Читать книгу Her Mother's Shadow - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 18

THE KEEPER’S HOUSE WAS QUIET AND CALM AS Lacey and Rick sat at the kitchen table, sipping iced tea and wrapping gifts for Jessica. Sasha slept by the screen door, occasionally opening his eyes to see if Clay or Gina or Rani might be walking through the sand toward the house. It was Clay’s long day at work, and Gina had taken Rani to her toddler swim lessons.

“Isn’t she a little young for swimming lessons?” Rick had asked when Lacey told him where they were.

“It’s mostly to get her used to the water,” Lacey said. “She was afraid of it when she first got here. She couldn’t even look at a full bathtub or the toilet without crying.” For reasons they were never to understand, Rani would scream even when approached with a damp washcloth. Gina’s best guess was that her little daughter had been subjected to rough shampooing with harsh soaps, necessary to kill the lice and nits that every child in the orphanage seemed to have. But Rani’s phobia was improving. She let Gina or Clay bathe her now in a large basin, and the previous week, Gina had finally coaxed her into the pool.

It was at moments like these, when the only sounds in the house were from the ocean and the cicadas, that Lacey realized how much chatter and energy Rani produced. Just a few months ago, Gina had worried there was a problem with her development, because Rani never spoke. One morning, though, the child simply woke up a chatterbox. Not only did she seem to know the right words for nearly every object she encountered, but she also strung those words together in sentences. She may not have been speaking, but she’d certainly been listening. She ran into the kitchen that morning, looked up at Clay, and said, “Daddy, I want you play with me, now!” Gina and Lacey had looked at each other and laughed, but Clay had cried. He had changed so much since Rani came into his life. There was a softness to him Lacey had never expected to see.

“Should I wrap each of these separately?” Rick held up the three gel pens they had bought for Jessica.

“Sure,” Lacey said. “It will be more fun for her to have a bunch of things to open, don’t you think?”

She and Rick had shopped most of the afternoon, picking up small gifts to send to Jessica. Little things like pens and magazines, tiny jigsaw puzzles and one of Lacey’s kaleidoscopes, gifts that could help her while away her time in the hospital. Lacey planned to put all the wrapped gifts into one big box and ship it to her. It had been kind of Rick to go shopping with her, and he’d seemed to get into it, picking up things on his own that he thought someone like Jessica might enjoy. Adding the kaleidoscope had been his idea.

A car door slammed shut in the parking lot, and Sasha was immediately on his feet, nose pressed against the screen and tail wagging. It was too soon for either Clay or Gina to be home, and Lacey got up to walk over to the door.

Her father was walking—strolling, really—toward the house. His head was down, his hands in his pockets. He was not a stroller. He always moved quickly, like Clay, and the sight of him like this scared her.

She pushed open the door and stepped onto the porch.

“Dad?” she called.

He looked up from his pensive staring at the sand and waved to her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as he neared the house.

“Let’s go inside.” He reached past her for the handle of the screened door. “Go on in,” he said.

He followed her into the kitchen, and Rick was quick to stand up.

“Dad, this is Rick Tenley,” she said. “Rick, this is my father, Alec O’Neill.”

“Hello, Dr. O’Neill.” Rick held out his hand, and Alec shook it, frank curiosity on his face, but the expression disappeared quickly as his somber look returned.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again. Her heart was beating hard, and she thought of Rani’s little heart, so newly repaired and delicate. “Please tell me Rani’s okay.”

“Rani’s fine.” Her father touched her shoulder. “Sit down,” he said, and she dropped into the chair Rick pulled out for her.

“Nola just called me,” her father said. “She was trying to reach you, but didn’t have your number out here.”

All of a sudden, she knew. “It’s Jessica,” she said.

Her father leaned against the kitchen counter and nodded. “She died this morning, honey. I’m sorry.”

Lacey leaped to her feet so quickly that Sasha started barking at her. “Oh, Dad, no!” she said. “How could that happen? She sounded so good when I talked to her yesterday.”

“They think it was a blood clot from the surgery,” her father said. “It was fast. She probably didn’t even know what hit her.”

That’s what they had said about her mother, but her mother had known. Lacey would never forget the look of surprise on her face.

“Oh, God, I don’t believe it.” She sat down again, one elbow on the table, her fist pressed to her mouth. She was not aware of crying until she felt the tears falling over her clenched fingers. Rick rested his hand on her back. She knew he was trying to console her, but his touch felt like more of an intrusion than comfort.

“Nola said they weren’t sure about arrangements for a service yet,” her father said, “but that it would probably be Monday.”

“I’ll go,” Lacey said into her fist. “I have to go.” She turned toward her father and saw that he looked tired and drained. The O’Neill family had become all too accustomed to coping with unexpected loss. “How’s Nola taking it?” she asked.

“She’s in a lot of pain, as you can imagine. I had trouble understanding her, she was crying so hard. Oh.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of paper, handing it to her. “She left this number in case you wanted to call her,” he said.

Lacey took the piece of paper from his hand and stared at it numbly.

“I have to get back to the office, hon,” her father said. “I still have some appointments today, but I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

“Thank you.” She knew he had done some major shuffling of his patients to be able to make the trip to Kiss River.

Her father turned his attention to Rick. “How do you know Lacey, Rick?” he asked.

“We met at her studio,” Rick said.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here.” Her father surprised her with the words. “I’m glad Lacey’s not alone right now.”

After Alec left, Rick began unwrapping the items they had bought. “I’ll return these things for you,” he said.

She glanced at the puzzles and pens without seeing them. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“I want to. I know there’s not a lot else I can do to help out right now.” He stood up and began digging through the trash can beneath the sink for the receipts. “I’d like to go with you to Arizona,” he said as he pawed through the trash.

“Thank you, but no.” She didn’t want him there. He would feel like more of a liability than an asset. She stood up, the piece of paper her father had given her in her hand. “I’m going up to my room to call Nola,” she said. “You don’t have to stay.”

He looked up from his work in the trash can. “Your father didn’t want you to be alone,” he said.

“I’ll be okay. Gina and Clay will be home soon. And I really just want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.”

He put his hands in his pockets, worry on his face. “It’s not even four-thirty,” he said.

She shut her eyes, drained of energy to explain her need for time to herself. “I just want to go to bed,” she said, and it came out like a plea.

He nodded. “All right.” He slid the trash can back under the sink, then walked over to her and hugged her tightly, and all she could think about was having him leave so that she could fall apart in peace.

Once he was gone, she carried the cordless phone upstairs and crawled, still dressed in her blue T-shirt and striped capris, into her bed. A breeze billowed the sheer curtains into the room, but it was still too hot for more than a sheet. She pulled the box of tissues from the night table to her bed. Hugging her arms across her chest, she thought, Should I let myself break down before or after I talk to Nola?

Without making a decision, she dialed the number on the piece of paper. A woman with a quiet voice answered.

“I’m trying to reach Nola Dillard,” Lacey said. “This is Lacey O’Neill.”

Her name seemed to mean nothing to the woman. “Nola’s lying down,” she nearly whispered. “Can I have her call you when she gets up?”

“Yes, I’m calling from the east coast, but please tell her to call me any time,” Lacey said. “No matter what time it is here, all right?” She gave the woman her phone number and made her repeat it back to her. For once in her life, she wanted to talk to Nola Dillard. She needed to talk to someone else who loved Jessica.

Once she hung up the phone, her tears started. They lasted for five or six minutes, then faded away, and just when she thought she was done with them, she pictured Jessica’s smile and thought about the fear and disbelief Mackenzie was enduring, and her sobbing started again.

She’d long ago given up asking why things like this happened. Her mother had died from a bullet meant for someone else. Her sister-in-law, Terri—Clay’s first wife—had died while doing search-and-rescue work. The losses seemed so random, so meaningless—although once this past year, she’d wondered if her mother’s death had been fitting punishment for all the cheating she’d done during her marriage. If God existed, though, she refused to believe he worked that way.

She longed for the escape of sleep, but her nose was stuffy from crying and she could not prevent memories of Jessica from slipping into her consciousness. When they’d been very young, she and Jessica had been in Brownies together, with Lacey’s mother as their much-adored troop leader. Lacey could not count all the milk shakes and French fries they’d shared at McDonald’s over the years, or all the times she and Jessica had slept at one another’s houses. Jessica had changed dramatically during their time in middle school, when she’d become one of the “cool crowd,” leaving Lacey confused and envious, but after Mackenzie was born, she’d reverted quickly to the sweet person she’d once been.

She heard Gina and Rani come home, followed by Clay a half hour later, but she didn’t want to get up to talk to them. The only person she truly wanted to talk to was the person she could never talk to again: Jessica. Why hadn’t she gone to Arizona to visit her sometime in the past twelve years? She had taken their friendship for granted. She should have known better than that. Now she was finally going to Phoenix, just a little bit too late.

Someone knocked lightly on her bedroom door.

“You awake, Lace?” Clay asked.

“Yes.”

“Dad called to tell me,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“I want to be alone,” she said.

He hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry, sis,” he said, finally. “And I’m sorry for the things I said about Jessica yesterday.”

“It’s all right.” She pressed a damp, overused tissue to her eyes. “Clay?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. Please don’t die.”

She heard his soft laughter through the door. “I love you, too, Lacey,” he said. But he didn’t promise her anything. He knew better than that.

She did not sleep, did not even doze, the entire night. She lay with the box of tissues on the pillow next to her and the phone clutched in her hands, waiting for the return call from Nola. But the call never came, and it would be nearly noon the following day before she understood why.