by Jodi Thomas
“What you want for this tip?” In Chipper’s world nothing came free.
“Milk.” Blaine named the first thing she could think of. “Two cartons every morning, along with the coffee.”
Chipper frowned at her.
Blaine decided she was no good at lying. She couldn’t think of the answers fast enough. She had to make her lie believable or the information might not be passed on. “I could be pregnant.” She said the words before she thought. It was the only answer she could think of as to why someone would need more milk. Somehow saying the words made it more of a possibility.
Chipper relaxed, accepting the answer, but still looked as if she was considering the bargain. “Double the milk each morning if Randell takes any part of your story. Otherwise, you get the same as everyone else.”
Blaine thought of reminding the woman that she’d agreed not to tell Randell about where she heard the story, but she didn’t want to mention it again for fear Chipper would pick up on how important Blaine’s secret was to her. She had an idea that if Chipper guessed, she’d be paying Chipper to keep her secret.
“You’ll know Randell took the story if I set two cartons on your tray tomorrow morning.”
“Deal.”
“One other thing.”
Chipper frowned.
“Would you let me know if the good-looking guy shows up again?”
Chipper nodded. “If you’ll help with the cleanup.”
Blaine agreed. “If you see him again and get word to me, I’ll help you clean up this place again.” She wouldn’t put it past Chipper to lie just to get help.
Chipper raised an eyebrow, sobering up slightly. “How do I find you?”
“Just tell Miller,” Blaine answered, not wanting to tell more.
“You with him?”
Blaine realized she might be putting Miller in danger. “No. But I see him around.” She figured Miller could handle anything that came along. He might not like her and she wasn’t all that sure she liked him, but she knew she could trust him.
She left feeling as if finally something might happen. She’d passed along the information without coming in the open, without putting herself or Mark in danger. Winslow didn’t strike her as the type of man who did his own dirty work and if this Jimmy was a paid killer for Winslow, he would be the one who had to be arrested before Blaine was safe.
The TV announced a special report. The body found at the clinic was not that of Blaine Anderson, wife of attorney Mark Anderson. The police had not released the information pending further investigation until now.
Blaine moved closer to the TV trying not to act interested. She glanced at Chipper. The broadcast had drawn her full attention.
The report gave all of Sindi Richards’s information.
They knew, Blaine realized. Everyone knew. Mark knew. The body in the fire hadn’t been hers.
She closed her eyes and fought back tears. She had to get to Mark. She had put him through too much, no matter what the risk, it wasn’t fair. Every time she’d tried to get to him something had stopped her, but not this time. She could feel what he must be feeling and the pain might kill them both before any crazy man with dynamite could.
She hurried out not even asking to use the phone.
Pulling the last of her money from her bag, Blaine ran to a pay phone in front of the shelter. She dropped the quarter twice before she managed to shove it into the phone.
She dialed home. No answer.
She tried Mark’s office. Only a machine. She didn’t dare leave a message. Winslow might get to the machine before Mark.
Digging for the last of her change, she tried to remember Mark’s cell. He rarely left the thing on, telling everyone it was for outgoing calls, not incoming. But maybe she’d catch him. At the very least, he’d be the one who got the message.
She dialed a wrong number.
Think! What order were the numbers in? Remember the details, Blaine scolded herself. She dialed again.
One ring. Two.
A machine’s voice sounded in her ear. “You’ve reached the phone of Mark Anderson. Please leave a message.”
Eventually he’d check his messages and when he did, she’d be waiting, she thought. Somehow they’d have to get through this hell together.
“Mark! It’s Blaine. Meet me in front of the Driskill Hotel. No matter what time, I’ll wait until you come.”
Eighteen
Mark went back to work a week after the bombing but couldn’t keep his mind on the research he needed to do for his upcoming trial. He’d been moved to the second string on all cases where he should have been the lead, but at least he was still involved. He told himself that all he had to do was prove how good he was, as he had when he’d first come to work for the company. Only this time his heart wasn’t in it.
His heart was missing!
He’d force himself to complete what he had to at the office, then go home to sleep the afternoon away, conserving energy so he could walk the streets of downtown Austin each night.
Feeling like a zombie, half dead, half alive, he roamed, hoping for a miracle his logical mind told him could never be. Mark wasn’t sure how it had happened, but part of him had died when Blaine disappeared and he did not know if he was strong enough to survive both the loss of her and of himself.
He knew the police were looking for her, along with a P.I. firm, but he had to try something besides staying home waiting for them to call. So he walked, looking into the faces of strangers, hoping to see her. Though he knew it couldn’t be true, in some primitive/fantasy way his heart told him that she was simply lost and waiting for him to find her.
The world changed that morning of the clinic bombing though he’d been too busy to notice. The earth simply flew out of orbit and by the time he realized what had happened, he could do nothing about it. He lost his footing. No balance remained in his life. Any minute he’d step beyond gravity and drift away. Any day, if he wasn’t careful, if he left his vigil for even a second, there would be no big-bang ending to his world. There wouldn’t even be time for a sigh. He would simply vanish, as Blaine had…as his life had.
He took ribbing from the other partners about his beard. They said little about the haphazard way he dressed. Forgetting his tie. Wearing the same suit three days in a row. They kept the hints kind, whispering he would need time to get over what everyone in the office called “the tragedy,” as if Blaine’s disappearance had been a flu to be recovered from.
The kindness eroded into a pity Mark couldn’t stand. He wished the partners would complain, or be angry, even threaten to fire him. Anything would be better than them feeling sorry for him. He’d always been powerful, someone to respect, but times were changing…he was changing.
Bettye Ruth, with her eternal quiet charm, seemed to understand and kept all their conversations professional. She didn’t just act like a southern lady, he realized, she was one. There was a strength about her that got him through emergencies at the office. She never bothered him with words of sympathy or questions about news. It was as if she knew they would fall on deaf ears.
When he told her he’d lost his cell phone, she simply ordered him a new one and programmed all the numbers. She suggested he call his friends and give them his new number, but Mark didn’t want anyone to call. He’d heard enough sympathy to last a lifetime. He did call Randell and the P.I. firm.
Lieutenant Randell offered to meet for coffee, and to Mark’s surprise, the conversation was friendly. Though Randell had no news, he understood what Mark was going through and the thirty-minute meeting wasn’t as strained as Mark feared it might be. The cop asked about the new cell number and Mark told him that he swore he’d left the cell phone on his desk one night. Randell seemed to think vanishing cell phones were routine.
Mark talked with no one else most days, avoiding conversation at work as well as the casual hellos around the complex. He gave up answering the door and usually turned off the phone so he could sleep afternoons. Tres ev
en quit talking to him. She passed through the apartment obviously looking for the right cat food to appear in her bowl. The eggs he scrambled and tossed in her feeder were starting to resemble a modern-art project. The old cat looked like the poster pet for Weight Watchers.
The only peace he knew lay in the stillness of the streets. It didn’t matter if it rained, or how late the hour grew, Mark walked, listening to the sound of his own steps as he looked for the woman who, supposedly, was his wife. A woman who had appeared the morning after the bombing, then vanished.
In his mind he planned what he’d say to her. He held little hope she could be Blaine, but if his wife had lost her memory, he’d have to talk to her as though he were a stranger. Even Blaine without memories would still be shy, he didn’t want to frighten her away. Everyone seemed to think they’d find her body in the rubble of the building, but they hadn’t. Maybe the woman could have been someone else who’d been at the clinic that morning. If so, she might have seen Blaine those last few minutes.
He spent hours thinking about what must have been Blaine’s last thoughts. Did she have a problem? Or was she just looking for something to do? Questions seemed to be his specialty and he had no answers to match them with.
The one question never slipped from his mind but remained. What day, or week, or year had he stopped knowing her as well as he knew himself? When they’d been dating, when they were first married, he would swear he could hear her thoughts. But not lately. Not for a long while. Somewhere in the details of their lives and work they’d lost one another long before the bombing.
Once in a while, he let his mind believe that there was a slim chance the stranger who’d wandered into the shelter that morning could have been Blaine, out of her head, without any memory. He held a grain of hope that he’d find her, that she’d come back. Even if she had no memory of him and their life together, somehow they’d fall in love all over again.
After hours of walking, the panhandlers stopped bothering him for money and treated him more like one of their own than a stranger. In truth, he felt like one of them. They didn’t care that he wore the same clothes and never shaved. Among them, his insanity seemed more of a character trait than an illness. They respected his space, moving no closer to him than necessary when passing. The few who greeted him only nodded.
As the night passed, he learned the people of the streets. Not by name, but he knew them just the same. The drunk who slept in the alley between Fourth and Fifth always snored. The chubby woman who pulled a suitcase behind her filled with empty cans and who sang “Amazing Grace” when she was well into the bottle. The prostitutes who got cheaper as the night aged. The youths who ran in packs and who he knew he’d see again in the courts someday.
The young thugs bothered him more than anyone. They weren’t like the panhandlers who begged for change or the college kids who held up signs that said, Will Work for Beer Money. The small gangs were unorganized and unruly. He’d seen them bother people for fun, as if they were playing some kind of game and the streets served as their playground. So far, they’d left him pretty much alone. Maybe he looked as though he might give as much trouble as he got. Maybe they thought he might be an undercover cop. Mark didn’t know why they walked around him, but he was glad they did.
Mark picked a corner on Sixth Street and stood in the shadows watching the college kids passing in groups from one bar to another. Memories of the days he’d dated Blaine lingered thick in his head. He used to spend hours telling her his plans over beer and pizza at these cafés. He’d talked of someday practicing law. Of making big money. Of running for office. And Blaine would listen. She always listened. Then she’d say, “I’ll be your rock, Mark. Climb as high as you like. I’ll be the base you come home to when all the dragons are slain.” Then he’d make fun of how she liked to talk in fairy tales and she’d smile the way she always did, as if it was him and not her who couldn’t see reality.
He closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head against the cold damp brick of the building. How long had it been since he’d heard her say those words? How many days or months had passed since they’d talked? Really talked?
If he could have her back, he’d stop talking and try listening. Blaine must have had dreams she’d never told him. Was she afraid he’d laugh, or simply not listen? In the ten years they’d been together, he had always thought her dreams were his dreams. Now, when it was too late, he realized he’d never asked her.
Dear God, he almost yelled out, the loneliness felt as if it might swallow him whole any moment.
She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. Mark still needed her. He wanted her so deeply there were no words. If he could go back, he would sleep beside her that last night. Maybe if he had held her one more night, all night, his arms wouldn’t ache so badly.
“Blaine!” he shouted, startling the drunk sleeping twenty feet away. “Damn it, Blaine, don’t just leave me.”
The drunk sat up. “Keep yelling, buddy, at nobody about your woman being gone and before you know it you’ll be sleeping next to me.”
“Sorry,” Mark said without any interest in the old drunk, or his advice. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
The bum settled back down on his dirty mattress and dragged a section of cardboard box over him.
Pull it together, Mark reminded himself. He had every symptom of a man falling completely apart. He’d gone through grief before, he’d lost his mother. Then he’d turned to his studies and for the most part acted as if his mom was still home waiting. Blaine became his family almost from their first date. She’d helped him get through the first Christmas when his father hadn’t bothered to call and Mark hadn’t been surprised. Being with Blaine…being with one person…was a thousand miles away from being alone.
Mark made himself a promise that he would work harder tomorrow, but he knew when darkness fell he’d be back walking the streets. Hoping. Wishing. Praying for that one-in-a-million chance that he’d find her again.
Nineteen
Blaine hung up the phone and left in a run. Finally, after over a week, she was making progress, she was doing something. She’d called Mark. It might take him all day to turn on his phone, but when he did, he’d find her message. In the meantime, Chipper would call the cop and relay the information. Maybe they would pick up the thin man in the blue cap quickly. Soon she’d be home.
All she had to do for the next few hours was stay out of sight and keep circling by the hotel until she spotted Mark.
Clouds hung like wet cotton above her. Blaine walked toward the cemetery, staying beneath awnings whenever possible. The rain settled, thickening the air like flour thickens gravy. Within an hour, it soaked her to the bone.
She looked for the little boy who played between the headstones, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had a home somewhere near and only played in the cemetery in the evenings? She hoped he had a home to go to even if he didn’t have someone to take care of him and feed him.
A few prisoners in white clothes rode with a guard along one of the paths. They stopped now and then to pick up a branch or a piece of trash that had blown in from the street. They didn’t seem to notice her.
She didn’t like the idea of the kid being abandoned or being a runaway. He needed to have someone who made sure he had clean clothes and hot food. Once Mark picked her up, Blaine swore she’d come back to the cemetery and look for the child again.
She circled by the Driskill again and again, watching for Mark’s little car, looking for his lean figure waiting for her. The old hotel entrance had a porchlike seating area where she could wait out of the rain, but she was afraid to stay too long.
Twice, she went into the gym and dried off, but few people were there and her safety lay in numbers. She could have climbed above the lockers and slept a few hours, but she was afraid she’d miss Mark. She slipped out into the rain once more.
Finally, the bus stop across the street from the Driskill drew her, with its tiny shelter. People usually stood arou
nd the benches, blocking space between the building and the street, but today they huddled together as they waited. The five o’clock commuters had long passed, leaving mostly shift workers, a few students and the homeless.
Blaine waited and watched. Why hadn’t Mark checked his messages? Surely he’d be here any minute. In the restaurant across the street, she saw a woman eating soup and wished she could taste it, or even smell it.
That was how she felt in her skin lately. She knew she was living, breathing, but she couldn’t quite feel it.
Running her hand over her abdomen, Blaine decided the questions of a baby didn’t seem any more real than her life. She no longer owned the problem. She knew it existed but just like the soup, it seemed somehow out of her reach, out of her reality.
She found the two Annas in the midst of those waiting for the bus. Chocolate Anna cautiously watched the people, obviously bothered by having others so near. She gripped her bags with both fists while her black eyes darted around. This stop was like her living room and far too many people had come to call. Vanilla Anna opened one of her many sacks, placing her head inside the bag as she looked for something. Every few minutes, she pulled out and took a gulping breath, like a deep-sea diver going after buried treasure.
Sailor June joined them. She stood just behind the Annas so that anyone wanting to stay out of the rain had to walk the gauntlet between her and the bag ladies’ clutter. She was a tiny woman with a wink crammed full of mischief. She was one of those few people who pass through life smiling no matter what their station.
Blaine couldn’t hold back a smile. She knew Sailor June checked pockets. Blaine had asked Shakespeare about her, but all the old man knew was that every once in a while June’s daughter would drive up and take her off. A few days later the little woman would show back up with a new set of clothes and complaining about being shanghaied by pirates again. Shakespeare said he thought she had a room down on the West End, but he wasn’t sure.
