The Cinderella Hour (18 page)

Wind
Chimes Towers

Sunday,
October
30

5
:
00
p.m.

Thomas was in the living room of
his condo when Snow knocked on his door.

“Hi,” she whispered. “I don’t want to intrude, but I did want
to offer my help.”

“Thank you. Come in. She’s asleep.”

“How is she?”

“Confused. Exhausted. Incapable of comprehending what has
happened.”

“How could she possibly comprehend something that’s
incomprehensible?”

“I’m assuming she couldn’t. That’s why I haven’t even tried
to explain. My hope is to make each moment feel as safe for her as I possibly
can.”

“That’s all you can do,” Snow said. “It’s a tall order in
itself.”

“And, for the time being, not terribly difficult. Her wakeful
moments are few and far between. And when she’s awake, she’s groggy. But eventually
her grogginess will subside and she’ll wonder what happened to her world.”

“She’ll discover a world that’s new, but not completely
unfamiliar. There will be, in that new world, all the safe moments you’ve given
her.”

“Well,” he said softly. “We’ll see.”

“How are
you
, Thomas?” she asked.

A faint smile touched his worried face. “Trying to comprehend
something that’s incomprehensible.”

Snow nodded, and, after a moment, said, “I know the
firefighter who rescued Wendy.”

“Luke Kilcannon?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“No. His name’s on the rescue report. I’m very grateful to
him. I hope to tell him that one day. Daniel would be so grateful, too.”

“Daddy!”

Thomas ran toward what had been his office, but was Wendy’s
bedroom now.

Snow was right beside him—until she stopped.

Wendy didn’t need more confusion in her life. More strangers.
For the foreseeable future, all her safe and loving moments had to come from
Thomas.

Let’s be quiet as a mouse and build a lovely little house for
Wendy.

That was what Thomas was doing . . . and what he alone should
do.

With mouselike quiet, Snow left his home.

Wendy was bolt upright in bed, her
eyes searching and wild. The bedroom blinds were closed, preventing her view of
the torrential rainfall that had wreaked such destruction in her life before
moving east. Hall lights enabled her to see the man who rushed into her room
and knelt before her.

“Where’s Daddy?”

It wasn’t the first time she had posed the question. During
the drive across the state, when she’d awakened and wondered, Thomas had stopped
the car, sat beside her in the back seat, and answered without answering.

“Hello, Wendy,” he had said. “My name is Thomas. I’m your
daddy’s friend. He asked me to take care of you. I
want
to take care of
you, sweetheart. I want to be your friend, too.”

Thomas hadn’t finished with a question of his own. Okay? The
bewildered little girl had fewer answers than he did, and she didn’t need the
pressure of searching for impossible replies.

“Your friend,” he repeated. “And Eileen’s.”

He’d taken the sleeping kitten from her traveling crate then
and placed her in embrace of the little girl. As Wendy’s blond head rested against
the kitten’s gray one, he offered the same reassurance again and again. “Your
friend, Wendy, and Eileen’s.”

If she could hear just that, he had thought. Hear it . . . and
believe it.

But that wasn’t Wendy’s responsibility. It was his. He had to
find a way to help her believe. And that would require the kind of
round-the-clock intensive care for which he was wholly untrained—but
would
provide.

The confidence had shocked him. How could he, of all people,
feel such certainty?

Because she had no one else. Her very survival was in his
hands.

He could have run away from it. Biological parents made mad
dashes all the time. But Thomas embraced the responsibility as Wendy embraced
her kitten.

“Your friend, little Wendy.” Your
father
. “Yours and Eileen’s.”

She had fallen back asleep in the car, carried to gentle
dreams, he hoped, by the sound of his voice and the promise of his words.

Now she was awake again, and terrified.

Thomas began the reassuring mantra anew.

“It’s me, Wendy. Thomas. Your friend. And Eileen’s.”

The kitten, too, was sitting bolt upright, startled from
sleep by Wendy’s cry. She cowered when Thomas appeared, her body slanting
toward Wendy. Wendy plucked her up and held her close as Thomas neared.

“Where’s Daddy?”

So much for creating such a solid foundation of safe moments
that by the time she was really awake there would be something a little
familiar in her foreign new world.

“He’s with Mommy, sweetheart.”

“In heaven.”

“That’s right. He’s in heaven, with Mommy, and you know what?
He’s smiling down at you, just like Mommy is.”

“Loving me.”

“Yes,” Thomas whispered. “Loving you, Wendy. Just like Mommy.
Loving you always.”

Wendy stared at the kitten’s head. The gray fur trembled as
she purred.

Wendy had something troubling to say. Thomas dreaded it and
vowed to do everything he could to make the troubling thought—whatever it
turned out to be—go away.

He looked at her delicate hands, offering comfort to the
kitten, and remembered the powerful ones of the pumpkin farmer he had met four
years ago.

How tenderly Daniel’s hands had touched his dying, fighting wife.
And when she lost her battle with death, how lovingly they had caressed his
tiny, fighting Wendy.

And how lovingly, tenderly, those hands had written about his
Wendy in the Christmas cards he sent.

And how crippled they had been when he addressed the envelope
that he placed, with the kitten, inside Wendy’s knapsack.

Wendy’s Legal Guardian, Dr. Thomas Vail, Grace Memorial
Hospital, Chicago,
the
envelope read
.
The broken fingers had known they were dying. They forced
their wobbly bones to craft those all-important words, and the ones in the
letter itself.
Love her, Thomas. Love my little girl. If you can’t, please
find someone who will.

I will love her, Thomas vowed as he waited for Wendy to
speak. I already do.

“Daddy drowned.”

Who had told her? Who could be so cruel?

No one, he guessed. In all likelihood it had been
carelessness, not cruelty, that revealed Daniel’s manner of death to his
daughter. She probably overheard a conversation she wasn’t meant to hear, one
spoken by adults who assumed she was so traumatized she wasn’t really listening
and too young, in any event, to understand.

Maybe she was too young. Maybe she had no idea what drowning
meant.

“He did drown,” Thomas said softly. “It was like floating off
to sleep, Wendy. Floating, on a cloud, to a dream. And you know where he was
when he woke up?”

“Heaven.”

“That’s right.”

“With Mommy.”

She looked up—to him
. . .
needing something
from
him
. Love, Thomas thought as he smiled gently at her searching blue eyes.
Love.

“I knew your mommy and your daddy,” he said in a quiet voice.

“You did?”

“Yes, I did. Before you were born. They were so excited you
were going to be their little girl. They were nice enough to share that
excitement with me. And you know what else? I was there the day you were born.”

“Really?”

“Really. I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. You were
very tiny. Much smaller than Eileen. You were so small, in fact, that you
needed to be in a special tiny room called an incubator, where you could be
warm and cozy while you grew. Do you know what happened whenever I came to
visit you?”

“What?”

“Well, I would put this finger”—Thomas raised his right index
finger—“inside the incubator. And you know what you would do?”

“No. What?”

“You would grab it and squeeze.”

“Did it hurt?”

“To have you squeeze my finger? No, sweetheart. It felt
wonderful. It was your way of saying hello.”

His finger remained where it was, in the air between them and
out of her reach. But it was poised, if she made the slightest move to say
hello, to meet her questing hand.

She was considering it. Maybe. Beginning to
understand—maybe—that the finger, that Thomas himself, would always be there.

Or perhaps her expression meant something else.

It was a thoughtful expression, not a troubled one.

“Are Mommy and Daddy angels?”

Thomas smiled. “Oh, yes, Wendy. Mommy and Daddy are most
definitely angels.”

At that moment, across the state
and many miles from the farmhouse where Daniel Hart had been swept away, a
helicopter hovered over what appeared to be a fallen angel. Its bright white
wings floated at the surface of the swollen river. They were spread wide, as if
in flight. But the angel itself—himself, herself—was snagged on a branch. And
quite motionless. The head was facing away, and down.

Dead, surely.

Drowned, despite the wings that kept it afloat.

Quail
Ridge Fire Station

Tuesday,
November
1

1
:
00
p.m.

“Hey, Luke! You decent? There’s a
beautiful woman on her way up to see you.”

Snow
.
Luke rose swiftly from the bed where he had been lying—thinking about her—and
strode the short distance to the closed door of his fire-station on-call room.

He opened the door to a different face from the past.

“Vivian.”

“Hi. May I come in?”

The bed was made, and there was nothing private in the room.
Unlike his firefighting comrades, Luke hadn’t added any personal touches. The
desk, chairs, computer, and TV were all standard issue QRFD. It wasn’t a large
room. But it could accommodate two adults without either one intruding on the
other’s space. Still, he asked, “Why?”

“I need to talk to you. Privately.”

“About?”

“The girl you rescued Saturday afternoon.”

“Come in.”

“Thank you.”

Vivian Larken, attorney-at-law, walked with high-heeled
elegance to the desk. She set her briefcase on the desktop and sat in the
chair. She rested a perfectly manicured hand on the case, but didn’t open it.

She looked at Luke, who had closed the door and was leaning
against it.

“I’ve been contacted by Dr. Thomas Vail,” Vivian began, “the
man Daniel Hart named as Wendy’s guardian in the letter he wrote shortly before
his death. The letter was neither witnessed nor notarized. It appears to have
been Daniel’s only will.”

“But not a legal one?”

“A dying wish can be viewed as legal, much as an excited
utterance can bypass usual hearsay rules in a criminal proceeding.”

“Can be viewed as legal,” Luke repeated. “But can also be
ignored?”

“Or contested.”

“You’re here because Thomas Vail is contesting Daniel’s dying
wish?” If so, Luke thought, if he doesn’t want to care for Wendy, I do. And
will. Snow and I will love—

“Just the opposite, Luke. Thomas has asked me to make his
guardianship ironclad in the eyes of the law. The first step is to authenticate
that it was Daniel’s dying wish by obtaining an affidavit from the last person
to see him alive. As I understand it, that’s you.”

“It is.”

“According to the sheriff’s report Thomas faxed me, Daniel
told you about the letter—addressed to Thomas—in Wendy’s knapsack.”

“Yes. He shouted to me that it was there. If you need me to
say I believe Daniel knew what he wanted for Wendy, I’m prepared to do so.”

“That’s what I need. I’ll draft something saying essentially
that. Once you’ve approved what I’ve written, we’ll have it notarized and I’ll
file it with the court—assuming by then Daniel’s body has been found. If not, I’ll
need another affidavit from you. Absent a body, it takes seven years before
someone can be declared legally deceased. In this case, I’d petition the court
to have the death certificate issued sooner. The sheriff’s report states you
witnessed Daniel’s death.”

“I saw him swept away by the floodwaters. Even if he was a
strong swimmer, I doubt he would have survived. And with the casts on his arms
. . . I didn’t witness his death, Vivian. But I believe I witnessed the final
moments of his life.”
The final moments of his love, his wishes, for his Wendy.

“Okay. I’ll prepare that affidavit as well. Thank you, Luke.”

“Sure. Do you know him, Vivian?”

“Thomas? Yes. He’s a physician at Grace Memorial. He and
Lacey dated for a while. Blaine and I had dinner with them a number of times.”

“Do you like him?”

Vivian wasn’t supposed to like Thomas Vail. Once Lacey was
through with a man, as she had been through with Thomas on the day of Vivian’s
wedding, she promptly forgot whatever redeeming qualities her ex-lover might
have possessed. As Lacey’s best friend, Vivian was supposed to forget the
redeeming qualities, too.

It should have been easy with Thomas. Vivian had no firsthand
knowledge of the solitary redeeming quality Lacey claimed Thomas had—a
sexuality that enthralled even Lacey.

Lacey would have been appalled at Vivian’s delay in answering
Luke’s question. Attorney-client loyalty be damned! For that matter, Lacey
would have been quite unhappy that Vivian agreed to represent Thomas in the
first place. Vivian
knew
Lacey’s thoughts about Thomas and fatherhood,
how disastrous that would be. Child advocate Vivian Larken should have been contesting
Thomas’s custody of Wendy Hart, not endorsing it.

Blaine
would have been similarly disapproving. Although he had never actually said as
much, it was clear that Thomas wasn’t one of his favorite colleagues. And,
Vivian had concluded, the uneasy feeling was mutual. It was hospital politics most
likely. A dispute involving space or funding between the intensivist and the
chief of staff.

Vivian’s reply to Luke would have incensed both her husband
and her friend. So would the fact that she felt flattered—and oddly grateful—that
Thomas had asked for her help.

“I do like him,” she said. “He’s . . . kind.”

“Good.”

“Thank you for asking my opinion, Luke. And for making it
sound as if it counts.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

Luke’s question was casual. Rhetorical.

And it provided a perfect segue for Vivian to the other issue
she was here to discuss, the one she dreaded but about which she had no choice.

“Because of what else I have to tell you.”

“About Thomas?”

“No. About Snow.”

“Whatever it is, Vivian, I don’t want to hear it.”

“You have to.”

“Not really.” Luke’s hand went to the door handle.

“I saw the two of you that night. On the terrace at the club.
I saw you touch her stomach. I didn’t hear your words. I didn’t try to, or need
to. She was obviously pregnant.”

“That was private, Vivian. By what stretch of your sense of
entitlement did you think you had a right to watch?”

“It was wrong. I
know
that. I’m sorry.”

“Wonderful. We’re done here.”

“No, Luke. There’s more.”

“It’s ancient history. Let’s not revisit it.”

“We have to. I know you’ll be seeing her tonight, following
her interview with Blaine. Before you do, I have to tell you what I said to
her—the lies I told her—the morning after the Glass Slipper Ball.”

“Lies?”

“About you. Us.”

“Us, Vivian? There never
was
an us.”

“No more tea.” Bea shoved her mug
to the center of Mira’s kitchen table. “And no more buckeyes.”

The platter of delicious balls of peanut butter and chocolate
owed its very existence to Bea. For decades the children of Pinewood had
galloped to her door on Halloween in pursuit of her famous treat.

The children had appeared, in the expected numbers, last
evening. The rainstorm had come and gone, leaving clear skies and a pumpkin
moon. The children’s mothers, many of whom had themselves galloped to Bea’s as
children, also appeared in the expected numbers. But, as always, Bea had
buckeyes to spare.

They froze well, she informed Mira. That explained the tins
for Mira’s freezer. The remaining leftovers, she hoped, would be consumed by
clinic visitors throughout the day.

Mira had scheduled a light day. One “well puppy” appointment
and two “well kitty” ones, plus a wound check, a suture removal, and a
follow-up ear exam. She wanted to be free to care for the onslaught of sick
animals who had been fed—or had found—Halloween candy.

But the onslaught hadn’t come.

“No more tea,” Mira agreed. “And no more buckeyes—after this
one. You have to admit it’s been fun. Gorging ourselves and being the ladies of
leisure we were meant to be.”

“I’m going to regret the buckeyes. I already do. But I’m
delighted your newsletter to Pinewood pet owners had such an impact. Not a
single ill creature.”

Mira nodded. “I’m delighted, too.”

“So.” Bea’s expression said the rest. She had shown enormous
restraint for forty-eight hours, having posed not one question about either
you-know-what or you-know-who for two whole days.

But enough was enough.

“So,” Mira replied. “No obscene phone calls. As of tonight,
it will be a week since the last one. He’s gotten bored, Bea. Moved on. Maybe
even mended his ways.”

“I hope so. And?”

“I haven’t spoken with Luke.”

“But you’re going to today.”

“Only if he calls me.”

“You didn’t listen to last night’s
Cinderella Hour
,
did you?”

“No. I was asleep by ten. Weren’t you on your way to bed, too,
Bea? We said goodbye to the last trick-or-treaters at nine-fifteen.”

“Yes. But I listened to the show this morning online.”

“Oh,” Mira said. “How was it?”

“Fabulous.
She
is. A grown-up version of the
thoughtful girl I knew. Her conversation with the Bears’ coach was terrific. I’m
sure he was relieved to talk to her after being grilled all day about Sunday’s
loss to the Vikings.”

“She didn’t talk to him about the game?”

“She did. And it was obvious that she’d watched it. She even
asked about his controversial decision to go for the field goal instead of the
touchdown. But coming from Snow, it didn’t feel like grilling. Anyway, at the
end of the show, she mentioned tonight’s guests. Blaine, of course, followed by
Luke.”

“Luke?”

“He won the silent auction for a slot on her show. Snow didn’t
say that. It was a program note on the website. Speaking of bids for Snow’s
time . . .”

“I haven’t heard from the fundraiser.”

“But Snow may have. And she may mention it to Luke.”

And, Mira knew, unless she took the initiative, it was
unlikely she would talk to Luke before he saw Snow. She hadn’t heard from him since
his return from the floods. But she wasn’t surprised. He didn’t like making
phone calls from work. And he had undoubtedly been on the job and living at the
fire station the moment he felt rested enough to be an asset to the crew.
Payback to the guys who covered for him while he volunteered across the state.

The payback wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t as if Luke had taken
an unscheduled vacation. And in the payback department, Luke’s fellow
firefighters could never hope to repay him for all the holidays he had worked—so
they could be with their families—and all the vacations he hadn’t taken, even
though they had taken theirs.

And what had Luke done with all the overtime money he earned and
all the savings he never spent on well-deserved vacations? Twenty-five thousand
dollars of it was buying ninety on-air minutes with Snow—and more importantly,
Mira thought, the off-air minutes Luke hoped would follow. During that time
Snow might, just might, mention Mira’s bid for some off-air time with her, too.
Luke would be caught off guard on a night when his focus needed to be on Snow, not
on surprises.

“So.” This time, Bea stood. “I think I’ll putter in the
clinic while you go talk to Luke. I’ll page you if anyone needs you.”