Snapshots

by Pamela Browning

He wouldn’t have recognized Martine if her name hadn’t been printed on a placard beside the door. A tightness gripped his heart when he first saw her, a heavy mantle of self-reproach pressing him down. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head bandaged so that only a few tendrils of hair escaped. She wore a hospital gown, its institutional print faded from many washings. When she first opened her eyes, she stared as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was, her eyes drifting closed almost immediately after registering recognition but no emotion at all.

  Rick settled himself on the uncomfortable plastic-covered chair and caught a couple of hours’ sleep, waking when an aide delivered a breakfast tray. Martine was still asleep, so he forced down what he could from the tray—gummy oatmeal, a wedge of toast soaked with margarine.

  After that he phoned a friend of his from the department and asked him to stop by the house. Charlie rang him back a couple of hours later and told him that Padrón had entered by disarming the security system and breaking a back window. “I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, and Rick left it to him, knowing that he would.

  Martine dozed most of the day, and Rick tried unsuccessfully to do the same. When the door swung open late in the afternoon, he glanced up sharply, expecting yet another nurse or an aide. Instead, Martine walked in, her eyes frantic. But no. His befogged brain cleared in a moment to realize that it was Trista.

  Overwhelmingly relieved to see her, Rick stood immediately and pulled Trista into a hug, taking comfort from her warmth. Her bones felt fragile and her pale hair smelled of the almond-scented shampoo she’d favored for as long as he could remember. He released her reluctantly when she pulled away.

  Trista turned immediately toward the figure in the bed. “I got here as soon as I could,” she said, noting the monitors and machines crowding the small space. “How is she?” She wore little makeup and a white T-shirt with jeans and a navy blazer. The back of her hair was crushed, as if she’d rested her head on the back of the airplane seat and forgotten to fluff it afterward.

  Rick filled her in as best he could, though he had the feeling he was leaving a lot out. Trista nodded, looking worried and upset as she slung her shoulder bag on the nightstand and slipped out of her jacket. “I called Mom. She’s not well enough to come,” she said. A sense of calm radiated from her, and Rick drew sustenance from it. He was desperately in need of support, someone to care about him, and Trista was the closest member of their family. His parents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to teach English in China, were living in faraway Nanchung, and he seldom saw his brother, Hal, whose prissy, uptight wife, Nadia, vaguely disapproved of him.

  As Trista’s glance took in his beard stubble and rumpled clothes, she moved to the side of the bed and caressed her twin’s hand.

  “I can’t imagine how awful it must have been,” she murmured sympathetically. “For both of you.”

  “I couldn’t stop Padrón. I tried.” As long as he lived, Rick would never forget those moments of watching helplessly as the man forced Martine into the car.

  Trista’s hand reached backward for his so that the three of them were linked as they’d been so many times when they were children growing up together. Her grasp was warm, familiar, and he should have completed the circle by clasping Martine’s free hand. He didn’t. The gesture was preempted by the IV needle.

  “Why don’t you take a break, Rick,” Trista said quietly and sensibly. “Grab some sleep. I’ll stay here.”

  He refused. He didn’t want to leave Martine, even though Trista was more than capable of looking after her. But after he slumped over a few times in the chair and realized that he was viewing Trista’s caring face as if through a heavy fog, Rick finally admitted to himself that he’d been wiped out by an ordeal that had begun with that unwelcome discovery in Martine’s dresser drawer.

  “I think I will go home for a while,” he told Trista, who had pulled a second chair close to the bedside and was still holding her twin’s hand.

  “Go on,” she said. “You’re a walking zombie.”

  You don’t know the half of it, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His anguish over the rift between Martine and him was coming back, invisible and unknown to everyone. Certainly, he’d feel less raw and vulnerable after a good night’s sleep.

  “Go on,” Trista urged gently.

  “Call me if there’s any change.”

  “I will.” She smiled up at him.

  It was eleven o’clock at night when Rick left the hospital. With Miami’s streets almost deserted at this late hour, he didn’t have to concentrate on his driving, only on staying awake. He pulled the car into the garage in Kendall and sat for a moment after the door descended behind him. Returning home was hitting him hard in his gut, and he had to force himself to go inside.

  The house was neat and clean, thanks to Esmelda, their Guatemalan housekeeper, who cheerfully whooshed in and out twice a week bearing vacuum cleaners, solvents and a multitude of rags. The master bedroom was as he’d left it, and Charlie had already repaired the broken window in the utility room.

  He showered, shaved, phoned Trista at the hospital.

  “Anything new?” Rick asked.

  “Martine’s resting,” Trista told him. “She’s opened her eyes a couple of times, and she took a drink of water about half an hour ago.”

  Rick wanted to say, Has she asked for me? But his mouth wouldn’t shape the words and he couldn’t have forced the air out of his lungs even if it had.

  And so he hung up. Even though he was exhausted, he lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. He kept thinking of the first time he’d seen Trista and Martine, long ago at Eugene Field Elementary School. How they’d become fast friends immediately, and where they’d gone from there. How until recently the future had always seemed just around the corner, bright and shining as the sun.

  If Rick had learned anything in his thirty-two years, it was that life had a way of rearing up in your face or skidding along in unexpected twists and turns, like now. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t go back and change any of it afterward.

  Chapter 2: Rick

  2004

  After Martine’s accident, Trista and Rick alternated shifts at the hospital, and Rick was thankful that Trista could stay on in Miami to help him out. They didn’t see each other often, mostly brief hellos and goodbyes as one left Martine’s bedside and the other arrived.

  Though Martine was more alert by the third day after the accident, she didn’t talk to him much. The nurses told him that she needed her rest while her body healed. Rick suspected that Martine was more forthcoming with Trista, and he considered whether she might be filling her sister in on their personal situation during the long hours when Trista sat at her bedside. Even if that was what was going on, he knew that Trista would respect Martine’s confidence and that she would never speak of their marriage difficulties with him.

  Rick returned to work in Homicide, but his heart wasn’t in it. More than anything, he wanted to patch things up with his wife, but he was reluctant to broach the subject while she was recovering. He was still wallowing in guilt. In his heart, he believed that the kidnapping would never have happened if he hadn’t gone against Martine’s wishes by choosing police work as a career.

  Five days after the accident, Rick was sitting in the backyard of their house, watching the light from the moon dancing in the dense tropical shrubbery and thinking things over. Not that he got very far with it—his mind kept playing back the scenes with Padrón and the horror of watching the car roll over and explode into flames. When he heard the glass door behind him slide open on its track, he snapped out of his reverie and swiveled quickly in alarm. Since the break-in, he’d remained jittery and on edge. He sagged in relief when he saw that it was only Trista advancing toward him through the shadows.

  “Hi, Rick. Martine practically pushed me out of her room and told me to get lost,” she said.

  It struck him how pretty she was, and though her features were the same as Marti
ne’s, Trista’s were softer somehow, as if they were the same picture captured by a more flattering lens.

  “She seems to be feeling better today,” Rick said. He’d been encouraged by the color in Martine’s cheeks and the fading of her bruises.

  “So what are you doing out here all by yourself?” Trista asked.

  “Thinking,” he said.

  She paused, skewering him with a glance. “About?”

  He sighed. “A lot of things.”

  “Do I have to drag it out of you?” she asked with an impish grin, but he wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

  “I need to figure out where to go from here. I thought I could do a lot of good by working in law enforcement, and yet I endangered Martine. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

  Trista’s expression changed, became serious. “You didn’t cause Padrón to do what he did. He’s responsible for his own actions.”

  “Tris, I’ve learned the hard way that when you’re dealing with the criminal element, you open yourself to things that should never happen.” He was more than serious. Somber, even.

  “We both figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?” Trista said, and he knew she was remembering her father, a prominent South Carolina attorney. Seven years ago, Roger Barrineau had been murdered by a former client, gunned down in cold blood on the steps of the Richland County Courthouse.

  He nodded. His father-in-law had been Rick’s friend and role model, and the shock and grief of his murder had never completely gone away. Now, years later, to be faced with nearly losing his wife in a similar situation had not only been terrifying, it had brought him up short. He didn’t want to live his life like this anymore. He wanted things to be peaceful, calm, nice.

  Of course, the case could be made that Rick had lost his wife before Padrón ever forced her into his car, but he wasn’t about to discuss that with Trista unless she brought it up first.

  Thankfully, she didn’t. She stretched, smiled at him and stood. “That chair in Martine’s hospital room has put a permanent kink in my spine. I could use a glass of wine to start the unwinding process. How about you?”

  “I’ll get it.” He started to rise, but she stayed him with a light hand on his arm.

  “No, let me. I’m going inside to change shoes, anyway. I’m ready to kick back some.”

  He looked at her feet, small for such a tall woman. She wore espadrilles with cork wedge heels that made her ankles seem impossibly slim.

  “All right, if you insist. I like the Delicato chardonnay. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  “I’ll try it,” she said.

  When Trista returned wearing bedroom slippers, which were incongruously fuzzy and pink, she carried two glasses on a narrow tray. “I couldn’t find any crackers or cheese. Maybe I should stop by the store on my way back from the hospital tomorrow.” She sat down beside him and eased the back of her patio chair down a notch.

  “I don’t expect you to do the shopping. I’ll be happy to pick up some food tomorrow. You’ve helped so much with Martine, and I’m grateful you’re here, believe me.”

  She regarded him over the top of her wineglass. “Where else would I be?” she asked. “I belong with you and Martine at a time like this.”

  “I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he said, thinking back to all the other occasions when he and Martine had depended on Trista. The time they’d won a Caribbean cruise in a raffle and she’d house-sat, overseeing the building of their new Florida room while they were gone. Trista had rearranged her vacation days in order to accommodate them. And a few years ago when Martine had injured her knee while skiing, Trista had uncomplainingly occupied their guest room for two weeks, doing all the cooking and keeping Martine company. Martine declared that she would have gone stark raving mad sitting around the house by herself all that time.

  “So what do you think of the Carolina Panthers’ chances when they play the Dolphins next season?” Trista asked, and since this was something on which Rick held a well-thought-out opinion, he gratefully entered into a discussion. It amazed him that he was capable of this when he was hurting so much inside, but it had become second nature to pretend everything was okay when it wasn’t.

  The conversation progressed to updating her about his parents and their work in China and inquiries about Virginia Barrineau, who now lived with her sister in Macon, Georgia. It was easy talk, unchallenging and comforting because it required no thinking, no decision making.

  “I like this chardonnay,” Trista said when the conversation began to wane. She swirled the pale liquid in her glass, studying it. “You have good taste in wine.”

  “You used to be disappointed that wine didn’t taste like Kool-Aid,” Rick reminded her, recalling their first foray into alcohol together. When they were high-school juniors, he’d snitched a bottle of pinot grigio from his parents’ bar at Sweetwater Cottage, and they’d drunk every last drop from paper cups on the beach. The wine had given them only a mild buzz, and Martine had declared that she liked beer better, so what was all the fuss about?

  He and Trista had jumped all over Martine, demanding that she tell them when she’d had occasion to drink beer, and she’d laughingly informed them that she and her current steady date customarily downed a six-pack every weekend; they’d park in the lover’s lane overlooking the lake behind their subdivision in Columbia and chugalug until the beer was gone. Then they’d make out.

  If Trista recalled that long-ago discussion, she gave no indication of it now. She smiled. “Not much can beat cherry Kool-Aid, even today. I’ve considered adopting a kid so people won’t tease me about having it in the refrigerator.”

  He cut a sideways glance in her direction. “You really mean that? About adopting a child?”

  Trista shrugged, almost too casually, and avoided his eyes. “I’ve thought about it, usually when I’ve overwound my biological clock. Then I get sane again and realize that with my job, I wouldn’t be a great single parent.” She sounded sad or perhaps reflective, and he could only imagine what was running through her mind.

  He infused his voice with what he hoped was encouragement. “You’ve got a great job. Don’t knock it.” After he said it, he realized that refocusing the conversation on her job rather than her wish to adopt could be construed as unfeeling, but it was too late to take back his words.

  Trista pushed a strand of cornsilk-pale hair back from her forehead and adroitly changed the subject. “Martine’s getting out of the hospital on Sunday. I’m planning to leave that morning,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  He was surprised at the disappointment that washed over him when he thought of her leaving. “Don’t you want to be here when she comes home?”

  “I did, but Martine insists that she won’t need someone around the house 24–7. And let’s face it, I’ve got a job I should be tending. Anyway, Martine said she’d call Esmelda if she can’t handle being by herself.” Esmelda had been angling for more working time due to the fact that she was expecting her fourth child and could use the money.

  Rick didn’t say anything. He supposed he couldn’t ask Trista to stay in Miami any longer, considering that she had her own life. For a few brief seconds, he wondered if it was a satisfying one. Her talk about adopting a baby seemed to indicate that she wasn’t completely happy.

  But she was already off on another tack. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  “Not yet.” In fact, it hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d lost his appetite after the accident and it still hadn’t returned.

  “I picked up some Chinese food at lunchtime, and there’s plenty left. I’ll heat it in the microwave and we can eat out here.” Trista set aside her empty wineglass before heading for the house.

  “Need some help?” he called after her.

  “No, it’s just a matter of dishing it out,” she called back. She disappeared inside, leaving him with his thoughts, not to mention regrets. Miami was a long way from Columbia, South Carolina, and he was a long way from
the person he had been while he was growing up there. While they were growing up, he and Trista and Martine.

  “Hey, Rick, can you get the door for me?”

  Trista emerged carrying a tray loaded with plates of General T so’s chicken, moo goo gai pan and fried rice, and he hurried to pull their chairs over to the round patio table.

  “I haven’t had Chinese for a while,” he said, watching her. She’d donned a loose cardigan over her top, but it didn’t obscure her curves. Trista had the well-honed figure of an athlete, thanks to her habit of running before breakfast. Back in high school and whenever they were home from college, the three of them had liked to run together.

  “Spicy for you,” Trista said as she spooned a helping of General Tso onto his plate, “and bland for me.” She dished out a small portion of moo goo gai pan for herself. She didn’t like anything hot, but he and Martine did. Tabasco sauce on eggs, hot red pepper flakes on almost everything else.

  Rick was hungrier than he expected. It didn’t take him long to devour all his food, after which Trista went back inside the house to get the rest of the moo goo gai pan, which he ate, as well.

  “That was delicious,” he said, smiling at her across the table. She’d brought a candle outside and lit it, and its sweet vanilla scent combined with the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine from the surrounding shrubbery. For the first time in days, he wasn’t thinking about all he had to consider—his marriage, Martine’s injuries, neglecting work.

  “There’s ice cream in the freezer,” Trista said. “I peeked.”

  “What kind?”

  She shot him a conspiratorial smile. “Our favorite. Mint chocolate chip.”

  The three of them must have eaten gallons of the stuff in the course of their childhood. Trista had laughingly pointed out that it should be their official ice cream, comparing Rick to the mint, Martine to the chocolate chips and herself to the ice cream itself. This was because, she said, Rick provided the spark, the excitement to the synergy that the three of them generated. Martine was the richness, and Trista was the no-nonsense person, the base of everything.