Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

"Ellen's hair?"

"They were talking about Ellen. And... uh, how she's alone. And how Cindy's glad. Is that nice, Mom?"

Timmie interrupted this little intelligence with a small swat on the butt and stood up. "You're much too nosy, little girl. Enough. I had a hard day at the sewing machine. I don't need an ethics class, too. Come up and help me dress for work."

Meghan's grin was a hundred percent imp. "Why, just so I can be bored?"

"By me?"

That got a giggle. "No, silly. By Heather. Couldn't Cindy come over? I'd rather have Cindy."

Now, that Timmie hadn't expected. She'd thought Meghan wouldn't have had time for a woman not much more mature than she was. "Really?" she asked, with a tickle for good measure. "How come?"

It took a few shrieks and wriggles for Meghan to answer. "Because it's fun scaring her with Renfield."

Ah. Some sense at last.

Timmie just picked Meghan up and carried her so she could keep her close as long as possible.

"Did you know she was locked in a herbi... herbi... snake house once?" Meghan asked, legs wrapped around Timmie's stomach. "All night, all by herself, and she had to hold very, very still so the snakes wouldn't smell her. Snakes can't smell very well, you know. Especially in the dark. When the lights went on, there were snakes curled up all around her."

"My, my."

"Yes, and her daddy had to leave when she was a little girl, too. She said it made her very sad, but he was an explorer, so she knew he was finding new places she could visit someday."

"Uh-huh."

"Do we have to go back, Mom?"

It took Timmie a while to catch that one. "Back where, baby?"

"California."

They'd reached the top of the stairs, where the books lived. Piles of them, masses, mountains. Literature, philosophy, history, tomes in English and French and Latin. A few in Gaelic, but her father had come to Irish late and had lost interest quickly.

Timmie still considered this place haunted and holy, the sum of words and ideas that had tumbled so easily from her father's brain all those years. The real Joe Leary when the other one went away, just like the explorer in Cindy's story.

But tonight Timmie didn't look. She didn't stroke old leather or visit well-known tides. She focused instead on her daughter.

"I thought you didn't like it here."

Meghan didn't quite face her. Meghan hated to admit she was wrong. "I can't have a horse in California," she whispered.

Timmie probably should have told her that she couldn't have a horse here, either. But she knew what her little girl meant. Meghan had already begun to be seduced by those quiet, dark nights and corkball games. By walking home from school and having a pony down the block she could feed apples to on her way by. And Timmie had no right taking those things away from her.

Even for the sound of sirens.

She sighed. "So you've decided to be a country mouse?"

Meghan nodded, head still tucked into Timmie's neck. "Only if my daddy could find me."

Timmie held on tighter. She fought all the old anxieties. "Your daddy knows where to find us," she assured her little girl. "As long as we're where he expects us to be, he'll find us."

Where he expects us to he.

Where he expects us to be. Why did that suddenly make her want to turn around and go back down to her statistics...

Timmie froze midthought.

Oh, God. Oh, no. She was wrong. She had to be wrong. That couldn't have been what she'd seen.

Timmie almost dropped Meghan down the stairs. She squeezed her hard, then set her on her feet. "Hang on a second, hon. I have to check something."

"Mom!"

But Timmie was already back down the stairs. Grabbing a highlighter out of the pen forest she'd been collecting in an old popcorn tin, Timmie bent back over the printout. She highlighted the names that were familiar to her. Lila Travers, Milton Preston, maybe Clara Schultz. Patients she'd personally dismissed from her ER. Added to the ER statistics as their own, as if they had come from the outside with only moments to live so they just brushed along the fringes of the hospital.

Except they hadn't come from the outside. That was what suddenly stood out to her. She had worked on the assumption that the numbers were okay because she was checking familiar ratios to see if they were wrong. ER, OR, ICU, Med/Surg. The ER numbers had been higher, but that didn't reflect on the hospital proper. The ER stood separate, individual, like an island in a larger sea. And Timmie would have seen a change in the ER. She would have heard, would have sensed or smelled.

But she'd been wrong. Not about the ER. About the ratio. It wasn't right. The ER numbers weren't honest. Timmie hadn't taken into account the patients they'd been seeing from Restcrest. The policy had changed no more than six months ago so that any Restcrest patient with a resuscitation order would be immediately transported to the ER if they needed treatment.

And if they died, they were dismissed as ER patients.

No, no, no, she wanted to say with her whole heart. It can't be that. I'll find it isn't that when I look closer.

She had to get back to that computer. She had to double-check which patients had come in from Restcrest. Because if her suspicions were true, it wasn't the ER's numbers that were going up, it was Restcrest's. And intentionally or not, the hospital's new policy was camouflaging that.

They were hiding the fact that there were more people dying in Restcrest than anybody knew.

Chapter 13

Another geek, Murphy thought with no little frustration. Another undernourished, overeducated freak of nature who seemed unable to communicate with anything but a microscope and, evidently, Alex Raymond.

No wonder these guys got into so much trouble.

Lanky and dark, Peter Davies was good-looking in an absentminded professor kind of way, with unkempt hair he kept dragging out of his eyes as he talked, deep-set hazel eyes, and a sheepish grin that probably delighted the ladies. If they wanted to put up with that six-week-old lab coat, that is, or the constant chatter about gene therapy and amyloidal plaques.

Davies's realm was much more impressive than his hygiene, anyway. Definitely high tech, gleaming white, with acres of test tubes, herds of centrifuges, walls of gleaming stainless-steel refrigerators. Light microscopes and electron microscopes and enough DNA testing equipment to staff the FBI. There was great work going on here, as reflected in the serious young faces of the research assistants and the static of excitement that permeated their conversation. Science was their god, and they were its priests facing down demon Alzheimer.

"I've already shown you the PET scan pictures," Davies said, shoving his hair out of his eyes with one hand and waving a color-enhanced photo of a shriveling brain with the other as they walked away from the populated area of the lab. "So you see the progressive destruction of the cortical areas, yes?"

His eyes still full of desiccated brain, Murphy nodded. Here he took notes. He was hearing about hippocampuses and neurofibrillary tangles and serum amyloid P. Words so familiar to Davies that he didn't stop to explain them to the reporter. The reporter, frustrated, tired, and disappointed by finding just what people had said he would, desperately wanted a cigarette. Instead, he got a stool at the far end of the lab, which made him think Davies had probably forgotten where his office was.

"It is the amyloidal plaques we're interested in," Davies said, pacing. "They're sort of like neurological junk piles that build up in certain areas of the brain, yes? Our focus is to keep them from forming and interfering with the neurotransmitters that link neural synapses and form thought. You understand?"

No.

"Sure."

A quick nod and he was off again. "To do that, we have concentrated on the part played by a substance known as apolipoprotein E, or Apo E, which seems to collect the plaques like a... well, a lint catcher."

Murphy jotted the words protein lint catcher and left it at that. He didn't give a damn about proteins he couldn't pronounce. He just wanted to know what they had to do with Restcrest.

"And how does your unique arrangement with Restcrest help you do this?" he asked.

Davies blinked a moment in response to the change of conversational direction. "Research money, of course. Alex is a whiz at that kind of thing. And we do excellent work because of our relationship with Restcrest. Restcrest gives us access to raw material other research labs are begging for."

"Raw material?"

Davies blinked again. "You do know that right now the only way to definitely diagnose Alzheimer's is through autopsy, yes?"

"You can't just mock up the problem on a computer simulation, you mean."

"Exactly. We need affected tissue to study it, and Restcrest provides that. It also enables us to correlate a patient's symptomology and family history with the postmortem microscopic changes on a scale not easily matched. A rare opportunity."

"I imagine."

Davies bounced, then leaned close. "Most people don't appreciate how important that is," he insisted, his eyebrows telegraphing his intensity like furry semaphores. "Without a facility like Restcrest, we would have to rely on donations. We wouldn't have complete access to the patients to study them while they're alive, not to mention the next generation of potential patients before they're symptomatic. As a matter of fact, because of the good image Restcrest has, we're starting to see donations of nonsymptomatic brains with familial histories. Young brains, Mr. Murphy. We don't get many of those, you see?"

Calling Mel Brooks. Your Frankenstein is waiting. It was all Murphy could do to keep a straight face.

Nursing home supplies raw research material, he scribbled, knowing that he'd never use it. Not like that. It was too scary. Too confusing. The truth was that the geek doctor was probably as sincere as hell. He performed a service, and inflammatory stories would only scare possible donors away from a good cause.

Unless, of course, the doctor's good luck had something to do with Murphy's mysterious phone call.

"Have you been getting more donations lately?" he asked.

Davies paused a second to sign off on some result a staff member presented. "More?" he asked, his attention on the clipboard. "Yes, I suppose we have gotten more. It happens like that sometimes, though. This week, in fact, we've already had three. Two from the unit and one from the coroner."

Murphy looked up from his notes. "Coroner?"

"Yes. The healthy donation."

Did Murphy remind the guy that if a brain had been healthy it wouldn't have been in his refrigerator? "Murder victim?"

Davies looked up. "No, no. An accident. It was just released today, in fact. Not perfect, of course. Heat damage. But usable."

Did Murphy hope for recognition or misapprehension?

"Name of Adkins?" he asked.

Davies started a little, then blinked. "Of course, you work for the local paper. You'd know about him, yes?"

"Yes," Murphy said, knowing damn well he shouldn't have felt that flush of triumph simply because he'd just heard an interesting coincidence and he hadn't believed in coincidence since the day a brand-new twenty-dollar bill had shown up on his dresser not two hours after he'd caught his father playing sink the Bismarck with his cousin Mary. "I knew about him."

* * *

Not enough, obviously.

"You want to tell me why you're investigating Alex Raymond?" Sherilee demanded an hour later when Murphy dragged himself back into the newspaper.

Punching his blinking answering machine, Murphy feigned innocence. "You were the one who told me to do the dry-good series on the Neurological Research Group. I'm doing."

Sherilee aimed a computer printout at him like a signed confession. "And personal finances are, like, important to the spreading of the unit's good name how, Murphy?"

"I don't go through your desk, Sherilee," he said agreeably. "Don't you think it's bad manners to go through mine?"

"Not when you're not telling me what's going on," she retorted. "You work for me, Murphy, remember?"

Murphy held up a hand as he waited for his messages. It was better than laughing at Sherilee when she was serious. The only words he'd heard more in his life than "You work for me, Murphy, remember?" were "Closing time."

"Something came up I'm investigating."

Three messages. Beep.

"Not about Alex Raymond."

Beep. "I'd say you owe me," the deep, laughing voice announced on his recorder, "but I've been saying that for years. Call me back. I've dug into your boy, and I'm afraid I came up empty. But I might have some other tidbits you'll like."

Marty Gerst. City-desk editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which would have covered one of Alex Raymond's failed units.

"Murphy?" Sherilee insisted, up on her toes now. "You aren't going after Alex Raymond."

Beep. "Just thought I'd let you know," Pete Mitchell offered in tight tones that betrayed his excitement. "Your boy kept more to himself than just his service record. Call me."

Hmmmm. This town was like an old knit sweater. Pull one loose strand and the whole thing began to unravel.

Beep. "You haven't listened—" Murphy hit the button at light speed. He'd been threatened enough over the years to recognize another of the breed. Definitely not the voice he'd heard before. Probably the one Leary didn't want to talk about.

"Murphy?" Sherilee asked, on alert.

Murphy turned to her, leaned his hip against his desk. Dealt with Sherilee like every other editor he'd worked with before.

"You were right, Sherilee," he said. "Something is going on at the hospital. I'm just looking for some answers."

"Just tell me and every city official who's called today that you're not climbing up Alex Raymond's butt just for the fun of it."

Murphy lifted a wry eyebrow. "Alex Raymond is too fragile to protect himself?"

"No..." She huffed, shifted from foot to foot. Reddened. "Not exactly."

"Oh?"

"You're not from around here," she insisted, suddenly frustrated. "You just don't know what kind of person Alex is."

"So tell me."

"No way. Tell me what you think first."

He grinned. "I don't think anything. I'm just looking. Although I will admit that I'm having a little trouble with this shining-knight routine. I mean, do you really expect me to believe that this guy would keep coming back like George Foreman just because his mother died of Alzheimer's?"

"She didn't die of it," Sherilee said. "She killed herself. Like, hung herself in their garage, and Alex walked in on her when he came home from school. You don't think that's a good enough reason for him to be, like, a little obsessed?"

Yes, he did. He didn't want to, but he did think that would be plenty of reason. Damn it.

"Give me my reports," Murphy said, snatching them out of her hands.

"So?" Sherilee asked. "What are you going to do?"

"Find out why the coroner released a murder victim and then see if you might be right about Paul Landry."

Sherilee brightened like a kid hearing a snow day announced. "Really?"

Murphy couldn't help it. He knew he could get hauled up on any number of harassment charges, but she was so damned enthusiastic. He tweaked her nose. "Really."

He waited till she'd left to replay the threat.

* * *

Actually, Timmie got to Van Adder first, for the simple reason that when she stopped in the ER on the way up to see her father, Van Adder was ensconced in the lounge with Angie.

She probably should never have gone near him. She was in a bad enough mood as it was. Her fingers were sore from trying to finish that damn costume, she hadn't had any luck in matching the Restcrest deaths to the ER without access to a computer, and the nurse on her dad's unit had called again about his memory case items. So Timmie had been forced to root through mountains of trash in the hopes of unearthing the treasures her father had buried.

At four, when she should have been primping for the date she'd dreamed of since her seventh birthday, Timmie stalked into the hospital carrying a grocery bag under one arm and a rolled-up poster under the other. Three separate people asked her why she was scowling. She was scowling because she'd had to dig through history she'd done a lot to forget, and now she was going to have to present her findings to her dad like tarnished medals commemorating his accomplishments in a long-forgotten war.

That was why she was scowling.

Then she spotted Tucker Van Adder slouched in the lounge with his oversized butt on the sprung couch and his feet on a wheelchair, laughing with Angie like he owned the place, and she decided she shouldn't be the only one in a bad mood.

"Barb tells me you released Victor's case as an accident," she said, blocking the doorway.

Angie started like a philandering wife.

Van Adder just frowned. "I thought you didn't want to think your friend killed him."

"She didn't," Timmie assured him. "But somebody did."

Van Adder lay the newspaper in his lap. "Somebody didn't. Victor had too much to drink and didn't move in time to save himself. That's what I think, and the police couldn't convince me otherwise."

"You're absolutely right," Timmie said with a gentle smile anybody who'd worked a hall with her would have recognized. "He was too drunk to notice. But it's what he was supposed to notice that's the problem. That fire wasn't an accident."

"How many arson cases have you investigated, Ms. Leary?" he asked.

Timmie straightened, fully aware that there were witnesses. It didn't seem to matter. Incompetence demanded comment.

"How many have you investigated, Mr. Van Adder?"

Setting aside his paper and coffee, Van Adder climbed to his feet. "If you weren't Joe's daughter," he threatened, "I'd just take you over my knee. You have a couple of courses in nursing school, and you think you can teach me my business. Well, little girl, I've been doing this for almost thirty years. I don't need a forensic nurse to tell me how."

"Maybe you do."

It was Angie's turn to react. "You'd better watch yourself," she warned, on her feet as well. "You're on probation here."

Van Adder waved her off as unnecessary. "Really?" he asked Timmie with an offensive smile. "You're going to teach us all how to do our jobs, huh? You're going to show me how it's done? What the hell can a forensic nurse do, anyway?"

It was Timmie's turn to smile. "She can run for coroner," she said, and then walked out.

* * *

Bad nurse. Bad, bad nurse.

Timmie spent the entire walk to Restcrest berating herself as a pigheaded fool. She'd probably just cost herself her job. Any hope of a job. But she couldn't let that smarmy son of a bitch dismiss not only her but his own responsibilities as if they were insignificant.

Little girl, was it? He was going to put her over his knee, was he? She hadn't had any choice after that. She'd had to finish him off, just to see the look on his face. The only problem was that she'd also effectively sabotaged any hope she'd had for a future in this town.

Worse. She'd probably talked herself into running for an office she didn't want, just to prove a point.

Bad, bad nurse.

"Oh, good, you brought them."

Timmie looked up, startled. She hadn't even realized she'd made it all the way to her dad's unit. But there she was, faced with the inevitable proof that it was THURSDAY, and that the weather was COOL AND DAMP. Timmie guessed they weren't allowed to use the much more appropriate SHITTY. If the weather didn't clear up by tomorrow, Halloween was going to be a bust. But that wasn't her problem right now. Her problem was smiling at her with all the dedication of a true believer.

Timmie held out the bag. "All here."

The nurse, a bright young thing with enough energy to exhaust Timmie, peeked into the bag as if she were looking for Halloween candy. "Oh, I really love this part of the job. It's like This Is Your Life."

Timmie almost laughed. That wasn't Joe's life at all. It was Joe's life the way Timmie wanted to remember it, which bore no resemblance to the truth. The truth she'd left back with all the piles of tax returns and half-finished crossword puzzles.

"It's the best I could do for now," she said instead as the nurse lifted out a 1982 World Championship pennant. Also in the bag were the 1964 and 1967 pennants, a baseball from the forties signed by the Gashouse Gang, a poetry textbook, a leather bomber jacket from the Eighth Air Force, a small, amateur painting of a little white house in a field, and a battered tin whistle. The poster was from when he'd opened for the Clancy Brothers at The Bells from Hell, a club he'd played in the Village, the tin whistle visible in his immense hands as he smiled over Tommy Clancy's shoulder.

"This is wonderful," the nurse said, her eyes alight as she lifted the painting. "Is this his house in Ireland?"

Timmie looked at the clumsy rendering with sheep standing as large as cows in the background. "It's his grandmother's home. Dad's never been there."

"Really?" the nurse asked, really surprised. "I could have sworn he grew up there."

Timmie smiled. "So could he."

"How about photos?" she asked. "Those are very important. Especially the rest of his family, your mother and sisters."

"I'm working on it. For now, though, it'll only be me."

The nurse blinked, trying hard to understand. This kind of nurse would, Timmie thought. A lovely woman, truly delighted to be here with her little old people, happy to reacquaint them with their treasures every time she passed by. This was the kind of nurse who saw her career not as a convenience, but a calling.

It was to Alex Raymond's credit that he could still command a staff like that, which was one of the reasons Timmie knew Murphy was wrong.

"Your dad's in his room, if you want to see him."

Timmie knew the nurse would probably be very understanding if Timmie said no, she didn't want to see him, especially after spending all day wading around in the detritus of his life.

It wouldn't make Timmie understand any better. Or feel any better about herself. After all, one of these days she was going to have to grow up and deal with it all. So she went on in to where he was sitting on the edge of his bed, hands on knees, patiently watching the wall.

The room was lovely, sunny and pastel and comfortable, with her father's easy chair along one wall and the sunflower quilt his grandmother had made him neatly folded on his bed. The staff had even figured a way to tuck a bookshelf in the corner so he could be with some of his beloved books. Not that he could read them anymore. He remembered their friendship, though. He stroked them like cherished children every time he went near.

"Hi, Daddy."

Slowly he looked over, his eyes clouded and vague. Fogged, ruined mirrors that could no longer reflect. Timmie fought the same damn old clutch of grief she'd struggled with for as long as she could remember.

"What do you want?" he asked, frowning.

Timmie sat down. The nurse, walking in behind her on crepe-shod feet, put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't expect it to get better yet just because he's here," she said quietly.

Timmie wanted to hit her. She wanted to hit something.

"I just wanted to say hello, Joe," she said instead, understanding more than the nurse thought.

He tilted his head in that odd, wry greeting he'd learned from his own father. "Then, hello."

As she sat there in that quiet room beside her silent father, Timmie tried to convince herself that there might well be some danger in Restcrest. People might be dying here who had no business doing it, people whose only illness was confusion. Her father could be in real danger.

Timmie studied the sharp relief of his cheekbones, the broken ridge of his hawk nose, the deep well of his eyes. She thought about the brilliance of his words, the terror of that gun.

Tentatively, the way she did to Meghan while she slept, Timmie lifted a hand and stroked her father's hair. It was cleaned and shiny from the staff's attention, brushed into a thick, noble cap that looked nothing like it had when he'd been tied to his chair at home. She stroked his hair and hummed a few verses of "Only the Rivers Run Free."

If she left him here, he could die.

If she took him home, he would certainly die.

Knowing that he would never need to understand her decision, Timmie kissed him and walked out into the hall that seemed suddenly much too bright for her eyes.

* * *

By eleven that night, the weather had cleared. The moon skirted fitfully among the ragged clouds, and a crisp breeze teased the trees. There was soft music drifting from the car stereo and the subtle scent of Aramis in the air.

"Surely you'll let me see you to the door."

Timmie looked over to where Alex's head gleamed faintly in the passing streetlights and smiled. She'd been preparing for this moment since she'd met Alex at Cafe Renee three hours earlier. Actually, she'd been dreading it. She'd intended to avoid the moment when Alex walked into her house by meeting him at the restaurant. But that had been before Cyrano had decided to have an uncommon hissy fit. Timmie had ended up walking over, and knew better than to think Alex would let her walk home. So she moved to plan B.

"This is Puckett, Alex," she assured him. "Nobody's going to mug me on my sidewalk. Besides, you've been yawning for the last hour. Get home and get some sleep."

Alex slowed his silver-gray Lexus to a perfect stop at the cross street before turning onto Timmie's block. "I'm really embarrassed about that, Timmie. I don't want you to think I haven't had a good time. I really enjoyed myself this evening."

Timmie smiled. "So did I."

Alex was a gentleman. He was dear and polite and sincere. Timmie was sure that it was the fact that she'd been distracted by everything on the planet that had made him seem so...

Nope. A woman who had just had a twenty-year-old fantasy fulfilled did not court words like "boring."

Alex was tired. Timmie was frustrated. She had had the evening scripted for almost a hundred years. Somehow it had never included endless paeans to her father, intensive instruction on everything to do with Alzheimer's, and a blow-by-blow description of the struggle to attain a new PET scanner for the unit.

Next time they would talk about world events, places each had traveled, the effect of any national policy that didn't have a direct impact on health care. Next time they'd laugh like kids over silly jokes and the foibles of lesser humans.

"I haven't had much sleep the last few nights," he apologized for the third time. "I just can't figure out why Barnaby graduated."

"Graduated." The favorite among the vast and varied euphemisms for dying Alex was so fond of using. It still amazed Timmie that Alex couldn't actually say the word "died." His patients graduated or passed or expired or went on. They never just died. Which was what they did. Another one two nights earlier.

She should ask now. She should demand an explanation.

"It's almost enough to make a new customer nervous," she said. "It does seem we've been seeing a lot of your... residents in the ER lately."

She couldn't say clients. She just couldn't.

His expression stayed tight. "It happens like that sometimes. You know that. But it's been a really tough autumn for me."

She was going to ask more when they turned into her drive, and Alex abruptly smiled. "I've always loved this old house," he said, leaning forward a little to catch sight of the old Victorian with its soft red brick washed in porch light. "It's such a dignified old lady. Our house was brand new when I was a kid. No ghosts at all."

Timmie almost said that there weren't any ghosts in this house, either, but she couldn't quite believe it. "Yeah," she said instead, "our house in St. Louis was pretty boring, too."

"You never did tell me," he said, pulling the car to a stop. "How's your mom? Last I heard she was working up at Barnes Hospital."

"She still is. Assistant director of nursing. She's fine."

"And Rose and Margaret?"

The girls who, if Alex had ever thought to look their way, would have been much more of an age to attract him. "Fine."

Timmie heard the snap in her voice and almost apologized. But if Alex heard it, he didn't interpret it. He only nodded and smiled, a handsome man wearing his regulation-gray tailored suit and blue-and-red-patterned tie, in his perfectly nice car. Putting the car in Park, he yanked on the brake, and turned to her. "I'm glad you're back, Timmie."

Timmie smiled back at him. "Me, too, Alex. Thanks for dinner."

Murphy would be waiting to hear that she'd finagled a confession out of Alex. He'd want something more than Alex's admission that his own first marriage had failed because of his commitment to his work and that he was troubled by people... graduating in his unit. Timmie couldn't pry any deeper, and not because she'd dreamed of Alex since she'd been seven.

"I'll probably see you at Restcrest tomorrow," she said, fiddling with the tiny bells that dangled from her earrings.

His smile grew. "You're a good daughter."

Timmie damn near laughed. Just the testimonial she wanted in a darkened driveway from the man of her dreams.

"He's quite a dad," she said, as she always did, and unhanded the bells to grab her purse. Definitely time to go.

"He's a lion of the hills."

That almost did it. Timmie nodded and struggled to get the door open. "He is that. Good night, Alex."

She made it all the way up to her front porch before it dawned on her that she hadn't even waited to be kissed. Or that Alex hadn't pressed the point. Definitely out of stage three of divorce, then, she decided, pulling out her house key.

Trying hard not to giggle, Timmie turned to wave good-bye. After she put that key in, Alex would go home and she'd be faced with that house again. With all the crap that she kept hidden behind that door. Well, hell, she might as well get it over with.

Except that the door was already open.

Timmie realized it when she went to slide in the key. The door creaked with the pressure of her hand. It swung in a little, and for the first time Timmie saw that she was standing in a pool of shattered glass. Somebody had broken out the door window.