The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [166]
“I did ask him,” Sam sighed. “I asked him the last time I saw him. I asked him on the phone for years. He says the mother was just some girl he’d known in Barbados.” Leaping to her feet, Sam paced the hallway, nearly tripped up by Georgette’s Siamese cat. “You know what I think? He was always scared he’d lose Annie if Ruthie found out.”
Georgette’s cat brushed against her legs. “He did lose Annie, Sam! Wasn’t that always Annie’s point? He lost her when he left her here. And Ruthie didn’t find out because she didn’t want to…Do I call Annie, tell her about Ruthie, is that what you want?”
Sam took a long breath. “No. No. I don’t want you to say anything till she gets through this mess with Jack. Please. I just want you to be there if she needs you.” Sam picked up the young woman’s bathrobe belt, which was hanging tangled at her feet. “You want to trip and fall on this thing?”
“Oh Sam, don’t cry.” Georgette hugged her.
After Sam left, Georgette rubbed her plump white arms as if she were warming herself. “Sacrebleu!” she said to her cat Pitti Sing, who arched softly against her ankles.
Chapter 43
Misleading Lady
Across the lawn at Pilgrim’s Rest, Clark Goode was awakened by a knock on his bedroom door. He had drifted off into a dream in which he was teaching his first wife Tuyet and the seven-year-old Annie to fly-fish on Emerald’s Aquene River. In the dream, his childhood tormenters the Fanhart brothers had suddenly ambushed him, just as they’d often done on his way home from school many years ago. But in the dream, Clark was an adult, dressed in his operating scrubs and towering over the Fanhart bullies, who were still fat little boys in the third grade. Easily, triumphantly, he chased them away. But when he turned around, both Tuyet and Annie had disappeared.
“Clark?”
He woke fully, expecting a hospital emergency. But Sam was saying, “It’s Brad. He just called me about Annie.” Sam held the old dog Teddy in her arms.
“What? What’s wrong! Where is she?”
“It’s okay.” Sam shook his foot. “Somewhere in Miami.”
“Somewhere? Why is Brad calling you about Annie in the middle of the night?”
Teddy dropped from Sam’s arms onto the bed, where she tried to make a pillow comfortable by pawing at it. “Brad’s in Miami too. At the Hotel Dorado.”
Sitting up, Clark turned on his light. “Just tell me! Is Annie okay?”
“I think she’s on a date.”
“What?” Clark felt for his glasses. “Brad called to tell you Annie was on a date?”
“No, Georgette told me that. When Brad got to the Dorado, she wasn’t in her room. He’s trying to find her; he even called Georgette.” Sighing, Sam sat down at the foot of Clark’s bed.
To wake himself, Clark yanked hard at his hair. “I’m having trouble here. Go back. Brad’s in Miami?”
“Yes. Clark, will you catch up? He went there to talk Annie out of the divorce.” Sam started folding the coverlet bunched at the bed’s end into neat squares.
As Clark checked the old plastic radio alarm clock by his bed, he noticed Sam was still in her slacks and shirt. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I went over to Georgette’s and woke her up.”
“Why?”
“To have a serious talk with her about Annie. Because if Annie needs help, she’ll call Georgette. She always calls her.”
“That’s because your line’s always busy because you’re calling her.”
“Go ahead and laugh.” When Sam had come home, she’d been unable to sleep. Then Brad had called.
“Why isn’t Brad asleep? Why are Georgette and I the only people trying to sleep in this group?”
Sam wanted Clark to come down to the kitchen with her for some more of the leftover sushi. “It won’t be any good in the morning.”
“Neither will I.” He yanked the coverlet away to stop her from unfolding, refolding, unfolding it.
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Clark. Also I had a call from Rafael Rook.”
“Really? You’re just a little magpie, aren’t you?”
“This is serious.” It seems that Jack had asked Rook to keep an eye on Annie, so Rook had been hanging out at the Dorado, when Brad Hopper had suddenly come into the bar. Then Annie had shown up in the lobby in soaking wet