Cold Cold Heart (7 page)

Oh my God, I used to be her,
she thought.

Beside the blonde stood her cameraman. The camera was rolling, sucking the moment of revelation in to spew it out to the home viewing audience of southern Indiana and northern Kentucky.

Dana felt rooted to the spot, unable to turn away. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to pull her hood over her face and vanish, but she couldn't seem to move.

A second reporter and a second cameraman appeared, and then a third pair.

They all seemed to speak at once, their questions coming in a wave of language rushing toward her even as her emotions began to flood her mind from within.

Dana, how are you?

How do you feel?

What—? Where—? How—? Who—?

Dana— Senator— Doc— Casey— Holiday— Grant— Senator— Dana— Mercer— Dana, Dana, Dana!

The words all ran together and tumbled over one another, ceasing to make any sense. Panic began to close a hand around her
throat. And all the while she continued staring at the blond reporter—the girl who reminded her so much of herself, of who she had been. The young woman's features were so like hers—the shape of her face, the tip of her nose, the color of her hair. Her intent expression was so familiar it was as if Dana was somehow creating it, generating that intensity from her own emotion.

In a trick of her damaged brain, the girl became her. She wasn't a stranger who happened to look like her. She
was
Dana. She was Before Dana, and After Dana was suddenly staring into the face of her past.

Her whole body began to shake from its very core outward.

“Stop it,” she said, so softly she wasn't even certain she had spoken out loud. Then the voice came stronger. “Stop it. Stop it!”

Without realizing what she was doing, she took a step forward, and then another, reaching out toward the image of herself.

“
Stop it! Stop it!
”

The faces of the reporters loomed larger, distorted, their mouths tearing open. Questions turned to screeching, discordant sound.

“
Stop it! Stop it!
” Dana shouted.

Like in her dream about the water, something caught her from behind, dragging her backward. A strong arm banded across her chest, pulling her back. Dana reacted on instinct, grabbing at the arm, fighting to pry it away. Her feet came off the ground as she was lifted and turned, and suddenly she was in her mother's arms and being turned again and pushed in the direction of the house.

Behind her she could hear a man's voice booming with authority. “That's enough, folks! Please! I'm sure you can understand this is family time. Senator Mercer's daughter is just out of the hospital. She's exhausted. She's overwhelmed.”

“We're thrilled to have Dana home at last,” Roger said loudly. “But please have some respect for our privacy.”

Dana felt herself propelled through the front door into the foyer, her body on some kind of self-defense autopilot, moving to
escape the mob even as her brain was still swimming in the noise and emotion.

Dana! Dana! Dana!

She twisted and turned and ran backward out of her mother's reach, banging into a hall table and knocking over a vase of fresh flowers. Water cascaded to the floor, splashing on the tile. The sound of crystal shattering seemed as loud as a bomb.

“Dana!” her mother shouted. “Calm down! Calm down!”

Dana shied sideways and ran into the powder room, yanking the door shut behind her, cutting off the sound and the motion and the madness. With trembling hands, she turned on the faucet, scooped up the water, and splashed it over her face. She repeated the process again and again, slopping the water down the front of her hoodie, all over the vanity, and onto the floor.

“Dana?” her mother called, tapping on the door. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Please open the door.”

The question was absurd, Dana thought as she stood staring into the ornate gold-framed mirror above the vanity. Was she all right? Nothing was right, least of all her. She had just had a meltdown in front of news cameras. News cameras in the driveway of her home, where she was supposed to feel safe and secure.

Why did they care that she was home? Her newsworthiness should have died with the man who had victimized her.

Welcome home
, she thought as she stared at herself in the mirror.

Her mother knocked again, harder. “Dana? Answer me!”

Forgetting to turn the faucet off or dry the water from her face, Dana stepped back and sat down on the toilet, her legs feeling like rubber beneath her as the adrenaline subsided.

The door flew open and Lynda burst in looking frightened and frantic and pale.

“Honey, are you all right? Are you okay?”

She started to lean in, to reach out, to touch and fuss, and Dana couldn't stand the thought of it.

“Stop!” she said, holding her hands up to block her mother's advance. “Just stop it! Oh my God! Leave me alone!”

Lynda pulled back, looking hurt and at a loss. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to do. The faucet was still running in the background. She crossed her arms and held on to herself as she struggled to calm her own emotions.

“Are you all right?” she asked again with forced calm.

“I'm tired,” Dana said softly. All the emotions tumbling inside her, and she chose the simplest physical excuse. She didn't have the energy to address the rest of it. Better if she just shut down. Better for everyone.

Her mother turned off the faucet, pulled a hand towel off the towel bar, and handed it to her. “Dry your face, sweetheart.”

Dana pressed the towel to her face, then wound her hands into it and held it in her lap, leaning forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. She wanted to put her head down and go to sleep right there. Maybe when she woke up she would be someplace else and all this would have been a bad dream. She wondered how many times a day she had had that thought since this second life had begun.

“I can't believe the nerve of those people,” Lynda said, looking out the door, as if the reporters might have come inside to wait in the hall. “How dare they show up here? They're nothing but vultures.”

“I used to be one of them,” Dana pointed out.

“You were never like that,” her mother argued. “Pushy and rude. You were never like that.”

“They're just doing their jobs,” Dana said in automatic defense of her former colleagues, even though she didn't want them here either. “They have assignments.”

“I'd like to know how they got this assignment. If Wesley had anything to do with it, he's getting a piece of my mind. Mr. Campaign Manager,” she muttered. “It's none of their business—someone coming home from the hospital. After everything you've been
through. What did they think? That you would want to give a press conference in the driveway?”

“I guess I'm news.”

Dana thought of the blond girl in the driveway thrusting a microphone, asking a question. She had been that girl, getting the answers, getting the story. Now she
was
the story.
Shoe Meets Other Foot: Details at Five
.

“You're not a headline,” her mother said. “You're my daughter. I don't want them upsetting you. Don't be angry with me for wanting to protect you. I'm your mom. That's my job.”

She reached out and brushed Dana's wet bangs out of her eyes.

“I'd wrestle a grizzly bear for you, you know,” she said with a soft smile.

Dana tried to smile back. It was something her father had always promised—that he would wrestle a grizzly bear for her. After his death, her mother had taken up the mantle of bear slayer.

“They don't have any right to come here,” her mother said. “It's time for us to get our lives back. They have no right to intrude on that.”

But they wouldn't get their lives back, Dana thought. There was no getting back what had passed. They could only move forward and hope for the best. Forward looked like a long hike up a steep hill at the moment. The idea of it drained what little energy she had left.

“I need to lie down,” she said. “Can I lie down now?”

“Of course, sweetie,” her mother said, holding out her hand to help Dana up. “Your room is all ready for you. Just the way you left it.”

“Great,” Dana said. “Now all I have to do is find it.”

When Dana woke
with a start, the world beyond the windows had grown dim. Warm amber light puddled beneath the small alabaster lamps on the nightstands. A soft pink blanket swaddled her in warmth. The big bed was like an ivory cloud beneath her. She felt like she was in a wonderful cocoon.

As always when she woke, she had no idea where she was. To head off the panic, she looked to the nightstand for her four-by-six cards with her familiar questions and instructions. There were no cards. She tried to remember the questions.

Where am I?

Not the Weidman Center.

Without moving, she looked around to take in the details of her surroundings and try to process them. Across the room, near the windows, sat a writing desk with feminine lines and curved legs. On the desktop sat a computer, a dictionary, a pink ceramic mug filled with pens and markers. Behind the desk, ivory-painted built-in bookcases were filled with books and framed photographs and the mementos of a young girl.

Where am I?

My room.

Where is my room?

Home.

She looked down as something stirred among the soft folds of the blanket. A black-and-white cat snuggled up against her stomach.

“Tuxedo!”

The cat awoke, yawning and blinking. He rolled and stretched and purred and yawned, then looked up at her with a self-satisfied cat smile and began purring like a small engine, kneading the covers with white-mittened paws. Dana stroked a hand over him, soaking in the sensation of peace that simple action gave her.

She had rescued the cat from a shelter in Minneapolis after interviewing the shelter director on the early-morning news show she had anchored. Tuxedo had been one of three cats brought along to promote an adoption event. He had spent the remainder of the day snoozing in an open desk drawer, curled up in a cashmere cardigan.

Dana had only a vague memory of the story—and her mind may well have pieced that memory together out of the details other people had given her. Until her mother had brought a framed photograph of Tux for her to keep in her room at the Weidman Center, she hadn't remembered having a cat. But stroking his glossy fur brought back a strong, familiar feeling of peace and contentment.

Across the room, the door cracked open and her mother peeked in.

“Just checking,” she said, letting herself in. “Did you sleep well?”

Dana nodded as she sat up and leaned back into a mountain of frilly pillows. Tux immediately resituated himself in her lap, chirping and trilling as he curled into a ball.

Her mother sat down on the edge of the bed and reached over to scratch the cat's ears.

“He's missed you.”

“I missed him.”

“I think Roger is allergic to him,” her mother confessed with a little smile.

“Too bad for Roger,” Dana said without sympathy.

“That's what I told him. The girl and the cat are a package deal,” she said. “Dinner's on the way from Anthony's. I ordered all your favorites.”

“What are my favorites?”

“Meatball ricotta pizza with mushrooms. Baked ziti. The big salad with chickpeas and red onions and tomatoes, with red wine vinaigrette. And garlic bread with cheese.”

“What if those aren't my favorites anymore?”

“Then we'll find you new favorites.”

So many things were different now. She had lost her taste for certain foods and craved flavors she had never cared about before. Her injury had taken away even the simplest of familiar small pleasures. She had to rebuild everything from scratch, even her likes and dislikes.

“It's all going to be fine, honey,” her mother said. “The only important thing is that you're home. Who cares if you don't like chickpeas anymore? If you can't stand the smell of my perfume, just tell me. It doesn't matter.”

“I can't stand the smell of your perfume anymore,” Dana said. “Seriously.”

Her mother smiled and laughed. “I'll throw it out tonight—even though you gave it to me for Christmas. What else?”

“I'll let you know,” Dana said, finding a little smile of her own. “I'm not crazy about that sweater either.”

They laughed together, something that would have seemed unlikely earlier in the day. Her mother patted her cheek.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” Dana said. “I'm sorry if it doesn't always seem like I do.”

“You don't have anything to apologize for, sweetheart,” her mother said softly. “You have one thing to concentrate on: getting better. I don't want you to worry about anything else, okay?”

Dana nodded.

Her mother got up from the bed, busying her hands by folding the pink blanket. “Now, you should freshen up. Dinner will be here soon. And Frankie and Mags are coming too. Do you want me to help you unpack?”

“I can do it,” Dana said automatically, a decision she regretted almost as soon as her mother left the room with Tuxedo tagging after her in hopes of a meal.

She opened her two suitcases and emptied the contents onto the bed and was immediately overwhelmed by the questions of what to put away where, what should go on hangers and what should go in drawers. Deciding the best decision was no decision, she abandoned the task and went into her bathroom to check herself out in the mirror.

She had changed out of her drenched pink hoodie for a gray hoodie before lying down, and now she looked like she had just crawled out of a laundry basket. Wrinkles creased the top, but she couldn't bear the idea of having to pick something else to change into. Her short hair was sticking up in all directions. Her solution was to put up her hood and call it good enough. There would be no television cameras at dinner, no strangers to judge her.

Still, she felt nervous. She tried to tell herself no one was going to expect anything special from her. It wasn't as if she hadn't had dinner with her mother and Roger before, or that she hadn't seen her aunt Frankie since everything that had happened. Frankie and her partner, Maggie, had been regular visitors to the Weidman Center. But it was somehow different because she was now home for good.

This was the first day of the rest of her life. What if she didn't
pass the test of behaving like a normal person at dinner? What if she couldn't find her way to the bathroom? What if . . . what if . . .

What if she couldn't find her way to the kitchen?

The idea would have seemed ridiculous to most people. She had grown up in this house. How could she not know where the kitchen was? But she hadn't navigated this house in a long time, and even if she had gone from room to room ten times today, there was no guarantee she would remember the path without having written it down.

She snatched up her iPhone from the nightstand, brought up the notes app, and typed:

DIRECTIONS: from my room to the kitchen

Her bedroom was located on the lower level of the house along with a large family room, giving this floor the feeling of being its own apartment. Both rooms faced out onto a large flagstone patio scattered with lounges and cushioned chairs that invited guests to relax around tables or the fire pit. Beyond the patio, a green area sloped away to woods.

After spending her childhood in a bedroom down the hall from her parents, Dana had been so excited when, at sixteen, she had been allowed to move downstairs, giving her the extra privacy and independence every teenage girl wanted (and giving her mother and Roger, who were newly married, the extra privacy they wanted as well).

Dana left her room and turned right, going toward the light-filled family room. Her mother, no doubt, had turned on the fat ginger-jar lamps that squatted on the end tables beside the big overstuffed leather sofa. A stone fireplace dominated the end wall, with a huge television hanging above the thick mantel.

A gracious curving staircase led the way up to the first floor, where Dana paused to recalculate. Turn right? Turn left? From
where she stood she could see the front door, the door to the powder room, the staircase that curved upward to the second-floor bedrooms. She stood quietly, taking in the details, listening carefully, trying to call up memories.

Left. Turn left. She made the note on her phone and continued down a hallway that opened to a formal living room on one side and a dining room on the other. She could hear voices now. Women's voices. Familiar voices. She paused and listened.

“I saw it on the television at the gym. I couldn't believe it! How did they know Dana was coming home today?”

“I don't know. Roger said I shouldn't have put the balloons on the mailbox.”

“Oh, for God's sake! What a dick! He puts the blame on you? Like you don't have enough stress?”

“But he probably has a point—”

“Don't defend him, Lynda! How dare he do that to you? And you know darn well it was probably Wesley Stevens who tipped off the newspeople. Anything for a media moment. Please tell me he's not coming to dinner. He clings to Roger like he's made of Velcro.”

“Wesley is not coming to dinner. Family only,” Lynda said. “And Roger didn't want what happened in the driveway, Frankie—”

“Well, it got him on television, didn't it? And it didn't cost a dime.
And
it's a news bit, so no equal time for the opponent. I hear this senate race is too close to call.”

“I'm not going to believe Roger had anything to do with that. He feels terrible that Dana was upset.”

“I feel terrible that Dana was upset, too,” a third voice chimed in. Frankie's partner, Maggie. “Dana is where our focus should be, Frankie. The look on her face . . . broke my heart.”

“What that newscaster had to say made me want to break her face,” Frankie said. “And bringing up Casey Grant. What the hell? That was years ago! Why bring that up now? Nobody knows what
happened to Casey. Leave it alone, for Christ's sake. Even if there was some connection, what possible difference could it make now?”

“Can we not talk about it?” Lynda said impatiently. “Dana's going to be coming up here any minute. I don't want her hearing any of this. She doesn't need to be reminded about this afternoon, and she certainly doesn't need to be reminded about Casey. It's her first night home. That's stressful enough for her. Let's just be happy and positive we have her back.”

Someone sighed.

“You're right,” Frankie said. “I'm sorry. It just made me so fucking angry.”

“Let it go, Frankie.”

“I will. I am. It's gone. See? Happy face! Now, where's my niece? I want to welcome her home.”

“She had a nap,” her mother said, “but she's up—at least, she
was
up. That's not to say she might not have forgotten about dinner and gone back to bed.”

“How is she?” Maggie asked.

“She seems better now that she's rested. She just got overwhelmed by all that madness in the driveway.”

“Understandably so. I felt overwhelmed just watching.”

“It scares me when that happens to her,” her mother admitted. “I don't know where her mind goes. It's like she doesn't even recognize me.”

“Don't take it personally, Lynda,” Frankie said gently. “The brain's first instinct is to protect itself. That fight-or-flight response is the strongest thing we have. I'm sure it's only more so in Dana, considering everything she went through.”

“I don't even want to imagine what would be left of my mind,” Maggie said. “I don't think I could have survived what that madman did to her. I really don't. She's so brave.”

“Should I go get her?” Frankie asked. “I'll go get her.”

A chair scraped against the floor.

Dana stepped backward one step, two steps, not wanting to get caught eavesdropping.

“Hey there, sweetheart!”

The voice was behind her, big and deep, startling her even as she stepped backward into its owner—Roger.

Her heart leapt into her throat, and she spun around, tripping over her own feet.

Roger grabbed her upper arms, catching her, holding on to her.

“Wrong way!” he said, smiling, laughing.

In the dim light of the hallway he looked sinister, towering over her. Dana tried to turn, to wrench out of his grip.

“There she is!” Frankie said, coming out of the kitchen. “I was just coming to find you! Welcome home, Li'l Dee!”

And then she was out of Roger's grasp and into Frankie's hug and being swept out of the hall and into the kitchen.

“We're so excited to have you home!”

Maggie came across the room, smiling, reaching out. She was all soft lines and gentle curves—the body of a yoga enthusiast and a dancer, while Frankie was the feminine version of Dana's father: compact, athletic, angular. Frankie had a handshake that could make a man wince, and the trademark rectangular Nolan smile and stunning blue eyes. In contrast to her partner's long dark hair, Frankie kept her hair in a punkish platinum crop that always sported a new splash of color, purple being the current choice.

“Come sit,” Frankie said, herding her toward the harvest table, which sat in an alcove of windows. “We get to wait on you tonight.”

“What would you like to drink, Dana?” Maggie asked. “We brought sparkling cider to celebrate. Does that sound good?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Dana slipped around to the far side of the table, putting her back to the windows. She worked to slow her racing heart and racing mind by slowly taking in the familiar room, focusing one by one on the things she recognized—the antique white cupboards, the big
island with the dark granite top, the copper pots that hung from the iron pot rack. On the counter a giant pottery cat dressed as a butler stood upright holding a menu board that read:
LYNDA'S KITCHEN
.

Maggie set a champagne flute on the table in front of her. Dana dutifully took a sip of the sparkling cider.