The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [3]
“There was a fight … and my boyfriend … oh, God, I'm so scared. Something terrible happened. Oh, God, God, help me, please help me,” she sobs.
“He in a convertible? Yellow Mustang? Then slide down, just slide down,” the driver says. “Okay,” he says when the car whizzes by.
A few miles ahead a cruiser passes, dome light spinning red. The truck driver flips on his radio, keeps glancing in the rearview.
A woman's staticky voice: “Ambulance! Up to the club. Fast, Buddy says.”
“Oh, God,” she moans into her sticky hands.
“Somebody's hurt.” The driver looks at her.
“My boyfriend. Eddie,” she sobs. “This guy tried to hit him. With a pipe. And then, oh, God,” she gags, retching again.
“Hey, hey, c'mon now,” the driver says. “You're all right now. Hey, I got kids myself How old are you anyways?”
“Seventeen,” she bawls at the horror, the shame of it. Her careful upbringing, her hardworking, principled mother.
“What's your name?”
“Nora.” She hesitates. “Trimble.”
“Where you from, Nora?”
“Massachusetts.”
“You run away from home or something?”
“No. I don't know.”
“Wanna go back?”
“I don't know. I don't know what to do. Maybe I should go back, go back and help. Oh, God, he's back there. In the car. He's hurt.”
“Who? Eddie?”
“Oh my God,” she moans, covers her face.
“How old's Eddie?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Eddie's a big boy. He'll take care of it. He don't need you.”
A whoosh now, like the unsealing of a vault, as the truck slows for the ramp onto the interstate.
ne more time now,” the photographer says. “Smile, Mrs. Hammond. You, too, Father Grewley. Don't look so grim.”
Nora shivers through a taut smile.
“Freezing,” Father Grewley says, teeth chattering.
The camera keeps clicking. The pictures are being taken on the front steps. SOJOURN HOUSE says the gold-leafed sign. Last night in his State of the Union address, the president praised, along with others, Nora and the young priest for their work on behalf of battered women. Overseen by the parish and privately funded, the house is staffed by volunteers. Every penny, loaf of bread, beds, linen, even oil for the ancient furnace is donated. They operate without state or federal money because as Father Grewley has just told the Newsweek reporter, their mission is “about neighbors helping neighbors.” And this way their only guidelines are their own. Nora is the new chairman of the board of directors.
“Oh boy,” she sighs as a small blue car pulls up to the curb. The magnetic sign on the opening door says THE FRANKLIN CHRONICLE. Camera in hand, Jimmy Lee tumbles out, running as if to cover a fire.
“Sorry I'm late, Mrs. Hammond,” he apologizes, taking his place beside the magazine photographer who looks tempted to turn his camera on his pony-tailed six-foot-seven counterpart.
“That's okay, Jimmy,” she calls back. “Do your thing.”
“You should have a coat, Mrs. Hammond. It's wicked cold. I could run back and get you one. Or we could go inside maybe.” Shoulders hunched, he begins to shoot. “That's good, that's good. Father Grewley! Look up a little more, that's better, that's better. Good! Great! Great shot! Traffic was terrible,” Jimmy Lee says in the midst of his legendary balletic routine, crouching, leaning, two steps back, a spin, forward lunge, camera clicking, flashing, the entire process so bizarrely awkward that the magazine photographer and interviewer are trying not to laugh at this clown, this yokel from the local paper. “Gotta get this right,” Jimmy Lee mutters, dropping into a sudden squat. “Big story! Can't mess this one up, can we now?” he says with a grin at the magazine people as he jumps up and snaps their picture. “Bet you don't get many of yourself on the job, now do you? Gimme a card, JPEG it to you.” He runs up to Nora and hugs her. “How's that? How's that? Feel better? Any warmer now? Okay, good. Gonna run this now. See you! Bye now!” he calls. He jumps into his car and pulls away on squealing tires.
“Who was that masked man?” the magazine reporter asks.
“He works for the Chronicle,” Father Grewley says on their