Liberty or Death (31 page)

I set down my fork, not hungry anymore, coming slowly back from the fog as I tried to make sense of this attack. I had been hustling for hours. I had been sitting maybe three minutes. "Theresa... Mrs. McGrath... I'm trying. I really am. It's just that I'm not feeling very well today." I did not want to share my personal business with her. I'd planned to wait until the mid-morning lull and then tell her I was leaving. But there had been no lull. Her sudden attack caught me off guard.

She peered at me with narrowed eyes. "Because you're not getting enough rest. You look like death warmed over, Dora. All the customers have noticed. What time did you get in, anyway?"

"It was pretty late," I admitted. "Look, Theresa, I... I appreciate all you've done for me, but..."

Theresa wasn't listening. She slapped her palms down on the table, exasperated. "I can't believe you've found another man already, Dora, but even if you have... you can't let that interfere with your work. Not if you want to stay... I'm not running some home for loose women here."

I felt like I had as a teenager, getting the third degree from my mother. I was always a pretty good kid, and her suspicion about what I might be doing made me angry. I'd gotten up this morning after only a tiny bit of sleep, and against all medical and practical advice, come to work because I believed in doing my job, even if it was a job I hated. And because I knew breakfast was the busiest time of the day and it hadn't seemed fair to leave her stranded then. But I'd been trying to quit for hours—to give her some warning—and she hadn't let me.

I was too strung out by now to have any finesse. "I got to bed around three," I said, my temper flaring. I tried to rein it in and act like the docile Dora. "Do you want to know why?"

She shrugged indifferently. I didn't feel like explaining in detail, but her reaction made me angry enough that I did plunge into my personal business. Now that I had relaxed some of my desperate control, it felt like I was having tiny fainting spells, consciousness coming and going like it was a camera lens and someone was trying to get the focus right. I'd been running too long on stamina. Now I was running down.

"I was at the hospital having a miscarriage," I said. "When I finally got back, your son Jimmy was waiting out there. He dragged me out of my car, dumped out my purse, threatened to beat me up, and cross-examined me about where I'd been."

Theresa looked stricken, but all she said was, "Oh, really? You never mentioned you were pregnant. And as for my son, why would he do that? Jimmy doesn't even know you."

That last, at least, was right. Otherwise, it was as if she hadn't heard a word I said. Perhaps, during the night, Theresa had suffered a sea change into something smaller and meaner. She'd always seemed tough but fair; now she just seemed tough. Despite being a mother herself, she didn't show even a glimpse of compassion. Suddenly I couldn't stand this place another minute. I shoved back my chair and stood up. I was worse off than I thought. I had to hold the back of the chair for support.

"Look, Theresa, I hurt and I'm bleeding and I'm supposed to be spending the day in bed. I've only had three hours sleep and I'm here at work trying to do my job because I know you need the help. I don't know how much more seriously a person can take things. I thought I might be safe here, but the people are even crazier than where I came from. I don't need to go from a husband who wants to knock me around to your crazy son who wants to do the same thing. Better the devil I know than the devil I don't."

Everyone in the room was staring at me. With shaking hands, I pulled my tip money out of my apron and crammed it into my shorts pockets. Then I dropped the apron on the table. "I quit." I wasn't getting anywhere and wearing myself out for no purpose didn't help Andre.

"Look," Theresa said, looking around the kitchen as if for confirmation and support. "You don't have to be so gosh-darned dramatic. Nor make a martyr of yourself, either. If you'd told me you were... uh... unwell... we could have managed and you could have stayed in bed. But I'm no mind reader." She waved a bony hand at the rest of the crew, who were still staring. "...None of us are. But that doesn't mean we don't care... that we're not decent human beings. Finish your breakfast and then go on upstairs and get yourself some rest. We can talk about this later."

I looked down at my plate of congealing French toast and shook my head. It wouldn't get any better. I couldn't cope with her practical kindness any more than I could cope with her coldness. I knew what it was like to run a business and worry about the bottom line. I did it myself. There was something missing in Theresa. Everyone talked about how she was hard but fair. Fair to herself, mostly. And I'd had enough. "No," I said. "I'll be going. It will be better for both of us."

Bravado. I couldn't go anywhere right now. If I didn't get out of this room and into bed in the next minute, I was going to humiliate myself by falling on my face in front of all of them. I wanted to rush upstairs, pack my bag, and go, but it wasn't in the cards. Not rush. Not stairs. Not pack. Not go. Crawl, stagger, stumble, creep. I made it to the door, defying their staring eyes, but even clinging to the railing, I couldn't manage the stairs. I huddled on the bottom step, watching the wall go from dark gray to light gray and fade into darkness again, until Clyde came, put an arm around me, and hauled me up. He left me sitting on the edge of my bed and went out, shutting the door softly behind him, never saying a word, as much an enigma as ever.

If I lived a dozen lifetimes, I'd never understand these people. Yesterday they had turned their backs and let Hannon's minions terrorize me. Today they were willing to let me fall on my face, and then, just as suddenly, they were kind. I was like a stray dog. Sometimes they fed me; sometimes they kicked me. I could go or stay and it wouldn't matter to them. My presence here really mattered to myself. Myself and Andre.

I should have been thinking about what to do next, but before I could, I tipped slowly sideways and tumbled into dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

Chapter 21

 

I woke around two in the afternoon because my room was so hot it felt like my blood was going to boil. I didn't have the strength to turn on the fan. I didn't think it was blood loss or delayed shock, it was simply exhaustion. I was always tired. The weeks leading up to the wedding I'd been working serious overtime so we could get away for a honeymoon, and I'd been running on borrowed energy all week—not only the energy to keep going at work, but the energy it took to keep from falling apart. It took a lot of energy to be tamped down, to maintain a low profile, and to keep from pounding on every door in town, asking if they'd seen Andre.

I was thirsty. I needed to take some pills, use the bathroom, do some stuff. I tried to get up but it was a repeat of last night. I sat up okay, but when I tried to stand, I slipped slowly off the edge of the bed and ended up sprawled on the floor, staring at the dust balls that had formed since my one attempt at housekeeping. At least this time there was no hulking brute to observe my humiliating weakness. I looked back in amazement at my morning, wondering how on earth I'd worked all those hours without collapsing. Well, I had collapsed, hadn't I? And just as soon as I got uncollapsed, I was packing my car, climbing behind the wheel, and getting myself out of here, making Jack Leonard a happier man. That didn't look to be happening anytime soon.

Being helpless increased my misery. In the end, I hadn't needed a horde of villains to entrap me and render me helpless. My own body had done it, betrayed me at a time when I needed to be at the peak of my form. More than ever in my life, I needed to be able to depend on my strength and resilience. Needed to and couldn't.

I was done here at Mother Theresa's, but there were still things I wanted to follow up. Lots of things. There were the forms from the shelter census to be gone over more carefully and compared with the names of the militia members on the list Roland Proffit had given me. There might be a connection between the two lists, a name I recognized. Now that I knew what had happened to Jed Harding's wife, there were questions I wanted to ask his mother. Mary Harding might be fragile and weary but she was a good person, a moral person. I didn't think she would condone a horrendous murder, not even to protect her son or out of fear of his compatriots. Before I left town, we were going to talk.

Then there was Jimmy McGrath. Who the hell was he and why had he wanted to borrow his mother's truck when he had one of his own? Because it was bigger? And what did he want it for? Where was he taking it? Another time, a bold and headstrong Thea Kozak probably would have followed the truck or found out where the camp he was staying at was and checked it out. But this was the new, risk-averse me. I didn't take life-threatening chances. Not when someone like Jimmy McGrath was involved, a bully who frankly scared me witless.

And I had to face the reality of my situation. I couldn't do much about Jimmy. At best, I might get an address or a location for the camp. Tell Jack and his men to be on the lookout for the truck. I was lying on a dusty floor, sweaty and sticky, my brain the only part of me that still seemed to be working. It was intolerable. I put my palms down and pushed myself up so I was sitting. That was as far as it went. I had to rest before my next move.

As I rested, I contemplated my situation. I had survived up to this point by a split-personality combination of being unusually optimistic, and by having big chips on both my shoulders that drove me and fueled my ambition. The first chip came from my parents: part from resentment that despite all my successes and efforts to please my father, he always took my mother's side, even when she was dead wrong; and part from the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I could never please my mother. The second chip came from having grown up with a big chest and a pretty face, which, in high school, had made it difficult to be taken seriously or respected for my mind. I was still, these many years later, edgy and resentful about anything I perceived to be a slight because I was female, or a failure on anybody's part to take me seriously.

I had spent the years since my husband David's death restoring my balance and learning about compromise and perspective. It had been scary to take a chance on another relationship and it had been scary to take a chance on becoming Suzanne's partner instead of her employee. I'd worked hard on it. Hard enough so that when Andre proposed, I was willing to risk saying yes. And this was where I'd ended up. Just steps from the top, I'd tumbled down life's emotional staircase and broken my spirit.

I was afraid that without bold acts and daring chances, Andre couldn't be saved. But I was afraid of Stuart Hannon and I was afraid of Jimmy McGrath. I was afraid of being hurt more, afraid of taking any more chances, even though I despised the pathetic, wimpy person I was becoming.

A fat, annoying fly circled my head, buzzing my nose, and after a few tentative waves of my arm, I gave up, too weary to chase it away. It seemed an appropriate companion, somehow, for my rotten life. The air in the room hung heavy. It had the breathless stillness of anticipation, as though the smoldering passions of this angry town had gathered within these walls.

Someone banged on my door, then entered without waiting for a response. Cathy McGrath, with a set and peevish face that she might have borrowed from her mother, came in carrying a tray which she set on the bedside stand. Then she knelt down beside me, staring into my face and feeling my forehead. There were food stains on her clothes and her hair had straggled out its confines and curled wildly around her face. She looked weary, but flushed and pretty. The color that heat and effort had put in her cheeks suited her. Too bad she looked so cross.

"Clyde sent me," she said shortly. "I can't stay. It's a madhouse down there. They're like a bunch of baby birds. A whole roomful of baby birds with open mouths, peeping continually until they're fed. And Ma's down there, charging around like an enraged bull, won't explain what's going on or what's happened to you. I really didn't have time for this, but Clyde insisted... He's such a Goddammed worry wart."

She sat back on her heels. "I don't want to offend your independence or anything, but would you like me to help you up off the floor?"

I had to like someone with the guts to ask a question like that. "Just this once," I said. She grabbed my hands and pulled me up. Like her mother, she was surprisingly strong for someone so slight. It hurt to move and I lay down on the bed, ignoring the lumpy covers, and groaned. "There are some pills in the bathroom... if you wouldn't mind."

She looked like she did mind, but waiting on people was second nature to her. "Hold on." She headed for the bathroom, then changed her mind. She dragged my chair over, set the fan on it, and turned it so that the air poured over me. I closed my eyes, relishing the cool, and wondered if maybe I wasn't going to die of misery after all. "Okay. Pills in the bathroom." I heard the snap of childproof covers. Water ran. And then nothing happened.