"Why didn't you let Jules know you were okay? She was terribly worried."
"I know. I did write. Twice."
"What happened?"
"I gave them to Weldon to mail," he said flatly.
"And he never did."
Dio shrugged.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I'm gonna live with a family for a while. The Steiners."
"I know them. They're good people."
"I guess."
"Well, good luck to you, Dio. Stay in touch, and look, if things get rough, give me a call, okay? I might be able to help."
His eyes went to her wrapped head, and he winced, but his parting handshake was more assured than the first one had been.
Al took the chair's handles and began to push it toward the doorway, but Kate had remembered something else. "Dio - who was the woman in the picture? The snapshot I found in your tent?"
Al turned the chair around, but the boy's face was closed up and he said nothing.
"Anyway, did Jules give it back to you?" After a moment, he ducked his head. "Yeah."
"That's good. Well, take care, man. See you later, Al."
Their voices faded down the noisy hallway, and Kate lay back to await the next interruption.
She was in the hospital for a week, refused release because of occasional spikes in her temperature and a cycle of blinding headaches that entertained a series of doctors and worried the nurses. Finally, however, her fevers left, and with the possibility of an infection inside her brain out of the way, she was discharged. Even then she had to lie to the head nurse, saying that there would be someone to care for her at home, but eventually, her shaven scalp cold around the smaller bandage, she eased herself from wheelchair to Hawkin's car, and he drove her home.
She let him take the bag of accumulated possessions into the house - things he or Rosa Hidalgo or Rosalyn Hall had fetched for her - and walked cautiously through to the living room sofa. Hawkin brought her the alpaca throw blanket, turned up the heat, made her a cup of hot milk, and carried her bag upstairs. He came back with her gun in its holster.
"Where do you want this?" he asked.
"The top drawer in that table with the phone on it, thanks."
He stepped back into the hallway and she heard the squeak of the drawer.
"Can I get you anything to eat?"
"No thanks. They fed me lunch." The doctor whose approval was required before Kate could leave had been in surgery, delayed by an automobile accident and leaving Kate to sit in her room, waiting and picking at a tray of hospital food, until he swept in, still wearing his surgical booties, looked in her eyes, asked her two or three questions, and left. "What I'd really like is to be alone, if that's not too rude."
"I understand. I'll stop by on my way home, but call if you need anything. Where's the -I saw it in the kitchen." He went out again and returned with the portable telephone, checking that the batteries were charged before he put it on the table in reach of Kate's hand. "You remember my beeper number?"
"Al, I had a concussion, not a lobotomy. Go do some work. Solve a crime or something, and let me sit and be quiet."
And it was quiet, once the door had closed behind him. A light, steady rain was falling, soaking the shrubs and pots and the bricks of the patio, where the moss in the cracks rose up to drink it in. Streaks ran down the windows and the French doors, a mild gurgle came from the downspouts, an occasional seagull floated across the gray sky, and Kate slept.
It was dark outside when she woke, although a light from the kitchen gave outlines to her surroundings. She woke bit by bit, dozing warmly inside the cocoon of the soft blanket, grateful for the familiar room and the sounds of home. Hospitals were cold, clanking death traps, and she was aware, for the first time since August, of the innate goodness of life.
Easing onto her back to look at the digital clock on the video machine, she felt a twinge along the right side of her skull, but that was all. Just after eleven - she'd slept for seven hours. Gingerly she tried sitting up, then got to her feet, and other than a couple of dull thuds at each change of position, the headache remained lurking in the background - not gone, but not actively attacking, either.
Enjoying the freedom of movement, exploring how far it would stretch, Kate folded the blanket and tossed it across the back of the sofa (a brief awareness of pressure at the throwing motion, not really a pain) and went to look out the window at the night. All the lights seemed very distant, but it was a comforting sensation, not an alienating one. The wind stirred the bushes, and she wondered how long Gideon the raccoon had continued to come before deciding that she was a lost cause. Maybe she would put a handful of dog biscuits out tomorrow night, on the off chance he cruised by.
She was thirsty, and, yes, actually hungry, although there was not likely to be much that was edible in the refrigerator. She pulled the curtains against the night and went to the kitchen.
There was a vase of flowers on the table, a fresh, fragrant mixture of florist's blooms, and beside it a note, the first part of which, strangely enough, was in Al's handwriting. Surely he would have mentioned any message that afternoon? She picked it up and read:
Martinelli - I turned the ringer on your phone off and the sound down on your answering machine. Call if you need anything, otherwise, I'll drop by in the morning. The flowers are from Jules.
Al
Beneath it on the page, in the same ink but by someone with a much lighter hand, was another message:
Kate,
We didn't want to wake you, but I thought you might like some food and wouldn't feel like cooking. You can eat the soups cold or micro them for a couple of minutes, ditto the beans in the glass casserole, but don't heat the noodles - it's a salad. I'm going to be at the civic center tomorrow morning, and may stop by around noon. Oh yes, that's Maj's tiramisu in the white bowl. Take care.
Rosalyn
Kindness, the simple kindness of friends, the last thing she had expected, and it reached in through her weakness and she felt tears start up in her eyes as she sat at the table and read the words over again. On the third time through, it occurred to her that she had been driven in here by hunger, and she seemed miraculously to have at hand something more appealing and substantial than the bowl of cold cereal she had resigned herself to.
Six containers of food awaited her: two white deli cartons, two glass jars, and two ovenproof containers reminiscent of potlucks. Noodle salad with the spicy, fragrant sesame dressing Kate loved - how had Rosalyn known? One jar with a strip of masking tape labeling it mushroom soup, the other chicken vegetable. Two kinds of beans. And a large bowl of creamy white pudding, drifted with black-brown powdered chocolate. Kate reached in and began greedily to pull out containers.
At midnight, replete and much steadied, Kate turned off the kitchen light, turned on the light over the stairs, and began the climb to bed. Halfway up, she paused, then reversed her steps back into the kitchen. She found a stemmed wineglass and a pair of scissors, turned to the bouquet on the table and teased a few of the flowers from it, trimmed their stems short, and dropped them into the wineglass. She put the scissors in the drawer, ran some water into the glass, put the denuded stems into the trash, turned off the light again, and took the miniature flower arrangement up the stairs with her. The flowers sat on the table beside her bed, keeping her company while she looked at the television, and later they watched over her while she slept.