“What a wonderful day,” Gujilio said, “a special day. I hope for everyone's sake it goes as smooth as glass.”
The attorney donated a certain number of hours a week to St. Thomas's Church and the orphanage. He appeared to take great satisfaction in connecting adoptive parents with disabled kids.
“Regina's on her way from the ladies,” Gujilio told them. “She stopped to chat a moment with my receptionist, that's all. She's nervous, I think, trying to delay a little longer until she has her courage screwed up as far as it'll go. She'll be here in a moment.”
Hatch looked at Lindsey. She smiled nervously and took his hand.
“Now, you understand,” Salvatore Gujilio said, looming over them like one of those giant balloons in a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, “that the point of this meeting is for you to get to know Regina and for her to get to know you. Nobody makes a decision right here, today. You go away, think about it, and let us know tomorrow or the day after whether this is the one. The same goes for Regina. She has a day to think about it.”
“It's a big step,” Father Jiminez said.
“An enormous step,” Sister Immaculata concurred.
Squeezing Hatch's hand, Lindsey said, “We understand.”
The Nun with No Name went to the door, opened it, and peered down the hallway. Evidently Regina was not in sight.
Rounding his desk, Gujilio said, “She's coming, I'm sure.”
The attorney settled his considerable bulk into the executive office chair beside his desk, but because he was six-feet-five, he seemed almost as tall seated as standing. The office was furnished entirely with antiques, and the desk was actually a Napoleon III table so fine that Hatch wished he had something like it in the front window of his shop. Banded by ormolu, the exotic woods of the marquetry top depicted a central cartouche with a detailed musical trophy over a conforming frieze of stylized foliage. The whole was raised on circular legs with acanthus-leaf ormolu joined by a voluted X stretcher centered with an ormolu urn finial, on toupie feet. At every meeting, Gujilio's size and dangerous levels of kinetic energy initially made the desk — and all the antiques — seem fragile, in imminent jeopardy of being knocked over or smashed to smithereens. But after a few minutes, he and the room seemed in such perfect harmony, you had the eerie feeling that he had recreated a decor he had lived with in another — thinner — life.
A soft, distant, but peculiar thud drew Hatch's attention away from the attorney and the desk.
The Nun with No Name turned from the door and hurried back into the room, saying, “Here she comes,” as if she didn't want Regina to think she had been looking for her.
The sound came again. Then again. And again.
It was rhythmic and getting louder.
Thud. Thud.
Lindsey's hand tightened on Hatch's.
Thud. Thud!
Someone seemed to be keeping time to an unheard tune by rapping a lead pipe against the hardwood floor of the hallway beyond the door.
Puzzled, Hatch looked at Father Jiminez, who was staring at the floor, shaking his head, his state of mind not easy to read. As the sound grew louder and closer, Father Duran stared at the half-open hall door with astonishment, as did The Nun with No Name. Salvatore Gujilio rose from his chair, looking alarmed. Sister Immaculata's pleasantly ruddy cheeks were now as white as the linen band that framed her face.
Hatch became aware of a softer scraping between each of the hard sounds.
Thud! Sccccuuuurrrr … Thud! Sccccuuuurrrr …
As the sounds grew nearer, their effect rapidly increased, until Hatch's mind was filled with images from a hundred old horror films: the-thing-from-out-of-the-lagoon hitching crablike toward its prey; the-thing-from-out-of-the-crypt shuffling along a graveyard path under a gibbous moon; the-thing-from-another-world propelling itself on God-knows-what sort of arachnoid-reptilian-horned feet.
THUD!
The windows seemed to rattle.
Or was that his imagination?
Sccccuuuurrrr …
A shiver went up his spine.
THUD!
He looked around at the alarmed attorney, the head-shaking priest, the wide-eyed younger priest, the two pale nuns, then quickly back at the half-open door, wondering just exactly what sort of disability this child had been born with, half expecting a startlingly tall and twisted figure to appear with a surprising resemblance to Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and a grin full of fangs, whereupon Sister Immaculata would turn to him and say, You see, Mr. Harrison, Regina came under the care of the good sisters at Saint Thomas's not from ordinary parents but from a laboratory where the scientists are doing some really interesting genetic research.…
A shadow tilted across the threshold.
Hatch realized that Lindsey's grip on his hand had become downright painful. And his palm was damp with sweat.
The weird sounds stopped. A hush of expectation had fallen over the room.
Slowly the door to the hall was pushed all the way open.
Regina took a single step inside. She dragged her right leg as if it were a dead weight: sccccuuuurrrr. Then she slammed it down: THUD!
She stopped to look around at everyone. Challengingly.
Hatch found it difficult to believe that she had been the source of all that ominous noise. She was small for a ten-year-old girl, a bit shorter and more slender than the average kid her age. Her freckles, pert nose, and beautiful deep-auburn hair thoroughly disqualified her for the role of the-thing-from-the-lagoon or any other shudder-making creature, although there was something in her solemn gray eyes that Hatch did not expect to see in the eyes of a child. An adult awareness. A heightened perceptivity. But for those eyes and an aura of iron determination, the girl seemed fragile, almost frighteningly delicate and vulnerable.
Hatch was reminded of an exquisite 18th-century Mandarin-pattern Chinese-export porcelain bowl currently for sale in his Laguna Beach shop. It rang as sweetly as any bell when pinged with one finger, raising the expectation that it would shatter into thousands of pieces if struck hard or dropped. But when you studied the bowl as it stood on an acrylic display base, the hand-painted temple and garden scenes portrayed on its sides and the floral designs on its inner rim were of such high quality and possessed such power that you became acutely aware of the piece's age, the weight of the history behind it. And you were soon convinced, in spite of its appearance, that it would bounce when dropped, cracking whatever surface it struck but sustaining not even a small chip itself.
Aware that the moment was hers and hers alone, Regina hitched toward the sofa where Hatch and Lindsey waited, making less noise as she limped off the hardwood floor onto the antique Persian carpet. She was wearing a white blouse, a Kelly-green skirt that fell two inches above her knees, green kneesocks, black shoes — and on her right leg a metal brace that extended from the ankle to above the knee and looked like a medieval torture device. Her limp was so pronounced that she rocked from side to side at the hips with each step, as if in danger of toppling over.
Sister Immaculata rose from her armchair, scowling at Regina in disapproval. “Exactly what is the reason for these theatrics, young lady?”
Ignoring the true meaning of the nun's question, the girl said, “I'm sorry I'm so late, Sister. But some days it's harder for me than others.” Before the nun could respond, the girl turned to Hatch and Lindsey, who had stopped holding hands and had risen from the sofa. “Hi, I'm Regina. I'm a cripple.”