Healing Grace (24 page)

East Bay helped its own. It had been unfortunate, but all the local inns and rooming houses were full, so Jilly and Gus had to find a motel room forty-five minutes away. Gas stations mysteriously were closed or out of fuel when their motorcycle roared up, and Kaye seemed to run out of precious many menu items whenever the pair came to eat.

After a suitable pause, Jilly’s counselor began. “My client, Mrs. Marshall—”

“
Ex
-Mrs. Marshall,” Marlby inserted calmly.

The man went on with hardly a pause. “Is asking for custody of her son due to the obvious ill health of the boy’s father. It is only natural and right that the boy go to live with her.”

Ted’s attorney sported his best poker face as he slid their written response to the suit across the table.

Gus had let slip his financial state to Grace when he asked for advice on his backache. While she worked on him, he obligingly mentioned his dismay that Jilly had run through the money from the sale of the house. “So quick! Man, just an investment tip turned squat.” He’d pressed a thick thumbpad and forefinger together. She turned around and spilled the beans to Ted who felt obligated to share the news with his attorney.

Ted watched emotionlessly as his ex-wife’s lawyer whispered in her ear and gestured at the paperwork. Her eyes widened slightly, and he could tell she held a tight rein on her emotions by the firm set of her lips and clenched jaw. She skimmed the papers her lawyer shoved under her nose. Jilly was smart. She could read the bottom line as well as anyone.

Ted now smiled and recited to himself, as if he could read the counselor’s lips, “You see, my dear, when you run a business into the ground, it can’t earn any income for you.” She had ruined the Marshalls’orchard. Ted stared at her. She glared back. The only property they owned jointly had been the house. After Jilly took her half of the sale and ran, Ted put his share, as well as all his remaining assets and business income, into an irrevocable trust for his son. Randall Marshall was the executor, with the Brouwers as secondary executors. The trust wouldn’t even buy a decent house in larger markets, but it was enough to ensure that with careful handling, it would take care of Eddy’s needs during childhood and see him through college at one of the state schools.

Jilly’s eyes shifted to Randy. Ted read the attempt to challenge his brother as she jabbed, looking for a weak spot, trying out scenarios of what it might take to gain control of the trust. Then her eyes dropped to the button pin of Eddy.

Yes, my dear, you’d still be stuck with our kid when the money runs out again.

The last of his limited patience fled. “You never sent any pictures, Jilly—how was he to know what you looked like now? I hardly recall what you looked like.”

“Ted!”

“Mr. Marshall!”

Both lawyers warned him to stop.

Ted raged on. “You didn’t know what day it was that you came in. It was your son’s birthday. I never even heard you wish him a happy birthday, let alone bring anything for him. One thing I’m sure of is that you will never, ever get your hands on my son when I’m gone.”

Jilly played her trump card. “That woman you hired to babysit. The witch—the one from the hills down south—you gave our home to. Who is she? How can you let her near our son? It’s all over town how she hurts other children with her mumbo-jumbo and magic potions.”

Ted struggled to his feet. “How dare you? I had to beg Grace to help us out when…” Too late Ted realized how he sounded.

Jilly smiled.

* * * *

Randy sniffed it first at Kaye’s not long afterward. The smell of blood and venom in the air. The mood of East Bay shifted and washed with the mention of Grace Runyon, the woman with the mysterious past who hurt their children. The care applied to the Marshalls did not extend to outsiders. The battle began.

Randy was right to believe that no judge in the world would give a child to a mother who demonstrated as little maternal care as Jilly Marshall. The suit had been dropped.

Gus had made no secret of his opinion. Randy had been informed of the loud discussion right on the street.

“I heard him,” Mrs. Woolver said. “Shouting in front of the shop. Shameful, it was. He told her, plain as day, that since poor Ted, your brother, is done for—what an ugly turn of phrase, ‘done for,’—and the little boy doesn’t know her, they should leave. But, how could it be true? A child not like his own mother? And, Mr. Marshall, it’s not true about the money is it? That you have none?”

But Jilly exacted her own brand of revenge. She had always wounded the best way she knew how. And Randy was afraid for them all.

At the park, at the community pool, and the playground, Jilly spread her poisonous whispers which were dutifully repeated at Kaye’s and the co-op. The ex-Mrs. Marshall might not have left any friends in East Bay, but there were plenty of ears willing to gobble up the latest gossip and pass it around. Then she disappeared as quickly as she’d come, no good byes, not a word to Eddy or Ted.

Randy’s heart burned with the horrible accusations. “Witch” had been the one used most often. “Adulterer” had been mentioned more than once.

Tanya interrupted him in the office about a month after school had started. “Did you hear? Hear what they’re saying now about Grace?”

“Yes. Just rumors, Tanya. The best thing you can do is not pass them around.”

“But what about her job?”

Randy pushed himself up from his desk. “What do you mean?”

“Some of the kids have accused her of hurting them on purpose. What are we going to do? I heard them talking about a petition to get her fired.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll look into it.” Randy started to sweat. He rubbed his hand across his head and escorted Tanya outside. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing. The clinic isn’t run by committee. Doctor Evans is in charge and he knows how to handle this.”

If only he believed it.

When Nancy gently let the two families in the clinic waiting room know there was an emergency and they needed to reschedule, they were not happy. Grace glimpsed their narrow looks when she flew past to meet Jimmy in the parking lot, Greg on her heels.

Jimmy had called and Grace still wasn’t sure how serious he was until she saw the amount of blood on the towel wrapped around Tanya’s hand. Greg hustled the unconscious girl inside, ordering Grace to stay and find out what happened.

“I was waiting for her to get off work, and I was early,” Jimmy said. “She was slicing the next day’s order for deli meats with that big, noisy meat cutter in the kitchen. I just stood there at the back door.”

Grace nodded, encouraging him while keeping an eye on the exam room door.

“‘So, what’s up?’ she asks me, looking over her shoulder,” Jimmy went on. “That’s when it happened. It was so fast. I didn’t really see anything. I ran inside, fast as I could.

“I reached past her to shut off of the machine. She looks down. I could tell the moment she figured out what happened when she saw the blood.”

Jimmy swallowed. “I tell you, I nearly lost my lunch. The whole tip of her finger was gone, down to the bone. The blood—it kept coming. So I ask Tanya, ‘where’s Kaye?’ I’m trying to keep calm. ‘She’s gone,’ Tanya says, and starts to giggle. ‘She went out buying.’ So I yell ‘be quiet!’ and grab a towel. It wasn’t exactly clean, but by then I didn’t care. I start to call 9-1-1, but then I realize we can get here quicker than waiting around for an ambulance.”

He swallowed convulsively. Grace reached out to steady him as he swayed. “You did good, Jimmy. She’ll be just fine, I’m sure.” What was taking so long? She looked at the exam room again, wondering if she should go in.

Jimmy kept talking. “I heard somewhere that sometimes they can sew your finger back on, so I looked for it. I tried not to gag at the sight of all that blood. How do you do it, Grace? How do you not throw up?”

She shook her head. “Practice.”

“You can help her, right? Like you did for me?” Jimmy’s eyes bored into her, bold, frightened, and confused all at once.

“It’s not the same kind of hurt, Jimmy, you know that.” She turned away. “Did you call Kaye?”

“She’s out, Tanya said. Tanya didn’t say whether she’d taken her phone.”

“Well, keep trying, okay? Wait—never mind. We’ll have Nancy leave a message, and try a couple of the places she usually goes.”

“But you can help, right? Go, now, go back there and help her. We both want you to.”

“Doctor Evans knows what to do.”

“Please, Grace, go back there. She needs you.”

Grace looked at the blood drops on Jimmy’s sleeveless gray T-shirt. She looked at the exam room again. With a pat on Jimmy’s shoulder, she got up and went down the hall, fright and determination vying. She could help Tanya in a way Greg could not.

Greg looked up as she opened the door. He didn’t acknowledge her. Matty soothed Tanya’s other arm, talking calmly, urging the girl to look away.

“I think we might need to take a little ride over to the hospital,” he said. “I wonder if, ah, the missing piece might yet be salvaged. It’s unlikely that there’s enough to reattach, but it’s a good clean cut. Deli cutter, the girl said. Do you think… Anyway, nail bed’s probably shot.”

Tanya gasped. “My nail bed? You mean, I won’t have a fingernail anymore? Please, Grace, you have to do something! I don’t want to be a freak!”

Grace leaned over Matty to assess the damage for herself. Much of the bleeding had already stopped. She agreed with Greg’s assessment. The sterile matrix was neatly sliced lengthwise at an angle, a large subungual hematoma already forming. She looked at Matty, saw the concern and compassion not just for Tanya in her expression. There was also sympathy and a desire to allow Grace a chance to work.

Matty spoke matter-of-factly to Doctor Evans, her brogue thicker than usual. “Let’s leave these two for a moment, Doctor. We should speak to young Mr. Marshall, and help Nancy find Kaye, yes?”

“Grace?”

She nodded, not meeting his eyes. He frowned. He looked at Matty again, and then abruptly turned around and left with her.

Grace, grateful for Greg’s silent trust, watched Tanya carefully for a moment, and then sat beside her. “Jimmy’s accident was different than yours, you know.”

Tanya shivered, but nodded. Grace took the girl’s hand in both of hers and turned so that she would not see her actions.

“I’m just going to look a little closer, and touch it some, okay? It will probably hurt. Matty gave you a shot, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then, here we go. Try to stay still.”

Grace could not recall a single prayer. The air felt dry, the atmosphere gone, and it hurt to take a breath. She stared at Tanya’s wounded finger while trying to gather the courage to touch her, fearful that nothing at all would happen.

And nothing did, at first. Gradually Tanya stopped trembling. Grace inhaled deeply, holding the breath while she let the pad of her finger caress Tanya’s. The blood darkening the remaining portion of the girl’s nail bed turned bright red and began to flow freely again, draining the hematoma.

Tanya gasped. The blood gradually cleared away and the edge of her finger looked pink.

Grace waited for the pain.

Nothing.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll need to stitch it,” she said. “We will need to take a picture, Tanya, to make sure nothing is wrong that we can’t see, okay? It won’t hurt.”

When the healthy nail bed was clearly visible, she carefully applied petroleum, so a new nail plate could grow underneath. She put on an Alumafoam splint and then wrapped the finger in clean gauze and taped it gently.

She wasn’t sure if the entire pad would come back, but the nail shouldn’t grow abnormally.

“There, Tanya. You’ll be all right. It may not look exactly look the same, but you won’t be a freak. The nail will grow back soon. The splint is just for a couple of days so that if you bump it, it won’t hurt worse. It will take as long as two to three weeks to start looking better, okay? Let’s go see if anyone got in touch with your aunt.”

Greg pretended to look at files at the reception desk. Nancy and Matty simply waited. Jimmy hovered nervously.

“Did anyone find her aunt yet?”

“No,” Nancy said.

Jimmy studied Grace’s hands. So he had seen and guessed during his own accident. She fought the urge to slide them into her pockets. She watched him narrow his eyes when he saw her hands were fine.

She pursed her lips before pulling the computer monitor toward her to chart. Filling in the proper spaces, she told the others in her clinical voice what she had done. “I applied some petroleum to protect the nail bed, as the original plate was too badly damaged and missing. It looks clean and healthy and should heal normally. I explained to Tanya it will probably not grow back exactly like before.”

Greg watched her unblinkingly. She finished woodenly. “I reduced the hematoma under the bed. She should come back but not tomorrow, I think.”

Nancy nodded and checked through the book and they set the time, automatically filled out the little appointment reminder, and with a page of instructions of what to watch for, Jimmy drove Tanya home, the question still on his face.

* * * *

Old Elvira Brown died in her sleep, after a blue moon had set. No matter how well and long a life, it was still a shock; one that Mrs. Brown’s granddaughter was not willing to accept.

Grace took it hard.

Greg told her what happened. “They called you a witch, for crying out loud. Said you’d burned and poisoned her in the past, that she wasn’t that old and shouldn’t have died.”

“But she was,” Grace whispered. “She had a long life, a pretty good one. I’m not a witch.”

Greg snorted. “Of course not.” He still had an autopsy done. It was expensive and revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

The story grew at the funeral which Grace attended. They didn’t bother to whisper though she stood nearby, flushed, dizzy with hurt and confusion. “Burned with that stuff the witch used on her. Died screaming in agony, Elvira did. Poor soul.”

“The witch was there with her, you know—as she lay dying.”