Dragonslayer Page 3

  “That kid had his hand at your throat.”

  “Andre.” She realized how angry she sounded, and she lowered her voice. “ ‘The kid’ has a name. And he’s bright and perceptive, a natural-born leader. He’s also not above throwing his weight around if he gets pushed into a corner.”

  “That’s what you think I did?”

  She told herself to try for patience. She couldn’t really blame Thomas Stonehill. In his world men rushed to the rescue of women. He just didn’t realize yet that the Corners wasn’t his world.

  “He wouldn’t have hurt me,” she explained, lowering her voice. “We have a relationship. I’ve known him since he was a baby. He had to threaten me like that to save face with his friends. And then, since I was asking him nice, he would have let me go on to do what I had to.”

  “You’re sure?” His voice indicated that he thought she was wrong.

  “I’m never sure about people. Good-looking, clean-cut kids in their daddy’s BMWs and Porsches show up on this corner on Friday nights looking for cheap dope and fifty-dollar women. Kids like Ferdinand, with his tattoos and scars, rescue kittens from trees and organize parties to clean up vacant lots so little kids will have a place to play baseball in the summers.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to do what I started out to do. I’m going over to Wilford Heights, and I’m going to see a patient.”

  “A patient?” He frowned.

  “That’s what this was all about. I’m a nurse. I’m on my way to see a patient.”

  She could tell by his expression that he was adjusting his evaluation of her. “What did you think?” she asked. “That I was one of those fifty-dollar soul-sellers doing an early morning shift?”

  “I didn’t have a lot of time to think anything.”

  “But I don’t fit your impression of a nurse, do I?” She glanced down at her clothes. Conservative to her meant a skirt that covered the essentials and a blouse that didn’t call more than modest attention to her breasts. In her opinion, today's attire met those standards.

  She looked up again. “You’ll find that we’re a lot less worried about impressions around here than we are about survival.” She realized he was assessing her legs, as if he wondered how Florence Nightingale had sunk to this. “Hey, Reverend, are you ogling, condemning or repenting?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. An eon had passed since she first waited for the walk light, but now it was green and no MidKnights were in sight. She turned away from Thomas Stonehill and crossed the street. And when she stood at the entrance to Wilford Heights, she looked across Wilford Avenue and saw he was gone.

  And because of him, now she was going to have to find a way to protect herself from the MidKnights. If she didn’t, her effectiveness at Mother and Child was finished.

  She was pulled back to the present when the office door opened, and her colleague Tex stood in the doorway and counted rubber band wins and losses, whistling at three misses in a row. “Bad day, huh?”

  Tex had never been to Texas. Her father and mother were Polish immigrants, and Tex had been born just two weeks after their arrival in America. The doctor who had delivered her had tugged and tugged as inch after inch of slippery baby girl emerged, and when all of her had finally been delivered his first words had been, “Lord, this one’s as big as Texas and just as sure of herself.” Her mother, whose grasp of the English language had been minimal, named her daughter after this Texas that the baby so apparently resembled.

  Tex always said she was grateful that the doctor’s delivery-room chatter hadn’t run to four-letter words.

  Garnet swept the remainder of her rubber band supply into her desk drawer. “I guess things went okay.”

  “I guess you almost threw Mary Ann out the clinic door.”

  “I guess sweet little old Mary Ann is using as well as dealing.”

  “And if she doesn’t come back here, then we don’t have a chance with her at all, do we?”

  Garnet didn’t have the delivery room doctor’s self-control. She rattled off a list of expletives.

  “Now put them in alphabetical order,” Tex said, unruffled.

  Tex was never ruffled, and that was why Garnet had hired her. She was six feet of blond composure. She didn’t judge and she didn’t lecture. When she had a mother-to-be like Mary Ann, who was slinging drugs to support herself and probably using them, as well, she calmly outlined the realities of living with a child who had been prenatally damaged. She showed photos, explained what it was like to have a child who cried constantly and couldn’t be comforted, to have a child who might never be capable of showing affection or whose problems in school might mean that he would always be dependent on his mother to meet his basic needs.

  And occasionally, when a mother wasn’t too far gone, she listened to Tex. Sometimes she even changed her life-style. But no mother ever changed because someone had gotten angry at her, the way Garnet had gotten angry at Mary Ann today.

  “So what’s really bothering you?” Tex asked.

  Garnet looked up and saw the real source of her tension walking forward to stand behind Tex in the doorway. She tapped her fingers on her desk and stared at Thomas Stonehill. Then she stood.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said.

  Tex turned as Garnet’s gaze flicked past her. She examined the newcomer almost as thoroughly as she examined her pregnant patients. Then she turned to Garnet. “I can see why you want to wait,” she said. She flashed a big, toothy smile before she edged out of Thomas’s way and did a sassy stroll down the hallway.

  Thomas stayed in the doorway. He took in the room in one glance. This was a medical clinic, and he had expected institutional green walls and cheap, soothing prints. Instead he had been blasted with color from the moment he entered the door. Two of the walls in the reception area had health and safety messages heralded in gaudy gang-style graffiti. The other two had a mural of children of different races playing on emerald green grass against a royal blue sky. The chairs were shiny plastic in primary colors. Even the flyers and brochures littering every available surface had been designed to scream for attention.

  The director’s office, decorated in splashes of yellow and red, had obviously been designed with the same goal in mind. And the woman standing at the director’s desk was no different.

  Garnet Anthony was not a fan of subtlety. He had never known a woman who could make such a blatant, sensual statement wearing white. Her scoop-necked T-shirt was a soft knit that hugged generous breasts; her skirt and wide white belt called attention to a small waist and sleek, womanly hips. She was standing behind her desk, but if the skirt was similar to the one she had worn yesterday, he supposed it stopped above her knees.

  It wasn’t only her provocative display of assets that proclaimed a sensual nature. She wore costume jewelry suitable for a cocktail dress and cosmetics designed to emphasize her unusual features. Her dark hair writhed with life. Medusa’s snakes came to mind. Individual locks twisted and curved over her shoulders, despite being tied back from her face. And the face itself was exotic enough to draw notice anywhere in the world. It was an earthy, recalcitrant face. Eve’s face. The face of Mary Magdalene.

  “Come in,” Garnet said. “I won’t tell you to make yourself at home, since I doubt you’d ever be at home here. But have a seat.”

  She sat down and turned her desk chair toward a sofa and two comfortable armchairs that she was storing for a patient who had been evicted from her apartment. Garnet never talked to anyone from behind a desk. It went against her basic nature to pretend that she was better than anybody else.

  “Coffee?” she asked, waving her hand toward the pot on a table by the window.

  “No, thanks.” Thomas lowered himself to one of the chairs.

  Garnet had expected him to sit carefully. He wasn’t a prissy man. No one could look at a man of his size and say such a thing with a straight face, despite his profession. But he was a serious man, as serio
us as they came. She had expected him to sit tall, feet flat on the floor, perhaps to lean forward when he spoke, as if the world’s fate hinged on the words they exchanged.

  Instead, he sprawled, as if his family had owned that chair for centuries, as if he had lounged there since the clinic’s opening, and irradiated her with his electric blue stare as she worked at her desk.

  And Thomas Stonehill lounging was an impressive sight.

  “If you’ve come about yesterday, let’s just forget it.” Garnet folded her arms.

  He watched the movement pull the fabric of her shirt tighter against her breasts. He watched a necklace of red and purple beads dip under the neckline of her shirt, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You were trying to help,” Garnet conceded.

  “I’ve come about your sister.”

  She was caught off guard. She had expected an apology, or at least an argument. She took a second to silently laugh at herself for thinking her opinion was important enough that he—or anyone—would come for either.

  “Which one?” she asked at last.

  “Ema.”

  “How did you know she was my sister?”

  “She’s mentioned you several times before, but it only clicked this morning, when she was talking about your job.”

  “I thought maybe you’d been overwhelmed by the family resemblance.”

  He thought of Ema, whose short, poorly cut dark hair was the same mahogany as Garnet’s. Hair color was the only similarity he could detect. Ema never looked anyone in the eye, but whatever color her eyes were, he knew they were not the steamy rain-forest green of Garnet’s. And although Ema might be pretty if she was well-nourished and confident, she was now, at the very best, pleasant to look at. No one would ever call Garnet’s appearance pleasant.

  Never pleasant.

  “Do you know her husband beats her?” he asked.

  “Do you know I have two eyes in my head and a brain residing behind them?”

  He studied her. She didn’t look angry. In fact, she showed no emotion. Her face had lacked expression yesterday, when she was dealing with the MidKnights, too.

  “Then, if you know, do you have any idea what can be done about it?” he asked.

  “She can leave Ron. She chooses not to. Most of the time she even refuses to admit he beats her. But I suspect you already know that much, Reverend.”

  “Thomas.”

  She tilted her head. “Really? Won’t you feel naked without a title?”

  “No.”

  She shrugged.

  “She needs encouragement,” he said.

  “She needs a signed affidavit from God assuring her that if she leaves Ron Celabraze, he won’t come after her with a gun and kill her in front of the kids. Can you offer her that?”

  He heard emotion. For a moment he wondered if he had imagined it, her words were so flip. “You’re frustrated because you don’t see any way out for her, either.”

  “You’re pretty good at this. Most preachers wouldn’t be listening so hard.”

  “Am I right?”

  “Close enough.” Garnet wished she could open her drawer and pull out her rubber bands. Instead she began a necklace of giant paper clips. “Ema’s married to a maniac. Ron’s close to tolerable when he isn’t drinking. But that’s about one waking hour out of every day.”

  “Ema says he hasn’t always been that way.”

  “Ema thinks Lucifer fries people in hell because he was the product of a broken heavenly home.”

  “And she stays with her husband out of pity? Out of fear?”

  “Yeah. And out of some perverted moral teaching forced down her throat by every church she’s tried to be part of. The last preacher she talked to told her it was God’s wish she stay married. St. Paul and death do us part and all that. But I’m sure you know the Bible better than I do.”

  “I don’t know that part of the Bible at all.”

  “Well, you folks have always been good at using what you like and tossing out what you don’t.”

  He ignored the jab. “If she had a place to go, would she leave?”

  “She can come to my place and live with me any time she wants.”

  “You know she wouldn’t put you in danger.”

  Garnet looked up from a paper clip chain that was growing long enough to stretch across the space between them. “Did she tell you that?”

  “You did.”

  “Not exactly.” She added three more clips. “But you’re right. She’d die willingly before she endangered anyone she loved. In fact, if I could convince her that Ron might harm the kids, she’d leave him. But he’s never lifted a finger to either of the girls. Ema never gives him a chance, of course. She drains off his anger singlehandedly. He can beat her anytime he wants, so he doesn’t have to take out his temper on his babies.”

  “But you think he might.”

  “It’s just a matter of time. Some day if Lisa cries too loudly or Jody asks for more milk when Ema isn’t on the spot to deflect his anger, Ron will beat them.”

  Thomas made a tent of his fingers. It was something he used to do in the pulpit, a calculated, thoughtful gesture.

  Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.

  Except that the people weren’t there anymore. Not to hear him, anyway.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  There really was no purpose Garnet could think of for a two-foot paper clip chain. Reluctantly she tossed it to her desk. “One preacher prayed with her, another prayed for her. One went looking for Ron and asked if Ema was telling the truth. That one probably didn’t have any doubts the next day when she came to church black-and-blue.”

  “What can I do?”

  Reluctantly she gave him a bonus point for asking. “She’s had all the courage beaten out of her. She was a spunky kid, and she’s plenty bright. She can make it on her own if she just starts to believe in herself again. If you can help her do that, then maybe she’ll still have a chance to get away from Ron and make a life for herself and the kids.”

  “Will he come after her?”

  “Not if she’s two thousand miles away, or even a thousand. I don’t think he’s capable of drying out long enough to mount an intelligent search. And he doesn’t have any resources. Our family’s not exactly the Brady Bunch, but we could help her escape and start over.” She stared at him. “Would you help, Reverend? Or would your religion stand in the way?”

  “Thomas.”

  “No one ever called you Tommy, did they?”

  He didn’t smile, but he was surprisingly tempted. “No one did.”

  “They should have. But it’s much too late now.” She stood.

  He didn’t. “Do you have time to show me around?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a good source for referrals.”

  She considered that—and the fact that he was watching her from his chair like a zoologist collecting data on an unknown species. “I’m about to eat lunch,” she said. “Join me?”

  “Here?”

  “I’ve got enough in the refrigerator for two.”

  “Then you’ll show me around?”

  “I’ll show you around before we eat, or while we eat, if it makes you feel better about not wasting time.”

  He rose. “What can I do to help?”

  “You can make your own sandwich.”

  The tour went swiftly because there wasn’t much to see. Mother and Child was a shoestring operation. “Clinic” was almost a misnomer. The space had once belonged to a men’s clothing store, but when it had become clear that men’s suits weren’t in big demand in the Corners, it had become one of a string of vacant buildings.

  When Garnet and a committee of community leaders approached the landlord about renovating and leasing the space to them, he had been enthusiastic. Since he owned several other properties on the block, he gambled that Mother and Child would bring business back into the area. The gamble ha
d paid off. Now the mothers who visited the clinic shopped for groceries at a corner store and bought clothes and household goods at a discount center two doors away. There were still vacancies, but as foot traffic increased, interest in the remaining property increased, too.

  Garnet showed Thomas the tiny examining rooms, the clinic office, the workroom. She explained about the parenting groups who met in a cozy meeting room that doubled as a drop-in day-care center two afternoons a week.

  After ten minutes they made their way to the kitchen. There was enough food in the refrigerator for a dozen sandwiches. Mother and Child didn’t have the resources to offer regular meals; they couldn’t do everything—not yet, anyway. But Garnet always made sure there was plenty of extra sandwich meat and cheese in the refrigerator. She bought bakery outlet whole wheat bread and food service containers of peanut butter and honey. Any patient who was hungry on arrival was not hungry when she left.

  Now, in the small kitchen off her office, Garnet set cold cuts on a tiny metal table for Thomas to choose from. While he made his sandwich, she washed a tomato and lettuce to go with it.

  He wasn’t a man who needed talk for talk’s sake. She had to give him that. He was neither a glad-handing preacher nor a pious priestly type. At least, she didn’t think so. He had come to her rescue in a potentially dangerous situation. And even if his intervention had made things worse, at least he had tried to intervene.

  Why?

  It wasn’t a question she could ask out loud. She would get an answer, but not the real one. His motivation for being in the Corners at all made for interesting speculation. His motivation for putting his body on the line yesterday was even more interesting. But not interesting enough to pursue. She imagined that getting the real story about Thomas Stonehill from Thomas Stonehill would take time, patience and a certain amount of absorption in the subject. She had none of the above.

  “Would you like me to make you one, too?” he asked.

  She paused in the middle of slicing the tomato. “Sure. Just mix everything up. I like surprises.” She turned and saw the excuse that passed for his own sandwich. One slice of ham and a layer of mayonnaise so thin not a pore in the bread was clogged.