by Judy Alter
Now there was a comforting thought.
“What is it psychologists say? She’s trying hard to separate herself from you, to become a person in her own right. Be grateful she hasn’t gone in for piercings or tattoos.”
“Mike would kill her,” I muttered.
The moussaka arrived, and we both ate as if we hadn’t eaten all day. Conversation stopped, and afterward, as we lingered over the last of her second glass of wine, our talk turned to happier things and a bit of gossip. Like Keisha and José. I kept my lip buttoned, since poor José didn’t know he was getting married, at least as far as I knew. Finally I glanced at my watch.
“Omigosh, it’s nine-thirty. Mike and the girls will be pacing the floor. We’ve got to go.” So we paid the bill, and I drove Claire home, promising we’d have another girls’ night soon. In spite of the heavy nature of some of the talk, the evening had bolstered my spirits. As I drove home, I vowed to get serious with Keisha about this wedding she was planning. I’d heard of grooms surprising their brides with instant weddings, but never the other way around. Leave it to Keisha to break tradition.
Chapter Five
I pulled my car up next to Mike’s in the enlarged parking space we’d made by the guesthouse. Daylight saving had ended, and it was pitch dark, so I decided to walk around to the front door because somehow the back yard lights were out, and the front porch was well lit. I knew my way down the driveway well enough to make it in the dark.
I started down the driveway and saw out of the corner of my eye movement in the bushes to the side. Just as I screamed, a dark figure ran toward me and before I could move head-butted me in the stomach—so hard that I lost my breath and fell on my back on the driveway. Within seconds Mike and the girls were outside, Gus having heard my scream if they didn’t. The figure was gone. Mike paused only a second to make sure I was breathing and talking and then took off to find the assailant, calling over his shoulder for Maggie to stay with me and Em to go call 911.
I lay still until I felt my breath come back, and then I struggled to a sitting position. Ever so gently, Maggie pushed me back down. “Stay there until Mike comes,” she said. Fourteen-year-olds can be so bossy!
Em rejoined us, holding my hand and repeating, “They said they’d be right here.” Then she looked nervously down the driveway and asked, “Where’s Mike? We need him.” Em and her comforting belief that Mike could save any situation!
The police arrived before Mike, though he came running up, winded, right after that. Bending over to catch his breath, he said, “I saw a car drive away about a block and a half north, but I have no proof it was whoever attacked Kelly.” Finally he turned his attention to me. “Where does it hurt?”
“Nowhere. Well, my belly’s sore where he hit me, and I think my back is roughed up from landing on the driveway. My head’s okay—I really landed on my butt and then sort of drifted the rest of the way down.”
Mike turned to one of the officers. “Call an ambulance. She’s got a baby in that belly.”
“Mike, I am not going to the hospital.”
“You are going to lie right there until the EMTs check you and I can call Dr. Goodwin.”
I mentally retreated but managed to murmur, “Don’t tell Mom.” Cynthia O’Connell would have been here in a flash, fussing over me until I got up and ran off into the darkness out of desperation.
“I won’t, if you promise to lie still. I don’t want to lose our baby.”
It wasn’t me he was worried about—it was the baby! Not a fair thought, Kelly.
I lay still. And I worried. I worried about bleeding, a sign I might lose the baby. Did my pants feel damp? Was it just evening dampness and lying on the ground? This baby had been a surprise, one that caught me off guard, but now the thought I might lose it sent me into a panic. I couldn’t, but yes…I’d worked myself into such a state I was having a hard time breathing. The girls stayed by me, and I could hear Maggie saying, “Take deep slow breaths, Mom.”
José appeared on my other side and grasped my hand. “You’re gonna be okay, Miss Kelly. Keisha will kill me if I let anything happen to you.”
I tried to smile but it didn’t really work. “José,” I said, panting to talk, “please call her. We need her over here right now.”
“Will do.” He stood and punched the buttons on his phone.
The EMTs brushed the girls out of the way, though I held out a hand to them. “We’re right here, Mom.” It was Em’s quavering voice.
The EMTs poked, listened to my heart, asked the same questions over and over, and then asked who my obstetrician was—Mike must have told them about the baby. Then I was loaded, oh so carefully, onto a gurney and rolled to the ambulance.
“I’m not going to the hospital! I’m okay. I’ll be fine if I can just sleep in my own bed.”
Mike was right there. “Kelly, stop. They need to check you in private. If you need to go to the hospital, you will.”
Mike rode in the ambulance with me, clutching my hand, stroking my forehead, pushing my hair, now damp with perspiration and evening air, off my face.
“The girls!” I struggled to sit up.
“José is with them, and Keisha’s on her way. They’re fine but worried about you.”
I started to cry. “Mike, this is so scary for them. Let’s just go back home so they won’t be frightened.” I struggled to sit up again, but his arms held me down.
“No, Kelly. They’d be more frightened if they thought you weren’t getting the medical attention you need.”
For once, we didn’t go to the county hospital. Sherrie Goodwin had privileges at a downtown hospital, where I admit the accommodations were a bit nicer. But an ER is an ER, and I was undressed, gowned, and subjected to more questions.
Just my luck, there was a female EMT, and she checked my underwear. In a soothing, reassuring voice, she said, “Just a few little red spots. No serious bleeding. But we’ve talked to your doctor, and she wants you in the hospital overnight for observation.”
Red spots! Blood! Oh, God, please don’t let me lose this baby. My mind had wandered far from the subject of who hit me and why. The paramedic gave me a shot, and pretty soon I didn’t care…didn’t care if I was going to the hospital, didn’t care if I didn’t know who did this or why, but even in my foggy state, I clung to the prayer for my baby.
I would stay overnight for observation. Mike made it clear that was Dr. Goodwin’s order and she would be in next morning to check on me. He also made it clear I was not to object.
“The girls?”
“Keisha’s with them. I’m spending the night here on that…uh…cot.” He looked distastefully at the cot on the wall opposite my bed. “Wish I could climb in with you.”
“Mike!” I pretended shock.
“Don’t misinterpret. It just looks a lot more comfortable, and I could hold you.”
I smiled, and he leaned down for a big kiss. “Tomorrow night,” I said.
Predictably, nurses came in every two hours to take my blood pressure and temperature and check my nether regions. “No more spotting, Ms. O’Connell. I think you and that tiny baby are going to be fine.” I breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course, it’s hard to sleep in two-hour segments, and neither of us slept well. Inevitably, when the nurse departed, with her cheery bit of good news, I wanted to go back to sleep. Mike wanted to talk about who did this and why.
“Kelly, you must have seen something. Describe the man for me.”
I sighed. I’d been over this so many times. “I think it was a man but I’m not even sure about that. If it was, he was slight, not tall, not heavy. He packed a wallop with his head though.” I rubbed my sore belly.
“I’ve thought about all your adventures, Kelly….”
I started to protest, but he raised a hand. “No other word for it. Ralphie who killed those old women and almost killed your mother and you is safely locked away in a mental institution; John Henry with his big box store that was a front fo
r drugs is locked away; that Wilson character who was dealing drugs is dead. And the Reverend Dr. Bruce Hollister is also locked away.”
“So is Jo Ellen North,” I said. “Why’d you leave her out?”
“Because my mind keeps coming back to her. Of all the people you’ve tangled with, she was the most vengeful, the most…oh, what’s the word I want? …sociopathic I suppose. And she has more reason for revenge now.”
“Mike, she’s in prison. Her parents are dead. And she had no siblings. It’s not like she’s pulling strings from inside the penitentiary.”
He hung his head and stared at his hands. “That’s what I keep worrying about. What don’t we know? I’m calling the warden tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I yawned. “You do that. My baby and I want to go to sleep.”
“Kelly!” It was a whispered protest, but I noticed he fell asleep before I did.
Next morning I was tired, stiff, sore, and grumpy. When a resident came in and said I was fine and about to be dismissed, I almost argued with him.
“Dr. Goodwin has asked that you go by her office on your way home. She’ll fit you in to her schedule.”
All I wanted was to go home and crawl in my own bed, preferably without Mike at this point. I slowly got out of bed and stood on legs that were decidedly wobbly. In all the commotion last night, Mike hadn’t thought to bring me any fresh clothes, so I put on the pants and blouse I’d been wearing and looked with distaste at the jacket probably permanently scarred with dirt and gravel. The blouse had bits of blood on it, so I finally threw the jacket over my shoulders and climbed back into bed. The whole process exhausted me.
While we were waiting for discharge paperwork, which seemed to take forever, Mike tried to run his district from his cell phone, and I called Keisha. She was by then at the office, having fixed the girls breakfast, packed their lunches, and delivered them to school.
“I missed my breakfast with José,” she said with a hint of complaint. But then, with more cheer, “I guess that ain’t the most important thing in the world. We got to figure out who’s trying to kill you.”
It hadn’t really occurred to me that someone was trying to kill me—maybe after last night trying to kill my baby. But I thought they were just harassing me, albeit to an extreme degree.
Keisha didn’t stop while I thought this through but talked right on. “I’m gettin’ on the computer right now and start looking into things. Don’t you worry. And I’ll get the girls from school and fix supper. You rest.”
“We can order something from the Grill,” I suggested tentatively.
“Those girls will love my fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I’m fixing supper.”
I thanked her and hung up, just as the nurse came bustling in with my discharge papers, followed by an orderly pushing a wheelchair.
“I can walk,” I said, climbing out of bed. But my legs threatened to give way again, and Mike caught me just in time.
“Hospital rules,” the nurse said crisply.
“Oh, okay,” and I sank into the wheelchair, trying to hold my head up and not show how grateful I was to be pushed by someone.
By the time we got to Dr. Goodwin’s office, I was feeling a bit better but had this strange feeling of being detached from the world around me.
“Being in the hospital, even briefly, can do that to you,” Mike said, patting my knee in what I’m sure he thought was a comforting way but I found sort of patronizing.
He held on to me going from the parking lot to the doctor’s office, and my mind flashed back to the day a stalker had shot at me, Ms. Lorna, and her daughter Sheila, with a high-powered rifle as we walked across the same parking lot. Came within a hair of killing Sheila. Now, with Mike, I felt safe.
The receptionist greeted us happily, though I could see curiosity in her eyes. “Ms. Buxton will show you in,” she said, and Sally Buxton appeared magically.
“Ms. O’Connell, what did you do? We’ll have to see that you take better care of yourself.” She took us directly into Dr. Goodwin’s office. “Just let me take your blood pressure and temperature…for our records, you know.” She patted my shoulder—why was everyone patting me today? When she finished, she said, “Temperature and pulse are fine, but blood pressure is a little high. I’ll mention it to Doctor. She’ll be right in. You take care of yourself now.”
She was followed almost immediately by Dr. Goodwin. Hands on hips, she demanded, “Kelly, what am I going to do with you? First you get shot at in my parking lot, and now you nearly lose your baby to some random violence.”
No need to tell her it wasn’t random, or at least we didn’t think so. “Did I really come close to losing the baby?”
She sighed and sat behind her desk. “There’s no way to know for sure. I doubt you damaged it, if that’s worrying you. But you’re still in your first trimester and you’re almost an at-risk patient because of your age, so miscarriage is always a possibility.” She paused, fiddled with a pencil, and then looked directly at me. “I didn’t need to see you today. Hospital reports all look good, but I wanted to stress the importance of taking care of yourself.” She looked down at the chart. “Your blood pressure is high. Let me take it again, now that you’ve been sitting here a while.”
She did and announced, “Perfectly normal. Must have been stress.”
I let out a sigh of relief. High blood pressure in pregnancy scared me. It led to eclampsia, though I knew that usually came later in a pregnancy.
Dr. Goodwin continued her lecture. “This is Wednesday. I don’t want you to go back to work until Monday. Sleep a lot, work from home if you have to, but stay home.”
“Probably be safer not out in public,” Mike muttered, but when Dr. Goodwin said, “Pardon me?” he just waved it away with a low, “Nothing. Talking to myself.”
She looked puzzled and turned back to me. “How’s the morning sickness?”
“Almost gone. Not really a problem.”
She asked about fatigue and I almost snapped that I was tired because I barely had any sleep last night, but I admitted that I was tired a lot.
“Then sleep. And call me if you show the least sign of spotting.” She stood, indicating the visit was over, and putting an arm around my shoulders, finished with, “I’m counting on you to take care of yourself and that baby.”
At least she hadn’t told Mike to “take care of the little woman.” We thanked her and left.
We got home about two o’clock, and I felt like it was midnight. I immediately headed for a shower, clean clothes and bed. Mike said he had phone calls to make and office work he could do from home. He didn’t want to leave me alone.
Sleepy as I was, I turned on him and said, “Mike, you can’t stay home with me every day. You’d lose your job. And don’t expect me to stay home for the rest of this pregnancy. That might delight Keisha, but I want to work. I need to work for my health as well as the income.”
And with that I stalked off upstairs and did not hear his soft, “I’m working on some things.”
****
I woke to the house smelling wonderfully of fried chicken, the kind my mom never made from scratch. Throwing on some of my nicer sweats, I wandered downstairs to find Mike helping the girls with their homework—quietly. Maggie was intent on algebra, which Mike was able to help her with and I never was. Em was creating something on her sketchpad, her lips clamped in concentration.
Keisha was in the kitchen mashing potatoes while the chicken warmed in the oven. When I offered to throw together a salad, she told me to sit at the kitchen table and watch. We were having Mike’s favorite green beans—with bacon, onion, and vinegar.
And so we gathered at the table for a great, home-cooked meal. Mike and I cooked—me on school nights and he on weekends—but I would never have tried fried chicken. I found myself ravenous but also tickled that the girls ate with such relish.
“Keisha,” Mike said, “you don’t need to work in a realtor’s office. Why don’t you move into the gues
t house and be our cook and nanny?”
“And what would I do with José?” she asked archly. “I want us to have our own house.”
That launched a discussion of wedding plans, and I asked bluntly if José knew yet that he was getting married.
“He’s got some idea,” she grinned. “We been talking about it.”
The girls, who had no idea about this, were open-mouthed. Once the idea sank in, Em jumped up and asked, “Am I too old to be a flower girl?”
“Maybe you both can be junior bridesmaids,” Keisha drawled, “but José won’t put up with a big, fancy affair. It’s gonna be small, maybe even City Hall. But first we gotta make sure your momma’s safe.”
Both girls glanced at me, though Maggie turned away quickly, a shadow erasing the smile she’d had.
Mike cleared his throat. “I called the women’s prison today. Talked to the warden who checked the records. Jo Ellen North has had no visitors, gets very little mail, makes no phone calls. That doesn’t mean some other inmate might not have gotten her a disposable cell phone.”
“Jo Ellen North?” Maggie exclaimed. “The lady who tried to kill you when we were little? Is that what this is all about?” She stood up, threw her napkin on the table, and stalked off to her bedroom.
The rest of us stared after her in awed silence. There was no mistaking the slam of her bedroom door. Mike put his napkin on the table and started to rise, saying, “I’ll go after her.”
“No, let me. This is a mother/daughter thing, and it goes beyond Jo Ellen North.”
Behind me I heard Keisha say, “Miss Em, let’s you and me clear this table. I got to take some chicken for José.”
Maggie had thrown herself face down on her bed and was crying into her pillow—softly, not loud sobs, but nonetheless crying. I sat and stroked her head gently, but she appeared to ignore me. At least she didn’t tell me to go away. Finally after a long silence, I asked, “Can you tell me about it? Surely the mention of Jo Ellen North didn’t upset you that much. She’s safely away in prison and can’t hurt us.”
