Kevin O'Brien Bundle (43 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

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Chris almost bumped into a nurse, who was emerging from the ICU visitors’ lounge. She was shaking her head. “Arrogant bitch,” she muttered.
He saw Mrs. Hahn, sitting alone on one of the two tan, cushioned love seats in the small lounge area. A TV bracketed high on the wall was muted and tuned in to some afternoon talk show. The coffee and end tables all had magazines and boxes of Kleenex on them. The window looked out to the parking lot.
Mrs. Hahn had her cell phone to her ear. She suddenly stood up. Her purse dropped off the edge of the love seat and fell to the floor. “Goddamn you!” she yelled. “Who are you? Why are you doing this? Goddamn it!” She hurled the cell phone against the wall, and it smashed into several pieces that scattered on the carpet.
His mouth open, Chris stopped at the edge of the lounge area. Mrs. Hahn turned and flopped down on the love seat. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“Mrs. Hahn, are you okay?” Chris asked, gently. He put down the dried flowers, picked up a Kleenex box, and offered it to her.
Without looking at him, she plucked a tissue from the box, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“It’s this awful woman,” Mrs. Hahn said, her voice strained. “She hasn’t called since Jeremy—since before Mr. Hahn was arrested. I couldn’t tell anybody about the calls, because she kept saying Jeremy was . . .” She took a deep breath. “Well, she said all these filthy things about him that I didn’t think were true at the time. I still don’t think it’s true—despite what everyone says.”
His brow furrowed, Chris gazed at her. “You mean, she told you ahead of time that he was involved with—”
“Yes,” she interrupted impatiently.
“ ‘Lynette, did you know your husband likes to fuck teenage girls?’ ”
she said in a scratchy, singsong, mocking voice. “I thought the calls started because some nut had seen me on TV when your mother was killed. But this woman kept calling. For a while there, I thought it was Molly. I couldn’t go to the police, because of what she was saying about my husband. He still hasn’t gone to trial. So I still can’t go to the police, and she knows it, goddamn it.”
“Molly was getting phone calls, too—about my dad,” Chris pointed out. He sat down on the arm of the love seat across from her. “Molly said my mom was getting harassed, too—by the same woman.”
“I knew about the calls to your mother,” Mrs. Hahn muttered, wiping her eyes. “But I didn’t know Molly was getting them, too.”
“You said it stopped for a while?”
She nodded. “After Mr. Hahn was arrested. This is the first one since then.”
“Can I ask what she said?”
“She said,
‘So, Lynette—’ ”
Mrs. Hahn took on that crawly, mocking voice again.
“ ‘How does it feel to have everything taken away from you?’ ”
Chris frowned. “That’s it?”
“No,” Mrs. Hahn whispered. “And then she said,
‘Now you know what you did to me.’ ”
“What does she mean by that?” Chris asked numbly.
“I have no idea.”
Chris got up and started collecting the broken parts to her cell phone. The battery had fallen out, and he put it back inside. The screen was cracked and the casing was in shards. He set everything on the coffee table in front of her. Then he picked up the flowers. “Is it okay if I see Courtney?” he asked.
Slouched in the love seat, Mrs. Hahn wiped her eyes again and nodded. “She was asleep earlier, but she should be up now.”
Chris walked down the corridor toward Courtney’s room. He wondered what the woman caller meant when she’d told Mrs. Hahn,
“Now you know what you did to me.”
Had Mrs. Hahn gotten this woman’s husband arrested in some kind of sex scandal? Did this woman have a daughter who was disfigured, maimed, or almost killed?
The last time he’d seen Courtney had been the afternoon before his dad had died. She’d been totally out of it, pumped full of drugs and painkillers. Her face had been so red and swollen that it had seemed almost twice its normal size. He’d barely recognized her.
The drapes in her room were closed now, but the TV was on—a
Friends
rerun. The light from the television flickered across her bed, which was raised near the headboard. Courtney was sitting halfway up. A bandage covered her right eye, but the other one was open. The swelling had gone down. Past the staples in her face and the shiny red skin, Chris could see a little bit of the old Courtney. But her blond hair had been shorn off, exposing a dark hole and pink scars where her right ear used to be. A tube was stuck in her nose, and she had another one in her arm. A third tube ran out from under the covers. That explained why one of the three bags hanging on a contraption at her bedside was full of urine.
Courtney’s uncovered eye seemed to catch sight of him, and a tiny smile flickered across her chapped, blistered lips. Her right hand rested on her stomach. The bandage didn’t quite camouflage the fact that her first two fingers were missing. The other hand worked the volume on the TV control. She put it on mute.
“Oh, crap, don’t look at me, Chris,” she murmured. She blocked his view of her face with her good hand. “I’m like something out of
Night of the Living Dead.
”
Chris tried to smile. “Actually, you look better than you did the other day when I was here. The swelling’s gone down.”
“You were here?”
He nodded. “You were pretty well medicated.”
“Are those dead flowers for me?” she asked warily.
“Yeah, they’re
dried
, not dead.” He set them down on the dresser across from her bed. He noticed a big card with a cartoon nurse on the cover leaning against a vase of flowers.
“Actually, they’re very pretty, thanks,” Courtney said. She finally took her hand down. “I got a card there from Madison. Can you believe it?”
Chris picked up the card and opened it. Inside, Madison had written:
Get well soon! I really miss you! XOX—Madison.
He carefully put the card back. “So—are you in a lot of pain?”
“It’s not as bad as it was,” she muttered. “They have me on a ton of drugs. I’m going to be a Vicodin addict when I get out of here—and I’ll be a circus freak, too.”
“Don’t say that,” Chris whispered.
The uncovered eye glanced toward the drapes. “Why not? It’s true.”
“Do you know if they’re any closer to figuring out who did this to you?”
“Nope,” she said, her ravaged face still turned away from him. “All they know is someone broke into my gym locker and rigged my cell phone. They think it might have been another student, pulling a prank that went too far. They’re not really sure.”
Chris hadn’t heard that about the locker. So on two separate occasions, someone had broken into both Courtney’s and his lockers.
She finally turned toward him again. “I heard about your father. I’m really sorry.”
“It was a lot like what happened with your dad,” Chris said. “They found him in a hotel room—with drugs and porn. Some woman set him up to overdose.”
“Only difference is your dad’s dead, and mine’s out on bail, living in a Best Western in Lynnwood.” Courtney sighed. “I’m not sure which one is better off.”
“Remember the morning you had your accident, when you were driving me to school?” Chris asked. “You said that you told Mr. Corson about your dad. You said we all spilled our guts to him. And you were right. He knew my dad had screwed around on my mom.”
“Yeah, Corson was wise to all our family secrets,” she said.
“Did he know about Madison’s mom and her drinking problem?”
“Sure,” Courtney said, with a weak nod.
“It’s kind of like he came back to haunt us,” Chris heard himself say. “Every secret we told Mr. Corson has been exposed. Our parents are getting killed or thrown in jail. It’s like his ghost has come back to get even with every one of us on Willow Tree Court who did him wrong.”
Courtney sighed. “I guess you blame me more than anyone else for getting him fired.”
Chris didn’t say anything. But he was thinking,
Yes, you and your iPhone.
And that was what had exploded in her face.
He stepped up to her bed. “Mr. Corson used to scribble down notes when I was talking to him in his office for those formal sessions. Did he do the same thing with you?”
“Yeah, sure, he used to take a lot of notes,” Courtney said. “He probably collected some juicy stuff there, too. Who do you think has those notes now? The school?”
Chris remembered, and he slowly shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Not anymore.”
“Hi, Molly, it’s Rachel calling at around three-thirty. . . .”
Molly stood in her kitchen with the big UPS box on the counter. She hovered near the answering machine, listening to the voice mail.
“I got your message earlier,”
Rachel went on.
“I’m fine. Don’t panic when you see my car isn’t in the driveway. You asked me to make sure if Natalie comes back that she doesn’t leave again. And I’ve done that. But I really need to go to the store. I know you’ll be home soon, because Erin’s bus drops her off at a quarter to four. I’ll be back before then, okay? I really don’t think you’re going to see Natalie again. But you’ll see me—very soon. Okay? Bye.”
Rachel knew her very well by now. When Molly had driven up the cul-de-sac and noticed there wasn’t a car in her driveway, she’d thought for certain something was wrong. But now that she’d listened to Rachel’s message, Molly felt better. It was 3:35, so she must have just missed her. Natalie couldn’t have come back, packed up, and left again in that short a time.
Molly still had some Styrofoam peanuts stuck to the sleeve of her pea jacket when she took it off. More peanuts fell out of the UPS box and onto the kitchen counter as she dug out the smaller parcel again. She took out the jade elephant and carried it up to her attic studio. She was going to clear a space on her shelf for it. But thanks to Erin, there were some recent vacancies.
Setting down Jeff’s elephant, Molly stopped and stared at her cola ad painting with all the characters through the ages—and the big, yellow
X
slashed across it. She hadn’t really assessed the damage yet. Nor had she cleaned up the mess Erin had made. She figured it might take a day or two, but she could fix the painting. As for the yellow paint on several of her elephants, a little turpentine could get that out.
Molly carefully put the cap back on the tube of Naples Yellow Light and returned it to the drawer with the other paints. She set the brush in some paint thinner. Then she bent over and picked up the putty knife Erin used to break three of the more fragile elephants. Molly put the knife back in the jar, where she kept it with a couple of old brushes and a sponge brush—on the second to top shelf of her supplies cabinet.
Before closing the cabinet door, Molly hesitated, and then glanced around.
She stored a stepladder in the other corner of the room, and it was there now. The stool was near the easel, where she usually kept it. And there was a chair against the wall in another corner of the room, where it always was. None of those things had been moved close to the cabinet.
Frowning, Molly glanced up at the putty knife in that jar—on a shelf that was almost six feet high.
Erin was only about three and a half feet tall.
Despite the November chill, she kept the window of her Honda Accord rolled down. It smelled like gasoline in the car. Two full five-quart canisters sat on the floor of the backseat. She had a grocery bag back there, too—with juice for Erin. She also had a blanket on the seat, in case Erin got cold.
Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, she watched the children file out the main doors of the two-story elementary school. One set of windows in the front had pictures of turkeys, pumpkins, and Pilgrims for Thanksgiving.
Along with several other mothers, Jenna was parked in the line of cars behind three buses in the school’s loading zone. As the mob of kids moved closer to the bus, Jenna stepped out of the car and started looking for Erin.
“Aunt Rachel?” she heard someone say.
She’d persuaded Erin to start calling her that a few days ago. And she was pleased to hear it now.
Lugging her book bag, Erin broke away from the crowd of youngsters and ran to her.
Jenna squatted down, kissed Erin on the cheek, and then zipped up her open jacket. “I’ve come here to pick you up,” she whispered. “Molly wants me to take care of you this afternoon. She—well, she just doesn’t want to see you. I don’t understand her sometimes, I really don’t.”
Her big eyes staring, Erin gave her a sort of puzzled, wounded look.
Jenna shrugged. “Let’s not think about Molly. She’s so awful. It’s like I was telling you the other day, the only reason I’m Molly’s friend is to make sure she doesn’t try to hurt you. I’m never going to let that happen, honey.” She took the book bag from her.
“Erin?”
Jenna glanced up and saw a stocky, pale woman of about forty waddling toward them. She had short hair, studded earrings, and wore a trench coat. Jenna smiled at the woman. “Hi, I’m Rachel Cross,” she said, holding out her hand.

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