Million Dollar Road (24 page)

“I see you're not wearing your wedding ring,” Con said, his mouth wry. His own ring would likely remain in Snowball's stomach for years. Alligators' digestive tracts rarely processed metal objects like license plates, Coke cans, or boat propeller parts without a decades-long struggle.

“No, I took it off yesterday,” Liz said. “And I'm going to have this one made into a necklace.” She regarded the diamond on her finger, her mouth pensive.

There was a long pause while Con took this in, what it implied for him. Being thrown out of the house was just the lead-up to something more . . . final.

“I take it you've already talked to a lawyer,” he said eventually. “Who're you using?”

Lizzie's quick, hostile glance was a stiletto between his ribs. With a brittle smile, she said, “Jerry Soames.”

Letting his head fall back against the pillows, Con closed his eyes and nodded. “Good choice.”

It was. Soames was an old
compadre
at Milliken-Odom, one of the most affably savage legal sharks swimming the bloodied waters of divorce court. Emma had resisted getting a lawyer, Con remembered. She'd trusted him to do the right thing by her and he had—but then, as he'd known for some time, Lizzie was a different animal from his first wife. Liz would be out for his balls, and Soames, a guy with a genuine enjoyment for his work, was the ideal man for the job. Con couldn't help being bitterly impressed at how quickly she'd moved, especially for a woman on crutches.

“Can't we try to work this out? You've mentioned counseling before.”

Liz shook her head in emphatic denial. “Absolutely not. I'm not going to spend hours in some therapist's office rehashing the disgusting details. You fucked somebody named Jennifer. I'll never forgive you for it. Period. End of story.”

“I never meant for you to know, but Liz . . . I honestly didn't think you'd be so upset as to divorce me over something so, so . . . trivial.”

“Trivial?”
Liz raised a disbelieving eyebrow. She shook her head again in disgust. “There's a lot you didn't think about. It's too late to start thinking now,” she said drily.

“What about the baby?” Even though Con wasn't sure how he would feel about her answer, he had to ask. “Won't he be needing a father?”

For the first time, Lizzie's cool confidence seemed to slip a notch. She turned away and stared at the sumptuous arrangement—hothouse lilies, red spray roses from Chile, lipstick-pink Shasta daisies, and white tulips—on the windowsill beside her. It was the alligator farm's gesture of support, one of half a dozen other, lesser bouquets. A shiny Mylar balloon hovered above the flowers like a miniature purple blimp, the directive “Get Well Soon!” emblazoned on its slick surface in aggressive cheer.

Her lips compressed, Liz took a deep breath, releasing it in a sigh. “I don't know yet, Con. If I decided to go through with having it, that would mean you being around for the rest of its life, you know? Neither one of us was exactly thrilled when we found out I was pregnant.” She reached over to the bouquet and fingered the fragile ivory petals of a tulip. “But right now, one thing
is
sure. I don't want to see you anymore, not after we're done today. I'll make up my mind about . . . this other problem . . . later, when I've had time to think.”

Con had been halfway expecting something like this, and Liz was right: he was ambivalent about becoming a parent to a child that was, as yet, only an idea to him. Still, with no warning, Con felt a bitter stab, a deep, disquieting sense of poignant loss.

Wait
.

“So it's all your decision. This means I don't have a say at all,” he said, his voice heavy.

Liz shook her head, plucking the tulip's petal and crushing it in her fingers. “No, you don't. It's not your choice anymore. Don't try to fight me,” she warned. “You'll lose.”

She was right; he almost certainly would, even if he decided to try. Con lay in the bed, stricken silent with the weight of his powerlessness, leaden with a kind of confused despair. He didn't know how to feel about any of this. Ever since the accident, his life had seemed to have slipped away from him. Lizzie regarded him impassively as the minutes passed.

“So that's it, then?” Con said at last. “We're done?”

“All but the paperwork. I'm going to get the house and the Mercedes, Jerry says, and fifty percent of everything else. That'll have to be enough.” Liz folded her manicured hands in her lap. Somehow, she'd managed to craft her flat gaze into a convincing expression of deeply wronged dignity. “I filed two days ago. You'll be served tomorrow and then six months from now, we'll be over for good.” There was a sheen of moisture in those familiar eyes, but no tears glistened amid her thick, dark lashes.

Underneath Liz's stellar acting job, though, Con thought he could read a malignant satisfaction. Louisiana, a community property state, was perfectly clear on the law: without a prenup (something it genuinely hadn't occurred to Con to ask for in the crazy-about-each-other, not-yet-married part of their relationship) Lizzie would be entitled to half of everything he owned, half of what was left over after paying Emma's alimony. Jennifer from the Lemon Tree had proved to be a very expensive lay indeed.

“I wasn't trying to hurt you, Liz.” It seemed like something he needed to say to her. Con didn't have the words for a better apology, although he wished he did. Still, he was going to make the gesture. “I'm sorry,” he said simply.

Liz smiled, all her sadness replaced with sudden, blithe good humor.

“Don't be,” she said, her tone airy. “I'm not.” With a glance at her Rolex, Liz gathered her crutches and rose to her feet. “And now I've got to go. Consuelo's waiting downstairs to drive me home. When I get back to the house, I'll arrange a nurse for the next week or two. She'll see to . . . whatever you need at the Marriott.”

She glanced at his bandage with barely disguised distaste. “After your discharge, you can take a cab over there.” Her crutches positioned, Lizzie paused, almost as if making up her mind to say something more.

But, “Good-bye, Con,” was all she said.

 

In the way of all tribal villages, the news of his marriage's demise must have spread through the ward in a fevered drumbeat of gossip. Compared to previous times, it seemed to Con that the nurse who came to take his vital signs later on that afternoon was more solicitous than usual.

“Anything at all I can do for you, Mr. Costello?” The dark-skinned, trim RN in pink flower-patterned scrubs sounded warmly sympathetic. She stripped the blood pressure cuff from his arm with a quick rip of Velcro. “Some juice? I think we have some Cran-Grape down at the nurses' station. Everybody likes Cran-Grape.”

What Con really wanted was a big scotch, but he stretched his mouth in a pale imitation of his trademark smile. “No thanks, but I could use another couple of tabs of Demerol.” He was sure he was due. Even if he wasn't, the hand was hurting like a bastard. “And a cup of coffee, if I'm allowed. I've got some arrangements to make, and I'm going to need the caffeine.” He shifted in his bed, trying to rearrange his pillows one-handed, but one of them slipped from his grasp and fell with a soft thump onto the linoleum.

“Damn. This is going to take some getting used to,” Con said ruefully, a latent flicker of the old talent in his voice.

The nurse reached for the pillow. “Let me do that, Mr. Costello.”

Con sat up in the bed and the nurse fluffed the pillow, settling it behind his head. “I'll see about your medication and the coffee,” she said. “Be right back, okay?”

Twenty minutes later, thanks to the dose of Demerol, the throbbing was reduced to a distant ache and the world was rosier, softer-edged, and kind in comparison. Con hoped he'd depart the hospital with a generous prescription for something strong, like Vicodin. Binnings had said the hand—it was easier to think of it as “the hand” than as
his
hand—would hurt for a long time. Nearly a week had passed since the moment Snowball had eaten half of it, but the pain was as bad as ever. Living with that pain would call for serious medication, a lot of it.

Con reached for the Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee and took an awkward sip, knowing he shouldn't put off any longer the extensive list of things that had to be done. All he wanted to do at the moment was to slip back into his doze, but his new reality awaited. It was time to make some necessary calls.

Time to get his own lawyer. Time to start looking for a new place to live. Con knew he'd be miserable at the residence hotel where his soon-to-be-ex-wife had banished him, as efficiently as though he were an old couch headed to the consignment shop. Finding a house or an apartment to rent in Covington would require the services of a realtor. He'd need his clothes, a coffeepot. Perhaps Liz could be persuaded to share some of the house on the golf course's furnishings, but remembering the greedy gleam he'd seen in her eyes, he doubted it. Con needed to get a new cell phone, too, since his old one was at the bottom of the retention pond. When he returned to work at the farm on Monday, he'd ask Lireinne to go get him one in town.

Lireinne.

In spite of his determination not to think of her, there she was again. Con dreaded facing Lireinne, sick inside at the questions that any thought of her ruthlessly raised. What if she was as repulsed by his hand as Liz was; what if he couldn't bear to see that same look of distaste in her green eyes? Best not approach that question yet, he told himself grimly. Monday would come soon enough. He could wait until then to learn just how bad life was going to be from now on.

And now for those calls. One-handed, Con dragged the hospital phone from the bedside table to his lap. He was in the process of dialing directory assistance when there was a hesitant knock at the half-open door to his room.

“Mr. Con?”

Lireinne. Although low-pitched, that voice was like a remembered song.

But
God,
he wasn't prepared for this, not now. In that heart-pounding, despairing instant, Con thought of pretending he was asleep.

“Mr. Con?” She tapped again, opening the door another shy few inches. She'd be peeking inside before he could stop her.

Con slammed the phone's receiver down, grabbed the edge of the blanket, and draped it over his bandaged hand. He smoothed his hair and arranged a welcoming smile on his be-whiskered face.

“Come in,” Con called. He did his best to fill his voice with confidence, but his gut was hot and loose with apprehension. He wasn't going to have the luxury of putting this off until Monday, Con thought, fighting to master his panic. Ready or not, now he would know the worst.

Wait
.

Lireinne entered the room as though she were a woodland creature—light-footed and uncertain, as though she could bolt at any moment. She carried a cheesy, plastic-wrapped cone of blue-dyed carnations, but she was wearing his favorite sweater and a slim gray skirt. Con's pulse skyrocketed as Lireinne's wary expression started to turn into a smile, but then her gaze dropped to the lump under the blanket.

Ah, goddamn it, damn it all to
hell
. The appalled horror dawning in her wide green eyes burned like battery acid.

“Oh,
no,
” Lireinne breathed. She raised her hand to her lips, the lips that Con had dreamed of owning, anticipating their taste, their softness, her surrender. That dream was ash. He was right to have been afraid: she pitied him. The beast reached for him then, reality had him by the throat. It would rip his heart out if he didn't fight it off.

And he
must
fight this reality. He dared not give in to it. With the suddenness of a thrown light switch, Con blazed an animal determination to
fix this
. He'd make his own goddamned reality. She would not feel sorry for him—before God, he swore it.

She. Would. Not.

The return of Obi-Wan came like a far-off cavalry bugle. The Jedi Knight was on the ground now, arriving only in the nick of time. With a glad sense of the battle being joined, Con smiled, confronting the pity in Lireinne's eyes.

“Lireinne!” he said, kindling all the warmth he could summon. “It's great to see you. Sit down.” With his good hand, he gestured at the chair from where, a mere two hours ago, Lizzie had lowered the boom.

Lireinne blushed, a soft pink suffusing the delicious, poreless white skin of her heart-shaped face. “I had to come,” she said, her voice grave and quiet, as though she spoke to someone on his deathbed. “I just had to come . . . to see if you're making out okay.” Ignoring his offer of the chair, she took a few steps closer, almost close enough to touch.

“Oh, Lireinne.” Con was unsure how to answer her, how to play this.

“Are you
really
okay?” Lireinne asked. Her question was oddly intense. Her hands twisted the stems of the blue-dyed carnations until the plastic wrapper split with a crackle. “I've been, like, so
worried
.”

Touched, Con sat up in the bed, making a gesture of resignation—a half-shrug, a tilting of his right hand that suggested he was maybe not so good, but not so bad either. That had been the way to answer her, he thought as he read Lireinne's face. It now betrayed a cautious hope.

“I'm going to be fine, Lireinne.” And that came out just the way he meant it to: not totally convinced, but brave-sounding. Stoic, even. “This could have been so much worse.” The irony of that statement wasn't lost on Con, but he added, “It could just as easily have been my head that Snowball had for lunch, after all.”