You'll Never Know Dear: A Novel of Suspense Page 4

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to stay in Bonsecours for more than a week or so. In case there’d be time for her to work on her grant proposal, she threw into the suitcase her dream diary, the pack of three-by-five cards on which she’d been laying out the main points to add to her grant proposal, and a folder of research. She added her sleep mask, the miniature tablet computer she used to collect data, and her laptop.

  All the while, she could feel the doll gazing at her from behind closed eyes, accusing her of willfully ignoring her grandmother’s message. Dreams didn’t mean anything, she reminded herself. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her grandmother was trying to tell her something.

  Just before she left the house, she surrendered, wrapping the doll in a shirt and stuffing it into her bag. Having her mother’s doll with her shouldn’t have made her feel more anchored, but it did.

  6

  The women at the Providence airport departure gates had been wearing jackets and heavy sweaters in shades of gray and black. In Savannah, women were in short sleeves and bright colors, and the FlipFlop Stop was doing a brisk business. She checked her phone. No new messages. No news was good news, right?

  The car Vanessa rented was a nondescript gray compact that fortunately had New Jersey plates and honked when she pressed the remote key or she’d never have picked it out in a crowd. She entered the hospital address into her phone’s GPS, then started the car and found a country-and-western music station. As she drove from the airport, she cranked the volume, trying not to think about what she’d find when she got to the hospital.

  We’re not in Kansas anymore, she thought as she passed billboard after billboard on the interstate hawking fireworks (“Buy One Get One FREE!” “Get the best BANG for your buck!”). You could get arrested in Rhode Island for having a sparkler in the trunk of your car.

  Her hands were aching from gripping the wheel when she stopped halfway for coffee and a donut and chased them with antacid tablets before continuing on. She exited the highway and continued across the vast Port Royal Sound. She’d forgotten how much more sky there seemed to be here, blue in all directions with turkey vultures teetering high overhead.

  Live oaks, arching from the sides of the road, were the first indication that she was getting close. Their spreading branches dripped with the pale gray Spanish moss that hung indiscriminately from telephone wires and fences, too.

  She turned at the sign for Coastal Memorial Hospital, found a parking spot, and hurried to the reception desk at the main entrance. “I’m here to see two patients, Sorrel Woodham and Elisabeth Strenger.” The woman at the reception desk typed on her computer. Then typed again. She barely blinked, her look impassive as she handed Lis a visitor badge to fill out and said, “They’re in Room 311. Elevator’s around the corner.”

  Not dead. And apparently accepting visitors. Vanessa felt the tension in her shoulders ease. She ducked into the gift store off the lobby and picked up a package of breath mints, a tin of butterscotch candies, and a copy of People magazine. She sucked on a breath mint as she rode the elevator up. Stopped at the nurses’ station for directions and then continued to the room.

  The door was ajar with a heavy curtain across the entryway. Vanessa looked down at her jean leggings, loose sweater, and boots. She probably should have worn something more ladylike. Not that it mattered. She’d be grateful if her grandmother was up to registering disapproval and her mother wouldn’t notice. Still, she unclipped her hair, shook it loose, ran her fingers through it, and clipped it back again as neatly as she could. Then she took a breath and stepped past the curtained opening.

  The room had two beds. Her mother was in the one nearest the door, pale and still, a breathing mask over her face. The other bed was empty, the sheets pulled back. Vanessa felt panic rising in her throat. She wasn’t ready to lose Grandma Sorrel. Not yet. Not like this.

  Vanessa’s mother stirred in the other bed. Vanessa swallowed and blinked back tears. The last thing her mother needed was to wake up and find Vanessa falling apart. Vanessa steadied herself and approached the bed.

  Lis’s eyes fluttered open. She held out her hand, and when Vanessa took it, she pulled her close. She held Vanessa’s gaze for a few moments, then lifted her breathing mask. “You came.” Lis winced and shuddered. “Ow. My head.” Her voice was scratchy and raw.

  “Of course I came. Evelyn called me.”

  “But what about your research? Your deadline?”

  Vanessa waved a hand like it didn’t matter. “I can work on it here, and if not, it will be there when I get back.”

  “But—”

  Vanessa held a finger to her lips.

  Thank you. Lis mouthed the words.

  “How are you feeling?” Vanessa asked.

  Lis half shrugged, half nodded. It would be like her to minimize her pain.

  “Grandma?”

  Lis put out a hand and tilted it side to side. Looked like touch and go.

  Vanessa felt a wave of relief as her gaze traveled to the empty bed, then back to her mother’s. “Where is she?”

  “Oxygen chamber.” Lis pointed toward the hall.

  “You’ve got oxygen, too?” Vanessa asked, indicating the tank beside the bed.

  Lis nodded and put the mask over her mouth.

  Vanessa had a million questions, but it was clear that what little strength her mother had was already sapped. She planted a kiss on her mother’s forehead and then went out to the nurses’ station.

  A nurse in green scrubs was seated behind a semicircular counter, tapping into a computer. She raised her eyebrows at Vanessa while she continued to type.

  Vanessa said, “My grandmother. Sorrel Woodham? I was hoping I could see her.”

  “She’s your grandma?” the nurse said with a tired smile. She typed something into her computer. Waited. “She’s receiving treatment. She’ll be in there for two more hours.”

  “Two hours? Can’t I at least see her now?” Vanessa bit down on the words and her vision blurred. “Please. I’ve just come from the airport.”

  A hesitation and the nurse’s expression softened. “A few minutes, but that’s all.” She came around from behind the desk. The rubber soles of her shoes squeaked as she led Vanessa down the hall.

  The nurse stopped in front of a double doorway and waved her badge over an electronic lock. The door clicked and she pushed it open. The room beyond was spacious, antiseptic white and stainless steel, with about eight beds, all of them occupied. Machines hummed and clanked and wheezed. Vanessa followed the nurse to the far corner where Grandma Sorrel lay encased in a transparent pneumatic tube that looked like Snow White’s coffin. A monitor next to it was tracing out acid-green waves in a slow, steady pattern.

  Vanessa rested her hands on the clear casing. Grandma Sorrel looked small and fragile. She seemed to be staring off into the middle distance, maybe at the interior of the tank. The skin was stretched taut across her skull and there were red blotches on her cheeks. Her eyebrows were singed and both hands were heavily bandaged, and if she could have seen her own hair, she’d have pitched a fit. Whatever had happened, Grandma Sorrel had gotten it worse than Lis.

  The nurse came up beside her. “This is a hyperbaric chamber. It’s the most efficient way to administer pure oxygen to someone like your gram. And it’s doing her a world of good. Her color is better and she’s less confused.” She flipped a switch on the chamber’s control panel and picked up what looked like a telephone receiver. “Mrs. Woodham?”

  “Miss Sorrel,” Vanessa said. “That’s what everyone calls her.”

  “Miss Sorrel?” The nurse tapped lightly on the roof of the tank.

  Grandma Sorrel’s eyes focused past the transparent shell.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” the nurse said. She handed Vanessa the receiver and pulled over a plastic chair. “I’ll come back in a few minutes.”

  Vanessa sat in the chair and pulled it closer. “Grandma?”

  Grandma Sorrel blink
ed. She reached with a bandaged hand and winced when it hit the inside of the chamber.

  “You can hear me?” Vanessa asked.

  Grandma Sorrel nodded. Her mouth formed a kiss.

  “I just flew in. I needed to see you and Mom before I went to the house.”

  Grandma Sorrel blinked and said something, but the voice coming through the handset was faint.

  “I didn’t catch that,” Vanessa said.

  Grandma Sorrel raised her voice to a scratchy whisper. “She came back.”

  “She?”

  “Ask Evelyn.” Grandma Sorrel lifted her shoulders from the stretcher. “It. It’s—” The tendons in her neck strained with effort as she moved her mouth closer to the speaker. “Have to find her.”

  “Don’t worry,” Vanessa said. “We’ll find her. I promise.” Easy to promise since she had no idea what her grandmother was talking about.

  Grandma Sorrel waved a clawed hand. “And the girl. The other one. The other one.”

  “The other girl?” Vanessa put her mouth close to the receiver and said, “Grandma, who?”

  “Not who,” Grandma Sorrel said. She strained to lift her head. The monitor alongside the hyperbaric chamber started to beep.

  Vanessa leaned closer, but before she could speak she felt a hand on her shoulder. The nurse had returned. “Sorry.” The nurse took the handset from Vanessa and hung it back up. “She needs her rest. And from the look of it, honey, so do you.”

  “I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up.”

  “She won’t be.” The nurse gestured around the room. Vanessa had to admit it was full of people.

  “If anything changes, will someone let me know right away?”

  “Leave your number and I promise we’ll call you.”

  “Are you sure she’s—” Vanessa started. But Grandma Sorrel had closed her eyes and the lines of tension in her face and neck were already erasing themselves. Vanessa didn’t need to see brain waves to know she’d fallen asleep.

  “I’ll be back,” Vanessa whispered.

  On her way to Lis’s room, Vanessa detoured to a restroom. After she’d washed her hands and splashed water on her face, she held on to the sink, nearly doubled over. The nurse was right. She was completely wiped out, exhausted, jangly nerved and running on fumes.

  She was also terrified. Grandma Sorrel had always been the ballast in their lives. The force that had anchored Vanessa and her mother when their world fell apart. The person who made everything seem normal. The one who told it like it was. Like when Vanessa got engaged to her college boyfriend and Grandma Sorrel had told her she’d buy Vanessa a bridal gown if that’s what this was about, but she’d be damned if she’d sit still and watch Vanessa throw herself away on a man who was pressuring her to become a nurse so she could pay for his medical degree. Furthermore, Grandma Sorrel pointed out, why in heaven’s name would you want to spend your life with a man who chewed with his mouth open? Once that had been pointed out to her, Vanessa could no longer ignore it. That mouth-open chewing tanked the relationship.

  She took down her hair and clipped it back again. She dabbed on a little lipstick. Then she went to her mother’s room to say good-bye, but Lis was sleeping, too, the oxygen mask hanging on the tank by the bed.

  Vanessa lowered the shade to darken the room. Sitting on the windowsill was a vase bursting with orange and yellow chrysanthemums, white daisies, and sunflowers. The accompanying card was signed Cap’n Jack. Vanessa smiled. Cap’n Jack was the legendary fishing guide who’d run Woody’s Charters with Grandma Sorrel after Woody died. When Vanessa was a little girl, still wounded and confused by her father’s vanishing act, Cap’n Jack was a steady presence in her life. Like a favorite uncle, he always had a piece of candy in his pocket and all the time in the world to listen to her.

  She found a piece of paper and wrote her mother a note saying she’d be back the next morning and left it propped on her mother’s tray table with the butterscotch candies and magazine. She’d have to wait until then to ask her mother what Grandma Sorrel had been trying to tell her. Who came back, and why was Grandma Sorrel so anxious about it?

  When Vanessa got back in the rental car, her own haunted eyes stared back at her from the rearview mirror. The shadows under her eyes were even darker than usual. She started the car, pulled out of the lot, and headed for the house where she’d grown up.

  Traffic slowed as the road rounded the bend in the river. Vanessa rolled down the car window and the odor of the broad tidal flat along the Bonsecours River flowed in, thick with the pungent, slick, gooey pluff mud that was exposed by a receding tide.

  Vanessa inhaled, loosened her grip on the wheel, and let herself be transported back. As a kid she’d had more than one pair of sneakers sucked off her feet when she’d ventured out onto the mud, despite the cautionary tales of foolish sailors who’d gotten their boats stuck, stepped out onto what looked like a mudflat, sunk in it up to their hips, and drowned when the river’s famous nine-foot tide came in. Or that was the story Grandma Sorrel used to tell Vanessa, anyway.

  Ten minutes later Vanessa pulled up and parked in front of Grandma Sorrel’s house. Wisteria vines hung bare across the front of the modest white clapboard house. Its façade—a deep front porch spanning the front and three peaked roof gables framing the only second-floor windows—appeared unscathed by the explosion. The only sign of damage visible from the street was yellow tape stretched across the front porch, a board nailed across the front door, and the broken pane of leaded glass in the front window.

  Vanessa climbed the steps. Glass crunched underfoot as she ducked under the tape. The porch swing creaked. On the table sat a nearly empty glass with some pale brown liquid in it, the remains of sweet tea, judging by the flies that were on the rim. Peering into the dark entry hall, she caught a whiff of smoke and could just make out the oriental-patterned runner on the stairs.

  She headed back down the porch stairs and walked up the driveway. The house was much deeper than it was wide, and the acrid smell grew stronger as the back of the house came into view. The windows of Grandma Sorrel’s workroom were boarded over and a large propane tank in the back was toppled onto its side. Clearly this was where the explosion had occurred.

  Vanessa was bending over to pick up a shard of broken glass when a man’s voice startled her. “Ma’am?” She straightened and turned around. A police officer stood in the driveway, the brim of his cap shading his face.

  Ma’am? Was she getting that old or was it old-fashioned southern courtesy?

  “I’m . . . my grandmother . . . I just . . .” She stammered, feeling like she was in junior high, caught in the girls’ bathroom without a hall pass.

  “Vanessa?” The officer tipped back his cap with the heel of his hand and squinted at her.

  “Vanessa!” Evelyn Dumont appeared behind him with Grandma Sorrel’s dog, Binty, in tow. Small and plump, Evelyn had on a white ruffled blouse and voluminous flowered skirt. Once a brunette with hair down to her waist, she was now platinum blond, her hair teased into a tight bouffant. With her shiny apple cheeks, she’d always reminded Vanessa of a Kewpie doll in a granny gown. Miss Evelyn won a baby contest and never got over it, Grandma Sorrel used to say when her best friend was out of earshot.

  “Guessing you don’t remember me,” the officer said, touching his cap brim. “Frank Ames.”

  “Officer Frank. Of course I remember you. You drank Budweiser.” Vanessa remembered the six-packs her mother kept in the refrigerator for when Office Frank would come over. He and Lis would sit out on the porch talking, late into the night. Vanessa had always felt safe in his presence. His eyes exuded a calm watchfulness.

  “Deputy chief of police, now,” Evelyn said.

  “Still Officer Frank to you,” he said with a crinkly smile. “Haven’t heard that in quite some time. Your momma used to call me that, too. And there’s still nothin’ like an ice-cold Bud on a hot summer night.” He took a step back and gazed at the house. “Sorry
this is what you have to come home to.”

  “ ’Nessa, honey,” Evelyn said, coming over and hugging Vanessa to her soft bosom. She smelled of jasmine, and her tight blond curls felt stiff against Vanessa’s face. When she pulled back, she brushed away some powder that had gotten transferred to Vanessa’s dark top. Like Grandma Sorrel, Evelyn never went anywhere without perfect hair and full makeup.

  Vanessa bent down to pet Binty and accept wet kisses. Poor thing, you could see her shoulder bones through her thinning coat.

  Evelyn said, “Lucky thing Frank was on duty last night. Got here just in time.”

  “It was the kiln,” he said, shaking his head. “Set real high’s what caused the explosion. On top of that, it wasn’t venting properly. And on top of that, no batteries in the carbon monoxide detector. Another hour and they’d have been goners.”

  “You’ve been to the hospital?” Evelyn asked Vanessa.

  “I’ve just come from there.”

  “Goodness me, but you made good time. How are they? You talked to them?”

  “Both. The nurse said they’re both getting better.”

  “The good Lord willing,” Evelyn said, crossing herself. “I made sure they got a room together. Even though I’m just part-time now, I still have some clout.”

  “When I was there, they were treating Grandma Sorrel in the ICU. I told Mom that I’d come back and get things ready for when they come home.” Vanessa looked again at the boarded-up windows. The capsized fuel tank. She didn’t want to think about how fragile Grandma Sorrel had seemed, like a piece of porcelain in a glass case.