Christmas at the Hummingbird House (17 page)

She gave him a skeptical look for his trouble, and he didn’t linger.

Paul clutched Derrick’s arm and pulled him out into the hallway the minute he was within reach.  “What?” Derrick demanded in an urgent stage whisper.  “What did you hear?  It wasn’t from the hospital, was it?  There hasn’t been an accident?”

Paul shook his head adamantly, but there were pinched white lines around his lips and his eyes were dark with despair.  “No, no, I haven’t been able to reach anyone.  But Derrick …”  His fingers tightened on Derrick’s arm.  “It’s gone!”

Derrick stared at him, baffled.  “What’s gone?”

Wordlessly, Paul pulled him down the hall into the reception room, where Purline stood beside the desk with her arms crossed and a grim expression on her face.  Paul flung out a dramatic hand toward the desk and cried, “Look!”

At first Derrick didn’t understand. He scanned all the walls to make sure the artwork was in place, and then his eyes fell on the tall reception desk with its fluffy cotton batting display and … “The train!” he gasped, staring.  “Where is it?”

“Well, if I knew that, would I have bothered you?” Paul retorted sharply.  Then he ran a hand over his face distractedly.  “I thought perhaps Purline had moved it …”

“Although why in the world he would think that I don’t know,” interrupted Purline smartly. “It’s not like I haven’t been told a hundred times not to dust the collectibles.”

“Or maybe she’d seen someone come in …”

“Like that could never happen,” Purline interrupted again, “since you never lock the front door, and with people coming in and out every minute. I told you and told you to put a bell on that door, but do you listen to me? Who hasn’t been in and out of here this morning, that’s what I’d like to know.  First that woman in the magnolia room goes tearing out of here like a house a’fire, then  those people going to the caverns, then that doctor fella, then the UPS man left a bunch of packages in here—don’t you worry, I put them all in the rooms they were for—but you know the only person that matters was that Mick fella you all are so wild about, and he musta been in and out of here a half dozen times before he got everybody loaded up and out of here.”

“It’s been in my family for generations,” Paul said, but it came out as more of a groan. “It’s worth …”

“Six thousand, five hundred dollars,” Derrick murmured, and then he explained, “At least that’s what the nearest facsimile went for at auction several years ago. But how could Mick—I mean, anyone—know that?”

Purline sniffed.  “Are you kidding?”  She jerked her head at Paul.  “He talks about that train almost as much as he whines about them crepe pans.  Everybody in this place knows what it’s worth.”

Paul looked stricken. “I do, don’t I?”  He sank back heavily against the desk.  “It’s my fault,” he said weakly. “I was boastful and careless and now it’s gone.  Stolen right out from under my nose.  How could I be so foolish?”

Derrick said, “There’s got to be an explanation.”

“You know what the explanation is as well as I do,” said Purline, “and it’s driving down the road right now with your friends and your paying customers and all your valuables!”

Then, at the look of genuine alarm that came into both men’s faces, she softened her tone.  “I’m real sorry this happened to you,” she said, “and I’m sure everybody’s okay—I mean, I hope they are—but if you don’t call the sheriff …”

“Excuse me, Mr. Slater, Mr. Anderson.”  Carl Bartlett came from the corridor where his room was located, looking worried and unsure.  “I don’t mean to bother you, but my girls went on the shopping excursion this morning and I expected them back by now.  I wonder if you’ve heard anything?”

Paul and Derrick looked at each other uncertainly while Purline held them both in her steely gaze.  Then Derrick said, with as much heartiness as he could possibly muster, “Just a slight delay, Mr. Bartlett, it’s Christmas Eve, after all.  I’m sure they’ll be here any moment.  In the meantime, why don’t you go enjoy tea with the others?”

Derrick lifted an arm to turn him toward the parlor, but the other man didn’t seem to notice.  His worried frown only deepened. “It’s just that I didn’t want to say anything until I talked to them, and my wife’s phone seems to be off … I don’t like to raise the alarm for nothing, but I really don’t know what could have happened …”

He sighed, and seemed to come to a decision.  “You see, I brought the Christmas gifts I’d intended to give my wife and daughters with me here.  They were rather valuable, I’m afraid—jewelry.  They’ve been locked in my suitcase all this time because I didn’t want the girls to find them and ruin the surprise.  But when I went to get them out this morning to put them under the tree, the lock on my suitcase was broken and the gifts were gone. I’ve searched every inch of the suite.  I just don’t know what could have happened.”

Paul and Derrick looked at Purline in despair.  She said, “Now?”

Paul gave a great and sorrowful sigh.  “Now,” he agreed.

The sun slanted in the sky, warming the ground where they stood but bringing the promise of a crisp cold night in the breeze it left behind.  There were a few false starts as the engine almost, but inevitably failed, to catch, and each one seemed a little less disappointing than the last. Bridget broke out a Tupperware container of cookies she had packed for her grandchildren, and Lindsay found a package of cheese crackers she had tucked into her purse for the trip and added them to the feast. Cici found a six-pack of water in the console of the van.  One of the teenagers passed around a pack of gum.  Their little group grew comfortable together, more like friends at a casual party than strangers stranded on the road.

Geoffery wished he had gone to the cooking class and gotten to know the women of Ladybug Farm. He wished he’d made more of an effort with Ms. Hildebrand.  He wondered about the people back at the Hummingbird House, all of whom he had missed the chance to know.  Geoffery turned to Angela and said, “I didn’t know you were leaving.”

There was a slight hesitance, and then she replied, pleasantly enough, “I hadn’t planned to, but when I heard the van was stopping at the airport on the way to town it seemed foolish not to take the opportunity.”

He waited for her to continue, but when she didn’t, the journalist in him wouldn’t let it drop.  He said.  “Your husband …?”

She replied without looking at him, “I thought it was best that I make this trip alone.”  Then she seemed to surprise herself by adding, in a perfectly normal tone, “We’re divorcing.”

One of the ladies, overhearing, gasped softly and all of them looked at her in concern.  Bridget said with genuine sympathy, “Oh dear.  I’m sorry.  That’s terrible news at Christmas.  It must be very upsetting for you.”

Angela released a tired breath.  “Not really.  It’s been a long time coming.  Thirty-five years, to be exact.”

Geoffery wished he had never inquired.  He was not comfortable being trapped inside the details of someone else’s life.  He cast about for something to say, but all he could come up with was, “It’s a little chilly out here.”  It wasn’t really, and the sun felt nice.  “Maybe we should wait inside the van.”

No one made a move to do so. Lindsay said gently, “I know it’s none of my business, but you’ve been together so long … surely there’s a way to work this out.”

Angela just smiled and shook her head.  “Thank you for your concern.  But it’s misplaced.”

Bridget had never been one to simply let a matter go.  She said, “You both seemed so happy together yesterday at the cooking class.  Your husband is—seemed to be—such a nice man.”

Angela leaned against the van and gazed into the distance, her eyes squinted a little against the sun.  “We’ve both had a lot of practice looking happy together.  It’s an art form really. Which isn’t to say that Bryce isn’t a perfectly nice man, because he is.  This isn’t his fault.  I wouldn’t want anyone to think that. If anything, he tried harder than I did.  I mean, he established a whole foundation, for God’s sake. He had a trauma center named after him.  He tried to make it all count for something.  But in the end it all boiled down to the fact that we couldn’t forgive each other.”  She turned pale, quiet eyes on Bridget and said, “We couldn’t forgive each other for killing our son.”

There was a collective held breath.  Bridget’s fingertips fluttered to her lips but no one else moved.  Geoffery thought,
I don’t want to know this; this has nothing to do with me; I don’t want to be inside this nice woman’s life, I don’t want to see behind the curtain. I don’t even know her, I don’t know any of these people.  I’ve got my own problems.  Leave me out of this.

But in the end he was the one who said quietly, “What happened?”

She answered.  He had not expected her to, but she did.  Her voice was flat and expressionless, almost a monotone, but she answered.  “We were young and ambitious and, dare I say it, privileged.  The golden children from golden families.  Bryce was already on a career track for chief surgeon, and I was doing monthly features in two magazines and had offers for others.  I was into interior design back then.  Still, we both knew that David was the most perfect thing either one of us would ever create.  We loved him intensely, madly, to the exclusion of all else.  It was as though he was the reason we existed, not the other way around.” She smiled then, but it seemed like an autonomic function, a simple curve of the lips unprompted by intention or emotion.  And it faded almost before it was fully formed.

“It was a typical Monday morning,” she said, “the week before Christmas.  You know how frantic it can be that time of year. I was late for a meeting, Bryce was supposed to be taking David to school.  He was six.  We’d all been Christmas shopping that weekend, and David couldn’t stop chattering about the ‘secret’ presents he’d gotten for each of us, throwing out so many hints I was sure he was going to give the whole thing away before the end of the day. You know how children that age are. Anyway, I was barely listening, and I was in such a rush I’m not sure I even kissed David good-bye.  I got in the car and realized I’d forgotten my portfolio.  I ran back in the house to get it, and by that time I figured David was already buckled into Bryce’s car. But he wasn’t.  Bryce had stopped to take a phone call, and David ran out of the house by himself, and when I started to back out of the driveway … I never saw him.”

There was a muffled sob, or a catch of breath, from one of the women.  Angela did not look around, and nothing about her expression, or her tone, changed.  “He lived for thirty-six hours, but he never regained consciousness.  Massive head trauma.” She took a slow, soft breath.  “We don’t celebrate Christmas at our house anymore,” she said.  “We go through the motions—the parties, the fundraisers, the charitable donations. But for the most part, it’s just something to be gotten through.  Coming here was a mistake.  This was all”—she waved her hand vaguely—“a mistake.”

Cici said quietly, and with fierce sincerity, “I am so sorry.”

Lindsay added, “I never meant to upset you.”

Angela seemed to come back to herself with a start, and gave a quick smile and a brief shake of her head. Once again she was the composed, polite and distant woman she had always been.  The curtain was closed.  “Please, it’s I who should apologize.  It doesn’t upset me to talk about my son. But I’m sorry you had to listen to it. I didn’t mean to ruin everyone’s holiday.”

Geoffery couldn’t stop looking at her.  He felt as though there was something significant he should say, but he couldn’t remember what it was.  So he racked his brain for the few snippets he’d gleaned from his casual conversations with Bryce Phipps, and with others who knew him, over the past several days.  He said, “Is that why your husband changed his specialty to neurosurgery?  And he established the David Phipps Children’s Trauma Center.  It’s known all over the country.”

Angela smiled distantly.  “Everyone deals with grief in his own way.  My husband found a way to celebrate David’s life.  I never seem to have been able to get past the moment of his death.  And as much as I’ve always admired Bryce for that,” she added slowly, with difficulty, “I think I’ve also always resented him as well.”

“It must be lonely,” Lindsay said gently, “for both of you.”

Angela looked at her with an odd expression on her face, as though she had never thought of that before.  “Yes,” she said simply.

Bridget had been strangely quiet, two fingers still lightly covering her lips, her eyes riveted on Angela.  Now she said, dropping her hand from her mouth, “My little boy—my Kevin—was hit by a car when he was seven.  He was airlifted to George Washington University Hospital in DC.  There was a neurosurgeon there giving a lecture, teaching a new technique, I don’t know the details.  He was supposed to have left already, I remember that much, but his flight was delayed because of fog over Chicago.  His name was Dr. Bryce Phipps, and he saved my son’s life.”

Cici clutched Bridget’s arm, her eyes growing bright with tears.  “Oh, Bridge,” she whispered.  “I’d forgotten.”

Bridget said, “I never got to thank him.”  She stepped away from Cici and walked over to Angela, pulling her into a clumsy, heartfelt embrace.  Her voice was muffled as she repeated, “I never got to thank him.”

Bridget stepped away with tears on her face, but Angela looked simply stunned. Instinctively, Bridget reached up to smooth a strand of errant hair behind Angela’s ear, as she might do to a child. “Please don’t misunderstand me,” she said huskily.  “I don’t mean to suggest that your son’s life was a good trade for mine.  What happened was inexplicable, a tragedy beyond measure.  But I wanted you to know … it had meaning.”