All for One (27 page)

“It doesn’t matter,” Joey said. “Okay?”

“PJ!” Caroline Hool put her hands on Joey’s shoulders and said, “You know that you are talking to the prince of darkness here.”

“I know,” PJ confirmed, honestly in part. He was a prince to her.

“So, let’s see,” Caroline Hool urged, beaming at PJ. “Open the package and let’s see your costume.”

PJ felt the weight of Mrs. Hool’s wanting gaze, and the sympathetic ones of her friends. Joey’s especially.

“Mom, we’ve—”

“Bryce, hush,” Caroline Hool said, then smiled at PJ. “I want to see what the fairer sex has come up with to compete with this motley bunch.”

Crud, PJ thought. Just crud. Put it away, and move on.

“A ballerina,” Caroline Hool guessed, her eyes bright and begging an answer. “Hmm?”

PJ reached up and unbuttoned her coat one fastener at a time, waiting until all were done to spread the two sides apart. Wide. Wider. Hiding nothing. This was it.
Get a good look.
Okay? Okay?

The boys had seen it already. Caroline Hool maintained her pleasant expression as PJ held her coat open, head cocked away a bit, her lips pressed together.

It was pink and it came to her knees, and stopped there only because her mother had put a few safety pins in to keep it from looking like an evening dress and not a uniform. A waitress’ uniform, complete with ‘
Vick’
sewn on the left. Her mother’s spare.

Caroline Hool took her hands from Joey’s shoulders and chewed at the inside of her lower lip for a second, thinking. Thinking parent kind of thoughts. “I think you look cute, PJ.”

PJ accepted the compliment with a quick nod and smiled at Bryce’s mom. “Thanks, Mrs. Hool.”

“Mom,” Bryce said, pointing to her watch.

“Boys can be so impatient,” Caroline Hool said, looking to PJ and giving her a womanly wink. It elicited what she thought was a bit more smile. “All right, everybody in. Candy awaits.”

They all piled in, Bryce taking shotgun and the others splitting the two bench seats comfortably. Caroline Hool climbed past and slid the side door shut.

“Your parents all know you’re coming, right?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hool.”

“Good. We’ve got burgers at our house, then it’s off on the hunt.”

“Are Connie and Bonnie coming?” PJ asked.

“Their father is taking them around the neighborhood. Now, are you starting at Mrs. Beeman’s again this year?”

Joey looked to Michael, then leaned between the two front seats and said, “If it’s all right, we heard there’s supposed to be a good spot to try this year.”

“Better than Mrs. Beeman and her block?”

“Yeah,” Bryce answered.

“That’s what people are saying,” Joey added.

“Okay,” Caroline Hool said agreeably. Candy was the objective, after all, and one had to go where the gettins were good. “Where’s the mother lode supposed to be?”

“Holly Village,” PJ replied before anyone could. She wanted them to know she was all right. That she was part of this. One for all.

“Holly Village.” Caroline Hool started the minivan and dropped it into gear. “After some real food, then, it’s off to Holly Village.”

Michael caught Joey’s glance for the second time in a few breaths. He reached down and touched the bulge near the hem of his jeans. It was there, long and cold, steel against skin.

Twenty One

As agreed he arrived at six, dodging a gaggle of waist-high munchkins on sugar highs dashing down Mary’s walk on the way to their next fix. When she saw him she stepped out into the light of the waxing moon, a Texas A&M sweatshirt over jeans. She hugged a bowl to her stomach.

He saw that her face smacked of apology as he drew close.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, peering into the bowl. It’s silvery bottom shined empty in the hazy lunar glow.

“I’m sorry. I tried.”

Dooley nodded and focused on her top. In big blue letters it said ‘TOTY’. “What’s TOTY?”

“Teacher Of The Year,” Mary said. “It was a gift at the end of the last school year.” She gestured to the door. “Come on in. I have refills.”

She walked up the steps and into the house. Dooley cursed under his breath and followed her in.

“I have coffee,” Mary said as Dooley closed the door. She tore the top from a bag of candy bars and dumped it in the bowl. “A cup?”

“Sure,” he said, sliding his jacket off and tossing it to the couch.

“Here.” Mary handed him the bowl of treats and went to the kitchen. She returned with two steaming cups to an empty living room.

A few notes rose from the piano. “What did they say?”

Mary put the coffee down and went to the erstwhile dining room. She pressed close to the far end of the instrument, hands gripping the contoured edge of the lid. “They said they have nothing else they can tell me.”

“Did they all say that?”

“Joey spoke for them.”

The first few bars of a lullaby Dooley couldn’t name played out, amateurish at best. No finesse. No feeling.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?”

He played out beyond the beginning of the lullaby, quietly amazed that he could remember something from so far back. Who had it been? His Aunt Rita? Yes. She had taught him a few simple songs.
Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Heart And Soul.
A drunken Irish version of
Chopsticks.
But what was this one called?

He remembered when Mary came around the piano and stood next to him.
Even Butterflies Cry
. That was it.

When butterflies fly, even butterflies cry

When butterflies die, all the butterflies cry

When all the butterflies cry, now you’ll know why

He suspected his aunt had borrowed the melody and concocted the lyrics. How odd, he thought, that it was this lullaby he remembered.

“Dooley?”

“Huh?”

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

He shook his head, confirming her belief. His fingers struggled with the keys until the long lost tune became whole. It rolled haltingly from the piano. “Do you know this?”

Mary listened for a few seconds, then nodded. “It’s an old English wedding song.
My Ever Love To Thee,
I think. Or
My Ever Love For Thee
. Something like that.”

Dooley smiled. “Do you know that my aunt was a thief?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He dragged the back of his hand the length of the keyboard and stabbed a low note once, hard, for punctuation.

“I tried, Dooley.”

He looked at her, a sorrowful honesty boiling within, and said, “I used you.”

“You asked me to do something,” Mary replied, adding her own spin. “I did it.”

“Do they hate you now?”

The frightful light flashed behind her eyes once again, as it had the first night he’d come by, like it had so many years ago, and she put a patch of fingers to her temple. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you all right?”

She rubbed a hard, tight circle on the spot and gave a fast nod. “It wasn’t easy.” Her head had burned then, too, hot and loud inside like a train rushing at her from a dark tunnel within. It really was punishment, she was beginning to believe. Like the dream. Punishment for letting another’s doubt drive her actions, even if it was the right thing to do...

A very bright wash of white brilliance stung the back of her eyes in quickening, precise pecks, like the painful flick of a finger against one’s ears. Except this was
inside her
. Right behind her eyes, somewhere between her window to the world and the grayish bundle of nerves and neurons that processed what was ‘out there’. The pain was right there, like a gate swinging in the wind on rusty, grating hinges, setting off the light each time something unpleasant passed through.

Headaches
, Mary thought
. It’s the headaches. It’s been a long time, but it’s them. That’s all it is.

And before the gate moved through its extreme arc again, something old and kind pushed through the light. A face. An old face in memory, a face from the time when the headaches had first come. The image strained to live in the caustic burn behind her eyes, and, with nary more than an instant before she knew (feared?) it would fade into the brilliance (be consumed by it?), Mary made the decision. While the pleasant old face was still clear in her mind she promised herself that she would make the call. She would call Dr. Cleary. She would call him soon.

Dooley could see the muted agony in her face, in the way her fingers dug at the soft flesh of her temple with abandon. Like they wanted to get beneath the skin and have a go at whatever was driving the hurt. “Are you sure you’re all right.”

The nod came again. The gesture she’d gotten from her mother. From the woman who had worked on a broken ankle insisting that the purple swelling about the joint was ‘
just the weather
’.

“You don’t look so good.”

“This has been really difficult,” Mary said. As her fingers drove hard on the skin the pain began to ebb, the inner light going soft until the only thing behind her eyes was darkness. The darkness again. She let her hand come away and looked to Dooley. “But I’m just fine.”

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

Maybe I...
Mary shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Is this maybe because you’re having doubts about them?”

PROTECT THEM! YOU HAVE TO PROTECT THEM!

Mary shook her head again. “You don’t understand. I have to believe them.”

“Even when logic tells you what they’re saying is a crock?”

“I don’t live by logic,” Mary said, placing her hand flat to her chest. A speck of light threatened far behind her eyes. She made herself look at him, not at it. “This guides me. My heart. What I feel.”

“And your heart tells you to believe them...”

YOU...

“It tells me that I have to.”

“That’s giving in to emotion.”

The pinpoint of whiteness burned red for an intense slice of an instant, then winked to black, like a hound’s eye closing in the night.
Exactly
like a hound’s eye.

Mary judged Dooley’s accusation, then eased her hand to his cheek and leaned close, pausing for a second as their noses brushed, her gaze holding his before surrendering to an outer darkness and kissing him.

His hand came up and touched her waist just as she pulled slowly back, not far, still close enough to feel his breath caress her lips.

“That was giving in to emotion,” she said.

“Why did you do that?”

“The head asks why,” Mary answered. The hound’s eye stayed shut. She leaned in again and teased his lips with the tip of her tongue, its fluid softness pouring a million prickly sparkles down his spine. “What’s your heart telling you to do?”

Dooley moved his hand down from her sweatshirt until he felt denim, then slid it back up, diving beneath the warming material and feeling her skin, the feathery softness of her stomach, quivering at his touch, and higher still as she moved toward him and swung one leg over his lap, straddling him and rolling her hands over his shoulders and clasping behind his neck, their faces just inches apart, lips so close, eyes wanting, his fingers spreading and finding the delicate underside of her breast, following the contour, the gentle turn of flesh, slowing at the warm, swollen tip, letting his palm cover her nipple as he drew his fingers together, squeezing, squeezing, hard until her breath left her and their lips came together again.

She moved against him, legs wrapping behind, his hand mauling her and her arms holding him close as if the breath she needed to live was within him.

Chester ambled in from the kitchen and stared at them. When their kiss paused the cat lost interest and curled himself into a furry circle beneath the piano.

“Is your back good,” Mary asked Dooley, her voice mostly breath.

“Yeah.” His hand left her breast and poked through the sweatshirt’s collar and cupped against her cheek.

“I’ve never been carried into bed,” Mary said.

Dooley smiled, his hand pulling back through the collar and out from under the shirt, joining its mate on Mary’s trim bottom. She closed her eyes and kissed him again, the bench grinding away from the piano and his legs pushing off, lifting her and carrying her through the living room, her lips planting wet kisses on his face and neck, his hands each clutching a denim-covered cheek.

She swatted the living room’s light switch off as they passed and sat erect in his embrace, her arms pulling her TOTY sweatshirt over her head and dropping it in the hallway. Dooley kicked the bedroom door shut and carried her to the bed.

Eight groups of costumed beggars came over the next two hours. All left empty handed.

Twenty Two

The front door opened inward and the screen door pushed out just before nine. Mary followed Dooley onto the porch and hugged herself against the cold.

He straightened his coat with a roll of his shoulders and touched the hair above her face. It was mussed, and it looked wonderful.

“I wish you could stay.”

“On a week night? What would your neighbors think?”

“Probably filthy, debaucherous, accurate things.”

“I want to kiss you,” Dooley said.

“You did.”

“I want to kiss you right now,” he clarified. “But that wouldn’t be good.”

“Wouldn’t it?” She reached out and slipped the fingers of one hand over the top of his jeans.

He backed away, her smiling playfully. “Who are you, Mary Austin?”

“Just me,” she said, then blew him a kiss and scooted back to the warmth of her house.

Dooley backed down the walkway, through the gate in the low white picket fence that would have difficulty corralling a dachshund, and spun finally toward his car. Stepping off the curb his foot skidded slightly on a sheen of black ice, the glassy hazard crackling under his weight. He kept one hand ready over the hood and made it to the door, climbed in, and started the Blazer up.

He switched it to four wheel drive right away and drove slow away from the curb. The tires spun twice before the corner, then found good pavement and took hold as he headed down Cougar Mountain.