She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“Were you running from something or someone?” he persisted.
She was running. Toward the light? Away from the light. Away from Jake?
Maybe her face reflected the unease the hazy memory of that alley engendered because Mac patted her arm and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Do you think…do you suppose…I hurt Jake? To get his coat, I mean. Was that why I was running?”
He stared at her and then smiled. Was it the first time he’d done that or had he smiled before and she’d forgotten? At any rate, he had a good smile, the kind a person could find themselves working to see again. The kind that took years and cares off a man’s face and gave a glimpse of what lay hidden in his heart. He said, “No. I don’t think so. We looked for Jake, remember?”
They’d walked through the alley. She could recall the clanging of empty bottles and the look of disgust in Mac’s eyes as he asked if they were hers. “How old do you think I am?” she asked.
Again he stared at her. “Early twenties, maybe.”
“And I’ve had a baby.”
“You’ve apparently had a pregnancy. And a husband.”
That jolted her. “A husband?”
He touched the ring finger on her left hand. “There’s a tan line here. There are tan lines on your body, as well.”
Sure enough, there was a discernible white line on her finger. She stared at it until her eyes burned. It didn’t help. No memory of a loving husband surfaced. No memory of an awful husband surfaced, either. She felt a new spurt of anxiety and wondered if it was related to the husband whose ring she’d apparently forsaken.
Or hocked. Or lost.
Or to a baby she held in her arms, nursed at her breast, and now couldn’t remember.
It was all too much.
“Which brings to mind all sorts of questions,” Mac said.
She gazed at him and waited, but when he finally spoke, she found she couldn’t comprehend what he said. She just couldn’t. His words stretched out and away and began to seem like musical notes in some bizarre song.
Could she sing along?
What were the words?
She felt his hands on her shoulders and realized her eyes had drifted closed. When she opened them, she found Mac supporting her, his gaze filled with alarm. He lifted her off the edge of the tub and she melted against his solid chest, circling his neck with grateful arms and closing her eyes again. Wrapped in his arms, she felt safer than she had since this ordeal began.
And then she felt a creepy sensation steal over her body. Flat black eyes stared at her behind a glistening silver curtain. Red hot hands grabbed her.
Screaming, she pushed her attacker away. The jolt when she hit the floor forced another scream from her throat.
“Grace, Grace, it’s okay,” Mac said.
She was on the floor. Mac bent over her. Gathering her in his arms, he held her for a moment while the fear subsided and the tears died in her throat. He helped her to her feet and onto the bed. She looked around for her assailant. No one else was in the room.
Somewhere in her head, she knew there never had been.
Mac tucked her between snow-white sheets. She caught his hand and held it for a moment, loath to give up the connection. She wanted to thank him for helping her, but the words were swallowed by fatigue and she drifted off to oblivion…or death.
What was the difference?
MAC SAT at his desk. He downed a stiff drink in two swallows.
The desk had been his father’s. Mac had grown up doing his homework on its polished surface, shoving aside the blotter and suffering his father’s wrath when the older man caught him doing it. Mac now ran his finger over the myriad of shallow indentations that still existed, ghosts of long-ago essays and algebra equations.
He stared down the hall at the bedroom door that he’d left slightly ajar and wondered what he was going to do with this woman come morning. He reviewed the impulses that had led him to bringing her into his home. Her confusion. Her distress. Her minor injury. Her robotic behavior.
Her vulnerability.
Her fragile beauty.
The memory of his mother…
That’s how she’d gotten here.
Now he was confronted with the realization that she was, or had been, married. She’d been pregnant, possibly still had a living child waiting for her return. Had she run away from her husband and her child?
Like his mother had.
Tempted to pour himself another drink, he stayed seated instead.
She was an addict. Drugs, liquor…something. If the marks on her arm weren’t witness enough, that fit she’d had while he carried her to bed was. She’d gone berserk, sleeping like an angel one moment and screaming like a banshee the next. He would spend the night in this chair to keep an eye on her, and then the next morning, he would take her to Sister Theresa’s or back to her alley, whichever she wanted.
And what about her child?
Burying his head in his hands, he found it almost impossible not to feel that child’s loss. He understood all too well the ache for a mother who has vanished, the ache that never goes away.
But what could he do?
Find him or her?
Find Grace’s husband?
How did someone do any of that when the person he was helping didn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to who they were?
Swearing at all the ambiguities, he opened the drawer and took out a dozen pages of facts and figures. Maybe he could lose himself in his work.
Once upon a time, way back when, Mac had had a best friend named Rob Confit, an army buddy who died as a result of injuries suffered in a helicopter crash. Since Rob’s death, Mac had become close to Rob’s father, and now the elder Confit was challenging the current mayor in next fall’s mayoral race.
It was Bill Confit’s contention that the city government’s mishandling of homelessness within Billington had resulted in skyrocketing inner-city crime. Appointing a privately funded task force to investigate this situation, Confit had asked Mac to act as chairman. Who better, he’d asked, than a former cop who’d risked his career to unveil corruption within the police force?
There was no way in the world Mac would think of denying Confit’s request. At first, he’d approached it readily, able to put his own past in perspective. But gradually, he’d come to see his mother’s face superimposed on every derelict he came across and the old wounds resurfaced.
Hence the need he felt to get out on the streets and see how the people who had next to nothing managed to survive. Did they prey on one another and the public at large? Were they responsible for rising crime rates and dying inner cities, or were they the victims of apathy and budget crunches?
Mac didn’t know the answers yet, but he was becoming increasingly determined to make sure that the homeless and the defenseless didn’t take the brunt of the censure unless they deserved it.
So far, he didn’t think most of them did.
The current mayor disagreed.
The police disagreed.
Most of the committee disagreed.
And to top it off, Mac couldn’t swear his own agenda didn’t sway his conclusions. Most people thought