The Midnight Road (21 page)

“I don’t think you do. I need to talk with him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s important.”

“I’m sorry.”

Trying to shove off again, almost putting some muscle into it this time, but not really, the doc looked back at the prettiest girl in the hall. He was going to make his move on her soon, cross a line, help her with her exams in the Commack Motor Lodge. Flynn kept his grip tight on the doctor’s wrist, thinking, a couple more foot-pounds of pressure and I could ruin his career. They’d put pins in the joint but it would never be the same.

Sometimes it helped to make a silent threat, to under stand your own power in the face of other storms that brushed you aside.

Sometimes it didn’t. He released the kid, who apologized without meaning again. “I’m sorry.”

The others sensed potential action but had already acquired an M.D.’s carefully established enamel of non-committal expression. They stared. They said nothing.

They all left and Flynn found himself seated on the edge of Shepard’s bed, wanting to thank him for making the final move that put him in the way of his own wife’s bullet. The man had saved Flynn’s life, at least until the big dip. Flynn owed him something, even if it had taken the guy six months to make the right call to CPS.

He put his hand on Shepard’s arm, trying to make contact and reach past the slow death. He’d done the same thing with his mother and failed, watching her dwindle, day by day, until she was out of sight. Until the morning he walked in and the bed was full of more machine than Ma, and he couldn’t even catch a glimpse of flesh beneath the metal and plastic.

“Open your eyes, Shepard, talk to me. Give up your secrets, it’ll lighten your load. You took a stand but you didn’t rise quite high enough. It’s time to try again. Your conscience isn’t clear yet, and neither is mine. I know you can hear me, damn you. Think of your daughter. Whatever’s coming after me might hit her on the way. How do I get us out of this?”

Shepard continued to sleep, floating in some safer harbor, too afraid to come back to the blood.

Saturday morning, Flynn parked in Sierra’s driveway, got out and walked to the front door.

He hadn’t even knocked yet when a child opened it for him and skirted away toward the side of the house. All he saw was a flash of dark eyes and pale skin, coming up to about his belly button, and then it was gone.

He followed. The side gate was open and he walked through, hearing laughter and yelling and whining and crying. It sounded like recess at an elementary school. A vague upset clambered through him because the gate had been left open, because anybody could step into the yard. But you couldn’t expect children to always lock the doors and shut the gates and live in fear.

He passed the garage. The door was down but through dirty, cracked windows he saw the teenager, Trevor, in there pulling plugs out from under a dented, dust-covered hood. Nuddin sat on a stool in the corner, bobbing his scarred head, apparently humming. Trevor seemed to be talking animatedly, showing Nuddin how the engine worked. Flynn was glad the two of them had each other to help them get through whatever it was they’d been, up until now, forced to brave alone.

A girl howled nearby and Flynn turned and narrowed his eyes, checking around. He shouldn’t be here, but he had to see Kelly Shepard and Nuddin again. The need had swelled within him until it forced him here knowing Sierra was going to give him high octane-fueled hell for it. After the fiasco with Mooney, he knew he might really be fired. He hadn’t shown up yet to find out. Whatever she did to him now, it was probably going to hurt.

The yard sprang alive. It was a snow-choked whirlwind of children. They were in the trees, they were charging around igloos. They were throwing snowballs and wailing because they’d lost their mittens. They swirled past him without noticing.

Kelly Shepard, out in the snow again. Wearing the same bright white ski outfit as the first time he’d seen her. She stood chattering with a little black girl about her age. How did Sierra play it? Did she tell them they were sisters now? Cousins? How did she bind them into a family, or did she even bother? Were they all just pals? Was she Mommy?

He couldn’t believe he’d known her for so long and knew hardly anything at all about her home life. How had he messed up so badly that he’d been to his one friend’s house only two or three times over all these years? His mistakes were becoming more obvious. The things that had driven Marianne away more prevalent.

He couldn’t get a count of the kids. There seemed to be more every minute. There were slides and swings and a covered aboveground pool. Neighbor children must pour in and out of the yard in varying numbers as the day wore on. He could see Sierra through the back door storm window. She was making sandwiches and pouring grape juice. Kids clumped in and out, in and out.

Trevor got the engine to almost turn over before it died. The clapboard siding of the garage rattled where it was loose and rotted black.

Flynn heard his name and angled his hip with the holster out a few inches in case he had to pull the pistol.

He turned and Kelly Shepard rushed at him with her arms open and before he knew what he was doing he was moving toward her. She slammed into him and he went to one knee in the snow.

He held her, smiling, going, “Hey, hey there!” like an idiot. “Heya!” He thought, This is what it would’ve been like if Noel hadn’t died. If the world had come down a little differently for me and Marianne and we’d gotten the important things right in the beginning. I’d be holding my child, and the shadow in the blizzard would have a carrot nose and be wearing a top hat. Wouldn’t that be nice?

He wondered how close he might’ve come along the way. If there’d ever been a point when he could’ve cut a half inch left instead of right and everything else would’ve fallen into place. He could maybe blame a lot of it on Danny, his father, and the other dead, but not everything.

“How are you?” he asked.

Her cheeks were bright crimson circles. She smiled and he saw she’d lost one of her front teeth. “I’m very fine, thank you,” she answered, under her breath, knocking the answer out with the unusual poise he’d noticed that first night.

“Look how big you’ve gotten. You in college yet?”

“No, not quite.”

“Ah, not quite, huh? You sure? I was thinking you were a freshman.”

“No, not yet. I’d like to attend Harvard. My daddy went there.”

“How are things here? You get along with everybody? You like Sierra?”

“Miss Humbold is very nice to all of us. I’ve made some friends.”

“You have, that’s great. I bet you’re the belle of the ball.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“It means you’re the most liked one among the crowd.”

She let out a giggle. “You’re silly.”

He wondered how she’d take the news that her dog was still around, talking to him, urging him to murder. He felt like telling her, Your bulldog, you feel like taking him off my hands? He’s got a bad attitude.

“How’s your uncle doing?”

“Nuddin loves it here,” she said. “We get to see all the storms, standing out here. Miss Humbold lets us. Even if it’s icy, we stand under the patio…me and some of the others, we enjoy it.”

“That sounds very…social.”

“Oh, it is.”

Icicles clattered in the trees overhead. Flynn got a wonky déjà vu feeling, knowing this had happened before, standing out in the snow with this little girl, talking of storms.

She still seemed like a regular, happy kid. He didn’t know how much Sierra had told her about her parents, if she understood what had been wrong in that house. He knew she’d seen her father in the hospital, unresponsive but, they said, not in a coma. The guy hiding within himself. Maybe a few more visits from Kelly could change all that, but Sierra would never let that happen. She had her own hang-ups and it was time for Flynn to address them, to put a few things on the line.

“Flynn, why haven’t you visited sooner?” Kelly asked.

Now there was a tough one. He thought of her mother, Christina Shepard, saying to him on the night she died, the night she killed him,
Would you like to speak to my daughter? Ask her questions? Foul questions, no doubt. What kind of man wheedles his way into working with children every day, Mr. Flynn? What thoughts go through your piggy mind?

What kind of thoughts were in his head when he was more worried about this girl than he’d been for his own wife? As worried for her as he was for Emma Waltz, another complete stranger? Maybe it was just easier caring for people who didn’t know you.

“I meant to,” he said.

“But you’ve been busy?”

“I’ve been…distracted. Does Miss Humbold ever mention me?”

“No. She said you worked together but that was all. I’ve asked a couple times but she doesn’t answer. She says we should make peanut butter. So we do. There’s a lot of people to feed. I help out, a little.”

“I bet you help out a lot.”

“Not really.”

“Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?”

“Like to buy me?”

“Yes,” Flynn said.” Or anything else. Whatever.”

“No, I don’t need anything.”

A slight tinge of sadness invaded her words and Flynn thought she might ask him, confidentially, when she might be going home. How much longer she had to stay here with these people who weren’t her family. But then she looked at him and her eyes brightened again and the moment passed.

He said, “Kelly, has anyone tried to contact you since you’ve been here?”

“Contact me?”

“Get in touch with you. Anybody saying they were your family? Any letters or notes? Any phone calls?”

“No, no one. Nothing like that. Nobody calls me. There’s nobody to call me.”

“You’re sure?”

That made her laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t say it otherwise!”

He had to keep reminding himself this girl was only seven no matter how she talked or how much maturity she projected. The weight of his useless sympathy strained his chest. He could think of nothing to do to help her when the time came when the truth of the world flooded into her. When she visited her mother’s grave and when she met with her father’s dainty-featured doctor and had to watch him flashing that vapid, white-capped smile at her.

The garage door opened and Nuddin loped to Flynn with a wide smile, his eyes alive with joy. He held his arms open and hugged Flynn, stroking his back, patting him. Flynn clasped Nuddin and rubbed the top of his scarred, battered head.

Nuddin went, Whoo whoo whoo.

The teenager, Trevor, sauntered out as well, wiping his hands on a rag. He shut the garage and gave Flynn an uneasy smile. He said, not unpleasantly, “Who are you?”

Flynn reached over Nuddin’s shoulder and held his hand out to the boy. “I’m Flynn.”

“You work with Sierra.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re the one who brought Nuddin and Kelly to us,” Trevor said. “It’s good to see him so happy.”

“From what I understand you’re mostly responsible for that. You’ve helped him out a lot.”

“I don’t know how much gets through to him. I try to show him about cars and games and downloading music. It makes the time go by.”

Kelly said, “Trevor is his best friend.”

Nuddin hummed and murmured his childish tune. Flynn held him and sorta danced with him in the snow for a minute. As he circled around he spotted Sierra framed in the back door staring at him, munching absently on a bologna sandwich, her expression pure hellfire.

SIXTEEN

He stepped inside and sat at the kitchen table. Today Sierra wore brown hair with thick curls coiling all over the place. She said, “You’re fired.”

“I figured that.”

“You figure everything, Miracle Man, and you get it all wrong. You purposefully threw a wrench into that meeting with Mooney.”

“What makes you say so?”

“He gave me a full report.”

“That’s supposed to be confidential.”

“Not from me.”

He shrugged. “I gave it a shot. I gave him a chance. I did my best. And I didn’t smack him in the mush.”

“You’ve got no right to be here, I told you to stay away.”

“They seemed happy enough to see me.”

“It wasn’t your call to make.”

“I think it was.” He locked eyes with her. “You’re not their mother, Sierra. They’re as much my responsibility as yours. Maybe even more so.”

“God, I hope that’s not true.”

The tone hit him hard enough to lift his chin. “Oh, that’s nice.”

It was self-righteous judgment. Was she taking him to task now, saying he’d botched the Shepard case? Or was it a mother’s instinct to stand up against anything that might bring trouble to her house? He searched her face and saw strain and fatigue there. He hadn’t picked up on it before. He’d been too wrapped up in his own troubles to be interested.

“You’re blaming me?” he asked.

“You could’ve handled things differently.”