Whisper Me This(10)

The old man resists, but Mendez pulls him away as easily as if he were a child. “If I have to arrest you, then you can’t go see her in the hospital.”

“I can’t—you can’t . . .” Walter’s resistance stutters to a stop, his brain grappling with a problem that shuts him down. Mendez propels him out of the room.

Tony and Cara kick into gear, a smooth, synchronized team. EKG. Blood pressure. Cara gets the IV started—not easy, given the blood loss and dehydration. As they roll the stretcher down the hallway toward the ambulance, Walter’s protests follow them.

“Listen, Officer. She didn’t want this. Wouldn’t want this. Please, you have to listen . . .”

The words, the desperation in the old man’s voice, worm their way under Tony’s skin.

What a sordid, ugly, twisted mess. He’s glad to be out of the house, will be glad to turn Leah Addington over to the ER staff and walk away. But he knows he won’t shake this case off easily. He feels the restless itch of his own trauma heating up.

When his chief calls to say somebody has phoned in sick and asks if Tony can work a double shift, he’s more than happy to volunteer. Anything is better than the nightmares that are waiting for him if he tries to sleep tonight.





Chapter Four

On Elle’s advice, I wait to call Greg until we’re at the airport. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, she says. Since we’re already through TSA and waiting at our gate, there’s not much he can do besides layer on the guilt.

Linda answers, sounding frazzled. I can hear the baby crying into the receiver and find myself wondering how Greg is adapting to this unexpected interloper in his perfectly ordered life.

“Maisey,” Linda says, “everything okay with Elle?”

“Elle is great. I just need to talk to Greg.”

“Are you sure? He had a hard day. I don’t like to bother him.”

“It’s kind of important, Linda. Please.”

I hear the sigh, can almost feel her fatigue through the phone line. “All right. I’ll get him. Greg? Greg! It’s Maisey. No, I have no idea what she wants.”

“You’re where?” Greg demands, predictably, when I tell him.

Elle grins at me, a momentary flash of conspiratorial mischief that lightens my heart.

“Elle and I are flying out to see my parents. We’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes, so I need to keep this short.”

I can hear him breathing, and I know he is pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes the way he does when he’s frustrated.

When he speaks it’s with an exaggerated calm. “Would you care to explain why you are flying out to Washington State, with our daughter, on a school night?”

No, I wouldn’t care to explain. As it turns out, I don’t have to. Elle grabs my phone.

“Hi, Daddy.”

His voice might as well be on speakerphone. “I’m talking to your mother.”

“Grandma’s dying and Grandpa needs us. Don’t worry about school. We’ve got it covered.”

A silence. “Elle. Give the phone back to your mother.”

“Whatever, Daddy. Love you. Kiss baby Jay for me.”

She hands me back the phone. I take it reluctantly, bracing for the lecture I probably deserve. It’s Greg’s unexpected kindness that undoes me.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and those three words melt the shield of ice that’s carried me from my kitchen into the airport.

No, I am not okay. I may never be okay again. If I answer, my voice will break. The tears will flow. I’ll be a sobbing lunatic in the middle of this overcrowded gate, and everybody will stare.

“Right,” he says, on the other end. “Stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. Oh my God. You could have called me, Maisey. If you’d only let me, I . . .” His voice trails off, but not before those words dump me into a memory so vivid I can taste the rancid bitterness of the stale gas station coffee rapidly cooling in a paper cup.

The first big decision I ever made for myself was on a summer night twelve years ago. The night I told Greg I wouldn’t marry him, despite the baby growing in my belly.

“God,” he says. “Your mom. Is she even allowed to be sick? You must feel like the universe is turned inside out.”

“I’m okay. Just in shock. We’ll let you know when we get there.”

“All right,” he says. “Keep me informed. Give your mother my love, will you?”

If I had made a different choice way back then, Greg would be flying with us. Him, me, and Elle, the three of us, a traditional family. I try the idea on for size and shrug it off, like a coat that doesn’t fit. Elle is all the family I need.



My old hometown looks dark and deserted when we roll in halfway between midnight and dawn. No lights. No cars. Even the gas station by the traffic circle is deserted. A slow, bleak drizzle of rain intensifies the effect.

My brain, short-circuited by fatigue, anxiety, and the energy drink I bought to help me navigate the seventy miles of dark, deer-infested highway between Spokane and Colville, goes straight to apocalypse. I imagine the entire population sizzled into nothing by an electronic pulse or sucked up into a spaceship, the buildings left standing.

Plague.

Zombies.