Blood Orange (24 page)

“There wasn’t much he could do.” She drew a deep breath. “I’d
thrown it away.”

No one said anything. Then Geoff cried, “Right on, sister! Garbage in, garbage out.”

“What were you thinking?” David asked.

“I wasn’t thinking, David.”

“Give her a break, Boss,” Gracie said. “She was in shock.”

Geoff said, “I’d ‘a done the same thing, Dana.”

David did not seem to have heard anyone. “That was evidence.
There might have been fingerprints.”

“Look, I’m sorry I did it, but it’s done and-“

“What about that message?” Geoff shuddered. “I love you both?
Is that bizarre? Omigod.”

“You might want to rethink what we were talking about,” Larry
said to David.

“Rethink what?” Dana asked.

David answered, “Dana, do you want a bodyguard? Larry knows
a woman, an ex-Navy type.”

“What a crazy idea.” For one thing, she knew the firm could not
afford a personal guard for Bailey and her; for another, she did not
want David to think she was afraid. She wasn’t, exactly. Whoever
had written the note had taken Bailey-Gary said this was so-and
returned her strong and healthy, traumatized but undamaged. If he
had wanted to hurt her-or Dana-he would have acted by now.

Allison said, “We’re going to trial in a few weeks. Once the case
is finished, the mail’ll stop.”

David laced his fingers together and twirled his thumbs, looking
from Dana to the members of the defense team as if weighing
whether to debate, concede, or negotiate. His colleagues had taken
her side, and she sensed that he felt in some way betrayed. She saw
the anger and the effort it took to conceal it. As Dana’s good mood
faltered, she made a quick decision. There was nothing she could do
about the lost evidence, so, to pacify him, rather than argue, she
would agree to the bodyguard if he insisted. But he surprised her by
changing the subject. The conversation turned to Frank Filmore, to
trial strategy, and to Marsha Filmore.

“How long do you think it’ll take for the press to find her here?”
Allison asked.

“The press?” She had been tricked. “You didn’t tell me there’d
be reporters.”

“Uh oh,” Geoff said, standing up. “Time to do the dishes.”

“Stay where you are.” Dana stood up. “You guys have done
enough.” It was a relief to escape into the house. If she had to talk
to David right then, or even look at him, she would get mean; and
mad as she was, she did not want to embarrass him in front of the
team.

None of them would have any peace after the cameras arrived.

As Dana collected the dishes, Gracie said, “I hate to ruin the
party, but I think we’d better get her before she calls from some
street corner.”

“She’s coming today?” Blindsided again. “But the paint won’t
even be dry.”

“She says she doesn’t care about the paint smell,” Larry said.
“She just wants out of that housekeeping motel in El Cajon.”

Dana hipped the door into the kitchen, put the dishes on the
counter, and sat down at the breakfast bar. Geoff and Gracie followed her, letting the door slam behind them.

“I can’t believe David didn’t tell you she’s coming tonight.”
Geoff laid his hand on her shoulder.

“We all assumed you knew.” Gracie sat beside Dana. “Here’s
what we’ll do. For tonight we’ll get her a hotel.”

“No.” Dana would not be the one to make David break his
word. “You told her she could come, so go get her.” She looked up
in time to see Gracie and Geoff exchange a glance. “What?”

“You listen to me,” Geoff said. “If you don’t want that woman
here, you just say so. This has not been a good year for you, and,
personally, if you’re asking my opinion, which I know you’re not,
but I’m going to give it to you anyway-“

“The boss can be a bully,” Gracie said.

Dana instantly and automatically rushed to his defense.

“Who are you, anyway? Laura Bush?” Geoff said as he pulled
out the stool beside her. “Gracie’s right.”

They meant to be supportive, but their concern cut into her like
a trap.

“We all know when David wants something, he gets it.”

“God, all the times he’s got me to work overtime when I didn’t
want to.” Geoff rolled his eyes.

Gracie said, “None of us thought it was fair to ask you to have
Marsha in the apartment in the first place. We all argued against it.”

Annoyed as Dana was, it still hurt to hear David criticized by his
friends.

At the sink she began scraping fat from the steaks into a plastic
dish to sweeten Moby’s dinner. Through the kitchen windows she
watched David in conversation with Larry McFarland. He tilted his
head back and drank the last of his Corona, and the movement was
so familiar, her eyes stung in memory of the college boy she fell in
love with. He would be deeply wounded if he knew Geoff and
Gracie had called him a bully. He took charge, called the plays; he
was the quarterback.

“You don’t really know him,” she said and snapped a top on the
plastic dish. “He didn’t bully me. He and I, we’re a team. This is
something I want to do to help the case. I honestly don’t care if she
moves in today or next week. I was just caught off guard.”

Gracie looked at Geoff. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Gracie said. “In that case, I’ll go get her.”

“Me too,” Geoff said.

They wanted to end the conversation in the kitchen and continue it in the car between themselves. For a while, as she imagined what they might be saying, Dana indulged in a fit of peevishness
that stirred the sparks of her resentment and annoyance until she
was angry again, not just with David now, with all of them. She was
wiping the granite counters when Bailey pranced into the kitchen
with each of the fingers of her right hand stuck into beer bottles.

“That’s dirty,” Dana snapped. “Put them in the recycling and go
wash your hands.”

Bailey shook her head and grinned at Dana from between huge
fingers.

Dana felt her face redden and her pulse quicken. “Do as you’re
told, Bay.” She tried to swallow back the anger. It wasn’t Bailey’s
fault. It was David who was driving her crazy.

Bailey grinned and waggled her fingers in Dana’s face.

“Dammit to hell-“

Bailey jerked back her hand and slammed it down against the
granite counter. Three bottles shattered, and shards of glass flew
onto the counter and floor. Bailey saw blood dripping from her
hand and began to scream. David raced through the back door and
scooped her into his arms at the same time he grabbed for a dish
towel and wrapped it around her hand.

Dana stood frozen, staring at them, then fled upstairs.

ana opened her eyes when the gray light of morning began to
Mill the bedroom. She stared at the open-beamed ceiling, feeling nothing, her mind a blank. Suddenly she remembered the night
before, and as the guilt rushed in, it flattened her, squeezing air
from her lungs as if she had awakened in a two-dimensional world.
Beside her David turned fitfully, taking half the bedcovers with him.
She would never get back to sleep. She might as well go for a run.
When she came back she would apologize to David and agree with
whatever he said or suggested.

Who was she, anyway? Lately she hardly recognized herself.
Organized, sensible, goal-oriented, and successful: that’s who she
was. But it certainly had not been sensible to throw away the note
and say nothing about it. Whoever was sending notes had taken
Bailey from them. It could happen again, and maybe this time he
wouldn’t bring her back.

Dana’s strange behavior had come from the shock of the kidnapping and return; it must be a kind of post-traumatic stress. This
made excellent sense. She had other symptoms: she couldn’t concentrate anymore, her mind was a sieve, she slept poorly, and her re lationship with David wasn’t good. She had suffered a massive emotional trauma. When she thought about it that way, it was a miracle
she wasn’t in a rubber room.

She walked softly down the hall, stopping at Bailey’s open door
to look in. She lay on her back with her arms flung out. Dana saw
the bulky white bandage on her hand and her throat closed. She
had reacted to the scene with the beer bottles as thoughtlessly as
Imogene once might have. Swearing to make it up to her husband
and child, she went downstairs, her bare feet sticking to the hardwood floors. Moby came in from the living room and put his wet
nose under her hand to get her attention. After giving him a biscuit,
she walked to the sink and splashed water on her face.

On the front steps she sat down to lace her running shoes. The
air was cool and damp as she stretched out her hamstrings and
quads on the brick front steps. From the next street she heard the
regular thump of the Sunday paper being tossed from a car onto
driveways and porches. A dog barked a halfhearted protest. In the
park across the street the details of the trees and shrubs had begun
to emerge gradually, like visitors from another world. A figure stood
at the foot of a white-barked eucalyptus fifty meters into the park.
She thought she recognized Micah’s insouciant slouch, and a thrill
ran through her, followed by dread like a heavy coat on a hot day.
She glanced up at the bedroom window to make sure the light was
off, then jogged across the street and into the park.

Micah straightened as she approached. He wore Levi’s and a
leather jacket over a T-shirt.

“What are you doing here?”

Once she had thought him attractively boyish, but the half-light
revealed his face to be more gaunt than she recalled and etched with
fatigue. She did not remember the deep lines bracketing his mouth
or the pleat of skin between his eyes.

“I have nothing to give you. How many times do I have to say it?
Why do you keep pestering me?”

“Pestering?”

He had last contacted her months ago, but seeing him concealed
in the shadows of the park, spying on her house, she felt as if he had
been tormenting her constantly and for a long time. It occurred to
her that in a sense he had been, though not intentionally. Since Italy
thoughts of him had never been far beneath the surface of her mind.
She had been reminded of him by Lexy, by a winning flash in the
eyes of a stranger, by the sight of someone with a boyish grin or tall,
slender body like his.

“Just tell me why you’re here. What do you want from me?”

“You know.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t know. I thought we’d talked this
through. I thought you understood me.”

“I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t stop thinking about you….’

“You’re off your meds, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “You and my sister, you act like everything’s a pharmaceutical problem. I don’t need medicine.”

“Don’t you want to be happy?”

“I want to be alive. You make me feel alive. Not pills.”

“It’s not fair to lay that on me. I don’t want that responsibility.”

“You said you loved me.”

“But I didn’t mean it the way you thought I did.”

“Why do you lie to me? You loved me, I know it.”

“Micah, the police patrol this park at night. You’re not supposed
to be here after sundown.”

“That’s not what bothers you.”

She despised his satisfied air of knowing her better than she
knew herself.

He said, “You always follow the rules.”

“That’s not the point. This isn’t about me. It’s about you leaving
me alone. I know I hurt you, and if I could undo what happened, I
would. But since I can’t-“

“You wouldn’t change a thing. You say you would, but I know
you better than you know yourself.”

“This is an insane conversation.”

“Don’t say that.” He grabbed her hand and held it pressed between his palms.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Not as much as you’ve hurt me.”

“Oh, God, Micah, I’m sorry. Why can’t you just believe me
when I say there can’t be anything between us? Let it go, let me go
for God’s sake.”

He dropped her hand. “If you were mine I wouldn’t let you run
at night.”

“Don’t change the subject.”