More Than Friends (6 page)

"I should be there," Annie said. "I think I'll cancel my classes. Teke should have someone with her."

"No. Go to school. J.D. said he'd be back in an hour. I'll stay until then."

"J.D. isn't good with illness. Teke needs someone to lean on." But Sam was insistent. "I asked her. She said you should go to class. She'll feel worse if you're here."

"Worse?"

"Guilty taking you away from school. Wait, Annie. Come in after class. Maybe there'll be some improvement by then." Annie prayed it would be so. She didn't need a medical degree to know that the longer Michael remained unconscious, the more ominous it was. Heavy of heart, she packed her briefcase with the papers she had abandoned the afternoon before and was in the process of ferreting her car keys from the kitchen basket when there was a knock at the back door.

It was Virginia Clinger. She was dressed in a lavender warm-up suit, had her blond hair arranged with artful negligence around a lavender sweatband, wore lavender shadow above perfectly applied liner over neatly mascaraed eyes, and reeked of Obsession.

Annie Pope wasn't the catty sort. She believed that the beauty of life lay in diversity, which was why she welcomed exposure to, and appreciated the strengths of, a wide variety of people. There were very few whom she disliked.

Virginia was one of those few. She was thrice divorced and had three difficult children--which would have evoked Annie's sympathy if Virginia had been at all devoted to those children, but she wasn't. Her major goal in life was self-beautification. She was sculpted in a way that Annie called "Styrofoam chic." Moreover she was a gossip and a busybody.

Annie produced a polite smile. "Hi, Virginia. I was just getting ready to leave."

"There's no answer at the Maxwells'," Virginia said without apology.

"Are they all at the hospital?"

"Teke and J.D. are. The girls will be there later."

"How is Michael?"

"The same."

Virginia clicked her tongue. "Such a tragedy."

"Not yet." Annie hurried to ward off a flurry of negative talk. "With a little luck, he'll wake up and be just fine." She returned to the table for her briefcase.

Virginia stepped into the kitchen. She tipped her head in a pretty little pose of curiosity that Annie suspected was well practiced. "What happened, do you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"What made him run into the street that way?"

"He was in a rush to get back to school. The pickup was going slowly. He may not have heard it."

"Had he been talking with Sam and Teke?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"That's funny. I could have sworn I saw him running from the house. What was Sam doing there?"

Annie picked up her keys. "He came home looking for me."

"Because of his case?"

"Uh-huh."

"That was quite some win," Virginia remarked. "He must have been wild with excitement. I wasn't sure what to think at first. When he and Teke rushed out after Michael, she was wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and his shirt was undone, and his belt. A stranger would have thought something was going on between them, but I know how close your families are. He was probably about to change his clothes when he decided to run over and tell Teke the news."

"You're right," Annie said dryly. "You know how close our families are." What Virginia didn't know-and what Annie wasn't about to disclose--was Sam's taste in celebrations. Annie could just picture him loping into the house and starting to undress as he climbed the stairs to her office. Her heart broke that she hadn't been there. It was a thought she wanted to be alone with.

She touched her watch. "I have to be going." She took Virginia by the arm and gently guided her to the door. "Thanks for stopping by. I'll tell Teke you were here."

"Definitely," Virginia said, and jogged off with a wave. Within minutes Annie had started her car and pulled out of the garage.

The phone rang four times before the answering machine clicked on. Disappointed, Sam hung up. He had wanted to catch Annie again before she left home. He had to talk with her about what he had done. After leaving the phone booth, he started down the hospital corridor, berating himself with every step. He should have told her right away, should have taken her aside the minute she had arrived at the hospital the day before. But she had been with the girls, who were terrified for Michael. He hadn't wanted to make things worse.

So he had remained silent. And he could stay that way, he supposed, and save Annie the hurt. What had happened with Teke was an isolated event that would never, ever be repeated. He had never been unfaithful before and hadn't intended to be unfaithful then. In the sense that Annie had been the one on his mind, he hadn't been unfaithful at all. But that was a crude rationalization. The blunt facts were that he had screwed Teke. And that Michael knew. And that Virginia knew. And that even if being caught and exposed weren't an issue, his conscience wouldn't let him be still--because he and Annie talked about everything. There was something between them-Annie called it a soul wire--that ensured communication. It had been there from the first, had been one of the things that had drawn him to her twenty-plus years before, and in the ensuing years he had never met another woman with whom he felt as free. He couldn't hide anything from her. If he tried, their relationship would be sabotaged by the silence, just as surely as it might be by the truth.

He headed on foot up Cambridge Street in the direction of the office. Halfway there he changed his mind and climbed Beacon Hill. By the time he reached the top and the public phones opposite the State House, he figured Annie was at school.

He tried her office number. The department secretary told him she had stopped in for a minute, then gone straight to class.

He hung up the phone and walked on, not toward the office but in the opposite direction. The day was hazy, warm for October, but the warmth was only partly to blame for the growing dampness of his skin. Nervousness made him sweat. So did fear.

Crossing the Boston Common, he entered the Public Garden, walked up the main path to the highest point of the bridge over the pond, and propped his elbows on the rail. The swan boats had retired for the season. So had the best of the flowers. True, the trees were still lush, but shortly they, too, would fade, turn color, and shrivel. He hated fall.

"Hey, Sam!"

He straightened at the call. Seconds later his hand was being pumped by Brian Hennessey, with whom he'd worked in the DA's office years before. As a lawyer Brian was a hack. But he was a nice enough guy.

"Good goin', Sam! That was some decision!"

Sam barely remembered reading the decision.

"You're the talk of the town. Got great coverage in both papers and mentions on the evening news. You'll go down in history, pal."

"I don't know about that. Cases come and go."

"Not this one. Decide to run for office tomorrow, and you'll get the vote of every goddamn woman in the Commonwealth. You went to bat for the abused. You're the man with a heart to match his drive--isn't that what channel seven said? You're their hero."

Sam managed a weak smile, weathered a final slap on his back, and, feeling worse by the minute, watched Brian walk on.

three

TEKE JERKED AWAKE, TREMBLING AND DISORIented. It was a minute before she got her bearings, but then she came up from the waiting room chair and rushed down the hall. Michael was just as she had left him, a motionless figure shackled to the stark white sheets by tubes connected to a bank of bleeping machines.

"You look exhausted, Mrs. Maxwell. Weren't you able to sleep?"

"Not for long," she told the nurse who came up beside her. "Has there been any change at all?"

The woman shook her head.

Teke had been praying for improvement, dreaming of it. With a sigh she ran tired hands over her face. "I should be grateful, I guess. He could be worse."

As the nurse left and she took her place by Michael's side, she imagined that her feet slipped back into practiced grooves in the floor. "Hi, sweetheart." She finger-combed his hair around the inch-long line of stitches in an attempt to make him look more human.

"I caught a little sleep. Feeling any better?" She watched his eyes for the tiniest flicker, but there was none.

"Daddy's gone out, but he'll be back soon. Leigh and Jana will stop by after school, and Annie, Zoe, and Jon. And Sam," she tacked on for good measure, though she tripped slightly on the name. It was hard to know what to say and what not to. She didn't know whether Michael was aware of his surroundings and, if so, how much he remembered of what had happened the day before.

She was haunted by the thought that he was lying there in his silent shell, brooding about what he had seen. She was haunted by the thought that he hated her and by the knowledge that his condition was all her fault.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "so sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen, Michael." She took his hand between her two, trying to rub life into it. "It was madness. I was sitting there feeling so alone, and he was excited when he came in, and before I knew it, you were slamming the door." Michael made no show of having heard, but she whispered on. "I wasn't thinking. I barely knew what was happening. It meant nothing. Nothing. It was a stupid thing, and it was wrong. If I could turn back the clock, I would. I'd do anything to turn back the clock, but I can't. All I can do is hope you'll forgive me."

J.D. would have to forgive her, too. And Annie. She had betrayed them both.

"It was the letter," she blurted out in self-defense. "He never should have written it. He was gone, out of my life. I let him go, just like he told me. Then he sent the letter. Damn it, why did he do that?" Her question hung in the air, like the breath in her throat, while Michael's machines beeped steadily. If he heard what she was saying, he didn't let on.

She released the breath in a tired sigh. "It was a bad time for you to see what you did. You're no longer a little boy, but not yet a man. You didn't know what to make of what we were doing--well, you knew what was happening, but you didn't know why. You didn't know why Sam was there. You didn't know why it wasn't your father. But I swear," she whispered more urgently, "it never happened before. Since I met your father, I've never been with another man. This was the very first time, the one and only time I ever came close to being with someone else."

She wondered if Michael heard any of what she was saying. It suddenly became imperative that he did. Clutching his hand more tightly, she begged, "Don't be mad at me, Michael, please? Don't stay this way because of what I've done. If you hate me, okay. I deserve it. I won't tell you you're wrong. I'll even go away if you want. All you have to do is to wake up and tell me, but please wake up. Please? We all love you. We want you with us. Please don't punish us this way. If you don't want to wake up for me, do it for your father. Or for Jana and Leigh. You're their little brother. They adore you." Closely, so closely, she watched Michael's face, one minute fancying that she had seen movement, the next minute deciding that she hadn't.

"Come on, Mikey," she pleaded, "come on." The nurse arrived with a fresh bottle of intravenous solution. It was a minute before Teke gathered her composure. Then she asked,

"Have you been on this floor long?"

"Two years," the woman said in a kindly way that coaxed Teke on. She had so many questions, so many fears.

"Do you see patterns between cases?"

"Some things are similar, some involuntary movements."

"Would you say that either a patient wakes within the first forty-eight hours or not for a very long time?"

The woman gave her a sympathetic smile. "It's impossible to make generalizations. I've had patients wake up three days after an accident, four days, five, eight, twelve days after. I've had patients wake up two months after, feeling nothing worse than groggy."

"That would be nice," Teke mused, then said in a commanding voice, "Do you hear that, Michael? Sleep, if you want, and wake up feeling nothing worse than groggy. We'll love you for it." The nurse slipped out. Teke held on to the hope she'd been given until it, too, slipped away. She was so tired. So scared.

She was wondering when J.D. would be by when a movement in the window caught her eye. At first she thought it was him, simply because whoever it was wasn't wearing hospital whites. Then she realized that the height was wrong, as were the coloring, the build, the features, the stance.

All were familiar, though. She had seen them just the day before. Sucking in a breath, she put a hand to her chest and in a flash was thirty years and hundreds of miles in the past. The window was suddenly wavy with old glass and marked the local doctor's storefront office. She was ten, hurting from a dog bite and scared to death of what was in store for her when her father found out. He had a temper, Homer Peasely did, and he had warned her to steer clear of the Fuckers'

dogs. But she loved animals, and they usually loved her. She hadn't thought to be bitten.

She had known who Grady Piper was. Everyone in town knew who Grady Piper was. He was two years older than her and nearly as poor, which was why he worked with his father. Between them they

kept the town docks and the boats moored there in working order. Grady was as tough of body and coarse of tongue at twelve as many a man three times his age.

The county authorities weren't impressed by that. They wanted him in school. Time and again they visited the docks, led Grady off, then found him truant a week later. They threatened to take his father to court and send Grady to a school for delinquents, but so far it hadn't happened.

On that day, Grady stood in the street and stared at her. Teke didn't know what else to do but stare back. Finally he opened the door and came in.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked the nurse.

"Got dog bit."

He studied the bandage on her leg. "Why's she standing here?"

"She's waitin' for her father."

"Homer Peasely?"

The nurse nodded.

"Does he know to get her?"