Читать книгу Deadly Grace - Taylor Smith - Страница 12

Montrose, Minnesota

Thursday, January 11, 1979

It was that woman’s voice again, firm but friendly—the kind of voice that wants you to know it intends no threat, but which commands your attention, nevertheless. Jillian lay still, feigning sleep—which wasn’t hard because sleep was never very far away. Hoping it would be enough to discourage the voice. Willing it to just leave her alone.

“It’s Dr. Kandinsky, Jillian. Do you remember? I was in to see you a couple of times yesterday and then again last night.”

Yesterday? Last night? What time was it? What day was it? When she’d opened her eyes a while back—when was that?—Jillian had noticed her watch was missing, taken along with the rest of her things, she supposed. The windows in the room were high and small, and all she’d been able to see out of them was a pale sliver of frigid-looking sky. There’d been daylight, but the shadows were long and blue-tinged, the way they get on cold winter days when the sun over the prairie is brilliant but without any heat in it.

“How are you feeling today?” the voice asked. “You’re looking a little better.”

Better than what? How long had she been there? If this doctor said she’d been in last night…well, fine. It could have been last week or last month for all Jillian knew. She did remember that voice, though, warm and reassuring. Seductive, like a promise of mercy. Or absolution, maybe, for what she’d done.

Her eyes snapped opened. The guardrails were still there, and the green wall. What did I do?

“You’re safe now,” the doctor said. “No one is going to hurt you here. I thought you might like to get cleaned up a little today. You’d feel much better if you did.”

Cleaned up? What happened? She stared at her hand lying outstretched on the crisp white mattress. She recalled someone washing blood off her when she was first brought in, but there was still some under her bitten nails, crusted, brown and guilty looking. She must look godawful, Jillian thought. Her hair was hanging loose and unbrushed, sticky mats clinging to her cheeks and neck and shoulders, and the long bangs flicking against her lashes felt bristled at the ends. Singed, she realized suddenly. Singed like her lungs, which hurt with every breath she took. And she could smell the sour, dusky odor of charred wood. It seemed permanently etched in her nasal passages….

And then, suddenly, it all came back. She remembered the fire. She remembered Nils, and the ambulance, and what had happened after they had examined her in the ER and left her sedated and alone to try to sleep off the shock of the fire. Of what she’d seen in her mother’s house.

She pulled in her arm and curled into a tight ball. Mother! Her mother was dead. Why wasn’t she dead, too? A clipped voice in her head snapped a reply: Because you’re weak!

It was true. She was weak. Twice now, she’d gone to the brink, only to let herself be pulled back. She should have died with her mother. She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to crouch down on the floor next to that small body, take it in her arms and hold it close to her breast, a full-circle reversal of their earliest roles—she and her mother alone at the end as they were at the beginning, finally at peace with one another and with the past, waiting for the purifying flames. But at the last minute, she’d allowed herself to be saved. She’d never had her mother’s iron will.

And then, in the ER…she’d been so close! The needle had been in her arm. All she’d had to do was push down on the plunger and let herself be swept to freedom on a tiny, merciful bubble of air. This could all have been over by now, but instead, she’d hesitated a split second too long and the decision had been taken out of her hands.

Now, here she was…where? Not on the emergency room gurney anymore, that much was certain. Lying in a bed, after having been moved to one of the wards probably. How long had she been here? She vaguely recalled they’d given her something after her stunt with the hypodermic, another tranquilizer, much stronger than the first, which had obviously kept her heavily sedated. For how long she didn’t know, but long enough that she had no memory of being moved to this room. It was obvious she had no tolerance for drugs. Not surprising, she thought grimly. Even in college, at the height of the psychedelic Sixties, she’d never taken anything stronger than an aspirin. The ever-well-behaved daughter of Grace Meade.

She closed her eyes, and immediately, gratefully, found herself sinking once more. The mattress seemed to be absorbing her like some great, downy mouth swallowing her whole. She was Jonah in the belly of a feather tick whale, floating on soft cotton waves, content to go where the flow carried her.

After her stunt in the ER she felt as if she had viscous muck flowing through her veins instead of blood. She didn’t care, as long as she didn’t have to think or remember. Maybe it was more than the drugs. Maybe it was some primitive instinct driving her to shut down rather than face the unbearable. Playing possum in the face of horror.

Her mother would be appalled to see her lying here like this, mute, stupid and filthy. Grace Meade was always at her best, turned out to perfection. In her entire life, she’d never so much as answered a knock at the door without first glancing in the mirror to check her lipstick, pat her hair and smooth down her dress. She’d tried to make her daughter into a miniature replica of herself, but it was hopeless, of course. Jillian had lost the genetic lottery. Had failed to inherit any of her mother’s fine features: her golden hair, her striking blue eyes, or her peaches-and-cream English skin. She was olive-skinned and brunette, like her father, apparently, growing taller and bonier than her mother had ever been.

Still, Jillian thought, she would have given anything, just for once, not to hear the note of hopelessness that always accompanied her mother’s chirpy words of encouragement. “Well, we just have to work with what we’ve been given, don’t we, dear?”

“What do you think, Jillian? Wouldn’t it feel good to get up and take a hot shower? Have a little lunch, maybe sit and talk awhile?”

It was the doctor again, Jillian realized with a start, not her mother. She opened her eyes. She was trying to please, but this was about as much as she could manage. Her mother would definitely have disapproved. Grace was unfailingly poised and polite in any public venue, no matter how trying the circumstances. She would have at least sat up when the doctor came in. But, frankly, Jillian thought, she just couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t mean to be rude, but she had nothing to say to this woman.

The doctor, in any case, seemed content to wait her out. The minutes ticked by. Jillian could feel her presence, but she remained silent—watching, perhaps. Observing. And what does she see? Jillian wondered. What kind of monster is this before her?

Suddenly, she felt the bed vibrate. She cringed as a hand reached across her, a hand at the end of a white sleeve. A soft gust of air brushed her cheek as the doctor laid something on the mattress next to her head. It was a notebook, Jillian saw. A thick notebook with a stiff, nubbled black cardboard cover. Then, the white-coated arm withdrew again and the bed was still.

“If you’re not ready to talk yet, Jillian, it’s all right. I’ll be here when you are. But I’m told you’re a writer and historian,” the doctor added—unnecessarily, Jillian thought. She wasn’t that far gone. She knew who she was. That was the problem, wasn’t it? “You know how to arrange facts into an understandable flow. I know you feel confused right now, but maybe it would help to sort out your thoughts if you wrote down what’s going through your mind.”

Oh, God…what’s going through my mind?

Jillian’s eyes closed once more, shutting out the light, praying for a miracle to shut out the sound of that woman’s voice and, mostly, to drown out the screaming of her own guilty thoughts.

What does she want me to say? That I’m haunted by the memory of my mother, her lifeless blue eyes staring up at me from the kitchen floor, as accusatory in death as they were in the moments before it arrived? That I don’t want to be alive anymore? That I don’t deserve to be? My mother won’t let me be. Her beautiful, dreadful face is an image I’ll carry to my death—which will come soon, if courage doesn’t fail me again.

62