Shooting Starr (12 page)

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I didn't then, but I do now. That's why—”

She shook her head, stopping him there. “The newspeople can't seem to make up their minds whether she's a hero for refusing to tell the judge what she did with the child and going to jail to protect her, or a misguided do-gooder keeping a little girl from her daddy. I want to know what
you
believe.”

He leaned back in his chair and gazed at his mother with narrowed and burning eyes. He thought he knew, now, what she was angling for. The one thing that really counted in Betty Starr's estimation of a person's worthiness. “Momma,” he said with gravel in his voice, “what you're wantin' to know is, what's in her heart. Is she a good person? Does she have a
good
heart…?”

“Well,
does
she?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma'am, I believe she does.”

“Well, then.” She plunked the pie down in front of him and turned back to the sink. “That's good enough for me.”

C.J. let his breath out like a steam valve letting go. “It's just real important nobody knows about her being here.”

His mother faced him again, leaning against the sink and smiling wryly. “That's going to be a little bit difficult, isn't it? The way people come and go around here—your brothers and sisters, the grandkids—it's like Grand Central Station.” Said his momma, who'd never been north of the state of Virginia in her life. “We can't exactly keep a beautiful young woman hidden away in the attic, like one of those romantic suspense novels.”

C.J. grinned, thinking that his mother could surprise him now and then. “It's not going to be for all that long, Momma. Just a few days…a couple of weeks…just while
she gets her feet under her and some strength back.” And her eyesight?

And, he thought, while the FBI guys are working out a plan to nail Vasily.

“Anyway, with Sammi June and J.J. just startin' a new semester of college, they're not going to be getting much time off until Thanksgiving break, probably, and Jimmy Joe and Mirabella off in Florida with the little kids for two weeks, that takes care of the closest ones. Jake and Eve are already in on it, and Charly and Troy—”

“‘In on it…' Just what
is
it we're all ‘in on,' Calvin James? Who are we hiding her away from? They've been saying on the news they think it was somebody with a grudge against the local authorities up there in South Carolina that fired those shots, and it was just bad luck those poor women got in the way.” His mother paused while her eyes took on a narrow, considering look. “But that's not true, is it? You and Jake—and that means the FBI—think it was that billionaire, the little girl's father. Isn't that right? You think he had his wife killed and that he's going to come after Caitlyn. That's why all the secrecy. Oh, my lands…” She leaned against the sink, fanning herself.

Ashamed of himself for all the trouble he was dumping in her lap, C.J. rubbed his eyes and said unhappily, “Momma, I wish I could tell you more, but I promised Jake—”

She made that swatting motion again. “We'll handle things as they come, don't worry about that.” She leveled The Look at him again, the one he was sure could see inside his brain. “What I want to know is, what's all this got to do with
you?
”

He shifted in his chair and squinted guiltily at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don't just offer up your family's home to shelter a notorious stranger without good reason.”

C.J. snorted. “I'd think it was pretty obvious why—”

“And by
good
reason I don't mean because there's somebody maybe trying to shoot her. The FBI is more than capable of stashing away people where nobody, not even billionaires, can find them, and I'm sure they'd've done just fine without your help.” Her eyes narrowed even more. “But you didn't want that, did you? You wanted that girl where
you
could keep an eye on her—you personally.” After a little pause to let him squirm some more, she asked softly, “So what is it about her, Calvin James? What does this girl mean to you?”

He knew from sad experience it wasn't going to do him any good to lie, but that didn't mean he wouldn't hem and haw and try and beat around the bush as long as possible. He stretched back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face and finally settled on “It's complicated, Ma.”

Typically she came to her own conclusion, and as usual, managed to hit the nail on the head without any help from him. “You feel responsible for her. For what happened to her.”

He agreed defensively, “Well, yeah, I do. People keep telling me I shouldn't, but they're wrong.” He gave his mother a hard, fierce look, but inside his head he was seeing himself standing in the yellow glare of a yard lamp with the racket of a springtime night all around him, and Caitlyn's silvery eyes pleading with him. “The simple fact is, she asked me to do something for her and I said no. Instead, I turned her in to the police. And I don't care how right-minded it seemed at the time, if I hadn't done that, none of what happened would have happened. A woman wouldn't be dead,
she
wouldn't be—”

“Son—” Gentle now, his mother pulled out the chair closest to him and sat in it. “You can't go back and undo it. No matter what you do, you can't unfire that gun.” She reached to touch his hand, but he wasn't in a mood to be comforted.

“No, I can't.” He snatched his hand away and felt
wretched and mean for doing it. “But I intend to do what I can to make it up to her. Set things
right.
”

“How are you going to do that? You can't give her back her eyesight.”

He was too angry with her to answer. Because, of course, he knew she was right.

She studied him for a while in a sad, faintly amused way that irritated him even more, then said softly, “I expect by making it up to her you mean you'd like to do something big enough and good enough to cancel out the wrong you think you've done her. What you want is to be her hero.”

He snorted. “I'm no hero.” No, his inner self said, but you want to be. You want to be a superhero and make the world turn the wrong way around, make time turn backward and give you another chance to save the woman you…

“Son, you're not a superhero,” his mother said, in the uncanny way she sometimes had of seeing inside his mind. She rose up out of her chair and snatched his empty plate and milk glass out from under him, then stabbed at him with a spare finger. “You just remember that, when this—this
Vasily
fellow comes looking for that girl of yours, you hear me, Calvin James? Your body won't stop bullets.”

 

Caitlyn woke to her perpetual darkness and, wide-eyed and listening, sought to understand what it was about this particular morning that was so different from other mornings in her recent past. It came to her at last.
It's so quiet.

It came to her, too, that quiet was very different from silence. As she'd discovered during her time in the hospital, silence spoke with many languages; silences must be deciphered, interpreted, understood. Quiet, on the other hand, was…peace.

One thing hospitals and jails had in common was that they are never quiet. It occurred to her that this was the first time in many, many weeks that she'd had a chance to
think…
really
think about everything that had happened and where she was now and what the future might hold, to think without shock and pain and fear, without the shadowy specter of Panic lurking like a stalker just beyond the edges of her mind's eye.

The first thing she thought about was what a wonderful relief it was to wake up this morning and not feel terrified. It was somewhat of a mystery to her why that should be so; she was still definitely blind, still almost certainly in danger, still very much alone among strangers, just as she'd been yesterday.

Unable to solve that puzzle, she put it aside and moved on to the second thing that was missing from her life this morning: pain. Okay, not
completely
missing; there was enough tenderness under the bandages that still encased quite a large part of her head to make her wince and gasp when she touched it with exploring fingers. But the pounding, nausea-inducing headache that had been her constant companion in the days following the shooting had faded to a hum in the background of her mind.

Having determined that much, her fingers moved on, lightly now, tracing the bandages…then her eyebrows…her nose…cheekbones…lips. Exploring the shape of her own face. How odd, she thought, that I've never done this before.
What must I look like?
She'd been swollen and bruised. Was she still? Were her eyes still bruised?
And my hair! Did they shave my head? Do I have any left?
Gingerly she felt the top of her head, breathed a long sigh when she felt the familiar short, slippery tufts. Badly in need of washing, she was sure, but
there.

She'd never been vain, but now she would have given anything for the chance to look in a mirror and see her own reflection looking back at her. She'd never thought before how vulnerable it made a person, not to be able to check out her own appearance before presenting herself to the world. How awful not to be able to tell if she had a smudge
of dirt on her face, spinach in her teeth, food spilled down her front, clothes that didn't match. A rooster tail in her hair!

She threw back the covers. Trembly, she sat on the edge of the bed and explored her body as she had her face. Arms…shoulders…collarbones…breasts. What was she wearing? Oh, yes—cotton bikinis and a camisole top that Jess had said belonged to her daughter, Sammi June. Jess had told her they were pink—Sammi June had evidently been very fond of pink—with a little edging of lace. Yes, she could feel that and also three tiny buttons on the front of the camisole near the top. She felt bones in unexpected places; she'd lost weight. Small wonder…

She stood up carefully, feeling brave and very tall in her personal darkness. She put out her hands and the left one brushed something—a lampshade. Yes—on the nightstand! And there were all the little plastic bottles with her medications Jess had put there for her the night before. A glass of water.

Feeling her way, she moved clockwise around the room, identifying the door to the hallway, then a tall dresser, and another door, this one obviously a closet. Then a rocking chair…oops, and a small desk. Then…a window. She explored it with her fingers and discovered that it was very much like the one in her room in her parents' house in Sioux City—an old-fashioned wooden sash, double-hung, with a locking lever. She moved the lever and tried to open the window. It slid up easily—evidently the former occupant of the room had liked fresh air, too. It rushed in, cool and light across her face, and she gave a little sobbing gasp of joy. Prickles filled her nose and eyes, then tears; she hadn't expected she would ever feel
joy
again.

Sinking to her knees, she rested her arms on the windowsill, and then her chin. How do I tell, she wondered wistfully, if it's morning or night?

But wait—it was the bright and busy twitter of birds she
heard, not the ratchety chorus of frogs and insects that filled Southern nights. Daytime, then. As if in confirmation, she heard the creak and bang of a screen door, and someone's—Jess's—voice talking to the dogs. “Hey, Bubba… Hey, Blondie. Yes…good girl…down now. Okay…yes…aren't you a good ol' boy….” And the eager woofs and grunts and whines they made in reply.

How she longed to be out there, too!
Could
she? Why not?
But…by myself? Do I dare?

Yes,
she told herself firmly.
I do. I must.

Yes…because the one thing in the world she feared more than being blind was being
dependent.
I won't, she thought, as memories of last night's attack of panic rose like a nightmare specter to taunt her.
I can't.
She closed her eyes and felt again the warm and solid strength of C.J.'s arms around her…how good they'd felt…the chill of loneliness when he'd left her. She shuddered.
Never. I'd rather be dead.

Using the windowsill for leverage, she pulled herself up and methodically continued her circumnavigation of the room. Finding herself back at the foot of the bed, she discovered the pair of sweats she'd taken off last night and put them on, being careful to get the backs and fronts right.
Tags to the back!
She made the bed, taking quite a long time at it and stumbling over her sandals in the process. When she had it smoothed to her liking, she sat on the slippery bedspread and put on her sandals, then rose, lightheaded and triumphant.
So far so good.

What I need, she thought, is the bathroom and some food. In that order. Jess had shown her last night where the bathroom was. Her toothbrush awaited her there, at position “two o'clock.” She'd smiled when Jess said that. And there was soap and a washcloth—nine o' clock—and warm water and soft towels. How good it would feel to brush her teeth, wash her face….

Her stomach growled. Lord, she was hungry!

Yes! You're alive! Good morning, Caitlyn Brown…and welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

A
s she was going slowly and carefully down the stairs—and yes, she'd remembered to count them—Caitlyn heard voices and music. Following those sounds and the wafting smells of coffee, bacon and maple syrup, she felt her way to the kitchen. A U-turn to the left at the bottom of the stairs, Jess had told her, then down a long hallway with several doors opening off of it, all the way to the end.

On the way she marked the fact that there was a carpet runner on the floor and several creaky spots in the wood underneath and that the walls were papered. She could feel the seams with her fingertips as she trailed them along the surface.

The door to the kitchen was open, and she could feel warm, moist air on her face. As she stood sniffing the wonderful smells and basking in her own inner glow of triumph at having attained such a remarkable goal, she heard a voice say, “See, Momma, what'd I tell you?”

Then Jess sang out to Caitlyn, “Come right on in, hon', straight ahead about six steps and you'll hit the table.” She
paused, then added with a note of smugness, “Momma wanted me to go get you when we heard you up and around, but I told her you'd find your way down here just fine.”

Behind those words, Caitlyn heard the sounds of a chair being scooted across linoleum and a wordless demurral that had a smile in it, and then someone short and soft put an arm around her waist and gave her a quick, warm squeeze.

“Oh, well,” Betty's voice said near her shoulder, “I just thought, since it was your first day and all… Now, what can I get you, hon'? Coffee? You want some hotcakes and bacon? Or would you like some eggs? Jessie, turn that radio down.”

“It's okay—” Caitlyn said quickly, but the country song had already faded to background noise. “Coffee would be great,” she breathed as her fingers made contact with the back of a wooden chair. “Black, please,” she added while she was easing herself into it. Safely seated, she let out a relieved breath.

Fingers brushed her left hand, and Jess said cheerfully, “You're doin' great, hon'. How're you feelin' this mornin'?”

Caitlyn gave a shaky little laugh.
“Hungry.”

Betty's voice came close again. “Here's your coffee, hon'. I put it in a mug and only filled it halfway so you don't need to worry about slopping it on yourself. Sure you don't want some cream in that?”

“No, thanks, this is fine.” Fragrant steam drifted into her face. It smelled like heaven.

“Momma, quit tryin' to fatten her up,” Jess said, and added in a murmur just for her, “Twelve o'clock, hon'…that's right.”

Caitlyn's fingers touched, then closed on warm heavy crockery. She lifted the mug and inhaled, then carefully tipped the hot liquid to her lips. Warmth and pleasure flooded through her, and with it that strange, poignant joy
she'd experienced when she'd first felt the morning breeze on her face. “Oh my,” she breathed, “that's good.”

“Well now.” Betty's hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “What can I get you for breakfast? How about some—”

“Whatever you have is fine,” Caitlyn said quickly, before she could go through the menu again. It had been mind-boggling the first time. Caitlyn's idea of a big breakfast was to put milk on her Cheerios instead of eating a handful dry on her way out the door. She couldn't recall the last time she'd eaten hotcakes. Or bacon, for that matter, except maybe in a tomato sandwich. “Please, don't go to any trouble.”

Jess snorted. “Momma always fries bacon and makes hotcakes for C.J. when he's here.” And there was that same wordless but good-natured denial from Betty as Jess continued, “We normally just have toast and eggs or cereal or something.”

Caitlyn lifted her coffee mug, hoping the flush in her cheeks might be explained by the heat. “Is, um, is he here? I thought— I was under the impression he had his own place.”

“He does. It's just up the road. Momma called him when we heard you were up. He said he was gonna jump in the shower and then run right over. Ought to be showin' up any minute. Right about
now,
in fact.” She added that last part with a smile in her voice as somewhere outside a screen door banged—by the sound of it, the same screen door Caitlyn had heard earlier from her bedroom window.

She set her coffee mug carefully on the table but kept her hands curled around it, firmly anchoring them there so they couldn't betray her by reaching up to check on the state of what was left of her hair. She had that vulnerable, exposed, “Oh, God, what must I look like?” feeling again. It's only because I can't see, she told herself; it must be. She'd never worried about such things before.

Her heartbeat quickened inexplicably as she heard foot
steps scrape and stomp across a plank floor. There came the sound of a door opening. Cool, fresh air flooded her cheeks and ruffled the short tufts of hair on top of her head.

“Calvin James,” his mother exclaimed, “it's October! Where is your shirt?”

“Got it right here, Momma.” C.J. wasn't about to tell her he'd taken it off because he didn't want to sweat in it. He didn't want for her—or Jess, either—to get the idea he was going to any extra effort on account of Caitlyn being there. He would never hear the end of it.

He glanced automatically at the digital clock on the stove and checked it against the stopwatch on his wrist. Still hadn't got his time down under five minutes, but he was gettin' there.

“Wash up, son, these hotcakes'll be ready in a minute.”

He took the dish towel his mother threw at him and mopped his face and chest with it. After he'd done that, he let himself look over at the woman sitting there facing him across his mother's familiar old oak table.

He'd never seen anyone look so calm and cool…or so unbelievably beautiful. Seeing her in his mother's kitchen didn't seem real. Like finding a real-live fairy perched on the front porch rocker. To his eyes she seemed to shimmer around the edges; he had the feeling if he blinked she might disappear.

He cleared his throat and growled, “Good mornin',” as he pulled out a chair, the one next to Caitlyn and across from his sister. Caitlyn's eyes were hidden behind a curtain of eyelashes as she murmured, “'Morning,” back to him. He hitched himself up to the table and parked his elbows on it while he tried to think of something else to say. It wasn't easy with Jess sitting there watching him, with her chin in her hand and a
way
-too-interested look on her face. He had to quell a shameful urge to kick her under the table the way he used to do when he was six and she was a brand-new and stuck-up teenager.

Reminding himself it wasn't good practice for a lawyer to be at a loss for words or thinking like a six-year-old, he frowned, concentrated and came up with, “How're you doin'?”

Caitlyn took a careful sip of her coffee and informed him she was doing okay. Which didn't give him much time to work on a rebuttal, but he had his next question ready for her, anyway.

“Sleep well?”

“Yes, very well. Thank you.”

Then, thank the Lord, she looked as if she might be going to elaborate on that, and he held his breath, waiting for it. But before she got around to it, his mother turned from the stove with a plateful of hotcakes in her hand and said, “She found her way down here to the kitchen all by herself,” sounding as proud as if one of her students had won the national spelling bee.

Caitlyn muttered, “It wasn't that difficult. Jess gave me good directions.” And she was setting her coffee cup down, not realizing there was a plateful of food sitting in front of her.

Jess barked, “Plate!” C.J. reached for it to snatch it out of her way, but neither one of them was quick enough. Plate and mug made contact with a loud
clank,
Caitlyn jerked and coffee slopped out and splattered onto the hotcakes and her hands.

She gasped out, “Oh, God—I'm so sorry.” But by that time C.J. had her hands safely wrapped in his.

That was the way he thought of it:
safe.
Lord, how fragile and fine they felt, her hands. And were they trembling or was that something way down deep inside of
him?

“Didn't burn you, did it?” he calmly asked as he was rescuing the coffee cup and brushing cooling liquid from her skin. As an answer she gave her head a quick, hard shake. “Well, no harm done, then.” He got the smile into his voice, but that was as far as it went; he'd never felt less
like smiling. What he wanted to do more than anything was touch her face…brush away that stricken, frightened look with his fingers.

His mother was fussing over her, mopping up what was left of the spill with a dishcloth and scolding herself. “Hon', I just set that plate right down there without thinking. I don't know where my mind was. Don't you feel bad, now. That wasn't your fault, it was mine. Let me fix you some more hotcakes.”

“Oh, no, please don't.” Caitlyn's hands stirred in C.J.'s grasp, and when he reluctantly let them go she put one on each side of the plate and held on to it, guarding it like a big dog guards a bone. “These are fine. Really. I'll just, um…” Her eyes lifted from the plate and darted here and there in a way that made him think of panic-stricken birds.

He watched her swallow, and a patch of color appeared in each cheek. And it came to him—he didn't know where he got it, that faint flicker of insight, like lightning in the daytime. Maybe it was because he'd been thinking so much lately about what it must feel like to be blind, but all at once he knew, with absolute certainty, why she was looking so uncertain and scared. Hell, he thought, it's bad enough trying to eat when everybody's looking at you, when you can
see
what you're doing.
What must it be like to do it blind?

He coughed and rubbed his nose and said gruffly, “Hey, you want some help with that?” Her eyes flicked his way, and he braced himself, but instead of the expected bright flash of silver, they held the dark and stormy, defiant look that made him abandon the idea of cutting up her food for her, right quick.

The same unbidden insight that had told him of her fear now warned him of her pride. He picked up the syrup pitcher and poured a puddle over her hotcakes with a deft little flourish.

“Bacon's at twelve o'clock,” he said in a casual tone of
voice as he did the same for his own plateful. “Knife and fork on your right.” He cut himself a wedge of syrupy hotcakes, put it in his mouth, chewed, and after he swallowed said thoughtfully, “What I'd do if I was you, I'd stick my fork in close to the edge of my stack and cut off what I'd got stabbed. That way, you'll know what you've got on your fork.”

Jess gave a hoot of laughter. “Say
what?
”

Well, okay, he hadn't said it very well, but it was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment.

But when he stole another glance at Caitlyn, he saw that her lips weren't clamped together anymore. In fact, it looked to him as if they might be working on a smile.

A pleasant warmth spread through him, and he ducked his head and attacked his own hotcake stack with extra concentration on the off chance his sister might be watching him and catch reflections of it in his eyes.

With his peripheral vision he could follow Caitlyn's progress as she picked up her knife and fork, gauged the size and location of the stack of hotcakes on her plate, cut off a chunk and lifted it to her mouth. Then he couldn't help himself, he had to sneak another peek at her. This time her eyes were closed and there wasn't any doubt about the smile. When the pink tip of her tongue emerged from between her lips to lick away a glaze of buttery syrup, his stomach growled and his mouth began to water in a way that didn't have anything whatsoever to do with the food he was eating.

He took a careful breath and cast a guilty look across the table at Jess, and yep, sure enough, she was watching him like a hawk watches a mouse. No, not like a hawk, come to think of it; the expression on the face of his oh-so-superior, usually teasing big sister was a lot kinder and softer than that. He didn't know what to make of it, but he wished to God she'd cut it out; she was making him squirm.

“So,” he said after he'd washed down his last bite of
hotcakes with a big swig of coffee, “you're getting around by yourself okay, then? Feelin' okay?” When she'd nodded yes to both those questions, he said, “How's your, uh—” and was pointing to his own temple when he realized what he was doing and added on “head.”

But just as if she
had
seen him, she'd already jumped in with “It's okay—aches a little, but I guess that's to be expected as long as there's still swelling. The doctors said I just have to take it easy…let it heal.” Her fingers lightly touched the crown of bandages that encircled her head.

C.J. followed the gesture and felt a shock of surprise; it was as if he were seeing the bandages for the first time. They gave her a waifish, childlike look, he thought, like something out of a Dickens novel. Fascinated, he watched her fingers creep upward to pluck at the tufts of her hair. Like little golden rooster tails, he thought, or plumes of winter grass.

He was so taken up with watching those waving feathers that he forgot to worry about whether or not Jess and his mother were watching
him,
until Jess jumped in with, “That's right, hon'—you just need to give it some time.”

Then he decided he didn't care who watched him watch Caitlyn, because a little bit of a frown had appeared in the middle of her forehead, like a ripple in silk, and he couldn't bring himself to take his eyes off it.

“What I was wondering—” she made a tiny throat-clearing sound “—what I'd really love to do is go outside. Do you think it would be—”

“I don't see why not,” said Jess, getting briskly up from the table. “Long as you feel up to it. I've got to go to work, but C.J. or Momma can take you out after a bit.”