Omens

Chapter Thirty-three

At 3:05, as I was walking back from the diner, Gabriel called.

“Good, I caught you,” he said. “Are you going back to your apartment to get ready?”

“If you mean changing out of my uniform, yes.”

“You’ll want to do more than that.”

“Are you going to tell me what to wear again?” I asked. “Once was fine, but twice gets a little creepy.”

“I’m merely going to suggest—strongly—that you take extra care and consider the image you want to present. There’s a possibility we may encounter media at the hospital.”

Of course. I should have thought about that.

“The question you need to ask yourself, Olivia, is are you still hiding? And if so, how much longer do you intend to do so? It’s understandable that you didn’t wish to face the media right away. You had to process the news about your parents. But as I said yesterday, journalists are like hounds. If you don’t run, they lose interest in the chase.”

“Great. But I just spent the last week setting up some semblance of a life here. Are you suggesting I just throw that away? Let photographers besiege my apartment until Grace evicts me? Let journalists hang out at the diner until Larry fires me?”

“Would that be so bad?” Gabriel said.

I gritted my teeth to keep from snapping. “I know you think I’m being silly living here and working in a diner. You’ve made that abundantly clear. However, I did not hire you to give your opinion on my life choices.”

A pause. “All right.”

“That includes not only advice but snarky and sarcastic side commentary.”

A longer pause, and when he said, “All right” again, his voice was as bitingly cold as vodka straight from the freezer. Yes, I’m sure angry clients told him off all the time, but they didn’t really mean it, because they were all too aware that he held their freedom in his hands. I’d grown up with lawyers, though, and in my world, they were employees. Valued and respected, but employees nonetheless.

After a moment, he said, “I’m not suggesting you reveal all aspects of your current situation, Olivia. Even if by some chance they tracked you to Cainsville, the town values its privacy. Anyone who asked for you would be told they’d made a mistake—you aren’t there.”

“That seems a little too good to hope for.”

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s a very insular community. My aunt tells me you’ve become quite popular with some of the older residents. In Cainsville, town elders still hold power. They’ll protect you.”

That sounded like something out of another century. But it was comforting, too, and when I glanced up at the omnipresent gargoyles, I felt comforted, as if their fierce scowls would ward off all the plagues that lurked beyond the town borders—including reporters.

“You will need to face the media eventually, Olivia. Do you want a surprise shot, like the ones they’ve taken so far? Or do you want one that presents the image you wish to convey?”

I paused, considering. Then I said, “Tell me what you have in mind.”

His basic advice was simple: set the stage for a photograph, and that “stage” was me. How did I want to look in those photos? Like Olivia Taylor-Jones. Polished, poised, and prepared.

He gave me until four. It was enough time to do the best with what I had, which wasn’t much, and as I sat on the front step waiting for him, I began reconsidering the wisdom of the entire plan.

When a shadow passed over me, I started and looked up to see Gabriel at the foot of the steps.

“Ready?” he said.

I nodded and followed him to the car.

“There’s more than one way into the hospital, isn’t there?” I asked as we drove from town. “I’m guessing any reporters will be parked at the main entrance.”

“Most, yes, so I’ll take you in the back. I’m sure we’ll encounter a more enterprising journalist on that route. Preferably only one. That will allow us to control the situation.”

“Actually, I … I’d rather control it by avoiding it altogether.”

A faint smile. “I’m sure you would.”

I looked over at him. “I’m serious.” I lifted a hand against his protest. “Yes, you’re right that I should dictate when and how I let myself be photographed. But I look like a twelve-year-old who tried to cut and streak her own hair. I can’t afford my usual brand of makeup, and I picked the wrong shades. This is the best clothing I have—the jeans and shirt I wore when I left home. Not exactly haute couture.”

“Not exactly Walmart, either. The cost of your sneakers could feed a family for a week.”

“Which is the problem. With the crappy haircut and bad makeup, I look as if I’m trying to pretend I’m just a regular girl, yet I’m wearing three-hundred-dollar blue jeans. Not the image I want to project.”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“Really? I’ve spent a lifetime being taught how to project an image. I want to show the world I’m still Olivia Taylor-Jones. This”—I swept a hand over myself—“is not Olivia Taylor-Jones.”

“Should it be?”

“If you’re going to give me some existential bullshit about whether or not I still am Olivia Taylor-Jones, you can save it. What’s important here is the image. Give me a week and I’ll have enough tips saved to get myself a real haircut, decent makeup, and an outfit. The laptop can wait. Not the way I’d like to structure my priorities, but if I’m going to get myself in the paper again, I need to think of what my mother and James would want, too.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” I reclined my seat, ending the discussion. “I do.”

Gabriel bustled me into a side door. His gaze traveled along the corridor and darted into each open doorway we passed. He might not have been thrilled with my decision to postpone my media reveal, but having agreed to respect it, he apparently wasn’t going to betray that by letting me “accidentally” bump into a reporter. I appreciated that.

I also appreciated the brisk pace. Nobody loves hospitals, but just one whiff of that smell—antiseptic and overcooked food—and my chest seizes up. Soon I’m gulping air, praying I don’t hyperventilate. I’ve been told it’s a panic attack. Which would make perfect sense … if I wasn’t so damned healthy that I’d never spent a day in a hospital. I’d only been to the emergency room once, when I was fourteen and broke my arm playing rugby at school and my parents weren’t home. Otherwise, my family doctor came to us; my deep phobia of medical care extended even to office visits.

That day, I had enough else on my mind that I didn’t go into a full-blown panic attack. I still had to breathe deeply, and I caught a few concerned glances from people walking past, but Gabriel was thankfully too intent on vulture-watch to notice.

We were near Pamela’s hospital room before I saw any sign of added security, and even then, it was only a young officer posted outside her door. He was reading a newspaper, as if his job was more to keep curiosity seekers out than to keep a notorious serial killer in.

When I commented on that, Gabriel said, “True. There will be another one or two inside, though. And they’ll be eager to get her back to prison as soon as the doctors say she can be moved. But that’s not because they’re worried she’ll escape. They’re ensuring her condition doesn’t worsen at the hands of someone who thinks the world would be better off if Pamela Larsen suffered a fatal relapse.”

“Oh.”

My mother had to be guarded against being murdered … by a complete stranger who might decide the justice system was better served if she left this hospital in a body bag.

As Gabriel spoke to the guard, I caught the murmur of Pamela’s voice, and my shock froze into a moment of perfect clarity. I heard the squeak of a bed being pushed down the hall and caught the faint smell of urine and tasted something cold and harsh and metallic. And pain. I felt pain, a sudden wave of it and Pamela’s voice, saying…

Nothing.

Pamela’s voice was a mere undertone, nearly drowned out by the squeak of wheels.

I turned to see a nurse pushing a bed with a woman on it, so thin she seemed like a skin-covered skeleton. The woman opened her eyes. They were empty sockets, blood weeping from the holes, spilling over her sunken cheeks.

I wheeled and plowed into Gabriel. He caught me and murmured, “Olivia?” I blinked and turned. The nurse was still there, pushing the bed, frowning at me. The old woman lay on the bed, but her eyes were closed. She wore a white nightgown covered with red flowers.

Poppies. She wore poppies.

“Olivia?”

I struggled to snap out of it, but the halls seemed to sway, everything slightly gauzy, every sound garbled.

I forced my mind back to what I’d been thinking before I saw the old woman and the poppies. Hospitals and Pamela Larsen.

I said I’d never stayed in a hospital, but there were two years of my life I knew nothing about. I must have spent time in a hospital.

I should have felt relieved. All those times I’d chastised myself for such a groundless fear, and it might not be groundless at all. But I didn’t feel relieved. I felt angry. Angry with my mother and my dad, who’d known damned well that I must have had an early bad experience before I came to them, but they hadn’t told me, fearing it could spark memories of the life they wanted me to forget.

“Olivia?” Gabriel said.

“Sorry,” I said. “Are we ready to go in?”

He peered at me, then waved me to one side. “Take a moment.”

I stepped away from the guard and motioned for Gabriel to follow. When he did, I lowered my voice and said, “Do me a favor? Erase those words from your vocabulary. At least with me.”

A frown. “Which words?”

“Take a moment.”

The frown deepened. “I was giving you—”

“—a moment to collect myself. I’m sure you need to do that with your clients. They get angry, emotional, distraught … But remember yesterday when I advised you not to make physical contact? Same principle here. You can’t pull it off.”

“Pull what off?”

“Expressing genuine concern. I’m upset, and you see that as weakness, which you make very clear, however inadvertently. You say, ‘Take a moment,’ but what I hear is, ‘Good God, not this again.’” I turned to the hospital room door. “Now let’s get this over with.”