Trial by Fire

by J. A. Jance

  “No,” he answered. “I’m fine. I’ll stay.”

  Hal didn’t sound fine at all but the soft cotton cloud was already descending around her.

  Mimi. He called me Mimi! The name still seemed strange and foreign somehow, and she regarded it with no little astonishment. If Mimi really is my name, how could I have forgotten it?

  She tried to fight the cloud, but Sister Anselm had already pushed the button. She wanted the pain to go away, but she didn’t want to fall asleep again.

  I want to be here, she thought. I want to be here with Hal. I want to be able to see his face and hear his voice. I want to know that when I open my eyes, he’ll be here beside me. I want to know that he won’t go away and leave me again. I want him here. With me.

  Even as she formed those thoughts, she was already drifting away from him, slipping away into some other space and time, but this time she was able to pick out a few details in the room that she hadn’t noticed before. The walls of the room were very white, and she was surprised to see that on the wall above his shoulder was a simple wooden cross.

  Has that cross been hanging here the whole time? she wondered. If so, why didn’t I see it before?

  Much closer at hand, she studied Hal’s face. He looked incredibly tired—as though he hadn’t slept for days. His cheek was rough—covered with a five o’clock shadow of stubble. That wasn’t at all like him. Then, as she watched, a solitary tear coursed down his cheek and dripped off his chin

  He looks awful, she thought. Why is he crying? Doesn’t he know how glad I am to see him? Why doesn’t he ask me that? Am I glad?

  Oh, yes. Please ask me. One blink for yes.

  He leaned over her. He was wearing one of those paper gowns like the one Sister Anselm wore. It rustled when he moved.

  “I’m right here,” he said. “I won’t leave. I promise.”

  Those words were like a balm to her tortured soul. She could feel herself sliding steadily into unconsciousness, but this time no flames awaited. The air around her was soft and moist and cool. For a disorienting moment she couldn’t imagine where she was. She noticed there was grass underfoot and fog all around, wrapping them both in an eerie embrace. In the distance she heard the sound of a foghorn.

  The foghorn. Of course. In San Francisco. How could she have forgotten that? Where they had stood on a hillside in front of the justice of the peace and said they would be together, loving and honoring each other, in sickness and health, until death do us part.

  “Go to sleep, Mimi,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll be right here.”

  The next blast of the foghorn was followed by another sound—the disturbing sound of a grown man weeping.

  “Come, Mr. Cooper,” Sister Anselm said several minutes later. “You really shouldn’t stay here much longer. We should go now, and let her sleep. Leave me a number. If you’re not in the waiting room, I’ll call you when she’s waking up so you can be here when she does.”

  As Hal Cooper left the waiting room, Dave turned to Ali. “Wait a minute,” he said in a performance worthy of an Academy Award. “Don’t I know you? Didn’t we have an art history class together at ASU a few years ago?”

  This was nothing short of an outrageous lie, since Ali Reynolds had never set foot on the Arizona State University campus. Obviously Dave had known who Ali was all along, but he had been careful not to show it

  “Yes,” she said, smiling back at him, holding out her hand and carrying her own part of the charade. “Cecelia McCann,” she said. “How nice to see you again.”

  “Dave,” he answered. “Dave Holman. Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. How about you?”

  “I’m a consultant,” she said quickly. “Doing a project for the hospital.”

  He gave her a quick wink, one that she hoped none of the other people in the room noticed.

  Ali wondered how long she and Dave and Sister Anselm could keep up the fiction that they knew one another but didn’t have a close working relationship.

  The elevator door opened and a woman stepped into the room. She was blond, mid-thirties, and definitely dressed for success. She stopped and surveyed the waiting room before going over to the nurses’ station. “My name is Donna Carson,” she said. “I’m looking for Hal Cooper.”

  Ah-ha, Ali thought. The daughter’s personal assistant.

  There was an attendant behind the desk, someone who hadn’t been privy to all the earlier discussions

  “I’m sorry,” she said at once. “We don’t have anyone here by that name.”

  “He’s a visitor, not a patient,” Donna said impatiently. “He came to see about his wife.”

  One of the lolling teenagers spoke up. “That guy’s down the hall,” he explained. “Visiting in one of the rooms.”

  “Which one? I need to talk to him.”

  “Are you a relative?” the attendant asked.

  “No, but—”

  “Only authorized relatives are allowed access to the patients’ rooms. You’ll have to take a seat.”

  “It is his wife, then?” Donna asked. “It is Mimi Cooper?”

  The attendant didn’t budge. “I’m not at liberty to disclose any information whatsoever,” she said. “If you’ll be good enough to sit down—”

  “But I spoke to Mimi’s daughter, Serenity Langley. She sent me here to find out what’s going on,” Donna argued. “If her mother has been injured, I need to let her know.”

  “Please,” the attendant said. “I’m sure you’ll know in good time.”

  That response evidently wasn’t good enough. Donna had already punched a button and was holding the phone to her

  ear.

  “The people who work here won’t tell me anything, not a word,” she whined into the phone when someone answered.

  A few of James’s relatives had decamped for the evening, leaving behind a couple of unoccupied chairs. Donna Carson chose one of those and dropped into it.

  “One of the other visitors told me that Hal is here right now. He’s in one of the rooms, but they won’t tell me which one. I’m guessing that means it’s bad news. Yes,” she added after a pause. “You’d probably better head home. I’m at Saint Gregory’s. On the eighth floor, in the burn unit. Do you want me to call your brother? Okay. It’s probably better if you do that, and if I happen to see Cooper, I’ll let him know you’re on your way.”

  Just then the door to room 814 opened and Sister Anselm emerged, leading a sobbing Hal Cooper. Dave left Ali behind and hurried to meet them. “It’s her?” he asked.

  Hal nodded wordlessly.

  “Perhaps you’d be so good as to come with me, Mr. Cooper,” Dave said, taking Hal by the arm and leading him toward the elevator. “We need to put you in touch with investigators from the ATF, and from the marshal’s office in Fountain Hills. We’re all going to need to ask you some questions.”

  Donna jumped up and hurried over to them. “Is it Mimi?” she wanted to know. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Hal shook his head numbly. “I don’t know,” he managed. “It’s too soon to tell.”

  “Are you saying she’s going to die?” Donna sounded stunned.

  Before Hal could say anything more, the elevator door closed.

  Dave and Hal disappeared. Once the door shut, Donna again opened her phone and dialed.

  “It is your mother,” she confirmed when someone answered. “She’s here in the burn unit at Saint Gregory’s in Phoenix. Yes, the one on Camelback. You’d better get here as soon as you can.” There was a pause. “How bad is it?” Donna Carson shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’d say it’s pretty bad.”

  Across the room Ali opened her phone and sent a text message to Sheriff Maxwell.

  Victim IDed. Mimi Cooper. Dave is taking the husband to meet with ATF and Fountain Hills marshals.

  Sheriff Maxwell’s response came back in less than a minute.

  Good work. Richard Donnelley’s gonna crap his britches over that one. I don’t think the agent
in charge will like being showed up like that. They’ll need to do a crime scene investigation in Fountain Hills. Does that nun still need you?

  Ali looked up. Down the hall, Sister Anselm was standing at her favorite window, looking out at the nighttime city. Without responding to the sheriff’s message, Ali sent a text message to her.

  Can we talk?

  Sister Anselm glanced at her phone. Then, smiling, she beckoned for Ali to join her at the window.

  “Sheriff Maxwell was just asking me if I thought you still needed me.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sister Anselm said. “I certainly need you here tomorrow.”

  Ali nodded. “All right. I’ll be here. But did she recognize her husband?”

  “Absolutely,” Sister Anselm said. “Her response to him was a wonder to behold. She’s resting more peacefully now than she has all day.”

  “She still doesn’t know who’s responsible for setting her on fire?” Ali asked.

  “No, and just because Mimi was glad to see Mr. Cooper doesn’t mean he had nothing to do with all this. I intend to keep a close eye on him.”

  Which meant, Ali concluded, that Sister Anselm didn’t trust the man and was unprepared to leave Hal Cooper alone with his injured wife.

  Ali was about to text a response to Sheriff Maxwell when her phone rang. A glance at caller ID told her that this wasn’t the sheriff calling back. It was Athena.

  “My daughter-in-law,” Ali explained to Sister Anselm. “She’s in town and was hoping we could get together.”

  “Of course,” Sister Anselm said. “I think things are under control for tonight.”

  “You’ll call if you need me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  By then Ali’s phone had stopped ringing, so she punched Redial. “Sorry I couldn’t answer before. I’m leaving the hospital right now. Where are you?”

  “At the apartment,” Athena said. “Just off Apache in Tempe.”

  It sounded like Athena was sniffling. June in Phoenix was hardly the time to come down with a cold or sinus infection. Ali wondered if she had been crying.

  “What about grabbing something to eat? I’m starving,” Ali said. “Do you want to meet me somewhere?”

  “Not really,” Athena said. “I’d rather you came here.”

  Ali’s gut gave an ominous twist. Athena Reynolds was boundlessly enthusiastic, and always ready for whatever. This didn’t sound like her.

  “Tell you what,” Ali said. “I’ll pick up something on the way. Give me your address so I can program it into the GPS.”

  On her way down to the hospital lobby, Ali called her hotel, spoke to room service, and asked them to box up some food—fries and two burgers—that she could take with her. At the hotel, she left the car in the driveway and hurried upstairs to shed the red wig.

  Ali knew instinctively that whatever was going on between Athena and Chris needed to be handled by Ali Reynolds rather than Cecelia McCann.

  The Desert Dunes apartment complex had little to recommend it other than its proximity to the ASU campus. It was a grim-looking three-story place built around a courtyard with a few scraggly palm trees for landscaping. It looked as though the courtyard might once have included a pool. That was gone, filled in and covered over by a tiny basketball court where no one was shooting hoops through baskets missing their nets.

  Ali followed Athena’s directions up two flights of stairs and down a long breezeway—a breezeway with no breeze on this hot summer night. The doorbell outside apartment 310 was covered with a three-by-five card reading Out of Order, so Ali knocked on the metal hollow-core door. Seconds later, Athena flung the door open.

  Ali could tell at a glance that her earlier assumption was correct. Athena had been crying.

  “I come bearing food,” Ali said, presenting Athena with the room-service burgers.

  “Come in,” Athena said. With a notable lack of enthusiasm she took the bag and ushered Ali into the room. “It’s not much, but it’s cheap, and we’re only here for summer session.”

  Surprisingly enough, the apartment was nicer inside than Ali would have expected. Someone—maybe an assistant professor rather than a grad student—had gone to the trouble of assembling a collection of good-quality secondhand furniture. Nothing matched, but the chairs covered with faded chintz were comfortable, and the end tables and bookshelves were sturdy if old-fashioned. The artwork on the walls was anything but old-fashioned. The unframed canvases provided explosions of splashy color on the otherwise landlord-bland taupe interior.

  “Art student?” Ali asked.

  Athena nodded on her way toward the galley kitchen. While Athena busied herself with setting out plates and glassware on the fifties-era Formica tabletop, Ali forced herself to take a seat and keep her mouth shut. She was dying to ask what the problem was, but she knew she needed to let Athena tell her at her own speed.

  “I’m pregnant,” Athena said bluntly, once they were seated.

  I’m pregnant, Ali noted. Not we’re pregnant.

  Still, of all the news Athena might have given her, news of an expected grandchild was something Ali welcomed wholeheartedly.

  “That’s wonderful,” she said. “I’m thrilled. What does Chris think?”

  “I haven’t exactly told him,” Athena admitted.

  “Why not?” Ali asked. “It’s his baby, too.”

  “We didn’t plan on getting pregnant,” Athena said. “At least not so soon. Actually, I didn’t expect to get pregnant at all, but I got careless. I forgot a couple of pills. Now this has happened, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Ali was mystified. Surely Athena wasn’t thinking about having an abortion.

  “You’re married,” Ali said quietly. “You and Chris love each other. You tell him you’re pregnant, and the two of you deal with it together. What’s so hard about that?”

  “My father never wanted me to join the military,” Athena said.

  This seemed like changing the subject, but Ali suspected it wasn’t. “So?”

  “And when I got hurt, he said I’d wrecked his chances of being a grandfather. That since I was a cripple, even if I had a baby, how would I take care of one with this?”

  Athena held up her prosthetic arm and hand and stared at them as though she’d never seen them before. Ali understood that there must be a lot more to the story than what she’d heard so far. For one thing, Athena’s parents hadn’t come to the wedding. As far as Ali knew they had been invited but had declined to attend.

  “Your father called you that?” Ali asked. “A cripple? Sounds like he doesn’t know you very well. It sounds to me as though he’s the one who’s decided to take a pass on the grandfather bit.”

  “What if he’s right?” Athena murmured. “Maybe I am a cripple. How do I hold a baby with this? How do I change one?”

  “Wait a minute,” Ali said. “You’re tough enough to go to war in Iraq, tough enough to almost die from an IED, tough enough to live through Walter Reed and do all the rehab, and you’re tough enough to spend all day, every day teaching high school kids. You expect me to believe that you’re scared of changing a baby?”

  “Not just changing it,” Athena said. “Feeding it, bathing it. I just keep thinking of all the things mothers do—all the things mothers have to do. What if I can’t do them? What if my child grows up thinking his mother’s a freak?”

  “But you are a freak,” Ali said with a reassuring smile. “You play basketball, and you’re evidently very good at it, even one-handed.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Athena said.

  “Kids always think their parents are freaks,” Ali said. “For instance, Chris thought I was a freak because I was on TV. As far as he knew, none of the other mothers did that.”

  Athena, staring at her untouched hamburger, said nothing.

  “Is this why you called off the trip to Minnesota?” Ali asked.

  “Yes,” Athena said. “I told Chris I’m not ready to deal with my parents yet, and it’s tru
e. I’m not.”

  “Look,” Ali said. “I get it that you don’t have perfect parents. Nobody has perfect parents, but I can tell you from personal experience that throwing a grandchild into the mix can help resolve a lot of old, lingering problems. Look what happened with me and Chris’s other grandparents at the wedding. As I recall, you’re the one who made that happen.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Those were Chris’s relatives, not mine, so it wasn’t as big a deal for me. My parents are a big deal. Besides, what if they’re right, and I’m not cut out to be a mother?”

  “Because of your missing hand and leg,” Ali asked, “or is it for some other reason that you’re not mentioning?”

  Again Athena said nothing. For almost a minute she and Ali sat in silence at the table while their untouched hamburgers turned stone cold.

  “Look,” Ali said finally. “I can tell you there hasn’t ever been a woman who found out she was pregnant who didn’t worry about being up to the task, but Athena, I happen to know you are. You and Chris together will be great parents. If he somehow thinks he’s got a pass from changing poopy diapers, then I’ll be happy to set him straight. And if I can’t make a believer of him, my parents will.”

  “You think it will be all right then?” Athena asked uncertainly.

  “It’ll be more than all right,” Ali said. “It’s going to be wonderful. Yes, I know bringing home a new little baby and having its health and well-being entirely on your shoulders is scary. Tiny babies and grown ones, too, require a lot of care, but you’ll grow into the job as the baby grows. So will Chris.”

  “Even with this?” Again, Athena held up her prosthetic hand.

  Ali had always been impressed by Athena’s determination to never let her missing limbs keep her from doing anything she wanted to do. Yet the daunting prospect of caring for a baby seemed to be more than she could handle. Ali was touched that Athena had come to her looking for reassurance.

  “Until the baby is born,” Ali went on, “yours is the voice that child will hear and know—your heartbeat, your breathing. Kids are adaptable. They love the people who love them. They love what’s familiar. Someday this child may notice that other kids’ mothers have two arms, but as far as this little kid is concerned—as far as your little kid is concerned—mothers with two arms will be the odd ones out.”