In that instant Carly snapped off the flashlight, sidestepped, and ducked down by the wall.
Ard fired, but the shot went wild, smashing into the wall above Carly’s head. Carly crouched lower, ears ringing, as Ard ran toward the door.
Before she reached it, the door opened and Matt’s dark form, backlit by the headlight glare, came running through. Ard fired wildly again, and he grabbed her; then Carly heard the gun clatter on the floor. Ard fought him, screaming. Before he was able to spin her around and pin her arms behind her, she bit his shoulder. Then she doubled over and suddenly went limp.
Carly rose on wobbly legs. The hallway was silent except for Matt’s and Ard’s labored breathing.
Then Ard said in a small, trembly voice, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Carly. Please tell him to let me go. You can have Natalie. I don’t even want the money.”
Carly turned on the flash and moved its beam to Ard’s face. It was twisted, tear-streaked, and her eyes blinked at the sudden light.
“Please!” she said.
She’s pleading for her life, and I don’t feel anything.
She looked from Ard to Matt. He nodded, face grim.
He doesn’t feel anything either.
We’re both free.
“Mom?” the voice that came from Deke’s attic studio was weak and frightened.
“No, honey, it’s Carly. Your mom…ssent me to bring you home.” She scrambled up the steep pull-down stairs at the back of the master bedroom closet.
“What was that noise that woke me up?”
“Just my truck backfiring.”
In the moonlight shining through the skylights she saw Natalie sitting up in a bed improvised from blankets, a sleeping bag, and an air mattress. She went over, squatted, and enfolded her in her arms. Even though it was cold in the room, Nat felt hot and sweaty.
“I can’t go home,” she said. “There’s this man…”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s…gone away.”
“Are you sure? Mom said he never would…”
“She was wrong.”
From outside, Carly heard the rumble of sheriff’s department cruisers, the chatter of their radios.
“Where is Mom? Why didn’t she come for me, too?”
“She…She had something she had to do, so I volunteered to bring you home.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“I know. We’ll get you to a doctor.”
Nat tensed suddenly, staring over Carly’s shoulder. She glanced behind her and saw that Matt had come up the stairs and was standing at their top. “It’s okay,” she told Nat. “This is my friend Matthew.”
The little girl relaxed some but continued to look suspiciously at Matt. He stayed where he was and said, “Hello, Natalie. Carly’s told me a lot about you.”
Nat didn’t reply.
Carly said, “Have you been staying here the whole time since you and your mom left home?”
“Except for the night we went to Westhaven. We stayed in a cruddy motel, and that’s when I got sick. Mom decided we should come back here till I got better, but we had to be very quiet and hide from that man. Mom said he was here in the house. A couple of times I heard him.”
She heard me. I could’ve found her, brought her home sooner.
Carly stood and eased Nat to her feet. She was fully clothed in jeans and a heavy wool sweater. “Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.” As she spoke, she swayed and stumbled.
“Matt,” Carly said, “maybe you could carry her downstairs.”
“Is that okay, Natalie? May I carry you?”
“I guess.”
He scooped her up, and they descended the steep staircase. In the bedroom Carly motioned for him to hold back and went to look down into the hallway. No one was there, but garish red-and-blue lights bounced off its walls.
She ran down the stairs and outside. Ard was being guided by a deputy into the backseat of one of the cruisers, her head sagging on her long neck like a flower on a broken stalk.
Carly turned away and went back to Matt and Natalie.
After the doctor at the emergency room in Santa Carla assured them that Nat would fully recover and was resting comfortably, Carly led Matt outside. The sky over the mountains to the east was tinged with pink and gold, but above them it was still midnight blue. She raised her face to it, breathed in the scents of the springtime dawn.
“So how’d you find me?” she asked.
“I went to your house after I heard a bulletin about Gar Payne’s arrest on the radio. I figured Ardis had planted the gun. When I found your lights on and the door unlocked, I got alarmed and called Grossman. He called me back after you alerted the dispatcher, and told me where you were headed. I was close by, so…Well, that’s me: Lindstrom to the rescue. Some rescue. I almost got myself shot.”
“Thank God she missed you, too.”
He glanced back at the hospital. “What d’you suppose will happen to Natalie?”
“I don’t know, but she wants to come home. The courts usually take the wishes of a child her age into consideration. And Ard won’t have any say in it; she’s admitted to child stealing and murder.”
“But it’s your word against hers. Once she gets a lawyer, she’ll probably manipulate her way out of it.”
“Nope. Not this time.” Carly reached into her pocket and took out her small voice-activated tape recorder. “It’s all on here. Old reporter’s trick: Never leave home without it.”
Friday, May 24, 2002
W
hen Matt crossed the footbridge, he saw Carly sitting on one of the chaise longues on her patio, and Natalie at the nearby table, drawing on a sketch pad. Carly set aside the book she was reading, pushed her glasses atop her head, and came to meet him.
“I just dropped by to say good-bye.” He waved at Natalie, who had looked up and was regarding him solemnly. She nodded and went back to her drawing. “We’re heading out now,” he added.
“We?”
Carly looked past him to where Sam sat in the Jeep, examining her image in the mirror on the visor. “Hmmm.”
“Not what you think, McGuire. The kid needs to get away from here, so I’ve signed her on as a deckhand. Johnny Crowe says business is booming, but I want to spend more time on my photography. Sam’s a hard worker, and I think she and Johnny’ll hit it off.”
“And what about you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Are you going to open up and hit it off with somebody?”
He smiled. “Maybe. I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of possibilities. Millie Bertram is always throwing eligible women at me.”
“So catch one, why don’t you?”
“I just might do that, now that I’m no longer haunted by a ghost.” His gaze moved to Natalie. “How is she?”
“Subdued. She hasn’t fully comprehended what’s happened to Ard. Thinks she’s ill—which she is, at least according to her lawyer. The psychologist I took Nat to agrees she doesn’t need to know everything till she’s made significant progress. I received temporary custody yesterday, and after a family court evaluation, that may become permanent. I like the judge; she says better the home where Nat’s been living than foster care.
“Are you going to be okay with that—raising a little girl alone?”
“It’s more likely to be a case of Nat and I raising each other.”
He stepped forward and hugged her. Then he broke away and strode across the footbridge toward the Jeep. At its end he turned and called, “Keep in touch. The two of you come see me, okay?”
She nodded and waved.
He slid into the Jeep and said to Sam, “Quit staring at yourself. You’re a pretty woman, and you’ll sweep the Port Regis guys off their feet.”
Then he started the engine and drove on, into his fifth and final life.
Friday, May 24, 2002
W
armed by her brief talk with Matt, Carly returned to the patio. Nat was still drawing, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. “May I see?” Carly asked.
Nat hesitated, then handed over the sketch pad.
The delicate, precise pencil strokes depicted a garden scene, and at the center of it, working the soil beneath a rose bush, was a surprisingly realistic portrait of Ard.
In a low voice Nat said, “She’s never coming back, is she?”
Point number one from the psychologist: Don’t lie to her. If she asks, she’s ready to hear.
“No, she’s not.”
“I didn’t think so. She was so weird all the time we were hiding in Uncle Deke’s studio. I mean, she didn’t talk or read or anything like she used to. She just sat, staring at me or the wall. It was really scary.”
“And you’ll always remember that. I’m sorry to say, bad memories don’t go away. But after a while they fade. Try to remember your mom like she is in your drawing.”
Nat nodded and reached for it.
“You know,” Carly said, “you’re really a good artist, honey. Maybe we should sign you up for some lessons.”
“That’d be great. But will you stop calling me ‘honey’? You’ve been doing that all week, and I hate it. It sounds like you feel sorry for me. I don’t like
anybody
to feel sorry for me—not even you.”
This child has just captured my heart.
“I promise I will never feel sorry for you or call you ‘honey’ again. So what
shall
I call you?”
“Natalie or Nat, like you used to. Those’re my names.”
“Okay, Nat. I’ll check into those art lessons.”
We’ve got a long road ahead of us, kid, but we’ll tough it out—the two of us, together.