Joe didn’t know what to say or what to think. He wasn’t as versed as his wife in the Glasgow Coma Scale, only that Marybeth seemed pleased there was rapid eye movement.
He thought it seemed voyeuristic in a way to watch April’s eyes move underneath her closed lids. He couldn’t help but think of Daisy and Tube when they “chased rabbits” while sleeping. What was she seeing? What was she dreaming?
“April,” Sheridan said softly. “Wake up now. We’re all here.”
April’s expression froze. Joe felt his heart start to break.
Then she opened her eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, and they reminded Joe of the first look that newborn Sheridan had given him in the delivery room twenty-one years ago. She had looked in his direction, but he hadn’t been sure she was really seeing him.
“Mom, Dad,” April said. “How long have I been here?”
Her voice was weak, unpracticed. But lucid.
Lucy said, “Yes,” and grasped her sister’s hand.
“Eleven days,” Marybeth said through tears. “You’ve been here eleven days.”
“Jesus,” April said in a croak. “Where is ‘here’?”
“Billings,” Marybeth said through a crooked smile as she fought back tears. “You’re at the hospital in Billings. You’ve been in a coma so your brain could heal.”
“A coma?”
“Yes.”
“Like the movies,” April said.
Joe heard the doctor chuckle behind him.
“We’re so glad you’re okay, that you’re right here with us,” Marybeth said. “You’ve got some injuries, but you’re healing up. It was always the head injury we were worried about.”
“You’ve been here the whole time?” April said, as if she couldn’t comprehend it.
“Most of it. For moral support, if nothing else. Everyone was praying for you.”
“Well,” April said, “I guess it worked.”
“Do you remember what happened to you?” Marybeth asked.
The doctor stepped forward and placed a hand on Marybeth’s arm. He said, “You might want to give her a chance to get her bearings first.”
“No, I’m okay,” April said. “I remember.”
The doctor stepped back.
April paused for a minute and searched the ceiling. Then her face darkened and she said, “Dallas was driving. We were coming back from the Houston Rodeo and we fought the whole way because I found out the son of a bitch cheated on me. I wanted to come straight home and Dallas wanted to go to his house first. I told him to let me out of the truck then, and he backhanded me.”
Joe jerked back as if he’d been backhanded.
“I got mad and slapped him across the face and told him to stop the truck right there. I was so mad at him I couldn’t see straight. He’d hit me before and he swore it would never happen again, and I’d told him, ‘You’re goddamned right it won’t.’”
April’s filter for cursing hadn’t come out of the coma yet, Joe thought.
Before Marybeth could prompt her to go on, she did: “I got out and started walking. Dallas tried to coax me back into the truck, but I wasn’t having any of that—or him.”
She tried to swallow, and said, “Can I have a drink of water, please?”
Sheridan practically knocked Lucy over to find a water bottle, and she held it to her sister’s mouth while she drank.
“Thanks, Sherry,” April said. “It’s good to see you . . . and even Lucy.”
Lucy smiled through tears at that.
“April, what happened next?” Marybeth asked.
“I walked for a while, but it was getting cold,” she said. “I would have called you guys, but my phone was dead. Then this old crazy asshole pulled up and said he’d give me a ride.”
Joe and Marybeth exchanged looks.
“I wasn’t going to go with him,” April said. “He drove this big Humvee thing that had stickers all over it. I thought he was a creep, but he said he knew you guys really well and he could get me home in ten minutes. I know, Mom, I shouldn’t have gotten in.”
Marybeth could barely speak. She said, “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I know. But I just wanted to get home, you know?”
“What did he do to you?”
“All I can remember is that when I shut the door, he started asking me what I thought about Obama and Bush and 9/11. I told him to shut up, and out of the blue he slugged me on the side of my head. I remember my head hitting the passenger-side window. And I guess he slugged me again after that. I don’t really remember what happened next. He hit me a lot harder than Dallas ever had.”
April indicated to Sheridan she needed another drink of water, and Sheridan gave it to her. When some spilled down the side of her mouth, Sheridan used the edge of the bedsheet to wipe it off.
April turned to Marybeth and said, “I can’t remember anything else. Did he rape me?”
“No. He beat you and dumped you on a county road. You weren’t found until the next day. You could have died of exposure out there.”
April looked to Joe. “Why did he do it?”
“We’ll never know,” he said. “He was crazy. His name was Tilden Cudmore and he hanged himself in his cell.”
Her eyes got wide, then narrowed. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said.
Lucy looked up as if to say, She’s back, all right.
Joe said, “You’re sure about all of this? That it wasn’t Dallas who beat you and dumped you?”
“He punched me for sure,” she said. “And I slapped him a good one and told him to stop the truck. But he went home, I guess, so he could be with his wonderful mama.”
Everyone stood in stunned silence.
Finally, April reached out for Marybeth and they grasped hands.
April said, “I’m never running off with another dumb-ass cowboy for the rest of my life.”
To Lucy, she said, “And don’t you do it, either, girlie.”
Lucy seemed insulted and said, “I’d never do that.”
—
“I HATE TO BREAK THIS UP, I really do,” the doctor said, approaching the bed. “But we’ve got to run a whole bunch of tests right now to make sure everything really is as good as it seems to be.”
As the family filed out of the room, he said to Marybeth, “I’m very optimistic.”
“You hid it well,” she said. “But I am, too.”
In the hallway, Marybeth hugged Sheridan and Lucy and they cried together. Joe backed off and leaned against the radiator with his hands on his hips.
Tilden Cudmore. He’d never believed it.
And neither, he suddenly realized, had Brenda Cates.
“I need to talk to your dad,” Marybeth said to Sheridan and Lucy.
—
THEY STOOD at the railing on the balcony where the janitor had fallen. Joe was surprised the Billings PD had not blocked it off with crime scene tape, and that told him they didn’t consider that a crime had taken place. It was dark on the pavement below and he couldn’t see where the janitor had hit.
A band of pink haloed the eastern rimrocks with the first hint of morning sun. The streets below were virtually absent of cars.
Marybeth said, “Are you going to call Mike Reed?”
“Soon,” Joe said. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what April told us.”
“Why would Dallas let Brenda make it look like he was hurt worse than he was? Why would he go along with that if he didn’t do it?”
Joe shook his head. He said, “I’m speculating, but I think she always thought he did do it, even when he said he didn’t. She knew what he was capable of and she probably figured since he’d backhanded April and kicked her out of his truck—he probably admitted that—she knew he’d be suspected of a much worse crime. And he would have been. She might have thought he didn’t know his own strength and that he could have hurt her worse than he realized—or that he was spinning what really happened into the best possible light. Either way, she convinced Dallas to come up with a whole different scenario—that he’d come home a few days early, that they’d broken up, the whole thing. She was trying to protect him, she thought. And Dallas let himself be protected that way.”