No Time to Wave Goodbye

  At that moment, she heard a gurney rattle up behind her.

  Vincent was wheeled past, a white sheet pulled up to his bare chest, the blue-flowered hospital gown over his shoulders. Both hands were wrapped in gauze and secured to individual boards and his ankle was suspended on a thick, formed foam block. The doctor with him explained to Beth that the fracture on his ankle was serious, but would mend. The packs on his hands and feet would bear watching and would be changed throughout the night. “We’ll hope for the best,” the doctor said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that your son could lose a finger or a toe. Or more. I hope not,” the doctor admitted. He and the nurse began to guide Vincent toward the room. For a moment, Vincent opened his eyes.

  “We did it, Ma,” he said, his voice something above a croak and below a squeak.

  “You did it,” Beth said.

  “Now you can be proud of me.”

  Beth smiled and said, “Naaah.” She kissed Vincent’s forehead but did not follow him into his room. She heard Vincent cry out as he and his structure were shifted onto the bed. Still, she hung back.

  Beth listened as a nurse told Ben, “We’ll bring you a pillow once we get him situated. And a blanket.”

  “Can I help?” Ben asked.

  “When he wakes up, yes,” the nurse said. “You! Hey, you’re the dad of the little baby. How is Baby Stella?”

  “She’s great. She’s with her mom at the hotel and she’s just great. Perfect. Thank you,” Ben said.

  “I’ll bet you can’t wait to run back there and cuddle her,” the nurse said. “She’s beautiful. I saw her picture on TV.”

  “I can’t wait. But I’m going to stay here tonight with Vincent,” Ben said. “I’ll stay here until morning.”

  “Your mom’s here …”

  “I have to be here too,” Ben said.

  “You guys must be close.”

  “He’s … uh, well, yeah. He’s my brother. Stella wouldn’t be here without him,” Ben said. “Come to think of it, maybe I wouldn’t either.”

  As Beth watched, unseen, Vincent grimaced and wrinkled his nose, tossing his head in opiate sleep. Ben leaned over and brushed his brother’s face, as though to banish whatever disturbed him. Then Ben sat back and put his feet up on the railings of the bed, his eyes watchful, flicking between Vincent’s face and the blue screen of the monitors. Quietly, he said, “It’s okay, Vincent. Shhhhhhh.”

  Beth’s eyes blurred. She fled for the elevators and grabbed a cab to the hotel.

  “Where’s Ben?” Eliza asked as soon as Beth ducked into their adjoined rooms. “He just … left.”

  Eliza lay curled on the bed with Stella sleeping between her and Candy; Pat had passed out on a kind of cushy chaise in one corner.

  Candy looked around. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say anything but about wanting a cheeseburger. And somebody brought about fifty cheeseburgers from the Air Force base. Those should be luscious.”

  “He’s at the hospital,” Beth said. “He’s with Vincent.”

  “How is Vincent?” Candy asked.

  “His ankle will be fine. They’re not sure about frostbite and if he’ll lose …” Beth glanced at Eliza. “Toes or fingers.”

  “No!” Eliza said and the baby cried out briefly. “I’d give up my own fingers!”

  “It’s what he wanted to do,” said Candy. “You married into kind of a good family.” Eliza smiled.

  “Where’s Kerry?” Beth asked.

  “Well, she’s decided to revive her career instead of teaching high-school chorus and giving up opera,” Pat said, suddenly waking with a broad yawn. “She told me if we found Stella she’d never let anyone take a photo of her, except you, Bethie. For the rest of her life. But she just took a long shower and said she was going down to the lobby to have cocktails courtesy of CNN.”

  “She looked beautiful, like the old Kerry,” Eliza said.

  “You’re might pretty, baby,” Candy put in.

  “She’s the prettiest thing I ever saw. She’s the most beautiful baby on earth. And thank you for the sweet dress, Mama.”

  “That was a gift from someone,” Candy said. “And I meant you. But I hope they’re okay tonight. Blaine especially.”

  Beth said, “It’s going to be a long time before they’re okay.”

  The next morning in Durand, after she’d stood next to Lorrie Sabo while she introduced Roman to TV audiences all over the world, telling them that it was “absurd” to think that she would let Vincent pay her for finding Stella, Sarah Switch slipped away to the trailhead that led up to the little house on Bryant Whittier’s land.

  Despite her stealth, news crews caught sight of her.

  They had already put two and two together when a helicopter churned over them toward the mountain field and made ready for whatever they could catch on film when it returned.

  Claire and Blaine waited with Sarah Switch as soldiers gently handed out a red-blanketed stretcher with straps firmly holding down a motionless form. From the top, a thatch of Bryant Whittier’s dark chestnut hair whipped in the artificial wind. The morning was soft and springlike. Claire Whittier covered her face and wept. Beside her, Blaine stood tall, her dry eyes impenetrable. Claire confided in Switch that, beyond her relief over the baby, she was unable to think of anything except that this might have been the moment of her twenty-fifth-anniversary toast in Tuscany.

  Whittier had the right wife, Switch thought. She wondered again if she should have honored Claire’s plea to bring her husband’s body down before police visited the crime scene. It would be a choice she would regret and a lesson she would never forget. The sheriff would not again accept that something that seemed unambiguous and unequivocal actually was.

  As they waited for the ambulance to finish loading her father’s body, Blaine Whittier said, “Mom, Dad made a choice. And you do have me.”

  Alone, later, although she wept at the unbearable details of his lonely death, Blaine Whittier hated her father for torturing her and Claire. She would hate him even more a week later when the snow melted.

  Then, police and recovery volunteers, headed by Switch and Humbly, searched and dismantled the little house. Beneath it, they found a cross, handmade from logs and bound with rawhide thongs, crushed deep into the soil. Under that, swaddled in a nearly disintegrated white wool blanket, were remains quickly identified as those of Jacqueline Whittier. The coroner’s opinion was that Jacqueline had died by misadventure, although no one could say for sure, after two full years in the ground, how she got the blow that fractured her skull.

  The story that had ended in cozy glory took a sinister turn and exploded.

  Blaine decided to take her junior year abroad, in Italy, where eventually Claire would visit her.

  When Claire opted to sell the house in Durand and return to Chicago to be near her parents, she asked Blaine what she should do with the mountain summerhouse. Blaine suggested her mother donate it to some children’s charity, in Jacqueline’s name.

  And she wondered if her junior year abroad might turn into forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Bye,” Beth said to Pat, who was headed for his first night back at the restaurant. They had come back from California several days earlier but Pat had taken his time about going back to work. “Is it going to feel weird?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but kind of, Bethie,” Pat said. “I used to think of it as my second home. Hell, I used to think of it as my first home sometimes. But now, it’s like, it’s my job. I’ll probably stay there for a while. Dad can close. He’s only been back a week. Hasn’t seen any of the crowd. Except Charley Two. Those guys practically threw a parade for us.”

  “That bother you?” Beth asked. “All the fuss, I mean.”

  “I’m not looking forward to it, after seeing this mug of mine on TV for the past two weeks. Then again, who wouldn’t be happy? We’re lucky to have friends like the friends we have.”

  “W
e are.”

  “What I’m scared of is women, to be honest.” Pat paused to glance in the hall mirror. “I’m wearing suits I couldn’t fit into for ten years. Nice ones, too. I could get mobbed. Tragedy’s good for weight loss.”

  “So I hear. But don’t even joke about it, Paddy.” She smiled then. “On the other hand, go ahead. We should smile. Go out and get ’em, stud. I’m just going to sit here like a lump of flesh.”

  “Kerry home?”

  “Recital practice. Coming up. It’s nice they let her be in it, considering that she’ll graduate later,” Beth said. “Vincent’s coming.”

  “They’re lucky to have her. I can’t wait to see her. I know what she’s singing,” Pat said, his eyes suddenly misting. “I heard her upstairs.”

  “‘Un Bel Di, Vedremo,’” Beth agreed. “One fine day. The saddest song in the world. I don’t know if I can handle it.”

  “Unless the little boy came back …”

  “And the little girl,” Beth said. “But that’s not how it is in operas. In operas, everybody has to die but the bad guys.” She added, “You better get going.”

  Pat bent over and kissed her neck. “’Night, Gram,” he said.

  “’Night, Gramps.”

  “Never thought I’d be so glad to hear it,” said Pat. “I’d hear it ten more times.”

  Beth crossed herself involuntarily. “Be careful what you wish for,” she said.

  She waited until she heard his car round Pebblestone Court and pick up speed. Then she carried her glass of tonic and lime out onto the pool deck. This was the kind of night that made a person want to stay up too late; the kind of night that she and Pat, twenty-five years ago, even twenty years ago, sometimes found the will to wrangle away until they heard the birds cheep or Baby Kerry kick the bells on her crib in the nursery—which was their bedroom closet. The air was weightless, free of the slightest humidity, or bug or breeze, an exquisite texture on her skin. She lay back in her chaise, on new cushions Pat had bought last fall, so thick, with some kind of downy stuff, it welcomed Beth to sleep there. Above her arched a riot of stars. They were not like the mountain stars. When Stella was missing, she had gazed up at them astonished that the spangled heavens’ display could share space in the universe with the black hole where nothing seemed to move or breathe. Beth didn’t know if she could ever lie on a hill and look up into the pure darkness and wait to see a shooting star, not ever again. Her pulse beat at the thought. But Harrington wasn’t yet so spoiled by lights from malls and schools and car dealerships that the stars were blocked entirely.

  There was still something that ached with romantic immensity in a starry night. When she was a young girl, and had no idea why the night sky made her stomach clench, when she missed her mother and couldn’t bear the noise that even her father’s drunken silence beat like a drum, Beth lay on the lumpy grass in her backyard and comforted herself by thinking, This is the best night of someone’s life. She thought that now. Tonight, someone learned the lump was only a lump; someone said yes; the stick had a plus sign; the call finally came; the smoke from under the hood was only steam; the kids won the game that would send them to State; the mother woke up in her hospital bed and recognized her daughter; the girl who had always been just ten pounds over perfect was voted prom queen.

  It wasn’t the worst night of Beth’s life, either. She sat still and held it gently. Her whole family—in California, downtown in Chicago, up here on the North Side, down in the old neighborhood—nestled in the cup of her hand. When she arrived home last week, the mailbox was stuffed with cards and notes—most without stamps. And on her porch, under the portico, were baskets of flowers and candles and picture frames and crocheted afghans, from neighbors whose names she didn’t know and who she would have thought didn’t know her name. In fact, they probably never did know her name until Vincent won the Oscar. That didn’t make them any less kind or noticing.

  Vincent hadn’t been kidding about a comedy.

  He and Rob were working on it now.

  Last week, Vincent had called to give her the gist: A woman wants so badly to break up her son and his trashy girlfriend that she pays a hunky jock, a would-be actor, and even the scion of an old Italian duchy to romance the girl at college. Finally, she falls for one of the prop guys and he falls hard for her as well. Then the woman’s son comes home for spring break and embraces her with gratitude. To her shock, he knows all about her scheme, but if it hadn’t worked, he’d never have met the great love of his life—Craig.

  “We’re still tweaking it,” Vincent said. “We don’t want it to be derivative. But we don’t want it to be too un-date-movie, either.”

  “Too art house?”

  “Deeply into sheer dough and entertainment this time around, Ma. Art for art’s sake when I get the oxygen for it. Right now, I don’t have the heart for depth and meaning.”

  “Speaking of meaning. Am I supposed to get a message out of that plot?” Beth asked, forcing herself not to be the mother—not to ask about the first joint of the index finger on Vincent’s left hand, the shard of the index finger on his right, which both had to be removed. He knew now that the tissue might have survived if he hadn’t rubbed snow on his bare hands. He knew that the numbness along the arches of his feet would confound him always. The single time they’d discussed it, Vincent said it had been small enough a price and it would remind him, each step he took.

  He told Beth, “No, the sleeping bag with Ben was the closest I’ll ever get to that kind of male bonding, I think.”

  Beth nestled back into her lounge, and tried to ignore the phone when it rang.

  It could be a reporter.

  It could be her brother.

  It could be … anyone. Whoever wanted her badly enough, they could call back.

  Annie’s parents weren’t strict about her going to school basketball games or anything. They’d let her go to a dance.

  But the movies were a different story. Movies weren’t supervised. They lasted late, after her little brother and sister were in bed. And they were with girls who didn’t attend Cornerstone Church. But Annie’s mom admitted that, before meeting her dad, she’d loved being a popular girl too. Annie Hixon’s parents had been true to each other since senior year in high school.

  So, because Annie would be thirteen in a few months, and a lot of her friends already were, they said yes when she asked if she could go see the new animated movie about the mouse who started her own ballet company. It was Disney. Annie and at least three of her five friends loved Disney, even if they pretended they were just watching it because of their little sisters. Still, Annie’s parents didn’t know that the girls were going to sneak into another movie, the one about the girl who fell in love with her boyfriend’s younger brother while the older guy was in the war. It was only PG-13, but Annie felt guilty.

  She usually never lied to her parents, although her little sister, Mary, did. Mary was adopted, like Annie. But Mary was adopted when she was littler, about three. Mary was seven now, and boy, was she the mischief type. At school, she used the name Amelia, which she remembered having from her foster home. Mary knew that the password on the lock their parents had on the TV armoire was their zip code and she opened it to watch TV when she wasn’t supposed to. She was a smart little girl, Annie’s father said, but she overheard him say that Mary needed “direction and discipline.”

  Annie had been older when her parents brought her home. She already had a lot of self-discipline so she never got in any trouble. Her mother said she was “very mature” for her age.

  That night, when Lucy’s mother picked them up, Annie was so excited she practically danced out the door into Lucy’s mom’s van. Four other girls—Lana, Mercy, Caitlin, and Gina—were waiting for her.

  “Lip-gloss drill!” Gina said. She was the worst of all of them, but in a good way. She dabbed lip gloss on Annie and added a little mascara at the tips of Annie’s lashes. “Glam, ma’am! You don’t want David Brandenauer to think you di
dn’t dress up for him!”

  “I didn’t dress up! For him at least! I’m not interested in boys!” Annie said, laughing hard despite the trouble she knew she’d get in if she didn’t get to the jar of Vaseline in the upstairs bathroom before her mom saw her.

  It was true what she said about boys. She was just enough younger than the other kids in seventh that the whole boy thing hadn’t quite kicked over for her yet, and it wasn’t just that she went to church Wednesdays and twice on Sundays.

  But she had to admit that she was more interested this year in looking nice than she had been. She chose her clothes with care, the night before instead of that morning, and was going to ask her mom if she could have her ears pierced next year. All of her friends were going out for pom-poms in eighth grade and Annie was already sure she would stick to swimming and volleyball. But not long ago at the Target, she’d stared so long at a shorter skirt with a matching vest that her mom, who usually made all her clothes, broke down and bought it for her.

  Lucy’s mom pulled up at the front doors of the multiplex.

  “Be out here at nine-thirty sharp!” she said. “Lucy Dillon Murray, do you have your phone?”

  “I have it, Mom!” Lucy said. “I’ll call you the first monster I see!”

  They ran up the walk and David was there, along with Cameron and Hanson and two other guys. Was this some kind of setup? But, no. Gina seemed ready to stay and flirt but the rest of them went running inside to buy their tickets.

  As they headed down the hall to get popcorn, Annie studied the posters for the other movies. Her family rented DVDs and watched them together—although less often since her younger brother, Ross, had come home. Rossie was only two and he cried all the time, day and night, for his foster parents, the poor little guy. So her own folks were a little distracted, what with visiting the pediatrician and the minister coming over and such. They didn’t even want to take Ross to church until he stopped kicking her parents and hiding behind the drawing table and crying for his “my-house Daddy-Mommy.” Annie knew every time her parents came back, in the van that had a sunrise over a mountain and the words “Begin Again at Cornerstone” painted on the side, she would hear Rossie crying as soon as her mother opened the paneled door.