More vomit on the floor.
Cal went back outside, sat down on the step next to Crystal.
“Do you feel sick?” he asked her.
“I feel sad.”
“I know. But do you feel sick in your stomach, like you’re going to throw up?”
“You think I caught what Mom got?”
“I just want to make sure you’re feeling okay.”
“I guess. My hands are a little itchy.”
“What have you had to eat or drink today?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all? Not even a glass of water?”
“Nope.”
Cal felt he could relax, a little, where the girl’s health was concerned. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
Crystal was shading the underside of a cloud. Without stopping, or looking at Cal, she said, “I heard Mom making funny noises, so I got out of bed. She was in the kitchen, saying she felt sick, but I should go back to bed. So I did, but then it was worse, so I came down again, and she was on the floor and she wasn’t saying anything and that was when I called 911.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Nobody answered. So then I found Mom’s cell phone and I called you and then you came.”
“What happened between the time you called me and when I got here?”
“Mom kind of woke up, and crawled up the stairs. I watched her the whole time and told her that you were coming. And she went into the bathroom. Where she was sick again, but this time she tried to get it into the toilet.” Crystal stopped moving her pencil and became very still. “And then she just kind of sat back, and then she didn’t get sick anymore.”
Cal slipped his arm around the girl and held her tight. She allowed him to pull her into him.
“Did you close the bathroom door?” Cal asked her.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Did you see her?”
“I did.”
“Is she totally dead?”
“Yes,” Cal said. “I’m sorry.”
Crystal said nothing for several seconds. Finally, she turned her head toward Cal and said, “I don’t know how to pay the bills.”
“You what?”
“I don’t know how to do those things. Mom paid the bills, like for electricity and her Visa and stuff, online. I could probably figure it out, but I don’t know if she had passwords.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, tightening his grip on her.
“If I don’t pay the bills, I won’t be able to live here. Isn’t that right?”
“All that will get sorted out, Crystal. Your dad will help do that.”
“He’s in San Francisco. I think, anyway.”
“We’ll get him up here to help you.”
“Mom said he was hard to find.”
“Still, it can be done. Do you have other family, a little closer? Aunts or uncles or grandparents?”
Cal felt her head moving side to side. “Nope.”
“What about on your father’s side? What about his mother and father? Are they still alive?”
“I don’t think so. I never met them.” She paused. “I have an idea.”
Cal closed his eyes.
“Did you get to move back into your apartment again after that fire?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then you could live here and you could figure out how to pay the bills and then I wouldn’t have to move out of my house.”
Cal rubbed his hand on her arm. “Let’s just take everything one step at a time, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“But in the meantime, until your dad gets here from San Francisco, I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
“I don’t want to live here now,” she said. “I don’t want to go inside.”
“Of course not,” he said.
“What happens to my mom? Do you take her away?”
“No. But people will come.”
“Are you sleeping in your car?”
“What? No.”
“I thought you were sleeping in your car because of the fire.”
“No, sweetheart. I’m in a hotel.”
“Can I stay with you?”
Crystal would have to stay with someone until her father showed up, if he showed up. But Cal wasn’t sure of the appropriateness of her living with him at the BestBet. He thought of Celeste and her husband, Dwayne. He could be a bit of an asshole, but Celeste would take good care of the girl, and be tolerant of her eccentricities.
“I’ll make sure you have a place to stay.” Cal wondered if she’d ever set foot in her own home again.
“I guess there’s one good thing,” Crystal said.
“What’s that?”
“My mom won’t ever have to go to jail.”
Cal felt his heart skip a beat. “What’s that again?”
“I heard her talking to someone on the phone. That she might be in trouble. I was really scared she’d go to jail.”
A lawyer, Cal figured. Lucy had been talking to someone, just in case Cal finally decided to go to the police with what he knew.
A fire engine, blaring a warning from behind its grille, had rounded the corner and was slowly making its way up the street.
“Are you okay sitting here while I go talk to them?” Cal asked Crystal.
“I’ll draw.”
“That’s good.”
“When you come back, could you go into the house and get some things for me?”
“Yes,” he said, giving her a kiss on the top of her head before he went to talk to the guy behind the wheel of the fire truck.
ELEVEN
VICTOR Rooney dialed 911 twice after finding his landlady, Emily Townsend, dead in the backyard of her house. But when no one answered the second time, he figured, what the hell, it wasn’t like they were going to be able to do anything for her anyway.
He turned on the radio in her kitchen and found the local news. Plenty of talk about what was happening in Promise Falls.
“That is some serious shit,” he said to no one in particular, reaching into the fridge for a carton of Minute Maid orange juice. He unscrewed the cap and drank straight from the container. That was the sort of thing Ms. Townsend frowned upon, but it was hardly going to upset her now.
Victor took the carton of juice with him as he stepped out the front door and dropped into one of the wicker chairs on the porch. Lots of activity for a Saturday morning, that was for sure. Neighbors helping sick family members into cars, racing off down the street. Others going house to house, banging on doors. People milling in groups, talking.
Judging by what Victor had heard on the radio, the hospital was the center of excitement.
He went back inside, leaving the half-empty carton of orange juice on the table just inside the door where Ms. Townsend left her keys, and went back up to his room. He was glad to have skipped his usual shower this morning. He wouldn’t have wanted any water to have accidentally dribbled into his mouth. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on a pair of sneakers, and grabbed the keys to his van.
He parked two blocks from the hospital and hoofed it over.
Even before he wandered into the emergency ward waiting room, he could see the mayhem playing out before him. Paramedics and nurses and doctors all being run off their feet. People puking their guts out. People collapsing.
He’d never seen anything like it. Promise Falls, he bet, had never seen anything like it. Upstate New York had never seen anything like it.
Ever.
“Out of the way!” someone shouted, and Victor Rooney spun around to find himself in the path of two paramedics wheeling a gurney toward the sliding ER doors. There was a teenage girl strapped to it, hands clutched to her stomach. Trailing the gurney were a man and a woman, presumably the girl’s parents.
The woman said, “You’re going to be okay, Cassie! You’re going to be okay!”
Victor stepped out of their way, then followed them, as though slipping into their jet stream, and entered the ER.
He stood to one side, cast his eye about the room. There had to be seventy to a hundred people in here. And that was just the ones he could see. Those beds in the examining area, behind the sliding curtains, were likely all full, too.