The Mill River Redemption (39 page)

Alex
.

Emily parked the car and jumped out, but the ambulance pulled away before she reached the bystanders. “I saw it coming over here while I was working at the McAllister house. What happened?” she asked as she came up beside her great-aunt.

“Nobody’s sure, but we think Alex fell out of that tree.” Ivy rubbed her eyes, and Emily saw that tears were working their way down the crevices on her face. “Daisy and Claudia happened to be coming by and found him in the grass, unconscious. He still wasn’t awake when they left with him.”

“They’re taking him to Rutland Regional?”

“Probably,” Ivy said. “I know things have been difficult between you and Rose, but she’s totally alone right now. Given the situation, I think we should all go to the hospital, too.”

Father O’Brien nodded his agreement.

Claudia seemed to take this suggestion as her cue to leave. She embraced Emily and Ivy and urged them to call her if there was anything she could do to help.

As Claudia made her way down the sidewalk, Emily watched Ivy talking quietly with Father O’Brien. She was anxious and afraid. Of course she understood that her great-aunt would find his company comforting at a time like this, but she didn’t at all like thinking about a priest in a hospital. Too often, it was an image of
last rites and imminent death, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her nephew. Still, neither her fear nor her discomfort would stop her from going with them.

“All right,” she said finally. “My car’s in the shop, but if we can take your car, Aunt Ivy, I’ll drive.”

“Actually, if you can drop me by the parish house on the way, I’ll drive separately in my truck,” Father O’Brien said. “It might be better to have more than one vehicle.”

On any other day, Emily might have tried to discourage the elderly priest from getting behind the wheel, but today she only nodded.

“Let me get my keys and purse,” Ivy said. “It’ll just take a minute.” She hurried back across the street.

Daisy was standing, listening to the plans being made and holding a large basket of vegetables and preserves. “I was bringing this to Miss Rose,” she explained as she caught sight of Emily’s curious look. “Miss Claudia was helping me carry it. I wanted to try to apologize one last time.”

“That’s so kind of you, Daisy. Your being here just at the right time probably saved Alex, you know.” Daisy blushed, causing the reddish birthmark that curled up onto her cheek to become a little less noticeable. “I wonder if you’d be willing to do me a huge favor? I haven’t fed Gus or taken him for his evening walk yet, and I have no idea how long I’ll be at the hospital. Could you take care of Gus for me until I’m back?”

“Oh, Miss Emily, I’d be happy to.” Daisy’s teary eyes lit up. “He could even stay with me. I just know Smudgie would love to have company, too!”

Emily ran into her house. She threw a few cans of dog food into a plastic grocery sack, put Gus on his leash, and hurried back outside. “Here he is,” she said as she handed the food and leash to Daisy. Gus wagged his tail and whined, eager for attention.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Emily. I’ll take good care of him for as long as you need me to. It’ll be like a doggie daycare!” Daisy reached out to stroke his head. “I hope little Alex is okay,” she added.

“Me too, Daisy, and thank you again, so much,” Emily said, just as Ivy came huffing across the street with her purse on her arm. “After we drop off Father O’Brien, we’ll give you and Gus a ride to your place so you don’t have to lug that basket all the way back.”

On the short drive to Rutland, she didn’t say much, preferring to remain silent while Ivy wondered aloud what had possessed Alex to climb up into the oak tree. Emily was terrified for her nephew and plagued by a sense of déjà vu as they approached the hospital. It was the same feeling of dread she’d had when Andy had died and Rose had been the one who was hurt. Just as it did back then, the drive seemed to take forever, as if time were moving backward in an attempt to shield them from the agony ahead.

At the hospital, they walked together into the emergency entrance and then the waiting room, the place where her world had fallen apart so long ago. As she looked at the rows of identical chairs, the dull industrial carpeting, and the stacks of worn magazines, Emily struggled to push away the memories that came flooding back.
Now isn’t the time
, she told herself.
We’re here for Alex. You need to stay positive for him
.

There were only a few people in the waiting area. Rose was among them, sitting hunched forward and tense in a chair off to the side.

“Rose?” Ivy said, and they started toward her, but almost at the same time, a man wearing scrubs came into the waiting room and called out, “Ms. Frye?”

Rose immediately jumped up and went to him, and Emily and Ivy moved closer. Still with her back to them, Rose was listening to
the doctor and nodding, but Emily was able to hear what he was saying.

“… results of the CT scan. Your son has an epidural hematoma. What that means is that he has bleeding inside his skull that’s causing pressure to build up on his brain. Alex needs to have surgery to relieve that pressure as soon as possible. We’ve alerted neurosurgery at Fletcher Allen in Burlington, and we have a DHART helicopter en route to transport him there. It should be arriving here in a few minutes.”

“Will I … can I ride with him? Please let me go with him,” Rose asked in a shaky voice.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the doctor said. “Stay here, in the waiting area. A nurse will be down in a few minutes to escort you to the helipad.”

Rose nodded again as the doctor hurried off, but she didn’t move from where she was standing.

“Rosie, honey?” Ivy said. Emily watched as her great-aunt went to put an arm around her sister. “We heard what the doctor said just now. Have you seen Alex since you got here?”

Rose shook her head and glanced back over her shoulder to where Emily was standing. Her face was splotchy and red, and she was still crying uncontrollably.

“Have you gotten hold of Sheldon?” Ivy asked.

Rose nodded. “Not yet, but I’ve left messages,” she managed to say between sobs. “Oh, Aunt Ivy, this is all my fault.” She fell into Ivy’s arms, and Emily watched as her great-aunt tried to comfort her sister.

“No, honey, it’s not,” Ivy said, smoothing Rose’s disheveled blonde hair. “Kids do things like climbing trees all the time. It’s a part of being a kid, and this is just one of those crazy accidents that sometimes happen.”

“No,” Rose said. “It wasn’t an accident. Earlier, he was wanting
me to come outside with him, and I didn’t go.” She uncurled her fist and held out her hand. “He was wearing this. He figured it out, found it all by himself. It must’ve been hidden in the tree.”

Emily took a step closer as she and Ivy stared into her sister’s open hand. She saw the sparkle of gold and silver—a familiar locket, and a key engraved with “338” that was unmistakably real.

A
S SOON AS SHE GOT HOME
, C
LAUDIA TRIED TO CALL
K
YLE
to tell him about what happened to Alex. He didn’t answer his phone, though, and the receptionist at the station told her he wasn’t there.
Probably on patrol again
, she thought. Even though she felt anxious and unsettled, and her thoughts kept drifting back to the horrible image of the little boy lying unconscious in the grass, she finally decided to head into Rutland as she had planned.

At JCPenney, Claudia found some cute shirts and a new pair of running shoes, but as she paid for her things and looked out of the storefront into the mall, she was forced to admit that, after Alex’s accident, her heart really wasn’t into clothes shopping. She still needed to stop for groceries, though. The inside of her refrigerator was looking pretty empty, and the big Hannaford supermarket had a nice salad bar and a better selection of produce than the small grocery store in Mill River.

Maybe it was because she was so concerned about Alex, or because she had committed the cardinal dieting sin of shopping while she was hungry, but when Claudia emerged from the supermarket, there was a box of Entenmann’s cake donuts in one of her bags. Oh, she’d bought plenty of fruit and vegetables, too, but it had been such a long time since she’d allowed herself her favorite sweet.
I’ll ration them out
, Claudia thought.
One each day, after exercising, and I’ll keep the box in the car to avoid temptation
.

On the way home, she passed the King’s Lodge, the fancy restaurant
where Kyle had taken her for Valentine’s Day. She felt warm and tingly remembering the wonderful dinner they’d had … and the unforgettable night together that had followed. It was a welcome distraction from her worry.

She was almost back to Mill River when she thought again of the vandalism complaint Kyle had handled. He’d said something about damage to Rose DiSanti’s lawn, about the word “lush” being burned into it. She and Daisy hadn’t made it as far as Rose’s house, and she was suddenly curious to see it for herself. She felt a little silly acquiescing to the urge to gawk, but vandalism of any kind was such a rarity in Mill River. It would take her only a few minutes to drive by and get a glimpse of what had happened.
In fact, I can get a little something for Alex at The Bookstop while I’m over there
, she thought. She remembered that Rose had mentioned how much he liked to read, so a couple of books would be the perfect get-well gift.

As she came into Mill River, Claudia turned onto Maple Street. The Bookstop was on one side of her car and Rose’s house on the other, and she slowed her car and peered out the window at the front yard.
Someone sure did a number on it
, she thought. Just as Kyle had said, the word “lush” was visible in the lawn, with the letters being formed by swaths of dead, yellow grass. Strangely, though, the grass surrounding the letters seemed to be dying, too. It was wilted, and patches were beginning to turn a brownish-yellow, although none was yet the same hue as the letters. It was almost as if someone had purposely poured weed killer over the whole lawn in an attempt to hide the word written there.

Claudia didn’t want to pause too long in front of the house lest she raise suspicion of any kind, so she stepped on the accelerator after a few moments of creeping along at idle speed. She had only gone perhaps another fifty feet, though, when she slammed on the brakes.

Kyle’s truck was parked along the curb right in front of Emily DiSanti’s house.

Her first thought was that it couldn’t possibly be Kyle’s pickup, since he was still supposed to be at work. But, there was no mistaking that the truck was his. She stared at the familiar dent on the left rear fender, the result of a close encounter with a shopping cart. As she eased up on the brake and slowly passed the vehicle, she saw the Mill River Elementary bumper sticker pasted on the back, the one she’d sent home with Rowen last year. Right next to it was the green license plate with the number she knew by heart.

With her mind reeling, Claudia drove the rest of the way down the street and pulled over just before the intersection. She was craning her neck around to look back at Kyle’s truck when Emily’s front door opened. She gripped the steering wheel and stared, still not quite believing what she was seeing. Kyle came out, looked around quickly, and jogged to his truck. Slowly, certain other facts registered in Claudia’s brain.

The sedan Emily had been driving earlier was parked right behind Kyle’s truck, which meant that even if Emily had gone to the hospital in Rutland, she was home now.

Kyle wasn’t wearing his police uniform.

Rowen wasn’t with him.

Claudia pulled away from the curb, gunned the engine, and headed back to Main Street. She needed to get home, to process what she’d just seen.

Something’s been going on
, she thought as she pulled back into her driveway. She grabbed her shopping bags from the back of her car and slammed the hatchback. She barely made it inside before starting to cry.

If she hadn’t seen what she’d just seen, she never would have believed Kyle to be capable of cheating on her. How could she have been so stupid, and so blind? There had to have been signs—maybe she’d missed them, or talked herself out of any suspicions. Obviously, she’d misjudged Kyle and underestimated her own naïveté.
He’d been her first real relationship, her first love, her first everything. She should have realized that no one was as perfect as Kyle had seemed. No real relationship happened just like magic and worked out happily ever after, like a fairy tale.

Claudia pressed her back up against her refrigerator and slid down until she was sitting on the floor next to the bags of groceries. She glared at the stalks of celery and the crisp green lettuce that protruded from them. What was the point? All the hard work to change the way she cooked, to deprive herself of delicious things, to fight with herself over running every morning seemed to have been a huge waste of time. When she’d been fat, no one had been attracted to her. Now that she was a healthy weight, it seemed that the only men interested in her were stalkers like Leroy and cheating scumbags like Kyle.

What other reason would there be for him to be over at Emily’s?
she wondered.

Emily
. Claudia felt a growing disgust as she thought back then to the first time she’d met her—at Josie DiSanti’s wake. She’d felt such empathy for her, standing alone in Josie’s living room while her older sister had the support of a husband and son. On the day Emily had moved to Mill River, she’d actually schlepped her belongings into her house. She’d offered to introduce her to her circle of friends. And just this morning, after Alex’s accident, she’d hugged Emily in a genuine attempt to comfort her, never guessing that the redheaded harlot had apparently been doing some comforting of a different kind. Emily’s behavior in the face of the kindness she had extended was especially appalling.

Sticking up from the grocery bag furthest from her, Claudia saw a white cardboard corner. Almost without thinking, she jumped to her feet and grabbed it. Before another ten seconds had passed, she was standing at her kitchen counter and had poured herself a tall glass of milk. She opened the Entenmann’s box and
began to salivate. There were a dozen donuts before her. Claudia’s hand hovered just above the neatly stacked rings of cinnamon-sugar- and powdered-sugar-coated bliss. Her indecision lasted only a moment, and the powdered sugar won.