Pandora's Key (9 page)

The elevator opened onto the first floor. Evangeline was in the Emergency Room. She walked past some guy with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand and a father holding a coughing, red-faced, infant in his lap. Spying the sliding glass doors, she ran toward them and spilled out into cold, fresh air. It was raining, but the drops felt good on her upturned face. She sank onto a bench, immediately pulling out her cell phone. She tried Samantha again. No answer. She dialed Raphe, but before the phone could ring, she hung up. She thought about Melia. No. She didn’t want to say the words. Saying it made the situation too real. Closing her eyes, Evangeline concentrated on counting the raindrops falling on her face.

“Excuse me, Ms. Theopolis?”

Evangeline clenched her eyes.
If I keep them closed long enough this will all be a dream.

“Ms. Theopolis, is there someone I can call for you? If not, maybe a taxi to get you home?” Dr. Sulliva’s voice was kind.

“Um, no thanks. I’ll stay here with my mom.” She kept her eyes shut.

“Visiting hours ended a few minutes ago.”

She finally opened her eyes to look at the doctor. He was drenched, white lab coat and khaki pants dripping onto brown crocs. He’d taken off his glasses and crescents of fatigue underlined his light gray eyes. Evangeline suddenly registered that she was soaked through and really cold. She drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them.

“You can’t stay out here,” Dr. Sullivan said. “You’re getting cold. Come on.”

“Okay.” She heard the exhaustion in her voice. “I’ll walk home.”

The doctor looked at Evangeline with concern. “It’s late, dark, and really wet. Your mom asked me to make sure you got home. How about I drive you, alright?”

Evangeline hesitated.
I don’t know him. But I don’t want to call anyone I know except Sam, and Sam’s not home…and he’s the only one that can help my mom so maybe I should get to know him.
Finally she nodded, following Dr. Sullivan into the parking lot. They got into a Volvo station wagon that had a babyseat in the back.
Bad guys don’t drive Volvos with babyseats, right?

“What’s your address?”

“794 Albermarle. If you take Johnson up the hill for a few miles, then it’s a left, third house on the right.” Dr. Sullivan cranked the heat and turned on both seat heaters. They rode in silence until they reached Evangeline’s pale-yellow bungalow with white trim. Flower boxes filled with red gardenias lined the covered porch.

“Okay, then,” Dr. Sullivan said when he’d put the car into park.

Evangeline didn’t move.
You have to ask.
“Is she really that sick?”

Dr. Sullivan stared out the rain-splattered windshield. “Yes.” Undoing his seatbelt with a click, he got out of the car and walked in the downpour to Evangeline’s door, opening it. She climbed out of the car and walked to the front door, the doctor right behind her. When she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking to unlock the door, the doctor did it. He followed her inside and stood dripping on the polished floors. “You mother wanted me to remind you to eat.”

“Um, okay—thanks,” Evangeline said, certain that there was no way she would be able to swallow even one bite of food. The doctor awkwardly shifted from foot to foot.
Why isn’t he leaving?
And then it hit her.
He feels bad about my mom and he wants to say something nice, but he doesn’t know what to say to me.
The telephone rang but Evangeline didn’t move to get it.

Dr. Sullivan walked over to the old fashioned rotary phone on the front table and picked up the receiver. “Theopolis residence.” Evangeline could just barely hear the other voice on the line asking, “Who the hell is this?”

“This is Dr. Tim Sullivan. And you are…I’m sorry, it’s hard to hear you—can you turn down the music?”

“I said, Samantha Harris, Olivia Theopolis’ agent and Evangeline’s god-mother,” Sam shouted so loudly that E could hear her. “Is Evangeline there?”

Dr. Sullivan held out the phone to Evangeline and she forced herself to take it. “Hi, Sam. No, it’s OK. He’s mom’s doctor and he’s nice…Yeah…I can’t hear you that well—” There were bells or something playing in the background—it was a familiar tune…but it didn’t really matter, did it? Her mom was in the hospital and she had cancer. Bad cancer.

“Everything’s going to be okay, honey,” Samantha said. “I promise.”

Evangeline felt terror circling her like a shark, deadly and just below the surface. “You can’t.”

“I promise that we’ll deal with this together, okay?”

Deal with this.
“Yeah.”

“I’ll be there soon. Is the doctor leaving now?”

Dr. Sullivan was halfway out the front door. “Um, yeah.” Evangeline hung up the phone without saying goodbye.
Do something!

“Wait! Please—can I show you something?” She walked over to a black and white photograph hanging on the wall at the base of the stairs. In it Evangeline was barely a year old, wearing a pink-flowered bathing suit and floating in the middle of a swimming pool. Her mom was sitting on the edge of the pool, clapping and with a euphoric smile. “I was born knowing how to swim, Dr. Sullivan. My mom was, too.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“People only care about people they know.”

Dr. Sullivan walked out the front door. At the last second, he turned and fixed her with an earnest look. “Ms. Theopolis—Evangeline—I’m truly sorry about your mother’s illness.”

The doctor hustled to the Volvo, shoulders hunched against the rain. Through the doorway, Evangeline watched him drive off. Lost in thought, she traced the onyx key—it felt warmer than her skin and the heat seemed to match the steady pulse of her heartbeat. The warmth started to return to her body in a soft wave and she stopped shivering.

Evangeline closed and locked the front door and walked into the living room, curling up on the overstuffed, shabby-chic couch her mom loved because it was ‘just the right amount of worn-in.’ Jasmine wandered into the room and climbed onto the couch, nestling beside Evangeline, her head resting against her neck. At some point, Evangeline drifted off into a troubled sleep….

• • •

Riding through the sun-dappled forest atop a thoroughbred whose ebony coat glistened with sweat, Evangeline heard the sound of other horses thundering behind her. She didn’t look back lest a low branch sweep her off her mount. The air smelled like the sweet decay of leaves, wet earth, and the musk of dogs and horses. Adjusting her gloved hands on the reins, she gave her mount his head and he moved from a canter to a full gallop.

I don’t know how to ride,
Evangeline thought, looking down at her attire: a tailored wool coat with black velvet collar and cuffs and tight tan riding britches tucked into tall black leather boots banded with brown. “Where’s the fox?” she murmured. Except it wasn’t her voice—it was deeper, with a sexy accent she couldn’t place and what her mom called a ‘bourbon rasp.’ Suddenly a red fox darted across the trail. Evangeline dug spurs into her horse’s flank and he surged forward. The trees were so thick she didn’t see the four-foot-high stone wall until it was only a few feet in front of them.
No!
Her horse leapt, soaring through the air, landing hard on the other side, then lunging onward, up a steep and muddy embankment.

Evangeline’s thighs ached as she clung to the horse’s back.
Where am I? Who am I?
Her mind scrambled for answers. She knew there was a man named Louis who was her husband and who was much older than she was—they’d married when she was eighteen. Louis liked young women. Now that she was thirty-five, his eyes had begun to stray.
Thirty-five?
That’s why I have to catch the fox first and prove that I’m still the best horsewoman Louis has ever seen.
Yesterday her husband was flirting with their daughter, Cleo’s, young ballerina friends. They were only sixteen. She needed to send Cleo right back to her ballet school in France so that her friends were out of Louis’ sight and mind.

Spurring her horse, Evangeline and her mount crested the hill. The red fox darted across a creek twenty yards below. Horse and rider charged down the hill, half galloping, half sliding. Mud splattered Evangeline’s neck and face. She could still hear horses behind her and the excited barking of the dogs. She needed to ride faster—she was so close to winning.
I want to get off,
Evangeline thought.
I need to get off this horse!

They reached the edge of the creek and charged into icy water that pressed around large boulders and flowed with the force of a rain-filled winter and early spring. Suddenly the horse’s ears flattened as if he’d heard a call.
Get off!
Evangeline tried to scream, but she had no voice. She kicked her horse again and he lurched forward. Halfway across the creek, the thoroughbred balked and danced sideways, trying to twist back toward the far shore.

“Penelope!” a man shouted. Evangeline glanced toward the bank. A dashing, mustached horseman in a tweed riding jacket, brown britches, and gleaming back boots stood in his stirrups, his expression fearful. “Penelope, come back!” But it was too late.

Evangeline’s horse was whinnying, twisting, and bucking. She struggled to stay in the saddle, but her balance was finally broken and she was thrown—airborne, tumbling toward the rocks and water.

“Louis!” she cried. But then her head hit a jagged rock and there was a wet, cracking sound. Color seeped from Evangeline’s vision until her world was black and white, flickered once, twice, and then went dark.

• • •

“Louis!” Evangeline screamed. She bolted upright, arms flailing, pain shooting through her head.

“It’s okay, honey. I’m here—it’s okay—you’re okay. Hush.” Samantha was wrapping Evangeline in a tight hug.

Evangeline breathed in the freshly-cut-grass scent of Samantha’s dark-brown hair. She pulled back and looked at her godmother. Sam’s almond-shaped green eyes were red-rimmed. Evangeline had never seen her cry. “Mom’s really sick, isn’t she?”

Samantha nodded and said, “Visiting hours were over but I
had
to see her.”

Evangeline pushed a tangle of curls out of her eyes. “Was she doing okay?”

Samantha looked away. “Olivia thought there were bugs crawling all over her skin. They had to put her in wrist restraints so she wouldn’t hurt herself.”

Evangeline swallowed the bitter bile surging up her throat. “She can fight the tumor. She can do chemotherapy—the doctors said that’d slow things down.”

“Honey, Olivia is—your mom was—she doesn’t deserve the humiliation of a slow, painful—”

“But it’s
her
choice,” Evangeline interrupted. “Dr. Sullivan said it’s
her
choice.”

Samantha nodded and brushed the side of Evangeline’s face.

“What? What’s on my face?”

“Just some dried dirt—it’s gone now.”

And then they just hugged each other because the woman both of them loved was dying.

Juliette eased open the door to Malledy’s bedroom. It was nearly midnight and when she’d left him hours earlier, after telling him secrets about Pandora and her descendant, he’d been so agitated she’d been afraid he wouldn’t get any rest. She was relieved to see that he was sleeping soundly. Dr. Aali had told her that being rested would help slow the progression of the disease. Any stress would only make things worse. That was why she’d told Malledy’s doctor not to tell him everything. If Malledy knew she’d meddle this way, he’d be furious, but she was willing to take the risk because she knew that Malledy couldn’t handle the whole truth.

And the whole truth, clearly spelled out in the MRI scans, was that the Huntington’s disease had already made Swiss-cheese of the boy’s brain. The areas that affect the ability to maintain logic, equilibrium, and control impulses had been severely compromised—eaten away and rotted through. According to the doctor, the disease had been active for some time, possibly as long as two years and well before the irritability and hand tremors betrayed its existence.

It was only because Malledy operated on a much higher mental plane than 99% of the world that he could continue to excel at his work. If the disease were somehow halted now, he might never need to know what the cruel disorder had taken from him. Juliette understood that for a young man who had an intense need to control his life and surroundings, learning what the disease had done already, knowing he couldn’t change what it had stolen, would completely crush him.

Tip-toeing to the bed, Juliette rested a hand on Malledy’s pale cheek, remembering how she used to comfort him as a child when night terrors would fill his dreams and he’d awake screaming.

“
D’accord
,” she murmured, forcing herself to leave the room and return to her own bedchamber to await the phone call that might save Malledy’s life.

Malledy opened his eyes as soon as Juliette left his bedroom. He hadn’t felt like talking to her. For some reason, he’d experienced a sudden and burning hatred when she touched his cheek. He reminded himself that he loved Juliette and that she had done nothing but try to help him.

Malledy climbed out of his bed and walked over to the narrow window beside his desk, peering out at the rain-soaked sky. For the first time in his life, he was on the verge of complete command of his future. Everything Juliette had told him earlier would lead him to Pandora’s Box. In addition, his mentor had identified the descendant.
It’s still hard to believe…but it must be true. I should’ve know—I should’ve been able to see it without being told.