Going for Kona (18 page)

I woke with a start in a strange place. The smells were strange: antiseptic, coffee, and something vaguely unpleasant. My forehead was resting on a flat, hard surface. I lifted it and looked down. A table. A cup of coffee of suspicious origins in front of me. I sniffed. Definitely not Kona.

An efficient female voice interrupted my thoughts. “I’m Dr. Smith. Are you Sam’s mother?”

Hope surged in me and I leaped to my feet. “Yes, I’m Michele Lopez Hanson.”

She waved her hand “no.” “Please, have a seat. I just wanted to update you on Sam’s condition.”

I lowered myself back into my chair and put one hand around my cold coffee, the other in my lap. “Thank you very much. Please, how is he?”

“Lucky, for one. Really, we can’t find any serious injuries.”

“His head?”

She smiled. “A concussion, but that’s it. We’d like to watch him overnight, but if all is well in the morning, you can take him home then.”

“Oh, thank you!” I rose so quickly I jarred the table and knocked my coffee over. “I’m so sorry!” Coffee ran in every direction and soaked the tiny napkin underneath the cup.

Dr. Smith went to the condiments bar and brought back a stack of paper towels and we both started blotting. “He woke up while we were stitching up his forehead. His head hurts and he’s pretty nauseous, but that’s to be expected. He’s on his way to a room now. You can go see him.” She gave me the room number. “I’ll finish this up.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. Go.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said over my shoulder. I was already halfway to the door.

I rounded the corner of the cafeteria into the hallway, where my body met a solid object. Large, unyielding, but not hard. A familiar scent. Two large hands reached for my upper arms. They were gentle.

“Sorry.”

“Just the person I came to see.” It was Detective Young.

“I’m on my way to Sam.” I stepped back and started around him.

He reversed course and fell in step with me. “Good. I’d like to see him, too.”

I bristled. “He has a concussion. He’s in no condition for questioning.”

“I only want to see him, to tell him I’m glad he’s okay. That I’m glad this is over, and I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Is Marchetti with you?”

“He’s back at the station doing all the paperwork. He’ll be with me when we take Sam’s statement. Yours, too.”

“But—”

“Slow down, Michele. When Sam is ready.”

“Good.”

I pushed the call button when we reached the elevators and the doors opened immediately. We got in together and ascended, jerking and dinging, to the third floor. When the doors opened and we stepped out, I said, “Thank you. For taking it seriously this morning about Sam.”

“I got your messages last night about Rhonda Dale and the other women, and what you’d done. That was pretty damn stupid, you know.”

“Someone had to do something. I was right about the Taurus. And that woman won’t get the chance to kill my son like she did my husband.”

“Point taken.”

We turned onto Sam’s hall and I pushed ahead of Young into Sam’s room. My eyes pulled my son into me. Tall, dark, and handsome, that was my boy, even in a hospital bed. A blue flowered gown hung from his frame, and his forelock hung over his bandaged forehead. He was sitting with the head of the bed raised, clicking a remote control.

“Sam.”

He tracked my voice, and grinned, or tried to. His eyes were sunken and black-rimmed. “Mom.” His voice was scratchy and young.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?”

“Weird. Not great.”

“You’ve got a concussion, I’m sorry to say, so it may be a long night.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I love you. I’m so happy you’re okay.” I sat down in the stuffed leather chair beside the bed and took his hand. He didn’t resist.

Young moved close to the bed. “Hi, Sam.”

Sam looked at me. I smiled. “He’s just here to say hello.”

Sam said, “Hello,” in a deeper voice than he’d used with me.

“It’s good to see you’re all right. When you’re feeling a little better, I’ll come back and talk to you about what happened, but it’s all going to be okay.” Young stepped up to the bed. “Has anyone told you yet that your mother saved your life?”

Sam shook his head, just a little, and grimaced. “No, nobody’s told me anything.”

I patted his hand. “Do you remember what happened, honey?”

“Uh—” He stopped and looked at the door as Robert, Papa, and Mom walked in, erupting with noise. Sam winced but smiled.

I stood up. “Easy guys. Concussion.”

Papa stepped in front of Robert and Mom and peered into Sam’s eyes. His hand reached into his pocket for his pen light, ever the man of medicine, even if usually with animals. He came up empty.

My father hugged me. “Itzpa, we were worried.”

I stood and slipped my arm around him. “He’s going to be fine, Papa.”

Young made an “ahem” sound. Papa released me. “Tough kid you’ve got here. Good kid.”

All heads swiveled toward the interloper’s voice.

I gestured toward Young. “Everyone remember the detective?”

“We’ve met over the phone.” My mother’s voice promised she had a lot to say about it, but she held it in. Robert and Papa just nodded.

“Good to see you all again.” Young made a round of the group, shaking reluctantly proffered hands. “I have to get back to the station. Michele, Sam, I’ll see you guys later.”

I moved back to let my mother join Papa. An arm slipped around my shoulders, and Robert squeezed me, hard. It was the first time he’d touched me since I moved out of the house we’d lived in together. I wouldn’t need a repeat for a long time, but I didn’t resist. I put my arm around his midsection and squeezed him once, too. Sam was our son. Right now, the only person in the world who felt like I did was this man beside me.

My phone rang. I broke free of Robert and saw it was Annabelle. “Hello, Belle.” I had sent her a message earlier that Sam was in the hospital, but I’d left out the details. It was the first time she’d called or texted me in days, and I was glad to hear her voice.

“It’s all over the news, and Facebook.” Her words ran together. “Is he all right, Michele? Is Sam going to be all right?”

“Yes, sweet pea, he is. He can go home in the morning. Let me hand him the phone.” Smiling, I held it out to my son. “For you. It’s your sister.”

An hour later, we had worn Sam out. Papa and Robert leaned against the window ledge and stared at the TV, a preseason NFL game. The Texans and somebody. Mom and I sat on either side of Sam, patting him. The kid would have bruises soon, but I just couldn’t stop.

“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Sam, but do you remember what happened?” I bit a fingernail on my non-patting hand.

“Michele.” My mother shook her head, miming biting a fingernail. I pulled it away from my mouth, then hated myself for doing it.

Sam touched the bandage on his forehead. “Yeah, umm, not a lot. I went to bed, and then I woke up because I heard something. A woman was in my room, and she had a gun. She told me to stay quiet or she’d kill my grandparents. She made me get in the trunk of her car, then she jabbed my arm with something, and I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Well, kiddo, let me tell you the rest.” My mother’s version? I stiffened. “That same woman ran your mother off the road on her bicycle, and the car flipped and the woman died. We discovered you were missing, and no one had a clue what to do. Except your mom. She told the police you were in the trunk of that car. Nobody believed her at first. But she didn’t stop until they’d found you, right where she said you’d be.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my mother talk like that about me. I put my fist to my mouth to hold in a sob.

“Mom? How’d you know?”

I lowered my fist slowly and relaxed my hand. “I don’t know. I just knew.”

“She was the same woman I hit with Adrian’s car, wasn’t she?”

I nodded but I couldn’t speak. Sam still called it Adrian’s car. He hung on to Adrian, too. Something zinged my heart. Adrian should be here.

Mom took over the conversation and Sam hung on her words, letting her fill in the blanks for him. As much as it soothed my soul to see my boy’s brown eyes clear and my mother take rare pride in me, my mind was adrift. Adrian wasn’t with me anymore, and I wasn’t sure when I’d lost him.

When I came to my senses after the wreck, he was gone. I thought back to the moments before the crash, to his arms around me, to his breath on my neck. To the moment I didn’t jump my bicycle.

I hadn’t jumped my bike because I wanted to stay with Adrian, and I’d almost joined him. Instead, I lived, and because of that, my son was alive. A horror swept through me. If I’d died, no one would have found Sam. Somehow, God or fate or—who knows, maybe even Adrian—had intervened, and because of it Sam lived. Jesús Cristo, I had made a choice that almost cost Sam his life.

Like a bulldozer, a thought crushed me: Adrian vanished when Stephanie died. I found his killer, and he was gone. The sobs I held in almost strangled me, but I could not fall apart again, not when Sam needed me, not when everyone thought I was finally back to acting like a real mother. Oh, what they didn’t know. What they didn’t know.

And then the warmth slipped over me, the warmth of my husband. Maybe he wasn’t gone. I focused on the feeling, listening for his voice. I strained, but there was nothing. Something inside told me to me look up, look UP, and when I did, there he was, standing in the doorway to Sam’s room, right where he should be. I stretched my hand toward him. He was so beautiful. His blond wavy hair, his sparkling green eyes. I could even smell him. He was real. The scent of tennis shoes, Old Spice, and him. Just him. I dove into his eyes, and his thoughts washed over me.

“You’re not safe, Butterfly. It’s not over.”
He disappeared.

“Take me with you!”
The warmth faded and I felt a pop, and something inside me loosened and fluttered down, down, down. I spoke aloud. “Adrian? Adrian!”

But he was gone.

I spent the night with Sam in the hospital, staring into the dark, unmoving, unwound, and untethered. I couldn’t stop the images that blasted through my head one after another in an endless loop. Adrian, catapulting into the sky in a shower of sparks off the bumper of Stephanie’s car. Sam, tiny and unconscious, wrapped in a burning wool blanket. Stephanie shoving Annabelle into the airport security line as the terminal around them ignited, Stephanie holding a lighter under Scarlett’s red nails as they burst into flame, and me flying on La Mariposa toward Stephanie, a lance with a glowing hot tip gripped under my right arm and aimed for her head. The fire in my head robbed the heat from the rest of my body. I wrapped myself in every blanket I could beg from the nurses, but I couldn’t get warm. The minutes ticked by, one second at a time, hours marked into halves by the visits of the night nurse to check on Sam.

At five fifteen the next morning, I heard a tap on the door. I jumped. My mother poked her head around the corner.

I tried to keep my voice down. “Do you know what time it is?”

“You don’t have to whisper, Mom,” Sam said. “Somebody comes in and wakes me up every ten seconds, so it’s not like I’m asleep.” He sounded tired and cranky.

Mother marched to the chair on the other side of Sam’s bed and sat herself in it. “I’ll handle it from here, Michele. Call when you’re done, in case they’ve let us check Sam out.”

“What?”

She made a little hrmph noise. “You only have six weeks of training left until you taper. Now’s not the time to slack off.”

Taper? Where in hell had my mother learned triathlon terminology?

Sam spoke in a slightly less grumpy voice. “Geez, Mom, don’t just stand there. Gigi’s got this.”

They were right, of course, but something had come off its track inside me, like the belt from the flywheel on my abuela’s antique sewing machine. I used all my strength to will my feet to move. I grabbed my bag as I passed it and left the room.

My condition was more than inertia, though. I dreaded facing the pool. Dreaded it more than death. Adrian’s words replayed in my head. “You’re not safe. It’s not over,” he’d said, then disappeared in a way that screamed “gone” at me all over again. Gone. Was Adrian really gone this time? I knew, but I didn’t
know
, and I didn’t want to find out. If I dove into that water and he wasn’t there, what then?

I spent three and a half hours in the water aqua jogging and swimming without a flicker of connection with Adrian. Not the tiniest bit of signal. He was gone, truly, and a piece of me broke off and floated away.

***

From the gym I went to the police station. It hadn’t changed since my last visit, but I had.

A text came in on my phone from Robert:
“Sam discharged. I have him.”

“It’s not over,” I said aloud. Sam would be safe with Robert, away from whatever it was that wasn’t over. More safe than with me, at least, the woman that couldn’t keep Stephanie Willis from getting to him. I shivered and put my hands around the warm Styrofoam cup in front of me and sniffed. The coffee smelled like weeds. I sipped. It tasted like weeds, too, but I knew I needed it.

Young, Marchetti, and Nickels entered together, and we exchanged greetings as they sat down. Marchetti’s sweaty shirt stuck to his chest.

Young took charge. “Thanks for coming in. We got Sam’s statement this morning with his father present. I think we’re good there.”

“Okay.”

“I’m glad he’s all right, Mrs. Hanson,” Marchetti said.

I sighed. “Michele. And thank you.”

Young grilled me for over an hour. They weren’t happy I’d taken the investigation into my own hands, but I deflected their disapproval. I hadn’t broken any laws, and we’d ended up in the right place. I could let them have this.

“We have evidence that suggests Ms. Willis killed your husband. She kept notes of every time she followed each of you. What you were doing. When. Where. What she did.” He cleared his throat. “She made a note on August second that she ‘took care of Adrian Hanson’ near Meyerland Plaza at 4:05 p.m. And, of course, the paint on her car is a match for the paint on Adrian’s bicycle.”

I sat, stone-like, even my heart and lungs on pause. I had known this, but I hadn’t had the proof. “So is this enough for you? I thought you had an eyewitness who told you different?”

He looked down and moistened his lips. “There’s more. She also made a note that she contacted the police and gave an eyewitness statement that a white Ford F150 driven by a young man in his late teens had hit a bicyclist.”

My heart restarted with a jolt. “She was your witness?”

“She was our witness.” He held up his hand. “We had no way of knowing she had any connection to Adrian, or any motive to do anything other than help us solve a crime, and she had a clean record. However, I am very, very sorry that it misdirected our investigation. So, yes, it’s enough for us. We’re going to close the case.”

His words sank in slowly. All of this. She had done all of this. Everything I lost, she took. I closed my eyes and saw my claws landing on her back, grabbing her, and my great orange and black wings beating the air around her and lifting her up with her head down and her arms and legs trailing limply. I opened my eyes and swallowed. Young was still talking. I had to stop letting myself think like this. It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t helping me. Sleep, I thought. I need sleep. I gave my head a tiny shake.

Young kept talking, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I knew I should tell them about Adrian’s money, but I couldn’t do it. I could keep my good memories as long as I learned to forget about that damned account, and I intended to try. None of it mattered, anyway. It didn’t tell me why Stephanie had done what she did, why Rhonda followed us, or why Adrian told me it wasn’t over. I chuffed very softly. What were the words of a dead man, anyway? I knew what Young would call them. Delusions. I didn’t need to hear that. Whatever the reasons, Adrian was gone.

Papers appeared in front of me, I signed them and said my thanks and goodbyes, and I left the room. I opened the front door to the station and stepped out into an army of cameras. Their shutters clicked and whirred. Microphones advanced at my face. Reporters fired questions at me.

“Tell us about Stephanie Willis, Mrs. Hanson. Did she kill your husband?”

“How was Ms. Willis connected to your husband? Did he have an affair with her, too?”

“Michele, where’s your son? Is he going to be all right?”

“Are you still doing the Kona Ironman?”

“How has all of this affected your book sales?”

I shielded my face with my hand as I pushed through the crowd. I’d had my fill of vultures and their intrusions. This was my life, my wretched life. Or what was left of it. I made my way to the parking lot, dragging my throng with me. My parents had picked the Camry up for me last night from Waller, and I was grateful for it as I clicked the fob. Several reporters ran ahead to it, drawn by the flashing headlights.

A Hispanic-looking female reporter in a summer-weight tan suit blocked the driver’s door, pen poised over her notebook. Print journalist. “Can you comment on the statement Rhonda Dale made this morning? Are you going to accept her olive branch?”

“Excuse me.” I looked past her faceless form.

She didn’t move.

My reaction took even me by surprise. My wings flapped on either side of me and I saw them—boney and black, dagger-tipped with a smattering of coarse black hair. I bared my fangs, more bat now than butterfly. “Get the hell out of my way, puta.”

She took a step back, her hand to her throat. “What the hell’s your problem?”

I raised my wings to their full span. “Really?” I hissed under my breath. “Really?”

She scurried away.

I tucked in my wings and retracted my fangs, then turned back to the group. “My family thanks you for your respect for our privacy at this time of tragedy and grieving.” I got in the car. The reporters blocked my path. I blared the horn until they let me through.

I drove away from the station aimlessly. I had no job and nothing to do before it was time to train again the next day. Long bicycle, my brain inserted automatically. But I had totaled La Mariposa, and what was left of her was in police custody. Adrian had picked her out for me. Every component, every setting of that bike Adrian had customized himself. I could ride Sam’s old bike, the one he rode ten inches ago in seventh grade, but it wouldn’t match my body precisely enough to get me through the Ironman bike course. Body position and comfort mean everything in avoiding severe pain and even injury.

I turned right instead of left at the next corner. Ten minutes later, I pushed open the door of Southwest Cyclery on South Braeswood. Cold, dry air infused with stinging droplets of condensation hit me like a blizzard. I let the door swing shut behind me and inhaled the smell of rubber tires and lube oil. Bicycles hung from hooks on the wall and in the ceiling, and row after disorganized row displayed triathlon and bicycling accessories from ear plugs to seat covers. Adrian loved this place. I never really had until that moment. Something about the chaos that had repelled me before was calling to me.

A twenty-something man with sleeve tattoos on both arms greeted me.

“Is Pilar here?”

He twisted his face toward the back of the store and yelled her name. I winced. She emerged from the doorway to their bike repair shop. Pilar could have sprung from the same womb as the man. Both of them were tall and stooped with bright blue eyes that peeked out from under sun-bleached brown hair.

“I’m Pilar. How can I help you?”

I introduced myself and she shook my hand. “I’m going to Kona to do the Ironman in October. I totaled my bicycle yesterday.”

Groans of sympathy came from both of them.

“I have a strong emotional attachment to it. My husband customized it for me, and he died recently. He said you helped him get the bike. His name was Adrian Hanson. I was hoping you’d remember it.”

“Oh my God, I knew I recognized you. Mrs. Hanson! I loved Adrian. I just read about your wreck online one minute ago. You know—in the retraction that woman made where she said none of the stuff she blabbed about to the media was true.” I blanched. “Here, let me show it to you. It’s awesome. Completely vindicates Adrian, but I’m not surprised.”

We went behind the counter and she typed a few keystrokes on the computer, then turned the monitor to me:
Dale Retracts Statement and Apologizes to Hanson Family.
I scanned down to the good stuff.

“Wow.” Scarlett was an even bigger bitch than I’d thought. And that reporter had moved fast to print a diplomatic description of my comment about Rhonda, which was probably better than I deserved.

The young man spoke in a serious voice. “We loved Adrian. We never believed that stuff.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, thank you. Now, about my bicycle—”

Pilar lifted a toe against the baseboard in front of the register and rocked forward in an Achilles stretch. “I remember your bicycle. He had it painted like a monarch butterfly.”

“Yes.” I tightened my lips to keep my voice from shaking. “La Mariposa. That’s what we called it.”

“I’m glad you and your son are okay.”

“Thank you. Can you replace that bicycle? I want one exactly like it.”

Pilar nodded, bouncing her hair. “I’ll bet I can find one by this time tomorrow and have it in shipment within days.”

“That would be wonderful. Adrian tweaked my bike, taking out spacers, cutting things down. I want to match the old one’s settings exactly. And the paint job. The police have it now, but I could bring it in a few days. Could you do that?” I didn’t have to tell two bicyclists how important this was.

“Absolutely.”

I heaved a sigh. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Pilar to the rescue. I was grateful, truly, I was. Yet this bike would only be a replica. How could an imitation ever be enough, really, once you’d had the real thing?

When I got home, Robert’s car was parked out front. Great. I thought when he said he had Sam that he meant at his house. I needed privacy, alone time, thinking time. Well, I wasn’t going to get it. I opened the door and headed in. Precious didn’t greet me.

Robert’s voice reverberated. “We’re in the living room.”

I set my purse on the island in the kitchen. “Okay.” I went into the hallway bath and splashed cold water on my face. A gray-haired woman stared at me from the mirror. “You look like I feel,” I told her. But I wasn’t falling for the tricks of my overactive imagination.

I trudged into the living room. Precious was sitting in Robert’s lap, purring as he scratched behind her ears. Traitor.

“Jeez, Mom, what happened to your hair?”

“What do you mean?”

Robert’s brows rose to upside down V’s, like insert marks. “Did you color it?”

My stomach knotted. “What color is it?”

Sam walked up to me and touched my hair. “Gray, or white, nearly.”

I dropped down onto the ottoman and put my head between my legs as the room itself grayed out. Sam was at my side in half a second, patting my back. “I’m fine,” I said. Only I wasn’t. I thought overnight grays were an old wives’ tale. I raised my head. “Thanks, Sam.”