Beyond Midnight (71 page)

Katie was almost totally unmanageable, screaming and kicking to be let off the rail. It was a wonder that Helen was able to hear Peaches say above the din,
"
You want Katie? Why didn
'
t you say so?
   Come and get her."

She lifted the child up and held her over the banister, suspended in space.

By now Katie was completely out of control, screaming and twisting in Peaches' grip.  Helen began warily but quickly moving from her side of the landing to where the nanny held her charge.  It would take a strong woman to hold a hysterical child like that for long, and Peaches was too slender and elegant to project much in the way of strength.  Whatever power she had wasn't in her arms; it was in her ability to strike terror in the hearts of the innocent.

"Peaches ... please.  Let me have her," Helen said in a voice she could barely control.  It was all she could do not to shriek.  She was within a couple of feet of the nanny when Peaches seemed suddenly to tire and lowered her arms to rest against the outside of the balusters.  The outside, not the inside.  Deliberately?  Who knew?

But Katie was two feet closer now to falling onto the marble foyer.

Everything happened at once after that, like a slow-motion ballet.  Katie wrenched herself violently away and Peaches let go of her hold, first with one arm and then the other, while Helen simultaneously bent over the bannister in desperate lurch at Katie.  She managed to hook a strap of the child's
Oshkosh
overalls:  one little corduroy strap.  But it was enough to bind rescuer and victim together as the weight of the child pulled Helen, bent over double and holding the strap in a vice-like grip, over the banister and into a free fall.

Slow motion became slower still as together woman and child fell through the air.  In the infinite span between wood balustrade and marble floor, Helen had time to form the thought: 
So this is what it feels like to fly
. 

And then they landed with a sickening thud. 
Somewhere in her consciousness
Helen
heard a major bone break and felt searing pain rip through her leg. She blacked out from the agony of it, then made herself
come back
.

Katie.
 
The child lay motionless on top of her, a rag doll again.  Helen's single thought was a wild denial. 
Don't let her be dead.  No.

Hardly daring to move, she whispered, "Katie?"  Her answer was a whimpering sound, a puppy left too long in the cold.

Helen fought the urge to black out again and turned her head with an effort to look above them.  There was Peaches, staring down at the two with utterly cool curiosity, assessing the damage.  A hint of a smile crossed her perfectly formed lips.

A car door slammed outside. It was like the hushed call of a director:
action.

Katie, revived,
burst into tears
. Peaches turned and fled from the balustrade. Helen
tried to sit up but fell back in pain.  The toddler, realizing she was on safe ground again, scrambled to her feet but tripped and fell back down on Helen's broken
thigh, sending her, finally and against her will, into the sweet release of prolonged unconsciousness.

W
hen Helen came to, she half expected to see Katie playing pony-boy on her shattered thigh: the pain was unbelievable.

But Katie was gone. In her place, two paramedics—the burly one looked kinder—were in the process of rearranging Helen
'
s leg fragments in a splint. In a near-swoon, Helen rolled her head from side to
side
, looking for other, more beloved faces.

Becky was standing a little to the left, pressing Katie close to her shoulder, stroking her cheek, soothing her whimpers. Next to her stood
Russell; even through her tear-
blurred vision, Helen could see that his nose was red from crying. To Helen
'
s right, Nat was on his knees, doing for her what Becky was doing for Katie.

All safe
,
all alive. Helen
'
s smile, so barely there, was profoundly joyous.
"
I feel
...
like Dorothy
...
in the
Wizard of Oz,
"
she whispered.

"
Oh, Mom
...
oh, Mom,
"
Becky said, tears running freely down her cheeks.
"
I saw it. I saw what happened.
"

"
You coulda died,
"
said Russell in a voice as pallid as his face.
"
You almost could
'
ve.
"

"
She
'
d never do that,
"
Becky said in distress to her brother.
"
How can you say that?
"
She turned back to Helen.
"
I got free out of the closet
...
I saw you
...
I
you lean
so
far over
,
"
she said, covering her hand over Katie
'
s ear and pressing her close
.  It was just horri
—
"

"
Hey, kids, c
'
mon
," Nat said, cutting her short.  "Let
these guys do their job. You
'
re not making it any easier.
"

He turned back to Helen and said in a low, shaken voice,
"
Everyone
'
s fine.
You
kinda took it on the chin, darlin
'
,
"
he said, trying to manage a smile.
"
But it
'
s over now, Helen. It
'
s over.
"

"
Peaches?
"

"
It
'
s over.
"

After that he hustled the children into the music room and cleared the way for the paramedics to get Helen onto a collapsible stretcher and into the ambulance.

"
As soon as Janet gets here,
"
he told Helen last thing,
"
she
'
ll take the kids back to your house and I
'
ll follow you to the hospital. I wish I could come with you now, but—
"

"
No,
"
Helen said faintly.
"
Stay
.  U
ntil Janet.
"
In a groggy, pain-drenched voice she
whispered
,
"
How did she die?
"  Because she knew.

"
Later
...
it can wait,
"
he said, more somber than ever. She motioned to the paramedics for a moment
'
s more time.
"
Please, Nat,
"
she begged. It seemed to her that she had to know. That she had to put Peaches Bartholemew behind her before she could begin the rest of her life.

Nat seemed ultimately to understand that. He said in a flat-calm voice,
"
She was climbing down the ivy that
'
s trained up the back of the house. Her carryall was slung diagonally across her chest. It got caught in the growth when she lost her footing on the way down. The handle caught around her neck, breaking it.
"

Helen closed her eyes; tears surprised her by spilling out.
"
Who found her?
"
she whispered, dreading the answer.

"
Thank God, the police. They didn
'
t see her at first. They saw the jewelry, splattered on the ground below her. It fell out of the bag as she
—
"

"
Hanged there. Oh, God.
"

"
It
'
s over, Helen. Go. I
'
ll be there for you as soon—ah, there
'
s Janet now. I
'
ll be there for you, Helen. Period.
"

Six days later, Helen was out of the hospital. Her doctors called her spunky and Nat called her nuts; her insurance company was thrilled. Her aunt thought it was scandalous, but Helen didn
'
t care. She had minds to soothe and hearts to fill, at home and at school.

Her shattered femur had been expertly rodded; she
'
d been able to avoid the dread cast-brace. All that remained was to master the use of crutches. It wasn
'
t easy. She hadn
'
t given her son nearly enough credit for his earlier nimbleness on them.

Russ teased her often about her awkwardness; it gave him great joy. (Without asking her, he
'
d also painted her crutches bright yellow, because he was afraid that someone might not see them and knock them out of his mother
'
s grip.)

Helen stayed at home for a full, luxurious week, surrounded by flowers and fruit baskets and the good wishes of the parents who
'
d stayed loyal through it all. It seemed to her that after months of stop-and-start agony, her life was moving into a smoother stretch, like a river that hits sudden rapids and, just as unexpectedly, flattens and becomes serene again.

The first good news had come early. While Aunt Mary was visiting in the hospital, a sharp-eyed surgeon had taken one look at her and, after a few questions, suggested that
she be tested for hypothyroidism. Aunt Mary
'
s puffy eyes, her facial fuzz, her distressing bouts of forgetfulness—all were symptoms, he ventured, of the eminently treatable disease. There was dancing (well, hobbling) in the hospital halls that night.

There was more good news. Nat had decided to leave his job and work at home. He couldn
'
t give it a hundred percent anymore, he said, and it didn
'
t seem right to give it any less.

As for the brick mansion with its bloodstained door, it would be sold.

"
Too many traumas; too many brutal memories for Katie and for me,
"
he
'
d told Helen in the hospital.
"
I can
'
t go into the garden, my old bedroom, my new bedroom. Katie—well, I wouldn
'
t think of taking her up the stairs again.
"

"
It
'
s been in your family so long,
"
Helen had said, though she agreed completely.

Nat had merely shrugged.
"
It
'
s time to move on.
"

Go where money is,
his great-great-grandfather had commanded. The words were like a curse that had hung over the majestic, sorrowful house on
Chestnut Street
. They had sent Nat away from his home in search of a fortune and had drawn Peaches into its midst on the same wretched quest.

And like any curse, it had left in its wake death and destruction and burned-out dreams.

So Katie had stayed at Helen
'
s house for a couple of days; but by the time Helen was out of the hospital, she and Nat had moved into a small, charming Victorian rented out by an elderly gardener who
'
d decided to move to Vancouver to be nearer her daughter.

"
I
'
m really getting the hang of this parent thing,
"
Nat had
told Helen one afte
rn
oon on his way to pick up Katie from The Open Door.
"
And the house is working out great. It
'
s just the place to crank up a new career. They say everyone has at least one book inside him. Mine happens to be a common-sense guide to investing—not the Great American Novel—but what the hell. Maybe the novel will follow.
"

Another blessing: The Open Door was still open. Not many parents and preschoolers went through it anymore, but it was still open. The appalling death of Peaches Bartholemew ha
d sent another round of parents
withdrawing, of course; violence to them was violence, and Helen couldn
'
t blame them.