Then it happened.
With no warning at all, a blinding pain slashed through Oliver’s head, and the room seemed to fill with a brilliant white light that faded to utter blackness in an instant. And then, out of the blackness, an image appeared.
The boy is in a small room, staring at a table to which heavy leather straps are attached. The man, looming above him, is waiting impatiently for the boy to get onto the table. In his hand, the man holds something.
Something the boy has seen before.
Something that terrifies him.
Instead of getting on the table, the boy retreats to cower in a corner of the room.
As the man raises the object, with two shining metal studs protruding from a long tube at one end, the boy whimpers, already anticipating the pain to come.
As the man advances toward the boy, the child, screaming now, starts to run. The man’s large, muscled arm reaches out—
“That’s it,” Philip Margolis said as he came back into the room. He unfastened the straps that held Oliver to the table. “That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
Oliver hesitated. The fact was, he couldn’t really remember much of the scan at all. There had been a moment of panic, but then …
What?
A headache? One of the strange hallucinations?
Something—some kind of vague memory—was flitting about the edges of his consciousness, but as he reached out for it, trying to grasp it, the memory slipped away.
Oliver managed a grin as he sat up, the straps having released their grip. “Not so bad,” he agreed. “Not so bad at all.”
Chapter 6
Andrea drove slowly, searching for the impossible: an empty parking spot in Boston. She’d already passed the red brick building three times, twice going this direction, once the other. Should she try the other side again, or give up hoping to find a spot within a few steps of the building, and try one of the side streets?
Or should she just turn around and drive back to Blackstone?
She rejected the last idea immediately. She’d thought it all through too many times to back out now. If she didn’t go through with it now, she never would. Her mother would start in on her, and this time there would be no escape. Sooner or later she’d give in. And whatever Martha decided, it wouldn’t be good for her, and it wouldn’t be good for the baby.
It would be good only for Martha Ward, who would then spend the next few years exacting emotional payment for having “gotten you out of that mess, even though I had nothing to do with getting you into it!” A three-way bank shot, the kind Andrea knew her mother loved best, leaving Andrea feeling guilty, grateful, and indebted, all at the same time.
But not this time. This time Andrea was going to take care of it—take charge of her own life. Her mind made up, she turned off onto a side street, resuming her search for a parking spot. She finally found one three blocks from her destination, pulled into it, and automatically locked the rusting Toyota, even though she suspected it was worth more stolen than not. Hunched against the cold drizzle that had begun an hour before, Andrea trudged back toward the clinic, her steps heavy, her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her.
The doctor’s office was on the third floor. To Andrea’s surprise, the door was unlocked. There were several women in the waiting room. Only one, a neatly dressed Asian woman several years younger than she, glanced up when she came in. The woman smiled briefly, then quickly lowered her eyes again to the magazine she was leafing through. A white-coated receptionist behind a glass partition looked up and said to Andrea, “May I help you?”
Andrea hesitated. There was still time to change her mind, still time to turn around and just walk out.
But then what?
Then, nothing.
No school, no decent job, no life.
Ever.
“I was wondering if Dr. Randall has an opening today,” she asked.
The nurse glanced down at the appointment calendar that was spread open before her. “Can you come back at two?”
Andrea nodded, gave the nurse her name, then filled out a medical history form, and filled in her MasterCard number, uttering a silent prayer that Gary had neither canceled the card nor run it past its credit limit. The first was doubtful; the second not at all unlikely. Leaving the office, she went back to the street, spotted a Starbucks half a block down on the other side, and settled in for the long wait.
When she returned to the office at exactly two that afternoon, the waiting room was empty. “Right on time,” the nurse said, smiling at her again. She opened the inner door and led Andrea into the doctor’s office, where a man of about forty, with a blond crew cut, the build of a football player, and a ruggedly handsome face rose and offered her his hand.
“I’m Bob Randall.”
As Andrea sank into the chair opposite the doctor, he reached for the forms she’d filled out, and she saw the gold wedding band on his finger. Damn.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Randall asked.
Andrea groaned to herself. Now what? Was she going to have to explain herself to the doctor too? What business was it of his? The operation was perfectly legal—hundreds of women had it every day, and thousands more, she believed, should have.
The doctor seemed to read her mind. “I don’t mean about having the abortion,” he said. “I just mean about the procedure itself.”
“You mean you’re not going to guilt-trip me?” Andrea asked.
Randall shrugged. “It’s your life, and your body, and nobody but you has the right to tell you what to do with it. You’re old enough to know what you’re doing, and if you’re as healthy as you say you are, there shouldn’t be any problems. You’ll be out of here in little more than an hour.”
For just a moment, Andrea hesitated. Even though she’d been told Dr. Randall wouldn’t lecture her, she hadn’t really believed it.
But this was it.
No questions, no arguments.
She nodded her head. “Let’s do it.”
The doctor took her into another room, left her alone while she changed into a hospital gown, and then came back, this time with the nurse. He checked Andrea’s blood pressure and pulse, her respiration and reflexes. He listened to her chest, palpated her stomach, then told her to stretch out on her back and put her feet in stirrups.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he told her.
“Go ahead,” Andrea said. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Fifteen minutes later it was all over. There had been surprisingly little discomfort; the worst had been when he’d dilated her cervix, but even that hadn’t hurt badly. “Is that it?” she asked as the nurse began cleaning up the small operating room.
“That’s all there is,” the doctor replied. “I’d like you to lie down and relax for half an hour or so, and then I’ll take a look to make sure there aren’t any problems, but I can’t really imagine that there are going to be any. It’s a very simple procedure, and I know what I’m doing.”
Forty minutes later Andrea was dressed and back out on the street. It had stopped drizzling. The first thing she did when she was out of the brick building in which she’d at least solved the worst of her problems was to reach into her purse and pull out a cigarette.
A cigarette, and the lighter that Rebecca had given her yesterday.
She squeezed the trigger concealed in the dragon’s throat, lit the cigarette, and sucked the smoke deep into her lungs, at last feeling a loosening of the tension she’d had all day.
Rebecca.
She’d have to apologize to Rebecca for what she’d said this morning.
And thank her for the lighter too. She was still holding it in her hand, and now, as the sun broke through the clouds overhead, it glinted brightly. She held it up, gazed at its red eyes, and once again squeezed its neck.
Click. Its flaming tongue appeared, flickering in the light breeze.
Andrea gazed at the lighter for a long time. Its red eyes glinted at her with
a fiery light that seemed to come, not from the sun, but from deep within the dragon’s golden body. Glowing crimson, the eyes held her mesmerized. Then, almost unaware of what she was doing, she held her other hand up too.
Very slowly she moved her hand toward the dragon’s fiery tongue.
When the flame touched her skin, it didn’t hurt.
It didn’t hurt at all.
Chapter 7
Dusk had fallen as Andrea pulled up in front of her mother’s house. In all the other houses on the block, except for the Hartwicks’ next door, windows were already glowing with light, and thin curtains revealed glimpses of warm, inviting interiors. Only her mother’s house was dark; save for the dim porch light that might provide a measure of safety to someone climbing the front steps, but offered no real welcome, the house appeared to be deserted. Yet Andrea was certain her mother was at home. She could almost feel Martha’s unforgiving presence inside, almost see her kneeling on the prie-dieu, her fingers clicking through her rosary beads while her lips formed the words, Hail Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us now and in the hour of … Except that it would be the Ave Maria her mother was reciting, repeating the prayer over and over again in the original Latin, understanding no more of the prayers she uttered than she understood the daughter she’d raised.
Andrea shut off the car’s engine, but instead of getting out of the Toyota, she reached into her purse, found her cigarettes, and used the dragon to light one. As she sat in the car, smoking her cigarette, she idly flicked the lighter on and off, watching the tongue of flame flare quickly, then die away. The cigarette was only half smoked when she was startled by a rap on the glass and glanced over to see Rebecca peering worriedly through the curbside window.
“Andrea? Are you all right?”
Stubbing the cigarette out in the car’s ashtray, Andrea got out. “I’m okay, I guess.” She sighed, knowing she wasn’t okay at all. The first terrible doubt about what she’d done had set in even before she’d gotten back in her car. Over and over, she’d tried to convince herself that she’d done the right thing, but she still hadn’t been able to rid herself of the nagging feeling that she could have coped with the situation another way. Surely she could have found some kind of job: pregnant women worked all the time—lots of them right up until a week or so before they were ready to deliver. And after the baby was born, there would have been lots of options. She could have put the baby up for adoption, or maybe even kept it and—
Stop it, she commanded herself. It’s over and done with.
Rebecca was still looking at her anxiously. Andrea forced herself to smile as she came around to the curb. “Hey, it’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to be okay. And look, I’m sorry about this morning, okay? I mean, I was having morning sickness and feeling like a mess, and—well, you were there, so I took it all out on you. So I’m sorry. And I really like the lighter. I’ve been using it all day.”
“But with the baby—” Rebecca began, but Andrea didn’t let her finish.
“Will you stop worrying? I said everything’s going to be okay. All right?” They were on the porch now, and as Rebecca opened the front door, Andrea smelled the familiar, choking scent of incense and candle smoke, and heard the drone of the recorded chanting. “She’s praying, isn’t she?”
Rebecca nodded. “I was just starting supper.”
“I’ll help.” Andrea hung her coat in the closet, then followed Rebecca into the kitchen, where the table was set for two.
Rebecca, seeing Andrea’s eyes fix on the two places, reddened. “I didn’t know whether you were going to be here or not,” she said quickly. “I’ll set another—”
“For God’s sake, Rebecca, take it easy. I’ll set another place.” She eyed the small table at which she and her mother had eaten all their meals since her father had left, and at which, presumably, Rebecca and her mother had been eating for the last twelve years. “I have an idea. What do you say we use the dining room?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. “I don’t think Aunt Martha would like that.”
“Who cares what Mother would like?” Andrea countered. “What about what you and I would like? Haven’t you ever wanted to eat in the dining room?” Without waiting for an answer, Andrea scooped the two place settings off the kitchen table and put them back in the cabinet to the right of the sink. “And I think we’ll just use the good silver tonight too,” she announced.
Half an hour later Rebecca dished the warmed-up pot roast, left over from the night before, onto the good china. Just as she and Andrea were carrying the plates in from the kitchen, the chanting from the chapel stopped abruptly and Martha Ward appeared at the end of the hall. Before her mother could say a word, Andrea spoke.
“We’re eating in the dining room tonight, Mother.”
“We never eat in the dining room,” Martha stated.
“Well, we are tonight. The kitchen table’s too small, and what’s the point of having a dining room if we never use it?”
“The dining room is for company,” Martha said coldly.
“Come on, Mother. When was the last time you had company?”
Martha’s lips pursed in disapproval, but she said nothing until she came into the dining room and surveyed the table. Andrea had not only set it with the good silver, but had put a cloth on the table, and candles in the twin candelabra that had stood unused on the sideboard for a quarter of a century. Rebecca hovered near the door, certain that Martha was going to demand that supper be moved to the kitchen and the dining room table be cleared instantly. When her aunt finally spoke, though, the chill in her voice had softened slightly.
“Perhaps we can consider this a celebration of Andrea’s homecoming,” she said. The tension in the room eased slightly, and Rebecca and Andrea took their seats on opposite sides of the table as Martha settled herself into the chair at the head. “But only for tonight,” she went on. “I’m sure the three of us can fit around the kitchen table perfectly comfortably. Shall we say grace?”
Martha bowed her head. Andrea winked conspiratorially at Rebecca, who quickly tilted her own head forward and clasped her hands as her aunt muttered the prayer. When Martha was done, she picked up her knife and fork, cut a piece of pot roast, and put it in her mouth. She chewed it for a long time, finally swallowed it, then fixed her eyes on her daughter. “I spoke to Monsignor Vernon this morning, Andrea.”
Andrea looked at her mother guardedly. “Oh?”
“He says I must pray for you.”
Andrea tensed, girding herself for the lecture she knew her mother was preparing to deliver. “I’m afraid it’s a little late for that,” Andrea ventured. “I haven’t been as good as you about going to church.”
Martha regarded her daughter sadly, as if contemplating whether it was already far too late for her to find redemption. Still, she thought, she must follow her priest’s instructions. “Monsignor Vernon says I must pray that you will find a way to return to the arms of the Lord. For the sake of the baby,” she added pointedly, lest Andrea mistake her purpose.
Andrea, about to put a bite of food in her mouth, slowly put down her fork, then looked directly at her mother. “If you’re planning to pray for my baby,” she said, “you don’t need to waste your time. There isn’t going to be a baby. I went back down to Boston today and had it taken care of.”
Martha Ward’s face paled. “Taken care of?” she repeated, her voice barely audible. “Exactly what do you mean, Andrea?”
Andrea searched her mother’s face for any trace of sympathy for what she’d been going through, any hint that her mother might understand why she’d done what she had. But there was none, and suddenly the doubts she’d had about the abortion vanished as she realized the future her child would have had: Her mother would have found some way—any way—to take the baby away from her. Then the child would have grown up in this house, suffocated by her mother’s fanaticism, believing that it was conceived in sin and damned for all eternity.
With a certainty p
roved by the unforgiving sanctimony of her mother’s expression, Andrea knew she’d made the right decision.
“I mean I had an abortion this afternoon, Mother.”
A stifling shroud of silence fell over the dining room as Martha and Andrea stared at each other. Finally, Martha rose from her chair and pointed an accusing finger at her daughter. “Murderess,” she hissed. Then her voice rose. “Murderess! May you burn in Hell!”
Turning her back on her daughter, Martha Ward strode out of the room. Within seconds the sound of Gregorian chants swelled through the house.
“She’s praying for you,” Rebecca said softly.
“No she isn’t,” Andrea replied. “She’s praying for herself. She doesn’t give a damn about me.”
“That isn’t true,” Rebecca said. “She loves you.”
Now Andrea too was on her feet. “No she doesn’t, Rebecca. She doesn’t love anyone.” Tears streaming down her cheeks, Andrea fled from the dining room.
As the house filled with the mysterious droning rhythm of the chanting, Rebecca sadly cleared the dining room table and wondered if it would ever be used again.
* * *
Rebecca wasn’t certain what woke her up; indeed, at first she wasn’t sure she’d fallen asleep at all. Though the doors to her small room were closed, she could still hear the music emanating from the chapel, just as it had been when she’d gone to bed. Rolling over, she glanced at the little travel alarm clock she’d brought down from Andrea’s room yesterday afternoon.
Three o’clock.
Three o’clock?
She sat up in bed, wide-awake now, and for the first time noticed something else.
There was a smell in the house; not the normal sickly sweet smell of her aunt’s incense, but the acrid odor of the smoke that had filled the living room the one time she’d tried to use the fireplace, only to discover that her aunt had long ago had the chimney blocked to keep the house from losing heat.
Smoke?
Getting out of bed, Rebecca pulled on her bathrobe as she went to the pocket doors that separated her sleeping room from the dining room beyond. Before the panels were even inches apart, the acrid smell grew stronger, and she choked as she drew in a breath of smoky air. Throwing the doors wide open, she ran to the foot of the stairs.