The Ex

53

The redheaded man groaned and staggered out into David’s arms.

David and Molly slowed his fall as he slid to the hall floor and sat slumped with his back against the wall.

David stared down at the injured man. “Is he the one who was following you?”

Molly nodded silently. She didn’t seem to notice the blood on her hands and arms.

“He must have thought you might lead him to Deirdre,” David said. He bent down to speak to the man. “You’re Grocci! Stan Grocci!”

“That’s right,” the man managed to say. His voice was feeble but desperate. His eyes rolled toward the open apartment door. “Don’t go in there! She’s got the boy! She’s done murder! She’s crazy!”

Across the hall a door opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a pink satin housecoat peered out with curious dark eyes beneath long, artificial lashes.

The eyes blinked twice. Quickly she slammed the door, and the deadbolt audibly clicked into its shaft.

“She’s sick,” Grocci continued weakly. “Dangerous. She was in an institution, where she belonged. Then she got out, killed Chrissy…”

“Christine Mathews?” David asked.

Grocci bowed his head in what might have been a nod. Blood glistened on the right side of his face and neck. David saw a slash just above his hairline, like a dark worm beneath the strands of red hair, still trickling blood.

“It was partly my fault,” he said, “but what was I supposed to do? The doctors said Deirdre would be in that place for years. I’d known Chrissy from my old neighborhood, so…things…they happened. Deirdre found out, she was jealous…Insanely jealous…”

David straightened up and took a step toward the open door.

“Don’t go in there!” Grocci pleaded, raising a bloody arm. “She did this to me. I think she’s killed me…”

David hesitated only a moment, then ignored Grocci and charged into the apartment. Molly was a few feet behind him. They dashed through the living room and into the bedroom where David and Deirdre had made love.

They stopped abruptly just inside the door.

Deirdre was cowering in a corner near the wide window where she’d enticed David as he’d gazed at the view. The window’s white sheer curtains were open to reveal the jagged, brightly lighted Manhattan skyline. The night was clear and the city glittered like a galaxy that had fallen.

Deirdre’s hair was blond and styled like Molly’s, and she was wearing Molly’s green dress and clutching Michael tightly to her. He appeared frightened, dazed, staring at his parents with dulled recognition and hope.

Molly and David stood where they’d stopped cold, fearing she might harm Michael.

Deirdre regarded them with calm green eyes that nonetheless held brilliant pinpoints of insanity that scared David.

“I came here to test you, David.” Her voice was a sad monotone. “I knew you’d think of this place, but I hoped you might act to protect me. Instead you betrayed me.” She glared at Molly. “You brought her.” When she spoke of Molly, the hate in her voice echoed in madness.

David was aware of the abyss they all faced. He was gentle, coaxing. “I do want to protect you, Deirdre. That’s why I came. Why don’t you give Michael to me? I’ll show you. I promise.”

She continued glaring at Molly with eyes that blazed her hatred. “We don’t need her, David. You never needed her. I came to New York to claim what I’d lost in life. I had no idea you were married. But it doesn’t matter. You’re rightfully mine! So is Michael, the child we should have had!” She loosened her grip on Michael to point a finger at Molly and took a few steps toward them. “Her life is rightfully mine!”

“That’s in-That doesn’t make sense, Deirdre. You know it doesn’t make sense. Give me Michael. Please! Then we can talk, straighten all this out. I know you. You’re not an evil person.”

She held Michael tighter. “Of course I’m not evil. It isn’t evil, and it isn’t crazy, to take back what’s mine and keep it. To keep it this time.”

David involuntarily started forward, but Deirdre raised her forearm to a choking position on Michael’s neck, and he stopped and stood motionless, fearful. Death was on the prowl here; ask Stan Grocci out in the corridor. Molly, who hadn’t moved since entering the room, continued to stare vacantly at Deirdre.

Deirdre tightened her grip, and fear glowed in Michael’s eyes. She widened her stance, as if tensing for action. “Don’t come a step closer! Either of you!”

Sirens began to wail outside. Shrill loops of sound in the distance, but drawing nearer. David wondered if the woman across the hall, the one with the false eyelashes, had phoned the police.

“I’m crazy, remember?” Deirdre said. “We crazy women…we might do anything. We’re mad as March hatters.”

There was a blur of motion in the corner of David’s vision.

Stan Grocci lurched into the room, past David and Molly. His shoes made scraping sounds on the carpet with each labored, dragging step. He was bleeding heavily and still had the knife in his shoulder. Though his movements were spasmodic and his progress slow, he was making his way toward Deirdre, his long features set and determined, his eyes fixed on her. In his right hand was one of the heavy onyx-bull bookends.

He was losing blood fast, getting weaker. His steps became even more faltering.

Deirdre merely stood staring at him, confident but wary, gauging his strength and waiting for it to expire.

Grocci’s legs became rubbery, like a tiring boxer’s in the late rounds. He began to weave. He stopped. His tall body swayed.

With a gurgling scream and a supreme force of will, he drew back his right hand and threw the heavy bookend at Deirdre.

It missed and shattered the window behind her.

Grocci fell with a dull thud on the carpet and didn’t move. His determination had died, and now he was dying. He gazed with sad detachment at Deirdre through opaque and hooded eyes.

Wind howled through the window frame that now held only a few shards of glass.

While Deirdre was distracted, David charged.

She noticed him and reacted in time, not changing expression except for an added intensity in her eyes. Angling her body and holding Michael to the side, she expertly shot out a foot to kick David in the groin.

Pain rocked through him, clamping and twisting his insides in a vise, nauseating and paralyzing him. Clutching himself with both hands, he dropped to his knees.

Deirdre smiled faintly. “You didn’t know what an athlete I am did you, David? I’m very good. Running, martial arts…”

“And swimming,” Molly said softly.

Deirdre stopped smiling and looked sharply at her, sensing that a balance had shifted. She knew the real enemy, the real danger.

Molly screamed and hurled herself at her, striking suddenly and with such unexpected speed and force that Michael was flung from Deirdre’s grasp.

The two women grappled with each other, struggling, kicking, biting, gouging eyes. Molly’s head banged against the wall, causing a burst of light along with the pain. It only made her fight harder. She tried to yank Deirdre’s hair but it came off in her hand, revealing a wild red tangle plastered with perspiration to her scalp, making Deirdre look even more like the madwoman she was. Molly flung aside the blond wig and cracked Deirdre’s jaw with her elbow all in the same motion. She continued to advance, never taking a backward step, driving Deirdre back.

The stunned but desperate Deirdre hacked at Molly’s neck with the edge of her hand, but Molly’s fierce attack kept her too close for Deirdre to gain leverage and inflict much damage. It was all happening too fast, too awkwardly, for Deirdre to set herself and use her fighting skills.

David saw what was happening and tried to stand up, but pain dropped him back to his knees.

Molly’s advance was so determined and swift that both women temporarily lost their footing and crashed against the wall, bouncing off the rough plaster and trying to regain balance. For an instant they separated, at last affording Deirdre fighting room. She yelled and raised her leg, wheeling her body sideways to deliver a crescent kick to Molly’s head.

Molly was weaker than her opponent, but she was younger and a split second quicker. She leaned back and slapped Deirdre’s flashing foot in the direction it was traveling, causing her to pivot faster and off balance on her toe and crash into the window frame, hitting her head hard on the steel upper sash. Dazed for a second, she sat down hard on the windowsill, teetering. Then she slid sideways away from the sill, toward dark space, bleeding where the glass shards had cut her. As she fell through the window, she scrambled frantically and managed to grab the marble outside ledge and hold on.

Molly staggered to the window and stared at Deirdre clinging to the ledge for life. The two women locked gazes. Deirdre was silent, her red lips drawn back from clenched teeth in what might have been a grin. Her eyes were ferocious.

Molly reached toward Deirdre’s pale hands that were clutching the ledge.

Then she hesitated.

Deirdre was obviously weakening. Her splayed, whitened fingers almost imperceptibly began to slide over the smooth marble.

Molly’s hands darted forward, then stopped and drew back slowly as Deirdre lost her grip and plunged thirty-four stories toward the street. For a few seconds she extended her arms, as if too late trying to catch the knack of flying. Then she tucked them in tight to her sides.

Molly leaned from the window and watched her all the way down, listening to her desolate, fading scream. Horror crossed Molly’s face, an instant of revelation.

Then she became calm. She knew what she’d done. She’d been reduced to animal will, forced to play an uncompromising, primitive game outside the rules, one that had existed even before the rules. She’d killed to preserve herself and her family. Like a she-wolf protecting her brood. She didn’t know if, under the circumstances, it was legal. If it was moral.

The legality didn’t matter. No one else would ever know that she’d let Deirdre fall. That she might have saved her.

It was something she’d have to live with, and she knew that she could.

She scooped up Michael and went to David, who’d at last managed to gain his feet. Molly encompassed them both in her arms, drawing them to her and hugging them fiercely, harder and harder.

Her family.