Part 27 (1/2)
Cece fielded that question. ”He's on his way.”
Doc fiddled with the drip hanging by my bed. ”I'm going to give you something more for pain. Just sleep, Sarah Booth. That's the best thing you can do for your body right now.”
There was no time to sleep. My mother was calling me. I was suddenly among the oak trees at Dahlia House, a place behind the family cemetery. When I was a child, I'd gone there to play with the fairies while my mother read books or entertained me with games only the two of us knew. It was our special place.
”Sarah Booth!” She sounded worried.
”I'm here.” I walked among the trees, uninjured, whole and complete. At last I saw her, sitting on her favorite limb, one that swooped to the ground and formed a perfect seat. ”I can't believe you're here.”
And she was. As beautiful as I remembered. The sunlight caught in her dark brown hair, and her eyes danced with laughter. ”You've grown into a fine woman,” she said. ”But I never had a doubt you'd be a looker. You stole your daddy's heart when you were born.”
”You came back to me.” I hardly dared to breathe for fear she'd evaporate. For twenty years I'd hoped for this moment, this time to be with her.
”Only for a short while,” she said. ”Jitty surely has told you there are rules here. I had to break a few even for this brief time.”
”You know about Jitty?”
She laughed. ”I know a lot of things.” Her hand linked with mine and we walked among the shadows cast by the beautiful trees and the dapples of suns.h.i.+ne. ”I know the woman you've become, and I want to tell you I'm proud of you.”
”Why can't you come home if Jitty can?”
She squeezed my hand. ”Sometimes love calls for sacrifice. I never want to encourage you to linger here, waiting and hoping for me. You have to live, Sarah Booth. Waiting for the dead isn't living.”
”Tell me what to do.”
My very serious request was met with laughter. For one split second I was sitting in the kitchen in Dahlia House, home from school, explaining how I'd gotten a spanking for tossing ink on Homer Kilgore. My mother's laugh was rich, warm, effortless. It was that same laugh, as if I'd told a funny story.
”Please, Mama, I need you.”
”No you don't, Sarah Booth. You want me and your father. But you don't need us. And that makes me very happy. This is a hard blow for you. The loss of a child . . .” She searched my face, her hand brus.h.i.+ng a few of my stray hairs out of my eyes as she'd often done when I was young.
”What about the baby?” I asked her.
”You'll grieve, but you'll recover. You're strong, Sarah Booth. And I'll never be far.”
”Why did you have to die in that wreck?” I'd never understood how, out of the night, an accident had happened that changed everything I'd ever known. The Delta is flat. The roads run straight and mostly empty for miles. She and Daddy hadn't been drinking. ”Why did Daddy lose control on a road with perfect visibility?”
”The past is dangerous, Sarah Booth. Don't linger there. No good will come of it. Live in the moment, and know that your father and I are close.”
”Will you come back?”
Instead of answering, she kissed my cheek, the sweet, sad fragrance of jasmine the last part of her to disappear.
25.
When I opened my eyes, it took a moment to realign myself with reality. I was in the hospital. I'd been gravely injured, and I'd lost the baby that I hadn't known I carried.
Listening to the sounds around me, I deduced I was in a private room with the door open. The oxygen mask had been removed. Someone sat beside the bed turning the pages of a magazine.
”Well, dahling, all I can say is that I'm so glad you avoided the draining pustule phase of the toxic mold business. In fact, you're something of a medical miracle.” Cece's voice was very nasal, as if she had a terrible cold. She rose into my line of sight, a copy of Cosmo in one hand and a chilled pink cosmopolitan in the other. Her face was heavily bandaged.
”You had the nose job?”
”And you're lucid, too. How wonderful. Now you can explain your total stupidity in going to the Carlisle place alone.” She took the sting out of her words with air kisses to both my cheeks. ”Dahling, I was dis-traught.”
”How long have I been out?”
She waved away my concern. ”Long enough for Cole-man to send battalions of crop dusters over the Carlisle plantation. That's all you've missed. I swear.”
”I need to talk to Coleman.” I remembered the key ring; he had to pursue that lead.
”Oh, there was something else. Bonnie Louise McRae has disappeared, and they finally found a witness in Jackson who saw Erin Carlisle arrive at her photography studio about fifteen minutes before I got there. She unlocked the front door and went inside. Coleman believes her abductors were already there, waiting to ambush her.”
”And then the woman posed as Erin and they attacked you.” My mind was a little fuzzy, but I'd put a few things together.
”Janks knew I meant to talk to Erin about the development deal.” Cece tried to hide her feelings with a breezy att.i.tude. ”I've gone over every single thing he told me, and I still can't find anything that would provoke Erin's abduction . . .”
”Or the severe beating you got.” I s.h.i.+fted so that I my head was raised. Obligingly, Cece stuffed a pillow behind me. ”Cece, Lester Ballard is dead. They could have killed you.”
”And Tinkie would have thrown herself on the pyre as a martyr to guilt. You ladies do guilt like no one else.” Cece had recovered her droll tone and unflappable att.i.tude. She was full of juicy tidbits--though she was doling them our like expensive caviar. The whole case would be solved and I would be lying in bed, whimpering whenever I had to get up to pee.
”Did Coleman find Erin?”
This time Cece wasn't so pert. ”Coleman is afraid she's dead.”
My body ached and my head throbbed. Moving set off jolts of pain, but I struggled to sit up completely. ”I have to speak with Coleman right now.”
Cece pressed the nurse call b.u.t.ton. ”Doc wants to talk to you first. He told me to notify him as soon as you regained your faculties. Of course, I told him that would be the Twelfth of Never because you'd always been half a bubble off. Still, he insisted he had to speak with you on a matter of great urgency.” She worked hard to entertain and never let the conversation s.h.i.+ft to the place where it eventually had to go.
”I'm not in a mood to be fussed at.” I couldn't bear it if Doc confronted me about what had happened in that cotton field.
Cece's sophisticated facade cracked--as did her voice. ”No one is going to fuss at you, Sarah Booth. I'll tear out their vocal chords. We're all so very sorry.”
I held up a hand. ”Do not go there.” I knew what had occurred, but somehow, I had to keep the full impact of it at bay. If one person offered sympathy or tenderness or compa.s.sion, I would be overwhelmed by emotion.
”I understand.” She tapped on a page of the magazine she held. ”As soon as the swelling goes down in my new face, I'm going to buy this dress.”
Even beaten, bandaged, and bruised, Cece could shop. I, on the other hand, was feeling out the edges of a black, consuming fury. While I couldn't begin to deal with the loss of my baby, I could relish the idea of revenge.
There was a rap on the door and Coleman entered. Something pa.s.sed between him and Cece, and she picked up her magazine and empty cosmopolitan gla.s.s. ”I need to call the photographer at the newspaper to bring another drink--I need more anesthesia. Rhinoplasty may be considered elective surgery, but, dahling, it hurts like h.e.l.l.” She sashayed out the door.
Coleman seemed to fill the room, and I could find nothing to say that wouldn't open a floodgate of emotion. I couldn't even look at him.
His hand covered mine on the sheet. ”When I saw you in the field, with all that blood, I thought you were dead. I've never felt such--I'm sorry about the baby.” He stopped to clear his throat.
”Thank you for finding me, Coleman, but please, let's don't talk about it.” I stared at the white sheet that covered my legs and stomach. Someone, I realized, had brought a beautiful green satin pajama set and dressed me. The 1940s Hollywood design was cla.s.sic Cece. She did more than look at fas.h.i.+on magazines--she purchased from them.