“I want this one.” Rebecca pointed to one of the pictures. “It’s the most bizarre-looking thing on the menu.” From where I sat, the entrée looked like a pile of pink flesh covered with some sort of leafy green vegetable.
“I’m going to pass on that,” Adam said with a laugh, and I was glad he hadn’t fallen completely under Rebecca’s spell. When he told me he was joining DIDA, I knew he’d finally succumbed to her persuasion. I’d always been glad that she and Adam got along so well, but I wished she’d left him alone about DIDA. I loved my sister, but she could be a steamroller.
We ordered beers while we continued to study the menu, and Adam held up his bottle in a toast to Brent.
“Drink up!” he said. “This’ll probably be your last cold brew for a while.”
Brent groaned, but he was grinning. “It’s going to be so bloody hot down there,” he said.
“Next trip is yours, bro-in-law.” Rebecca tapped her bottle to Adam’s.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” Adam asked.
“Both,” she said.
An African-American woman was walking toward the rear of the restaurant, a little girl in her arms. I suspected she was heading for the restroom, but she was looking straight at me, a broad smile on her face.
“Do you know her?” Rebecca whispered.
She wasn’t the least bit familiar.
“Dr. Ward!” she said, and for a moment, I thought she meant Rebecca, but her eyes were definitely on mine.
“Hi.” I smiled, struggling to place her. Then I noticed the little girl in her arms. “Taniesa!” I said, jumping to my feet. I reached for her, and Taniesa came easily into my arms, as though she’d never connected the pain from her surgery the year before with me. She clutched a small stuffed panda bear in her hand. “You’re getting huge, baby girl.” I planted a kiss on her cheek.
“I seed you and Mama said no, that isn’t you, but it is too,” Taniesa said.
“And you were right. How are you, honey? How’s that arm of yours?”
“Good,” she said, and she lowered her head to my shoulder as if she wanted to go home with me. I could picture the X-ray of Taniesa’s left arm, shattered in a tricycle accident, as clearly as if I’d seen it only minutes before. I’d never had a photographic memory when it came to reading, but show me a juicy X-ray or CAT scan or MRI image, and I’d never forget it.
“You mean the world to us, Dr. Ward,” Taniesa’s mother said. I couldn’t remember her name. Taniesa’s last name was Flanders, but I knew her mother’s surname was different.
“I’m so glad we could fix her up,” I said, reluctantly letting go of the little girl and handing her back to her mother. Taniesa had on a sweater against the air-conditioned chill of the restaurant, but I ran my fingers down her arm, picturing the scar beneath the fabric.
Rebecca gave the girl’s mother a little wave. “I’m Dr. Ward’s sister, Rebecca,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. This is Brent Greer and my husband Adam Pollard, and this is—”
“Lucy Sharp.” Taniesa’s mom saved me the embarrassment.
“I like that panda, Taniesa,” Adam said. “Is it a girl or a boy?”
Taniesa looked at the stuffed toy as if she was just noticing it. “Girl,” she said.
“She have a name?” Adam asked.
“Taniesa.”
We all laughed, and Taniesa grinned.
“That was so smart!” Adam’s eyes were wide with feigned wonder. “You’ll never forget her name, will you?”
God, it was strange watching Adam with other people! I’d forgotten what he was like. How playful he could be. How he used to be playful with me. Our lives had become far too consumed by fertility and pregnancy and worry. We needed to change that, yet I knew he wasn’t ready to give up. I knew he wanted a child more than he wanted the sun to rise in the sky.
“Isn’t this some place?” Lucy Sharp asked. She glanced down at our plateless table. “You haven’t tried anything yet?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“What do you recommend?” Brent asked.
“Oh, Lord, anything you get’s going to fill you up. Try the Churrasco. It’s barbecue, Brazilian style. I never thought I’d like Brazilian food. Who would’ve guessed? But my sister-in-law got me in here a couple weeks ago and now she can’t get me out.”
Our waitress came to the table just then, and Lucy Sharp took a step backward. “I’ll get out of your hair,” she said, “but Taniesa wanted to be sure we said ‘hey.’”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. “Bye, Taniesa.”
The little girl reached for me one more time, and her mom leaned over to let her kiss my cheek.
I have the world’s best job, I thought. I watched them walk back to the front of the restaurant, and even before I saw them sit down again, I felt happy and at home and hungry enough to eat alligator meat.
The food was delicious and I was eating coconut flan when I noticed that the crowd was beginning to thin out.
“I’m drunk,” Brent admitted happily. He was. Adam was not far behind him. His eyes were glossy and a little unfocused, and the grin he’d been wearing most of the evening was lopsided in a way that made me smile.
“I’ll drive,” Rebecca said. “Though I’m so stuffed I may not fit behind the wheel.”
Adam said something in response, but I didn’t hear him. My gaze was on a man who had walked into the restaurant. He was Caucasian, dark haired, wearing a white T-shirt and beige pants and he stood in front of the door, shifting his gaze quickly from table to table. Something about him sent a shiver through me.
He started walking toward us—or at least, I thought he was heading toward our table. His stride was deliberate, his nostrils flared. Then I saw that his eyes—his ice-blue eyes—were locked on the two men at the table in front of ours. Adam said something that must have been funny, because Brent and Rebecca laughed, but I’d set down my spoon and was gripping the corner of the table, my heart thudding beneath my breastbone.
I knew better than anyone how quickly these things could happen. The man reached behind his back with his right hand, then whipped his arm out straight, the gun a gray blur as it cut through the air, and I saw the tattoo of a black star on his index finger as he squeezed the trigger.
9
Maya
BEFORE I COULD SCREAM OR DUCK, THE SHOT RANG OUT AND the man at the table in front of ours slumped in his chair. Then I did scream, the same way I’d screamed twenty years earlier in my driveway. This time, though, I had plenty of company. The congenial atmosphere of the little restaurant gave way to utter chaos. I bent over in my chair, making myself as small as possible, and I felt Rebecca cover me with her body like a shell. My hands were pressed to my ears, but I still heard footsteps racing toward the restaurant door.
“Get him!” people shouted. “Stop him!” Chairs scraped against the floor, and I heard the thud of a table falling on its side.
“Call nine-one-one!” I heard Adam yell.
Rebecca sat up and I straightened slowly from my crouched position, my stomach clenched around the meal I’d eaten. Brent and Adam were already on the floor next to the injured man, who had fallen from his chair in a crumpled heap. Rebecca sprang from her seat to the floor next to the men, while I remained frozen in my chair. The table blocked my view, and I caught only snippets of their conversation. “Press harder,” my sister was saying. “Can’t get a pulse,” Adam said. “Dude’s gone,” Brent added.
Should I try to help? Could I? This is why the three of them belonged in DIDA and I didn’t. I loved my work because it put me in control. “Maya knits teeny little bones back together,” Adam always said when introducing me to someone. That’s what I loved doing: fixing the fixable.
My gaze sank to my dessert plate, and I saw the splatter of blood across the remnants of my flan. The room spun, and I sprang out of my chair and raced toward the ladies’ room in the rear of the restaurant. The tiny restroom was crammed with cry
ing, frightened women who let out a collective scream when I pushed open the door. Just looking at the small sea of hot bodies stole my breath away. I let the door close and sank to the dirty tiled floor of the hallway, my back against the wall.
I couldn’t seem to pull enough air into my lungs. Those cold eyes. The steady aim of the gun. Gulping air, I lowered my head to my knees and fought the darkness that seeped into my vision. I’d never once fainted. Not the first time I’d worked on a cadaver. Not during my medical training. Not as an intern in the O.R. I’d never even come close. Yet, I could feel the pull of unconsciousness teasing me now. He’s gone, I told myself. The danger’s over.
Above the voices and commotion from the restaurant, I heard the distant sound of sirens. The women left the ladies’ room en masse, stepping around me, trying not to trip over my feet. I pulled myself into a ball, wrapping my arms tightly around my legs. The sirens grew louder, multiplying in number. I pictured the police cars and ambulances squealing to a stop in front of the building, and I heard new voices adding to the din in the restaurant.
A few minutes passed before Adam walked into the hallway. He squatted down in front of me, his hands on my arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“The guy died,” he said.
I nodded again.
“I’m sorry, My,” he said. “You didn’t need this tonight. I know you still feel like shit.” He glanced behind him as if he could see the interior of the restaurant instead of the peeling paint on the wall. Then he sat down on the floor across from me. The hall was narrow enough that, even leaning against the opposite wall, he was able to keep one hand on mine. God, I loved his touch! During the past week, I’d wondered if I’d ever feel him touch me again.
“The cops locked the door, because they want to talk to everyone who was here when it happened,” he said. “Especially you and Becca, since you were facing the shooter. But if you’re not up to it…I can tell them you’re only six days out from a miscarriage and to leave you alone. You could go into the police station instead of—”
“I’m okay,” I said. I’d be strong for him. I wanted his admiration, not his pity.
Adam turned his hand to lace our fingers together. “You know,” he said, “it was so crazy in there, that when you disappeared, I was afraid you’d been shot. I even looked under the table for you. It scared me.” His voice was heavy with emotion, and I knew he still loved me. Only then did I realize how much I’d come to doubt that love.
“I’m okay,” I said again, getting to my feet. “I can talk to them now.”
The ride home two hours later was quiet and dismal. We were talked out from the interviews with the police, and Brent, now stone-cold sober, drove.
He dropped Adam and me off in front of our house. We started walking up the curved sidewalk to our front door, but I turned as I heard a car door slam and saw Rebecca running toward us.
“Just want to talk to my sis a minute,” she said to Adam.
He nodded, pulling his keys from his pocket. “I’ll see you inside, My,” he said.
We’d left the outside lights on, and I could see the worry in Rebecca’s face. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded. “Fine.” I looked toward my house, hoping the sight of the light-filled windows and overflowing planters by the front door would erase the image of bloody flan from my mind.
“I was afraid when we picked that restaurant that you wouldn’t want to go,” she said. “I know you don’t like going to that part of town. But it seemed great at first. We were having so much fun. And then this had to happen.” She shook her head. “It was terrible.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
Rebecca looked toward Brent’s car, then faced me again. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about the baby since I got back. I mean, you and me alone. Let’s make time before I end up on the road again, okay?”
I wasn’t thinking about the baby at that moment. I didn’t want thoughts of my baby—my son—to be connected in any way to this horrible night, but she was waiting for some response from me. “Okay,” I said. “I really…” I looked toward my house once more, thinking of Adam inside. “We have to figure out whether to try again.”
“Or adopt.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think Adam ever will.”
“What is his problem?” She sounded annoyed. “I want to pound some sense into that man’s head.”
“No. Don’t. He and I have to figure it out. Okay?”
Rebecca ran a hand through her short hair, glancing again toward Brent’s car. “This is a terrible send-off for Brent,” she said, “but then, you get kind of used to the unexpected when you work for DIDA.” It was the wrong thing to say to me now that Adam had signed on as a volunteer, and she caught herself. “But nothing like this has ever happened in all the years I’ve worked for DIDA,” she said. “Really, Maya.”
I didn’t want to talk about DIDA. What I wanted to say was, Did tonight remind you of the night Mom and Daddy were killed? But I would never say those words. Our relationship was so complex. We were close in so many ways. Distant in others. If tonight had reminded her of that other night, I would never know.
“You get some sleep,” she said. “Do you have some Xanax lying around?”
“Somewhere,” I said.
She touched my cheek with the back of her fingers, the way a mother might touch her child. She was not usually tender, and I was moved by the gesture. Then she pulled me into a hug.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
We stayed that way, holding on to each other, for close to a minute. No matter how tightly I held her against me though, I felt that long-ago night wedged between us like a solid wall of stone.
10
Rebecca
REBECCA SAT IN HER FAVORITE RED VELVET CHAIR AT Starbucks, shoes off, feet tucked beneath her, a double Americano on the table next to her. She was reading a book written by a guy who’d worked with the Red Cross after the quake in China. Even though she’d worked in China after the quake herself, she couldn’t concentrate on the book today. She was impatient and the coffee wasn’t helping.
The devastation from the earthquake in Ecuador was much worse than anyone had realized, and she was itching to go down there. Brent had been working thirty miles from the epicenter for a week now, and he’d finally managed to call her on a satellite phone the day before. “Tell Dot we need you here,” he’d said. They were extremely shorthanded, but Dorothea didn’t want her to go.
“Not until we see what these devils in the Atlantic have on their minds,” she said when Rebecca relayed Brent’s message.
The tropical storm that had been wallowing a good distance off the coast of Bermuda was now Hurricane Carmen. She barely deserved the name hurricane, in Rebecca’s opinion. She was nothing more than a puffy white amoeba on the weather map. No one seemed sure where she would make landfall—if she made landfall at all. Possibly South Carolina. Possibly farther north, along the Outer Banks. But the storm was so pathetic that evacuation was voluntary, and Rebecca knew that most people would stay to watch the waves swell and the wind howl and enjoy being as close as they could get to danger while remaining perfectly safe. Durham and the rest of the state were promised buckets of rain and a little wind, but so far, nothing more than that, and Rebecca couldn’t believe she was stuck in North Carolina because of potential rain. She had to admit, though, that Dot had a sixth sense about storms. Rebecca sometimes thought she had missed her calling and should have been a meteorologist. She wondered if, when it was her turn as DIDA’s director, she’d be able to determine who was needed when and where with Dorothea’s precision.
“It’s not just Carmen I’m concerned about,” Dorothea had said to her in her dining room-slash-office that morning. She’d pointed to the weather map on her computer. “See these two guys north of Haiti?” She ran her finger over two other amoebas. “I don’t trust them on
e bit.”
“Okay.” Rebecca had given in. “Whatever.” So now she was biding her time—working out at the gym, running, catching up on e-mail and helping Dorothea with DIDA’s mind-numbing administrative tasks.
She’d finally had a couple of hours alone with Maya the evening before. Over their Frapuccinos at this same Starbucks, they’d talked about the baby. They’d sat in the courtyard outside so Rebecca could smoke, and she’d loaded Maya up with advice: It was too soon to make a decision about trying again, she’d said. Maya needed to put the whole baby thing out of her mind for a while. She had to give Adam time to grieve before reintroducing the topic of adoption. Maybe by then he’d be ready.
Maya listened in that patient way she had, looking more at her mug of coffee than at Rebecca. And when Rebecca had offered every last bit of sisterly advice she could come up with, Maya leaned toward her.
“I know you have my best interest at heart, Bec,” she said, “but you can’t really understand how this feels.”
Rebecca didn’t know why the words hurt her so much, but they did. Maybe because they were the truth. She couldn’t understand. She was out of her league, and that was a feeling she loathed. She thought of telling Maya about that weird fantasy she’d had in Brent’s hotel room of holding the baby, that powerful sense of loss, but caught herself in time. Maya’s loss was real; hers was imagined.
“Well,” she’d said, “I want to understand.”
“It’s creating issues between Adam and me,” Maya said.
Rebecca frowned. What did she mean by “it”? Maya could be so vague. She had a way of talking around a subject instead of coming out and saying what she meant. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Because he won’t adopt or what?”
“Partly,” Maya said. “I haven’t told you a lot of this because I didn’t want you to worry, but ever since the first miscarriage, things haven’t been the same between us.”