More Than Friends (9 page)

"Are you going home?"

"I don't know." She turned to him then, with fresh tears in her eyes and a world of a hurt in her voice. "I have to think. I don't--this isn't--I haven't had any experience with--I don't know what to do."

"I'll come."

"No!" She knew that much. "I don't want you!" She ran off. He followed. "You're upset. You shouldn't be alone."

"But I am alone!" she cried, and whirled on him a final time. She was shaking again. "That's what's so awful about this. From the day we met, I felt there was someone who knew all I was thinking and feeling. I gave you everything that was me. I trusted you completely. Trusted you." She started to cry.

"Annie--"

She whirled around and ran on.

"I love you, Annie."

She ran faster, then faster still, uncaring about the sobs that came from her throat or the tears from her eyes. She only knew that if she could outrun all he'd said, it might not be true after all. Distraught, Sam started after her, then stopped. She was petite, vulnerable looking, and sometimes

prone to the dramatic, but she had a grip on herself. She might walk around for a while, or get in the car and drive, but she wouldn't do anything rash.

He wanted to be with her. Desperately so. But he was the last one she wanted to see. He was the offending party. He had to respect her wish.

Feeling a great heaviness inside, he started walking slowly toward the hospital. Halfway there he stopped. Parked where he hadn't noticed it during his dismal confession to Annie was a police car from Constanceonthe-Rise.

His first thought was that something had happened to Annie, but he could still see her, albeit growing more distant. His second thought was that they had come for him--he was feeling so guilty. His third thought was that something had happened to Jon.

His head was filled with visions of a football injury or a car crash. He was about to run over and ask when two officers from Constance emerged from the hospital. Between them was the man who had left the elevator earlier, the man Sam had found so familiar.

Only then did he identify that man as a cleaned up version of the one whose pickup had collided with Michael.

four

expect the worst. He hadn't had any childhood to speak of, had never known a real home or experienced much by way of human softness other than the little he'd stolen with Teke, and even that had been taken from him. For years he had lived day to day, neither planning for the future nor dreaming. Without expectations he couldn't be hurt. Or so he reasoned, just as he reasoned that having lived through hell, he could take most any grief. He was tough as nails. So he reasoned.

Fact was, he was totally shaken by what had happened. He was shattered when he thought of the little boy and devastated when he thought of Teke.

"The problem," the policeman explained as they sat in a borrowed interrogation room several blocks from the hospital, "is that Constance is a pretty exclusive place. Carpenters who drive through usually have a destination. We need to know what yours was."

Grady tried to stay calm. He told himself that he was only being questioned, that the cops were just

doing their jobs, that he hadn't broken any law and couldn't be charged. Still, he felt the chill of a reawakening terror. Once, he had experienced the ultimate in law enforcement. The horror of it could surge back with as innocent a thing as the yellow VIOLATION tab in an expired parking meter.

"I had no destination," he said. He couldn't very well say he was looking for Teke. That would spark a whole new set of questions and might well cause Teke trouble. Lord knew he'd done enough of that. "I was just driving down the street."

"Looking for what?" the officer asked.

"Work. Prosperous townfolk are always repairing and renovating."

"Why Constance? We're not on a highway, sure not on one coming from Maine. But you're right. We are prosperous. A thief might think he'd made a find."

Grady looked the man in the eye. "I wasn't looking to rob anyone. I was minding my own business. I was driving slowly. The boy ran out. I stopped best I could, but the damage was done. I talked with you at the scene and again at the station in Constance. I told you where you could find me, and you did. I haven't lied to you yet."

"The question is whether you told the whole truth," the officer said, and came forward. "You're an ex-con. We know that. And we know what you served time for. Now, don't you think we have a right to wonder what a murderer is doing driving around our streets?" Grady had known they would find out. The chill inside him deepened. "I served my time. I been out fourteen years."

"Doesn't change what you are," said the second officer, who came toward him with his hands on his hips. One was tauntingly close to his gun.

"We're a nice, peaceful town, Mr. Piper. Unemployed carpenters don't joy-ride round our streets. They don't sit in our coffee shops. They don't bed down in our park." Idly he tapped the leather holster.

"Where'd you sleep last night?"

Grady had a feeling he knew; still he said, "The motel on the edge of town."

"Why?"

"I had nowhere else to stay."

"Why'd you stay at all?"

"Because of the boy. I told you. I couldn't leave without knowing how he was."

"So now you know. Are you leaving?"

Grady shook his head.

"Why not?"

For the first time Grady felt a flicker of anger. He might have murdered a man once, but he wasn't a coldhearted son of a bitch.

"Because the boy's unconscious. I can't leave until I know if he'll make it."

"He could be unconscious for a while."

Grady shrugged. He'd stay for as long as it took.

"You got enough money to hole up at a motel that long?"

"I got money."

"Where'd you get it?"

Grady's nostrils flared. His anger grew, hot against the chill that pooled deep in his gut. "Am I under arrest?"

"Where'd you get the money?"

Grady asked the first officer, "Am I being charged?"

"No," the man said, and called off his partner with a look. When his eyes returned to Grady's, they were quieter. "You didn't break any law that we can see. But you have to understand our situation. Constance is a special kind of town. It isn't known for what happens, but for what doesn't happen. We

don't have drug pushers on the front steps of the school. We don't have hookers on street corners. We don't have rape. And we don't have murder."

Grady didn't blink. That didn't mean he didn't wonder how many of the citizens of Constance cheated on their income taxes or on their spouses. He'd had many a wealthy customer over the years. He knew what they did.

"What happened to the Maxwell boy yesterday," the officer went on, "is upsetting to the whole town. They want to know how it happened, so it doesn't happen again."

"I told you how it happened."

"They also want to know all they can about the man driving the truck. Now, fine. We know who you are and where you're from. What we want to know is when you're leaving." He smiled. "The news that you'd gone back to where you came from would make our folks feel a whole lot better."

Grady's anger swelled far above his fear. Fuck your folks, he wanted to say. This is a free country. I want to drive down your streets, I'll damn well drive down your streets! But he had learned the hard way what back talk accomplished, especially back talk to cops. They could get you for pissing, if they were so inclined.

So he deliberately relaxed his mouth, deliberately took a deep breath, deliberately pushed the anger to the back of his mind, and in an even voice said, "I understand your problem, Officer, but I can't leave until I know about the boy. I won't cause your town any harm. I didn't mean any in the first place. If anyone's upset about what happened to that boy, it's me."

"You done worse," the second officer put in.

Grady leveled him a cold stare. "I was convicted of manslaughter. I served my time. I finished my parole. For fourteen years I've been clean. You want

to know how I got my money?" He didn't mind telling, didn't mind telling at all, long as he was the one offering to do it. "I got my money working. I started in construction, sunup to sundown. Then I met a carpenter who took a liking to me. He was the first kind man I ever knew besides my father. For five years he taught me the trade."

"D'ya steal his customers?"

"I paid him referral fees," Grady said tightly. "Even when his cancer got so bad and I was getting the customers on my own, I paid him. Then I paid for his funeral. I've had a few other expenses, but not many, so I have money in the bank. I don't have to steal from your homes. I don't have to sell drugs to your kids. And if I want to stay in that motel on the edge of town for two years, I can pay the bill in advance. I wouldn't, though. That motel's not worth it. Even I've stayed in nicer ones." He rose and faced the first officer, who wore an amused look. "Any other questions?"

The officer shook his head.

"I can go?"

"We'll drive you back to the hospital," he said, and started to rise, but Grady held up a hand.

"I'll walk." Without so much as a glance at the second officer, he left the room. He walked down the hall holding his breath, half expecting to be called back. Tempering the urge to run, he walked down the stairs to the first floor, pushed open the door, and went through. He stood on the stone steps for a minute, drawing air into his lungs that was dirty with the pollution of thousands of homebound cars, but fresh and free and his to draw in. Then, on legs that hadn't been steady since hitting his brakes hard the day before, he set off in the direction of the hospital.

He held his head high, kept his eyes straight

ahead even when the cruiser from Constance passed him. Only when it had disappeared, and the police station was too far behind for Big Brother to read his mind, did he think about the whole truth. The whole truth was that the boy's condition was only one of the reasons he couldn't leave. The other was Teke. He had come to see her. He wouldn't leave until he had done that.

In a ragged spill of moonlight, Annie wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked in her corner of the window seat. Moving helped. It fought the chill and distracted her from the pain. But the confusion lingered, and the disbelief. She was too weary to blot them out.

"Mom?" came a tiny voice from the door.

It startled her. Normally, even three floors up, she heard the sounds of the house, but she hadn't heard the garage door. Her mind was a cell padded with torment.

Soft as a zephyr, Zoe flew across the floor. "Where were you?" she whispered with a hug. "We were so worried."

"I had to leave," Annie whispered back.

"Daddy said you were upset."

"Things got to me. I didn't think I could help." She shifted so that she was the hugger rather than the hug gee "How's Michael?"

"The same."

She was about to ask how Teke was, but a slash of pain deleted the words. "How's everyone else holding up?"

"Okay."

"Did you have dinner?"

"Uh-huh. We went to an Italian place near the hospital. J.D. was in a snit."

Annie's heart went out to J.D. He had been betrayed just as she had. He would be in far more than a snit when he learned the truth. She couldn't begin to imagine his fury. And against Sam. They had been best friends for so long. It was tragic.

"Why was J.D. in a snit?" she asked Zoe.

"The guy who was driving the pickup came to the hospital to see Michael."

"What a nice thing for him to do!"

"That was what I thought, but not J.D. He was furious."

"Did he say anything to the fellow?"

"No. The guy was leaving when we were coming back from dinner. One of the nurses mentioned who he was--she thought it was nice of him, too. I think J.D. would have run after him, but the man was gone by then. So he started interrogating the nurse. When she said that it wasn't the first time the man has been by, J.D. hit the roof. But the nurse said that he just stands in the hall and looks at Michael. He never stays long, she said. He never goes into the room. She said she's seen it before in cases like this, that he's probably feeling terrible about what happened."

"What did J.D. say to that?"

"He said the man was a no good slime, and that he was only there for show. Jana thought so, too. She thought he should stay away."

"But it wasn't his fault."

"I told Jana that. She said that he may not have broken any laws, but that if he'd been watching where he was going, he wouldn't have hit Michael."

"He didn't hit Michael, Michael hit him," Annie said, and in the next breath felt an awful pain. Michael had hit the truck because he had run blindly from the house, because he had seen Teke and Sam making ..

. making .. .

"That was what I said," Zoe went on, "and Jana got mad at me. She said I was being disloyal to Michael."

Making love? Having sex? Copulating? Annie didn't know what to call it. One word was as upsetting as the next. Sam and Teke? It hurt so much.

"Am I being disloyal?" Zoe asked.

Not you, honey, Annie thought as she looked into her daughter's upturned face. The moonlight on it was frail, painting even greater vulnerability there. Annie suspected her own face looked much the same.

"No," she whispered, pulling Zoe to her again. She felt herself start to cry, which was surprising. She had thought herself all cried out.

"Mom?"

Annie held her tighter. After a minute, brokenly, she said, "It's an upsetting time."

"Are you okay?" Zoe asked, sounding frightened.

"Just feeling raw."

"Mom?" came another, deeper voice, followed by Jonathan's materialization in the moonshine. "Why are you up here in the dark?" Annie brushed at her tears with the back of her hand. "I needed thinking time. That's all."

"Why did you leave so suddenly?"

"Everything just hit me suddenly."

"We were all worried. Especially Teke. Dad said he thought you'd gone home, but he wasn't sure."

Annie hadn't been sure, either. She had left the hospital, driving blindly, crying freely, with no plan in mind but escaping the truth. More than once she had thought to keep driving and driving until she was lost in a world totally new. Increasingly, though, her hands took familiar turns until, eventually, she was home. Which was right. Because, severed as she felt from Sam, she still had the kids.