The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (28 page)

Chapter 29

B
y the end of April, Felicia
was telling callers that Dr. Costa didn’t have an opening for six weeks. Some of the reactions were so loud that Hallie could hear them from across the room. “But you’re not even open yet! How can you be all booked up?” The most common complaint was that the caller had been one of Nick’s very best patients. Didn’t that count for something? If they were really angry, they might also point out that Felicia was a hairstylist, not a secretary. What was she doing working in Dr. Nick’s office?

When that happened, Felicia quickly retorted that this was
not
Nick’s office, and that she had made a career change—
if it’s any of your business
. Unless they were particularly rude, or had done her or any of her family wrong in some way over the years, she waited till after she hung up to add that last bit.

Once the office opened, the days were long and full; and when word got out that Hallie never turned anyone away, regardless of their ability to pay, people started to come from as far away as Yarmouth.

H
allie was seeing her last patient
of the day when the nurse she’d added to the practice knocked on the door of the examining room. Paolo was a recent transplant, who’d come to Provincetown for vacation and fallen in love with a man who owned a gallery down the street.

“Felicia says someone’s here to see you. A personal matter.”

“Well, tell her I’ll be finished here in about fifteen minutes,” Hallie said, galled by the interruption. The man in her exam room had come all the way from Orleans with a serious case of emphysema. Then, out of curiosity, she asked, “Is it a patient?”

“I don’t think so. Some guy named Alvaro Silva. Says it’s important.”

Hallie felt a flutter of nervousness, wondering if he was finally ready to give her some news of Gus, but she hid it under her usual professional calm. “Tell him not to leave,” she said.

However, by the time she had finished with the patient, there was no one in the office but Paolo and Felicia. Paolo looked oddly nervous, while Felicia covered her mouth and suppressed a grin.

“So where is he? Didn’t want to wait?” Hallie said as she dropped her new patient’s file on the desk. “I thought it was
important.
”

“He was gone by the time I came out of the examining room,” Paolo said.

“But he left you a little present,” Felicia added. “Two of them, actually.”

They both pointed in the direction of the front porch. Hallie cautiously opened the door. At first, she didn’t notice anything unusual, but then she spotted them, tied to the gate: two of the most forlorn-looking animals she’d ever seen.

Puzzled, she turned back to her friends.

“Gus’s dogs,” they said simultaneously.

“What?” Hallie said, trying to avoid the dogs’ plaintive eyes. “Well, they’re going to the pound. I don’t have time for a dog, let alone two.” Then she eyed the larger one and something broke inside her. “You don’t look very healthy either, do you, girl.” She stepped forward to stroke her ears.

“I’ll make an appointment with the vet,” Felicia offered.

“Oh, and Hallie? One more thing. Apparently there’s someone who has visitation rights to these mutts. Alvaro said to expect the girl every other Sunday, precisely at two.”

V
isitors were never a problem at
Hallie’s house because, like her father before her, she favored meal-in-a-pot type concoctions like chili or curries that would serve guests if someone stopped in, or keep for a day or two if they didn’t. On the first Sunday that Julia Perez showed up, it was a particularly festive gathering. Stuart was there with a new friend bearing a chocolate raspberry torte for dessert, as well as Buddy, Felicia, and Felicia’s mother, Luanne. Hallie’s third cousin, Tony, who’d recently moved to town and was thinking of opening a café, was in charge of the CD player. He started with Chuck Berry, and moved on to Alicia Keys, but it was his Brazilian sambas that got everyone to their feet, hips swaying. Lunes Oliveira had stopped over just when the dancing began, and once he got a whiff of the fragrant smells coming from the kitchen, it hadn’t taken much to convince him to stay.

“Obviously, your intention from the start,” Buddy said, eyeing Lunes with inebriated pomposity. “What, may I ask, is your interest in my niece, anyway?”

Hallie wanted to remind him that he wasn’t exactly her uncle—as Nick had once done—but it was too late for that. Instead, she just shrugged in Lunes’s direction, as she poured him a glass of wine. “You better be careful. My uncle’s watching you.”

“And I’m watching you,” Lunes said, as he pulled her to her feet for a samba. Since that first antagonistic visit, he dropped in whenever one of his two boys, age eight and ten, had a game or a practice in town. Hallie saw a different side of him when he was with them, and she had even attended a couple of the boys’ Little League games with him in the spring. But when he hinted about going on a “grown-up date—you know the kind that involves wine and dinner and maybe even a kiss on the cheek at the end,” she had demurred.

“God, Lunes. The ink’s hardly dry on my divorce papers.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to say yes, but at least be honest. The ex has nothing to do with it.” Lunes smiled in a way that reminded her why she had initially found him so annoying. “Anyway, I was just throwing it out there. If you ever get over your pining, give me a call.”

Hallie had slammed the door, and avoided him for weeks, but to her surprise, she missed his friendship. She also missed the boys, who tore through the house, trailing sand everywhere and lured her and Lunes outside to throw a football on the beach.

Julia seemed uncomfortable from the moment she entered the room. Within the first five minutes, she’d declined an offer to dance with Lunes’s ten-year-old son, a plate of scallops with bacon pressed on her by Felicia, and an illegal drink from Uncle Buddy.

“I’m just here to see the dogs,” she said, nervously studying the floor. Hallie wondered how such an introvert survived the raucous atmosphere of a dorm. She led the girl into the bedroom where Jane, who had eaten little since she arrived, was sleeping heavily with Stella loyally at her side. Julia instantly forgot Hallie as she sunk to the floor and stirred them, prompting a joyful welcome.

Hallie sat on the bed and tried to strike up a conversation, asking about Jack, and her studies, but Julia answered tersely. Her straight, dark hair obscured her face as she focused on the animals, obviously waiting for Hallie to leave.

“A lot of the people I did my residency with went to Tufts, including my friend Abby. It’s an excellent program. Any thoughts of going into medicine?”

“No,” Julia answered, a little too quickly and much too sharply. It was the first time her voice had risen above a whisper since she entered the house.

Suspecting the girl had spent far too much time in hospitals already, Hallie instantly regretted her question. She had hoped she might ask the girl if she’d heard from Gus but decided that was probably a taboo subject, too.

Stepping out of the room, Hallie almost walked directly into Stuart, who was just outside the door. His eyes were closed and he was holding a hand over his heart like he was about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

“My God, you scared the shit out of me,” Hallie said. Then, thinking of his cardiac condition, she took his arm. “You’re not having pain, are you?”

Stuart put a finger to his lips, then led her away from the door. “My heart has never been stronger, but it broke just a little when I saw that girl come through the door. She reminded me of myself those first months after Paul died.”

“You were
nothing
like that, Uncle Stuart. You went through the streets, wailing and telling your mournful story to anyone who would listen, even those who’d heard it a dozen times. And at night, you cried so loud that neither Nick nor I got any sleep for weeks.”

“Excuse me, young lady. I might have cried, but I most certainly did not
wail
.” Then, abruptly, Stuart’s tone changed. “That girl, on the other hand, looks like she needs to have herself a good keening. And she needs to tell her story as many times as it takes, to someone who understands—until she finally accepts it herself.”

“And I suppose that understanding someone would be you,” Hallie said. “Well, you can go in and talk to her if you want to, but don’t be offended if she ignores you.”

“Very little offends me these days. It’s one of the only advantages of my advanced years.” Stuart kissed her cheek before he started down the hall.

Hallie would never know what he had said in there, but when the two emerged he asked her to set another plate. “Julia has decided to stay, after all.”

Julia’s face was still closed, although she looked as if she had been crying. Hallie decided to sit her between Felicia and Luanne, partly as a buffer for their occasional mother-daughter sniping, and partly because Luanne talked so relentlessly, and with such animated outrage (usually about the latest “jerk” she was dating), that she hardly required a response.

Hallie walked Julia to the door when she was leaving. “I hope Luanne didn’t wear you out, or ruin your opinion of the opposite sex.”

“I liked her. She kind of reminded me of my mother.” Then, looking as though she’d revealed too much, Julia quickly added. “So it would be okay if I come back in a couple of weeks? You don’t have to give me dinner or anything. Just a quick visit with the dogs will be fine.”

Hallie rubbed her forehead. “Maybe you should make it next week, honey. You probably noticed Jane isn’t eating—and there are some other things going on with her, too. Bring Jack along. Linda Soares, who used to be the librarian in town, is making her famous cod with tomatoes and beans.”

“
Really?
” Julia said, her eyes filling. “You mean you . . . have you made an appointment?”

Hallie looked over at Jane, who was watching them from her bed in the corner as if she understood. “Not yet, but soon. We both know how much Gus loves those dogs, Julia. I’ve got to do right by her.”

Julia nodded solemnly. “Next week, then. I’ll ask my—” she began, and then corrected herself. “I’ll ask Jack.”

“Your dad.” Hallie finished the sentence as Julia clearly intended.

Finally, Julia smiled. “Yes, my dad. One of them, anyway.”

She was off the steps when she turned around and called back: “
Medical research!
”

“Excuse me?” Hallie said.

“That’s what I want to do when I get out of school. Medical research.”

Chapter 30

I
t was on a particularly busy
Wednesday afternoon when Paolo knocked sharply at the door of the examining room and announced an emergency. A man had shown up complaining of chest pains.

Hallie excused herself and stepped into the hallway. “Someone we know?”

“Oh, you know him all right.” Paolo hesitated. “It’s the guy who left the dogs, Hallie.” Since his partner was a native, Paolo knew the old stories as if he’d lived through them himself.

“Has Felicia called the ambulance?”

“As we speak.”

In spite of herself, Hallie was taken aback when she opened the door to Room 1 and saw that Alvaro had removed his shirt. He was standing in the center of the room with the military straightness characteristic of the Silvas, his chest and arms as toned as Gus’s had been in high school.

“Open your mouth,” she ordered sternly. When he did, she popped in an uncoated aspirin she’d brought from the chest in the office. “Chew.”

Alvaro grimaced. “A friggin’
aspirin
? That’s all you’ve got? Pretty primitive medicine, Doc. Don’t I even get a glass of water?”

“Chew,” Hallie repeated, ignoring both his questions and his sarcasm. “It could save your life. And don’t talk so much, either.”

When she applied the cold stethoscope to his skin, Alvaro shivered. “Jesus Christ! If I wasn’t already having a heart attack, that thing would give me one.”

“You shouldn’t have removed your shirt; it wasn’t necessary.” As Hallie tuned in to the even rhythm of his heart, she felt calmer. “Tell me about the pain. Where is it? What does it feel like?”

“It’s right beneath your hand. And it hurts like hell. Shit, what’s pain supposed to feel like?”

“Well, your heart sounds fine. I’d give you an EKG, but the ambulance will be here before I have time. They have everything they need to treat you till you get to Hyannis.” It was the same reassuring spiel she gave to the emergency patients worried about the long drive to the nearest hospital.

“What the fuck, Hallie? You called an
ambulance
?”

“This is a medical office, Alvaro. When people come in presenting with symptoms of a heart attack, that’s what we do,” Hallie said brusquely. “And put on your shirt while you’re at it.”

“What’s the matter? The sight of a man make you nervous? Or maybe I just remind you too much of someone—”

“Nothing you could do would make me nervous, Alvaro Silva—unless you tried to drop off another animal.”

Alvaro grinned. “I knew you’d take them in. Neither you or Nick could ever say no to a stray.”

“Well, it would have been nice if you had at least told me the old one had bladder cancer. The poor thing was nothing but a sack of bones, and she bled all over my good rug the first night.”

“She’s not just
the old one
, you know. The name was on her tag.”

“Well, excuse me,” Hallie said, galled that he refused to apologize for leaving a sick geriatric dog and an overactive Jack Russell at her door. “
Jane
bled all over my best rug.”

“So how’s she doing?”Alvaro asked in a low voice.

“About a week ago, we had to put her down. I was with her, stroking her ears as she went to sleep. Then we buried her in Maria’s old garden.”

The euthanasia at the vet’s office had been peaceful. Beautiful even. But the burial was a dark comedy. Partly out of spite and partly just to get Alvaro’s attention, she’d dragged a very inebriated Hugo out of the Pilgrims Club to help. Things had gone downhill from there. But if Gus’s cousin had been home since the burial, he apparently hadn’t noticed the grave.

“You buried her at my house?
What the
—?” He stopped mid-sentence, apparently having a change of heart. “I guess Gus would have liked that.”

Before Hallie could respond, they heard the paramedics enter the building. There was a knock on the door to the examining room. “Provincetown Emergency.”

Alvaro stepped aside and allowed the paramedic to enter. “How you doin’, Eric?” He flashed a smile, as if he were encountering him on the street or in a bar.

A second man followed with a stretcher.

“Listen, I came in with a little indigestion—probably from the calzone I had over at Provincetown Pizza,” He rubbed his stomach. “I thought the doctor here might hook me up with a script or something. But it looks like she overreacted.”

Eric looked from Hallie to Alvaro. “It may well be heartburn, but we should probably bring you to the hospital anyway. Just to check it out; you know, bro?”

Hallie agreed emphatically, but she could already sense she would lose this fight.

“Any family history?” the second man asked, looking at Hallie. She had never seen him before.

“
Family history?
” Alvaro laughed bitterly. “Lots of it, right, Hallie? But none involving heart problems. Men in my family got hearts like lions. We’re more likely to die by suicide or electric chair than a heart attack.”

The new guy glanced at his coworker, obviously wondering if this was a joke, or if they were dealing with a psych case.

Hallie had folded her arms across her chest, and looked down. Though she was seething inwardly, she exuded calm. “The patient is right; I overreacted. Sorry I called you out, but don’t worry. Mr. Silva will be happy to pay all the charges incurred. Won’t you, Alvaro?”

“The hell I will. You’re the one who called nine-one-one.”

Eric looked from one to the other. “Listen, Alvaro, you get any other chest pains, indigestion, whatever, and Dr. Costa here’s not available, don’t hesitate to call. Heart attacks fool a lot of people.”

Hallie nodded. “Thanks again for coming out, guys.”

However, as soon as they’d left the room, she regarded Alvaro coldly. “Put your shirt on and get out.”

“What? I thought you were giving me an EKG. You heard Eric. Better to be safe than—”

“Yeah, I heard him. And I think we’ll both be a lot safer when you’re out of my office. You’ve wasted enough of my time, Alvaro.” She spoke firmly, refusing to show how shaken she was by his theatrics, and by the way his scent reminded her of Gus.

But as she was exiting the examining room, Alvaro reached out and seized her by the arm. “Meet me at Cantelli’s at five—before the place fills up. There’s something I need to say to you, and it’s been a long time coming.”

A
t first she thought Alvaro had
stood her up, but then she saw him at a small table in the corner, his eyes flaming over the small votive candle. There were two martinis before him.

“What’s this?” Hallie said, feeling annoyed as she slipped into a seat that faced the window. “You ordered for me?”

He lifted his glass in a mock elegance as if to toast her. “I figured this was something a lady like you would drink. You and Wolfman’s son.”

“Leave Sam out of it, okay? You know nothing about my ex-husband.” She put up a finger and signaled the waitress. “What’ve you got on tap, Julie?”

Alvaro guzzled his martini as Hallie waited for her beer. He pushed the empty glass to the edge of the table before he reached for Hallie’s.

“They’re supposed to be sipped,” she said. “And do you have to look at me like that? It’s unnerving.”

“
Unnerving
,” Alvaro repeated. “Good word. I bet you and Wolfman’s son used it a lot when you sat around drinking beer in your penthouse, pretending you were regular people.
Unnerving
that your old boyfriend was charged with murder. So
unnerving
that you had to go into that courtroom and talk about how he tried to kill you, too.
Unnerving
to watch the best guy you or I or anyone else ever met sit there and forgive you. Even as you were sending him to hell. And then when he was sentenced to life, my, my—I bet that was
unnerving
as hell. You and Junior probably had
two
martinis that night.”

His voice rose a little higher every time he pronounced the word:
unnerving
. Hallie felt people watching them, though she refused to look back.

“You know what I don’t understand? Why you hate me so much. We always got along when we were kids, didn’t we?”

“I don’t hate you, Hallie. I just love my cousin.”

“
And you think I don’t?
” Hallie whispered. It was the first time she’d admitted the truth out loud—or even in the privacy of her heart—in years. Maybe not since she ran away from Gus on the beach.

“If you loved him, you would have believed him.”

“What are you talking about? You know I believed him. I got on the stand and—”

“You got on the stand and finished him, is what you did.”

“That’s ridiculous, Alvaro. I—” Hallie began, but the blaze of anger in Alvaro’s eyes stopped her.

“They had a lot of evidence against him, but they had no body. He might have got off—until the tall, blond doctor walked to the stand in her red suit. So sincere. So reluctant. So fucking
sorry.
If you looked at the jury when you were testifying, you would have seen the turn. Something hardened in them then and there. There was no coming back from that, Hallie. Gus knew it; I knew it; and if you were honest with yourself, you’d know it, too.”

“How can you say that? You were there. You know what I did. I practically perjured myself trying to help him.”

The infamous Silva rage flared, and Alvaro slammed the table so hard that his martini glass toppled and shattered. When the waitress made a tentative step toward them, he stopped her with a look. “Shit, Hallie, it wasn’t what you said. It was
you.
Anyone watching you on that stand could tell you didn’t believe him. You loved him—I suppose even your idiot husband could see that—but you’d seen his other side; you knew what he was capable of.”

“I didn’t think he was guilty. Jesus, Alvaro, I
didn’t
,” Hallie said weakly. But then the image of Gus heaving Neil’s body against the Jeep rose to her mind. The memory of Neil’s blank eyes, his flaccid body. It was the same memory that had rattled her when she was on the stand. She covered her face with her hands and started to cry.

“I didn’t want to believe it. God, I would have given anything to be sure he didn’t do it. But I wasn’t. I just wasn’t,” she said when she looked up. The restaurant was beginning to fill, and again she felt the other customers watching her. Hallie Costa, drinking with Gus’s cousin and weeping openly. But she didn’t care.

“No crying, okay,” Alvaro said, softening. “You’re making a fucking scene. And besides, I can’t deal with a woman bawling.”

“There was so much evidence, Alvaro. And I couldn’t help but remember that night—how crazy he got. How could you be so sure?”

“Because I asked him, that’s how. Gus may be a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. And besides, he’s blood. If he was bullshitting me, I would have known.”

“If I could have talked to him like you did, if I saw him even once . . .” Hallie said. “I would have fought to get him a new trial. I would’ve hired private detectives. I would never have given up. You must know that, Alvaro. But I was afraid if we dug too deeply, we might find something—I don’t know—even more incriminating.”

“So what if you did? He’s doing life, no parole, Hallie. Were you afraid they’d add another hundred years onto his sentence?”

“It couldn’t get any worse for Gus, but there are so many people who believe in him. People who love him, Alvaro. They would be shattered if it turned out he was guilty.”

Again, Alvaro pounded the table. “For Christ sake, admit it, Hallie.
You’re
the one who would have been shattered. The people who are sure of his innocence—people like me and Gallagher, Jack and that kid who seems to think she’s his stepdaughter or something—we got nothing to fear. We been saying ‘bring it on’ since the trial. The only one who would be shattered is the one who wants to believe Gus is innocent, wants to with all her heart, but can’t shake her doubts.” Alvaro reached out and covered her hand with his own.

“
Come on, Hallie
,” he said more gently. “What did I tell you about this crying shit?”

“The way he turned his back on everyone—I don’t know, Alvaro, it felt almost like he was hiding something. You’re right. I was afraid to know the truth. I was a coward.”

Alvaro squeezed her hand and then released it. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? For one thing, Gus
was
hiding something. And after all these years, everyone stopped writing to him. I mean, you can only carry on a one-way conversation for so long. As far as that crap about you being a coward, everyone in this town knows—

But Hallie had stopped listening. “What do you mean he’s hiding something? Something about the crime?”

“Yeah, something about the crime all right. But not the one Gus committed. The one that was committed against him the day they locked him up for something he didn’t do. He didn’t want you to see what living in that place did to him, Hallie. He couldn’t stand for anyone else he loves to know who he had become.”

Finally, the rage in Alvaro’s eyes was quieted. “If we talked before, we might have cleared this up a long time ago . . . but like my girlfriend says, maybe things happen for a reason.”

“Gus would call it
God’s will
,” Hallie said bitterly.

“And I’d call it timing. The last time I visited Gus, a little over a week ago, we were just sittin’ there, not talking much—we don’t usually—when all of a sudden, he looks over and asks about you.”

“He did?” When Hallie looked down, her hands were shaking.

“He didn’t say much. Just asked if I ever saw you, or how you were doing, something like that. But anyway, I’ve been thinkin’ about it. I don’t know if you’d even want to after all these years, but maybe you could write to him one more time.”

“Did he say he wanted to hear from me?”

“Nope. Nothin’ like that. But it was the first time since my dad died that he actually asked about someone from town. I don’t want to get your hopes up, because he’ll probably blow you off just like he does with everyone else. But then again, he might not.”