Run Away Page 23

  Next up: Check Paige’s charge card. Simon had set up an autopay for the Visa card Paige used at Lanford College, and even though he’d been forced to cancel it when Paige started to abuse it to secure drugs for her and Aaron, he was still able to access the old records. He downloaded the charges and started going through them.

  It was a painful exercise. His daughter’s early expenses had been typically collegiate-innocent—local eateries for small meals, the Lanford College store for school supplies and logo-emblazoned sweatshirts, toiletries from a CVS. There were two charges to a Rita’s Italian Ice in Poughkeepsie and a sixty-five-dollar charge, probably for a summer dress, from a place called Elizabeth’s Boutique.

  There was no charge to DNAYourStory.

  But Simon did find a seventy-nine-dollar charge to something called Ance-Story. He Googled the company and yep, it was a genealogy website that concentrated on “filling the branches on your family tree” via DNA testing. He was just reading through the site when a tired female voice called his name.

  “Simon Greene?”

  Dr. Heather Grewe was still dressed in her classic blue surgical scrubs. Classic blue. Simon liked that. He found the color properly somber and therefore comforting. Too many of the nurses and staff members had funky or fun scrubs, bright pinks or floral patterns or ones with SpongeBob or Cookie Monster, and fine, Simon got it—if you work here all day, maybe you wanted to change it up or do something different, and sure, the contrast of wearing something bright in this grim environment made sense, but no, unless you were in the pediatric wing, Simon wanted the somber, serious scrubs, and he was glad to see Ingrid’s surgeon wearing them.

  “Your wife is out of surgery. She’s stabilized.”

  “Is she still in a coma?”

  “I’m afraid she is, but we alleviated the immediate problem.”

  Dr. Grewe began to explain in some detail, but it was hard for Simon to focus on the medical minutiae. The big picture—the words in caps, if you will—seemed to be the same:

  NO CHANGE.

  After Dr. Grewe finished, Simon thanked her and asked, “Can I see my wife?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She led him down to the recovery area. He had no idea how a body in a coma could appear more exhausted, but Ingrid’s ferocious battle with whatever had dragged her back into surgery had clearly left her drained. She lay completely still, like before, but now the stillness seemed somehow worse, more sunken, fragile. He was almost afraid to take her hand, as though it might somehow break off in his.

  But he did take the hand.

  He tried to picture Ingrid upright and healthy and beautiful and vibrant. He tried to flashback to other times in this hospital, happier times, Ingrid holding one of her newborn children, but the vision would not hold. All he could see right now was this Ingrid, weak, pale, drawn, more gone than here. He stared at her and thought about what Yvonne had told him about the past and secrets.

  “I don’t care.”

  He said the words out loud to his comatose wife.

  Whatever she had done in the past—he tried to imagine the worst: crime, drugs, prostitution, even murder—he’d forgive. Didn’t matter what. No questions asked.

  He stood and put his lips to his wife’s ear.

  “I just need you back, babe.”

  It was the truth. But it also wasn’t. He didn’t care about her past. But there were some questions that still needed to be asked. At six a.m., he checked in with the duty nurse, made sure they had his mobile phone number, and headed out of the cloying hospital air and into the city street. Normally he’d take the subway to his apartment, but he wanted to be above ground in case a call came in. At this hour, the ride from the hospital to his place on the Upper West Side should be fifteen minutes tops. As long as he had his phone with him, he could come back immediately if there were any changes.

  He didn’t want to leave her, but there was something he needed to do.

  Simon called a ride share with his app and had the driver stop in front of a twenty-four-hour Duane Reade pharmacy on Columbus Avenue near Seventy-Fifth Street. He ran in, bought a six-pack of toothbrushes, hopped back into the car. When he got home—man, how long had it been since he’d been in his own home?—the apartment was silent. He tiptoed down the corridor and looked into the bedroom on the right.

  Sam was asleep on his side, fetal position, legs pulled up tight. That was how his son always slept. Simon didn’t want to wake Sam yet. He headed into the kitchen and opened the drawer with the Ziploc plastic bags. He grabbed some out and quietly made his way to what they’d dubbed “the girls’ bathroom,” the one Paige had shared with her little sister Anya.

  It had become something of a running joke in the house that the kids never changed their toothbrushes until the bristles were not only frayed but pretty much nonexistent—so years ago, Simon took it upon himself to buy a package of new toothbrushes every two months and switch them out on his own. He was going to do that today too, so no one would notice what he was up to, even though, well, who really would?

  Paige’s toothbrush was still here from her last visit…sheesh, how long ago?

  He took her toothbrush carefully by the handle and placed it in the plastic bag. He hoped that there would be enough DNA on it to get a sample. He started to leave the bathroom but pulled up short.

  He trusted Ingrid. He really did.

  But working under a better-safe-than-sorry personal philosophy, Simon put Anya’s toothbrush in a second Ziploc bag. He moved to the other bathroom and put Sam’s in one too.

  It all felt like a sick, terrible betrayal.

  When he was done, Simon headed into his own room and packed the plastic bags in his work backpack. He checked his phone. Nothing. It was still early, but he texted Suzy Fiske anyway:

  Hey I’m home for a bit. If you’re awake, can you wake up Anya and send her home for breakfast?

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d have to wait for a response, but right away he saw the flashing dots indicating Suzy was typing him back:

  I’ll wake her up now. Anything new on Ingrid?

  He told Suzy no, nothing new, and thanked her profusely for looking after Anya. She typed back that Anya was a pleasure, that having Anya around actually made it easier, and while Simon knew that she was being nice, he also knew that there was truth there. Suzy had two daughters and like most sisters that age, they fought. If you add a third element into a mix like that, it changes the chemical makeup just enough to make everything a tad more pleasant.

  Simon texted back: Still I’m super grateful.

  He moved back into the kitchen. All of his male New York City friends suddenly liked to cook. Or claimed they did. They waxed eloquent about some complicated risotto dish they recently made or a recipe from the New York Times weekly email or some such thing. When, he wondered, did cooking become the new poser claim, replacing all the amateur sommeliers? Wasn’t cooking, for the most part, a chore? When you read history books or heck, watch old movies, wasn’t being a person’s cook one of the worst jobs in the house? What would be the next chore turned into great art? Vacuuming maybe? Would his friends start debating the wonders of Dyson over Hoover?

  The mind likes to wander under stress.

  The thing was, Simon did have one meal, one specialty if you will, that he prepared with great aplomb on those weekend mornings when the family were together and he, the father, was in the mood: pancakes with chocolate chips.

  The secret behind Simon’s beloved family breakfast recipe?

  You can’t have enough chocolate chips.

  “It’s more like chocolate with pancake chips,” Ingrid had joked.

  The chocolate chips were in the upper cabinet. Ingrid always made sure they had them, just in case, even though it had been a long time since Simon prepared his celebrated dish. That depressed him. He missed having his children home. Forgetting Paige’s tragic descent for a moment (as if he ever could), having his oldest daughter go off to college had b
een more traumatic than Simon would have expected. When Sam left, the trauma doubled. They were leaving, his children. They weren’t really growing up anymore—they were grown. They were abandoning him. Yes, it was natural and right and it would be a lot worse if they weren’t. But it bothered him anyway. The home was too quiet. He hated that.

  When Sam graduated high school, his class president posted a well-meaning meme on the school’s social media. The photo was the classic self-help image of a lovely beach at sunset with the prerequisite gentle waves, and the text read:

  LOVE YOUR PARENTS.

  WE ARE SO BUSY GROWING UP, WE OFTEN FORGET THEY ARE GROWING OLD.

  He and Ingrid had read the meme together in this very kitchen, and then Ingrid said, “Let’s print that out, roll it into a tube, and shove it up a pretentious ass.”

  God, he loved her.

  He’d been seated as they read that meme, Ingrid leaning over his shoulder. She threw her arms around his neck, bent close so he felt her breath in his ear, and whispered, “Once the kids are all out of the house, we can travel more.”

  “And run around the house naked,” Simon had added.

  “Er, okay.”

  “And have a lot more sex.”

  “Hope springs eternal.”

  He fake-pouted.

  “Would having more sex make you happier?” she asked.

  “Me? No. I was thinking of you.”

  “You’re all self-sacrifice.”

  Simon was still smiling at the memory when Sam said, “Whoa, Dad’s pancakes.”

  “Yep.”

  His face lit up. “Does that mean Mom’s gotten better?”

  “No, not really.”

  Damn. He should have thought of that—that his son would see him making pancakes and jump to that conclusion.

  “It means,” Simon continued, “that she’d want us to do something normal and not just wallow.”

  He could hear his own “Dad voice” falling way short of the mark.

  “It isn’t normal when you make pancakes anymore,” Sam said. “It’s special.”

  He had a point. He also ended up being both right and wrong. The breakfast did end up being normal—and special. Anya came up from the Fiske apartment and threw her arms around her father as though he were a life preserver. Simon hugged her back, closed his eyes, rode the wave for as long as his daughter needed.

  The three of them sat around the circular table—Ingrid had insisted on round for the kitchen, even though rectangular fit better, because it “promotes conversation”—and even though two chairs were glaringly empty, it felt somehow, well, normal and special. Anya soon had chocolate all over her face and Sam teased her for it, and then Anya recalled how her mother called his breakfast concoction “chocolate with pancake chips.”

  At some point, Sam broke down and cried, but that felt normal and special too. Anya slid off her seat and wrapped her arms around her older brother, and Sam let her, was even comforted by his little sister, and Simon felt the pang deep in his heart of Ingrid missing this moment between her children. He’d remember it though. As soon as Ingrid woke up, Simon would tell her about this moment, when her son looked for comfort from his little sister—his little sister of all people!—and she was able to give it, and one day, when Simon and Ingrid were old or gone, they’d still always have each other.

  It would make Ingrid so happy.

  While Sam and Anya did the dishes—family rule: whoever prepares the food doesn’t do the cleanup—Simon headed back to his bedroom. He closed the door. There was a lock on it, the kind of flimsy thing you install so your kids don’t walk in on you during an inopportune moment. He turned it and then opened Ingrid’s closet. Toward the back, there were six hanging bags with various dresses. He unzipped the fourth one, the one with a conservative blue dress, and slid his hand down to the bottom of the bag’s interior.

  That was where they hid the cash.

  He took out ten thousand dollars in wrapped bills and stuffed them in the backpack with the toothbrushes. Then he checked his phone to make sure that there was nothing important and headed back into the kitchen. Anya got changed for school. She gave her father another hug goodbye and left with Suzy Fiske. When he closed the door behind them, Simon had yet another of his imaginary conversations with Ingrid, this time asking her what gift they should get Suzy when this was over—a gift certificate to that dumpling place or a spa day at the Mandarin Oriental or something more personal like a piece of jewelry?

  Ingrid would know.

  He realized now that he was having these imaginary conversations with Ingrid all the time, running what he’d learned by her and seeing the reaction, even holding back the obvious question he wanted to ask her, the one that he and Elena danced around, the one that had been gnawing on him since this whole genealogy angle raised its ugly head.

  He threw the backpack over one shoulder. “Sam? You ready?”

  They headed down the elevator and grabbed a passing taxi. The driver, like pretty much every taxi driver in New York City, talked quietly into an earpiece in a foreign language Simon could not detect. That was old news, of course, everyone was used to that, but Simon wondered about the ridiculously strong family bonds of such people. As much as he loved Ingrid (and even had imaginary conversations with her), he couldn’t imagine a situation in which he could stay on the phone and talk to her or anyone else for hours on end. Who were these drivers talking to all day? How much must they be loved to have someone (or “someones” plural) who wanted to share that much news with them?

  “Mom had a setback,” Simon said to his son, “but she’s better now.”

  He explained. Sam bit down on his lip and listened. When they arrived at the hospital, Simon said, “Go up and sit with your mom. I’ll meet you up there in a bit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to run an errand.”

  Sam stared at him.

  “What?”

  “You let Mom get shot.”

  Simon opened his mouth to defend himself, but then he stopped.

  “You should have protected her.”

  “I know,” Simon said. “I’m sorry.”

  Simon moved away from his son then, leaving him alone on the sidewalk. He flashed back to that moment. He saw Luther aiming the gun. He saw himself ducking out of the way so that the bullet hit Ingrid instead of him.

  What a chickenshit.

  But was that what happened?

  Had he really ducked out of the way? He didn’t know. He didn’t think that “memory” was real, but…Stepping back, trying to be objective, he realized that he hadn’t seen any of that, that guilt and time were replacing real memories with ones that would forever wound him.

  Could he have done more? Could he have stepped in the way of the bullet?

  Maybe.

  Part of him recognized that this thought was unfair. It had all happened so fast. There was no time to react. But that didn’t change the reality. He should have done more. He should have pushed Ingrid away. He should have jumped in front of her.

  “You should have protected her…”

  He headed into Shovlin Pavilion and took the elevator to the eleventh floor. The receptionist led him down the corridor to the lab. A lab technician named Randy Spratt greeted him with a latex-gloved handshake.

  “I don’t know why we couldn’t do this through proper channels,” Spratt bristled.

  Simon opened up the backpack and handed him the three plastic bags of toothbrushes. He had originally planned on bringing just Paige’s toothbrush, but somewhere along the way he decided that if he was going to travel down this dark, dank road, he might as well travel all the way.

  “I need to know if I’m their father.” Simon pointed to the yellow toothbrush that had been Paige’s. “This one is the priority.”

  Simon didn’t like doing this, of course. It wasn’t a question of trust, Simon told himself. It was a question of reassurance.

  Then again, Simon also realize
d that was a big fat rationalization.

  Didn’t matter.

  “You said you could rush the results,” Simon said.

  Spratt nodded. “Give me three days.”

  “No good.”

  “Pardon?”

  Simon reached into the backpack and pulled out the wad of cash.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is ten thousand dollars in cash. Get me the results by the end of the day, and I’ll give you ten more.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Seven

  The Truth was dying.

  At least it looked that way to Ash from the foot of his bed.

  Casper Vartage’s sons stood on either side of the bed, two devastated sentinels guarding their father in his final days. Sorrow emanated from them. You could feel the grief. Ash didn’t know the brothers’ real names—he wasn’t sure anyone did—nor did he remember or care which one was the Visitor and which the Volunteer.

  Dee Dee stood next to Ash, hands clasped, eyes lowered as though in prayer. The two brothers did the same. In the corner, two gray-uniformed women quietly sobbed in unison, almost as if they’d been ordered to provide a soundtrack for the scene.

  Only the Truth kept his eyes open and up. He lay in the middle of the bed adorned in some kind of white tunic. His gray beard was long, so too his hair. He looked like a Renaissance depiction of God, like the creation panel in the Sistine Chapel that Ash had first seen in a book in the school library. That image always fascinated him, the idea of God touching Adam, as though hitting the On switch for mankind.

  God in that mural had been muscular and strong. The Truth was not. He was decaying almost in real time. But his smile was still radiant, his eyes otherworldly as they met Ash’s. For a moment, maybe longer, Ash understood what was happening in this place. The Truth was tweaking him with just his gaze. The old man’s charisma, even as he lay sick in this bed, was almost supernatural.

  The Truth lifted a hand and beckoned for Ash to come closer. Ash turned toward Dee Dee, who nodded that he should go ahead. The Truth’s head didn’t move, but his eyes followed Ash, again like some sort of Renaissance painting. He took Ash’s hand in his. His grip was surprisingly strong.