Beth rolled her head around, looking at anything and everything in the conference room except her mother and sister. I told him he was as sexy as leftover meat loaf, she said very matter-of-factly. I told him Id be perfectly happy if he never touched me again as long as I lived. I told him he was useless as a father and I couldnt stand the way he smelled.
Josie shut her eyes for a second and thought, /Sweet Mother of Jesus./ Okay. Anything else? She couldnt believe she dared to ask.
Yeah. I told him I only married him because I knew hed take care of me financially. I told him I settled when I married him. That he didnt excite me and never really had.
Josie bit her bottom lip so hard she tasted blood. She glanced briefly at her mother, whose mouth was pulled into a narrow white line of distress.
Okay. So did you mean any of it?
Beth let out a groan. No! Maybe some of it. I dont know. I just She looked up at Josie with an expression of bewilderment. I think somethings wrong with me, Josie. Ive been so unhappy. Miserable. I ache all over. Im exhausted. Some days I cant even walk up the stairs. Some days I dont… I cant… I dont even like my own babies! Ive been too angry and tired to love my own kids!
Josie reached out and caught her sister as she fell forward into her arms. Josies mom leaned over and kissed the top of Beths head and handed her youngest child a stack of tissues. Beth cried and cried. Eventually, Josie patted her sister on the shoulder and asked, Whens the last time you went to the doctor, Beth?
She blew her nose in a tissue and shrugged. Whenever Chloes last checkup was, when she had her last round of vaccinations. I dont knowthree months ago or something?
Was that the pediatrician?
Beth nodded.
No, Beth. Im talking about /you/. When is the last time you went to a doctor and had a complete physical?
She looked at Josie like she was speaking a foreign language. Uh, when I was in college? I dont knowit had to be before I got pregnant with Calvin. But Ive been to the obstetrician more times than Id like to remember.
Calvin is almost four, Josie said.
Beth nodded, then blew her nose again.
Mom, she needs an appointment to see her doctor. In the meantime, Josie looked at her sister, Ill talk to Howie if its okay with you. Ill explain whats happening and ask him to hang in there.
Beth blew her nose yet again. I think it might be too late, but thanks, Josie. That would be great. Then Beth mumbled, Im sorry if Ive been mean to you, too.
Josie nearly laughed. Shed been waiting for that particular apology for thirty-one years, and now that shed gotten it, it didnt seem important.
She walked her mother and sister to the elevators and headed back to the newsroom.
As she passed Denises desk, Josie said, Listen, if anyone else comes up here looking for me, tell them Im at a funeral home convention or something.
Will do, Denise said.
Josie made a sharp U-turn. Oh, unless its a really handsome man with gorgeous green eyes and a serpent tattoo that runs up the left side of his neckyou can send him right on back to my cubicle!
Yeah, right. Denise laughed like that was the funniest thing shed ever heard. You are such a riot, Josie, she said.
CHAPTER 12
Bennett Cummings opted for the northern route. There was no particular reason, other than it was spring, and on a northern route hed be able to witness the earth coming alive one last time. It would be his sixty-seventh cycle of changenot bad, really. It wasnt as long a life as the fellows in the actuarial department might have selected for himwith his excellent health and impeccable lifestyle habitsbut not too shabby, either. Sixty-seven springs had been his to treasure, no matter what happened.
Besides, hed never really taken the time to see the country. In his forty years of business travel hed only become familiar with five-star hotel suites, private airstrips, Michelin-rated restaurants, and the inside of banks, boardrooms, and manufacturing plants. Their exact geographic location had rarely mattered to him.
And so it was that he found himself just west of Albany around dinnertime. It was a rather cloudy day, with a few sprinkles hitting the windshield, when he stopped at a family restaurant off the interstate.
He ordered the fish special. He should have known better, of course, considering how far inland hed come. But he topped it off with a piece of warm cherry pie with vanilla ice cream, accompanied by a strong cup of coffee, which more than made up for the fish.
Bennett didnt know how many hours hed be able to drive after sundown.
His eyesight wasnt as keen as it had once been, and he found the reflection of headlights on wet pavement especially distracting, but he decided to keep going until he absolutely had to rest.
There was something thrilling about this kind of existence, Bennett decided. He was an everyman, a shadow among shadows, guided only by his preferences and the limits of his physical stamina. It was freeing. He wished hed tried this sooner.
The sky turned completely black by eight P.M. The rain was coming down harder, and he squinted between sweeps of the windshield wipers. He and the gardeners car had become old friends in the last couple hundred miles, and hed decided the situation was comical, really. The tires were just shy of dangerously worn. The shift did indeed stick, and not just when putting it in reverse. The alternator needed to be replaced, yes, but so did the wipers and a dozen other components. The heater was intermittently overzealous and the defrost had a mind of its own. And here he was, Bennett Cummings, suffering through all this inconvenience while he owned seven luxury vehicles and had reserved a private jet that, along with its three shifts of personnel, sat idle in a Providence hangar at the rate of seventy-six thousand a day.
The cat-and-mouse nature of all this made Bennett smile. Of course Rick Rousseau was keeping an eye on him. He knew that Rick would know the second any flight plans were filed for that jet. All the financial and technological resources at Rousseaus disposal would make it easy to track Bennetts cars, as well. But a 1991 Skylark with a bum defrost? A guy in a ball cap eating substandard fish at a diner outside of Albany?
No. Rick Rousseau would be blind to Bennetts movements.
The rain continued, and Bennett couldnt help but recall that it was a night like this one that had changed his life. The phone call came just before midnight. The Rhode Island State Police said their daughter had been injured in a motorcycle crash on a rainy country road. She was still alive, but shed suffered what the doctors called a traumatic brain injury. The driver of the motorcycle had just died in surgery, they added.
It was one of those moments in a mans life that went beyond rational explanation. The police hadnt said who owned the motorbike, but Bennett instinctively knew it was Rick Rousseau. The truly strange thing was that Rousseau hadnt been in Margots orbit for a decade or more, not since hed gotten her pregnant in college. But Bennett had recently heard that the young man was back from his travels, and somehow, he put the two events together in his mind. As Bennett and Julia drove to the emergency room that night, he took some comfort knowing that justice had been handed down by the universe. Rousseau had been punishedhe was dead!
But Margot was alive, and Bennett would spend every dime he had to ensure shed be as good as new, as quickly as possible.
Hed failed, of course. Margot was never good again. The ultimate betrayal was that doctors had the skills to drag Rousseau back from the dead, but they left Bennetts little girl to wither away in a coma. Hed remained hopeful during those long seven years. Bennett never gave up, not like Julia did with her pills and her private world. Bennett visited the nursing facility twice a week, every week, and with each medical consultation he demanded his daughter be kept alive with every trick in the book. He knew a miracle was just around the corner.