“I remember it was raining hard and very cold. I didn’t see anyone.”
“You let me know if you do,” I said.
29
Somehow the supplemental part of the attempted burglary offense report made it into the press basket in time for the six o’clock news on Saturday night. Reporters began calling both Rose and me at home with question after question about our being followed
I had no doubt Bray was behind that little slip. It was a nice little bit of amusement for her on an otherwise cold, dreary weekend. Of course she didn’t give a damn that my sixty-four-year-old secretary lived alone in a community that did not have a guard gate.
Late Sunday afternoon I sat in my great room, a fire burning, as I worked on a long overdue journal article that I had no heart for. The wretched weather continued and my concentration drifted. By now, Jo should have been admitted to MCV and Lucy should be in D.C., I supposed. I didn’t know for sure. But of one thing I was certain. Lucy was angry, and whenever she was angry, she cut herself off from me. It could go on for months, even a year.
I had managed to avoid calling my mother or my sister Dorothy, which might have seemed pretty cold of me, but I didn’t need one more watt of stress. I finally relented early
Sunday evening. Apparently Dorothy wasn’t home. I tried my mother next.
“No, Dorothy’s not here,” my mother said. “She’s in Richmond, and maybe you would know that if you ever bothered to call your sister and your mother. Lucy’s in a shooting, and you can’t be bothered. . .”
“Dorothy’s in Richmond?” I said in disbelief.
“What do you expect? She’s her mother.”
“So Lucy’s in Richmond, too?” The thought sliced through me like a scalpel.
“That’s why her mother’s going there. Of course Lucy’s in Richmond.”
I didn’t know why I should have been surprised. Dorothy was a narcissistic upstager. Whenever there was drama, she had to be the center of it. If that meant suddenly assuming the role of mother to a child she cared nothing about, Dorothy would.
“She left yesterday and didn’t want to bother to ask about staying in your house, since you don’t seem to care about your family,” my mother said.
“Dorothy never wants to stay in my house.”
My sister was quite fond of hotel bars. At my house, there was no possibility of meeting men, at ldast not any I was willing to share with her.
“Where is she staying?” I asked. “And is Lucy staying with her?”
“No one will tell me, all this secrecy business, and here I am, her grandmother . . :”
I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Mother, I’ve got to go,” I said.
I practically hung up on her and called the orthopedic department chair, Dr. Graham Worth, at home.
“Graham, you’ve got to help me out,” I told him.
“Don’t tell me a patient in my unit died,” he wryly said.
“Graham, you know I wouldn’t ask for your help unless it was something very important.”
Levity gave way to silence.
“You’ve got a patient under an alias. She’s DEA, was shot in Miami. You know who I mean.”
He didn’t answer me.
“My niece, Lucy, was involved in the same shooting;” I went on.
“I know about the shooting,” he replied. “Certainly it’s been in the news.”
“I’m the one who asked Jo Sanders’s DEA supervisor to transfer her to MCV I promised to’personally look after her, Graham.”
“Listen, Kay,” he said. “I’ve been instructed that under no circumstances am I allowed to let anyone but immediate family in to see her.”
“No one else?” I said in disbelief. “Not even my niece?”
He paused, then said, “It pains me to tell you this, but especially not her.”
“Why?That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s not my call.”
I couldn’t imagine Lucy’s reaction if she was being barred from seeing her lover.
“She’s got a shattered, comminuted fracture of the left femur;” he was explaining. “I’ve had to put in a plate. She’s in traction and on morphine, Kay. She fades in and out: Only her parents are seeing her. I’m not even sure she really understands where she is or what happened to her.”