Just a Memory (39 page)

Mac raised his hand to shield his eyes. The second blanket fell to the ground and he made no effort to retrieve it.

Funny. How can it be snowing when the sun's so hot?

"Caro…" was his last word.

In his last moments, Mac called out the name of the only woman he'd ever loved. The woman he'd waited a lifetime to find, but he'd found her too late.

Now…now his strength was gone. He felt no pain as his knees slowly buckled, and his body twisted and collapsed into the soft thick blanket of white.

Several yards away, a car door opened. A man ran to Mac's side, a flashlight in his hand.

Standing over him, the man watched the snowflakes landing on Mac's chest turned red by his life's blood running out.

Chapter Fourteen

"Hines, you can't be serious."

Carolyn could not believe her ears. With her feet curled under her, she sat in her living room, dressed in a heavy sweater over a comfortable cotton-knit turtleneck with wool slacks. Nowadays she always dressed as warmly as she could.

Winter sunlight streamed in the picture window behind her onto her shoulders, but still she felt chilled. It had been that way since she escaped from the cabin, since the run she'd made trying to save Mac's life.

"I've been home for just over a week after spending time in the hospital with pneumonia, a broken rib, a sprained wrist, and now you want me to do
what?
" Carolyn thought she must have heard him wrong.

Hines set his teacup down and shifted in his chair. He looked decidedly uncomfortable and Carolyn felt he deserved to. "You won't have to do any of the work. I'll do it all. You were with him when he bought some of the stuff. I figured you would know where he would want it to be put."

He paused and fiddled with a spot more worn than others on the leg of his jeans. She felt some measure of comfort that he didn't seem to be having an easier time making the request than she was having believing it.

"I thought it would give you something to do to help get by New Year's Eve, Carolyn. After being forced to spend December in a hospital bed and recuperating at home, I thought, well…"

Carolyn was touched by his caring concern for her. "It sure wasn't my idea of a wonderful month. Thanks for caring."

"Just don't let the word get around that I'm such a softy," he responded with a quick broad grin. He studied the same worn spot on his leg a moment longer. "I think Mac would have wanted it this way."

Carolyn closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. "Please. Don't," she managed to whisper. Tears stung her eyes. She clenched her fists and determined not to cry again. She had cried enough already when they told her Mac hadn't made it that night. She hadn't gotten him help in time. When Hines told her that day in the hospital, something inside her had died with him.

"Oh, Carolyn, I'm sorry. I just wish I could tell you what you need to hear, but I can't." Hines stood up and walked to the window at the end of the couch and surveyed her yard covered with a blanket of snow. "Carolyn, Mac and I…well, we were very close. We worked together. I was closer to him than anyone outside his partner who was killed. Mac would understand that what I'm trying to do here is right. Sometimes…well, what we want to do and what we are allowed to do are not the same. Hell, there's a lot more I wish I could do and say right now."

He went to sit at her side and took her trembling hand in his. She stared at the contrast of her pale thin hand against his dark strong one.

"I know this is very hard for you, Carolyn, but about helping me… Could you just trust me on this? I need you to be at that house tonight. Please. Please, say you'll come."

Carolyn sniffled a little and looked up from his hands to his face. "Let me get this straight. Mac's furniture for his house came from where it was in storage and the new things we shopped for came too?"

Hines nodded.

"And you want me to go over there and help you decide where to put everything to make the place look its best for a sale to benefit the Police Widow's Fund?"

"That's it. You don't have to do any moving and lifting. I'll do that. Just tell me where to put it. Won't you help?"

"I don't see why you don't just return the new things. No one has used them. The store should take them back. The worst they would do is charge a fee for the delivery and pickup."

Hines shrugged and looked down at their hands.

"And on New Year's Eve, Hines? I'm probably the
last
person you want to spend New Year's Eve with."

Hines smiled. "Hey, I'd be honored to spend New Year's Eve with you. So come. You've already arranged for Terri to go next door for the night."

Carolyn nodded. "It's the first time she's been interested in something other than making sure I'm okay. I've been worried because she's been so anxious about my health. I'm glad she wants to play again."

"That's a good sign," Hines agreed with a warm smile. "And there's no time like the present to set up Mac's house."

She frowned. "You're sure it will help?"

"Cops learn these things, Carolyn. Being there tonight is going to be the best thing you could do. I'm sure."

"It took me so many years to get over Richard's death. Maybe you're right. Helping with Mac's things might make it easier–or at least quicker. Right now I don't think the pain will ever go away." She sighed. "I have to learn to handle my feelings because I have to go back to work in the store starting next week. I can't afford to hire help any longer. They can wait on customers but can't do the sewing."

"I'll build a big fire in the fireplace and we'll turn the furnace way up so you won't be cold," Hines offered.

Carolyn smiled at him. He understood she was always feeling cold, but did he really know what going into Mac's house would do to her? Mac had never got the chance to show her the inside. The last time she saw him, he'd been handcuffed to the bed in that dingy cabin. Now she was visited with nightmares about that night as persistently as she found out Mac had been hounded with his nightmare about the night on the dock. The terror came back so real each time it woke her there was no chance of her getting back to sleep.

"Well, maybe you're right. This is at least something I can do for Mac. I don't see how I can fail at arranging furniture like I failed at trying to get him the help he needed." Her lip started to quiver. This would be her last chance not to let him down.

"Carolyn?" Hines' voice brought her out of her reverie. "You didn't let him down. You did the best anyone could hope for." He slapped his thigh and rose. "Helping me won't take long."

"It might be good to get out for a while," Carolyn said, blinking the tears from her eyes. She turned and glanced out the window over her shoulder. "At least it isn't snowing."

Hines held his hand out toward her and helped her up. They put on their coats in the front hall. Hines waited patiently as Carolyn added mittens, a beret, and a long wool scarf she twisted around the collar of her new long coat. She methodically pulled her purse strap on her shoulder and took her key to lock the deadbolt behind them. She shut the new storm door so the latch caught and wouldn't blow free in the wind.

As they walked to the car, Carolyn noticed her neighbors the Martins sweeping the light overnight snow from their sidewalk. They waved and were greeted with a wave in return.

Hines held the door for Carolyn. "You've got nice neighbors," he said and then jogged around the car to get in behind the wheel.

"They're the best," she told him. She waved again as they passed their house. With a sigh she put her head back on the seat as the blocks sped by. She closed her eyes and thought of waking up in the hospital with such pain. It hadn't been only the pain in her extremities and the pneumonia that had made each breath, each hacking cough hurt. It was that days passed before they would tell her anything about Mac. She'd asked everyone she saw, all strangers except for Terri–and they only allowed her to visit for a few minutes at a time.

The nurses said there was no one by that name brought into the hospital that night. They couldn't tell her anything. Or wouldn't. When Carolyn wasn't worrying about Mac, she was worrying about Terri. Her daughter moved temporarily to Judy's house and shared the room with her friend Christie. Carolyn talked often to her by phone to assure her she was all right. She'd hated seeing the fear in Terri's eyes the first time she came into the hospital room. She saw the creams coating Carolyn's cold-damaged skin, the tube bringing oxygen into her lungs that struggled with pneumonia, the IV carrying liquids and medications into her arm, not to mention her black eye and bruised cheek from Harry hitting her. Terri had clung to her mother and cried.

Carolyn spent weeks reassuring Terri she would be fine again, that she wasn't going to die like Terri's father had before she'd even had the chance to know him. She couldn't guess how long it would take for Terri's fear of losing both parents to dissolve away.

All during the early weeks of her hospital stay, Carolyn could find no rest awake or asleep. The nightmare of what happened haunted her in both states of consciousness. Ultimately, only a drugged sleep allowed her escape from it.

She was at the point of feeling a bit stronger when finally Hines came to see her. She knew the moment he came in the door he had news of Mac and it was not good. She lay there mute while he told her what happened that night. She remembered he'd fiddled with his cap and didn't look at her. She was thankful the news came from him and not from a stranger.

"We saw Mac collapse on the snow. We carried him into the car behind the plow and wrapped him up the best we could as we drove him to the hospital."

Hines had rubbed the back of his neck and glanced out the hospital window before he continued. "As soon as the snow lessened, Mac was airlifted to a
Syracuse
trauma center. But he'd lost so much blood, and there was the raging infection. I guess it was a lethal combination because Mac didn't make it."

Carolyn had fallen back onto her pillow. Tears flooded her eyes at that moment and for days afterward.

"He gave his all to get you out to safety because that's what he wanted most, Carolyn. He wanted you safe, no matter what. No other woman ever meant as much to him as you do. Did. God, you can't know how sorry I am for having to say all this. Someday it will all make sense," Hines had said. "I'm so sorry."

Since that horrendous day in the hospital, Carolyn had come to realize Mac had been one of the most important threads making up the fabric of her life. The thread had been short, but it created a beautiful pattern in the weave of beautiful, deep, and pure colors that she would treasure memories of always.

Carolyn felt the car turn a sharp corner and go down an incline. Struggling out of her reverie, she retrieved a tissue from her purse and wiped her wet cheeks. She wasn't about to fall apart in front of Hines again the way she had in the hospital that day. She would show him she was strong enough to do this for Mac. To carry out his wishes that the Police Widow's Fund benefit from the sale.

Hines turned the car into the gravel parking area behind Mac's lake house. "Carolyn. We're here."

"Yes," she whispered.

With the leaves gone from the trees, Carolyn could see the lake. It was a truly beautiful scene and somehow calming to her psyche instead of upsetting as she thought it might be. She had her seatbelt off and her purse in hand by the time Hines opened the door and offered his hand to help her out. She smiled. She wondered if his mother had taught him to do that for women the same way Mac's had.

Carolyn looked all around. "This is such a peaceful place–despite the violence that took place here, I mean. I can see why Mac loved it so."