Текст книги "Brain Dead"
Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer
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There was even a piece in there about his mother, the brewery heiress who had fallen tragically ill in her early fifties and succumbed shortly thereafter to Alzheimer's disease.
It was enough to turn a reporter's stomach.
And then Murphy's day brightened. The golden boy had a tarnish.
Three years ago, in Boston, where he'd so diligently schooled and trained, he'd helped set up another Alzheimer's prototype unit. An experimental site coadministered by his now-famous partner, the nerd researcher Dr. Peter Davies. Pictures were included of two smiling, white-coat-clad physicians who looked like Jekyll and Hyde in person. Raymond the bright light, Davies the dark loner.
Only the two of them evidently hadn't gotten it right that time. The unit folded, and they declared bankruptcy, leaving behind some seriously displeased creditors and more than one cranky customer. They had given the press the usual, "a great idea that needs better funding" line, and then split town.
And four years before that, they'd done the same in Philadelphia. The pictures looked younger, brasher, more hopeful. The results were dismally the same.
And now, they were the toast of Puckett with the same song and dance.
Murphy smiled. It wouldn't hurt to get in touch with somebody involved in the other Alzheimer's units. See what might have happened, what tastes were left in what mouths. It might not even be a bad idea to venture deep into the bowels of Price University labs and see just what the dark, intense Dr. Davies looked like now that he was working on a possible third strike.
It might even be a good idea to ask Leary out to dinner. Just to ask what she'd found out. And then he'd tell her what he'd found out. For the first time that day, Murphy laughed.
Chapter 12
"What difference doe that make?" Timmie demanded when given the news two days later.
"What do you mean, what difference?" Murphy retorted, now close to seriously enjoying himself as he walked down the hall alongside her. "Money and power and status. Tough stuff to give up, Leary."
"Alex isn't giving anything up. He's trying again."
"With somebody else's money."
That stopped Leary dead in her tracks and spun her around. "I imagine you've already figured out why a guy trying his best not to go bankrupt would be killing off his paying customers?"
"That's what this visit is all about."
The two of them stood face-to-face about halfway along the connecting tunnel between the hospital and Restcrest, where Murphy was due for an appointment with not only the good doctor himself, but Mary Jane Arlington and Joseph Leary, their newest resident. Or client, as Mary Jane had put it.
Murphy hated the word "client." The minute the public relations queen had used it, Murphy knew he wanted to find dirt under Restcrest's rugs. He just hadn't realized he'd have so much trouble getting Leary to help him.
"I won't be party to a witch-hunt," she insisted.
Murphy started walking again. "I'm not hunting anything. I'm doing an in-depth piece on the wonders of Restcrest and the Neurological Research Group. I'm tying that in to the character piece I'm doing on your father."
Leary followed along, her heavy shoes thunking on the tile. "Which is the only reason I'm coming along."
Ten feet from the open fire doors into Restcrest, she stopped again. Stood there, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. She was wearing jeans today, old, worn ones, with an oversized pea green sweater and what looked like heavy brown work boots. She also sported a black-banded Mickey Mouse watch with the dial against the inside of her wrist and those tiny four earrings in each ear. Other than that, she was unadorned. A straightforward force of nature.
"I just think we need to look into the main hospital more," she protested, sneaking a look past the doors as if somebody might hear her. They probably could. Her urgent voice echoed down the hall like a soft wind. "I still haven't had a chance to look at the death stats, but I didn't see anything at all that indicted Restcrest."
"You've had two days," he reminded her, just to see her get mad.
She did. "You're right, I have. I also had a six-year-old with the flu and a backed-up toilet. I'm afraid in situations like that, murder just has to take its turn. Its turn will be right after work tonight, after I finish making my daughter's Halloween costume, and probably after dinner tomorrow night."
"Dinner?"
Suddenly Leary was the one looking like a six-year-old. "Yes. Dinner. You know that word."
"You can't read a printout while you're eating?"
She ducked her head, shoved her hands in her pockets, and headed off again toward Restcrest so fast that Murphy almost missed her answer. "Not when you have a date."
"A date?" he demanded, knowing damn well he was reading her reaction right and following hot on her heels to prove it. "Tell me you're not going out with the golden boy. Tell me, if you are, that you're just doing it to grill him for me."
Leary stopped. She glared. She spun back along her original course like a comet snagged by a vagrant sun. "I'm going out with him to talk about family and memories and the outside world."
"And murder," Murphy insisted, watching her neck mottle.
"Don't be ridiculous."
Murphy found himself grabbing her arm. As if it would make a difference. As if she weren't a big girl and knew just what she was getting into, or he wasn't the last person to offer advice to anybody on the planet.
She turned on him like a mad cat. And, suddenly, smiled.
Not at him. And not with any warmth.
"Ms. Arlington," she said with almost-clenched teeth to a spot over his left shoulder. "Nice to see you."
Murphy spun to see the perfect Junior League poster child clacking their way in her Bruno Magli shoes, her pageboy bouncing with her step, her trim figure wrapped in something gray and Ann Taylor. The public relations queen looked confused.
"Are you helping Mr. Murphy?" she asked Timmie, clutching her soft leather daybook to her chest like a baby.
Murphy quickly let go of Timmie and watched her smile grow the way a prizefighter's did before the first bell. "Only with my dad. I don't have to be at work for another couple of hours, and Mr. Murphy asked if I might sit in. I'm going up to visit Dad while you all do... whatever it is Mr. Murphy plans on doing."
Ms. Arlington nodded, her hair bobbing just once. "I see. Well, thank you. That's... um, generous of you."
"No it isn't," Timmie assured her as she turned on down the hall toward the patient wings. "I'm here to make sure nobody bothers my father."
Ms. Arlington didn't know quite how to react. Murphy did it for her. "Helluva nurse, I hear," he said, taking hold of Ms. Arlington's arm and walking her the other way. "But don't ever pull a gun on her. She'll drop you like a rock."
* * *
Murphy was going numb. There was just so much PR babble he could ingest in one sitting without wanting to make Stooge noises. And Mary Jane Arlington was fonder of PR babble than Ross Perot was of pie charts. For the last hour she'd guided him on a micromanaged tour of the wonders of Restcrest as if he were a first-time visitor to a space station, all the while dispensing Alzheimer's statistics like Pez.
"We've begun to find early Alzheimer's indicators in people as young as twenty," she was saying as she walked. "Which makes you wonder how many more people out there are gestating the disease like time bombs ticking away in their brains."
She also made Murphy want to count backward from a hundred and recite the state capitals, just to make sure he still could.
The unit, Murphy had to admit, was impressive. Set up in a daisy pattern, it contained a complete twenty-patient unit in each petal with support services tucked into the core area. The sections were open and airy, with walking paths laid out around the perimeter of the central activity area for the people who needed to roam, and other paths snaking through a well-tended garden outside within very secure high walls. Semiprivate bedrooms circled the outside along with frequent and well-identified bathrooms.
Mary Jane led Murphy to the center of the high-ceilinged recreation area, where couches and beanbag chairs were gathered into islands of intimacy and tables displayed the clutter of constant activities. The atmosphere was quiet and soft, the staff well-evident and patient. Even the old people seemed happy. They certainly looked clean and well cared for.
"Right now we're only equipped to handle a hundred inpatients and selected outpatients," she said. "But Dr. Raymond is expanding outpatient services and research. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to one day make any Alzheimer's unit obsolete."
Toward the center, two or three people sat around picnic-type tables, beyond which gleamed a tidy, state-of-the-art kitchen. At its edge, a pencil-thin old guy in brown cardigan and lime green golf pants carefully plucked an apple from an open shelf.
"Mr. Veniman there is using our cafeteria-style dining area," Mary Jane announced like a narrator in a theme park. "As you can see, all our refrigerators and cabinets are either open or glass-fronted. Often, if a client sees food, he'll remember that he's hungry. Isn't that right, Mr. Veniman?"
Startled by the sound of his name, the old guy looked up and smiled. Nodded vaguely and then went back to studying the food he held. Ms. Arlington barely took a breath before plunging on.
"You see, as Alzheimer's progresses, the connection of certain needs to certain tasks becomes lost. A patient may recognize hunger and not remember what to do about it. If he can't see the food, often he forgets the need. We try to keep everything necessary as open and immediate as possible. We break tasks down into easily manageable functions, with reminders to help."
They did a lot of reminding here. Every wall bore big corkboards with announcements in huge letters.
IT IS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29:
SQUARE DANCING TONIGHT, PARDNER!
THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS:
CLOUDY AND COLD,
TEMPERATURE 30 DEGREES.
TWO DAYS UNTIL
BERT BRINKERHOFF'S BIRTHDAY.
There were smiley faces and frowny faces everywhere, bright paintings, yarn sculptures, photos of the neighborhood. Kind of like the dark antithesis of a preschool room.
"This is one of my favorite advances in Alzheimer's care," Ms. Arlington continued as they approached the patient rooms, her hand sweeping out in a gesture familiar to anyone who watched game shows. "Our memory cases. We put them at each patient's room to help him easily identify it. To cement his own identity."
Murphy had to admit that he was impressed by the brightly lit Plexiglas cases. Built into the wall by each room, they displayed mementos from the patient's life. Old photos, uniforms, bric-a-brac, children's artwork. The guy who'd gotten the apple headed toward one now, hand out a little as if reaching for it, his eyes on a big wedding picture from the forties and the set of crescent wrenches that lay in the light. Passing by, he stroked the Plexiglas, as if his connection were frail enough to need physical contact to maintain it.
It was like ancestor worship, Murphy thought, itching with discomfort. Little shrines built to forgotten memories and worshiped every time a person walked by. A mental mezuzah tacked to the door to reestablish reality.
Murphy had spent most of his life deliberately severing that kind of connection. He wondered, when he saw the old guy smile at the sight of himself in younger clothes, what he'd have left for a shrine of his own. Whether he'd be able to recognize himself from just two Pulitzers.
Screw that, he decided with an almost superstitious shake of the head. The important thing here was that the place looked... legit, damn it. Upscale, well run, well planned, well intentioned. Murphy had investigated more than one nursing home in his career. He'd spent an unforgettable week from hell in one place outside Detroit that offered cockroaches in the soup and mice in the mattresses. Whatever he would end up saying about Alex Raymond, it wouldn't be that he extracted profit from patient misery. The patients here were not miserable. The equipment was first rate, from diagnostic tools like CT and PET scanners to rehab equipment. All space-age stuff, all for these frail, smiling people and the frail people who would follow them.
Not at all what he'd expected from this trip. Not, truthfully, what he'd wanted. He'd started this story as a relief from boredom. But the more he learned, the more he suspected there was a worm hidden somewhere in this perfect apple. He just couldn't find it, damn it, and that made him have to work harder.
Which he didn't want to do, either.
"Everybody seems pretty mobile here," he said, deliberately walking on. "What happens to them when they aren't?"
"Unit five," Mary Jane answered gaily, somehow clacking along on carpeted flooring. "It's a full nursing wing for any of our clients who are ill or have progressed on to the third stage, which is the final physical decline of the illness. Care here is never discontinued because of physical problems. Right now we're lucky, though. We have very few patients needing advanced care."
"Lucky?"
Mary Jane's smile could have been used to teach condescension to acting students. "Nobody likes to see suffering, Mr. Murphy. By the time our clients have reached stage three, they've lost most of what has made them the people they are. It's not easy for anybody. Especially Dr. Raymond. He suffers every time he has to graduate a client. We seem to be preventing that better, don't you see?"
He didn't, but then, he didn't work here day in and day out.
"It's expensive, though, isn't it?"
Her smile brightened, as if she could stun him into forgetting he'd asked such an impolite question. "We have the very latest in care here, Mr. Murphy, the most advanced research. And Dr. Raymond does his very best to offset every cost he can. Fund-raisers, research grants, that kind of thing." She took a quick look around, then leaned closer, in confidence mode. "He'd probably be angry with me if I told you, but a good example is Mr. Leary. Dr. Raymond is picking up much of the cost of his care himself. That should definitely tell you something right there."
Murphy would like to think so. Of course, Murphy naturally hoped it was because Raymond wanted something in return. "Is that why he went bankrupt before?" he asked.
For a second, old Mary Jane's features froze entirely. Murphy spent a moment wishing he had a cigarette. It would have been a good time to light it to give her a chance to recover, him time to assess. Besides, it would get the smell of Giorgio out of his nose.
"Excuse me for being rude," Mary Jane said with the kind of controlled vehemence that betrayed real outrage. Personal outrage, the first Murphy had seen from the plastic woman. "But I don't find that line of questioning pertinent. Or productive. I imagine you'd have to get those answers from Dr. Raymond."
* * *
"You bet we went bankrupt," the golden boy answered twenty minutes later. "What, specifically, did you want to know about what Pete and I are so fond of calling 'our youthful excesses'?"
"You'll pardon my saying so," Murphy said, settling back into the comfortable leather chair across from Raymond's simple teak desk, "but I'm a little surprised that you didn't have any more trouble setting up a unit for the third time."
And damn if Raymond didn't laugh. "Who says I didn't? Don't get me wrong, Mr. Murphy. I grew up in Puckett. I love it here. But is Puckett, Missouri, the first place that comes to mind when you think 'premier medical facility'? The people here gave me a chance. I'm trying to pay them back."
"What makes you think you won't have the same problems here you had before?"
Raymond leaned back himself. Tented his hands as if building an antenna to search for the perfect answer. Dressed today in blue shirtsleeves, Looney Tunes tie, and nicely tailored gray slacks, with his white lab coat slung over the chair behind him like a casually assumed mantle of office, Raymond looked supremely unconcerned with his image. Murphy wished the guy at least seemed more nervous. That he needed to display himself more, with diplomas on the walls or community service awards strewn around. Hell, even a picture or two with Raymond's arm around a semi-famous person.
But the golden boy had decorated his office in high-quality Monet prints, and left it untidy with books and magazines stuffed into simple shelving units along with the obligatory anatomy models and a couple of reproduction Chinese horses.
Raymond didn't even have pictures of the legendary mother to elicit sympathy. He had paperweights made out of geodes and a dollar goldfish swimming around in a kid's bowl. And Alex Raymond smiled as if he really did enjoy watching that stupid fish swim around on his desk.
"I don't think I'll make the same mistakes as before, because I have Paul Landry looking out for me this time. Peter and I are committed to what we do. It doesn't mean we're not fiscal idiots. Paul, on the other hand, is a genius, and I'm more than happy to leave the financial end up to him. Between him and Mary Jane, they've freed Pete and me up from everything but patient care and research."
Murphy didn't even bother to take notes. He just sat there wondering if this guy could really be serious. Hell, he wondered if this guy could be real. It certainly seemed that Mary Jane had a real investment in the guy. From what Murphy had seen so far, Landry would probably be stupid not to be involved as well. But there wasn't any way Murphy was going to buy into the myth that Alex Raymond was completely oblivious to everything but holding hands and separating genes.
"Which brings us to Joe Leary," he said, regrouping.
Dr. Raymond beamed like a kid talking about a favorite big brother. "Which does, indeed, bring us to Joe Leary. What would you like to know?"
"Why you're paying for his care, for one thing."
The perfect face fell a little. Surprise, disappointment, caution. "I imagine Mary Jane told you. I'd really rather not let that get around, if you don't mind. It's a personal matter."
"Personal how?"
And now, as if choreographed, that smile. The smile Murphy had seen from damn near everybody in town with the notable exception of Timmie Leary when Joe Leary was introduced. "Joe is... special. He's a true original who won't come this way again, and I already miss him."
"That's it?"
The smile grew, shifted. "Why don't we go see him now? After you spend some time with him, I think you'll understand."
* * *
"Like most of our residents in the inpatient area of Restcrest," Raymond said as they walked, "Joe is in what we term the second stage of Alzheimer's. Affected enough that he can't safely remain in a home environment, but still mostly able to care for himself. The first stage, when he was beginning to forget, is the toughest stage for the patient, I think; the second stage, when he begins to lose touch with his world, is toughest for his family. He only remembers Timmie occasionally now, which must be terrible for her. The two of them were inseparable when she was a little girl." For a second, Raymond remembered, smiled, and nodded. "It's something you just don't forget. That great, huge man with his booming laugh walking down the sidewalk in the summer holding hands with that tiny girl and singing and reciting poetry to her."
"He still seems to remember the poetry, anyway."
"Magnificently. I wish he'd taught me English lit instead of Mrs. Beal. I might have actually passed the class."
"He taught?"
"For a while. He did lots of things for a while. He entertained us all for the sheer love of it, though. Bars, town square, church suppers. He always said there wasn't enough music in the air. If nobody else was going to provide it, he would. He did."
He still was, evidently. Murphy heard the distinctive voice even before they'd opened the doors.
"'... Oh, how may I call this a lightning? O, my love! My wife!'"
Raymond grinned like a kid. "Romeo," he crowed, pushing open the door as if expecting to see Julia Roberts on the other side.
The only thing on the other side was more old people. More staff. More glass-fronted storage and brightly lettered memory boards. And Joe Leary standing foursquare in the center of the beige carpet, his frame bent, his massive hand cupping the face of his daughter, who was sitting at a table littered with coffee cups and orange rinds. Even from where he stood Murphy could see the glitter in her eyes.
"'Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,'" Joe Leary whispered so that every person in the room could hear, "'hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered..."'
"Act five, scene three," Raymond told Murphy in awed tones. "Romeo's about to die for her."
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Murphy watched them, watched Raymond quiet to attention just like the rest. He turned and took in the show himself.
Joe Leary mesmerized. His great voice was hushed, his eyes grief-stricken, his movements small. Murphy could damn near see a crushed, callow seventeen-year-old standing in the place of the rumpled, white-haired old titan.
Evidently, so could everybody else. They remained in suspended animation as the words built like a soft, sad storm in the artificially bright room.
'"Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once... now at once..."'
Nobody noticed the hesitation but Murphy. It seemed a natural pause in the play if you didn't know it by heart. But the old man's eyes flickered, his hand trembled.
"Now, at once..."
Murphy wanted to jump in to save him. He didn't have to. Joe Leary's trembling grew until Murphy thought the people in the room would surely see. His gaze sharpened on the face of his daughter. She didn't move. Murphy could barely see her mouth work the lines the old man had temporarily misplaced, the whispered words so soft the audience could barely tell. The perfect prompter, she kept the focus on him.
And then, as if she'd hit a light switch, Romeo returned.
"'Now at once run on the dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!'" he cried. '"Here's to my love! O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick.'" Lifting an imaginary vial to his lips, he drank, and all eyes went with him. '"Thus with a kiss... I die.'"
They all burst into applause.
"He do this all the time?" Murphy asked as he joined in.
"All the time," Raymond assured him. "He's the best thing that's happened to this place since music therapy."
Everybody clustered around the old man, all with that same damn smile. Old people wept and staff laughed and Joe stood there, the power draining away from his features like a flashlight with a failing battery, the tremble reappearing.
He began to look around, as if trying to remember something, and then one of the staff asked him to refresh her about the rest of the story. Joe settled, turned to her, smiled.
"The story is as old as time," he said, reaching to take her small hand, and everyone listened.
Murphy knew then why Timmie didn't want to indict Restcrest for anything. What he didn't understand was why, as everybody else crowded around in rapt attention to catch some of Joe Leary's infectious enthusiasm, the one person who walked away, movements as tight and contained as fury, was his daughter.
* * *
It was two more days until Halloween and Timmie hadn't finished sewing the damned costume yet. Why couldn't Meghan want to be Pocahontas like every other kid on the block? Why couldn't she even want to be a pumpkin, like last year? That costume was still around somewhere, a masterpiece of orange-and-green felt, and Meghan certainly hadn't grown out of it yet.
No, Meghan had to be Scheherazade, just like in one of Grandda's stories, and that meant she had to have yards of netting and those stupid bloused pants. It meant that all that damn material was draped over Timmie's dining room table like a taunt as Timmie skimmed pages of death notices.
She should be finishing the costume, or Meghan was going to be trick-or-treating with straight pins in her crotch. She should be getting ready for work so she could afford to extend her father's run at the Restcrest Playhouse. Instead, she read about dead people.
Normal dead people. Old people, young people, all reduced to a single line of print. Name, age, date of birth, date of death, unit, cause of death, disposition.
William Anthony Marshall, 47,
1/15/50, 2/25/96,
CCU, Acute MI,
Breyer's Mortuary
She had to find some direction other than Restcrest for Murphy to point his finger. Somebody other than Alex Raymond to be responsible.
Minerva G. Wilding, 71,
6/23/25, 6/30/97,
Oncology, CA, Liver,
Breyer's Mortuary
Some of the names she recognized. Some of those spare statistics could still ignite melancholy or delight or frustration, like surprising scent from long-pressed flowers. Some just made her sad.
William R. Porter, 8,
11/1/88, 8/15/97, ER,
MVA, Head Trauma,
hold for coroner
Well, so there had been cases Van Adder had investigated. Timmie could swear his numbers were awfully low, though. Especially when she considered the fact that the hospital mortality rate was an average of thirty a month, increasing to almost forty in the last few months. What were the odds that in over 360 people, not one was a suspected suicide or homicide?
Maria Salgado, 76,
10/1/22, 10/22/97, ER,
Cardiac Arrest,
Van Adder Mortuary
Timmie looked again, all the way through, just at the disposition line. She checked every time she found the word "coroner," and what it was for. Two gunshot wounds and a stabbing. An overdose. Little William who had died in the car accident, and another motorcycle accident. Two other overdoses that went to Breyer's and a head injury that was taken back up to St. Louis to bury.
Van Adder wasn't doing his job. Not a huge surprise, after meeting the man. But it would take that lunch with Conrad to get the whole skinny on that.
Timmie flipped the pages back to the last few months, running her finger down the lines just to see if anything stood out. Anything she should have noticed as unusual.
"Don't you have to go to work?" Meghan asked, skipping over from where she'd been finishing her homework.
"Yes," Timmie assured her daughter, her eyes still on the page. "I do. You probably could have figured that out when Heather came to baby-sit."
A name. Something about a name that niggled at her.
Wilhelm Reinholt Cleveland, 76,
7/1/21, 10/20/96,
ER, Cardiac Arrest.
Breyer's Mortuary
What should she be noticing here? What made her uneasy?
"Heather's boring," Meghan complained, leaning against Timmie's arm.
That was Meghanese for "I need some hugs here." Meghan was not the type of kid to demand emotional outbursts. She expected them as her right. Far be it from Meghan to admit that all the upheaval in the last few months—not to mention the last few days—would make her need them a little more.
Leaving a pen in the fold of the printout, Timmie turned to put her arms around her daughter and squeezed hard.
"At least she likes Renfield," she bargained.
"I can't go over to Mattie's again?"
"Sorry, hon. You're going to spend the night there tomorrow so Mommie can go out."
"Again." Meghan sighed like the orphan kid in a melodrama. "You're always gone now."
Timmie gave Meghan another squeeze. "Don't give me grief, kid," she teased. "This will be the first time I've put on panty hose for anything but a funeral since your dance recital last year. Mommies need to play, too, you know."
"But Daddy will be mad," Meghan insisted. "Especially if he comes here and finds me gone."
Daddy. Timmie did her best not to flinch. She'd forgotten. Well, probably not forgotten. Done another Scarlett. She had to find that lawyer and head off that "miscellaneous action" Jason had filed to harass her about not being able to get in touch with him. She had to start looking for him around every corner so she'd be ready when he walked up to her door to delight his daughter and harass his ex-wife. Damn, it was always something.
"We'll leave Daddy a note," Timmie promised.
Meghan leaned her little head against Timmie's chest just as she'd done since she'd been a baby, so that Timmie could smell Johnson's shampoo and fresh air. "I want to go to Mattie's tonight," she said.
"I know."
"I like them. Mr. Mattie lets me help him barbecue."
Timmie stroked silky brown hair and smiled. "Not mister. Reverend. And his name isn't Mattie. It's Wilson. Reverend Wilson."
"He thinks it's funny when I call him Mr. Mattie. He says it's okay. What's vengeance, Mom?"
Timmie pulled back. "What?"
Meghan screwed up her face. "I thought he said penguins. I thought he said penguins were the Lord's, and I thought that was silly, so I asked. He said it was vengeance, but that wasn't for little girls."
"When did this happen?"
"The night before you took Grandda away, I think. Cindy was there, and, oh, Barbara. I remember Barbara because she took us all out into the street to play cork-ball after dark. After dark, Mom, isn't that cool? Do you know we even went for a walk and saw a shooting star? You never showed me a shooting star before."
"We never lived anyplace we could see them, my little city mouse."
Another wrinkle of the nose so that she did, indeed, look the part. "I'm not a mouse, Mom. But if I was, I don't think I like being a city mouse anymore. I like shooting stars. What's vengeance, and why can't little girls have it?"
Timmie gave up the stats for good. Just keeping pace with this kid was dizzying. "Were, honey. If I were. And vengeance kind of means getting even. Like if Crystal Miller pulls your hair, you pull hers back. Which you can't do—"
"Because it's not for little girls. But why would the Lord pull Crystal's hair?"
Timmie laughed. "I think what the reverend meant was that if the Lord doesn't pull Crystal's hair, then neither should you."
That didn't seem to work either. "Well, if she's being mean, somebody has to. And why would the Lord pull Ellen's hair?"
