Shooting Starr (20 page)

There was barely time for her to register that thought before it came to her—the hospital smell, faint, unmistakable. Relief made her knees buckle. She put out a hand to steady herself. “Jess? Is that you?”

“Yeah.” The newspaper rustled; the silhouette turned to face her.

She felt out of breath, as if she'd been running. “I didn't hear you come in. How…how long have you been here?”

“Long enough,” Jess said.

C
aitlyn moved toward the table on feet she couldn't feel. Her groping hands found the back of a chair, but she didn't sit down. Magically, her butterflies were gone. She felt instead a strange icy calm. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know your eyesight's come back,” Jess said quietly. “That's great. I'm as happy as I can be for you.”

“Thanks—”

“And that you're about to do something that'd be dangerous for a professional law enforcement person with perfect vision.”

“It's…something I have to do,” Caitlyn muttered, staring fixedly at the pale-gray shapes that were her hands.

“Yeah,” Jess said in a voice that cracked, “that's what my husband said when he went off to Iraq. Tell me something—were you going to tell any of us? Momma and me? Or were you just going to sneak off with Eve tomorrow and leave us sitting here in the dark? So to speak.”

Caitlyn gripped the back of the chair and leaned her weight on her hands. Her face felt hot…swollen, and she
had to swallow twice before she could answer. “I don't know. Please don't think— It's not because of you. I just…I can't let C.J. find out. He'd have a fit. He hovers over me like a…like a mother hen with one chick, as my Aunt Lucy would say. He acts as if I'm completely helpless…as if he's afraid I'll break. He's never—”

“Well, of course he does,” Jess interrupted in exasperation. “He's in love with you!”

“—going to let me… What?” The last word came out in a wheeze, much as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

Slowly, patiently, Jess repeated it. “C.J.'s in
love
with you. Don't tell me you didn't know!”

Caitlyn gave her head one quick, dazed shake. She was feeling earthquakes again. As the ground shifted beneath her feet, she pulled the chair out and lowered herself into it.

“You
have
been blind, haven't you?” Jess said in a kindly way. “The rest of us knew from day one.” Her tone betrayed a smile. “Right from when he insisted on carryin' you up those stairs in true Rhett Butler style.”

“Rhett…Butler?” Caitlyn whispered, still disbelieving. “I thought he just felt guilty. Like…I'm this huge responsibility, because he blames himself for what happened.”

“He may very well,” Jess said, nodding, “but believe me, I know my baby brother, and if he feels he's responsible for you, it's not because of guilt. It's because as far as he's concerned, you are
his,
honey chil', and he is not about to let any harm come to you, not if he can help it.”

Caitlyn put both hands over her eyes, but it couldn't stop what was happening. To her dismay, she had begun to cry. She wept in total silence while images played across the blank screen of her mind: Ari Vasily's cold black eyes watching her from his seat in the courtroom the way a snake watches a mouse, sensuous lips curved in a cruel smile; Mary Kelly's sweet face and sad, gentle look; the
scars and bruises on her body; Emma's frightened eyes; the blue September sky over the courthouse steps; dreams of people she loved lying dead in pools of blood.

Other things, too…not images, but sensory impressions even more profound: C.J.'s warmth and arms closing around her; his smell, that unique amalgam of soap and clean clothes, diesel fuel and a familiar aftershave she didn't know the name of; his deep-throated voice, growly in her ear;
I've got you…

She drew a quivering sniff and wiped her cheeks with her hands. “Oh, dear,” she said, and this time her voice was soft and purposeful. She cleared her throat and pushed back from the table. “Jess—what time is it?” Wired with a terrible sense of urgency, she didn't wait for a reply. “Would he be home…do you think? Right now?”

“He was when I drove by. His pickup was in the driveway and the lights were on.” Jess had risen as well. “Why? You want me to call him for you?”

“No—” vaguely Caitlyn shook her head “—not on the phone. I…I have to tell him something. Have to see him. Before—”
Before I go. If something goes wrong, if Vasily kills me, I'll never get to tell him. He'll never know. I'll never know….

She didn't say any of that, but strangely, Jess seemed to understand. She touched Caitlyn's arm and said gently, “You want me to take you over there?”

“Oh—” relief trembled through her, almost like a sob “—would you? Please.”

“Sure. Just let me get my keys.” Counting heartbeats, Caitlyn listened to the scuffling, jingling noises Jess made, rummaging through her purse. “Okay. You ready?” she asked, and Caitlyn nodded, too choked with fear to speak.

“Are you sure you don't need a jacket?” Jess asked her as they were going down the steps. Caitlyn shook her head; it wasn't cold that made her shiver.

The one-mile trip to C.J.'s house seemed to take for
ever—and was much too short. Bewildered, Caitlyn huddled like a sick sparrow on the front seat with her hands tucked between her knees to stop the shaking and thought about all the reasons she shouldn't be doing what she was doing.
What if he's not there? What if I'm too late? What if Jess is wrong? What if I'm making a terrible, colossal fool of myself?

She didn't understand it. She'd never felt so uncertain in all her life, or so scared.
She,
who'd faced wife beaters and child abusers twice her size, violent men, often armed, with everything from guns to broken beer bottles and most of the time drunk besides. How was it that she should be more afraid of a man with only goodness in his soul, kindness in his heart and gentleness in his hands?

Could be,
a voice inside her replied,
there's never been so much at stake before. Could be that you're afraid to hope….

“Look's like he's home,” Jess said. “His pickup's here.” Tires crunched as she turned onto a graveled driveway. “Want me to come in with you? Need any help finding the door?”

Caitlyn shook her head; she could make out the light-colored door and the steps against the darker building. “As long as the lights don't go out before I get there, I should be okay,” she said with a wan attempt at humor, taking determined hold of the door handle. “Any obstacles on that grass I'm not seeing?”

“Not a thing. You're clear all the way. I'll wait till you're inside, though, just to be sure.”

Caitlyn nodded and slipped out of the car. Her heart knocked against her rib cage as she started across the gentle grass-covered slope, Jess's car engine idling softly behind her. And maybe it was the crisp autumn feel of the air, or something about the way it smelled—of hay and drying cornstalks, of burning leaves and pumpkins ripening on the vine—that took her suddenly back to another
time…another place…another Caitlyn. A Caitlyn just as apprehensive and uncertain as this one. A very small Caitlyn, picking her way across a leaf-strewn lawn while her daddy's car idled at the curb, holding the flapping pieces of her Halloween costume together and gathering up the courage to knock on an unfamiliar neighbor's door.

The memory and the cool October breeze lifted her spirits. Dizzy with nervous excitement, she mounted concrete steps and felt her way across a small front porch. Unable to find a doorbell, she raised her hand and knocked. The sound seemed frail and timid against the heavy wooden door. Would he even hear it? She waited, rocking gently with her own heartbeat, like a boat tied up at a quay.

Her throat closed when she heard the doorknob rattle. A rectangle of light appeared, and in it a shape that seemed already familiar to her—though how could that be? She heard a shocked, “Caitlyn. Oh, my God…”

“I've lost track of what week it is,” she said in a droll but unsteady voice as somewhere behind her Jess's car whined in reverse down the driveway and purred away into the night. “Am I too early for ‘trick-or-treat'?”

He was losing his mind. It couldn't be Caitlyn standing in his doorway, like the answer to some adolescent dream.

At first he could only stare at her, tongue-tied as an adolescent would have been, beholding the object of his fevered imaginings. Then he saw her eyes, misty and lost above the stretched mask of her smile, and he forgot everything in the fervency of his desire to fold her into his arms. Not knowing what it was that had brought her to his doorstep, he restrained the impulse and, heart flapping furiously against his rib cage, waved his pancake turner at her instead.

“I was just— Here…come in, for Pete's sake. How'd you get here? Was that Jess? Why didn't she…” He took her arm and cast a quick look over her shoulder at his empty front yard as he drew her into the entryway.

He didn't know what to do with her. What to say to her. He'd never, except perhaps in his dreams, imagined her
here.
“Uh, look, I was just…I'm making myself grilled cheese. You want one?” Her eyes had been aimed past him toward the living room, separated from the entryway by a half wall partition. “I make a pretty fair grilled cheese,” he added, attempting a smile as her gaze, vague and bewildered, swiveled slowly toward him.

“Thank you. That would be nice.” She sounded like a well-brought-up child.

C.J.'s heart was about to choke him. Juggling the pancake turner, he did an awkward little do-si-do to switch sides with her so he could usher her down the hallway to the kitchen, and everywhere her body brushed his felt like he'd been lit on fire.

“You have a nice house,” Caitlyn said, tilting her head as though she was listening to voices.

He glanced down at her, curious. “How can you tell?”

She lifted the hand she'd been trailing along the wall. “You have wallpaper,” she explained, smiling crookedly. “And hardwood floors.” There was a patch of color in each cheek.

“Huh,” said C.J. “I guess it is…nice, I mean. Not mine, though. I'm just renting the place—people that own it are getting up there, so they bought a place in town. He used to be a friend of my daddy's, actually, and his wife's Momma's cousin, second or third once removed—something like that—so I get a pretty good deal. No sense in buying a house, not until I pass my bar exams and figure out where I want to hang out my shingle, right?” He realized he was babbling and made an effort to stop.

“Where
do
you want to hang out your shingle?” she asked in a breathless voice, half polite and half distracted. “Atlanta?”

He gave a dry huff of laughter. “Not if I can help it.” He guided her to the small maple table shoved under the
window that overlooked the backyard and pulled out a chair. She lowered herself into it and he turned back to the stove. “No,” he said, squinting as he relit the burner he'd shut off to go and answer the knock on the door, “the way I see it, people who live in small towns need lawyers, too.”

“So, that's what you want? To live in a small town?”

“Live, practice law, raise a family…I don't expect I'll get rich, that's for sure,” he said, aiming an ironic smile at the slice of butter he'd just dropped, sizzling, into the frying pan. “I guess,” he said after a moment, “what I'm lookin' to be is the lawyer equivalent of a small-town family doctor. Know what I mean?” He said it casually, but having laid out his future as a kind of offering to her, the way he felt was
exposed.
As if he was standing on the edge of a cliff with a cold wind blowing against his back.

He waited an interminable time for her to answer, and when she didn't, briskly clapped his hands, rubbed them together and announced, with thumping heart, “There…that's comin' along good. Now, how 'bout some soup with that? What kind of soup goes good with grilled cheese?” He opened a cupboard door. “Let's see…we got—”

“Tomato,” Caitlyn said. “Tomato soup goes with grilled cheese.”

“Tomato it is.” He plucked a can from the shelf, closed the door, opened a drawer and took out a can opener. Closed the drawer. Opened the can. Opened another cupboard and took out a pot. Closed the cupboard door.

And on and on, doing the normally routine things required to heat up a can of soup, something he'd done a few thousand times, probably, in his lifetime. Only, tonight he had to think about each step, recite them to himself as he checked them off, one by one. Why? Because it was impossible to concentrate, hard to even hear himself
think
above the voice inside his head screaming,
For God's sake, Caitlyn, why are you here?

More than once it was on the tip of his tongue to ask her. Each time, he bit the words back, thinking they'd sound too blunt…even rude. Or maybe he didn't want to ask because he wasn't in any hurry to hear the answer to that question. Because he was so certain it wouldn't be the one he wanted.

What
did
he want? Not so very much, really, no more than any man wants. To have the woman he's chanced to fall in love with by some miracle love him back. To lay out his dream for the future in front of her and find that by some miracle it's her dream, too. Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary.

So why did it feel like he was hoping for the moon? His whole body prickled when he thought of the implications of her coming to his house, alone, in the evening like this. Prickled…why? With fear? Excitement?
Uncertainty?
Being a man, he feared feeling uncertain more than anything.

“My mother used to fix me this when I was a little girl,” Caitlyn said. She was hunched over her bowl, spooning soup, and her voice sounded husky. “When I'd walk home from school on cold winter days…and my nose would be so cold I couldn't feel it…and she'd make grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell's tomato soup. I had this special plate with a big matching cup, with the Campbell's Kids on them. I remember that little burn you get in the back of your throat. Tomato soup. It always does this—makes my eyes water and my nose drip.”