Tied to the Tracks (24 page)
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
He said, “Angie. Tell this guy to let me go home. It’s hardly even a concussion.”
The exam room was smelled of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol and sweat. That was mostly from the doctor himself, as Len Holmes hadn’t taken the time to do much beyond wash his hands and face and pull a white coat right over his baseball clothes. On the other side of the exam table was a nurse wearing scrubs the color of canned peaches and hair dyed to match, and beside her was Win Walker.
Angie stayed with her back pressed against the door.
“Tony, I’m not taking you home until the doctor says so, so forget it.”
“Angie—” Win began, and she whirled around to face him.
“What? What do you want?”
“Win is here in his official capacity,” said Len Holmes. The nurse was looking back and forth between Win and Angie with an eager expression.
Win nodded. “I’m just waiting to take Mr. Russo’s statement. He may decide to press charges.”
“Tony will not press charges,” Angie said firmly. “Isn’t that right, Tony? You’re not going to press charges over a little misunderstanding.”
Tony was scowling at the nurse, who had snatched the package of cigarettes out of his hand as soon as he fished it out of his pocket. He turned his scowl in Angie’s direction.
“I won’t press charges,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Win asked. “You’ve got every right—”
“No charges,” Tony said. “I just want to go home.”
Len Holmes said, “I’m going to hold you for a couple hours to be sure you’re stable. Or as stable as you ever get.”
“You see?” Tony said to Angie. “You see? They’ve all got the wrong idea about me.”
“Of course they do,” Angie said. “And later you can clear it all up. Once your head is on straight again.”
When Angie made her way back to the waiting room she found it was almost empty. Harriet sat alone in the row of chairs nearest the desk.
“I sent them all home,” she said. “Time to feed the boys anyway, and they were driving me crazy.”
“You don’t mind sitting here alone?”
“I called Caroline to come sit with me, but she wasn’t answering, so I left some messages. I’m sure she’ll show up. See, here’s John’s car now.”
“Great,” Angie said, not even trying to smile.
Harriet cocked her head and sent Angie a sidelong glance. “I can’t figure you out, Angie.”
“No surprise there,” Angie said. “I’m not much good at that myself.” The door swung open and she forced her expression back to neutral as John Grant came in and walked directly across the room toward them.
“John, darlin’,” said Harriet, holding out her right hand. “Come and set with us. Where’s Caroline?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. We were at a party over on Slow Down Lane—”
“Oh, did Rob and Kai buy the Reynoldses’ place? Isn’t that the sweetest little house? They’ll be happy there, wait and see.”
“They seem pleased with it.” John had not yet met Angie’s eye, which was beginning to irritate her. “Caroline had just gone off to the store with Kai and Rivera when I got your message. I’m sure she’ll be here shortly.”
Then he did look at Angie, though the expression he showed her was baffling. Regret, and distress, and a kind of unhappy resolve. He had looked like this the afternoon he introduced her to his grandfather Grant.
“I’m sure she will,” Harriet echoed, but her tone had gone very flat. A doctor was coming toward them, a woman in her forties, small and neat and solemn.
“Dr. Landry,” said Harriet, a smile faltering on her face, “you look like your dog just died. Is Tab back there giving you a hard time?”
They were all standing now, the three of them in a quarter circle around the doctor, whose attention was focused on Harriet. She said, “Tab’s ankle is what brought him in, but I’m afraid it’s more than that just now. He had a minor cardiac event while I was examining him, Harriet. He’s not in danger of his life—”
“A heart attack?” Harriet said, flatly. “You’re saying Tab’s had a heart attack?”
“A minor heart attack,” said the doctor. “Doesn’t look like there’s any serious damage to the heart muscle, but we have to run some tests—”
Harriet pressed her fist against her mouth and shook her head, held up a hand to stop the flow of words.
“Now listen, Harriet,” said the doctor, “we’ve got a cardiologist coming in to have a look at him. Right now he’s asking for you. I’ll take you back to him.”
Harriet had gone very still and pale, though her eyes were abnormally bright. She nodded and then turned to John.
“Don’t call anybody, just yet. I couldn’t cope with the boys just now and I want to tell them first, in my own way. Whatever there is to know, they should hear it first, and from me.”
“Anything you need,” John said. “Anything at all.”
She produced a very wide, very forced smile. “It’s a minor cardiac event, you heard the doctor. No need to get your knickers in a twist, John.”
Harriet walked away with the doctor, but she stopped suddenly and turned back.
“It turns out I don’t want him to die, after all. But I can’t live with him, either. I told him so yesterday, which is why all this happened. Angie, you be sure to let Tony know. This is all my fault, it’s got nothing to do with him.”
“I’ll tell him,” Angie said.
Harriet nodded, and walked away down the corridor.
John asked, “Tony’s okay?”
Angie nodded. “Really, it wasn’t anything. Just some halfhearted punches thrown and a lot of people rolling around on the ground. Tony hit his head when he tried to crawl under the bleachers.”
She sensed that John might have laughed at this image, if it weren’t for what was going on in the examination room at the end of the corridor. Thinking of Tony sneaking off from the Rose mob on all fours did make Angie laugh; she couldn’t help it, except the sound came out as something else, halfway between a hiccup and a sob. John reached out for her hand and then stopped.
“Things could be worse,” Angie said quietly.
“Things are about as bad as they can get.”
Angie’s blood was thrumming loudly in her ears. She felt light-headed and weighed down all at once; she had the idea that her feet wouldn’t obey her if she tried to walk away. If she tried to run away. So they sat side by side for a long time in the empty emergency room, in a silence that seemed to have a physical presence, words buzzing around their heads.
Angie leaned forward and folded her arms across her knees. She studied her feet, the fraying lace on one scuffed white sneaker, the smudge of clay on the other. John had stretched out his legs and so she studied his feet, too, sun-browned and long and strong and sinuous in immaculate Mephisto sandals.
She had been in Ogilvie for weeks, and in that time he had only touched her once, when she had collided with Patty-Cake Walker in his front hall.
His hand settled on her back, the touch light, the heat of his skin coming through the fabric of her shirt in a jolt that ran along her spine. Her throat swelled until it was almost painful, but when she turned her head she saw that he wasn’t looking at her. John had put his head against the wall. She watched him swallow, the muscles convulsing along the arch of his neck, his Adam’s apple riding the wave. His hand rested on her back, warm and firm and still.
A slow, bright anger started up someplace deep in her belly, and along with it the dull throb of desire. Angie thought of getting up and moving; she thought of putting her head on his chest and closing her eyes.
John’s hand traveled up her back to the nape of her neck, slowly, tentatively, and then settled there. She could feel the curve of skin between thumb and first finger along her hairline, and then his fingers threaded into the curls, damp with sweat.
“John.”
“Shhh. I’ve got something to say.”
The fingers kept working, pulling gently, tugging. Angie closed her eyes and tried to close her mind to what he was doing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His tone was even and steady and considered, and with some part of her mind Angie wondered if he had practiced this speech.
“It was my fault, that summer. I pushed, and I didn’t see what that was doing to you.”
Angie steadied her breathing, counted to ten, counted again. The exact thing she had wanted to hear from him for these five years, word for word, and now it was said. She was gratified and relieved and unhappy, because it wasn’t enough. She opened her mouth to say—what? And found he wasn’t finished.
“I’ve been thinking about all this a lot these last couple days. There are a few things I know for sure. The first is, I don’t want to be like them.”
She said, “Like who?”
“I don’t want to end up like Harriet and Tab. The second thing I know for sure is, I’m already halfway there unless I do something about it. And lastly, I know that I have a ways to go before I figure out why I did what I did. I’ve screwed things up.”
Angie made a noise in her throat, though she herself couldn’t be sure what it meant:
Stop, I can’t bear it,
or
Go on, get it over with
. John came forward, leaned over so that their shoulders touched and their heads were side by side, like kids whispering secrets in the back of the classroom. His hand was still on the nape of her neck and his fingers moved in her hair.
Stop, I can’t bear it,
or
Go on, get it over with
. John came forward, leaned over so that their shoulders touched and their heads were side by side, like kids whispering secrets in the back of the classroom. His hand was still on the nape of her neck and his fingers moved in her hair.
“I ran into Win Walker out in the parking lot,” he said.
In her surprise Angie turned her head, and found he was so close that her hair brushed his face. He smelled of the sun on skin, of perspiration and wine, of soap, and of whatever it was that made John himself. It brought a flood of memories with it, associations that came to her in half images and bright colors and tastes and ripples that skittered over her skin like ants, made her want to jump up and run away.
“What about Win Walker?” Her voice was small and creaky and unwilling, but she forced the words out.
“Did you tell Win Walker we broke up that summer because I didn’t love you?”
“Damn it,” Angie said, pulling away sharply. “Can’t a person have a private conversation in this town?”
“Sometimes,” John said calmly. “This conversation, for example, is completely private.”
Angie spun around and saw that the nurse had left the desk, that all the chairs in the waiting room were empty, and outside the windows the lights had gone on in the parking lot, and that was empty, too.
She inhaled noisily. With her eyes closed she said, “This is a dangerous game you’re playing.”
“Angie,” he said, his voice a little harder now. “I’ll ask you again. Did you tell Win Walker—”
She cut him off with a short sound and then forced herself to look him in the eye. “I said that, yes.”
He went very still. “I understand the need to explain things away, but, Angie, that’s too much. There were things we couldn’t get past—”
“Like what?”
He sat back. “You couldn’t get comfortable, I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. Maybe you didn’t want me to. But you can’t say that I didn’t love you.”
Those words in John Grant’s voice, at a low whisper. Her whole body shook with it and her mouth was so dry, so very dry, that when she tried to speak, her voice whispered and cracked. But she swallowed and swallowed again until she could make herself understood.
“Not enough,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have let me walk away.”
He had turned his face toward the wall. She could see him struggling, with disappointment, with anger, with resolution; she had no idea what he was thinking. Then he swung back toward her and Angie saw that under his tan he was pale.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t think it’s so simple, but I’ll let it go.”
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