The Cinderella Hour (7 page)

“Nothing.”

“Something.”

Vivian sighed. “I wonder if he has any idea that the woman
who broke his heart is back in Chicago.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That Snow broke Luke’s heart.”

“Everyone knew. It wasn’t subtle. After Snow disappeared,
Luke went a little crazy. That was before anyone even imagined horrific scenes
like what happened at Columbine. Teenage boys weren’t wandering around with assault
rifles. People worried about fire, though. Feared it . . . and they feared
Luke. They could see him dousing the school—the whole town—with gasoline and
lighting a match.”

“Could you?”

“See Luke committing murder? No.” Softness filled Vivian’s
voice. “Luke could never kill anyone.”

“Kilcannon.” Luke heard his own weariness as he answered his
cell phone. It was a hands-free operation. It always was when he drove.

He needed both hands this evening. The storm that had caused
such devastation in southwest Illinois was traveling toward Chicago. It was a fight
to steady his truck in the gusting wind.

Arguably, Luke needed more than both hands. A rested brain
would be nice. A few stitches wouldn’t hurt, either. A suture—or ten—here and
there.

But he was racing the storm to Chicago. It was pretty crazy,
he knew, to see Snow on a night like this. Yet what night would be better? And
there was a certain symmetry to this night. The last time he had seen her was
when he had taken her to a ball.

“It’s Don Mills, Luke. Where are you?”

“Thirty miles west of Chicago.”

“You really did jump off the helicopter and into your truck.”

“I thought we were done.”

“We were. We are. I just thought you might be interested in a
hot shower, a lot of food, and a good night’s sleep before taking off.”

“That’s where I’m heading, Don. Home.” Food wasn’t on his
agenda for this evening, of course, and the shower he planned would be cold.
His fatigued brain needed to remain edgy, his exhausted body alert.

The stop at his home would be brief, just long enough to
shower and change, before driving to the Wind Chimes Hotel. Bert, of Bert’s
Tuxedo Rentals in Quail Ridge, had promised that a rental tux would be on his
sheltered front porch by the time he arrived. Luke had no reason to doubt the
promise. He had rented his first tux from Bert, the one he had worn to Larken
High’s Glass Slipper Ball, and there had been a handful of rentals in the
sixteen years since.

“Can’t say I blame you. Home sounds pretty good. That’s where
we’ll all be by tomorrow. I wanted to give you some follow-up on the girl.”

Luke had been involved in a number of rescues during the past
week. But he knew which rescue Don was referring to. The final one.

Don’t tell me she’s dead, Luke thought—then realized he
already knew that she wasn’t. Don’s upbeat tone forecast a happier outcome.

The notion of happier tripped a thought Luke would never have
allowed if he hadn’t been so exhausted. Maybe she would be better off dead.

It was what Luke had once believed about himself. It had been
a persistent belief, a constant companion, until a snowy Christmas afternoon.
After meeting the girl named Snow, and no matter how bad things got, he had vowed
never again to wish for his own death.

She had shown him a different world, a world he wanted to be
part of, even from the outside looking in.

Luke didn’t believe the girl he rescued today would be better
off dead. But he feared there might come a time when she would wonder it
herself. She was probably too old to repress the trauma. At least, his memories
from the same age—four—were crystal clear. His every torment vivid and bright.

Wendy Hart would, he feared, remember this devastating day.

Wendy. His weary heart ached. I think she’s a she, Snow had
said to him a lifetime ago. Our baby girl. I think she’s Wendy.

Luke forced his memories from the baby who had died to the
girl he had rescued today. From Wendy Kilcannon to Wendy Hart.

He had heard about her before meeting her. Her father,
Daniel, had been a local volunteer. His pumpkin farm was on high ground, above
the flooding, and his fields had been harvested before the rainfall, their
Halloween bounty shipped.

Daniel’s land and livelihood were safe. He had volunteered to
help his neighbors, all of whom respected him, although none of whom knew him
well. His wife, Eileen, had been the gregarious one.

Had been
.
Four years earlier, Daniel and his six-month
pregnant wife decided to spend a weekend in Chicago. Then as now, their
pumpkins had been shipped. A celebration was in order. A weekend of romance and
a shopping spree for baby clothes.

As they strolled along Michigan Avenue, a car jumped the
curb, injuring its drunk driver only slightly and for all intents and purposes
killing Eileen. She was rushed to Grace Memorial Hospital’s ICU and maintained
on life support to provide in utero sustenance until the baby had a chance of
surviving on her own.

Daniel became a widower the day his daughter was born. He
lived a quiet life, caring for Wendy, tending to his crops . . . and helping
neighbors in times of need.

Daniel worked beside Luke, sandbagging threatened homes,
piloting boats to stranded families, and guiding livestock to drier pastures.
Wendy helped, too, in the community center gymnasium, offering comfort to
anxious evacuees while they waited for the floodwaters to recede.

Luke witnessed Daniel’s accident from afar. A concrete slab,
designed to channel water away from houses, fell from a truck bed onto Daniel’s
arms. The bones would mend, the doctors said. Daniel would be out of plaster in
time to prepare the soil to grow next year’s jack-o’-lanterns and Thanksgiving
pies.

For the coming months, both arms required casting from
shoulders to wrists. Another volunteer drove Daniel and Wendy home, to the pumpkin
farm that should have been safe.

But wasn’t. Recent manmade ground covers—a superstore parking
lot and the expansion of a two-lane road—redirected flow from swollen rivers.

No one envisioned the floodwaters swooping where they did, or
that it could happen so swiftly.

In moments, the Hart farmhouse became a flimsy island in a
raging sea. A rising sea. Daniel summoned help via cell phone and then broke
the plaster at his elbows, enabling the casted joints to move. He needed to
prepare for their journey—Wendy’s journey—and get her to the rooftop.

Daniel saved Wendy. Daniel, not Luke.

Yes, Luke insisted on being lowered from the helicopter. To
hell with the wind. But it was Daniel who stood on the speck of roof and lifted
Wendy up to him.

When Luke had her firmly in his grasp, he extended his other
arm to Daniel. Luke was strong enough to hold onto Daniel. But Daniel had to
return the grip. It was the only chance they had. There wasn’t time to get
Wendy into the chopper and lower Luke again to rescue Daniel.

The only chance. Unless Luke traded places with Daniel.

Luke was a strong swimmer. And he was familiar with being
held under water to the point of near-drowning. That had been a favorite
torture of Jared’s, inflicted numerous times before Luke’s fourth birthday . .
. and remembered with brilliant clarity ever since.

Luke knew how to surrender without fighting, to conserve
every molecule of oxygen. He could survive the raging river, at its surface or
below, longer than Daniel could. And thanks to another of Jared’s torments,
Luke could also endure the cold.

Jared had delighted in forcing Luke to swim to exhaustion and
beyond. And beyond. Jared didn’t care that his son’s body shivered and his lips
turned blue. Or that Luke pleaded to be allowed to stop. Jared would promise an
end. Two more laps, he would say. Then, when Luke had accomplished that
impossible feat, he would laugh and say two more.

If anyone could outlast the floodwaters, it was Luke. Above
the roaring helicopter and howling wind, Luke shouted the suggestion to Daniel,
who, with a shake of his head, declined.

Perhaps Daniel sensed that even in their casts his freshly
broken bones would not permit the midair acrobatics necessary for such a
switch—and that, in the process, he might drop his little girl. Or maybe he
would have declined in any event. Why should Luke perish for him?

Daniel’s wishes were clear. Save my Wendy.

Daniel saw his wish come true, watched his daughter ascend to
safety as he awaited his fate.

Luke tucked Wendy’s face against his chest. Her memories
would be horrifying enough without witnessing her father’s death. But Luke saw
the moment. Daniel’s solemn nod of gratitude—and of acceptance—as he lost his
footing and was swept away.

“Luke? You there?”

“Right here. How is she?”

“Cold. In shock. But getting better, the doctors say. Warmer.
She’s going to be okay, Luke. And so is the kitten.”

“What kitten?”

“The one zipped inside her knapsack. There were holes poked
in the pocket. Daniel must have done that so it could breathe.”

Daniel had touched Wendy as long as he could, shoulders,
waist, knees, toes. Only when she was out of reach had he shouted his final
words to Luke.

Be careful of the knapsack
, he had yelled.
There’s a letter inside, who to
call, who will take care of
—the rest had been carried away by the wind.

“There was a letter in the knapsack,” Luke said.

“They found that, too. It’s addressed to Wendy’s legal
guardian, a doctor in Chicago. No one’s opened the envelope, but they’re
working on finding him.”

“She doesn’t have family in the area?”

“No family anywhere.”

Luke hoped like hell the Chicago physician wanted nothing
more in life than to be a father to the orphaned girl. It made him hurt in ways
he hadn’t hurt for a very long time that she might not be so lucky.

“Thanks for letting me know, Don.”

“Sure. And thank you, Luke, for helping out.”

Luke kept hurting, in ways he hadn’t
hurt for a very long time. So much for supposing the Snow emotions were dead
and buried.

Firefighters didn’t carry torches—or so the bumper stickers
proclaimed.

This firefighter did. It was a special torch, one he would shine
in her face until she told him what he wanted to know: why she had left, why
she had lied, why she had walked away from Quail Ridge, the way he had once
intended to, without a backward glance.

And when Luke had her answers? He would touch the torch to
every memory of Snow, creating a conflagration until all that remained would be
ashes in the wind, like the flurry of snowflakes on the Christmas Day they met.

For now, as he drove into the storm, memories clamored to be
recalled, beginning with the November day he told Snow he was leaving . . .

Luke forced his weighted footsteps
away from the forest, away from her, remembering how his father had forced him
to swim until lactic acid bathed his muscles and he nearly drowned.

Two more steps. Two more. Two more. Toward the house that had
been a prison, not a home.

Luke hoped never to see Jared again, that this would be one
of the nights Jared returned after midnight and Luke would be gone forever before
Jared awakened.

It wasn’t to be.

Jared was waiting for him, as if he knew what Luke was planning.
And, as if he knew, Jared picked up where he had left off the night before,
with questions and innuendos about Snow and Leigh.

The innuendos became fact.

“Everyone knows what Leigh Gable is, what she gets paid to
do. The cops won’t touch her. Her clients, her
tricks
, are the richest
men in Quail Ridge. But a call to Child Protective Services couldn’t be
ignored. There’d be an investigation. Leigh would have to leave town. Private
affairs are one thing. Public scandal’s another. Snow would end up in foster
care. I’ve been thinking it might be neighborly of us to take her in. She’d get
to stay in Pinewood, and the three of us could have some fun.”

Luke’s empty stomach knotted at Jared’s suggestion, the
perversion Luke knew so well. His hands knotted, too, until, knowing the
pleasure Jared would take in seeing his fists ready for battle—and that his
taunts had hit their mark—Luke managed to relax them.

“I have homework to do.”

Jared filled two glasses with scotch and shoved one at Luke. “Time
you learned how to drink.”

“No, thanks.”

“I insist. Just one drink, Luke, then you can go upstairs.”

Luke knew enough about alcohol to realize that the large
glass Jared poured for him was more than one drink. He also realized Jared had
already been drinking.

Jared became even meaner when he drank. Crossing him was the
surest way to make his meanness escalate to violence.

“Just one,” Luke agreed. “I really do have a lot of homework.”

“Drink up. All of it. Now.”

Luke obeyed. He had no choice. In no time, the scotch was clouding
his starving brain.

“Like it?” Jared asked.

Luke struggled for clarity. He was vulnerable to Jared. As
strong as he had made himself, his father was stronger. And Jared was further fueled
by a cruelty that Luke prayed he did not possess. Luke’s only advantage over a
drunken Jared was mental, the ability to read Jared’s moods in an effort to
placate, not to provoke.

The scotch stripped Luke of what meager advantage he might
have had.

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” Jared said, “I like it. You know why? It brings out
the truth. So, Luke, let’s talk about your little friend. Snow. Do you think I’d
like her, too?”