Grace to the Finish

by Julie Hyzy

  “And she’s making you feel guilty?”

  “Attempting to,” I said. “I know what I know. She’d been hit by a car and was in pretty bad shape for the first day. I was out of my mind with worry.”

  “Wow, hit by a car?” Bruce said. “Poor thing.”

  “Liza lost a lot of blood and had to have transfusions. I remember my parents being terrified about that.” I frowned again. “I know I was young at the time, but I remember there was a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” Scott asked.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t remember. Our parents weren’t the type to discuss worries with eight-year-olds. I just recall a lot of whispering and plenty of phone calls.”

  Bruce started rinsing the dishes again. “They were probably calling friends and family.”

  “Probably,” I said. “I just seem to think that there was something more going on.”

  “I doubt Liza will tell you, even if she knows,” Bruce said.

  “True enough.” My phone pinged an incoming e-mail. A quick glance told me it was from Patsy at the bank. With an attachment.

  I pointed upstairs. “Do you guys mind if I grab my laptop for a second? I’ll come back in a bit to help.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Scott said. “A one-dish meal makes for easy cleaning.”

  Bootsie bounded up the stairs with me, crossing my path and staring as though trying to start a conversation. “Sorry, Boots,” I said as I hurried into my bedroom to fire up my laptop. “I want to see if Patsy came through for me.”

  She had.

  Patsy’s e-mail was brief. In it, she stated that she’d found some of the old invoices Craig had signed off on, but that his penmanship was so bad that she couldn’t make out the proper spelling of his last name. She offered her guess and also attached several copies of invoices so that I could try to decipher his scrawl myself.

  I downloaded immediately and enlarged the documents as much as I could. This Craig was a scribbler, no question about that. He started his first name with a giant C, but the rest looked like little more than a bumpy flat line with a loopy g at the end. His surname clearly began with a W. I studied the first document and thought that Patsy’s guess of “Wedestia” wasn’t bad.

  I compared three documents on my screen. The loopy center consonant that Patsy had identified as a d could actually be an l, I thought. The extra stroke before it could be an x. A bit more scrutiny and I decided that Craig had a specific twist to the r in his first name. Which put that consonant at the end of his last name.

  I tried that combination. Wexlstir. Probably not.

  Except. That final vowel could easily be an e.

  “Wexlser.” As soon as I said it aloud, I could see the potential. Maybe Wexler. “Oh, yeah,” I said to Bootsie. “Time to call Rodriguez.”

  “Grace,” the detective said when he picked up. The odd note in his voice took me aback. I didn’t have time to react, though. “How did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  “Why did you call me?”

  “I may have a lead on Craig’s last name.”

  “Hold on.” In the background, I heard him tell someone else that he’d be right back. He lowered his voice. “Give it to me.”

  I did and could tell he was writing it down.

  “Why did you think I called?” I asked.

  I heard his sharp intake of breath. Before he could refuse to answer, I said. “Please tell me.”

  “I’m at the hospital. Your friend the squatter was just brought in. Somebody did a number on the poor guy.”

  “Oscar?”

  “Yeah. Beaten up pretty bad. But he’ll live,” he assured me. “Lucky that a Good Samaritan stopped it from being worse.”

  “Who attacked him?”

  “Unknown,” Rodriguez said. “The witness couldn’t provide much of a description beyond ‘male’ and ‘average.’ We plan to question Oscar as soon as the docs give us the all clear.”

  “The papers this morning said—”

  “We know. Could be this Craig trying to tie up a loose end. Could be as simple as another homeless person wanting a share of Oscar’s good fortune. Don’t worry, Grace. We’ll find out who did this.”

  Chapter 21

  My roommates were horrified by the news.

  “I knew something was wrong when he didn’t show up,” Scott said later when we were all gathered in the parlor. “I should have done something.”

  “What could you have done?” I asked.

  He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know.”

  “I feel responsible,” Bruce said from the sofa. “Poor guy.”

  “The police agree that it may have been Craig who attacked him,” I said, “but there’s no way to know for sure. Not yet.”

  “If only the newspaper hadn’t mentioned the eyewitness,” Scott said.

  “I know.” I’d pulled out some of my mother’s old photo albums and now drew one of them onto my lap. “I really wish they would have specified that Oscar provided the police zero description.”

  Scott came to peer over my shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asked, pointing at a photo of me and Liza in our plastic backyard pool. “Is that you? Look at how blond you were.”

  “I know. I was a real towhead back when I was seven.”

  He sat down in the chair across from me. “What’s with the trip down memory lane, Grace? I can’t imagine you’re trying to conjure up warm feelings for your sister.”

  “No,” I said with a sad laugh. “I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m trying to figure out what’s bothering me about her stay in the hospital.” I ran my finger along the bottom of the sunny backyard photo. I was standing up to my ankles in the water, mugging for the camera. Behind me, Liza held a bucket of water poised to dump over my head. “I remember that Mom stopped her from dousing me. Liza kept insisting that I’d dumped water on her first.” I glanced up. “I hadn’t.”

  “Some things never change,” Scott said. “Some people, either.”

  I slid the photo out of the album and turned it around to check the date my mother had recorded there. “This was about a year before Liza got hit by the car,” I said. “My mom was a fanatic about dating pictures.”

  “Do you have any from when your sister was injured?” Scott asked. “Maybe something in them will trigger a memory of what’s bugging you.”

  “Good idea,” I said, flipping forward. I got to the last page of the collection but the album ended with New Year’s Eve. “Let me grab the next one.”

  I’d pulled out five of my mom’s albums. There were plenty more where these had come from. All carefully categorized.

  “Here we go,” I said as I turned to the center of the book and paged forward a little until I got to the summer pictures. Bruce got up from the couch and looked over my shoulder the way Scott had.

  “There I am with my chicken pox,” I said, pulling the photo out and glancing at the date on the back. I passed it up to Bruce.

  He took it without comment then handed it to Scott, who said, “Pictures are great for dredging up forgotten memories.”

  Bruce started to take a seat. “Hang on,” he said. “Anyone want a little wine?”

  I smiled up at him. “That sounds delightful.”

  The three of us repositioned ourselves, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the quiet fireplace. Bruce had opened up a smooth rioja that eased down my throat like warm silk. Even though my roommates couldn’t possibly help me in my quest to snag that elusive memory, they each took an album and perused pages slowly—commenting often—as they turned.

  “Who is this?” Scott asked, tilting the book at me. “She’s beautiful.”

  “That’s Aunt Belinda, believe it or not,” I said. “Oh wait, you haven’t ever met her, have you? She was gor
geous.”

  Scott studied the photo then checked the dates. “These are from before you were born,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to grab one from that early,” I said. “But now the picture makes sense. From what I understand, Aunt Belinda lived near us until she got married and moved to Florida. After that we hardly saw her.” I wrinkled my nose and thought about that, too. “Except once, I think. She came to stay with us for a little while. To help my mom take care of me when Liza was born.”

  “How old were you then?” Scott asked.

  “Almost three.”

  “How can you not remember these?” he said, then pointed at another picture of my aunt from before I was born. “Check out those plaid hip huggers.”

  Bruce leaned over to look. “She sure rocked them, though.”

  I turned the next page of the album on my lap to see the WELCOME HOME sign my parents had made for Liza when she got out of the hospital. I’d still been contagious at that point, so I had to wait to return home to see my sister.

  “Finding anything?” Bruce asked.

  “Nothing that triggers any important memory,” I said. “Liza spent most of the next few days on the couch, as I recall. When I finally was able to return home, most of the living room was covered in toys.” I laughed. “My mom didn’t even complain about the mess. That was a first.”

  “How long did Liza recuperate?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “At that point, I was only eight. I do remember that the doctors said she was still too weak to do the stairs so my dad had to carry her up to bed every night.” I had a quick mental image of my dad lifting Liza up. How the belt of her bathrobe trailed down between his arms. How Mom hurried over to tuck it up so that he wouldn’t trip. “She’d lost so much blood. They said that it could take some time before she felt strong again.”

  “That had to be one heck of a trauma,” Bruce said. “Blood transfusions are a very big deal.”

  “They are,” I agreed absentmindedly. I placed both hands facedown on the open album in front of me. “That’s what I forgot,” I said. “That’s what the problem was.”

  “What?” they asked in unison.

  “My parents wanted to do a directed-donor option because they didn’t trust the blood supply,” I said. “This was shortly after that young boy in Indiana was banned from his school. He’d developed AIDS from a transfusion he needed because of his hemophilia.”

  “I remember that,” Bruce said. “Even though I was just a kid, too.”

  “I’m glad we’ve come such a long way to understand the disease and how to prevent it,” I said.

  “Though we still have a long way to go,” Scott added.

  “True enough,” I said. “The thing is, because everyone was terrified about contracting AIDS, my parents thought that they’d donate blood for Liza directly so that it would be safe.”

  “Two pints probably wasn’t enough,” Bruce said.

  “That wasn’t the problem,” I said. “They weren’t the same blood type as Liza.”

  “What blood type is she?” Scott asked.

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “But I know my parents were both B-positive because that’s what I am.”

  “How can Liza be different if your parents are both the same?” Bruce asked.

  I thought about my discussion with Joe where he’d started to explain how Virginia’s daughter could have a different blood type than her mother. “I’ll have to ask my favorite doctor,” I said. “That’ll give me an excuse to call him.”

  At that moment, my phone rang. I glanced at the display and smiled as I held it up for the boys to see. “Speak of the devil.”

  “I hope I’m not calling too late,” Joe said when I answered.

  I clambered to my feet and arched an eyebrow at my roommates signaling that I’d take this call upstairs. Bruce made a kissy face and Scott shooed me out.

  “Not at all,” I said. “In fact, you saved me the trouble. I have a question for you.”

  “What can I help you with?”

  “You first,” I said. “You made the call.”

  He made a noise that sounded like hesitation to me. “No, go ahead. What’s your question?”

  I decided not to argue the point. “Remember when we were talking about blood types and you mentioned how Virginia’s blood type could be different from her daughter’s?”

  “Sure,” he said. “A child’s blood type comes from a combination of both parents.”

  “What if both parents have the same blood type?” I asked. “Shouldn’t their children have all the same blood type, too?”

  “Not necessarily. Why? Do you know Virginia’s husband’s blood type?”

  I chuckled, embarrassed. “I’m asking for myself this time. My blood type is the same as my parents’ but my sister’s is different.”

  “That’s not impossible,” he said. “If both parents are A or both parents are B, they can have a child with type O. That’s not unusual.”

  “Hmph.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “No, just curious.” I gave a sad laugh. “Let’s move to better subjects,” I said, shaking off my melancholy. “Like the reason for your call.”

  He coughed. “About that.”

  A stab of awareness pinched me in the gut. Uh-oh.

  “Let me guess,” I said slowly, “this is not a happy subject.”

  He cleared his throat again. “I really like you, Grace.”

  Here it comes. The let’s-just-be-friends conversation.

  Disappointment twisted deep. I liked Joe a lot more than I’d allowed myself to admit. And until this minute I hadn’t been honest with myself enough to realize just how much I wanted to pursue a relationship with him.

  I swallowed. “I’m glad,” I said, keeping it light. I waited a beat, but when he hesitated again, I said, “Go ahead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said, ‘I really like you, Grace.’ There’s a silent ‘but’ hanging between us right now. I’d like you to feel free to share what’s on your mind.” I forced a smile into my voice. “Go ahead. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

  To my surprise, he chuckled softly. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect you to say,” he said, “but I’m mucking it all up. You have the talent of being direct without being unkind. You’re strong, compassionate, and honest. I can’t help thinking that anyone you choose to share your life with is a very lucky person indeed.”

  I tried to ignore the bittersweet sting of his words. Although he couldn’t break up with me—not technically, at least—because we’d never been a couple, he sure delivered a very touching, sincere-sounding “It’s not me, it’s you” speech.

  Better now than later, when it would hurt even more. “But that person isn’t you,” I said. I blew out a breath. “No worries. I understand.”

  “Jeez,” he said. “No. You don’t. I told you I was mucking this up.” He made a noise that sounded like “Aaah,” then gave a frustrated growl. “I really like you, Grace. Period. You’re fun, fascinating, and I enjoy being with you. I want that to continue.”

  I didn’t know what to say. There was still that nagging “but.” I kept silent.

  “I would love to give us a chance, to see where this relationship goes,” he said. “If you’re willing, that is. But there’s a lot I haven’t told you about myself.”

  “The story that you don’t want to dump on me all at once,” I prompted.

  “Exactly,” he said. “But I realize I need to trust that you’ll understand.”

  Even though he couldn’t see me, I leaned forward, intrigued. “Go ahead,” I said again.

  “Not now.” Another soft chuckle. “I don’t mean to be mysterious but this is a tale I need to tell in person. My goal tonight was to commit to you to doin
g so. And to make a date.”

  “Okay.” I was both disappointed and vaguely relieved. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow sounds perfect,” I said.

  When we hung up, I meandered back downstairs wondering what it was that Joe intended to tell me.

  “Well?” Bruce asked.

  I reclaimed my seat on the floor. “Dinner tomorrow night at Hugo’s.” When my two roommates gave a whoop of glee, I raised both hands. “Not so fast. It seems that the handsome doctor intends to use our date to share all.”

  Bruce and Scott exchanged a glance. “That’s pretty brave of him,” Scott said.

  “You don’t know what he plans to tell me.”

  “True, but the fact that he’s being straight up about it and not playing games—well, that’s unusual,” he said.

  Bruce nodded. “Admirable.”

  Leaning sideways to sort through the photo albums, I said, “Let’s see how we feel about him after he spills his story.” But I couldn’t imagine anything bad enough to make me change my mind about the man. “Back to the project at hand.”

  It took a minute to find the album I was seeking and hoist it onto my lap. Liza’s baby book.

  “What are you looking for now?” Scott asked.

  I shot him a sheepish grin. “I can’t help thinking that I’ve missed something but—I know it sounds weird—I have an idea about what it is.”

  “What is it?” Bruce asked.

  “Hang on,” I said.

  A few minutes of paging brought me to the section I was looking for. I placed the open book back onto the floor and pulled up another album—my baby book. “Here,” I said, pointing. “Look at all the photos of my mom when she was pregnant with me.”

  Bruce and Scott peered over my shoulder. My dad had taken pictures of my mother throughout her pregnancy, and as I paged through them, we watched her progress from barely showing, to glowingly ready to give birth, to smiling as she held me at the hospital.

  “Pretty normal,” Scott said.