Run for Your Life - James Patterson [63]
After triple-checking that our trap was set, I put Reno in charge and decided to quickly do something I’d been needing to do for a long time.
The sun was going down over Jersey when I pulled up my unmarked car beside Riverside Park, behind my building. I walked along a path, crossed a desolate ball field, and crouched down beside an oak sapling in a clearing that faced the Hudson. I cleaned up some cigarette butts and an Aquafina bottle at the base of the tree, tossed them into the bag I’d brought, and then sat down.
The fledgling tree was the one my kids and I had planted after my wife, Maeve, had died. She was actually buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery up in Westchester, but whenever I needed to speak to her, which was pretty often, I usually ended up here. Most of the time, I’d just sit, and after a while it would almost be like she was there with me—just out of sight behind me, the way she’d been on the countless picnics we’d had here with our incredibly motley crew.
When I glanced back over my shoulder at my apartment house, I could see two of my kids in the kitchen window. Fiona and Bridget, was my guess. Maybe they were missing their mom as much as I was. Wishing she was still around to take care of them, cheer them up, make things right again.
I waved up at them. They waved back.
“We’re hanging in there, babe,” I said to the wind. “By a toenail, maybe, but what can we do? I love you, though, if that’s any consolation.”
When I went up to my apartment, Mary Catherine met me at the door. Something was wrong. I could see a troubled look wavering there in her usually stoic blue eyes.
“What is it, MC?” I said.
“Seamus,” she said gravely.
I followed her into my bedroom. Seamus was beached on top of the covers. His eyes were closed and he looked even paler than usual. For a second, I honest-to-God thought he was dead. Then he let out a string of gasping coughs, his thin chest shaking beneath his Roman collar.
Oh, Lord, I thought. Really not good. He’d finally caught our flu. Which, for an eighty-plus-year-old like him, was extremely dangerous. It suddenly hit me how stupid I’d been to even let him come around. I panicked for a second. What would I do if I lost him, too?
But I would lose him anyway, one of these days, an evil little voice whispered in my ear. Wouldn’t I?
I shook off the thought, went to the kitchen, and got the bottle of Jameson’s from the cupboard. I poured a couple of fingers into a Waterford crystal tumbler and added some heated milk and sugar.
“God love ya, boy,” Seamus said to me, after taking a couple of sips. “Now give me a hand out of bed, and I’ll be on my way back to the rectory.”
“Just try to get out of here, old man,” I said. “I dare you. Lay there and finish your medicine before I call an ambulance on you.”
Chapter 67
I WAS STILL STANDING over Seamus when my oldest boy, Brian, ran in.
What now?
“Dad! Mary Catherine! In the kitchen! Quick!”
I raced after him into the hall. The kitchen had gone dark. That was all we needed right now—some kind of blackout. Damn prewar building’s wiring was falling apart just like everything else. It would probably start a fire. I sniffed for smoke in the walls and tried to remember where I’d put the fuses.
“Psych!” yelled all my kids as the light flicked on.
On the kitchen island, two plates were set up with Tombstone pizzas on them. They’d even made a salad. Trent was pouring Diet Cokes with the dish towel draped over his arm, like a three-and-a-half-foot-tall sommelier.
“Now, hold on a second. You guys are supposed to be in bed,” I said as Mary Catherine and I were ordered to sit. “And what did you do with all the dirty dishes?”
“Chill, Pops. It’s all being taken care of,” Jane said, pushing in my chair for me. “We’re feeling better now. We decided you and MC need to take a load off already. You work too hard. You guys should learn to relax a little.”
After we were done, coffee was prepared, and we were led into the living room.