The Lost Husband (29 page)

“Go to sleep,” I said. “I’m putting a trash can here in case you have to barf.”

And then, with the moment officially ruined and the right thing officially done, there was nothing left to do but take myself back to my bed and regret it.

Chapter 23
 

The next morning, I woke up wondering about seeing O’Connor at milking time once he was sober again.

There had been so much longing the night before, right on the surface of things in a totally new way. Sometimes alcohol can work like a truth serum, but sometimes it’ll just make people say anything at all. I wasn’t totally sure which effect all that beer had had on O’Connor, but I knew I would read the answer on his face when he saw me again without his beer goggles on—and I was dreading finding out. I confess to breaking down and putting on some lip gloss before starting the morning chores.

But he wasn’t in the barn when I got there. He slept through the morning milking, his trailer silent until long after I’d milked every goat and fed every animal on the farm. Jean had left early for her Tuesday morning coffee-and-crafting meeting, and with Sunshine gone and the kids at school, I had no one at all to distract me from the crackly sense of anticlimax I carried all morning.

At some point, I kept thinking, he’d have to wake up.

But before he did, I got a phone call. About Abby. From the nurse at school.

“I don’t want you to panic,” she said, catapulting me at light speed into a state of panic, “but Abby’s here in my office.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“She has a head injury, and you need to come pick her up.”

“What kind of a head injury?” I asked, every muscle now tensed for action.

“Not a terrible one,” the nurse assured me. “It appears she fell down on the playground and scraped her head on the fence.”

It was the weirdest injury I’d ever heard of. “She scraped her head on the fence?”

The nurse went on. “She’s here in my office with an ice pack. She’s in good spirits. But she should take it easy today.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, grabbing my purse and idling next to the phone. If Jean had had a cordless, I’d have walked it out into the yard.

“One more thing,” the nurse said. “When the head bleeds, it bleeds a lot.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It’s stopped now,” she said. “But Abby’s clothes are pretty well drenched.”

“Drenched?”

“Just so you can prepare yourself for the sight of it.”

That morning Abby had worn a pink T-shirt that she and Jean had decorated with little white ribbon flowers. I tried to imagine it drenched in blood.

“I’m on my way,” I said, just about to hang up.

“One more thing,” the nurse added. “Abby’s explaining to me now that she didn’t trip on the playground. She was pushed.”

My heart turned into a brick. “Who pushed her?”

I could hear the nurse turn to Abby and say, “Who pushed you, darlin’?”

And I didn’t even need the nurse to report back the answer. Because through the phone, from across the room, I could hear Abby’s clear voice say, “Jimmy Gaveski.”

As I was racing across the yard, O’Connor chose that exact moment to emerge from his trailer, hung over, his eyelids at half-mast.

I slowed for just a second as he sauntered toward me, but I didn’t even really focus on him. He’d gone from filling the entire frame of my mind to the size of a tiny speck of dust on the corner.

“Hey,” he said as we both paused a few feet apart. And in that moment, reading his uncomfortable face, I had my answer about the night before. The way he’d looked at me … it had been beer goggles.

It was my worst-case scenario for seeing him again, but it paled in comparison to the worst-case scenario of my sweet child waiting for me in the nurse’s office at school. I edged toward the car.

“I just want to apologize for last night,” he said. He looked physically uncomfortable, the way a person would if he were, say, standing barefoot on a hot summer sidewalk. Or deeply embarrassed.

“No need,” I said, still edging.

“Can we talk for a minute?” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

But I didn’t have time for that conversation. The whole thing flashed through my mind in a millisecond. He was sorry, it had
been a mistake to go out drinking, he didn’t know what he’d been thinking, he didn’t think of me that way. Blah, blah, blah.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I said. “And I really have to go.”

I turned and walked fast toward the car.

O’Connor followed me. “Where?”

“The school just called,” I said over my shoulder. “PeePants Gaveski pushed Abby down on the playground and gashed open her head.”

“Pushed her down?”

“The nurse warned me to expect a lot of blood.”

I’d reached the car door and was moving fast. I swung in, buckled up, and hit the ignition before I noticed that O’Connor was buckling up right next to me in the passenger seat, all traces of hangover removed from his demeanor. He sat straight up and leaned forward, as if willing the minivan to gallop away.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

There wasn’t time to argue. I floored it, and the wheels of the minivan skidded on the gravel road as we fishtailed out onto the highway. The school was fifteen minutes away, but we made it in ten. On the drive, I told him everything I knew.

As we screeched up to the front steps, the principal was waiting at the entrance. We were well into May, but she looked so frazzled, I wondered if she’d make it to the end of the school year.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she promised as we coursed through the hallways. Class was in session, and the place felt deserted. “And Abby is alert and cheerful,” she added. Even though my endless frustration over this PeePants problem was crystallizing
into rage at the same moment, it did make me feel a little better to hear that.

But only until we reached the nurse’s office.

The sight of Abby—lying so still with closed eyes, the hair on one entire side of her head matted and her T-shirt crimson with blood—made me literally dizzy. It’s the kind of nightmare image you don’t even let yourself prepare to see. She looked dead. In that instant I was transported back to the moment the ER nurse had pulled the curtain back on Danny.

My knees seemed to disappear.

I buckled, but O’Connor, who I’d forgotten was even there, caught me before I hit the floor. He pulled me back up, put his arm around my waist, and held me steady. I took a big, slow breath, and then I remembered who I needed to be in that moment, and I kneeled down beside Abby.

She opened her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hey, ladybug,” I said. “How are ya?”

“Good,” Abby said.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really,” Abby said. “Just the blood, you know, kind of freaked me out.”

“What happened, sweetheart?” I asked.

“Jimmy Gaveski pushed me,” Abby said.

“That little shit,” I said.

“Mom,” Abby said, glancing over at the nurse. Then, in a whisper: “ 
‘Shit’
is a curse word.”

“I thought Jimmy Gaveski wasn’t bothering you anymore,” I said. “I thought he was picking on some other kid.”

“He wasn’t bothering me,” Abby said. “That was the problem. He was bothering George.”

“What do you mean?”

Abby sat up, to better explain. I tried to stop her at first, but the nurse said it was okay if she felt up to it—and Abby clearly did. She swung her feet off the side of the cot and gestured with her arms. “Jimmy kept pushing George down. You know that section of the playground with all those big tree roots everywhere?”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

“He pushed him into the tree roots. He kept saying, ‘Stop stumbling! Stop stumbling!’ But then he’d push him and make him stumble. George’s knees were all bloody and everything.” With that, she pointed across the room, and for the first time I noticed a second cot, this one with a kindergarten-sized boy lying on it. His knees were bandaged, and so were the heels of his palms.

“Hi, George,” I said.

“Hello,” he said, lifting a bandaged hand to wave.

I turned back to Abby. “That’s why PeePants Gaveski shoved you? You were standing up for George?”

Abby nodded emphatically. “That’s right. I said, ‘Knock it off, Jimmy. That’s not cool.’ ” She turned toward O’Connor, and from the look that passed between them, I could tell he’d taught her the phrase.

The rest of what she had to say was for O’Connor, too. “I was about to use Crouching Chicken on him,” Abby went on. “Or maybe the Ice Fist. But he fought dirty and slammed me into the fence while I was still helping George to his feet.”

“But why, sweetheart?” I asked. I could feel all my old worries about Abby rushing back into my body like icy water into the
Titanic
. “He was finally leaving you alone! He’d moved on. Why on earth would you step in like that and get it started all over again?”

It was a cowardly question; I knew it even as I spoke the words. And cowardly wasn’t Abby’s style.

“Mom,” she said to me, as if the answer were so obvious she couldn’t believe she had to say it, “somebody had to help George.”

It was agreed that Abby should go home—and get an ice cream cone for bravery on the way. The nurse rooted around in Abby’s hair with her fingers to show me the cut on the scalp, which really didn’t look that bad for such a gusher. It was maybe an inch long, but it was thin, clean, and already scabbing over. The nurse said we could go get stitches if we wanted to, but she thought it would heal up just fine without them.

“No one will see the scar under all that pretty hair,” the nurse said.

From across the room, George added, “Plus, scars are awesome.”

Through it all, O’Connor was absolutely silent. He stood next to me as if poised to catch me again, and didn’t say a word. That is, until we were walking out past the principal’s office and saw the newly suspended PeePants sitting on a bench waiting to be picked up and driven home.

“That’s him,” Abby said as we approached, stopping to point. “That’s PeePants Gaveski.”

We all stopped, turned, and stared at him. He glanced at us and then turned his head away.

For some reason I’d been expecting a redhead. In my mind, he was an iconic TV-style sitcom bully—a tall, mean, freckled kid with a pug nose and a sneer. But that wasn’t what I saw on the bench. The real PeePants had mousy hair and totally nondescript features. He had a nose and eyes and a mouth and ears, but I
couldn’t tell you much else about them. If he was heading for a life of crime, he’d chosen the right profession. You could never pick this kid out of a lineup.

“This is the kid who pushed you?” O’Connor asked Abby, speaking up for the first time since we’d arrived at the school.

“Yes,” Abby said.

“This is the kid who’s been calling you names all year and taunting you?”

“Yes.”

Without another word, O’Connor made it over to PeePants in one step, grabbed him by one arm and the back of the collar, and dragged him right out the set of doors that led to the playground. As the doors clanked closed behind them, Abby and I turned to each other for a reality check—and then hustled to follow.

O’Connor and PeePants were several steps ahead, and when O’Connor let go, the poor kid stumbled and hit the ground.

O’Connor turned around and found Abby’s eyes. “Is this your class?” he asked.

Abby nodded.

“Second graders!” O’Connor shouted then, in a voice so loud it shocked even the teachers into silence. “Listen up!”

O’Connor waited for everyone’s attention. PeePants, too petrified to escape, waited for O’Connor’s next move.

“This kid,” O’Connor announced, “has been bullying my friend Abby Moran all year. And I’m here to tell you that the bullying is over.” O’Connor turned to PeePants but continued to yell. “If you touch Abby again, even by accident, or call her a name, or even dare to speak to her, I will come and find you. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll break your arm, or your neck, or maybe even poke out your eyeballs. But I guarantee that you will spend every minute of every day of the rest of your life regretting that
you even thought about messing with my friend. And if that doesn’t stop you, I’ll come back for your parents, and your brother, and your dog, and your pet hamster. Do you hear me?”

PeePants gave the tiniest nod.

“And that goes for all of you,” O’Connor went on, gesturing around. “If you see this little shit hurting someone or teasing someone, you stand up and stop him. Be brave! Do the right thing! And then tell Abby to tell me. And I will come after this kid like a bolt of fire.”

The teachers were onto O’Connor now. There was so much wrong with what he was doing that I was sure that he’d wind up in jail. The teacher nearest to us started marching toward him, saying in her teacher voice, “Sir, you can’t—”

“And these teachers can’t protect you,” O’Connor roared over her, turning back to PeePants. “I will ram this playground fence with my truck if I have to. I will run over your pets and haunt your dreams. I will make you wish you’d never been born.”

“Sir!” the teacher said, totally outraged. “I’m calling the sheriff!” She shook her cellphone at O’Connor like it was a weapon.