Embers (61 page)

The brew seemed a bit fishy under the lily-of-the-valley smell; but then, it
was
organic.

Mrs. Camplin smiled and said, "The water's boiling by now. I'll pour the tea and bring out a tray. You keep on working."

"Sure," Meg said, assuming they'd be nailing down an interest rate during teatime. She returned happily to the task and thought,
People get paid for this?

Ten minutes later, her eyes were tearing and she had the beginnings of a pounding headache. She was allergic to something in the garden, apparently: mold spores or pollen, maybe. She thought about returning to the house, but Mrs. Camplin seemed so intent on having tea in the garden; Meg hated to disappoint her. Still, the damn tea was taking forever to brew.

She became restless and jumpy, swatting at the mosquitoes that seemed more interested in her than ever, and still — still! — no tea. This was stupid. If she was promised tea, then she should have the damned tea. And a brownie
—
what about that brownie?

No, no. No brownie. The mere thought of it made her suddenly nauseous. She fought back a rising tide of vomit, looking around frantically for somewhere discreet to puke. But there was no place; everything was planted, tended, flowering. She couldn't defile the site. Oh, but she was becoming deathly ill. She had to find a place. She turned and ran to one corner, then another, dizzy from her frantic maneuvers.

There was one little spot without flowers; she ran toward it and found it was filled by a big stone frog.
Two
stone frogs; or else she was seeing double. One frog or two, she couldn't wait. She was sick all over it or them, and then she fell to her knees, breathing rapidly, her heart still pounding furiously, struggling to stand and make her way back to the house for help.

She couldn't get up. She lay th
ere awhile, and it seemed to her
that she must be getting better, because her heartbeat began to slow down, and
then it slowed down some more ...
and then
...
some more
...

And then it seemed to her, in her lethargic but not unpleasant stupor, that help did come. Mrs. Camplin did come. And Meg had been sweating, she knew she was still dripping wet, and Mrs. Camplin must have felt sorry for her, because through a haze Meg watched her pick up a galvanized bucket from somewhere and pour water all over her. It was very cool
...
it felt very refreshing
...
but it smelled awfully fishy.

The gates were locked, but that didn't stop Wyler. By stepping on the iron scrollwork of the bottom gate rail, he was able —
just
—
to get a footing mid-picket and haul himself over the gate without
—
quite
—
impaling himself on the spear points. Cursing himself for not taking his physical therapy more seriously, he dropped to his feet, then to his knees, before he recovered and went charging
, despite his aching leg,
down the drive.

He didn't think about guard dogs, he didn't think about alarms; he only thought,
she's here, and if she's here, she
's
in danger.
It seemed incomprehensible to him that with all she had on her plate, Meg was still pursuing this sham photography scheme of hers. Didn't she have enough to worry about? When he found her, he was going to take her in his arms and kill her.

The driveway seemed to go on forever; the grounds were vast, ringed by thick woods. His cop's eye noted that there were plenty of places to hide the results of a crime. His heart, pounding hard, turned away from the thought. At the head of the drive and in front of a fl
ower-covered house too picture-
perfect to be true, he saw Meg's old Chevy parked alongside a Mercedes. He should've felt relieved but didn't; Bobby's words were too fresh in his mind:
They're so desperate to hang on to what they've got.

He found Meg almost by instinct, lying unconscious on a mulched path near a big stone frog. Her shorts were wet; a knocked-over galvanized bucket lay next to her. The bucket was filled with soggy, half-shredded cigar butts; why, he didn't know. All he knew was that nicotine was one of the most toxic natural substances in existence. Panicking that he might be too late, he dragged a nearby hose over to Meg and rinsed her off quickly, then made a beeline for the house and phone. Two things were on his mind: Get an ambulance. Get the gate open.

He was in the front hall when Dorothea Camplin emerged carrying a large brass tray laden with a yellow teapot, two matching cups in their saucers, and a yellow plate of frosted brownies cut into two-inch squares. She looked absolutely shocked to see him there, but she didn't drop the tray or act hysterical, and he didn't wait for her to say something first, a fact that later he regretted.

"Where's your goddamned phone?" he demanded. "I've got to call an ambulance."

"An
ambulance?
What's happened? A car accident? Who are you? I've seen you before. How did you get on the grounds?"

He saw a phone on a small butler's table in front of a chintz-covered sofa and ran to it, then dialed an ambulance. The call was brief
;
he had another to make, still in a state of anguish, to the poison control center. All the while, Dorothea Camplin was watching him with a look of horror on her face.

When he hung up the second time, she said, "What should we do? What can I get?"

He ignored her and looked around, then ripped a soft cashmere throw from an arm of the overstuffed sofa and ran out with it, with Dorothea Camplin hard on his heels, saying, "I know what happened. I know just what happened. I had a bucket of cigar-water sitting on an old stump; I was painting my rosebushes with the solution, to kill the aphids. She must have knocked it over on herself."

Wyler didn't know an aphid from an apricot, but he had no doubt that Dorothea had set up a perfectly reasonable scenario. He didn't care; he didn't care about anything else in the world just then except the woman lying unconscious in the rose garden. When he got back to Meg he stripped away her shorts and rinsed her off still more, rubbing her limbs clean with his handkerchief. He had no idea whether he was doing anything right; his hands were shaking with apprehension.

But he knew how to treat a victim in shock. He wrapped Meg in the cashmere throw, then carried her back into the house and laid her on the thick knotted rug with her legs elevated, and monitored her breathing and pulse, ready to give her CPR, until the ambulance arrived through the iron gates that Dorothea Camplin had been commanded to open.

****

"You again?"

Wyler lifted his head from his hands and looked up.

It was the curmudgeon nurse, standing above him, only this time she had a look of compassion on her face. "I just heard about Mrs. Hazard. What a bizarre accident. I don't know
...
sometimes fa
te can be so ridiculously cruel ...
"

She put her hand on his shoulder, then pressed her lips together in a hapless smile and continued on her way.

Wyler dropped his head back in his hands, unwilling and unable to change from that position. He'd been like that, numb with anticipation, since Meg was admitted. In his entire life he'd never shut down as completely as he had now. The only part of his consciousness that wasn't focused on Meg's recovery was, every once in a while, saying things like,
Have them bring the old woman in, stupid. Don't let her fool with the scene.

He didn't care about that; he had no room to care about that. If Meg lived
—
of course she would live, she
had
to live
— she would be furious with him for not being on top of her case. But he couldn't move. He was in a state of suspended animation. His soul was somewhere outside of his body, moving restlessly between Meg's body and his, trying to reassure her, trying to reassure himself. She
would
live. She
had
to live.

One eternity rolled into the next, and finally, someone came out to see him.

"Her vital signs have stabilized," the physician said, cutting straight to the chase. He knew who Wyler was; he didn't mince words. "She definitely dodged a bullet out there. We're going to keep her here for a couple of days, make sure we've flushed out her system. She'll be on medication to strengthen her heartbeat. I understand her sister's being treated here too? That would be
—
you?" he asked, shifting his attention away from Wyler.

"Yes, Doctor. That's me. I'm her sister, Allegra Atwells." Wyler swung around and was stunned to see Allie, wrapped in a yellow robe with one sleeve cut away, standing behind him and hanging as anxiously as he was on every word. Everett Atwells was there, too, materialized out of thin air.

The physician smiled reassuringly. "She's going to be fine."

"Can we see her?" her father asked humbly, rotating his cap in his hand like a peasant seeking an audience with royals.

The physician scrunched his face good-naturedly. "Actually, no. I'd give her a little while. She's been through hell. What she needs now is uninterrupted rest." He repeated, "She's going to be fine," then excused himself and left.

Wyler said to Allie and her father, "I'm sorry. I hadn't noticed either of you."

Allie and her father exchanged looks. Allie said, "We've been waiting here with you for the last half hour."

"Oh, I knew
that,"
he said, although he couldn't remember a moment of it. "I meant, naturally he should've addressed himself to you two, not to me."

Allie drummed the fingers of her right hand nervously on her cast, then closed her eyes and let out a sigh of jittery relief. "I can hardly let myself think about this. If you hadn't gone looking for her when you did
..."

She shook her head and opened her eyes. "What did you say Dorothea was doing? Bringing out tea to the garden?"

If he said it, he didn't remember it, but he
nodded. At the same time, a red flag went up in the back of his mind.

Allie said, "She would've found Meg, I guess. But who knows what her reaction would've
been.  She
might've gone into useless
hysterics; some
people are like that."

"Not, I think, Dorothea Camplin," Wyler said with tightly controlled understatement. Suddenly he was back in focus. He smiled a private, wry smile, knowing that Meg would be pleased that he was on the case.

Everett Atwells, exhausted and adrift without his daughter to boss him around, said, "Should I stay? Should I go? What would she want?"

"Go back to Uncle Billy's, Dad, and get some rest," Allie said gently. "I'll be here for her."

Allie looked at Wyler as she said it, answering the question that had been hovering in the air between
them
. Wyler put his arm around her and kissed her on her cheek.

"You're doing the right thing, kiddo," he said softly.

"I'm not, Tom; things are still the same," she repeated, frowning. "But this is different."

Wyler left her there, convinced that if he lived to be a hundred and two, he'd never understand what made sisters tick. All he could do was cross his fingers and hope that love ran deeper than pride. In the meantime, he had a stop to make downtown.

****

He was at Meg's hospital room early the next morning, before visiting hours. Strictly speaking, his visit was an official one; but his heart was beating like a schoolboy's as he waited for the nurse to give him permission to enter the room.

Meg looked better than he thought possible after what she'd been through. She smiled weakly when he came in. "Hi. You're the first one they've let me see," she said.

He sat next to her and took her hand in his, just to make sure she was real; the sense that spirits had been coming and going and doing some hard bargaining was with him still.

She was real. Her hand felt warm and solid. He bent over and kissed it in simple homage to the fact that she was alive. He was not a praying man, but he'd prayed plenty on the day before. His prayers had been answered, and now, as he bent over her hand, he mustered one more prayer, a prayer of profound and humble thanks.

She said, "I remember telling you
...
back in your cabin
...
  that you were the right man at the wrong place at the wrong time." She smiled and said, "I take it all back."

He laughed softly. "I remember telling you
—
back in my cabin
—
that you were the most headstrong woman I'd ever met. I stand convinced."

"Okay, okay," she said, blushing a wonderful, healthy shade of pink. "So I've suffered a minor setback. But I think she's going to lend me the money
—
out of guilt, if for no other reason."

Wyler stared at Meg, amazed. She'd marched in and out of the lion's den without ever realizing there was an animal lurking there. "You have no idea what happened?" he asked, disappointed.