Maddy laughed in spite of the ache that had stayed in her throat. It was probably true. Jody knew virtually everyone in San Ramon.
"So… do you think you'll ever see him again?" Jody asked.
Smiling wryly, Maddy shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Why not?" Jody sounded as wistful as a child denied a chance to meet Santa Claus.
But Maddy only smiled and gave Jody an enigmatic shrug. She didn't feel like trying to explain to her blithe and effusive friend that the only way she was likely to see Zack London again was if something happened that she hoped would never, never happen.
Fifteen minutes later she let herself into her house and made straight for the blinking message machine, scooping up Bosley on the way. She was feeling, not so much depressed, as… wistful.
"It's too bad," Jody had told her one day, "that you don't have a personality to match your looks."
"Well, your looks don't match your personality either," Maddy had pointed out.
"I know." Jody had sighed, gazing down sadly at her comfortably plump and rumpled self. "There is no justice. With your looks I could have either been a movie star or married a prince!"
"But Jody," Maddy had said, smiling, "you did marry a prince."
"Yes," Jody had agreed smugly, in that purring tone she acquired whenever she spoke of Mike. "I did, didn't I? Which just goes to show you-looks ain't everything!"
"No," Maddy said softly now to Bosley. "Looks sure don't ensure happiness, do they? Look at Zack…"
Look at me.
For once, the dragon had nothing to say. Maddy sighed and flipped the message button.
Moments later she was on her way back out the front door, and Bosley was draped haphazardly on his stand, swaying slightly in the breeze of her departure.
When Maddy drove into the parking lot of the San Ramon Municipal Park she wasn't sure what to expect. All Zack's message had said was, "Can you come to the pool before one-thirty? I think there's something you ought to see."
She couldn't understand what had made her heart jump like a startled rabbit at the sound of his voice on her answering machine, but it had been racing as if a pack of hounds was in hot pursuit ever since. And now, as she sat in her car, staring at the glass front of the pool building, she felt almost afraid. She'd been scared the last time she'd sat here, too, but that had been different. That had been butterflies, the cold sick dread she'd grown accustomed to over the years. Right now she felt hot and shaky and confused.
In the last few days, she realized, her emotions had been under almost constant bombardment. She was beginning to feel besieged. She knew that the kind of work she did required a certain degree of insulation in order to survive it. People who let themselves get emotionally involved tended to burn out pretty quickly. Maddy had always managed to keep herself at arm's length-literally. Her puppets were her buffer. Which was really ironic, she thought, when you stopped to consider it. The very tools she used to reach those terrified and withdrawn kids kept her from being reached by them.
But that was before Theresa. How had that kid managed to get under her defenses like that? All because she'd made the mistake of trying to tackle an old hang-up. It had turned out to be like nudging the first in a lineup of dominoes. Her fear had made her sensitive to the embarrassment of being in the wrong class, and fear and embarrassment had made her vulnerable. And in that state she'd allowed one small brown hand to reach out and touch her. Touch her- not Bosley, or one of the other puppets. And she hadn't been prepared for what happened to her heart when she first looked down into those big, lost eyes…
And then, on top of that, to be confronted with Zack London, literally in the flesh! And to suffer the unspeakable indignity of passing out cold in his arms! She'd already arrived at the realization that it had to have been Zack who had carried her into the office that day, Zack who had wrapped her in a blanket and placed her on the cot. And after all that, knowing who he was now and what had happened to him… Well, it was no wonder she was feeling nervous and awkward. Anyone would. As for getting the shakes at the sound of his voice, of course it was because she'd immediately realized he could only be calling about Theresa.
Maddy pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Oh, how she'd prayed she was wrong about Theresa. But it couldn't be anything else. Zack wouldn't call her for any other reason. Unless-her heart gave a hopeful lurch-he'd found an adult swim class for her after all! Maybe that was it. Maybe-
She reached for the car-door handle, then stopped. Theresa had come out of the pool building. She looked incredibly tiny, standing there in her yellow bathing suit and sandals, holding a towel around her shoulders like a cape. So small and unprotected. Maddy's heart ached as she watched the little girl search the parking lot, then begin to descend the steps one at a time, her sandals making slapping sounds on the cement.
Maddy sat very still, hardly breathing, as the child came slowly toward her. For a few moments she thought Theresa had seen and recognized her and was coming over to say hello. When she heard a man's voice, rough and impatient, coming from the car right next to hers, she was so startled, she jumped and banged her crazy bone on the door handle.
"Hey, come on. Get a move on!"
Theresa looked up, and Maddy's body went cold. She felt like a great big exposed nerve. One side of the little girl's face was discolored from temple to jaw. Her lip was swollen and the outer part of the white of her eye was blood red.
Fighting the urge to jump out of the car and grab the child, Maddy shifted her gaze to the fragile little hands. She saw them grip the chrome door handle and struggle to open the heavy door, then appear again on the windowsill as they tugged the door shut. Maddy caught one brief glimpse of a swarthy face, dark, curly hair, and a moustache. Then the car roared away.
And still Maddy sat, unable to move.
"You saw?" a voice asked. Zack was leaning over, looking at her through her open window.
She nodded, still staring straight ahead. "It's… different," she said in a low voice, "when you… when you…"
"When you're personally involved. Yeah, I can imagine." He put his hands on the windowsill, then reached for the handle and pulled the door open.
Maddy jerked her head sideways but still didn't look at him. "How do you know?"
His voice was grim. "I have a very vivid imagination. And I haven't done much else since you told me what you do, dammit, except imagine it. Come on. Let's go inside and talk about this. I'll get you a drink of water."
Maddy finally looked at him and felt a wave of shame. At least she'd had experience with this kind of thing. She'd had some warning, some preparation. Zack hadn't. His face looked like bleached bone.
Without a word she nodded and got stiffly out of the car.
As Zack followed Maddy into the pool office he was experiencing a particularly frustrating and futile kind of rage. It was a feeling he'd only had once before in his life.
"How do you take that, day in and day out?" He threw the question at her angrily, almost as an accusation. He found himself resenting her ability to "take it." Dammit, it seemed almost a kind of complicity. And it only enraged him further that she just looked at him with compassion in response to his rudeness, as if she understood how badly he needed to hit out at someone-anyone.
"I'll make this report, if you like," she said in a low voice. "Your name doesn't even have to be on it."
He stared at her. "What the hell do you mean? I want my name on it! I'd like to personally strangle with my bare hands whoever did that!"