“That would be fine,” Mrs. Sanders said.
“Now, Jo, you do what the doctor says;” Mr. Sanders told his daughter in a dispirited way.
They went out and the instant I shut the door, Jo’s eyes filled with tears. I bent over and kissed her week.
“You’ve had all of us worried sick,” I said.
“How’s Lucy?” she whispered as sobs began to shake her and tears flowed.
I placed tissues in a hand that was tethered by IV tubes.
“I don’t know. I don’t know where she is, Jo. Your parents told her you didn’t want to see her and . . :’
Jo started shaking her head.
“I knew they’d do that,” she said in a dark, depressed tone. “I knew they would. They told me she didn’t want to see me. She was too upset, because of what happened. I didn’t believe them. I know she would never do something like that. But they ran her off and now she’s gone. And maybe she believes what they said.”
“She feels what happened to you is her fault,” I said. “It’s very possible the bullet in your leg came from her gun:”
“Please bring her to me. Please.”
“Do you have any idea where she might be?” I asked. “Is there any place she might go when she’s upset like this? Maybe back to Miami?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t go there.”
I sat down in a chair by the bed and blew out a long, exhausted breath.
“A hotel maybe?” I asked. “A friend?”
“Maybe New York;” Jo said. “There’s a bar in Greenwich Village. Rubyfruit.”
“You think she went to New York?” I asked, dismayed.
“The owner’s name is Ann, a former cop;” her voice shook. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. She scares me when she runs away. She doesn’t think right when she gets like that.”
“I know. And with all that’s gone on, she can’t be thinking right anyway. Jo, you should be getting out of here in another day or so if you behave,” I said with a smile. “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t want to go home. You’ll find her, won’t you?”
“Would you like to stay with me?” I asked.
“My parents aren’t bad people,” she muttered as morphine dripped. “They don’t understand. They think . . . Why is it wrong . . . ?”
“It’s not,” I said. “Love is never wrong.”
I left the room as she drifted.
Her parents were outside the door. Both looked exhausted and sad.
“How is she?” Mr. Sanders asked.
“Not too well,” I said.
Mrs. Sanders began to cry.
“You have a right to believe the way you do,” I said. “But preventing Lucy and Jo from seeing each other is the last thing your daughter needs right now. She doesn’t need more fear and depression. She doesn’t need to lose her will to live, Mr. and Mrs. Sanders.”
Neither of them replied.
“I’m Lucy’s aunt,” I said.
“She’s about back in this world anyway, I guess,” Mr. Sanders said.. “Can’t keep anybody from her. We were just trying to do what’s best:’
“Jo knows that,” I replied. “She loves you.”
They didn’t say good-bye but watched me as I got on the elevator. I called Rubyfruit the minute I got -home and asked for Ann over the loud noise of voices and a band.
“She’s not in great shape,” Ann said to me, and I knew what that meant.
“Will you take care of her?” I asked.
“I already am,” she said. “Hold on. Let me get her.”
“I saw Jo,” I said when Lucy got on the phone.
“Oh,” was all. she said, and it was obvious from one word that she was drunk.
“Lucy!”
“I don’t want to talk right now,” she said.
“Jo loves you,” I said. “Come home.”
“Then what do I do?”
“We bring her to my house from the hospital and you take care of her,” I said. “That’s what you do.”
I barely slept. At 2:00 A.M. I finally got up and went into the kitchen to fix a cup of herbal tea. It was still raining hard, water running off the roof and splashing on the patio, and I couldn’t seem to get warm. I thought about the swabs and hair and photographs of bite marks locked inside my briefcase, and it almost seemed the killer was inside my house.