Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(41)
The Amazon diviner had progressed from fear and anger to terror and rage. She acted on the latter as she thrust to her feet, cursing Bibi and the Thorpe children that she hadn’t yet produced. “Get away from me, stay away from me, you insane crazy bitch.”
As Calida turned toward her dropped suitcase, Bibi said, “Crazy bitch? Me? Me? Meeeee? I was just having the best day of my life, that’s all, free of cancer, then you show up and…”
But she abandoned that line of response. She loathed the whine in her voice, did not want to paint herself as a victim. Valiant girls did not whine. They never played the victim even if there were benefits to be had from inhabiting that role, which there were, huge benefits, which was why everyone wanted to be a victim these days.
Half of Calida’s custom-crafted two-sided suitcase had fallen open when she dropped it, spilling the silver bowl and some of the other items that she used for divination. She stooped to repack with urgency.
Bibi rose from the lounge chair. “Look, maybe I am crazy, running from my apartment because you say someone’s coming—someone or something—I don’t even know who or what or why, crazy for buying in to this Ashley Bell thing, but here I am. So tell me how to find her. Tell me who these wrong people are.”
Turning to face her, suitcase in hand, Calida said bleakly, “Oh, you’ll know them.”
Because the apartment complex catered to young professionals, most of them single, thought had been given even to the lighting in the courtyard. In the service of romance, or whatever the hippest of the cool called it these days, the tall bronze lamps and every fixture used in the landscape lighting produced a calculated radiance—a candescence, resplendence—that flattered every face, that buttered an appealing sheen of health on the skin of every limb and curve that might be revealed.
In this well-schemed, computed, designed light, Calida remained as pale as bleached flour. Oppressed by fear, she had a face that appeared sliced-bread flat, incapable of offering any expression other than dread. “You’ll know them when you see them.”
“What’re we going to do?” Bibi asked.
“We aren’t doing anything. I don’t want to be anywhere near you. Not now. Not ever. What I’m going to do is run. Run and hide.”
With that, she turned away and hurried toward the parking lot, all of her bejeweled and silk-scarfed glamor gone, now just one more desperate woman overwhelmed by the madness of the world.
For six happy years, the foundling Olaf had been an exemplary companion: as pure of heart, as noble, as joyful, as loving as any dog who had ever lived. He had walked out of the rain to become his beloved girl’s best friend, and he had kept faithfully at her side through every mood and circumstance, taking to the sea and surfboard as enthusiastically as she did.
When he first showed symptoms, the cancer had already spread from his spleen to his liver and heart. Dr. John Kerman called it “hemangiosarcoma.” Although Bibi was a lover of language, that was a word she would hate for the rest of her life, as if it were not merely a word, but also one of the names of Evil. Neither chemo nor radiation would extend the dog’s life. The veterinarian estimated that Olaf had a week—at most two weeks—to live.
Bibi gave her cherished friend all the affection that could be squeezed into so little time, fed him all of his favorite treats and some that he’d never tasted before. She took him on easy walks, not where she determined, but where he seemed to want to go. They sat on the bench at Inspiration Point for hours, watching the sea in all its serenity and all its tossing glory, while she shared with the golden retriever every confidence, as always she had.
Her mother and father were not surprised by Bibi’s devotion, but they did not expect that her commitment to Olaf’s comfort in his last days would extend to participation in the act of euthanasia. The moment might arrive when the cancer, thus far largely painless, would begin to work its agony in the flesh. With human beings, a natural death was a death with dignity. But animals were innocents, and as their stewards, people owed them mercy. Bibi decided not only that Olaf must not suffer, but also that he must not be in the least afraid when the moment came to put him down. The dog liked his vet, but he didn’t like needles and became anxious at the sight of them. Only his trusted mistress, so precious to him, might inject him without causing him so much as a moment of fear.
Dr. John Kerman was a good man, extending every kindness and courtesy to people and animals alike, but he did not at first think it wise to grant young Bibi’s request to administer the mortal drugs herself. Although mature for her age, she was nevertheless only sixteen. Soon, however, she convinced him that she was up to the task both emotionally and intellectually. During that week, each time he had a dog to be anesthetized for teeth cleaning or other procedures, Dr. Kerman welcomed the girl into his surgery to observe how a catheter was placed in a leg vein. She also attended two emergency euthanasia sessions, observing solemnly—and wept only later, at home. Using green grapes and hypodermic syringes, she practiced the carefully angled insertion of a needle.
On the morning of the tenth day after they had been given Olaf’s prognosis, the dog came to a crisis, suffering a sudden weakness in his legs. His breathing became labored, and he began whimpering in distress. John Kerman arrived at the bungalow with his medical kit, confirmed that the moment had come, and on the nightstand in Bibi’s bedroom, he placed the instruments that she would need.