Mary, Mary

Chapter 119

MY SLOW CLIMB UP and out of the gully from the crash site was hellish, nothing but excruciating pain, dizziness, and nausea. The only blessing was that I barely remembered any of it.

Somehow, I managed to get out to the main road - where an alarmed college student in a Subaru picked me up. I never even got his name. I guess I passed out in the backseat of his cat By the next morning, Michael Bell's body had been recovered from the stream, and I was resting in a bed at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. Resting is probably the wrong word, though. Local police came and went from my room continually I spent hours on the phone with my office in Washington, the L.A. Bureau office, and Jeanne Galletta, trying to piece together everything that had happened from the start of the murder spree.

Bell's plan had been a feat of convolution and madness, but his cover was ultimately simple - diversion. And he'd succeeded until the very end. As Jeanne pointed out to me, Michael Bell wrote and produced stories for a living. Plot was his thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this one ended up as a screenplay, written by someone else. The writer would probably change everything, though, until the movie carried the fishy title “based on a true story”

“Who's going to play you?” Jeanne kidded me over the phone.

“I don't know. I don't much care. Pee-wee Herman.”

As for Mary Constantine, I wasn't sure how to feel about her. The cop in me had one response, but the shrink had another. I was glad she'd be getting back into the kind of treatment and care she needed. If Dr. Shapiro was right, maybe Mary was ultimately headed toward some kind of recovery. That was how I wanted to think about it for right now Around four o'clock, the door to my room creaked open, and none other than Nana Mama poked her head inside.

“There's a sight for bed-sore eyes,” I said, and started to grin. “Hello, Nana. What brings you to Vermont?”

“Maple syrup,” she cracked.

She came in timidly, especially for her, and winced when she saw the truss around my shoulder.

“Oh, Alex, Alex.”

“Looks worse than it is. Well, maybe not,” I said. “Did you have any trouble getting a flight?”

“No trouble at all. You go to the airport. You pay money”

She reached out to put a cool hand on my cheek. It felt familiar and so comforting. What would I do without this ornery old woman? I couldn't help thinking. What will I do?

“They said you're going to be fine, Alex. I suppose that's a relative concept, though, isn't it?”

I'd been shot before. It's traumatic - there's no way around that - but not irreversible, at least not so fat “I'll be fine,” I told Nana. “Body and soul.”

“I told the children to wait outside. I want to say something to you, and then put it behind us.”

“Uh-oh. I'm in trouble again, aren't I? Back in the doghouse.”

She didn't return my smile, but she did take my hand in both of hers.

“I thank God for you every single day of my life, Alex, and I thank him for letting me raise you, and see you turn into the man you did. But I want you to think about why you came to me in the first place, what was going on between your poor parents before they died. Simply put, Jannie and Damon and Ali deserve better than you had.”

Nana stopped to make room for what was coming next. “Don't make them orphans, Alex.”