Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Page 4

  She was such a tiny little thing. She had two crooked braids, secured by wooden beads. And a rape fistula Dr. Mwami wasn’t sure he could repair.

  Sarah squeezed her brow and poured darkness over the memory. She forced herself to exhale the breath she’d been holding. Then she took that ugly memory and shoved it deep down into that place that held all the others, where it could fester.

  This was why she needed the memory of Colin, she told herself. She needed to know that goodness and honesty and dedication still lived in the world. She was afraid of what would happen to her sense of balance if she discovered that Colin had left the business of international relief, that he’d settled into an easy life as a gout-footed general practitioner with a cabin on the shore of Lake Michigan.

  “Okay, Sarah, now let’s get to the hard part.”

  “Childbirth?” she asked, shaking the gloom away. “Twisting a Guinea worm out of an infected leg?”

  “What if he’s single?”

  The idea flowed through her, dissolving the last shreds of darkness like a river of light. She hadn’t allowed herself to consider Colin’s availability. Because to consider it meant there was a possibility for more, and no reasonable girl would ask for more than heaven could give.

  Kate swirled her wineglass toward the desk. “Look. The computer is booted. Get up and type his name.”

  “But—”

  “He was the greatest lover you ever had. Oh, please, don’t blush. You admitted that to us that night we conned you into doing a second shot of vodka. You even told us about that toe thing he did—”

  “Is there nothing sacred?”

  “Hey, didn’t you catch me and Paul on the washing machine that night in—”

  “Enough!”

  “So,” Kate said, her grin growing sly, “have you thought about what it would be like to be with him again?”

  Sarah filled her mouth with wine. Potent and dry. She thought about his body, wiry, long, strong.

  “Even just once,” Kate said. “Just one more time. Even if nothing else happened.” Kate leaned forward. “Because isn’t that what Rachel wanted for you, Sarah? To either move ahead… or, at least, leave him behind.”

  Sarah put down her empty wineglass. The monitor blinked at her. The home page had downloaded. Her gaze fell upon Rachel’s envelope. With a burst of courage, she slipped into the computer chair and typed “Google.”

  Kate loomed behind her. “You know, when I got my letter, I couldn’t believe what Rachel had me doing.”

  “When you meet her in the afterlife,” Sarah muttered, “push her off a cloud.”

  “I mean, I’ve got three kids at home. Huge responsibilities. I don’t have the right, anymore, to risk my life. My life isn’t mine.”

  For heaven’s sake, this computer was slow. It was still loading the very simple, very plain page.

  “I’m a slave to dust bunnies. And overenthusiastic twenty-something kindergarten teachers who think they have a right to screw my weekends with ‘family projects.’ ”

  The box for the search engine finally appeared. Sarah went cold. Cold that had nothing to do with the October breeze coming through the open window.

  “But Rachel was right.” Kate slid her glass on the desk, scraping an inch of fuzz. “It wasn’t much of a risk at all. It was a well-managed risk. And in those few minutes and the hours since I plunged from eight thousand feet, I’ve felt more alive, more intense, and more clear-eyed than ever before. I’m not living the life I should, Sarah. Things will change.”

  Type it in. Dr. Colin O’Rourke. No. Colin Quinn O’Rourke.

  “Things will change for you, too.” Kate put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. Warm. Firm. Confident. She spoke into her ear. “Go ahead, Sarah. Jump.”

  His name blinked at her from the little box. Dr. Colin Quinn O’Rourke.

  Love of my life.

  She tapped the enter button.

  Kate wrapped her arms around her. She clutched Kate’s forearm and leaned back against her. Her heart raced. Such a silly thing. She was acting like a child; she couldn’t look at the screen. She knew it would take a while to load. She was tempted to ask Kate to preview it, to tell her the worst.

  Kate leaned close. “Gawd, this thing is slow.”

  “Tranquilo.” Sarah spoke more to her racing heart than to Kate. “The news will come.”

  Then there it was. Colin’s name. Running up and down the screen. Twelve hits altogether.

  And seeing his name there, so steady, so real, changed everything: It turned her fear into hunger. She jerked forward in the seat. She seized the mouse. She scrolled down the entries, soaking in the snippets of information, processing them, seeing how they all fit together.

  Then she came to the last. Kate gasped. Sarah covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh my God.”

  chapter four

  “Oh my God.”

  Jo grabbed the frame of the hospital bed just as Dr. Mulcahey stabbed what looked like a fishhook into Grace’s forehead.

  Grace—who’d been listening to the plastic surgeon chatting about the virtues of SpongeBob—turned her gaze to Jo. Jo froze. Don’t look terrified. Jo intentionally unclenched her grip on the bed rail. Smile. Everything’s fine, just dandy. The doctor must have numbed Grace up good; the kid couldn’t possibly feel a thing. And is that… is that Grace’s skull under all that ragged skin?

  Don’t faint.

  The doctor’s gaze never flickered from the gash. “Keep still, now, Grace, just another minute.” Stab. Tug. Flash. “Nurse, why don’t you take Miss Marcum back to the front desk? I understand she’s got some paperwork to finish.”

  Jo gave in to the tug of the nurse’s hand, realizing only after she was beyond the curtains and out of Grace’s sight that her jaw ached because she’d been grinning like an idiot.

  She followed the nurse down the blazing white hall, contemplating the idea of fainting into one of the molded plastic chairs. She was a Southern girl, after all, and fainting was a Southern girl’s prerogative. It instantly absolved a woman of so very many responsibilities.

  But Bobbie Jo Marcum didn’t faint. Couldn’t faint. At least not yet. Because the desk troll was glaring at her from the end of the hallway.

  This squat and implacable medical administrator had halted her when Jo first rushed Grace into the ER. Grace had been bleeding all over both of them. The gatekeeper, ignoring the screaming child, had demanded the answers to so many pesky questions. Like when Grace was born. In February, right, kiddo? Was it really June? Where Grace was born. Uhh… Teaneck? Whether her immunizations were up-to-date. The kind of things a mother would know, but not a new guardian—or a pedophilic kidnapper.

  Now the troll waved in the air the plastic card that Jo had tossed her as a distraction, just before Jo had barreled past the desk and shoved Grace in the arms of a surprised nurse.

  “We don’t take frequent-flier miles, Ms. Marcum.”

  Clearly, a broad smile and a sweet apology weren’t going to work. Nor would flattery, Jo thought, sweeping her gaze over the troll’s bleached green scrubs and iron-gray hair. So Jo simply poured herself into a chair and allowed herself a fleeting fantasy about St. Lucia in February.

  The troll returned her attention to the computer screen. “Your full name.”

  “Bobbie Jo Marcum.” She fished out her driver’s license. “ ‘Bobbie’ with an ‘i-e.’ ”

  “Relationship to the patient?”

  “I guess I’m her legal guardian.”

  “You guess.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  “My friend died. Rachel Braun, Grace’s mother.” Jo remembered the letter. I know you’re going to think this is a mistake…. “In her will, she made me Grace’s guardian.”

  “Got a copy of that document?”

  Jo indicated her slim leather clutch. “You think that’d fit in this purse?”

  “Adoption papers.”

  “Oh, p
lease.” Jo felt a sudden urge for nicotine. “Rachel died only recently.”

  “What about the father?”

  “He was an anonymous tablespoon of semen in a test tube.”

  Iron Woman didn’t flicker an eyelash. “Any other family? A blood relative who can verify your claim?”

  Claim?

  “She’s got grandparents in Jersey, with a whole barrel-full of medical problems of their own.” And likely to have heart attacks should they get a call with the news that another Braun was in the hospital. “I can manage the bills, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Just then, Jo noticed three officious-looking people turn into the hall beyond Grace’s room. Not doctors. Clearly not doctors. Two of them talked together, in low and urgent tones, consulting their clipboards as they strode up the hall. The third was dressed in blue, sporting a badge. Jo watched them as they approached Grace’s room, then turned into it as a group.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  She’d seen that type before. Whenever her mother was forced to file for benefits, they’d arrive, park their cars in front of her double-wide, stride across the drive, and eye her home with an anthropologist’s horrified curiosity. Then they would take a good long look at her, in her borrowed clothes, and ask her mother—indiscreetly sniffing her breath—if she was sure she could care for a child… under the circumstances.

  “Listen, I’ll call the lawyer.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Barry Leibowitz of Leibowitz & Rabin in Hoboken. They’ll verify the will—”

  “You can’t use that cell phone in here.”

  “Then I’ll use your phone—”

  “This is an emergency-room phone, Ms. Marcum. Step outside to make your call. Have the lawyer call back at this number.”

  Jo marched through the automatic doors. As she flipped open the phone, she felt the sizzle of authoritative eyes on her back. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed that one of the guards had followed her out of the building—as if he were suddenly in need of a breath of fresh air.

  She punched in the number for the lawyer and got an answering machine. Clearly, Barry Leibowitz had no criminal practice. It was nearly ten-thirty at night, and his perky message left no emergency number for late-night bailouts. She flipped the phone shut and took a deep breath before making the one call she hadn’t wanted to make.

  “She’s where?!”

  Jo kept her voice neutral. “It was an accident, Jessie. I heard a noise, I looked up, and there she was wandering in my hallway. She didn’t hear me call her name. She just kept walking… right to the edge of the stairs.” Jo flinched, remembering the crack of Grace’s head against the glass table. “I insisted on a plastic surgeon—she’s getting stitches right now.”

  “And where are you, calling me, while Grace is being sewn back together?”

  “I’m doing my doggone best not to interfere with the function of every X-ray machine in the hospital.”

  “You should be at her bedside. She’s seven years old. She must be scared to death! I’m coming in.” Jessie panted, clearly running up some stairs. “What the hell were you doing, Jo? You had her for less than a day—”

  “Jessie, if you don’t answer my questions right now, Gracie will be spending the night in a New York City foster home, and I’ll be banging a tin cup against the bars of a jail cell.”

  “What?!”

  “Picture it. I come in here with a bleeding kid. She’s got a different last name. She looks as much like me as a possum does a mountain goat. I don’t even know Grace’s birthday—”

  “June fifteenth.”

  “—I don’t know what grade she’s in—”

  “Second!”

  “—or if she has allergies or previous hospital visits or medical insurance. They think I’m some sicko kidnapper, and they’ve got social workers lining up outside her hospital room.”

  Jessie went silent. Behind Jo, the security guard shuffled his feet against the sidewalk.

  “So maybe,” Jo continued, “you should have filled me in on a few vital details when you shoved her suitcase in the back of my car this morning.” Jo turned over the scrap of paper the troll had given her, and wrote down Grace’s birthdate and grade. “Now tell me her medical insurance number, so I can give the troll something to work with, until you call her directly with the rest of the information.”

  “Uh… hold on.”

  “Jessie!”

  Too late. Jessie abandoned the phone; Jo heard her receding footsteps. Jessie must be off to tell Grace’s grandmother Leah, who for the past three months had done nothing but visit the sick.

  Jo sagged against the brick wall. Great freakin’ mom she was turning out to be. And wasn’t that predictable? Jo had grown up fatherless in the shadow of a chicken-processing plant, wearing Salvation Army clothes. Baby fever, she’d once told Rachel, was one fever she would never catch.

  “Hey, I’m back.” Jessie fumbled with the phone. “You still there?”

  No, I abandoned Grace and bought a ticket to the Caymans.

  “Okay. I found a folder in my uncle’s office. Marked ‘Grace.’ ”

  “You didn’t tell Leah and Abe.”

  “Are you crazy? Like my aunt and uncle don’t have enough to deal with. Okay. We got a birth certificate. We got a couple of report cards—”

  “What’s the name of the school?”

  Jessie told her, then continued to rifle through the papers. “We got… I guess this is a chart of immunizations. It’s in the stuff Rachel sent to register Grace for school. And here’s a business card…. I know this guy. Dr. Migliore. He must be Grace’s pediatrician. Want his phone number?”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, yeah. Here’s Grace’s health insurance card.”

  “A little nugget of gold.”

  Jessie paused. “I suppose I should have sent this off with you.”

  “Hey, they did teach you something at that fancy city school.”

  “I didn’t expect you’d need it quite so soon.”

  “Sugar, right now I’ve got a security officer breathing down my neck, and though he’s hot in a jackbooted kind of way, I’m a little too distracted to think about hooking up.” Jo spun on a heel to eyeball the officer. “Right now, I’m going back into the hospital to check on Grace. You are going to call this number and give all that information to the tro—to the lady at the desk. Then, just maybe, I won’t have to spend a night under a bare bulb undergoing interrogation—and Child Protective Services will let Grace out of its dirty clutches, okay?”

  Jo gave Jessie the number and then snapped the phone closed, straightened her shoulders, and swept by the security guard. The automatic doors whooshed open, and the first thing Jo heard was the sound of the emergency-room phone ringing. The troll picked it up and then gave her a significant glance. Jessie was obviously a quick dialer.

  Jo approached the desk, envisioning a velvet rope and a bouncer beyond. She knew how to deal with invisible barriers. Spent most of her life crashing them. So she just kept walking with unquestioned authority. She strode by the troll, turned the corner, and clacked her way down the hall. Her shoulders tensed. But no one followed her; no one stopped her. And as she neared Grace’s room, the police officer and two social workers emerged in conversation.

  The woman in the group caught her eye and met her in the hall. “You must be Mrs. Marcum?”

  “Ms.”

  “I’m Bonnie Spencer. From Social Services.” Earnest look, dangling earrings and all. “My colleague and I just finished talking to Grace.”

  “Is it your policy,” Jo said, summoning her inner warrior, “to interview a minor without a parent or legal guardian present?”

  The woman’s smile tightened. “Since she seems to have neither, we took the risk.”

  Touché.

  “Guys,” the social worker said, nodding to her colleagues, “would you give us a moment?”

  The men left, and Bonnie Spencer from Social Services gave Jo a disc
reet but thorough look-over that suggested that a certain breed of social workers went to the same school, where they were taught to gauge people’s worth by reading their clothes and their body language and the tics of their faces under pressure—and destroy entire families with these conclusions.

  “Grace is a quiet little girl,” the social worker said, “but when I let her talk through her Lovey, she confirmed your story.”

  “Well, hallelujah, I’ve been sprung by a stuffed rabbit. May we go home now?”

  “When the doctor is finished. Tell me, have you ever caught Grace sleepwalking?”

  “This was her first night at my house.”

  “I see.”

  Jo tried to keep her gaze steady. It wasn’t easy. She knew, just as well as this social worker, that in her Manolo Blahniks and silk sweater she didn’t exactly cut the figure of a Good Mommy.

  “You should keep an eye on her behavior.” The woman rifled through the pockets of her suit jacket. “This little trip-and-fall may have been an accident. Or it may have been a way of getting attention. Or she may be sleepwalking. I don’t think she has fully processed the loss of her mother yet. Children grieve very differently than you or me.”

  Jo took the card she offered. “Tell me this is the phone number for Mary Poppins.”

  “No. It’s for Dr. Rodriguez. She’s a very good child psychiatrist, one of the best in the city. I suggest you make an appointment with her as soon as possible. It’ll help to get a professional opinion.”

  Then she left, her soft-soled shoes making no noise as she padded down the hall, leaving Jo standing there realizing she wasn’t just going to be the sole caretaker of a seven-year-old girl; she was going to be the only guardian of a grieving, sensitive seven-year-old girl, which meant she might as well kiss the counselor’s ass—she was sure to screw it up.

  Why, Rachel?

  Jo had grown up owning three changes of clothes. Now she had her dry cleaning and laundry picked up every Monday and returned every Thursday. She’d grown up sharing an outhouse. Now a nice Portuguese lady cleaned her toilets every week, whether they needed the wash or not. She’d ditched her childhood Sunday-newspaper route for afternoons listening to bluegrass and reading the New York Times, particularly to see if any of her own parties had made it into the Style section. She’d long ago reached a place she used to only dream of.