In Death's Shadow (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

It could have been wetter, I suppose, like at the
bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

Our team, whittled down to a dozen waterlogged, but spirited individuals—I shared DNA with half of them—rendezvoused at the Washington Monument, where we slogged around in puddles up to our ankles and fortified ourselves with the water
du jour
—Dasani—and containers of Yoplait served up with plastic spoons by volunteers in official yellow Race for the Cure®
T-shirts.

Somewhere down on Constitution near the Ellipse, we'd left the children, damp but happy, in the capable hands of Emily and her father, but we'd long ago lost track of Brian and Dennis, who had gone off in search of a battery for Brian's digital camera. One of those underwater models would have been far more practical.

The rest of my team was packed—elbow-to-elbow, along with 55,000 of our closest friends—into two blocks of Constitution Avenue that normally accommodated eight lanes of rush hour traffic. I sipped my water, intrigued, as the crowd began to sort itself into distinct clusters around me.

Behind Connie, a man and a woman waited with their arms wrapped protectively around their daughter, not yet thirty, but, sadly, already wearing the pink T-shirt that identified her as a breast cancer survivor.

Next to them, a husband snapped photograph after photograph of his wife as she mugged for the camera, switching the bill of her pink ball cap forward, backward, and sideways, laughing merrily into the lens.

A Neanderthal in short-shorts barged past to join a pack of eight or nine individuals, all running—their bibs proclaimed—in honor of Marjorie. As I watched, a woman who had been bent over retying a shoelace stood, and I could read the writing on her shirt: I
'm marjorie.

I was thinking,
Way to go, Marjorie!
when Connie nudged my arm with the hand she was using to hold her water bottle. "Look behind you," she whispered. "That just breaks my heart."

I turned slowly, casually, to see what Connie was talking about.

A thirtyish guy with a profile right off a Roman coin knelt on the wet pavement, helping his daughter, around four, adjust her rain cape. Through the plastic, the little girl's bib read:
in memory of mommy.

I swallowed hard, thinking how close Emily might have come to running this race in memory of me. My throat tightened as I recalled that awful day when, still groggy from the anesthesia, I'd awakened in the hospital to hear Emily sobbing in the hallway just outside my room.

I stole a glance at Valerie and knew, instantly, even before she spoke, that she was thinking the same thing. "That little girl's mother must have fought very, very hard," Valerie whispered.

I found Valerie's hand and squeezed it, too choked up to speak. I stared into the distance instead, toward the huge balloon archway that marked the starting line, then back into the mob of runners—north, south, east—in any direction other than that of the sad-eyed little girl and her handsome father.

My eyes skimmed the crowd. On the fringes, near the curb, stood a woman, her pink shirt showing through a clear plastic raincoat. Even from ten feet away I could tell her eyes were rimmed with red.

I nudged Valerie. "Look. See that woman over there? Is she all by herself?"

"Don't think so. See those two guys? Just behind her?"

But as Valerie spoke, the men moved away, confirming my suspicion that the woman was alone. She hugged herself, arms laced tightly across her chest as if trying to contain some private grief.

"Here, hold my water for a minute, will you?"

I elbowed my way through the mob until I was even with the woman. "You okay?" I asked, stepping up on the curb.

Even the rain couldn't hide the tears that coursed down her cheeks. "My sister was supposed to run with me today." She drew a ragged breath, gulping air. "But she . . . she died last week."

It was probably my imagination, but the rain seemed to fall harder then, drumming a dull rat-a-tat-tat on the bill of my cap. I slipped my arm around the woman's shoulders. "It's been four years for me. How about you?"

“Six years in September."

"You are a survivor," I said. We stood in companionable silence for a few minutes as packs of runners ebbed and flowed around us. Water that had collected on the twisted hem of her slicker poured onto her jogging shoes, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Your sister would have wanted you to run today, you know."

"I know. It's just so hard to . . . to . . . go on."

"But that's what it's all about, isn't it? Just going on."

She turned to face me then, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand. "You're right," she said. "You're absolutely right."

"Come run with us." I waved to my team, huddled in a pathetic blue and gold clump about ten yards away.

"Thanks. I'm okay. Really."

The woman squeezed my arm gently then turned and, before I could stop her, was swallowed up by the crowd.

I stood there for a moment, staring after her, praying she'd live to run the race again next year, when I noticed Connie trying to attract my attention by making exaggerated gestures, pointing to the starting line and to her watch.

Way up front, in the sea of runners, heads began to bobble. "They're off!" Connie called. But the crowd was so dense that, just like traffic jammed up on the beltway, I knew it would be five minutes, or even more, before we'd move even an inch in the direction of the starting line.

As I rejoined my group, the rain began to descend in torrents. Connie shrieked, then began laughing. "I'm soaked clear down to my underwear!" Someone began to cheer, and before long everyone around us, drenched and dripping, was laughing and cheering, too.

I nudged my way forward and stood next to Valerie, who had added a digital MP3 player to her running ensemble. I tapped her on the shoulder. "What are you listening to?" I asked.

Valerie smiled, removed one of her ear buds and handed it to me. "Listen."

I held the ear bud to my ear and concentrated, trying to identify the music over the deafening roar of the crowd. It wasn't hard. Lindsey Buckingham's gorgeously twangy guitar was slipping and sliding all around the lyrics of "I'm So Afraid," one of the tracks on Valerie's favorite Fleetwood Mac album,
The Dance
. "'Days when the rain and the sun are gone,'" I sang out loud, tearing up again as bittersweet memories washed over me. Valerie had a boom box in the hospital room we shared. We must have played
The Dance
CD a thousand times, singing along, each confined to our separate beds, until we knew the lyrics to every song by heart.

Who could have predicted that, years later, Valerie and I would be bonding again on a street in Washington, D.C. Like twins, each connected by our own umbilical cord to Valerie's MP3 player, our heads bobbed together in perfect rhythm as we sang: "'So afraid/Slip and I fall and I die.'"

The song ended. Almost reluctantly, I handed the ear bud back to Valerie. Instead of screwing it back into her ear, though, she let it dangle and reached out to wrap me in a bear hug. We might have stood there forever, oblivious to the crowd, the noise, and even the pounding rain, if Connie hadn't whomped me on the back.

The runners in front of us had begun jogging in place.

I picked up my feet. "Valerie, can I ask you a rude question?"

"Sure," said Valerie, jogging in place beside me.

“When we first met, you were worried about how to pay your medical bills, so when I heard about the cruise and saw your house—” My voice trailed off. "You win the lottery or something?"

Valerie took off her cap and shook the water out of her hair. "Ha ha, I wish." She grinned broadly. "We had kind of a windfall."

"Yeah?"

"An insurance settlement."

"You won a lawsuit?"

"No, not a lawsuit." As space opened up, we began to jog forward. "Look, it's complicated. I'll explain later." Valerie adjusted her cap, screwed in her ear bud, and with a friendly wave jogged away.

"What was that all about?" asked Connie, running up to take Valerie's place beside me.

"It's complicated," I said. "I'll explain later."

Side by side Connie and I jogged south on 17th Street and west on Independence Avenue. An insurance settlement, I mused. Very in-ter-rest-ting. I barely noticed the water rushing along the roadway as I ran, until the stream became a torrent, carrying with it raw sewage from a storm drain that had overflowed. With Connie trailing close behind, I eased through the foul-smelling bottleneck, trying not to breathe. I'll never wear these shoes again, I thought, plodding on and on toward the Lincoln Memorial.

An insurance settlement
. Chug-chug-chug.
Malpractice, maybe
. Chug-chug.
With an out of court settlement
.

Pulling slightly away from the pod of runners behind us, Connie and I looped west toward the Tidal Basin. As I dashed over Kutz Bridge, with my socks squish squish squishing, I found myself hoping Valerie would spill all, nondisclosure agreement, if any, be damned. I glanced right and couldn't resist waving to Thomas Jefferson, standing in the shelter of his memorial. Old T.J.'s Nikes, at least, were dry.

We zipped past the Holocaust Memorial, picking up speed near the Freer Gallery, so much so that the netting set up by Park Police to keep back the spectators became a blue peripheral blur. At the Hirschorn Museum, I slowed to concentrate on massaging a painful stitch out of my side, but Connie, recklessly throwing away any chance she might have had of setting a land speed record—as if—declined to run ahead, staying with me as we turned north on 7th Street. Runners streaked by, cutting and weaving, as we passed the Sculpture Garden and rounded the corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Just ahead, like a carrot on a stick, was Freedom Plaza and the black banner and digital time clocks that marked the finish line. Endorphins kicked in, and I sprinted the last hundred yards.

A few seconds later a loudspeaker blared, "Hannah Ives has crossed the finish line. She's a breast cancer survivor," and I thought my lungs would burst, whether with pride or from exhaustion, it would be difficult to say.

Valerie was waiting, as promised, on the steps of the Old Post Office Building. We gave each other a high five, then I collapsed onto the wet marble.

"Seventy-six minutes, more or less," I wheezed. "Gawd, I'm exhausted!"

Connie bent over, her hands resting on her knees. "How'd you do, Val?" she said, addressing her shoes.

Valerie beamed. “Twenty-seven."

Connie straightened. "Twenty-seven minutes? My God, girl. You on drugs?"

Valerie smiled. "I've been working out."

Breathe, Hannah! In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
"I am so out of shape," I panted. I stood up, stretched and wind-milled my arms. “I thought once around the Naval Academy seawall three times a week would prepare me for this—”

"Do you have a running partner?" Valerie asked.

"No," I admitted. "I suppose it would be easier if I went running with someone."

Connie raised both hands, palms out. "Don't look at me, sweetheart! I've got a business to run."

That was certainly true. An article in the Sunday
Arts & Leisure
section about Connie's folk art dolls, made entirely out of gourds she grew herself on the Ives family farm, had brought in a flood of orders, so many that Connie had hired a part-time assistant.

"You got Thursdays free?" Valerie asked, ignoring my sister-in-law.

I nodded.

"I'll run with you," she volunteered. "Meet me at Quiet Waters Park around ten."

"Thanks," I said, enormously grateful. "I'd like that."

Connie had been drinking from her water bottle when she stopped in mid-swig and looked around as if she'd lost something. She had. Her husband.

"Where are the guys, Val? Surely they've crossed the finish line before now."

Valerie hooked a thumb toward the arched doorways that led into the building. "Brian and Dennis have gone to find Paul and the kids. I suggested we meet at the Hotel Washington on 15th Street. We can catch a cab to the restaurant more easily from there. Don't know about you, girls, but I'm ready for some
serious
carbohydrates."

A vision of the Thai Room's delectable Bean Thread Jelly Mushroom shimmered large before me, like an oasis in the desert, especially after my skimpy breakfast.

"C'mon," I called, my stomach rumbling. "Last one to the hotel is a rotten egg roll!"

CHAPTER FIVE

The doorman at the Hotel Washington gamely
held a black umbrella more or less uselessly over Paul's head as he leaned his elbows against the passenger side window and bargained with the cabby. Dressed in an international yellow foul-weather suit he normally reserved for sailing, Paul looked like the Gloucester Fisherman, but whatever this fisherman was selling, the cabby, it was clear, wasn't buying. I could tell from the expression on the driver's face that he wasn't keen about taking a group of shipwreck survivors on board. His eyes darted from one of us to the other, clearly weighing the advantages of a three zone fare, plus a dollar fifty for each additional passenger, against how wet his seat covers were going to be by the time he got us to the intersection of Connecticut and Nebraska and paid him off, plus tip.

At the restaurant, two cabs later, we peeled off our sodden rain gear and left it to drip dry in the glass-enclosed vestibule. The hostess led us past the booth seating to a long rectangular table covered with thick, white tablecloths where the rest of our party were already pulling out chairs and getting settled.

Miranda didn't care for the booster seat the waitress had brought her. She tucked her chin to her chest and whined, "I'm a
big
girl, Daddy." Brian smiled apologetically and waved the waitress away, watching with a paternal grin as Miranda hauled herself up onto the chair. Brian pushed her in, but her dimpled chin barely cleared the edge of the table. Her lower lip quivered. "I can't
see
!"

Connie shot Dennis a look that said, plain as day,
Thank heaven she isn't our kid
, and I caught Dennis winking back.

Valerie leaned toward her daughter. "Would you like to sit on a phone book, sweetheart?"

Miranda nodded, and in a few minutes was elevated to eye level with the rest of us, perched on a copy of the Metropolitan Washington yellow pages, seriously studying her menu. It was upside down.

Paul ordered wine, then surveyed the group over the top of his reading glasses. "Everybody like spicy?"

"I do," said Valerie, "the spicier the better. But not for Miranda. Do they have something milder, like Pad Thai?"

"Is the Dalai Lhama Buddhist?" Dennis quipped.

Connie cocked her arm and aimed a playful jab at her husband's rib cage. "He's been working too hard," she said. "Poor boy needs a vacation."

Dennis had, in fact, been working hard. A series of robberies, the last resulting in a triple homicide, had every convenience store clerk from Glen Burnie to St. Mary's City clamoring for bulletproof vests.

Dennis poured his wife a half glass of pinot grigio, then turned to Valerie. "We haven't been away, really away, since our honeymoon." He filled Valerie's glass, then passed the bottle to Paul.

I dipped the corner of my napkin in my water glass and used it to wipe liquefied Goldfish crackers off Jake's chin. "Brian and Valerie just got back from a fabulous trip," I said.

Emily smiled across the table at Valerie. "I was wondering where you got the terrific tan!" She folded a large cloth napkin into a triangle and tied it loosely around Chloe's neck. "Where'd you go? The Caribbean?"

Valerie laid her menu on the table. "We went on a cruise."

Before she could continue, the waitress appeared to take our order.

Brian looked up from the menu he'd been sharing with Miranda and said, "What do you recommend, Paul?"

"Everything's good," Paul replied.

"Why don't you order for us," Dennis suggested. "Community table, right?"

Nods all around. Soon Paul was locked in a serious discussion with the waitress, who, scribbling furiously, took down every word he said in Thai script.

"Dennis and I honeymooned in the Caribbean," Connie commented after the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen with our order. "What islands did you like best?"

"Actually," said Valerie, "we never stopped in the Caribbean. We went straight from Lauderdale to Cartagena in three days! Can you believe it?"

"Where's Cartagena?" Emily asked.

I stared at my daughter in mock horror. "Where's Cartagena? After four years at Bryn Mawr you have to ask?
That
was money well spent!"

Emily stuck out her tongue.

"It's in Colombia," Brian told her, laughing. The wine had reached our end of the table and he paused to pour me a glass. "On the Atlantic side of the canal."

By "canal," I presumed Brian meant the Panama Canal. No geography whiz myself, I was confused. I'd seen
Romancing the Stone
three times. I thought Cartagena was in Chile. Maybe there were two of them.

While Valerie and Brian described highlights of their cruise, interrupting each other excitedly from time to time, I nibbled on my Thai Room Special Chicken—a crab-stuffed drumstick, deep fried to a golden brown—and wondered about Valerie's insurance settlement.

During the Stone travelogue, platter after platter was brought to our table. In addition to Pad Thai and the delectable bean threads I'd been lusting after, there was Lemon Grass Soup, Larb, Satay, Beef with Ginger Root, Chicken with Hot Chili and Garlic, Pork with Spicy String Beans, the sort of rough-hewn, lip-blistering fare one might encounter at the home table of an expatriate Thai cook. As each new dish arrived, we'd
ooh
and
ahh
and somehow rearrange the table to accommodate it, before falling upon it with dueling chopsticks like ravenous villagers. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Meanwhile, I tried to figure out a tactful way to bring up the question of Valerie's good fortune.
Say, Valerie, speaking of the Shrimp in Red Curry Sauce, weren't you going to tell us about your recent windfall?

Instead I ate silently and studied portraits of the Thai royal family that hung on the wall behind the well-stocked bar, while Valerie went on and on about the beauties of New Zealand, the mysteries of the Orient, the oppressive heat of India and Africa, and how disappointed she was that they got to spend one day—only one day!—in England, and in Southampton, at that. What was there to see in Southampton, for pity's sake?

"Wow!" said Emily simply after Valerie had talked the QE2 from Southampton back to New York Harbor. I jabbed my chopsticks into a spicy squid salad that was delicious but so spicy that it made my eyes water.

"Wow, indeed," said Paul.

"And you . . ." I pointed my chopsticks in Paul's direction. "You never take
me
anywhere!"

Paul held up a hand. "Not true! Remember the BVI?"

I settled back into my chair and chewed thoughtfully on a carrot curl before replying. "Yes. Well, there was that."

Several years before, Paul had been accused of sexual harassment by one of his students, an allegation both the Academy—and I—had taken very seriously. After putting everyone through months of hell, she'd withdrawn the charges. Exhausted by the ordeal, we'd chartered a sailboat in the British Virgin Islands, where, floating silently over the crystal blue, impossibly clear water of Manchineel Bay, the rifts in our troubled marriage had finally begun to heal. I smiled, remembering Paul's daily ritual: standing on the bow in his bathing trunks, gazing down the Sir Francis Drake Channel as the sun rose over the hills of Cooper Island behind him. How he'd turn to me with a goofy grin and sing like Jimmy Buffett, "Ah! Just another shitty day in Paradise."

According to Valerie, they'd had 120 days—none of them the least bit shitty—in Paradise.

Connie and Dennis were gazing meaningfully at one another. Based on our recommendation, they had honeymooned in the BVI. From the signals that were passing, like electricity, between them, I was betting their memories were X-rated.

I blushed and turned away, noticing that Chloe was using her fingers to arrange individual grains of rice into a design on her plate, making sure the noodles didn't touch the rice.

"Damn!" Dennis patted his waistband, pulled out his beeper and checked the screen. "Sorry, all. Gotta make a call."

Connie pouted. "Perfect timing, as usual."

Dennis kissed the top of his wife's head as he eased between her chair and the wall. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll be back before dessert."

I spooned rice into Jake's mouth while he reached for the dish holding the spicy squid. Jake would eat anything. Emily tried to persuade Chloe to try a shrimp, but my granddaughter was having none of it.

I turned to Brian. "Valerie tells me you've won some sort of lawsuit."

Brian glanced up from his noodles. "Not exactly." He gave Valerie a narrow-eyed look that would have turned Leona Helmsley to stone.

Valerie ignored him. "We cashed in my insurance."

"Your life insurance?"

Valerie nodded.

"I didn't know you could do that," I said.

Brian reached out and covered Valerie's hand, where it rested on the table, with his own. I knew the type. Now that she'd let the proverbial cat out of the bag, he would go all masculine and take charge on her. "It's a plan that became popular during the AIDS epidemic," he explained. "Here's a theoretical for you. Let's say I'm gay, terminally ill, with no dependents. And I've got this monster life insurance policy. Who's going to get it when I die?"

Connie balanced her chopsticks on the rim of her bowl. "Your family?" she suggested.

"That's one scenario," Brian continued. "But suppose your nearest and dearest believe that homosexuality is an abomination before the Lord? Suppose they've disowned you? What if you don't want them to get one red cent?"

"Change your beneficiary," Paul said.

Brian pointed a finger. "Exactly! That's exactly it! Change your beneficiary."

When we looked puzzled, Brian pushed his plate aside and leaned forward. "So let's say you're gay, you're terminally ill, your family's a bunch of homophobic shits, and your medical bills are sky high. You've also got a $500,000 life insurance policy. Why shouldn't you get to use that money now, when you need it most?"

"It's called a viatical," Valerie interrupted.

"Viati-what?" said Emily. She unwrapped a straw and plunked it into Chloe's milk.

"Viatical. It comes from 'viaticum.' That's Latin. It means preparations for a journey," Valerie said.

Brian nodded. "So this is how it works. You get a doctor to certify that you're going to die, you take that information to a financial services company that specializes in viatical settlements, and they buy your policy from you. Cash on the counter."

"I get it," said Paul. "You sign your policy over to them, they pay you for it, and when you actually die, they get their money back."

"Right. And you get to spend the money any way you want," Brian added. "Medical bills. Clothes. Cars. Trips. Whatever."

"Wait a minute!" Paul held up a hand. "How does the company make any money on the deal?"

"Well, they don't pay you the full value of the policy, of course. It's on a sliding scale, based on their estimate of how long you have to live." He patted his wife's hand. "As you know, Valerie's prognosis was grim. The doctors gave her six months. A year, max. So the payout was about eighty percent."

Valerie shifted in her chair, as if uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. "Yes," she chirped with artificial cheerfulness. "But I didn't die, did I, darling?" She smiled. "So we paid off my medical bills, and with the money we had left over—” She paused, glancing at Brian as if seeking his permission to go on.

"We bought the house and splurged on the trip," Brian finished for her.

"It's ironic, really," Valerie added, grinning broadly. " 'Viatical' means preparation for a trip. Well, it was for a trip." She giggled. "It's just that I didn't end up at the morgue."