Maybe a little of that educated tongue, for good measure.”
He gave her what she asked for. Rose held him tight, and for a long time.
15
Dan and John rode in silence most of the way back to the motel in Adair. The spade was in the trunk. The baseball glove was in the backseat, wrapped in a Holiday Inn towel. At last John said, “We’ve got to bring Abra’s folks into this now. She’s going to hate it and Lucy and David won’t want to believe it, but it has to be done.”
Dan looked at him, straight-faced, and said: “What are you, a mind-reader?”
John wasn’t, but Abra was, and her sudden loud voice in Dan’s head made him glad that this time John was driving. If he had been behind the wheel, they very likely would have ended up in some farmer’s cornpatch.
(NOOOOO!)
“Abra.” He spoke aloud so that John could hear at least his half of the conversation. “Abra, listen to me.”
(NO, DAN! THEY THINK I’M ALL RIGHT! THEY THINK I’M ALMOST NORMAL NOW!)
“Honey, if these people had to kill your mom and dad to get to you, do you think they’d hesitate? I sure don’t. Not after what we found back there.”
There was no counterargument she could make to this, and Abra didn’t try . . . but suddenly Dan’s head was filled with her sorrow and her fear. His eyes welled up again and spilled tears down his cheeks.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
16
Early Thursday morning.
Steamhead Steve’s Winnebago, with Snakebite Andi currently behind the wheel, was cruising eastbound on I-80 in western Nebraska at a perfectly legal sixty-five miles an hour. The first streaks of dawn had just begun to show on the horizon. In Anniston it was two hours later. Dave Stone was in his bathrobe making coffee when the phone rang. It was Lucy, calling from Concetta’s Marlborough Street condo. She sounded like a woman who had nearly reached the end of her resources.
“If nothing changes for the worse—although I guess that’s the only way things can change now—they’ll be releasing Momo from the hospital first thing next week. I talked with the two doctors on her case last night.”
“Why didn’t you call me, sweetheart?”
“Too tired. And too depressed. I thought I’d feel better after a night’s sleep, but I didn’t get much. Honey, this place is just so full of her. Not just her work, her vitality . . .”
Her voice wavered. David waited. They had been together for over fifteen years, and he knew that when Lucy was upset, waiting was sometimes better than talking.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with it all. Just looking at the books makes me tired. There are thousands on the shelves and stacked in her study, and the super says there are thousands more in storage.”
“We don’t have to decide right now.”
“He says there’s also a trunk marked Alessandra. That was my mother’s real name, you know, although I guess she always called herself Sandra or Sandy. I never knew Momo had her stuff.”
“For someone who let it all hang out in her poetry, Chetta could be one closemouthed lady when she wanted to.”
Lucy seemed not to hear him, only continued in the same dull, slightly nagging, tired-to-death tone. “Everything’s arranged, although I’ll have to reschedule the private ambulance if they decide to let her go Sunday. They said they might. Thank God she’s got good insurance. That goes back to her teaching days at Tufts, you know. She never made a dime from poetry. Who in this fucked-up country would pay a dime to read it anymore?”
“Lucy—”
“She’s got a good place in the main building at Rivington House—a little suite. I took the online tour. Not that she’ll be using it long. I made friends with the head nurse on her floor here, and she says Momo’s just about at the end of her—”
“Chia, I love you, honey.”
That—Concetta’s old nickname for her—finally stopped her.
“With all my admittedly non-Italian heart and soul.”
“I know, and thank God you do. This has been so hard, but it’s almost over. I’ll be there Monday at the very latest.”
“We can’t wait to see you.”
“How are you? How’s Abra?”
“We’re both fine.” David would be allowed to go on believing this for another sixty seconds or so.
He heard Lucy yawn. “I might go back to bed for an hour or two. I think I can sleep now.”
“You do that. I’ve got to get Abs up for school.”
They said their goodbyes, and when Dave turned away from