Текст книги "Family Love"

Автор книги: Liz Crowe

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Four

One Year Later

The next Christmas galloped up fast, surprising me a little. I’d spent the year since the Love family’s implosion working my forty hours, taking home my paycheck, going out on a few dates, but shocking myself with my unwillingness to have sex, even a one-night stand.

“I’m about to be that lady, the one who only goes out to get a bottle of gin and kitty litter,” I said to Kieran a few weeks before I was to go home for the holiday.

“You gotta at least have one cat for that,” he said. “Did you talk to him?”

“He said he was coming, for the kids’ sake.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess.” He sighed. “Mama’s full speed ahead, in denial mode. But planning the typical over-the-top Christmas day festivities.”

“How’s Daddy?”

“Working too much. He and Dom fight daily, but I think Dom does it just to give him a feeling of normalcy. We’re pretty sure he and Mama are sleeping in separate rooms. But Lindsay puts up a good front, as you know.”

“I do know.” Guilt over not setting foot in Lucasville for the past twelve months made me dizzy. “They don’t … fight or anything?”

“If they do, it’s when no one else is around. I have this feeling that they don’t. Which in a way is worse.”

“Yeah,” I said, toying with my coffee cup. “I’ll be in on the twenty-third. Don’t tell them. Maybe I can surprise Daddy in a good way. I can’t wait to hold that sweet little girl.”

“Ugh, it’s killing me, I won’t kid you. We’re too old for it.” But I heard the happiness in his voice.

“Liar. If you could, you’d have a litter of ‘em, just like Mama and—” I stopped.

“I’ll see you next week, Angel. Send me your flight info. I’ll pick you up.”

***

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Mama said, wiping her floury hands on her apron and accepting my kiss to her cheek when I trooped into the kitchen the following week. “Anton,” she said, her voice neutral. “Your baby girl is here.”

Daddy walked in from the living room, holding a magazine. I gasped at the sight of him. “Daddy, are you sick?” He gathered me close and kissed my hair. He must have lost twenty pounds he couldn’t afford to lose.

“No, Angel. I’m fine.” He let go of me and wandered into the living room again. No admonishing me about helping Mama or asking my mother what she wanted him to do. He sat in his recliner and stared down at the open magazine.

I bit my lip, and then returned to the kitchen. Mama handed me napkins to iron. Cara and Diana both shot me sympathetic looks from their corners, where they were prepping food. I held the pile of Irish white linen fabric, glancing between my parents, my heart thudding.

Christmas day brought snow, kids, and brothers. When Aiden and his family arrived, it was a flurry of strange reunion. He was polite but cool with Mama and his usual loving self with Daddy.

The weird awkwardness saturated everything until Dominic burst in the door alongside his now teenaged, tall, and very handsome son Jace, with a big announcement about Jace’s college basketball career. That broke the tension for a while, once everyone got over the fact that Jace would be wearing a Louisville Cardinals uniform the next winter, and playing for the archenemy of my father and brothers’ beloved Kentucky Wildcats.

Daddy brought out U of L hats, and everyone put them on, wincing as if they burned. But he was damn proud of Jace, and I knew it.

When the doorbell rang, I ignored it until Mama told me to go answer it. Wiping my hands on a dishtowel, I set the silverware on the expanded dining room table in passing. Everyone got real quiet as while I walked down the steps to the front door. I glanced over my shoulder as I opened it.

“Angel,” a familiar voice said. I turned slowly and came face to face with Cal Morrison, brandishing a huge bouquet of roses and a bottle of wine.

“Mama,” I called out, not taking my eyes from his. “What have you done?”

“Just what’s best for my children,” she sang out from the kitchen.

Dominic reached around me, snagged the flowers and wine, and gave me a push toward him.

Something in me gave way then. All the almost-unbearable tension from the past years, the failure of a marriage, all my rotten, stupid life choices, seemed to lift up and out of me like steam off summer morning grass.

I smiled. Cal opened his arms.

Our holiday dinner was loud and chaotic. My father seemed to have recovered his appetite and joy at having the family around him. My mother served, bossed, joked, and laughed at her end of the table. But they didn’t ever speak directly to each other. An omission that hung over us like a thundercloud.

Cal held my hand tight the whole time. I let him, loving it and him, and fighting an inner battle with myself over how I might ponder a real future here, in the city I’d despised so intensely for so many years.

Dom played Santa, and when he gave Diana a beautiful diamond ring at the end of the gift frenzy, she burst into uncharacteristic tears. All pretty typical Love family drama, but in a good way. Aiden stayed aloof, but I could tell he was glad to be home, at least for a while.

Mandy was surly, and had been the whole year, according to Rosie. Separating her from her beloved grandma had been brutal for everyone.

Cal helped dry the serving dishes. Mama treated him like family, bossing him around while bragging on him and his job as head of emergency services at the fancy new county hospital.

Once we were done, the wrapping paper all disposed of, the table cleared, kids getting grumpy, and Daddy about to pass out on the couch, Cal grabbed me and pulled me down to the bottom basement. I’d spent plenty of time making out in that space as a teenager, but when he kissed me then, I knew I wouldn’t want another man’s touch or lips but his, ever again.

“Angel,” he gasped when we broke the lip-lock. “Oh God, honey, I have missed you.”

“Take me home, Cal,” I said. “I mean … I’m real sorry about your divorce.”

He thumbed my chin. “It’s all right. She knew I was only half with her the whole time. She found somebody else, and I don’t blame her.”

“Only half with her,” I said.

“And half with you,” he said, smiling before taking my hand and leading me upstairs.

“Go on,” Mama said from her spot in her chair, reading glasses on and a book on her lap.

“But I was staying here,” I protested, knowing I had to do that.

“No, you’re not,” she said, smiling at me.

We rode through the swirling snow to Cal’s tidy house in one of the older neighborhoods. He unlocked the door, pulled me inside, and held me close. “Promise me something,” he said into my hair.

“Anything,” I said, gripping the back of his shirt.

“Never leave me again.”

I nodded, took a half step away, and slipped out of my shoes and dress. He sucked in a breath. But I put my finger to his lips, unbuttoned his shirt, unbuckled and unzipped his trousers, and left everything in a puddle at our feet.

“I love you,” I said, letting my finger trail along his jaw, down his neck and torso. “And you are stuck with me now. I hear I’m a real handful.”

He smiled, scooped me up and took me to his bedroom.

The sound of a ring tone exactly like the one from the kitchen of my childhood jolted us both awake. Cal got up and found his phone in the pocket of the trousers we’d left on the living room floor. I lay still, arm over my eyes, so completely happy I was scared to let myself feel it.

“Okay,” Cal was saying as he walked into the bedroom. “I’ll tell her.” He ended the call and stood in the doorway, his dark eyes serious.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, holding the sheet to my chest. “Spit it out, Calvin. I know I’m not going to be allowed to be this happy without the axe dropping sometime.”

“Your father is moving out of the house,” he said, coming to gather me in his arms. “Antony and Kieran are helping him. He’s all right. But he insisted on it … late last night, I guess. Big blowout fight, or something.”

I pushed away from him and scrambled out of bed, wrapping myself in a quilt. “It’s Love family crap, Cal. And I shouldn’t subject you to it.” I headed out into the living room to find my clothes. “I’m sorry.” Blinded by tears, I stepped into panties and tried to locate my bra.

“I’m disappointed in you,” he said, watching me slip the dress down over my bra-less body.

“Yeah? Well, take a dang number on that one,” I said, grabbing my shoes. “I gotta go to him. He needs me.”

Cal had on a pair of jeans and soft blue button-down shirt by the time I emerged from the bathroom. “You promised me, remember?” He spun his keys on his finger. “And I’m not letting you break it this time.” He dropped to one knee and held out a ring box.

I sighed dramatically and took it. “Lord have mercy, Calvin, you have the worst timing in the world. My parents’ marriage is breaking up, and you want to propose? And me without my coffee?” But I smiled and slipped the tasteful, classy diamond onto my finger as if there had not been ten years between this time and the last time he’d done it. “Get up, already. We have to go deal with Anton and Lindsay.”

“I adore you, Angelique Love.” Calvin kissed me in that way he always had, making me wish we could ditch all the drama and head back to bed. But I pulled away and gripped his arms.

“I am a handful,” I repeated.

“I’m aware. I have big hands. Let’s go. We can bring everyone coffee and muffins from Jen’s,” he said, naming his sister-in-law’s popular deli.

My brothers, Calvin, and I all loaded a few things into the brewery van, then carried them up the metal stairs to the apartment over the old brewery where Dom had lived for a while. They all stood around, looking lost and useless, making noises about getting some beer, or maybe pizza, until I shooed them the hell out.

Calvin shot me an odd look when I told him to go on, that I needed a few minutes alone with my daddy. But I put my palm alongside his scruffy jaw, kissed him gently, and he left without another word. I watched him a minute and surprised myself by saying a quick, mental prayer of thanks that I finally had been allowed to find my Prince Charming.

“Sit down, Daddy,” I said, once I got past that moment. He stood in the middle of the small combination dining and living room, stubborn on his face and in every line of his body.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a bottle of expensive bourbon, plunked it on the small table, and said it again. “Sit down, Daddy.”

He sat. I poured us healthy portions into a couple of juice glasses and held mine up. He didn’t join me. Just tossed the liquor back fast.

“Why?” I asked him, gesturing at the piss-poor accommodations. I had no other question, really.

“Not your business, Angel,” he growled, reaching for the bottle.

I picked it up. He sat, glaring at me. The silence took on a life of its own for a while. “It is my business. You and Mama are being ridiculous.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t care what she did.” His slightly swollen knuckles bulged above the grip of his fingers. “I do care. But I didn’t, then. I couldn’t, you know?”

He glanced up at me, the abject plea on his face forcing me to take a step away and wonder why I’d initiated this potentially devastating discussion. “I was no better. I was worse. I … I cheated, lied, told myself to stop. Stopped. Then would start it up again. Always with the same girl.”

I raised an eyebrow, forcing myself not to voice the words in my head about And that makes what she did okay?

He groaned and put his forehead down on his hands. “I knew what that damn piece of paper was. Where she’d been figuring out the blood types. I’m not a total idiot.”

He pushed his empty glass to me and I refilled it. They’d been yelling about some piece of paper in the hotel, confusing everyone except them. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything, willing myself to listen for now.

He sighed and leaned back. “I think I knew it the minute she got home from that weekend.” I got a glimpse of him as a man, a frustrated young father, husband to a supremely aggravating woman he adored, and attractive to other women.

That freaked me out so much I gulped my drink, almost choking on it.

“Marry Calvin Morrison, Angel. He’s a good man. He’ll take real good care of you. Better than I ever did of Lindsay.”

“Daddy, that’s self-pity talking now. Stop it.”

He shot me a dark look. But I surged ahead, needing to say these things before I chickened out. “Y’all are only good if you’re together, warts and all. You say you knew, but you raised Aiden as your own. She says she knew about the … the … that woman.” I had to stop and pour myself another one to get past that fact. “And all Mama did was make you fire her, no questions asked. Why make this such a thing now? Such a huge thing. A thing that makes you move out of your own dang house?”

He got up and started pacing the small space, dragging his fingers through his almost all-silver hair.

I sat, drinking and waiting, and—surprisingly—praying in my mind. Finally, he stopped and turned. “I need space, Angelique. I have to think this thing through now that Aiden knows. Now he … he’s so mad we kept it from him that he’s gone and moved to California. And now I know she honestly believed she could keep such a thing from me.” He pointed to his chest. “Me.” He yelled, pounding it now, over and over again.

“From me! I’m the only one who ever got her, understood her, loved her the way she deserved to be loved. But I fucking knew what she’d done and who with. Not because of that damn paper with the blood types, either.”

He slumped against the fridge. “He told me. Joe Patterson. He was a good man, but a man all the same and Lindsay was a beautiful, headstrong, tempting woman.”

My father looked up at the ceiling. When he met my eyes, his were hard and set. “Joe and I had ourselves a conversation, and an understanding. And I expected her to tell me herself after that. But she never … fucking … did. She hid it behind trying to be a supermom and wife. Don’t think I don’t know that. But I love her. God save my soul from the depths of hell, I still do.”

I was gripping the bottle so hard it hurt when I let go, but I did, and got up and went to him. But he sidestepped me, running fingers through his hair again and looking frantic. “Go on. Leave me be.”

I dropped my arms. We stood glaring at each other for a solid minute.

“Tell her this, Daddy,” I said, my voice rough, tears burning. “You have to. You can’t just give up.” I grabbed his arms. He looked startled. “You are not allowed to give up. Not on this. Not on her.”

He plucked my hands off his arms and held them to his lips. “Oh, Angel,” he said. “My Angel. I think I already have.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The new Love family reality hit everyone hard. Having lurched from terror at the idea of losing our mother to cancer, through her various setbacks and eventual recovery, we were all raw around the edges. Every brother had experienced his own bit of trauma in between. Plus me and my nonstop ability to screw up my life.

But this, this actual, physical separation of the one unit we’d all considered our touchstone—it was a knife in our backs. It hurt, bad. And we couldn’t reach around and yank it out to stop the pain.

I held off any talk of weddings for a few months, until circumstances dictated that we should elope and have ourselves a kitschy Las Vegas ceremony. We returned from that to learn there were attorneys involved now. My father had actually initiated a divorce. Mama was stoic, annoyingly so, unwilling to discuss it with any of us.

We hit early spring with a riot of flowers and color. I tried to get my brothers to help me host our parents’ traditional Derby Day party, but they were lukewarm about the idea. Antony was having trouble with his son Josh, he claimed. Kieran was swamped with the end of the school year approaching, plus a bunch of bizarre tension between some new suburbia kids that had moved in, upsetting the delicate balance that is a large high school’s social environment. Dom didn’t even want to discuss having that “stupid fucking party.” He seemed to be the most torn up over our parents’ looming divorce.

“Honey, I think it’s probably not worth the effort,” Cal said to me one late April morning over breakfast. He smiled and put a strawberry to my lips. I took it, wincing at its early season sourness. “You have enough going on already.”

I sipped some coffee before jumping up so fast my chair fell over. I barely made it to the bathroom.

“Oh, my Lord,” I said, leaning against the tub after throwing up the scant contents of my stomach. “Is it gonna be this bad for long?”

I glared up at my husband who leaned in the door, looking pleased with himself. “Well, help me up, already. Just because you knocked me up when my Italian stallion husband couldn’t.”

He smacked my ass. “Some of us are better at some things than others. And remember, dear heart, I couldn’t knock up the first Missus Morrison, either. And I assure you it was not from lack of trying.”

When I turned around after brushing my teeth, he pulled me close. I shoved him away, irrationally jealous over thoughts of my Cal making love to anyone but me.

He looked me up and down, making me tingle from head to toe. “Guess the DNA combination that was meant to be is ours,” he said, his voice perfectly calm, as always.

I sighed and let him hold me after I administered a quick, stern inner lecture about my basic self-centeredness. He cupped my breast and bit my earlobe. “God damn, you are hot. Let’s go back to bed.”

I’ll admit I was tempted. Ever since getting my good news I’d been insatiable, as if my hormones had revved into a weird kind of overdrive.

I reached into his shorts. “Mmmm …” I said. “Okay, let’s.”

He sighed. “Forgot, can’t. I have to get to work. Oh, Jesus.” He groaned when I pushed him out into the hall, yanked his shorts down and slid my lips over the head of his cock. He let me mess with him a while, then pulled me up to meet his lips. “Turn around,” he whispered. I did, bracing my hands on the wall and sighing when he slid into me.

Later that morning, I sat at the desk in the newly-expanded studio office, pondering resumes and wondering what in the hell made me think I could run a business. I kept sipping tea and eating saltines between bouts of puking. After a couple of hours setting up interviews and assigning classes to the three instructors I had already hired, I gave up.

When I pulled into my parents’ driveway, I blinked, not even realizing I’d meant to come here. But I got out and headed for the door, knowing it was high time I told my mother the news.

“Hello?” I opened the door, expecting the usual greeting from the kitchen. But the house was silent. I went up the steps to the main living room, figuring maybe she was napping. But it was empty. The kitchen was tidy, tucked away, unused, which was odd. There was no smell of morning coffee or toast. Panic bloomed in my chest. I ran upstairs, calling for her. The bathroom and all the bedrooms were clean and devoid of people.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Mama! Where the hell?” I stopped at the top of the stairs to the lower family room.

“Down here,” she called. I dashed down the steps to the bottom basement. She sat on the butt-sprung, ratty old couch my brothers and I had played on, sat on while drinking illicit beers, and made out on with various partners over the years. The room was neat as a pin. The toys Mama kept around for her grandbabies were all put away. It smelled of fabric softener and starch.

She sat on the couch, fists on her knees, tears streaming down her face. “I have to get him back,” she said. “Angelique, please, you have to talk to him.”

I sat next to her and put my arm around her thin shoulders. To my utter shock, she leaned into my neck and sobbed like a child. Feeling all sorts of awkward, I patted her back. Finally she sat up and dabbed her eyes. “We are too dang old for this nonsense. Divorce. Lord have mercy. It’s not like he didn’t … and it was so long ago …”

“Well, Mama, I guess—”

She shot me a sharp, familiar look. Then she sighed and seemed to crumple in on herself. I patted her knee, at a total loss. The sum total of our relationship didn’t include a whole lot of moments that would give me any real frame of reference for this one.

“I’m gonna have a baby,” I said.

She blinked fast, and then grabbed my hand. “Oh, honey. I’m so happy for you.”

Then she started crying again—loud, gut-wrenching, anguished sobs that scared me. After a while, she got up and started pacing the room, the way Antony tended to do when he was upset about something.

I sat, swallowing a sudden surge of nausea.

“I’m sorry. I told him I was sorry.” She twisted her fingers together before dragging them through her hair. “I told them both that. Now I’ve lost them both. My sweet baby boy and … my …” She dropped to her knees, startling me even further. I got up and went to her, unsure what to do.

She grabbed my legs and held on for dear life. I pulled her up, gave her a hug and said, “Let’s go have some tea.” She swallowed hard, and then chuckled. Then she giggled. Then she laughed.

I held onto her, thinking I should call Cal, or maybe the guys in the white coats, ’cause my Mama had just gone the rest of the way ’round the bend. Finally, she calmed.

“Oh, honey,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Oh, my sweet girl.” She patted my cheek. “I always wanted a girl, you know. But kept getting all those damn boys.”

I moved away, nervous now, and a little aggravated. “Couldn’t prove it by me,” I said, picking up the pile of clothes she must have dropped on her way to laundry room.

“Oh don’t be silly, Angelique.” Her dismissive tone had returned. She stood, arms crossed, face red and puffy, but yet still managing to force me in the irrational teenager role.

“I’m not silly, Mama. You hated my ever-loving guts. Don’t deny it.”

She put a hand over her lips and closed her eyes. “No,” she finally said, staring at me from across the expanse of old, smelly couch. “No, I didn’t hate you. I hated myself.”

I frowned and crossed my arms, mirroring her. “What is that supposed to mean? Unless you’re fixin’ to tell me I have a different daddy, too?”

She moved fast, shocking me with the slap. I put a hand to my stinging face. “I’ll take that as a no,” I said, turning to go upstairs.

“Angelique, wait.”

I stopped. Calvin had told me more than once I should try harder with her, give her a shot at being a good mother without jumping in and causing trouble with my smart-ass commentary first. Respectful of my love for that man, and for no other reason, I faced her with my mouth shut.

She had her arms held out as if in supplication. They were shaking. “I was so … so very tired. I didn’t want another baby. My body definitely didn’t, even though I’m still mad at your Daddy for letting those surgeons tie up my tubes while I was out.”

She bit her lip. I stayed quiet. “I was disappearing under a mountain of babies and diapers and toys and puke and shit.” Her lip quivered. She cleared her throat.

“After Aiden, I swore I’d make everything right with him, with Anton. I mean, he’d done it, too—let that slutty woman—” She stopped and ran a hand down her face. “It doesn’t justify what I did. I knew it was my fertile time of the month, and I did it anyway. I let Joe Patterson fuck me.”

I took a step backwards, more shocked by that than any slap she might administer.

“I needed something. And I got it. I got Aiden, the sweetest, most wonderful little baby boy. And I also got to keep the most terrible secret, carry it around my neck like a stone all day, every day, picking it up every morning, and letting it color everything about my view of myself and my inability to be the wife and mother I should be.”

“Mama, you were—” I stopped. She truly had been a supermom, the volunteering, chaperoning, party-throwing, cookie-baking, house-always-clean and dinner-always-cooked type. I didn’t appreciate that fully until this very moment. “Why didn’t you just tell him?

She snorted. “Right. I can’t imagine how that conversation would have gone.”

“Well, it might have kept us from sitting here in the basement today, talking about you and Daddy getting a divorce in your sixties.”

She glared at me. “I tried to make it up to him. Lord knows I nearly killed myself for a couple of decades getting most of y’all through your teenage years intact. But that was the goal. Nothing more. When you came along I was, I don’t know, a shell. I had nothing left to give.” Her shoulders hitched. “I’m sorry. You’ll understand, maybe, someday. Or maybe not. You’ll be better equipped than I was.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have iced tea. Lord knows you’ve offered that to me often enough as a way to solve problems.”

She smiled a little. “Oh, it’s not a problem-solver, necessarily. It does gives you a chance to catch a breath and see a problem in a different light.”

“Fine, whatever.” I held out my hand. “Let’s go do that.”

We sat with the glasses in front of us, words dried up for the time being. But for the first time in my entire life, I sensed the silence as a comfort, not a stressor.

She looked up at me, her green eyes still watery. “You’ll talk to him for me? He listens to you. And he’s just being so dang stubborn, you know? He doesn’t want a divorce. He’s still too Catholic for that.” She turned her glass around on the table. “I told him that. Which didn’t help.” She sighed “Me and my damn mouth.”

I hesitated, stalling, so as not to reply to that leading comment. What in the world I might say to my nearly sixty-five-year-old father to convince him not to divorce my mother, after all they’d been through, escaped me completely. I patted her hand. “Yes, Mama. I will.”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost Aiden forever.”

I sipped, not wanting to agree with her and make it worse. She put her work-roughened hand to my cheek. I leaned into it.

A siren screaming past made us both look toward the window. Our little town, once nothing more than a place for the employees at the various horse farms to shop and bank and pray, had been overrun with suburbanites and their Starbucks coffees and BMW SUVs parked in the garages of houses built on the land those horse farms once occupied. That seemed to mean a lot more emergencies requiring sirens.

Mama got up and closed the window. “Thank you for coming over,” she said. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

As if on cue, a wave of nausea hit me. I got up and ran for the bathroom. Mama followed me and handed me a cool, wet washcloth after I’d finished.

“It’s bad, huh?”

I nodded. She patted my knee and walked out.

When I made it to the kitchen, she had a lemon and some ginger sliced and was boiling a pot of water on the stove. I dropped into my seat and pushed the tea glass aside so I could put my head on my arms.

She rubbed my shoulders. “I’m so happy for you, Angel. That man is such a catch.”

I chuckled. Leave it to my mother to remind me of that fact.

Another, louder siren shrieked down the street, followed by what sounded like the entire Lucasville police department. “Mercy,” she said. “Go lie on the couch a minute. I’ll make this up for you. I swear it will help.” She dropped the lemon and ginger into the boiling water as I passed by. I must have fallen asleep and directly into a dream filled with my brothers, all looking sad, a couple of them crying, which was beyond strange.

Someone was shaking my shoulder. I tried to turn over, lethargy pulling me down deep. “Angelique. Wake up.” I opened my eyes. My mother stood over me, clutching her computer tablet, her expression wild.

“What is it?” I tried to get my bearings. The light seemed weird. It must be a lot later than I thought.

Mama kept staring down at her phone. “Turn on the television,” she said, before dropping into her chair. “Quick.” Panic blossomed in my chest. I grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV. “Channel seven.”

I found it and stared at a video image of my old high school, newly expanded and made super-fancy with all the money that had poured in from the rich commuters. It appeared to be surrounded by police cars and ambulances and three fire trucks. A scroll of words ran across the bottom of the screen. I read them once, then again.

Mama gasped, jumped up and grabbed my arm. “Where’s Cara?” she said. “We have to get to her.”

“I … I … I d-d-d-don’t know.”

“I have to get to her.”

I blinked, attempting to process the sounds coming from the television.

“Lucasville High School is on lockdown,” a voice said. “Our reporters are not being allowed near enough to determine much. What we have surmised, from various reports of cell phone calls from students and faculty, is that there are two gunmen, both teenagers. They entered the high school about three hours ago, ran directly to the gym, and opened fire on a large group there, and are now holding the rest hostage, including several teachers and members of the administration.”

“Oh, my God, oh, Mama. Oh, Jesus.” I shook my head, blinded now by tears. She tightened her grip on my arm.

“Call your brothers. I’m going to Cara’s clinic.” She sounded completely calm, which helped me pull myself together.

I nodded, looking down at my phone. It was lit up with texts from Aiden. “Call me now,” he’d said, six different times in the last twenty minutes.

I touched his name with a trembling finger.

“He’s all right,” Aiden shouted. “He messaged me from inside.” I put a finger to my ear.

“Where in the hell are you? I can barely hear you.”

“Airport. I’ll be there as soon as I can. But he’s all right. Tell Mama and Daddy. Kieran is okay. He sent me a text a few minutes ago. Tell them, okay, Angel?”

I nodded, as if he could see me, ended the call and jumped a mile when it buzzed in my hand. The name “Francis” popped up on the screen.

Shaking all over I put it to my ear. “Kieran? That you? Kieran?”

“Angel,” he said. He sounded winded, as if he’d been running, his voice barely above a whisper. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes. Oh, God, are you …”

“Shush a minute. I can’t get hold of Cara. Please, tell her …” The phone went dead.

I leapt to my feet, staring at the TV screen and noting the cops all running toward the building, breaking the glass doors and pouring inside, out of sight of the many cameras.