House of Reckoning (3 page)

Her father’s wince told Sarah there wasn’t any insurance, but he patted her hand and stood up. “Do you really need to operate?” he asked the doctor, his voice low, as if he hoped she wouldn’t hear.

But every word slammed into her ears like a death knell.

“If we don’t, she’ll lose her leg,” the doctor said.

What was that she was hearing?
Lose her leg?

“Thing is,” her father said, his voice dropping even further and his eyes studying the floor, “we don’t have any insurance.”

“I can help you apply for Medicaid,” Leila Davis said. “Please come with me.”

“Don’t leave me!”
Sarah cried, the panic she’d fought back only a minute or two ago now gripping her chest. “Not
now!”

“Shhh, honey,” Ed said. “I’m right here.” He sat back down in the little orange plastic chair and held her hand. “I’ll go take care of that later.” He looked at the woman from the business office, who checked her watch and then nodded.

“Through the double doors and to the right,” she said.

“Sarah?” It was the pretty blond nurse again. She had a nice smile and there was a little koala bear clipped on her stethoscope that somehow made Sarah feel just the tiniest bit less frightened. “I’m going to give you something that will make your mouth cottony, and you’ll get kind of sleepy. You just relax and take a little nap, okay? Soon we’ll be wheeling you down to the O.R.” The nurse injected something into a tube, and a moment later Sarah felt her eyelids grow heavy.

Now there was another voice, a heavy voice. “Ed Crane?”

“Yes?”

Sarah felt her father’s hand slip out of hers, and when she tried to reach for it, she couldn’t find it. Fighting the heaviness in her lids as hard as she could, she forced her eyes open far enough so she could see her father, standing just out of her reach, facing two men who wore police uniforms instead of white coats.

“I’m Sheriff Wilson, Mr. Crane,” one of the men said. “This is Deputy Clark. We need you to come with us to the police station, to answer some questions.”

“Not now,” Ed said. “My daughter—”

“I’m afraid it has to be now, Mr. Crane,” the sheriff said. He glanced at Sarah for a moment, and she let her eyes drop closed so he’d think she was asleep. “You’re under arrest.”

“It was an accident,” her father said. “You don’t think I’d run over my own daughter on purpose—”

Sarah struggled once more against the drugs that were pulling her into blackness. What was going on? What were they talking about?

She had to get out of bed and talk to them—tell them they were
wrong. But she couldn’t—the blackness was wrapping around her now, and the voices—and the last of her strength—were fading away.

“It’s not about that, Mr. Crane. Mel Willis was found beaten to death in the alley next to the Fireside Tavern, and half a dozen people say you were arguing with him. And from the looks of you, I’d say they’re right.”

A dream! It had to be another dream! Sarah marshaled the last of her strength and managed to force her eyes open again. Her father’s shoulders were slumped in a way that drained her of hope. A single word drifted from her lips: “Daddy?”

He turned and gave her a sorrowful look, a look that made a new pain blossom in her chest, and without another word he followed the two men as they moved out through the curtain.

“Daddy!
Daddy, don’t leave me!”
she whispered, struggling to get up in spite of the pain that made flashes of searing light edge the darkness that was still swirling around her, drawing her inexorably toward its vortex.

“Shhh, honey,” the nurse said, gently pushing her back against the pillows. “He’ll be back. He’ll be here when you wake up.”

But she knew that wasn’t true, and she knew that the nurse knew it, too.

Nick Dunnigan cracked an eye and looked over at his alarm clock.

Ten minutes before it would go off and he’d have to get up.

The toilet flushed in his parents’ bathroom. In a minute his mom would knock lightly on his door as she passed by on her way downstairs to make breakfast.

Nick squeezed his eyes closed and whispered the litany he had developed over the years. “I’m going to be okay today,” he said into his pillow. “Okay. Please God, let me be okay.” He stopped and listened for the voices in his head.

They were there, but way off in the distance, whispering just around the edges of his consciousness. And this morning it sounded as if they were talking to one another, and not to him.

Or maybe they were still quiet because of the double dose of medication his mother had given him last night.

A shiver ran through Nick as the memory flooded back. The voices
had been screaming at him, a cacophony of demons each trying to drown out the others. One voice telling him to do terrible things to innocent little animals, another demanding that he lock all the kids from school inside the church and then set fire to it. And there were others—lots of others—all vying for his attention, all commanding him to do something unthinkable.

All trying to destroy his mind.

The soft knock on his door interrupted his thoughts. “’Morning,” she said.

“‘Morning.”

Nick shook his head to clear the last vestiges of the memories away, turned off his alarm, and got out of bed.

The broken keyboard, battered beyond repair, lay on his desk as if he needed further proof of last night’s “episode.”

And next to it his mother had left the pill bottle. Usually she kept it in the kitchen, high in the cupboard above the refrigerator, as if he were still a little boy who could neither reach nor climb that high, to dispense his medication strictly in accordance with the doctor’s orders.

But today she’d left it on the desk, and if two pills worked last night, two might work again today.

Okay, he prayed. I just want to be okay today.

He dressed carefully, listening to his mother empty the dishwasher in the kitchen. She would want to keep him home today and call the doctor about what happened last night. But he wasn’t going to give her the chance. The more normal he acted, the more normal she would think he was. They didn’t put normal people into psychiatric hospitals. Besides, if he acted normal enough, he might even feel normal.

He took a pill from the prescription bottle and washed it down. Then he brushed his teeth, combed his hair, smiled at himself in the mirror, grabbed his book bag, and headed downstairs.

This was going to be a good day—he could feel it.

Or was it just the medicine kicking in?

Nick handed the prescription bottle to his mom, who shook one out and set it next to his orange juice, then put the medication back in its place in the cupboard above the fridge. “I think you better stay home today,” she said, just as he’d known she would. “I’m going to call your doctor.”

Nick swallowed the second pill with the orange juice and spread peanut butter on his toast. “But I’m okay,” he said. “I feel great.”

His mother turned away from the stove and eyed him appraisingly, her eyes boring into him as if she could actually see the extra pill he’d taken. “Really?”

“Really,” he insisted, biting into the toast. “No problem.” “No voices?” She turned off the stove and slid two eggs onto a plate.

Nick shook his head. “None.” He busied himself putting some marmalade on the toast so she wouldn’t see the lie in his eyes. He could still hear them, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—let her know that. He had to look normal, had to pray that the second pill would carry him through the day.

“Maybe doubling your medication last night worked,” his mother mused, but he could hear the doubt in her voice.

He shrugged as if he’d all but forgotten last night. “I’ve gotta go, or I’ll be late.” He pulled his jacket on, picked up his book bag with one hand, and grabbed his peanut-buttered toast with the other.

Lily Dunnigan wrapped her son in a hug before he could slip out the kitchen door. “I just worry about you, that’s all,” she said as she kissed his cheek.

“Well, don’t,” he said. “Worry about something else for a change, okay?”

“Easy for you to say,” she replied, but managed to force a wan smile. “I’m going to call the doctor anyway about doubling your medication.”

“Whatever,” Nick muttered as he escaped her embrace. “I really gotta go, Mom.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Have a good day.”

“I will,” Nick tossed back as he banged out the kitchen door and into the chilly September morning. I will, he repeated to himself.

But he was no more than a block from his house when the committee in his head began raising their volume, shouting loud enough to drown out everything else.

By the time he got to school, they had his full attention.

Kate Williams drained the last of the cold coffee from her travel mug, dropped the mug into the cup holder between the seats in her car, and turned into the hospital parking lot.

She would see two new clients here this morning. One was a newborn infant abandoned by his mother—left in a Dumpster like so much garbage but found twenty-four hours later, having somehow survived the ordeal of its first day in the world. The baby would be easy to place: his story was all over the media, and her office had already been flooded with offers of foster homes and half a dozen pleas to adopt him.

It was the other one that would be difficult, but Kate hadn’t realized how difficult until an hour ago, when she stood in the courtroom watching Edward Crane sentenced to fifteen years in prison on a manslaughter charge.

Nothing about this case had been what she expected. When she’d picked up the file and seen that it concerned a fourteen-year-old girl whose father was charged with murder, she was prepared for the usual tawdry tale of people living on the fringe of American culture—probably in a trailer park—whose tenuous grip on life had finally given way. What she’d found was a description of tragedy: a family that hadn’t managed to survive the death of Ed Crane’s wife six months earlier. Making no excuses for his drinking problem, he’d merely apologized to the family of the man he killed and pleaded with Kate to take care of his daughter.

“I will,” she assured him, but his eyes were so filled with tragedy that it made her own well with tears. Ed Crane was no run-of-the-mill thug who killed someone in a drunken rage and then ran over his daughter on purpose. This was a tragic series of events that began with the death of the man’s wife, setting the pieces of his life to toppling over like so many dominoes, landing him in jail and his daughter in the hospital with no place to go when she recovered.

If she recovered.

This one would have been hard if there were no other problem than her age. At fourteen, Sarah Crane would not have an easy time adjusting to the foster care system. But in addition, it wasn’t easy to place children in wheelchairs, a situation in which the Crane girl might very well find herself.

Kate parked, grabbed her briefcase, and stepped out of her car into the cool fall morning. The brilliant color of the maple trees on the
hospital grounds gave her an excuse to pause for a moment and bask in the glory.

And steel herself to deliver a large package of bad news to a fourteen-year-old girl who’d done nothing to deserve what had befallen her.

Kate locked her car and walked up the broad steps into the hospital. Resisting the urge to put Sarah Crane off for at least a few more minutes, she checked with the information desk, then made her way to the third floor. Unconsciously sucking in a deep breath, she tapped softly on Room 332, then pushed the door open.

A girl lay in the bed, her face turned away from the door as she stared out the window, and Kate felt a fleeting urge to just close the door, go away, and let her enjoy the morning. That, though, would only postpone the inevitable. “Sarah?” she said.

The girl turned a pale face toward her and nodded. Beyond the sallow complexion, Kate could see sharp intelligence behind Sarah Crane’s blue eyes, and though her smile was wan—as well it should be, given what she’d been through—it was friendly and revealed well-cared-for teeth. Other than the scrapes on her right cheek and a bandaged forehead, Sarah Crane was the typical girl next door.

Kate strode across the room, pulled a hard plastic chair to Sarah’s bedside, sat down, and pulled the girl’s file from her briefcase. “Hi. I’m Kate Williams, with the Vermont Department of Social Services. How are you doing?”

Sarah eyed her cautiously. “I’m okay, I guess.”

Kate arched her brows. “That’s not what it says here. According to this, you have a broken leg and a broken hip, and they’re not sure you’re going to be able to walk again.”

Sarah seemed to ignore her words. “Do you know what’s happening with my dad?”

“I just saw him,” Kate said, and though she tried to keep her voice from revealing anything, she saw the instant worry in Sarah Crane’s eyes.

“Is he going to be able to come and see me?” Before Kate could formulate any kind of answer at all, Sarah came up with her own. “He’s not, is he?”

The girl was looking at her with a forthrightness she hadn’t seen in so young an adolescent, and she instantly knew that Sarah had far
more strength than her wan smile had revealed. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “He pleaded no contest to a manslaughter charge. Apparently, he got into a fight the night of your accident, and the man he was fighting with died.”