Virtue Falls (11 page)

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Yvonne patted her arm. “Charles Banner is a sweetheart through and through.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re too trusting.”

“Really? Do you think your mother would continue to hang around him if he had killed her?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Had working here in this place of ephemeral minds and memories robbed this nurse of her sanity? “My mother’s dead,” Elizabeth explained carefully.

“He talks to her sometimes, and looks at this empty space beside him like she’s there.” Yvonne nodded her head as if that explained everything.

“Well. He does have Alzheimer’s.”

“I know.” Yvonne looked at her, her brown eyes wide and not at all crazy. “Today, right before the quake, Mr. Banner was sitting in the dining room eating his meal with Mr. Cook carrying on behind him, and all of a sudden your father did that thing where he was talking to the air.”

Elizabeth needed to clarify. “You mean, he thought he was talking to my mother?”

“I’d say so, because he nodded, like he was agreeing, got up, and moved close to the wall. Cocky as a bantam rooster, Mr. Cook sat down in Charles’s seat like he was proud of chasing him away. And the earthquake hit.
Boom!
” Yvonne clapped her hands. “Everybody staggered or fell over. But the only place the ceiling came down was onto your father’s chair. Ceiling tiles, steel support—
slam!
—knocked Mr. Cook out cold. We sent him to the hospital with a concussion and a broken collarbone for sure, and heaven knows what other injuries. If Charles had stayed at the table, if he would have been the one injured … He’s a slighter man, more frail than Mr. Cook. I think the ceiling collapse would have killed your father.”

“So you’re saying you believe my mother warned him to move?”

“How else can you explain it?”

“Coincidence. Or luck.” Yvonne’s conviction made Elizabeth uncomfortable.

“Or your mother is with him. If I loved a man, and he had suffered for a crime he didn’t commit, I wouldn’t leave him to die alone. I’d come back for a visit, too.”

It had been a very long, odd day, and in this silent nursing home filled with empty corridors and snoring patients, Elizabeth began to feel as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. “Perhaps he deserves to suffer. Perhaps he thinks she’s here because he’s guilty and he knows it.”

“Perhaps.” Yvonne seemed none-too-worried about Elizabeth’s skepticism. “You’re stuck here tonight, I think.”

Elizabeth thought of the treacherous road back to town, and what was left of her apartment. She looked at her hand, still wrapped in a stiff, dried blood bandage. “I … yes, I think so. If you have extra blankets, I can sleep anywhere.”

“We’ve got the staff bathroom where you can shower, and sack out in the room behind the nurses’ station. We all use it when we pull a double shift and have to catch a few hours of shut-eye. The cot isn’t any too comfortable, but it’s better than nothing.”

“But if I sleep there, you won’t be able to lie down.”

Yvonne sighed. “I can’t lie down anyway. There’s no staff to replace me. What did you do to your hand?”

“Glass. During the earthquake.”

“Come on. I’ll look at it.” Yvonne led her to the nurses’ station at the junction of three long corridors, and peeled off the bandage. While Elizabeth steadfastly stared over Yvonne’s head, she examined the cut. “It’s deep,” Yvonne said. “You really need a doctor, but you’re stuck with the medical staff we have here.” She glanced at Elizabeth’s stiff face. “Don’t worry, we’re good. Here, I’ll page Sheila. Even after all these hours on duty, she’s got a steady hand. Of course, she’s younger than me.”

Yvonne did have dark circles under her eyes, her brown hair hung limply in a ponytail down her back, and when she was not animated, her jaw sagged as if keeping it tightly closed was too much effort. But no matter what, she looked kind, and remembering how thoroughly she had championed Charles Banner, Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a warmth for the woman, reluctant perhaps, but real nonetheless.

Elizabeth gazed around at the long, dim corridors that seemed to stretch forever, and said, “I suppose, in this lonely atmosphere where minds silently leave the body early, reality and fantasy are blended, and death picks off the living one by one … I suppose ghosts can slip unseen along the halls.” She stopped, startled to hear herself say such things.

Yvonne gazed at her almost fondly. “I did not believe what they say in town, that you’re all science and smarts without a lick of emotion. I guess I was right.”

“I suppose I, um, have the occasional lick.” Although Elizabeth didn’t want to, she glanced toward her father’s room. She didn’t want to have any emotion at all. Pleasant emotion—hope and love—always backfired and became pain. Always. “Do you know, is your family and your home okay?”

“My husband’s a trucker, and on the road, so he’s fine. The kids are grown and out of state. We’ve been meaning to take out the cedar that sits close to the house because it leans, and it’s probably landed on the roof. But it will be what it will be.” Yet Yvonne sighed and glanced toward the windows as if to bely her untroubled attitude. Then she looked at Elizabeth, and her eyes sharpened. “What about you?”

“My apartment’s gone. I don’t know where I’ll stay after tonight. A shelter, I suppose.”

“Stay at the resort.”

“The resort? Virtue Falls Resort?” Elizabeth blinked. “I can’t do that.”

“Didn’t I hear you were married to old Mrs. Smith’s foster son?” At the shock on Elizabeth’s face, Yvonne laughed. “Your father told me.”

“How did he know?”

“Prisoners do have access to the Internet, and you are his daughter. He kept up with you. Knew all about how you graduated from high school a year early, and your studies and degrees. He knew when you took this job, and he was tickled about it.” Yvonne made it sound absolutely reasonable.

Elizabeth found it unnerving. She had an Internet stalker, and it was her father.

Yvonne apparently misunderstood Elizabeth’s discomfort, for she hastened to reassure her. “I don’t think he told anyone else who you had married, and I haven’t said a word.”

“We’re divorced, and I … I have not been to see Mrs. Smith. I only met her the time she came down to visit, and it seems presumptuous of me to assume a family connection when I’m the one who severed it.” Elizabeth could not have been more uncomfortable.

Yvonne waved away her objection. “I see Mrs. Smith at church, and she’s an old-time Catholic. If you were once married to Garik, then in the eyes of God, you’re still married to Garik. So you’re family, and she’ll take you in.”

Elizabeth would have argued, but Sheila arrived from some far corner of some far wing, walking silently in rubber-soled work shoes, wearing yet another flowered smock and those green scrub pants.

The two women held a whispered consultation, then with a wave, Yvonne disappeared back the way Sheila had come.

Sheila thoroughly cleaned the cut on Elizabeth’s hand, and didn’t mock Elizabeth when the blood welled and Elizabeth found herself reclining on the linoleum, head spinning. Sheila used a butterfly bandage to close it, and gave her a shot that she sternly told Elizabeth was nothing, while showing her a bottle that identified the injection as an antibiotic.

“I understand,” Elizabeth said. “As a nurse, you’re not allowed to prescribe such medication without a physician’s order, but you fear the infection from the cut will make me ill unless you take action now.”

Sheila stared at her, shook her head, then leaned over and pressed her hand against Elizabeth’s shoulder. “I never gave you a shot.”

“You never gave me a shot,” Elizabeth repeated obediently. “Thank you.”

“Stay on the floor. I’ll send Yvonne back for you.” Sheila went down the hallway, as quiet as one of the ghosts Yvonne said haunted the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility.

Spooky thought. Spooky place. Didn’t matter. The hours of stress caught up with Elizabeth, and her eyes drooped and closed.

When something touched her arm, she woke with a gasp.

“It’s just me,” Yvonne said soothingly.

Elizabeth sat up, then stood up and swayed. “Earthquake?” she said.

“No, it’s you. You’re wiped out.” Yvonne opened a supply closet and handed her a clean gown and robe. “Here. You can sleep in this.”

Wide-eyed, Elizabeth looked at it, and wondered who had worn it last.

“It’s new,” Yvonne said. “We get donations.”

“Okay. Thank you.” Although it was irrational, Elizabeth was uncomfortable wearing a gown in which one of the patients had died.

“The staff bathroom is there. The cot is there.” Yvonne pointed at the two doors behind the nurses’ station.

“Do you mind if I charge my phone and camera? You’ve got power and I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to—”

“Of course. Give me the cables and equipment and I’ll plug them in.”

“Thank you, and thank you for, um, taking care of…” Elizabeth jerked her head toward Charles.

“Your father?”

“Yes. Thank you for taking care of my father.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

Elizabeth stared, not sure if Yvonne was joking or not.

“Oh, honey. You poor thing.” Yvonne embraced her as if she couldn’t stand not to. “Taking care of your father is what I’m here for.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Several hours later, Elizabeth came out of a sound sleep and into a state of frozen terror.

Without even opening her eyes, she knew someone stood over the top of her.

Her father. Holding the blood-drenched scissors.

She couldn’t look. She didn’t dare. Didn’t not dare.

She’d had this nightmare before, and it was never true.

So she forced her eyes open.

And there he was. He really was, her father, leaning over her, the night-light at the nurses’ station glowing around him, leaving his face in darkness.

Elizabeth tried to scream. But as in every other nightmare she’d ever had, her throat was too tight. Although she opened her mouth and strained, no sound came out. She was mute in the face of death.

“Shh.” Charles put his finger to his lips and drew back. “It’s coming.”

“What?” she whispered. She didn’t want to startle him into action.

“The aftershock.” As he spoke, the earth began to tremble, just slightly, enough to rock the cot.

“Yeah.” Elizabeth glanced past him toward the nurses’ station.

The shaking increased.

Yvonne was sitting in the desk chair, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin resting on her chest.

No one could sleep through this. She was dead.

No. There was no blood. And she was snoring.

An exhausted nurse can sleep through an aftershock. Yvonne
was
sleeping through an aftershock.

The earth’s trembling faded.

Yvonne’s head rolled as she rode the fading trembler. The trembler Charles had known about before it arrived.

Coincidence. It had to be coincidence.

“About a four-point-five, I think,” he said. “Although that’s difficult to judge without a seismograph.”

“How did you know there would be one?”

“Misty told me.”

Elizabeth eyed him. Eyed the door. Tried to figure out if she could make it past him before he caught her.

Charles collapsed onto the floor and crossed his legs. He pushed his black-rimmed glasses up on his nose, and viewed her with the bright-eyed excitement of an old gray squirrel. “That earthquake yesterday evening was the one we’ve been waiting for. The big one.”

Elizabeth deliberately calmed herself. Hysteria wasn’t going to help. Screaming would only upset the patients. And Yvonne needed her sleep.

Misty told him
. Okay. Yvonne had said he was suffering from hallucinations. There was no reason to freak because he … he said Elizabeth’s long-dead mother was talking to him.

No, the reason to freak was because Misty correctly predicted earthquakes.

Slowly, making no sudden moves, Elizabeth lifted herself on her elbow and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Do you, um, see Mama often?”

Charles tilted his head and stared at Elizabeth as if he was trying to place her. Then his smile blossomed. “Of course. You’re my daughter. You’re all grown up now.”

“Yes.”

“I should have known. You’re beautiful. You look like Misty when she was your age.”

Thoughtlessly, Elizabeth said, “She didn’t live to be as old as I am now.”

His eyes, magnified by his glasses, grew wide. “I don’t understand.”

Did he not remember? Or was he lying? After all, the man who had murdered her mother would think nothing of lying about it. He had always denied his guilt.

Elizabeth had a weapon. A knife. In her backpack. A long, sturdy pocket knife she used to cut rope, twigs, dig in the dirt if she had to. And she knew how to use it to defend herself. Garik had taught her that. Garik had insisted on teaching her that.

Charles seemed oblivious to Elizabeth’s alarm. He placed his elbow on his knee, cupped his chin in his hand, and looked disarmingly like a skinny, elderly elf. “I met Misty when she was twenty,” he said. “Did you know that?”

Elizabeth shook her head. When and where her parents had met and why they had married was a mystery to her. She couldn’t ask her aunt Sandy. Aunt Sandy always acted stricken and upset when Elizabeth talked about her mother, as if Elizabeth didn’t understand her sorrow … no, as if Elizabeth had no reason for sorrow. As if Misty’s death had had no effect on Elizabeth’s life.

Aunt Sandy guarded her memories like a hostile pit bull over a meaty bone. She did not share.

Now someone was offering Elizabeth the memories; a man who inspired such mixed feelings that she now, with the greatest of caution, opened her backpack and searched with her hand for the hilt of her knife. “How did you meet my mother?” She kept her voice polite, interested, enthusiastic.

“I was a guest professor at Berkeley for a year.”

She brushed her hand over the fake leather of her photo album. If forced, she could use that as a shield if he went for her throat. “Did you like to teach?”