’s situation, and a strange, inexplicable sadness. She’d found her sister; she’d always been so sure that would be the key to real happiness. Why wasn’t she feeling it now?

  She reached for her mug of green tea. Borrowed mug—this one belonged to one of her two roommates, both traveling nurses. Splitting the rent was great, but Macy couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to dig through heaps of mixed laundry trying to match up a pair of scrubs. Or the countless times she’d found her carton of almond milk sitting empty in the fridge. Hectic, crazy, crowded. But then, living barracks style seemed all too normal after foster care.

  “Are you going to buy that house . . . ?”

  Leah’s question had caught Macy completely off guard. She’d answered with the truth—as much truth as Leah knew. She couldn’t afford it. Macy had always lived frugally. Her pre-owned Audi had 200,000 miles on it. She ate a lot of her meals courtesy of hospital sales reps. No pedicures, no Starbucks, no credit card debt. She socked away all she could into her retirement plan, and most of the rest went to paying back her student loans. They were Macy’s only encumbrances, and she was counting the time until she was free of them. All the while hearing Elliot cluck his tongue about her stubbornness over monthly—more recently, weekly—lunches and dinners. Free eats for her and Elliot’s opportunity to explain, in enthusiastic and glittery-eyed detail, that at the tender age of twenty-seven, Macy’s net worth would soon afford her the title of millionaire.

  She hated everything about that. Though the years of separation from Leah had been painful, Macy was glad her sister never knew about the day she’d finally met her biological father, Lang Wen, at the famous Yank Sing restaurant in San Francisco. Macy’s first taste of dim sum, not that she could actually swallow with her mouth so dry. To finally see him, apart from the few photos she’d found in old newspapers and magazines featuring San Francisco art and fashion events, seemed a dream come true. The wealthy international businessman who’d taken Macy’s young mother—a beautiful, struggling runway model—to all those events. And won her trusting heart.

  What Macy had expected that day—awkward, underdressed, petrified—she still wasn’t sure. Had she really been naive enough to think a man who’d made no attempt to contact her in eighteen years would suddenly embrace her as his own? In truth, it would have been far more likely that he’d ignore her e-mails, refuse to meet. Except that Lang Wen, impeccable, coolly reserved, and so obviously used to being in contr
ol, had apparently anticipated that day. And prepared for it. In hindsight, that was what hurt Macy most.

  She reached up, instinctively finding the lock of hair now dyed a rich mahogany shade. It had been a startling white all during her childhood—often a source for teasing—and she remembered her astonishment in seeing the same peculiarity in this man’s hair. A patch at his hairline, like a brushstroke of white paint in his fastidiously cut blue-black hair. An unusual hereditary trait he hadn’t missed observing either. His gaze fixed on it almost immediately. Macy’s face had flushed. She was glad he couldn’t know how she’d struggled over the best way to bring up the subject of DNA testing.

  But Lang Wen skipped the paternity denial, in the same dismissive manner he waved the waitress away when she offered the steaming bamboo basket of snow pea dumplings. He simply paused, chopsticks raised, to remind Macy that, at eighteen, she was no longer a minor. And he had no intention of letting this “regrettable situation” bring shame to his family—especially his wife and children. Certainly she could understand that.

  She couldn’t. She could barely keep from heaving.

  The remaining moments were still a blur. Macy recalled him saying something about her mother being sweet and lovely, her death so unfortunate but not surprising perhaps, considering the risky and unstable manner in which she lived: “. . . understandable that she would prefer to call herself a model rather than an escort.” But that she had very clearly overstepped the boundaries of their special friendship by attempting to link his family to a child she’d named after a department store.

  Macy’s leap from the table had sent her teacup crashing to the floor and caused a dozen heads to whip around. She ran from the restaurant to the streets . . . and then kept running.

  The Wen lawyer contacted her six months later. The trust became payable when she turned nineteen. She wanted nothing to do with it—except for the assistance of his attorney in changing her name from Wen to Wynn. The hair dye she’d managed by herself.

  Macy took a sip of her tea, tepid now, then glanced at the clock. Eleven thirty. She was doing a favor for a friend by picking up a few hours in the ER, promising to come in at one o’clock. Even if it was her day off, she was glad she was going in. The only thing she had planned was her kickboxing class, and that wasn’t until four thirty. Plus, it meant some extra cash. Working would keep her mind off Leah’s situation. She frowned. Her sister was making a mistake in trusting that boyfriend, the same way Macy’s mother had with Lang Wen. There was no way she could let this happen.

  “I’m not going to let you drive yourself there,” Fletcher advised his mother. “You just told me you’ve been feeling dizzy today.”

  “Light-headed. And only if I stand up too fast.” Charly managed a teasing smile. “I’ll have to postpone the tango lessons.” She reached for her purse and her box of tissues. “The doctor’s exchange said he’s finishing up a surgery at Sacramento Hope. If I go to the ER, the triage nurse will have him paged.”

  “Fine. We’ll do that, then. I drive; you ride.”

  “You’re stubborn.”

  “Always.” He watched as she tucked a plastic bag into her purse, to handle used tissues, no doubt. “I don’t like that you’ve been having those nosebleeds.”

  “I’ve had them before,” she assured him. “Way back, even before the leukemia. I’m sure it’s this dry air out here; my nose is happier in Houston. And I told you that my last labs were much better. The doctor’s probably going to recommend that I buy myself a humidifier and dab some Vaseline up my nose. I think this hospital visit is unnecessary, but I’m following the rules and being cautious.”

  “Good—I’d hate to have to arrest you.”

  Fletcher took the box of Kleenex from her hands and led the way to the car, trying to push down his growing concern. He hoped she was right about the dry air. He was fine with blaming one more thing on California.

  13

  “THERE,” TAYLOR TOLD THE GIRL, showing her what looked like a clump of tiny spider legs on a gauze pad. “The stitches are out. Your forehead’s good as new.”

  “Can I touch it and see if it feels the same?” Annie Sims asked, eyes wide.

  “Sure.” Taylor watched the child raise tentative fingers to her face, exploring the healed wound. The ER had offered to take out the sutures as a courtesy to the child’s physician and because Dr. Andi Carlyle hated to say no to anyone. Especially today, when she’d shared such wonderful news: she and her husband were expecting their first child. She’d come prepared for the announcement with a sonogram photo, two bakery boxes filled with cupcakes, and a pair of mismatched polka-dot socks—one pink, one blue. She said that they were going to wait until the birth and be surprised by the baby’s gender. For now, she was fondly calling Baby Carlyle “our little elf.”

  “It feels the same,” Annie reported, expression too somber for a six-year-old. “Douglas Barker said maybe there was a bullet in it.”

  “No, sweetie,” Taylor assured. “No bullets. Dr. Andi checked everything—you’re okay. And safe.” She took hold of the girl’s hand, gave her fingers a squeeze. “Remember how we talked about that at your school?”

  Annie nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  The Crisis Care chaplain team had been making visits to those directly affected by the freeway shooting; Annie’s school had been first on the list. “If you want to talk about it anymore or have a question, you can ask Helen to call us. Anytime.”

  Taylor saw the child’s gaze dart to the door and her worried expression flick to a smile like someone had found the light switch in a dark room. Macy had arrived.

  “Hey, kiddo,” she said, striding through the doorway, dark ponytail swinging. “I heard my little pal was here.”

  “Yep . . . it’s me.”

  Taylor watched their silly knuckle bump turn into a hug, heard Annie’s giggle, and then found a reason to excuse herself. She told herself she was giving them a little privacy, that she couldn’t resist that cupcake any longer, but the truth was she’d found herself blinking back unexpected tears. She’d experienced the same thing a couple of times since Dr. Carlyle announced her pregnancy today. Sometimes it happened that way. Just when things were going great, when Taylor dared to trust that she was through with the worst of it, the grief would come back and pick at the edges of that wound—whisper that she’d lost too much to ever really heal. There were no sutures for this.

  Macy found Taylor half an hour later in the triage office. Impossibly, the waiting room had thinned out.

  “Annie was certainly happy to see you,” Taylor told her as Macy perched on the chair provided for incoming patients.

  “I’m glad I got to see her too.” Macy smiled, the memory warming her. That alone was worth coming in on a day off. “She was wearing tap shoes. It sounded like a Broadway show when she walked out of here.”

  Taylor laughed. “I saw that. They were going directly on to a dance class. Pretty special foster mother to provide that experience.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  When Macy was thirteen—gangly and self-conscious—Nonni had enrolled her in a church-sponsored ballet class. Macy balked, protesting initially as she did with most things. But eventually the music, the other students, and Nonni’s warm encouragement wore down her stubborn resistance. For that short while Macy had actually felt like all the things her foster mother told her she was: graceful—“grace-filled”—special and loved. “Helen seems like one of the good ones.”

  Taylor met her gaze. “That’s how you met your sister, Leah, right?”

  “I was twelve, Leah almost nine. It was a place in Pleasanton, this old house fixed up to accommodate as many kids as possible. The garage made into a bedroom, second story added over that, big oak tree with a tree fort, and two picnic tables in the backyard.” Macy shook her head, that strange, wistful sadness coming back. “It wasn’t big or fancy, but it was sort of great, you know?”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Thr
ee years. Longer than anywhere else. Nonni—our foster mother—was in her late sixties, a widow. No children of her own. I got the sense she spent every penny she had on her foster kids, sort of barely hanging on to that house. She joked that she was like the old woman who lived in a shoe. She said she’d keep making a home for children who had none as long as she could make up a bed and flip a batch of pancakes.” Macy’s heart cramped. “She collapsed at home one day after driving a van of kids to school—massive pulmonary embolus. Never regained consciousness. We all got sent to different places. I heard that the bank eventually took the house.”

  “It was a long time before you saw your sister again?”

  “Two years. She was in Modesto, just turned fourteen, and . . .” Macy hesitated, wishing she’d never started this conversation. “She’d had a rough time of it. But now I’ve found her again. And I’m going to see to it that—”

  The overhead PA speaker crackled. “Dr. Laureano to the ICU. Dr. Laureano to the ICU, please.”

  “I’ll bet that’s for Darlene Harrell.” Macy calculated the number of days since the woman had arrived in the ER with a devastating cerebral bleed. “Things can’t be going well in there.”

  “No. Andi said that the son, Bob, tracked her down again this morning, asking her all the same questions he asked before.” Her teeth scraped her lower lip. “So hard to accept losing someone you love. . . .”

  “Taylor!” The registration clerk burst through the doorway, eyes wide. “Come quick. There’s a man in the waiting room with—”

  “Open this door!” a man’s voice shouted from the hallway. There was pounding from the door to the waiting room. “We need help!”

  “He’s carrying a lady,” the clerk explained in a rush as she followed Macy and Taylor out of the office and toward the waiting room. “He said she’s passing out.”

  “I’ll get the hall gurney,” Taylor shouted as Macy grabbed for the doorknob. The frantic pounding came again, a split second before she swung the door inward.