Disguised Blessing Read online

  They’d already had this discussion. She sidestepped a replay by saying, “Gene is here.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t due back from Japan for another two weeks.”

  “Mom told him about Lynda and he flew home to see if he could help.”

  “That’s insane. The trip put him in line for a promotion. Your mother shouldn’t have called him. I sure as hell wouldn’t have. There’s nothing he can do here. Besides, Lynda’s doing fine.”

  “She isn’t fine, Tom,” Catherine snapped. “She’s a long way from being fine.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant. And you know if there was something, anything I could do to make her better I would do it. I just don’t see how having a crowd of people sitting around the hospital is helping.”

  It was one of those things she didn’t want to have to tell him, that she wanted him to see for himself. But she’d given up on the possibility that he ever would. “I need you as much as Lynda does.”

  “Make up your mind, Catherine. Either I do the running around you ask me to do or I’m at the hospital. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Are you leaving the house now?”

  “I have to stop by the office first.”

  “I thought you were still on vacation.” When would she learn? “Never mind. Just come when you can.”

  “Do you need the clothes right away? I can try to get there sooner if you do.”

  “I’ll have my mother stop by and pick up something on her way.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Say hello to Gene for me.”

  “I will.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye.

  Catherine met Gene in the hallway outside the intensive care unit where he was leaning against the wall waiting for her. “How is she?”

  “Out of it. I tried talking to her but I don’t think she even knew who I was.”

  “It’s the drugs.”

  “How long will that go on?”

  “For as long as she needs them. They believe in pain control around here.”

  “Have you been able to talk to her at all?”

  “Some. The worst time is after a dressing change. She’ll be more lucid later on.”

  “Is Tom on his way?”

  She shifted her gaze to the floor and knew immediately that it was a mistake. Gene read body language as well as he did Japanese. “He has to stop by the office first.” She’d sworn she was through making excuses for anyone. When had she started again?

  “I assume he’s all right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That he wasn’t in a wreck or some other disaster that kept him from calling you.”

  “He got tied up and forgot. I had him running from—”

  “It’s okay, Catherine. You don’t have to explain.”

  “He doesn’t like hospitals.” She’d already told him that.

  “Still…”

  “I know. But he’s so good to us in every other way. I feel judgmental complaining about this one thing.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve had too many stones thrown at me. I’m not about to start throwing them at someone else.” Gene put his arm around her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Speaking of stone throwing, what do you hear from Jack?”

  “He met us here the night she came in, and he was here yesterday. He’s in Dallas now and will be for the next week. One of the nurses told me he’s called several times from there.”

  “Is Jack coming around a problem with Tom?”

  She wished it were that simple. “The only time they saw each other was the first night, and it was pretty rough on all of us.” Gene didn’t say anything, but she could feel his disapproval. How could Tom hope to build a relationship with Lynda if he wasn’t around when she really needed him? “I’m going inside. Do you want to come with me?”

  “I’m here until you throw me out.”

  She put her head on his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden, unexpected onslaught of tears. Why was it she could be strong until someone was nice to her? “I’m sorry Mom called you and pulled you away from your meetings, but I’m so glad you came.”

  “Of course I came. I had to. It’s in the big brother’s handbook under what to do if something terrible happens to your favorite sister’s daughter.”

  “I’m your only sister.”

  “Which made it a real no-brainer.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Now I need to find a phone and let Mom know I got here before she adds me to her list of things to worry about.”

  Catherine dug her cell phone out of her purse. “You can use my phone.” He reached for it but she didn’t give it to him right away. “First you have to promise to tell her that I look great and that you’re surprised how well I’m holding up.”

  He shook his head. “Only for you would I tell such blatant lies.”

  7

  RICK ARRIVED HOME IN TIME TO SEE THE DELIVERY truck pulling out of his driveway. He waited for it to pass on the narrow road, nodding to the driver and absently wondering which neighbor had ordered the remaining redwood on the flatbed. The telltale sign of summer in the foothills: fresh building material. Seemed everyone had a project going. Even Sandra and Walt, who’d sworn they were taking the year off, were talking about putting up a greenhouse.

  Blue came trotting toward him. He barked a laconic greeting, his tail whipping in excited half circles. Rick climbed out of the truck and spent a few minutes scratching the dog’s ears. He spoiled Blue, giving him free run of the house, letting him sleep wherever he wanted—including on the bed on cold nights—sharing his dinner with him, and even giving him an occasional contraband sip of beer. Rick believed it was little enough compared to the companionship Blue gave in return. When Rick was home, there was no question that Blue was his dog. When he was at the firehouse, Blue belonged to Sandra and Walt. The arrangement was Blue’s, worked out a couple of months after Sandra and Walt rescued him from the pound, and refined over the past two years.

  Rick rounded the house looking for Sandra and found her in the combination garage-workshop. In square footage almost the size of the rest of the house, it was the first thing Rick had built. He’d lived there for two years before he completed enough work on the attached, half-burned shell to move in there.

  Sandra had the delivery slip in one hand, a pencil in the other. “Oh, hi,” she said, spotting him. “Just making sure it’s all here. How’d it go at the hospital?”

  “I think it was a little soon for me to be there. The mother needs more time to adjust to what’s happened before I start loading her up with information about support groups and therapy meetings.”

  “Girl or boy?”

  “Girl—fifteen.”

  She grimaced. “Bad?”

  “Bad enough. Nothing facial, but she won’t appreciate that until she’s a lot further into her treatment.” Rick frequently discussed his assignments with Sandra. When it came to figuring out the mind of a teenager, he’d found no better resource or sounding board. She insisted the knack came from her twenty years of teaching high school. Rick was inclined to believe it came from her ability to see beyond the obvious.

  “If she ever does,” he added. “It’s all relative. Telling someone he or she should be grateful they only lost a hand by showing them someone who lost an arm doesn’t make it easier to pick up a piece of paper when it’s dropped on the floor.”

  Blue came into the garage and immediately jumped on top of the sheetrock, sat down, and swept an arc with his tail. “Get down from there,” Sandra told him.

  He looked at Rick for confirmation. “Yeah, she’s right,” he told the dog. “It’s going to be days before I can get this stuff hung and I don’t want to be cleaning off your paw prints when I do.”

  “Walt has a tarp you can borrow.”

  “Thanks. I think I’d just as soon have this staring me in the face every time
I come out here or I might be tempted to postpone this weekend to a more convenient time. Lately it’s been out of sight, out of mind.”

  “If having things stare you in the face worked, you’d have those closet shelves up by now.”

  He chuckled. “Point taken.”

  “Well, I’m outta here. I promised Walt I’d get some prices on greenhouse heaters today. He’s still trying to pretend he’s just thinking about it, but he made up his mind the minute he realized how early he could harvest tomatoes if he started them in a greenhouse first.”

  “Thanks for taking care of the delivery for me.”

  “No problem.” She looked at Blue. “You coming?”

  He sat as if following orders.

  “I didn’t think so, you ungrateful beast.”

  Rick walked with her to the opening in the fence that separated their properties. When she was gone, he turned to Blue. “Let’s go see what we can scrounge up for lunch.”

  He took a lot of teasing about his half-finished home—the never ending project, the new Winchester House, the champagne craftsman home on the beer income. He didn’t care, because he was doing what he wanted to do exactly the way he wanted to do it. He drove a ten-year-old truck and had a ten-thousand-dollar bathroom in his master bedroom. He’d personally gathered every stone for the fireplace in the living room and spent six months making all the raised panel doors throughout the house. He cooked in a portable microwave or on the gas barbecue on the patio, and ate off a door suspended between two sawhorses. When finished, the kitchen would have granite counters, a tile floor, and washed pine cupboards, constructed from wood he’d rescued when he’d happened upon a barn being torn down.

  The new cupboards, completed over the past two winters, stood in a corner of the garage, covered with sheets of plastic, protected from accidental bumping and scratching by a specially built frame. All he needed was some hardware, money, and time for the installation and the pieces would come together. The hardware was easy. The money was almost there—a couple more paychecks and he’d be at his budgeted goal for the granite countertops and tile floor. The time he’d think about later.

  The house was his hobby, the only one he’d been able to afford once he and Barbara came to the conclusion they’d given a hopeless situation their best effort and decided to go their separate ways.

  With an intense dislike of apartments as his guiding factor, he’d taken his share of their accumulated assets and bought a partially burned house on five acres in the foothills. Rundown would have been a kind description of both the house and property. He’d rented the largest Dumpster he could find and had it emptied weekly. Even at that, it took three months to clear the lot.

  Now, after eight years, all he had left to do were the kitchen, dining room, and some odds and ends like the closet in his bedroom. Last Christmas, at their annual neighborhood get-together, Sandra had wondered aloud if Rick had slowed the work because he was reluctant to see it come to an end. He’d laughed at the idea, but had given it a lot of thought since. What was he going to do with himself once he finished the house?

  Standing at the refrigerator waiting for inspiration, he absently broke off a piece of hot dog and gave it to Blue. The dog took it as if it were ice and he had a toothache, carrying it to the middle of the room and looking back at Rick with a disheartened expression.

  “All right, so it’s not steak. Bring it back and I’ll see what else I can find.”

  Blue dropped it on the exposed plywood floor.

  “What part of ‘bring it back’ didn’t you understand?” Rick picked up the offending piece of processed meat and tossed it into the freestanding sink. “How about a tuna fish sandwich?”

  This brought a soft whine and frustrated bark. “Okay, dog biscuit it is.” He took the box from the single kitchen cupboard he’d left standing and tossed Blue one of the bone-shaped biscuits. “Not even going to offer to share, huh?”

  Blue ignored him and headed outside with his prize. His toenails clicked on the metal weather stripping on the garage doorsill and then the concrete floor. Rick listened closely, timing the steps. Sure enough, they stopped at the wallboard.

  He was on his way to remind Blue that the wallboard was off limits when the phone rang.

  “Rick—it’s Lyn. How did the meeting go?”

  “Not as well as I would have liked, but I’m going to give it another try tomorrow. Her brother came in from Japan and I took off to let them talk. I got the impression there’s something going on with the fiance that could cause some family problems down the line, but I might have read it wrong.”

  “We had another boy come in a couple of hours ago. He’s in pretty bad shape, but right now they’re saying they think he’ll make it.”

  “The one from Fairfield?” Rick had heard about the fire on the news coming home and wondered if it was the same boy the nurse had mentioned.

  “He’s the only survivor out of a family of seven. Looks like the fire was arson. Something to do with the brother being in a gang.”

  Lyn didn’t gossip and rarely had time for casual conversation. She was leading up to something. “Did you want me to take this kid instead of the Miller girl?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could stop by to visit him when you’re there with Lynda. At least until I can find someone in Fairfield to take his case. According to the police, he doesn’t have any family left in the area and I thought it might help if he had someone to talk to.”

  Rick had stopped looking for fairness in life, or believing good people were rewarded and bad punished, a long time ago. It didn’t happen that way. There was nothing this kid could have done, no crime big enough, no sin bad enough to bring something like this on himself. “What’s his name?”

  “Ray Tatum. He’s seventeen and should be easy to talk to—when he can talk, that is. He’s a candidate for valedictorian at his high school and, according to one of his teachers I saw interviewed on the news, he’s being considered by both Harvard and Stanford.”

  “Jesus, what a waste. Did you hear whether they know who did it?”

  “Supposedly they have a couple of eyewitnesses.”

  “Who’ll develop amnesia before the case comes to trial,” Rick said.

  “I don’t know. The people in the neighborhood are pretty shaken by this. They’re tired of having their lives controlled by a bunch of thugs.”

  “Even if some of them are their own children? The changes they need to make are ones that are a lot easier said than done.”

  “Granted.”

  Rick stared at the hole in the dining room wall that he’d been staring at for the past eight years and decided today was the day he was going to do something about it. Tearing down wallboard would be a good way to vent his frustration, and if he had it out of the way, putting the new stuff up would go a lot faster. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know how things go with Lynda’s mother. Right now I hear a hammer calling my name.”

  8

  LYNDA WOKE TO THE NOW FAMILIAR BEEPS AND humming sounds of the equipment around her bed. She opened her eyes to small slits, ready to close them again should she discover someone in the room with her. It seemed the only place she could be alone anymore was in her mind, and she escaped there whenever possible.

  She didn’t see anyone. Even ever present Brian wasn’t there.

  As much as she loved her mother and uncle and grandmother, she’d reached the point where she wanted to scream at the sight of them. For over a week now they’d all had the same look in their eyes, that “oh, poor, poor Lynda” expression of pity. Only Brian treated her the way he had before. Which she didn’t understand or trust. He should have checked out the first day when he saw that she was going to live and that there was nothing more he could do to help.

  She couldn’t figure out why he was there all the time, especially with the way she looked and the things he saw done to her. For a while she’d thought maybe he felt guilty, but he was the one who’d saved her from being a t
otal matchstick, so he should have felt pretty good about himself.

  Sometimes she liked having him there, especially when she needed to vent. He would listen and nod once in a while like he understood. Everyone else she tried to talk to would say things they thought would make her feel better, whether they made sense or not.

  How could they think that was possible? Couldn’t they see? Her life was over. At least the one she used to have, the one she wanted back more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

  She didn’t need people feeling sorry for her. And if she heard one more time how everything was going to be all right, or how good the doctor was, or how lucky she was that it was her back and not her face that had been burned, she was going to tell them that they didn’t have a goddamned clue and to leave her alone.

  Words never spoken aloud, they were her secret escape from being the perfect daughter, the perfect niece, the perfect granddaughter.

  Damn. She was crying again. On display all night and all day, she couldn’t hide her tears. Someone always saw when she was crying and made a big deal out of getting a tissue and holding her hand and saying something stupid like it was all right to cry.

  “Your lunch is here,” a deep male voice announced.

  Lynda startled at the sound. She hadn’t heard anyone come in, so he must have been there the whole time. She opened her eyes and found him sitting by the window. He got up and came over to the bed. She realized she’d seen him before, but only briefly and only since she’d come to the hospital.

  She shifted to move her good arm—actually her better arm—so that she could wipe her eyes with the corner of the sheet. “Who are you?”

  “Rick Sawyer.”

  She didn’t want his name, she wanted to know why he was there. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I’m a firefighter with the Firefighters’ Burn Association.”

  “From the lake?” The men who’d helped her there were indistinguishable in her mind. All she remembered were uniforms, lots of them.