Sympathy Between Humans Part 21

"That's understandable," I told her. "In fact, I was thinking I might as well just stay out here with you guys tonight."

"Really?" she said. "That's not necessary, honest."

I'd expected that this would startle her, and said, "Well, it is late, and it's a long drive back..."

"Oh," Marlinchen said, falling back immediately into her good manners. "I understand. I didn't mean-"

"It's okay," I said. "Look, I need to ask you another favor, if I'm going to stay out here all night. Can I run my shoes through your was.h.i.+ng machine?"

The washer and dryer were both in the garage where Hugh kept his Suburban. I threw in both my Nikes and my socks, poured in detergent, and set the temperature control to the hot-water setting. As the first cycle started with a muted sound of rus.h.i.+ng water, I crossed to the cabinet I'd checked out before, the one where the old wine lived.

Back in the house, the family room was unlit, the TV off. The kids had gone upstairs, and the whole downstairs was dark, except for the kitchen. I walked over and set the wine bottle down.

Footsteps told me Marlinchen was coming down the stairs. "Sarah? I was just on my way to bed. One thing I need to tell you-"

"Come down a second," I said, interrupting her. "I need to ask you something, too."

Marlinchen leaned out a little, over the stairway railing. I tilted the wine for her to see. "I found this in your garage. Liam said your father doesn't drink anymore; I think it must be left over." In fact, the year on the bottle was about eight years past. "There's no sense in letting it go to vinegar. Do you mind?"

"I don't see why not," she said. "Listen-"

"Good," I said. "Come join me." I fished a corkscrew from a drawer.

"You mean, drink some?" Marlinchen's voice, from the stairs, sounded both scandalized and tantalized.

I took down two oversized goblets from a high shelf. "Sure," I said. "I wouldn't make a habit of it, but you're running a whole household. I think a gla.s.s of wine isn't out of order."

Outside the kitchen window, all was inky black, except for the lights of a pleasure boat drifting on the lake. I killed the main kitchen light, so that two overhead recessed lamps isolated the counter in a long pool of illumination, and pulled the cork from the wine. I didn't say anything more to Marlinchen. She was intrigued. She'd come.

I can't say I felt totally comfortable with what I was doing. But I wanted to speak freely to Marlinchen, and for her to speak as freely to me, and from what I'd seen, her armature wasn't going to come down unaided.

When I sat down at the counter, I heard her footsteps again, descending. She slipped onto the stool next to mine, and I poured until her gla.s.s was nearly full. Her eyes widened.

"Don't worry," I said. "That's not so much, for wine." I pushed the gla.s.s over to her. "If anyone ever tries to serve you that much vodka, question their motives."

We drank. Marlinchen winced.

"I know," I said, "but stick with it. Its charms will become more apparent as time goes by." I held up my own gla.s.s, watching the way the light pierced the ruby liquid. "One of the Puritans, like Cotton or Increase Mather, said this great thing about wine. He called it 'a good creature of G.o.d.' "

"That's lovely," said Marlinchen.

s.h.i.+loh had told me that, s.h.i.+loh with his love-hate relations.h.i.+p with the Christian faith and his eclectic but vast knowledge of its followers and teachings.

"The thing I was trying to say earlier," Marlinchen said, "is that you can't close the door in Dad's bedroom. The k.n.o.b is virtually useless. People have been known to get stuck in there."

"That's probably not hard to fix," I said.

"I know, but Dad's hopeless about things like that," Marlinchen said. "Not only is he hopeless with tools, I mean, he's fundamentally incapable of caring about stuff like that. He'd rather just keep the door cracked all the time." She smiled, rueful.

"To each his own." I poured myself a splash more wine. "If memory serves," I said, "you should be studying for final exams right about now, right?"

Marlinchen nodded.

"You never mentioned," I said, "where you've applied to college and if you've been accepted anywhere yet."

"Actually," she said, "I'm putting school off for a while. I mean, I'm not Liam. It's not like my grades are that great."

"They'd probably be a lot better if you hadn't been running a household of five," I pointed out.

Marlinchen paused with the winegla.s.s close to her lips. "These are extenuating circ.u.mstances, with Dad in the hospital-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t," I said. "You're balancing a checkbook, keeping a house clean, planning meals, cooking them, doing the grocery shopping. These are not things you learn to do in a matter of weeks. I have a feeling you've been doing them a lot longer than your old man's been in the hospital, and even if your father makes a full recovery, things aren't going to change much."

She hesitated before speaking. "Family is important to me," she said.

"That's fine," I said, pouring her more wine, "but Donal is 11 years old. By the time he's 18 and ready to move out, you'll be 24. Are you going to put off college until then?"

"College isn't for everyone," she said. "I bet you didn't go."

"I went for a year," I said.

"See?"

"But it was long enough for me to find out I didn't want what it had to offer," I said. "You should find out too, before you're too old for the dorms and Jell-O shots and all the things that make college more than just school," I said. "Even right now there are things you should be doing with your high school years that you're not. Like dating, or just going to the movies with friends."

Marlinchen drank, mostly to stall for time. She was thinking up verbal evasive maneuvers. "You're a friend," she said after a second, her voice sweet. "You want to go to the movies sometime?"

"I'm not the sort of friend you should have at your age," I said.

Marlinchen looked pleased, and I realized I'd stepped into a trap. "That raises an interesting point," she said. "You're out here, late at night, with a bunch of kids you hardly know. Why aren't you you out dating, Detective Pribek?" out dating, Detective Pribek?"

"Because I'm-" I broke off. I really didn't want to explain s.h.i.+loh to her.

Marlinchen saw my discomfort, and her newfound audacity drained away. "I didn't mean to pry," she said gently. "If you're gay, Sarah, I'm totally all right with that."

She was so sincere that I felt absurdly touched, but now I had to correct her misperception. "Well, gay people date, too," I pointed out. "But what I was going to say was 'Because I'm married.' "

Marlinchen's mouth fell open slightly, in shock. "But... where's your husband?" she finished.

"Wisconsin," I said.

"You're separated?"

"Sort of," I said.

Marlinchen wasn't dense; she heard that I didn't want to talk about it anymore. She played with the stem of her winegla.s.s instead. "That's too bad," she said, and then nearly let the gla.s.s slip from her fingers.

"Careful," I said, steadying it. "Let me weigh that down for you." I poured again.

"You're right," she said. "The charm does become appear... apparent."

"Stick with me, kid," I said. "I'll take you places." Like Hazelden. Like Hazelden.

But I noted the high color in Marlinchen's cheeks, and judged that she was ready for the direction I wanted to take the conversation. With a hundred-pound nondrinker, it didn't take long.

"Since I've been out here, visiting you kids," I said, "you haven't mentioned Aidan to me. Not once."

She spoke quickly. "I am sorry about the way I talked to you, the day that-"

I shook my head. "That's not what I mean," I told her. "I'm not angry about what you said, but the question I asked you that day still stands." I paused, watching her face. She undoubtedly remembered what we'd been talking about, but I reminded her anyway. "Kids don't get sent away from their families for no reason," I said. "Good reasons, bad reasons... there's always something."

True to form, she didn't answer.

"I get the feeling that there's something else you'd like to tell me," I said. "Do you trust me, Marlinchen?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "It's just that Aidan is a painful issue."

"Sometimes, in my line of work," I said, "I tell people they have to make their pain worse for a while on the way to making it better, or they'll go on dealing with the same low-grade pain indefinitely."

Marlinchen looked straight ahead, staring out into the blackness beyond the kitchen windows. She wasn't ready to make the pain worse. I'd tried.

"Finish your wine," I said, "and let's go to bed."

I very nearly shut myself into Hugh Hennessy's bedroom before I remembered the loose k.n.o.b. Leaving the door cracked, I felt a little frisson of anxiety. It was so dark and quiet out here, I felt like I had stepped into a Gothic novel, complete with trick doors that trapped you behind them. In bed, I missed the small city noises that would have helped me sleep. shut myself into Hugh Hennessy's bedroom before I remembered the loose k.n.o.b. Leaving the door cracked, I felt a little frisson of anxiety. It was so dark and quiet out here, I felt like I had stepped into a Gothic novel, complete with trick doors that trapped you behind them. In bed, I missed the small city noises that would have helped me sleep.

Because I'd left the door open, nothing alerted me that someone else was in the bedroom until I heard movement. I rolled over quickly, judged from the shape of the shadow that it was Marlinchen, and relaxed. She was barefoot, dressed only in a camisole and boxer shorts.

"What is it?" I said.

"I want to talk about Aidan," she said.

Finally.

Marlinchen came closer, to sit on the floor by the bed.

"I didn't say anything against Aidan being sent away. I thought it was for the best." She drew in a shuddery breath. "I was afraid of what would happen if Aidan stayed."

"Why were you afraid?" I asked.

"He was beating Aidan," she said. "Toward the end. But it started a long time before that."

"Tell me," I said.

Marlinchen Hennessy was her father's little girl; she was bright and verbal, and her father loved to read to her and teach her new words and listen to what she was learning in school. No sound had been sweeter to her own ears than the nickname of "Marli" that only Daddy used, and it hadn't been until she was perhaps 10 that she'd realized that Daddy wasn't six feet tall, but only five-foot-eight. she was bright and verbal, and her father loved to read to her and teach her new words and listen to what she was learning in school. No sound had been sweeter to her own ears than the nickname of "Marli" that only Daddy used, and it hadn't been until she was perhaps 10 that she'd realized that Daddy wasn't six feet tall, but only five-foot-eight.

Aidan, quiet as his twin sister was talkative, gravitated to their pensive, withdrawn mother. Like an astronomer, he studied her silences and her moods. When she seemed saddest, she'd draw him up into her lap and hold him, stroke his golden hair, kiss his maimed hand. Sometimes they'd sit together under the magnolia tree and look out at the waters of the lake. When he thought it would make her feel better, he'd bring the baby down to her, first Colm, whose weight had bowed Aidan's small back, then later baby Donal. That was close, of course, to the end.

All the children had been stricken by their mother's sudden death, but none more than Aidan. After the funeral, he'd lain under the magnolia tree and wept without restraint. Daddy had finally looked out the window and seen Aidan there, and his lips had narrowed to a thin line, and he'd opened the door and gone down the back steps and stood at Aidan's side. Marli, watching from her bedroom window, hadn't been able to hear his words, but Aidan wasn't responding. Then Daddy had bent down and pulled Aidan to his feet, and when he saw Aidan was still crying, slapped his face.

Marli forgot her shock in a day or two. She was young.

She was busy, too. There was so much to learn. Daddy gave her a footstool so she could reach the table where she changed Donal's diapers. She dressed the baby in the morning and put him down for his naps and to bed in the evening. In the weeks after Mother's death, there were babysitters, but soon they faded away. "It's our home," Daddy said. "We'll take care of it, like we'll take care of each other."

Marlinchen liked that idea. She thought of it as she poured cereal into bowls for her brothers and made their school lunches and washed up the dishes. She was not yet eight years old.

Marlinchen worried about her father constantly. She'd heard him talking to someone on the phone about having an ulcer. That was new, in addition to the back pain that came and went, and Marlinchen knew that stress aggravated it. With Mother gone, Daddy had to do the shopping for six now, and drive them to school and buy them their clothes and school supplies.

Daddy used to kiss the top of her head and say, "What would I do without you?" He sampled the dinners she started cooking at eight years old, her first recipes, and proclaimed every one of them "superb," even the ones she knew she'd messed up. He came to stand in the doorway sometimes when she was reading bedtime stories to Colm and Donal. She'd always pretend she didn't see him, keeping her pride in his approval to herself.

There were other compensations: a little extra spending money. A white kitten on her birthday. Marlinchen was the first girl in her cla.s.s to have pierced ears, with permission from Daddy, who said she was mature enough for them at nine.

Lost in the unconscious narcissism of childhood, she didn't realize for a long time that Daddy never really made eye contact with Aidan much, or spoke directly to him. If Marli was around, that's who he talked to. When Marlinchen did begin to notice this, she thought it was because Aidan was so quiet all the time, and self-sufficient. Not like Colm and Liam, who got sc.r.a.ped knees and had arguments that needed to be refereed, or Donal, who needed everything. Aidan never required much of anything.

Then, one midwinter day, he got sick.

It wasn't serious. Shouldn't have been, at least. It was a flu, one of those things that runs around schools in wintertime. Aidan caught it, but kept going to school until a teacher sent him home.

When Marli got home that day, she went to his room to see how he was doing. He was very sleepy. When she touched his cheek, it was like a furnace covered by a thin layer of muscle and skin. She took his temperature with the little thermometer from the bathroom. What it showed her made her run to her father's study.

Daddy was working on a lecture he was giving at Augsberg College. She found him deep into his writing.

"Daddy?"

"Hi, honey," he'd said, not stopping his work.

"I think Aidan's really sick," she said.

"It's the flu," Daddy said. "Bed rest is the only thing you can do for it."

"I think he needs a doctor," Marlinchen said. "His temperature is 104."

"Really?" Daddy said. "Better give him a couple of ibuprofen, then. That'll take the fever down." He was still typing.

Marlinchen swallowed. "I really think he needs a doctor, Daddy."

Daddy had stopped typing, but he hadn't turned around. "Did you hear me? Give him the ibuprofen," he said. His voice had become sharp. "I'm giving this lecture tomorrow. I don't have time for this s.h.i.+t."

"All right," she said faintly.

Marlinchen had seen a movie where people saved a man with a high fever. She made Aidan wash the ibuprofen down with a big gla.s.s of ice water, and then another, and she ran him a very cold bath and made him get in it. In an hour, his temperature registered at 100, and she knew he'd be okay.

Daddy came out of his study three hours later. "I'm sorry, Marli," he said.

Relief warmed her.