The Black Hour (13 page)

I could finally open my eyes and see him. I hated his look of concern.

“You have to stop toppling over,” he said. “The first time, a bullet, sure. But today? People are going to start to talk.”

“Not funny.”

“You used to think I was funny.”

I hadn’t been this close to him in a long time. His nose was pink with sunburn. In good weather, he nearly lived on his boat. “I used to think you were a lot of things.”

He wouldn’t ask me. Before, he would have asked me for the sake of the conversation and full disclosure and argumentative rhetoric, but I wasn’t the before Amelia anymore, and he wasn’t the same man, either.

“How did you meet her?”

“Do you want to try to stand?”

“Please tell me I don’t know her.”

“You don’t. Here, let me help.”

He steadied and delivered me into a nearby chair.

“Does she have kids?”

“Does the back of your head hurt? Jesus, you took a spill, didn’t you?”

“How many?”

He sighed. “None.”

That was something. “What do Sarah and Ty call her?”

“By her name.”

“Which is?”

“I thought you were hurt.”

“I am.” So hurt. And like a child, poking at the sore spot. I couldn’t tell him how often I wondered if I shouldn’t have died on the wine-colored carpet of Dale Hall, if, by living, I had cheated fate or some vengeful god I didn’t pray to. That whatever happened after the shooting was my fault, for surviving. When I couldn’t sleep, this is what happened. Wound tight in self-pity’s clutch, I couldn’t separate Doyle’s leaving and the gunshot. Had he left me before, or had he walked into my hospital room to say good-bye? Doyle’s hand, a gun, rising out of the dark. “I’m hurt. But I’ll live.”

“Counting on it.” He smiled, but I could see how flimsy the offering was.

“How did you meet her?”

“Amelia.” He looked tired. Old. Not just older than I was, but a man who’d lived a long time, had maybe given some thought to his own mortality. “Are you getting some help? With all this, I mean, not with—”

“I’m fine.”

“It would be normal to falter a bit.”

“I don’t falter.”

The door opened, and Nath came in. He wore a grave face, like a mask he’d put on. “They’re coming up the stairs.”

“I’m not going to the hospital.”

“Insurance purposes,” Doyle said.

“I think I’ve hit the cap on my insurance.”

“Not yours. The university’s.”

“I don’t care—”

“Melly.” Doyle put his hand on mine. “You don’t have to care. I will do the caring.”

As always. As ever. He didn’t say these things. I heard them in the hollow way he spoke to me now. He’d cared too much for too long, so little in return.

The ambulance crew walked in like frat boys who’d heard rumors of a good party. “Somebody have a fall?” one of them said.

Doyle stood, his hand sliding off mine. “Get checked out. Let me know how you are.”

“I’m fine,” I said, and wished it were true.

The EMTs let me walk to the elevator, because the gurney didn’t fit inside. They seemed to know that already, which made me wonder if one of them had carried me down the Dale Hall stairs last year.

Outside, I threw Nath my car keys. “Come meet me after I’m sprung.”

“When will that be?”

“Give them an hour to figure out that my major injuries are preexisting, and then throw a fit in the emergency room until they let you see me. Do you know how to fake a seizure?”

He looked at the keys. “I have something to tell you.”

Of course. The kid hadn’t signed up for this, had he? “You don’t want to be my grad assistant anymore.”

“No, I do. It’s just—”

“Ma’am.” My rescuers held the back doors of the ambulance open. One of them bowed and swept his arm toward the cart inside.

“A minute. What’s wrong, Nath?”

“James Baker is in our class.”

“I think I recall you reading off that name.”

“He was in a different 101 class earlier this week,” he said.

“Maybe he liked our schedule better.”

“Maybe he liked you better.”

“I’m very likeable.” One of the EMTs made a sound in his throat. “As a teacher.”

“So you don’t know him? I mean—I didn’t, either, but I’m not the one—”

A chill went up my spine. I knew where we were. “Who is he?”

Nath glanced at the EMTs and back. “Last year, he was Leonard Lehane’s roommate.”

“Ma’am.”

I held out my hand to them. “If I’m holding you up, why don’t we just agree to meet there? Nath, are you sure?”

“That’s what I heard. I guess if I had to say was I
sure
—”

“But someone told you that’s who he was. Could there be another James Baker?”

He shrugged. “Another James Baker in the intro soc course this semester? I guess it’s possible.”

There were only a few thousand students at Rothbert. I could calculate the actual likelihood, but it was hardly worth the math. Lehane’s roommate wanted to get a look at me. Like so many others, he wanted to stare.

Or tell me something.

Or finish what his friend had started.

Now I remembered the kid’s pink neck, his rabbit eyes behind thick glasses. He’d sat four feet away and hardly looked in my direction.

“Why?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“He sat there for an
hour
,” I said. “Was he trying to make some kind of point? Was it—oh, God. Was it a protest?”

“I can find out.”

“You can?”

“I can—I can try,” Nath said.

“
Professor.
”

I glanced at the EMTs, nodded to them, and then transferred the nod to Nath. “Got a date with a waiting room. Nath, if you can—do you really want to do this?”

He hesitated, but only for a blink. “I do.”

“OK, but be discreet. Don’t get into any trouble. Don’t—Nath. Be cool, all right?”

He thought about it for a second before nodding back, solemn.

I was the one in trouble.

Hours later Nath tracked me down at the hospital, true to his word, and drove me home, quiet and thoughtful when he handed over my keys.

“Do you—” I’d almost asked him in, and for what? “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Sure.” He looked uncomfortable and eager to get away. “I have—homework.” He hitched his backpack over his shoulder and started off toward campus. The poor kid had saddled onto quite a Derby champ, but he seemed to be holding up.

Holding up better than I was. I tapped slowly toward the door to my building, feeling all the places on my body that had been introduced to freefall. Reintroduced.

Plans started to form: hot shower, tumbler of wine, and an extra dose from the pill bottle. How much did I need to take to make sure I slept through the night? I looked at my watch: it wasn’t yet five, but I felt as though I’d lived a week in this single, jarring day.

I stopped, glanced at my watch again. I was supposed to be somewhere, and in a rush I remembered that I’d missed my appointment with Rory McDaniel. I would have made it if I’d left straight from class, but I hadn’t counted on an ambulance ride or a three-hour wait in the emergency room.

“In all the excitement,” said a man’s voice. “You probably just misplaced me.”

He stood under the awning of my building’s back door, flipping a set of keys around his finger.

In this gesture, I saw Doyle, his sheepish good-bye, and was annoyed. I didn’t know this guy, but I knew whom he would turn out to be. He was tall, fuller-bodied than Doyle, and wearing a jacket that looked as though it had been handed down from an even taller, bigger brother. Or a Dumpster. He had dark hair, but when he stepped out from the shadow of the building, the scruff on his face caught the sun and glowed a secret red.

“If it makes you feel any better, I also misplaced about twenty-five students,” I said. “Did you literally chase the ambulance?”

“You’re thinking of lawyers. Reporters sit with their feet up playing computer solitaire until something comes across the scanner.”

“Sorry to interrupt your game.”

“I never win anyway. Why do we play games against ourselves that we hardly ever win?”

“Did you really want an answer to that?”

He blinked at me. “Am I getting near your research, Dr. Emmet?”

“I imagine you already know about my research.”

“I’ve been looking for a copy of your book—”

“My dissertation is out of print. Why would you want to read about post-traumatic stress disorder? Tough times at the paper?”

“Not that one,” he said. “The new one. Maybe you can spot me an advance copy until it’s published.”

“I don’t have another book.”

His veneer dropped, showing his confusion. He’d done his own research.

A long time ago, I’d been confident enough to put the working title of my manuscript-in-progress on my faculty web page and in a bio for an industry association site. I’d pulled both of these references since my little patio barbecue, but even without the book, the title lived a life separate from mine. As far as I could tell, that was the purpose of the Internet: to capture everything ever said or done and never let it go.

McDaniel regained his steady, lie-breaking gaze. “So you are not the author of
Silent Witness: The Sociology of Violence in the American Midwest
? That’s all just irony?”

I took a few exaggerated, limping steps past him toward my door, letting him get a good look at my cane. “Nice title. I do teach sociology and the social aspects of violence. But you must be misinformed.”

“I’m hardly ever misinformed.”

“Why did you leave your number on my car?”

“Why did you call me?”

This was all a mistake. I should have never called, and now that he was here—uninvited, now that I thought about it, stalking my apartment for the second time—I wanted no part of this conversation. “I’m the one misinformed. I thought you did car detailing.”

“You don’t want to tell your side of the story?”

“If I knew my side of the story I wouldn’t have called you.”

“What’s that mean?”

He was handsome, I noticed. Maybe that was part of the problem. I wasn’t in the mood for handsome. “There’s no story.”

“See, that’s what people say when there’s a story bigger than they know.”

“If I don’t know—look, Anderson Cooper, I’m sorry I wasted your time—”

“What do you remember about that day?”

“Nothing. That’s the truth. I was out cold.”

“I wasn’t.”

The article I’d saved, the photo cropped out to save me from knowing too much, had been published with his byline. “You were there.”

He shrugged. “You came over the scanner.”

“Lucky you.”

“Well, I’m not counting on the Pulitzer or anything. You’re not that big a story.”

“Then why are you leaving sad notes on a handicapped lady’s car?”

“I believe the term you’re looking for is
disabled
.” He had a crooked smile. Probably got him all kinds of interviews and favors. “And I didn’t know my name and phone number could convey such deeply held feelings.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’d like to know why you were shot.”

I helped myself to the pause in our conversation to punch in my keycode and open the door. McDaniel could be a sociological study all his own. The big-boy clothes, the calculated facial hair. That smile. I tapped inside and turned, my arm holding the door ajar but blocking his entrance. I released the door.

“We want the same things,” McDaniel said, moving so that we could see each other through the slowly closing door. “I wasn’t misinformed about that, was I?”

I caught the door with my cane. The day I’d had—I couldn’t keep living like this. I didn’t have time for handsome, but I had all the time in the world for utility. He’d been interviewing people, taking notes. The whole time I’d been in the ICU, he’d been hitting the pavements.

“The Mill at eight,” I said, and was gratified to see McDaniel’s eyes narrow. Someone else had taken control. I moved my cane, leaving him on the outside.