Thorns of Truth (49 page)

That was why, instead of sending Mandy home, he’d given her a list of other shelters to search. She probably wouldn’t find Iris at any of them, but it would keep her occupied for the time being. And who knew? Maybe she’d get lucky. He had to hand it to her; for someone barely holding it together herself, it had taken a lot of guts, and more than a little grace, to take on her brother’s shitstorm. After tonight, when all this was over, Eric would suggest they get together for a cup of coffee, or a bite to eat. If she wasn’t yet ready for AA, at least they could talk.

One thing Eric knew how to do was talk. A corner of his mouth twisted up in a bitter smile. With Rose, hadn’t he talked himself right out the door? Maybe, if he’d kept his mouth shut, and his heart tucked away instead of wearing it on his sleeve, it’d be Rose waiting for him at the end of a tough day, not just another meeting, or a fellow drunk in need of shoring up.

“Eric? Hey, this just came in from the newsroom.” The evening shift’s engineer, an older guy named Danny Wilkinson, stuck his head through the doorway. He was holding a faxed UPI report in one meaty hand. “Fire at West Seventy-ninth and Riverside, couple of casualties, no one seriously hurt,” he reported, in the matter-of-fact tone typical of those in broadcasting. “One of the names looks familiar. Rose Griffin. Isn’t she the lady you been seeing?”

Eric’s heart took a flying leap and slammed into his rib cage. He sat for a moment, too stunned to say anything; then he was on his feet, snatching the sheet of paper from Wilkinson’s hand. Rose? Christ Almighty. All this time he’d been sitting here working the lines, hoping to hear that Iris was okay, and
Rose
had been in jeopardy. Rose, who—despite what that damn wire report said—might be badly hurt.

A jolt of adrenaline kicked through him. He had to see her, find out for himself. Rose.
His
Rose. He scanned the three-line item. Beth Israel. She’d been taken to Beth Israel, along with a second victim, Rachel Rosenthal. Jesus.
Rachel, too?

As he was rushing out the door, Eric was struck by the irony of it—his wanting to bring solace to a woman who’d ended their relationship, believing it would only wind up causing her pain. Rose had made it clear she didn’t want him in her life, not on any kind of permanent basis. Why would this change anything?

Maybe it won’t. But I have to be sure she’s all right. I have to do SOMETHING.

Twenty minutes later, after a trip uptown in a cab that had been more like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Eric was pushing his way through the double doors of the emergency room. Thanks to AA, he knew every hospital in the city like the back of his hand. How many sponsorees had he visited here, and in other ERs? Drunks too out of it to realize they’d ruptured their guts, or cracked their skulls. Guys who were lectured by so-called professionals who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about.

He didn’t bother with either of the two receptionists, who had their hands full with the family crowded in front of the desk, all of them jabbering at once in Spanish. Or the triage nurse in her Plexiglas cubicle, lifting a bloody shirttail to examine a wound on the back of a skinny, shell-shocked kid. He walked straight past the rows of glassy-eyed patients in plastic chairs, cradling a wrist or an elbow, or clutching a square of gauze to an eye in need of stitching. From years of experience, Eric had learned that, if you looked as though you knew exactly where you were going, you became virtually invisible.

Around the corner, outside the first door on his left, he found what he was looking for—a harried resident who didn’t question his authority when Eric asked the whereabouts of Mrs. Griffin. The ponytailed young man, who would have been handsome if not for a complexion ravaged by acne, merely pointed toward a treatment room down the corridor before brushing past Eric on his way to another, clearly more pressing emergency.

Eric, his heart pounding with a mixture of relief and apprehension, walked slowly past a gurney parked haphazardly against the wall, and a thicket of IV poles, some of them still hung with bags of Ringer’s solution. Any minute now, he thought, Rose’s sons would be here, and probably her sister Marie. They wouldn’t make him feel unwelcome—he was pretty sure of that. But
he
would know exactly where he stood. He’d see himself as they did: as little more than a glorified bystander.

And maybe, in the end, that’s all he was. Someone who’d just happened along at a low point in Rose’s life. A kindly stranger who’d given her a leg up, and a reason to go on.

Eric eased the door open. Rose lay asleep on the gurney. Other than a thick bandage covering most of her wrist, she didn’t appear to be seriously injured. She was breathing with the help of an oxygen mask, but he guessed that the damage from whatever smoke she’d inhaled wasn’t permanent.

Mostly, he wanted to sink to his knees beside her, just like in one of those corny TV movies. Take her hand—her capable hand, with its firm grip and pronounced bones, a map of every hard row she’d had to hoe—and press it to his heart, which was hammering hard enough to make him glad he was in a place where they would know what to do with him if it gave out.

Instead, he just stood there, staring at her. He smiled a little, even, thinking how it would embarrass her to know he was watching. When her eyes fluttered open at one point, he started. But she wasn’t seeing him. And whatever she’d murmured just then, it was just sleep-talk. She would have been annoyed at him, he knew, for listening in.

It was as if, even in her sleep, Rose was holding him at a distance, warning him without words to stand back.
Loving is too hard,
he could almost hear her say.
Even when you’re loved in return, it can be snatched away from you at any moment.

It doesn’t have to be that way,
he cried in silent protest. Who would know better than he—a recovering alcoholic who’d learned the hard way that, in the end, taking it one day at a time wasn’t just a method of coping,
it was the whole point
? There was no pot of gold at the end of some mythical rainbow; the happiness in front of you was what you took away in your pocket.

Rose stirred, and her eyes fluttered open again. And this time she
did
see him—he could have sworn it—a brief flicker of recognition that cut through him like a scalpel. He loved her. And would go on loving her. Always. But maybe it had been prophetic in a way, that inscription in the Paris cemetery he’d carried in his head all these years—All My Love. Always. Maybe what he should have paid attention to was that it had been carved on a tombstone by a man mourning a love forever lost to him.

Eric turned away, and slipped from the room as quietly as he’d entered it. A group of doctors and nurses stood clustered in the hallway outside. One of them, a silver-haired department head, looked as if he was giving the others their marching orders. They didn’t even glance at him as he walked past. For all he knew, he might truly have been invisible.

Rose woke with a start, bewildered to find herself not in her own comfortable bed at home but in a hospital room. Weak sunlight spilled from an east-facing window onto a bed so white it looked pasteurized. Her head throbbed, and her arms felt as if they’d been yanked from their sockets, then shoved back in. For a disoriented moment, she wondered what on earth she was doing here … and then it all came rushing back. The fire. Dragging Rachel down the stairs. Being taken away in an ambulance.

“I thought
I
was supposed to be the one sleeping it off.”

Rose darted a glance at the next bed, not entirely surprised to see Rachel lying beside her. She looked awful, like the victim of a barroom brawl, the left side of her face bruised, one eye swollen almost completely shut. But she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. Rose made a face, and brought a hand to her own cheek in sympathy.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you so hard.”

“It’s okay—I had it coming.” Rachel managed a smile, which must have hurt, given the way she winced. “To tell the truth, I don’t remember much. But they told me you saved my life. So I guess I’m the one who owes
you
an apology.”

“Let’s call it a draw, okay?” Rose found that it hurt to talk. Her throat was so sore, and her lungs felt as if they’d been stripped raw. And there was something else—something lurking in the back of her mind .…

It hit her with the force of a blow: Iris. What about Iris?

The dismay must have shown on her face, because Rachel picked up on it at once. She shook her head, rolling it back and forth on the pillow. “She wasn’t in the house,” she said hoarsely.

“How do you—?”

“That poor fireman … One minute I was out cold, and the next thing I knew I had him by the collar, and wouldn’t let go until he told me they’d checked upstairs, and no one was there. Must have scared the shit out of him.” She managed a wobbly half-smile. “I should feel relieved, I guess. But I still don’t know where she is.” A tear slipped from the corner of her good eye.

“Your house …” Rose felt her own eyes welling.

“No,
your
house,” Rachel corrected. “And, either way, it’s just a house. It’s awful … but it isn’t like losing a person.”

“But …”

“No.” Rachel’s voice was stern. “We’ve got to stop this, Rose. Stop thinking about what we’ve lost—and start concentrating on what we still have left. I don’t know where my daughter is. But when we find her …” She stopped, and swallowed hard.

Rose thought of Eric then. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen him last night, here in this hospital …

Rose was flooded with a sharp sense of loss. She wouldn’t miss Sylvie’s house, but she would miss Eric. She would miss his face, with all its interesting, mismatched facets. She would miss his voice murmuring in her ear late at night, and his street smarts that hid an even sharper intellect. And the sex, too. But most of all, the sense of being loved for who she, Rose Santini Griffin, was …

But she didn’t dare let herself dwell on Eric, not now. What about Drew? And Jay? Where were her sons? Had anyone called them? Dear God, Jay must have been scared out of his mind when she didn’t come home last night.

The door to the room opened a crack, and a narrow figure sidled in as noiselessly as an alleycat. Marie. Rose was flooded with relief. If her sister was here, her sons couldn’t be far behind.

Marie came to a halt between the beds, as if not sure in which direction to turn. She shot a wary glance at Rachel, who stared back with frank curiosity. Then Marie walked over and squeezed Rose’s hand. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, Rose saw, but her grip was as steely as ever.

“Hey, kiddo.” Marie, with her usual disregard for the seasons, was wearing jeans and a midriff top that showed a slice of stomach as flat and white as a tortilla. A loose-fitting pink sweater hung over her bony frame. “Well, you did it. You finally succeeded in scaring the crap out of me—and, as you know, I don’t scare too easy. When I first heard what had happened, I thought you’d bought the farm.” She rubbed under one eye. “Drew and Jay are outside. I asked them to give me a minute. We visited last night, but you were out like a light.”

Rose, feeling suddenly drowsy, allowed her eyes to drift shut. “They’re okay?”

“They’re fine … just a little shook up.”

When she opened her eyes, Rose saw that Marie’s gaze had wandered back to Rachel. “Jeez, how many rounds did
you
go?” she quipped.

“KO’ed in the third,” Rachel responded with a weak laugh, not missing a beat.

Marie grinned. “Yeah, I can see it now. Around the eyes. You’ve got our dad’s eyes.” She looked back at Rose. “Not like this mutt here. I always figured Rose was some kind of throwback. Too ugly to keep, and too big to toss back.” Her grin widened.

“Speak for yourself,” Rose shot back. “By the way, have you told Clare what happened?”

“I called last night,” Marie informed her with the face of someone biting into a lemon. Her shoe-black hair, tied back in a ponytail, made her look like an older, more hardbitten version of Veronica from the Archie comics. “Clare said to tell you she’ll have Father say a mass for … well, whatever. If you ask me, you’re lucky she lives too far away to visit. If it were me in that bed, a sick call from Our Lady of Humility would just about finish me off.”

“Now I
know
we’re related,” Rachel said with a laugh. She eyed Marie critically, like a chess player contemplating her next move, then said, “You’re pretty, you know. I never noticed that before. But you are.”

Marie blushed. “Get out of here.” Her voice was flat and unconvinced, but Rose could tell she was pleased. “I’m still waiting,” she said gruffly. “You were supposed to let me know when would be a good time for us to get together.”

“I will. As soon as I get out of here. As soon as—” Rachel’s gaze was pulled away suddenly, and she gave a gasp.

It was Drew, walking into the room slightly ahead of someone Rose didn’t recognize at first, a bedraggled figure who looked only vaguely familiar. A girl who reminded her a little of—

“Iris!” Rachel clapped a hand over her mouth, and let out a sob.

Rose watched her try to get up, but she was still too weak, and fell back with a strangled cry. It was Iris, poor Iris, looking as if she’d been fished out of the East River and left to dry on a subway grate, who shot across the room to fling herself into her mother’s outstretched arms.

Chapter 19

I
T COMES IN ALL
sizes, Rachel thought. Like in supermarkets and drugstores—all those breakfast cereals, laundry detergents, headache medicines, promising better taste, whiter whites, faster relief. When you finally allow yourself to feel what you’ve been trying hard for a very long time
not
to feel, no one package can contain it all.

In the days and weeks following Iris’ return, Rachel shed more tears than she would have thought possible.… In the hospital, clutching her daughter to her, she wept with relief and renewed hope. With sadness, too—for Mama, and for the house she’d never quite felt at home in, reduced now to ashes and rubble. It had hurt to cry—among her other injuries, she’d cracked a rib—but it also felt
good.
Healing, somehow. Though in many ways, she realized, the journey had just begun.