Bloodline(43)

“None other.”

“All right, how does tomorrow morning sound to you?”

Another cough. “I like the plain doughnuts. Nothing fancy.”

I’m about to confirm when the screech of a car sliding to a halt rips through the glass of the booth. It’s so loud and so startling that the phone drops from my hand. Two hundred feet away, at the intersection of Highway 23 and Augusta Avenue, a car has jumped the curb. Next to it, there’s a body sprawled on the road. I push against the door and step out, mouth hanging open.

I stagger forward.

The unmoving body is dressed in the same clothes as the “mugger” I thought I saw over the weekend, right down to the porkpie hat resting a few feet from the body. I’m going insane, the pregnancy eating my brain. There’s no other explanation. But here he is, laid out flat on the ground. I push through quicksand, toward the contorted figure lying on the pavement. I need to see his face.

“Joan! Where are you going?”

Gray-skinned, rodent-faced Mildred appears in front of me. Behind her, the Lilydale lunch crowd closes in around the body. I try to jostle Mildred aside. She is surprisingly sturdy.

“Who is that?” I yell. “Did he just get hit by a car?”

Mildred forcibly turns me around and leads me back toward the phone booth. “Did you leave your handbag in here?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She retrieves my purse and loops the strap over my shoulder. The far-off keen of an ambulance slams against my skin. I shuffle toward the noise. Mildred is tugging me back, I’m stretching forward.

That’s the mugger on the road, I’m sure of it.

There are about twenty folks between me and him, though. How are there so many people? It’s like they showed up to deliberately block my view. When the ambulance careens around the corner, the crowd steps back as one to make room. Over their heads I can see the paramedics emerge from the front of the ambulance and hurry around to open the rear. Then they disappear into the throng. They reappear in moments, the gurney heavy with a body. They slide it in the back of the station wagon, close the door, reclaim their seats, and drive off.

Away from the hospital.

I know this because Lilydale General is on my end of town, southeast. The ambulance is driving northwest.

“Mildred,” I groan in a voice I don’t recognize. “Where are they taking him?”

“The hospital, dear.”

“But it’s the other way.”

“Saint Cloud hospital, then. It’s bigger.” Mildred is searching the crowd. I realize she’s looking for help in controlling me.

I am a risk. They don’t want me to become hysterical.

Was my mugger a risk? Did Lilydale take care of him? I must control myself.

“I think I need to visit Dr. Krause,” I say.

Mildred’s relief is so tangible that it would be hilarious if not for the circumstances. “I’ll walk with you,” she says.

I must be cooperative. There is too much danger, too much on the table. I smell it, and it smells thick and coppery, like great amounts of drying blood. “Thank you.”

She weaves us around the edge of the crowd, distracts me with chatter, but she needn’t worry. I am looking nowhere but at my own feet. I fear there is no one in Lilydale but Regina who would believe me, no one, not even Deck, who wouldn’t commit me and take my baby away if I tell them that I’m certain I’m always being watched, that I have the same scar as my boyfriend and a stranger who claims to be a boy who disappeared twenty-four years ago, that somehow the man who mugged me in Minneapolis showed up in Lilydale, and now he’s been hit by a car.

Hell, I’d commit whoever told me that story.

I’ve heard of that before, of women who lose their mind because of the disequilibrium of pregnancy. They never get it back.

I don’t want to be crazy.

I hug myself tighter, letting Mildred lead me inside the doctor’s office. She murmurs something to Cornelia at the front desk. I am immediately guided to a back room.

Dr. Krause appears moments later. I’m not surprised.

“I’m not feeling well, Dr. Krause. Not like myself.” I won’t offer details. I will not tell him that either this entire town is insane, or I am. “I feel like I’m overstimulated. Growing upset over minor things.”

“I’m glad you came,” he says, nodding, his expression concerned. He has brought a chart with him. He opens it. “September 5 due date. That’s right.”

He peers at me through his round, rimless glasses. He has yet to examine me beyond the cursory check last visit.

“You’re being a thoughtful mother, very obliging, following medical orders,” he continues, his gaze serious.

Silence shrouds the room, a quiet so forceful that I can feel its heat.

The doctor’s threat is clear. Follow my rules, or else.

I nod to show I understand.

“Very good,” he says. “I’ll increase your Valium, and you’ll promise to come back if you feel unsettled again, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”





CHAPTER 30

“I think it may have been the heat,” I say. I’m standing next to Deck, holding the relish dish I forgot to put out with the rest of the food. Ronald and Barbara have joined us for dinner, which I’ve cooked. It’s too late for relish, the main course is almost finished, but I need to show them I’m trying. Deck is carrying brandy to refill his glass as well as Barbara’s and Ronald’s.