Caroline stood.
“Joseph Whalen,” I said, my voice stuttering, stammering, eyes tearing. “When Molly and I were twelve…” She pressed her open hand against mine. “We… never… told anyone.”
She too began to cry.
“I know,” she said, patting my hand. “I didn’t always know. But now after what happened to you in the woods on Friday… after what the detective told me… now I know.”
We were silent from that point forward.
Until Franny came back.
Chapter 77
He had a smile on his round face.
I didn’t know whether to attribute the smile to the pie he’d just eaten inside the hospital cafeteria or to the painting he was about to give me.
The final painting.
As he picked it up and brought it to my bed, I felt my heart beat. In my head, flashes of images. Faces. Michael. Molly. Whalen.
Like the other four before it, this image took my breath away. Unlike the others, however, it did not frighten me. What this image represented was the end of something.
It was an almost exact representation of Molly and me. We were sitting by the stream in the woods, still dressed in our cut off jeans and t-shirts. Molly was washing me with the stream water, washing my hair, touching me with the cold, clean water and her gentle hand. It had been only moments since Whalen had attempted to do terrible things to us and failed. But now he was gone and Molly was being strong. Strong enough for the both of us. Molly was washing me in the stream. It was a baptismal ceremony; Molly making all things new again.
I laid my head back on the bed, into the soft pillow. I wanted to cry. For Molly, for Michael, for Franny, for everyone. But I felt that I couldn’t possibly cry another tear.
This painting was the end of something.
Somehow I was happy about that. Happy and sad at the same time.
“What’s its title Franny?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“’Touch’,” he said softly.
Maybe there were no more tears to shed, but I felt myself choking up. I felt my heart and my lungs and all my organs twist inside out.
“You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “All those years ago in the woods. You saw what happened to Molly and me. You must have seen it all through a basement window.”
He stood by the bed in his baggy jeans and yellow suspenders and he began to cry. He cried for the both of us. It was all too true. Franny had witnessed the attacks and couldn’t find a way to express what he’d seen. He couldn’t communicate it until now; this very week. Like me, like Molly, Franny had been carrying the burden for nearly his entire life.
He must have known that Whalen had been freed. He must have used his special extrasensory gifts to intuit Whalen’s intent-the intent to come after me. Franny sensed the danger and he tried to warn me through his art, his special language. In a word, he tried to save my life even before it required saving.
Chapter 78
The nurse came back in with my lunch, which she set down on the table beside me. I couldn’t bear the thought of eating. Attached to the nurse’s clipboard was a strip of paper. She pulled the piece of paper off the board and held it in her hand. Just a small strip of litmus paper about the size of a cigarette, its tail end painted with pink.
When the nurse glanced at Caroline, I could only assume that she took her for my mother, and Franny for my brother.
“I have some good news,” she announced. “You’re going to have a baby.”
For some reason I could not explain, the news didn’t throw me into the least bit of shock. The effect it had was good and kind. It made me feel warm inside; it made me feel healed.
Caroline came to me, hugged me without getting in the way of the wires.
“From out of the bad comes the good,” she whispered in my ear. “Where there is death, there is life.”
I believed her.
In my mind I’d thought about all the people I’d had relations with over the past twelve months.
Michael. He was the only one. I pictured him doing what he loved-working at his laptop, biting the nail. I saw him sitting at a small table sipping cappuccino outside a Paris cafe; I saw him working at a desk inside a New York City hotel room. I felt him lying beside me in bed, our bare feet touching.
Michael, don’t die.
Chapter 79
Michael was being kept alive inside a clear partitioned room in the ICU Caroline wheeled me into the dimly lit room, pushing me directly to the bed that held my husband’s comatose body. When Caroline left the room, I took Michael’s hand in mine. Already it felt cold and as frail as Molly’s had just before she died all those years ago.
There was an IV attached to his left forearm by means of a needle and clear plastic tubing. The monitors set beside the bed recorded blood pressure and heart rate.
Although dark hair veiled more than half his face, I could see just how pale was.
“We’re going to have a baby,” I whispered. “How about that? A couple of divorcees starting a family together.”
I squeezed cold fingers together and I began to cry. For a brief second, Michael’s eyes opened up. I felt my heart race. But just like that, the eyes closed and a short breath was exhaled out his mouth. That’s when the green line on the monitor went flat and an electronic alarm sounded.
“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
A nurse came in then. She didn’t look at me at all. She approached the machine and turned off the alarm. Glancing down at her wristwatch, she made a mental note of the time. Before walking back out, she set her hand on my right shoulder and gently squeezed.
“Stay with him for a bit,” she said.
She closed the door behind her.
I stayed with Michael for a while. I cried and I also talked to him, planned things out. But after a time I knew it was no use. Michael had waited to die until I came to him one last time. Until I said goodbye.
Michael waited to die. He loved me that much.
I let go of his hand knowing I would never hold it again. I let go of his hand. But still I felt it in mine.
Michael.
I let go of his hand. It was time to let him go.
Chapter 80
One week later I received my discharge. My doctor’s healing instructions in hand along with a big fat bill (the Albany Art Center couldn’t afford comprehensive health care), I packed up my bag with get well cards, sympathy cards, and gifts and tossed out the now wilted flowers. Then I wrapped Franny’s final ‘Touch’ painting in aluminum foil that one of the nurse’s had snatched up from the floor kitchen. Everything set to go, I settled into an A.M.C. wheelchair.
I’d lost five pounds over the past week, but the weight loss didn’t make me feel any lighter. Nor was it good news for my pregnancy. Maybe Michael’s parents were still alive, but in their mind I was still his wife and they saw to it to wait on burying him until I was well enough to attend the funeral. But I was no longer his wife even if I was the mother of his unborn baby. Only when the funeral was over would I share the news about my pregnancy with Michael’s parents.
I shared an elevator with Caroline and Franny.
Staring straight ahead, I caught my reflection in the chrome-paneled doors. My face stared back at me, distorted, black-and-blued, unfamiliar, like a beat-up funhouse mirror reflection.
Almost tranquilly the elevator descended three stories to the first floor where we proceeded along the extended length of the narrow corridor to the exit. But Franny and I were barely through the automatic sliding glass doors before we were besieged by the scattered reporters who shouted out questions regarding mine and his overnight ordeal of one week ago.
“Do you plan on bringing a class action suit against Albany County for negligence, Ms. Underhill?”
“Is it true Whalen abducted you and your twin sister thirty years ago?”
“Do you fear for your life now that Whalen’s body has yet to be located?”
The questions were machine-gunned as microphones were shoved to within inches of our faces even while we made for the parking lot.
Until Caroline took control.
She stopped the chair, stepped around to the front, blocking any and all access to Franny and me.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she exclaimed. “Please leave us in peace. In time, we’ll release a statement regarding last week’s ordeal. But until then we ask for patience and understanding while the process of convalescence continues. Thank you.”
As soon as I was seated besides Franny in the front of Caroline’s old truck, I decided to break my silence.
“That was eloquent, Caroline,” I offered, eyes planted on the open road up ahead.
Throwing the automatic transmission into drive, she said, “I’ve had a lifetime of protecting Francis from vultures like that.”
For a moment I was reminded of Franny’s upcoming cable television debut. But I thought better of mentioning it now.
While she motored the truck out past the city limits, over the South Troy Bridge and along Rural Route 2, Caroline brought me up to speed on a few developments that had transpired over the past twenty-four hours.
First item of importance was that Robyn had been transported to her mother’s home in the Albany suburbs where she continued to recover. Silently, I brooded over my best friend and partner not having called or come to visit me. But then, I knew something about post traumatic stress. I knew about wounds that change a person, make them withdraw-wounds that even time couldn’t heal. Caroline went on to say that the FBI still had no clue as to the whereabouts of Robyn’s attacker, and in all likelihood would not until someone either caught him in the act, or was able to make a positive ID in a line-up.
The next item was very important; it was believed that traces of Whalen’s body were uncovered in the deep woods not far from Mount Desolation. Having been left to the elements and the animals, his body was assumed to be badly decomposed. Specifically recovered were several bones that might belong to his right hand. Not even the press was aware of the discovery since the remains were now arriving at the FBI forensics’ lab in Albany for DNA verification.
“Is Mr. Whalen dead now?” Franny asked, his eyes staring out the windshield onto the pine tree-lined road.
I took hold of his hand, held it.
“Yes Franny,” I said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“What if he’s not dead? Does Mr. Whalen come back for us?”
I’m not sure if it was a conscious move, but Caroline tossed me a tight-lipped glance. I knew what she was thinking without her having to say it. That all DNA tests aside, until Whalen’s entire body was uncovered, she would not believe he was dead.
Neither would I.
I spent another full week at the Scaramuzzi’s farm recovering from my wounds. Exactly two weeks to the day he was murdered, Michael’s body was released for burial. It took some effort, but as a part of his eulogy I read a few pages from the Hounds of Heaven and it didn’t surprise me one bit that not a dry eye could be found inside St. Pious Church-the same church where we buried Molly and my parents all those years ago.
After the church ceremony, I rode to the cemetery in the front seat of Caroline’s truck (Franny was allowed to stay home and paint by himself). While a handful of us surrounded the gravesite, the priest said a few more prayers on Michael’s behalf. The day was cold and blustery. When we set red roses on his casket the red petals shivered in the wind gusts.
As the service came to an end and everyone scattered away from the grave, I stood alone with my husband. I told him I loved him. I thanked him for what we had during the final week of our lives together. I set a hand on my belly, told him I’d take care of our son for us. I didn’t know for certain I was going to have a boy, but whenever I tried to picture the baby inside of me, I saw a little Michael.
While Caroline stood waiting for me by the open door of her truck, I felt my husband’s loss like a person might feel a limb that has suddenly been amputated.
“I’m sorry we ever left one another,” I said, brushing away a tear from my eye. “I will always love you and I will always love our child.”
When I walked away from the grave I knew it would be a long time before I returned to the cemetery.
Chapter 81
Caroline and I didn’t say a whole lot on the way back across the river to Rensselaer County. I had assumed we’d drive straight to her house for the small reception she was putting on for those who’d attended the funeral. Instead we took the long way around the backside of Mount Desolation. When she pulled off the main road onto an overgrown two-track, I turned to her.
“Where are you taking us?”
“Closure.” She smiled, as the truck shook and lumbered to and fro. “I can’t think of a better place for it to happen.”
The two-track was hardly even a two-track anymore; it was covered with so much growth. We must have driven two miles before we could go no further. Not without getting the truck caught up on some heavy rocks that blocked the parallel tracks. Obstacles no doubt placed there by Whalen himself.
Caroline got out.
“We walk from here,” she said.
But before she got out, she reached into my purse.
“I’m doing this for you,” she said, her eyes locked onto mine. When she pulled out my old copy of ‘Mockingbird’, I had no idea what she had in store for it. Nor did I ask. I just slipped out, shutting the door behind me. That’s when I saw her reaching into the truck’s cargo bed, where she picked up an old metal gasoline can imprinted with a yellow and black Sunoco logo on its side.
“Let’s go,” she ordered, that same subtle smile painted on her face.
To some of the animals who watched us from their hideaway dens, we must have been some kind of sight. Two grown women, dressed all in black, making their way through the woods, one of them still sporting a heavy cast on her right hand. I almost felt like laughing. Instead I just kept quiet and followed Caroline for the thirty minute walk into the dark woods.
I’d never before come upon the front of the old Whalen house. I’d always approached it from the backside. As we emerged through the woods, I felt that familiar pressure in the stomach; the organ slide in my intestines. My eyes gazed upon the warped and mold-covered roof shingles, the gray-brown siding, the decayed and now completely detached front porch. I eyed the picture window, the glass now shattered and leaving only jagged edges. I imagined that at one time it would have offered a view of a front lawn, two little children playing on it. A boy and a little girl. I imagined a mother looking out the window onto the children, maybe while she dusted the furniture, while a stew or maybe a chicken was cooking in the kitchen.
But then I pictured that boy having grown into a teenager. I pictured him walking into the house late one night, a shotgun in his hand. I saw that boy moving methodically from bedroom to bedroom until his horrific deed was done.
Without a word Caroline stepped onto what was left of the front porch. The gas can and my old novel in hand, she raised her right leg like a woman thirty years younger, and kicked the door in. Proceeding under the plastic police “crime scene” ribbon, she entered into the place and disappeared. Maybe three long minutes later, she reemerged with that old Sunoco gas can in her hand, the metal canister appearing far lighter than it had been before she’d entered the house. Setting the can onto the porch floor, she pulled something from the pocket of her black pants.
A book of matches.
Striking the match, she set the entire book on fire and tossed it into the open front door. Casually, as if she’d only set a bundle of red roses on the porch floor, she picked the can back up and made her way back to me. By the time she reached me the fire was already visible through the open door. Moments after that, the entire first floor caught fire.
It didn’t take long for the whole place to go up in flames. I felt the heat on my face and I eyed the bright orange fire and I felt my hatred and fear melt out of
my pores like candle wax.
Taking hold of my hand, Caroline kissed me gently on the cheek, setting an open hand on my belly.
“We should get back to Franny,” she said. “He’ll be worried.”
I turned and never looked back.
Chapter 82
The next morning, I woke up inside my apartment alone. It was the first night I’d spent there since the events of the past few weeks had transpired; since Michael died. I didn’t sleep very well that first night, but then I didn’t sleep poorly either. Since the thirty year anniversary of Whalen’s attacks on Molly and me had passed, I was no longer plagued by nightmares. But that didn’t mean I was feeling bad on the inside so much as I felt very much alone, even with Michael’s beret stuffed under my pillow.
With Michael gone and with Robyn eyeing a far longer emotional recovery than her physical wounds would ever bear, I had some serious decisions to make.
Would I go back to my teaching job at the art center? Would I continue to live in this apartment? Would I sell off my parents’ house and the three-hundred acres that went with it? Would I move away from Albany? Maybe make the forever dreamed about move to New York City? Would I ever return to my art?
One thing was certain: I had a baby to think about now. Where to raise him and how to raise him would be of prime concern, which pretty much meant that my NYC residency might have to be put on hold once again.
No one should raise a child in the city, Michael used to say. Unless they’re filthy rich.
I can’t say that I disagreed with him. He was still the baby’s father, no matter what.
First things first, I jumped back into my routine. I made the coffee, poured a glass of juice, and took my vitamins, which now included prescription prenatals.
I poured a small bowl of Shredded Wheat and two percent milk. When that small meal proved not to cut the mustard (I was eating for two now), I took advantage of Caroline and Franny’s having kindly stocked my fridge and shelves with food. I got the frying pan out and lit the gas stove. Setting my open hand on my growing belly, I realized how famished I truly was.
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