“Hi, I’m Regina. I’m a cripple.”
She reached out in greeting. Hatch reached out, too, before he realized
that her right arm and hand were not well formed. The arm was almost
normal, just a little thinner than her left, until it got to the wrist,
where the bones took an odd twist. Instead of a full hand, she
possessed just two fingers and the stub of a thumb that all seemed to
have limited flexibility.
Shaking hands with the girl felt strange distinctly strange but not
unpleasant.
Her gray eyes were fixed intently on his eyes. Trying to read his
reaction.
He knew at once that it would be impossible ever to conceal true
feelings from her, and he was relieved that he had not been in the least
repelled by her deformity.
“I’m so happy to meet you, Regina,” he said. “I’m Hatch Harrison, and
this is my wife, Lindsey.”
The girl turned to Lindsey and shook hands with her, as well, saying,
“Well, I know I’m a disappointment. You child-starved women usually
prefer babies young enough to cuddle-” The Nun with No Name gasped in
shock. “Regina, really!”
Sister Immaculata looked too apoplectic to speak, like a penguin that
had frozen solid, mouth agape and eyes bulging in protest, hit by an
arctic chill too cold even for Antarctic birds to survive.
Approaching from the windows, Father Jiminez said, “Mr. and Mrs.
Harrison, I apologize for-”
“No need to apologize for anything,” Lindsey said quickly, evidently
sensing, as Hatch did, that the girl was testing them and that to have
any hope of passing the test, they must not let themselves be coopted
into an adults-against-the-kid division of sympathies.
Regina hopped-squirmed-wriggled into the second armchair, and Hatch was
fairly certain she was making herself appear a lot more awkward than she
really was.
The Nun with No Name gently touched Sister Immaculata on the shoulder,
and the older nun eased back into her chair, still with the
frozen-penguin look. The two priests brought the client chairs from in
front of the attorney’s desk, and the younger nun pulled up a side chair
from a corner, so they could all join the group. Hatch realized he was
the only one still standing. He sat on the sofa beside Lindsey again.
Now that everyone had arrived, Salvatore Gujilio insisted on serving
refreshinentPepsi, ginger ale, or Perrier-which he did without calling
for the assistance of his secretary, fetching everything from a wet bar
discreetly tucked into one mahogany-paneled corner of the genteel once.
As the attorney bustled about, quiet and quick in spite of his
immensity, never crashing into a piece of furniture or knocking over a
vase, never coming even close to obliterating one of the two Tiffany
lamps with hand-blown trumpet-flower shades, Hatch realized that the big
man was no longer an overpowering figure, no longer the inevitable
center of attention: he could not compete with the girl, who was
probably less than one-fourth his size.
“Well,” Regina said to Hatch and Lindsey, as she accepted a glass of
Pepsi from Gujilio, holding it in her left hand, the good one, “you came
here to learn all about me, so I guess I should tell you about myself.
First thing, of course, is that I’m a cripple.” She tilted her head and
looked at them quizzically. “Did you know I was a cripple?”
“We do now,” Lindsey said.
“But I mean before you came.”
“We knew you had some sort of problem,” Hatch said.
“Mutant genes,” Regina said.
Father Jiminez let out a heavy sigh.
Sister Immaculata seemed about to say something, glanced at Hatch and
Lindsey, then decided to remain silent.
“My parents were dope fiends,” the girl said.
“Regina!” The Nun with No Name protested. “You don’t know that for
sure, you don’t know any such a thing.”
“Well, but it figures,” the girl said. “For at least twenty years now,
illegal drugs have been the cause of most birth defects. Did you know
that?
I read it in a book. I read a lot. I’m book crazy. I don’t want to
say I’m a bookworm. That sounds icky, don’t you think? But if I were a