The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [169]
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we got some of that?” sighed Georgette.
As they parked in the staff lot and walked toward the hospital, she suddenly asked, “Okay, what do you think of Sam’s theory that Aunt Ruthie is Annie’s mother?”
She turned to wait for him to answer her. For a moment, he ambled along with his old briefcase swinging slowly at his side, not speaking. “Clark,” she repeated, “What do you think of Sam’s theory?”
He took off his round tortoise-shell glasses, rubbed his dark-blue eyes, wiped the glasses on the lab coat he already wore. “I think we ought to tell Sam more often that she’s done a great job raising Annie.”
He walked to the entrance, where young smokers gathered. “Y’all should quit,” he told them. The smokers stared at him, hostile.
Georgette walked Clark through the busy hospital corridor to Pediatrics. “We could find out. I could take my blood. Ruthie’s my aunt.”
He nodded. “That’s between you and Annie. So, you hear the one about the midget fortune-teller who got arrested but she was so little she slipped through the jail bars and escaped? Well, they put out an all points bulletin on her that said—”
“—Small medium at large,” Georgette finished the pun for him.
He made a rueful noise. “I guess I need to get some new puns or some new friends.”
Chapter 44
Daughters of Destiny
Bright and early, Annie arrived at Golden Days for her appointment with her father’s doctor. Too bright, too early. She had an excruciating headache from last night’s margaritas and a queasy stomach that hadn’t been helped by all the hot salsa and mole she’d eaten at La Loca. Far more unsettling was her sense that she’d undergone a transformation in her personality. Insofar as she’d ever known herself, Lt. Anne Peregrine Goode did not wake up in bed in a hotel room with a stranger who was hugging her family dog.
But that’s where she’d found herself at 7 a.m., in a Miami hotel bed with Malpy and Daniel Hart. She’d managed to free the dog without waking the detective. The prospect of having him prove indifferent or tasteless or stupid or smug or not everything she had felt him to be last night was unbearable to her. Better to slip away and if he never got in touch again, it would be sad, but so be it. Awakening him appeared, however, to be only a remote possibility, since once again he looked to be dead. Despite Malpy’s licking his face he did not budge.
Undeterred by physical pain and psychological shock, she’d listened to messages on her hotel phone line—including multiple requests from both Sam and Trevor to call them back or at least to turn her cell phone on, as well as news from Georgette that Brad had checked into the Hotel Dorado and was looking for her. She didn’t feel up to talking to Trevor (much less Brad) but she did phone Sam. Sam was driving to the RDU airport. Annie managed to persuade her that she, Annie, was perfectly fine and could take care of Jack and that Sam should return immediately to Emerald and wait for news. “There is no need for any of you to come to Miami. Please don’t come to Miami. I am handling this! I don’t know why people don’t realize I can handle things! I flew fuckin’ combat missions!”
“Sweetheart, nobody thinks you can’t handle things. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine! I’m fine.”
“Bring Jack home today,” Sam said. “I’m going to fix up his room. Tell him his old room will be waiting for him. Tell him I can’t wait to see him. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Annie promised to tell her father all of that as soon as Sam let her hang up the phone so she could go to Golden Days.
It was an accomplishment to take a shower without screaming, to dress, to walk Malpy, to return the dog to the room (Dan made a noise but didn’t stir) and then to leave Brad a note at the hotel desk explaining that she was “out dealing with the Dad thing.”
Sunglasses and aspirin enabled her to drive to Golden Days by 8:10 a.m. On the lawn of the pink stucco building, the old men and women sat under an already hot sun. In their waffled bathrobes, with their walkers and wheelchairs and tanks