A Sound Among the Trees (16 page)

“She isn’t here, is she?”

Marielle shook her head slowly. “No. She’s not. You’re safe here.”

“And the house? Did she burn down the house?”

“No. The house is fine. And you’re going to be fine.”

Adelaide reached for Marielle’s hand.

“Don’t go back there. It’s not safe.”

Marielle’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“Don’t go back there.” Adelaide said again.

Marielle opened her mouth to say something, but two smiling men in scrubs walked into the white room and announced she was going to have her picture taken.

A doctor stood over her. He held an x-ray in his hands. She did not remember being wheeled into this room. Marielle was nowhere in sight.

“Mrs. McClane, you are very lucky,” the doctor was saying. “You’ve a fracture in your wrist, but that’s the only broken bone. The bruising on your back will make it hard for you to go dancing for a while, and you’ll
have a sizable knot on your head, but I’ve never seen someone your age survive a fall like that without a broken hip—or worse.”

Adelaide studied the negative image of her arm in his hands. A claw. A skeleton.

He held the picture up to a backlight. “So you broke both the ulna and the radius here. Fairly clean breaks, though. But we’re going to have to set them in surgery and use a few pins to coax the bones back together. I’m thinking with some therapy you’re looking at full range of motion within six months.”

“Six months?” Adelaide echoed.

“With therapy.”

“I need to sew.”

“I’m thinking you’ll be able to sew again. If you keep your therapy appointments. Now, your daughter-in-law tells me you’re able to sign your own release, is that correct?”

“She’s not my daughter-in-law. She’s married to my grandson-in-law. Where is she?”

The doctor nodded toward the hallway. “I believe she’s out in the waiting area talking on the phone to your …”

“Grandson-in-law. And yes, I can sign my own release.”

The doctor flipped off the backlight. “Okay. We’ll have the staff get the forms in here and get you set for surgery. Your records say you had heart surgery here before. Correct? Ten years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll take a quick look-see at your records and see how you tolerated the anesthesia and all that. Any questions before I see you again in the OR?”

Adelaide shook her head. The movement made her wince.

She awoke again to blessed numbness. Nothing hurt.

Her throat felt thick, as if she had been asleep for a thousand years. She tried to clear her throat, but the effort proved impossible.

Suddenly there was movement beside her.

“Would you like a drink, Mimi?”

Adelaide turned her head. Marielle sat in a chair close to the bed, a magazine folded open in her lap. Adelaide nodded.

Marielle reached for a cup with a bent straw sticking out of it. She poured water from a plastic pitcher.

“Here. I’ll raise your bed a little bit.”

Marielle touched a switch on a remote, and the bed began to fold into an L. She stopped it and then reached for the cup, setting it just under Adelaide’s chin. Marielle guided the straw into her mouth, and she drank. The liquid felt like heaven.

“Thank you,” Adelaide murmured when she pulled away from the cup.

Marielle sat back down.

Adelaide tried to remember what day it was. Tuesday? Saturday? The kids left for New York today. So it was Saturday. “What time is it?”

“A little after five.”

Adelaide motioned for the water, and Marielle rose to hold it for her. She took another long swallow.

“So I guess I missed lunch?”

Marielle smiled. “Dinner’s on the way, though I hear it’s chicken cacciatore.”

“I suppose Carson is all bent out of shape because I fell while he was gone?”

Marielle set the cup back down on the tray. “He was pretty worried when I called. But I told him your surgery went very well and that you were expected to come home tomorrow.”

“He’s not trying to dash home tonight, is he?”

Marielle sat back down again. “It’s raining hard up there. I told him not to worry. To come home tomorrow like he planned. But if you want, I can call him and tell him you’d rather he came home tonight.”

Adelaide shook her head. “No, no. You did the right thing. I can’t stand it when people fuss over me.”

Adelaide looked down at her arms. One sprouted tubes that were busily transmitting information to a collection of monitors; the other was fat with hard foam and gauze. “So I’m all in one piece again?”

“Yes. The doctor said everything went fine in surgery. They put a couple of stitches in your forehead too, to minimize the scar.”

Adelaide raised her good arm to her head and touched the padded bandage. “I must’ve scared the living daylights out of you.”

Marielle smiled. “Actually, you did.”

“What happened?”

“You … you don’t remember?”

Adelaide closed her eyes. “I was on the stairs. You were … you were outside in the studio. I reached for the railing …”

A sudden recollection of the house turning upside down on her flooded her mind. She saw the pictures on the wall tumbling, eyes turning, watching her spiral. She remembered the rustle of a dress. Susannah’s voice calling her name …

She shuddered.

“Mimi? You okay?” Marielle rose to her feet.

Adelaide swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, I’m all right.” She took several deep breaths.

Marielle slowly sat back down.

“Good Lord, it seemed so real,” Adelaide said.

“What? What seemed so real?”

“I heard a voice calling my name. It sounded like my great-grandmother. I heard the rustle of her skirt. I felt flames all around me. It was like she was … reaching for me. Like she had pushed me down the stairs
and set the house on fire. I heard her voice, Marielle. She said, ‘I’ve got you.’ ”

Marielle leaned forward and clasped Adelaide’s good hand. “That was me. I came in from the studio and found you at the bottom of the stairs. You were bleeding and trying to crawl for help. I said your name. And I had Brette’s play dress in my arms. That’s the rustling you heard.”

“You called my name?”

“I didn’t think to call out, ‘Mimi.’ I said, ‘Adelaide.’ It’s the name that popped out first.”

Adelaide eased back onto the pillows, exhaustion creeping over her. “It just seemed so real …”

“You … you hit your head pretty hard, Mimi.”

Adelaide turned her head on the pillow to look at Marielle. “I said some crazy things to you, didn’t I?”

Marielle squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. You’re back to being you.”

The door to her hospital room opened, and an orderly in purple scrubs walked into the room with a covered plate. “Hello, Mrs. McClane. I’ve got a nice hot meal for you.” The orderly set the meal onto the wheeled tray and pushed it close to Adelaide. “Want me to cut your food for you, or would you like to have your granddaughter do it for you?”

Marielle opened her mouth, but Adelaide spoke before she could say anything.

“We’ll manage. Thank you.”

The orderly left.

“So would you like me to cut your food for you, Mimi?”

Adelaide nodded.

Marielle stood, removed the plastic cover, and began to cut the chicken and pasta into bite-sized bits. “Would you like me to stay while you eat?”

“You’ve been here all day with me, haven’t you?”

Marielle nodded.

“No, dear. You go on home. I am going to eat and then sleep. I feel like I could sleep for a year. You feel okay about sleeping there alone?”

“Of course.”

Marielle finished and then reached for her purse on the floor. “I’ll come back in the morning. Carson’s planning to leave Long Island at daybreak, if the weather permits.”

“That sounds fine, dear.”

Marielle squeezed her hand. “See you tomorrow. Call me if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

Marielle was almost at the door when Adelaide called her name.

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For everything you did today.”

“You’re welcome.” Then she left.

Adelaide ate her meal, one-handed, in silence. She couldn’t recall the last time she had slept in a room other than the one at the house. As she chewed, she tried to think back to the last time she had spent a night outside Holly Oak.

Ten years ago. At this same hospital.

Adelaide pushed the tray away. The world outside her window was turning gray as the sun disappeared behind fat clouds.

The sweep of the storm’s arc was increasing. It was moving south.

he first raindrops began to spatter on the windshield as Marielle neared Holly Oak. She fed the accelerator a bit more gas, anxious to get home. She had left the door to the studio open that morning, expecting to return to it within minutes. The journals were sitting on top of the wooden box she had found them in. Exposed. Anyone walking past the garden on the street could stand on tiptoe and look over the gate. If the angle was right, they could see that the studio door was open. The house’s security system didn’t include the garden or the studio. If someone wanted to climb the fence and see inside the studio, there was nothing to stop them.

She thought of Sara’s journals, her most private thoughts, laid bare, and her heart began to pound. The sprinkling turned to heavy drops of rain.

Marielle pulled into the driveway and threw the gear into park. Grabbing a canvas shopping bag to cover her head, she dashed from her car to the side gate to the garden. Rain pelted in plump, generous drops, and her sandaled feet were soon soaked. She ran across the flagstone patio and kicked off her shoes at the stone steps that led to the lawn and the studio at the edge of the yard. She sprinted across the wet grass, nearly slipping twice, and darted through the open studio door. Water was already seeping onto the stone floor, puddling on its uneven surface. Marielle pulled up the tarp she had been sitting on and reached for the journals, dry except for a sheen of glistening moisture on the top book. She rubbed it across her
chest and placed it in the center of the tarp along with the other two and folded the edges over. Then she placed the wooden top back on the box and replaced it on the top shelf.

A peal of thunder rocked the sky as she grabbed the bundle and headed for the door. She reached for the studio key in her pocket as rain hammered her back. With the door locked and the journals carefully wrapped, Marielle ran up the sloping lawn, her purse slung over her shoulder clapping her on the back. She grabbed her drenched sandals at the top of the patio steps and dashed for her office door, fumbling in her purse for her house keys. When at last she was inside, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it to catch her breath.

Marielle shook her wet hair out of her eyes and walked into the laundry room, just off her office. She set the damp, tarp-covered bundle on the washer and dropped her shoes to the tile floor.

First a shower and dry clothes.

Then a bowl of pasta and parmesan and a glass of wine. Then the journals.

The house was eerily quiet inside as the storm raged outside. Marielle turned on lights in the kitchen and foyer, closed the parlor doors and was about to head up the stairs when she noticed spots of blood on the floor at the bottom of the stairs from where Adelaide hit her head. She headed back into the kitchen for paper towels and window cleaner.