FROM AWAY ~ BOOK TWO Page 2

  “Kind of you. But it seems the doctors have things covered.”

  The nun frowns. Releases Netty’s arm.

  Her elevator arrives. Bings. The doors slide open. She makes no move to step aboard.

  “It could be you’re right... Our intercessions may well have no effect. Purest vanity to believe the entreaties of a few old biddies might have any impact on the will of the Almighty.”

  Tired of waiting, the elevator doors close.

  “Perhaps Ms. Fields would be better off if we were to just... Leave her be. Mind our own business. Allow science to do what it can to mend her. That’s what you think, is it?”

  Netty’s teeth clench. Like it or not, she knows what service the nun is there to provide. Knows what Paula’s chances are, without her help.

  “In fact...” Mother Agatha continues. “I’m willing to leave the decision in your hands, Sheriff. Just you say the word, and never again will I or any of the sisters of St. Neot’s darken Paula’s doorstep. Is that what you’d prefer? To deprive the woman of whatever... Assistance we might offer?”

  Netty stares daggers at the nun. “No.”

  “No?” The doors shoosh open. Giving her another chance. “No, what?”

  Netty grits her teeth. “No. That’s not what I want.”

  Mother Agatha steps into the elevator. Turns to face Netty. “No, that’s not what you want... What?”

  Netty blinks. Realizing what the woman wants. Gives it to her: “That’s not what I want... Mother Agatha.”

  The nun smiles. Beatific. “As you wish.”

  She presses a button. The doors slide shut. The elevator descends.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the days since it happened, they’ve shared the commute. Picking up Sylvie on the way to the docks. Dropping her off on the way home after patrol.

  Truthfully, no one felt she should be working at all yet. So soon after losing Aaron. A single day spent away, then back in the boat. She should still be in mourning. Focused on her family. Letting them focus on her. But she wouldn’t have it. Said she needed to work. That she’d go crazy without the routine to hold on to. And everyone knows: There is no arguing with Sylvie.

  Burl glides his beat-up truck through empty streets. Still dark. Too early for anyone to be up and around. Crammed sideways into the afterthought back seat, Roscoe has ceded his customary shotgun position to Sylvie. The trio drive in silence. No conversation. No music. No radio. Just the engine’s grind. The familiar world in which they’ve spent their lives going by outside their windows.

  Burl sniffles. Flinches. The swelling has finally gone down, but his broken nose is still hurting. Little metal splints pinch on either side. Held in place beneath criss-crossed surgical tape.

  Onto Sylvie’s block. Slowing towards her house: One in a row of multicolored but otherwise identical clapboard homes. The one with Trevor sitting in the dark on the front stoop. Waiting for her return.

  Burl is first to notice him. “Uh-oh.”

  Sylvie sees her husband. Sighs.

  As they pull up to the curb, Trevor rises. Steps down to the sidewalk. Anxious for his wife’s return. Almost dancing in place.

  Sylvie climbs out. “Service starts at 9:30. Stanley Funeral Home.”

  Burl nods. “Got it.”

  Sylvie turns away. Heads up her driveway. If she says anything to her husband as she pushes past him, the men in the truck don’t hear it. But Trevor stops dancing. Watches her climb the steps. Follows.

  Roscoe struggles to extricate himself from the second row. Takes the passenger seat.

  By the time he’s situated, Sylvie and her husband have both disappeared inside.

  Burl pulls away.

  ~

  They don’t talk about her on the drive home. They don’t talk about her. They don’t talk about Aaron. Don’t. And haven’t. And won’t.

  It’s not what they do. Not part of the service agreement included with their relationship. Never before necessary. Unwanted now.

  When they reach their apartment building, Burl flashes his card at the reader. Waits for the garage door to lift. Rolls down the ramp into underground parking. Finds his spot. One of the few empty this time of day.

  Not feeling up to two-point turns and reverse navigation, he pulls the truck directly in. Shuts it down. Takes out his keys. Holds them in his lap.

  Neither reaches for their door handle. Neither makes any move to leave. Despite being ready to go, the men just sit.

  Windowless. Lit by sporadic orange lamps. The parking garage seems to exist outside of time. Always a chilly cement cellar, regardless the season. Always twilight, regardless the hour. Underground, there is no sense of progress. Of losses or gains. Of change.

  No reason not to get out. If they expect to get any sleep at all before the ceremony, they really need to get upstairs. But they don’t.

  Then, Roscoe leans forward. Puts his face in his hands. Starts to weep.

  Burl’s not sure what to do. He can’t look over. Stares at his hands. His keys. Through the windshield. At the cinderblock wall. In all their years of friendship, he’s never seen anything like this from Roscoe. The closest facsimile was a long, shuddering sniffle at his dying father’s bedside.

  He contemplates leaving Roscoe to it. Getting out of the truck. Going up to the apartment without him. He’d find his way on his own, once he’s gotten it out of his system.

  Instead, he finds himself reaching out an arm. Wrapping it around his oldest friend’s shoulders. Pulls him close. Roscoe lets him.

  Tears come to Burl then, too. Stinging his already achy black eyes.

  Four minutes pass before the truck’s doors open. The men get out. Go on with their lives.

  And - as with so many other things - never speak of it again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In sight of the finish line, Emilie F realizes Emily K has disappeared.

  They had been running side-by-side. She’d fallen into a good rhythm. Absorbed into the Power-Mix on her earbuds. Lost track of anything going on around her. Only now does she realize that at some point Kay left her side. Since then, she has been running entirely on her own.

  She slows to a stop. Catches her breath. Walks in a small circle. Hands on hips. Looks back up the trail. There’s no sign of Kay. Despite her dream of someday taking the lead, Emilie F knows better than to think she could possibly leave Kay behind entirely. She pops out her earbuds. Shouts: “Kay? You all right?”

  No response.

  For a moment she wonders if her friend sprinted ahead without her even noticing. It is usually around this point in the circuit of the wooded trail that Kay - a veteran runner of five years with six marathons under her belt - puts on a sudden burst of speed. Leaving Emilie F far behind.

  Most days, by the time she catches up - a shaky, sweat-drenched mess - she finds Kay already waiting in the car. Leisurely sipping from her water bottle. Reading newsfeeds on her cellphone. Without a drop of perspiration to show for the effort involved.

  Hearing her coming, Kay always looks up with that cocky smile and says: “You wouldn’t want me to go easy on you, would ya?”

  This daily trouncing has even inspired Kay to rename her. Compressing “Emilie F” into “M-Leaf.” As in: “Shaking like M-Leaf.”

  But however zoned out Emilie F might have been, she would certainly have noticed had Kay bolted past her. Without any doubt. She always notices.

  Not knowing what else to do, she starts back. At a light jog. Shouting intermittently. “Kay?”

  Little square signs hang from trees along the trail. Arrows. Pointing everyone clock-wise. Moving backwards - against the arrows - is an entirely new experience. All the little landmarks she’s become so accustomed to in the year since she joined Kay on these early morning runs seem strangely foreign from this direction.

  Around the halfway point she hears Kay. Pained. Somewhat muted. “Help! Em! I’m down here! Oh, God! Be careful!”

  Not understanding, but taking the w
arning seriously, Emilie F slows to a cautious walk. “Kay! Keep talking. I’ll follow your voice!”

  Kay sings out. Loud as she can manage, but with a constant quaver. “There was a little gir-rl, who had a little cur-rl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was--”

  “Holy shit!” Emilie F stops short. Stunned. Alongside the trail - altogether too close to the side where Kay was running - is a big, square hole.

  Eight feet long. Eight feet wide. Eight feet deep.

  In a dirty heap at the bottom: Her friend, Emily K. One foot pointing in an incongruous direction. The ankle horrifically dislocated. On the opposite leg, bone pokes through the flesh of her thigh. A compound-fracture.

  Emily F’s eyes dart away from the disconcerting wounds. Hone in on Kay’s sky-blue spandex jogging shorts: Darkened around the crotch. Either on the shock of the fall or the pain of her injuries... Emily K has pissed herself.

  In a year or so, with a lot of physiotherapy and even more discipline, Emily K will consider running again. When she does, Emilie F will happily welcome her back. Excited to once again have a partner to run with in the early mornings.

  “M-Leak,” she will say, each time she beats Kay around the circuit, “Wouldn’t want me to go easy on you, would ya?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “It’s your choice, Dawnie, but I’m telling you: They will not welcome us.”

  Ren drives into town. Eyes on his daughter as much as the road. Worried.

  “The last thing they should have to deal with is the surprise appearance of a long-lost brother they were hoping to never see again and a niece who really wants to get to know everyone.”

  Dawn’s tearing up. Again. “That’s not why I want to go, you know.”

  It’s been a hard three days since her cousin’s shocking death: Caught in the blast when the back-up generator exploded at the lighthouse where he worked. Hard for Dawn, not because she’d known Aaron well, but because they’d only been introduced earlier that day. The first relation she’d met on her father’s side of the family since arriving on the island where he was born and raised. They’d gotten along famously in their all-too-brief interaction. Looked forward to knowing one another better. But now...

  “I know you’re hurting. That’s legitimate. You liked Aaron and now he’s gone. But you need to think about what they’re going through. His family. And if we’ll be helping them by showing up.”

  Dawn sniffles. “But Dad... We are his family.”

  “Dawn, no. We’re related. It’s not the same thing.”

  Once, Ren had been family. A long time ago. But he’d left. Cut all contact. Never looked back. Only there now due to work-related circumstances beyond his control. Since returning, he’s run into each of his sisters once. Neither encounter had gone well. One ending in a fist-fight. The other, a dismemberment.

  “Shouldn’t we at least be there to show our respects?”

  “These people have known one another their entire lives. They’ll be pulling together. For security. Reassurance. We’ll just be invaders. Trying to force ourselves into their grieving .”

  “We lost something, too. At least they’ve had the chance to get to know him. Now, we never will.”

  Ren frowns. “You don’t really believe you could possibly be hurting more than the people who raised him?”

  Dawn looks away. She might very well believe that.

  Ren thinks about his sister, Sylvie: Aaron’s mom. Who she might be, after all his time away. How strongly she’d always felt things. How personal everything always was to her. He could only imagine how devastated he would be to lose Dawn. If his presence could help alleviate that in any way, he would want to be there. But - based on the punches she’d started throwing on their last run-in - he doubted that would be the case.

  “All right. I’ve said what I have to say: I think you should reconsider going. But you’re old enough to decide, and I’ll be with you either way. It’s a bad idea, but if you still want to go, we’ll go. What do you say?”

  Dawn is resolute. She will not reconsider.

  “We’re going.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  If she didn’t always bite her nails, they’d be much better suited to tearing into flesh. But even the ragged chewed edges she’s left herself are better than nothing. The overwhelming itch - constant since waking up there in the hospital bed - demands scratching. With any tool or implement convenient at the time.

  So Wanda digs under the bandages. Just below her elbow. Where her left forearm abruptly ends. Why they left that much - what good an inch of forearm could do anyone - she’ll never know. Should’ve just removed it entirely. Maybe that would’ve taken the itch away, too.

  She continues to scratch. Seeking satisfaction that will not come. Probing after a foreign irritant that must be removed. As though she hasn’t had enough removed already.

  She glances at the half-length mirror hung inside the closet door. Tries not to focus on her missing pieces. But even beyond that, her reflection is a shambles: Morning-faced. Hair unbrushed. Halfway-dressed when the itching had become too much to ignore.

  Turns out it isn’t easy: Doing one-handed what was second-nature with two.

  She’d pulled the t-shirt on without much difficulty. Rainbow tie-dyed, with an enormous smiley face on the front. Not hers, originally. Something from the hospital lost-and-found. Replacing the one they’d cut off her in order to operate.

  Nothing else had gone as smoothly.

  After twenty minutes of back-breaking contortions, she’d given up on the idea of ever wearing a bra again. A one-handed removal is one thing. Hooking it together that way? Something else entirely. Undies are time-consuming, but feasible. Jeans? Nothing less than a nightmare. The days of squeezing into anything form-fitting were behind her. Outside of hiring an assistant to help her in and out.

  And always, the itch.

  She holds her arms out towards the mirror. Flexes them together. The little nub beyond her elbow surely doesn’t amount to much. Less than two inches past the joint. Including the wrapped gauze dressing. Useless.

  Wanda’s ill-prepared for guests when the door opens.

  Miss Philips enters. Leaning on her four-footed cane. Short. Squat. Pure white hair trimmed close. Severe. She looks around the hospital room. Tries to decide what she likes least.

  For Wanda, it’s no contest. “Looks like you took a wrong turn, Phil. Morgue’s in the basement. If they give you any trouble, just let ‘em try to find your pulse.”

  “Wanda, Wanda, Wanda...” Miss Philips drags a chair away from the wall. Up next to Wanda’s bed. Sits.

  “Yeah-yeah, I know: I’ve failed you again.” Wanda scratches at her stump. “Well, you failed me first. Failed to mention it was my own brother you expected me to--”

  “Doctor Ramsey tells me you’re refusing to heed his advice.”

  Wanda plops down on the edge of her bed. “Oh he did, did he?”

  “He’s warned you: Worrying at your wounds like that can impede the healing process. It might even do permanent damage to your hand.”

  “To my... Are you cracked?” Wanda stops scratching. Waves her slight stump. “Got no hand to damage. Just an elbow, and then...” She whistles. Waves her existing hand through the empty space where her lost hand should be.

  “Nonsense. We made sure you were well taken care of. The procedure was a complete success. I’m told you should have full use in a matter of days.”

  “Sure. Sure.” Wanda glares at the old woman. Tries to figure out the game she’s playing. Gives up. “And maybe after that, I’ll regrow my tail.” She grabs a black leather boot. Threads her toes into it. Struggles to pull it over her calf with one hand.

  Miss Philips frowns. “You haven’t been released.”

  “True.” Wanda hops off the bed. Pushes down into the boot. That does the trick. “You might be surprised to find I don’t give a shit.” She lines up the other boo
t. Steps into it.

  “The Old Men have ensured you are receiving the very best care possible. All we ask is that you follow the doctor’s--”

  “I can’t imagine how you missed this, Phil, but... Aaron. My nephew? He’s dead. His funeral is today. I’m going.”

  With pressure, Wanda’s heel pops down into the second boot.

  The old woman blinks. “Yes, of course.” She leans heavily on her cane. Rises. “Try not to overdo things, Wanda. You’ll need all of your strength for optimum healing.” The old woman heads to the door. “When you’re better, we fully expect to revisit the terms of our original agreement.”

  She leaves.

  Wanda thrusts out her stump. With a little imagination, one can guess the salute her phantom hand is extending.

  “Revisit this!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Ambrosia salad... Peggy Winters. Tuna casserole... The McNeils? No. Archie Saunders.”

  Trevor is surrounded by foil and plastic wrap. Trays. Bowls. Air-tight containers. Every available kitchen surface covered. Food, lovingly prepared. By concerned neighbors. Co-workers. Clients. Delivered to their door. One less worry. One thing taken care of. By their community. People who love them.

  “Blondies... Mrs. Grant, of course.”

  People who will need their dishes returned. Who will require personalized thank-you notes. Specifically mentioning the sustenance they’ve so generously provided. How very good it was. How nourishing. What a consolation it had been in a time of need.

  “Lasagna. Who...?” Ah. Vegetarian lasagna. “Must’ve been the Harrises.”

  Trevor writes the name twice. First, in pen in his notebook. The second time, in marker on masking tape. Sticking it to the tinfoil cover. He’s worked hard to keep up with the influx. But in the midst of dealing with everything else, it’s been difficult to track each meal to cross their threshold. Those he received personally, of course, were no problem.