Pulling Home (11 page)

The In and Out burger and fries didn’t relieve Kara’s headache. Attributing it to travel and the good-bye stress at the Wheytons, Audra tucked Kara into bed—her own bed, not the bed of a dead child—and promised she’d feel better in the morning.

With Kara settled, Audra poured Peter a glass of chardonnay and plunked beside

him on the couch. “Howard called the other day.”

“He did? What did he want?”

They both knew Howard Krozer never called for idle chit chat. “He told me I

missed my extended deadline.”

“That bastard.”

“He wasn’t happy about it.” She hesitated and then asked the question that had

plagued her since his call. “Do you think he’d really give away my identity?”

Peter put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Don’t let Howard steamroll

you with his tough guy antics. He might be a manipulating conniver, but he’s still a businessman, and you’re valuable intellectual property. He knows that. He also knows the mystique behind
On Eden Street’s
head writer. You’re winning him awards and growing his audience. People love a good intrigue and as long as the show’s growing, he’ll feed the frenzy, count on that.”

“What if it suddenly becomes too much effort to keep my name a secret?”

Peter leveled his blue gaze on her. “Then it’s fifty-fifty which will win out—

Howard’s greed or his word.”

***

“Damn good to have you back, girl.” Howard Krozer lifted a cigar from his

humidor and smiled, his smallish face puffing out like a blowfish.

“Thank you, Howard. I appreciate it. I’m sorry I wasn’t available earlier. It’s been a tough week.”

“I know, honey.” He reached across the massive desk and patted her hand. “This

marriage business is a tough gig. I’ve tried it four times and still haven’t gotten it right.

Of course, I don’t ever love them, not the way you did with the ‘death do us part’ bit. I like them all well enough, though, and I certainly desire them. But love? Now that’s a damn uncontrollable creature. But you loved the guy.” He trimmed the end of his cigar and stuck it in his mouth. “And that’s the bitch of it.” He lit the tip, puffed, puffed again, then blew out a blur of smoke. “Now you got a hole in your heart. What the hell good is that?”

Howard could make an optimist consider suicide but he was a brilliant producer

and most of the time, a decent employer.

“So, back to the business. I got the whole lot of ‘em stewing over why the hell the head writer isn’t sending new material. Did she have a nervous breakdown? Is she on a three day screw? Did she jump out a window? And I have to deal with it all. Now I’m as good a liar as the next, but my limits get tested when they hit my wallet.” He tapped the ashes of his cigar in a silver ashtray. “All I’m saying, is don’t friggin’ disappear on me again. I don’t care if you have to write on the wing of a plane or in the hospital ICU. I need material. Period. That’s the only way we stay on top, and it’s the only way I can guarantee your anonymity. You start screwing up and people get pissed. And then they want to get even. The damn cleaning lady could follow you to your car and write down your plate number. Identify the car, identify the driver. Cha-ching.
The Enquirer
pays big bucks. We don’t want that.”

No, she certainly didn’t. Audra shifted in her chair and met Howard’s purposeful gaze. “I understand. I appreciate your help.”

“You’re my girl.” His small, white teeth spread into a broad smile. “My golden

girl. You can fly to Zimbabwe next week and I don’t care, as long as the work is in on time and it’s top shelf. Gut-wrenching, in your face work, like you’ve been giving me.

Do that and we’ll have a long, happy life together.”

Chapter 13

“There is such a thing as God’s will, even if you don’t like to acknowledge it.”—

Leslie Richot

 

“Yes! Yes! Ahhhhh, yes!!” Leslie threw back her head and rode Jack hard and

fast, her hands cupping her enormous breasts. Leslie loved her breasts, loved stroking them, pinching the dusky nipples, dangling them in his face. Large breasts had their benefits but Jack was partial to smaller, well-rounded ones that rested perfectly in the palm of his hand.

He was thinking of those breasts and the woman attached to them as he grabbed

Leslie’s hips and thrust into her, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched. When his body convulsed in ragged, uneven jerks, sending him into a vicious climax, he was still thinking of those other breasts—that other woman.

“Jack!” Leslie fell against him in a wave of quivering exhaustion.

Jack kept his eyes closed and imagined the smell of honeysuckle. For the past

three days, he’d been determined to keep the memory alive as he tormented himself with thoughts of those few lust-filled moments in his old bedroom. How twisted was that?

Any man with an ounce of testosterone pumping in his veins would be ecstatic to have someone like Leslie in his life. Smart, beautiful, sexy. Better than great in bed.

Compassionate, adventuresome, in and out of bed, funny, independent—the list could go on another ten minutes. She was perfect. But she wasn’t Audra. Damn it. He eased Leslie off of him and rolled to the side of the bed.

“Hey.” Leslie’s fingers cupped his sex. “That was only round one.”

Jack lifted her hand and stood. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I need to get to the hospital.”

“It’s Nathan Menden, isn’t it?” She scooted to the edge of the bed and touched his thigh.

He stood there, oblivious to the fingers inching toward his groin. Nathan Menden was the reason behind the sex he’d just had—a release of pent up frustration and despair.

“I still don’t understand how it went bad.”

“The boy was terminal, Jack.”

“He was ten years old. I removed the tumor. He had more time.”

“Don’t do this to yourself, baby. It won’t change anything.”

“I told him I had club seats to the Yankees game.” Jack never made promises to

patients or their families, but Nathan Menden had seemed like a sure thing to make it home, even for a short time. And then he’d coded, just like that, in the time it took Ted and Shirley Menden to grab a tuna on wheat from the cafeteria.

Leslie slid off the bed and moved toward him, mashing her breasts against his

chest. “He was going to lose his gross motor capabilities. No running, no skateboarding.

Eventually, no walking. Did you really want his parents to watch their son debilitate until he became nothing but a shrunken mass of fried nerve endings and withered muscle?

That’s not life.”

“Defining life isn’t my job. My job is saving kids, as many as I can, for as long as I can.”

“Maybe Someone knew better than you this time.”

He thought of the boy’s smile, his excitement when Jack offered him the Yankees

tickets. How do you measure that quality? Would his parents have bartered for more time to give their son that one small remaining pleasure? He’d bet to hell they would have. But they’d been denied that right and Jack felt responsible. He’d gone through the surgery notes and the post op record. Everything had gone as anticipated and then a curve ball from left field snuffed out a ten year old’s life. Unpredictable. Just like his sister’s death.

That’s what ate at him, that, and the look on Ted and Shirley Menden’s face when Jack drew the ICU curtain and told them they’d lost their son. It was the same look his mother and father had twenty years before.

Leslie laced her arms around his neck and rubbed her belly against him. “You’re a great doctor. People fly from all over the world to see you. Don’t let this sad, but inevitable misfortune take away from that.” When he didn’t react to her words or her ripe body, she planted a light, open-mouthed kiss on his lips and murmured, “Come back to bed.”

That was the last thing he needed right now. Jack untangled her arms and stepped away. “I need to get to the hospital.” Thankfully, she didn’t follow him into the shower and attempt to stroke him into a mindless frenzy. Maybe she knew it wouldn’t work today. Nathan Menden’s freckled face tortured him. Almost as much as Audra Valentine’s.

***

Doris O’Brien refused a second dose of valium. She must remain clear when

Pastor Richot arrived. She needed his comfort as only a sinner could. Sixteen years in the convent, countless novenas, and rosaries of Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s had not lessened her conviction that she was one of God’s tainted souls. If not, would she have fornicated with a young priest just out of seminary, produced a daughter who God struck down at the tender age of two, and then toppled into an abyss of sexual promiscuity and illegal drugs? But who would not have turned to the unadulterated bliss of sensation through flesh and mind altering substances after losing an only child? Mary Rose’s death was not a quiet one, taken in the grips of a brain infection as little Rachel Wheyton’s had been. Those deaths might torture the parents forever, but they spared the child. Mary Rose drowned in five inches of water. Epileptic fit. Spawn of a devil deed, she drew her last breath alone while her mother—a mere floor below—prepared her favorite meal of chicken soup with tiny meatballs.

People called Doris crazy, and maybe she was, but she knew what she knew.

Seeing that poor boy stretched out in a coffin like Adonis brought back memories, and with them, the conviction that if she did nothing else in her unfortunate existence, she would right her best friend’s name.

She knew what people said about Audra Valentine and her mother. Lies. Corrine

was not a whore, or hadn’t been when she got pregnant. Maybe nobody cared anymore, but they sure slung the Valentine name around enough as though
they’d
never fornicated outside of marriage, as though they’d never done a nasty deed in their lives. Damn hypocrites, all of them. August Richot wouldn’t judge or surmise, or even suggest. He would help her uncover and remember the truth.

After all, he’d been there when Corrine met her demise. Maybe he couldn’t tell

Doris the truth outright, but he’d tell her, one way or the other—a look, a word, a fidget.

One thing she’d learned in her years in and out of psychiatric care was how to read a situation. Damn, she needed a cigarette! Doris sniffed in a dollop of air from the tube in her nostrils and concentrated on keeping her head clear. She breathed in and out, until finally, despite her best efforts, she dozed.

When she woke some time later, August Richot stood at the hospital window,

illuminated by the setting sun which cast an ethereal presence over him, as though indeed he possessed special powers. Three African violets lined the ledge in soft, lavender beauty. It was said Isabelle Richot had held a special fondness for African violets and the good pastor carried on this tradition in honor of his beloved wife by presenting violets to the sick and needy, of whom Doris was both. She clasped her bony hands together, careful not to disturb the IV tubing. “Thank you for coming. I know all the sinners in this town keep you hopping.”

August smiled and held up a watering can. “It’s my pleasure to be here, Doris.”

He lifted a turkey baster and waved it at her. “You know what this turkey baster is for?”

Doris slouched against her pillow and considered the question. “Well, aside from the obvious, I once heard a woman tried to suck up some of her man’s leftover juices with one and then use it to inject up inside herself. Kind of invitro with a baster.”

“Ah, no, that’s interesting, but that wasn’t what I was thinking of.”

Doris let out a snuffled laugh. She could say anything to August and it never riled him. She once told him how she stole Prozac from a fellow patient and then convinced the woman the pills had magically disappeared. Another time she stripped naked and marched down Fifth Street with a huge sign reading, ‘Sinners Confess’. Of course, he knew about that one since it landed her in Syracuse State Mental Institution a second time. August never judged her and maybe that’s why she visited him at least once a week.

That and because after all, she was a sinner.

He plunged the baster in a pitcher of water and pulled it out with careful

precision. “Watch closely and you will never kill another African violet.”

“August, the only flowers I grow are dandelions.”

“No matter, it’s valuable information.” He placed a plant with delicate lavender flowers and pine-colored, velvet leaves on the adjustable table next to her. “Now observe.

Violets like to be treated gently—like people. They don’t want their leaves ruffled or touched too harshly. And if you water them from the top only, they’ll rot. You have to provide sustenance from the bottom up, just like people.” He depressed the bulb of the baster and filled the saucer beneath the violet. “Gradual dissemination of water permits the roots to grow and become strong. Again, same as people. Information fed a bit at a time stays with a person much longer than a bucketful tossed in the face all at once.”

Doris tried to lean on one elbow to watch the water disappear from the saucer as the roots absorbed it. “Kind of like a sponge.”

“Kind of.” His voice moved over her with the same gentleness he used with the

violet. “But sometimes, the roots need a little extra help and that’s where the baster comes in.” He located a space of dirt between two leaves and eased the plunger into the soil. “If you make a hole and water away from the crown, you won’t rot out the plant and you’ll strengthen the roots.”

Doris watched as the soil turned moist and black. “What does that have to do with people?”

“It’s about being slow and steady, building a strong foundation—with trust,

commitment, compassion, none of this slap-in-the-mud rush or over-the-top craziness that does nothing but confuse and destroy.”

“Hmmmm.” He had a way of saying things that made sense every now and again.

“Did you hear Audra Valentine went back to California?”

August squeezed the plunger so hard, water splattered all over—onto the pine-colored green leaves, the delicate, purple flowers, the crown. “Doris,” he said in his sermon voice, “I am not going to divulge any information about Audra’s parentage. I couldn’t three days ago and I can’t now.”