Tears came into the blue eyes, but not easily. The boy had to squint and wrinkle his nose, hauling them up from some deep well. “Can you help me find her?” he said.
None of this made sense to Eric. Something unsound came off this boy in waves as palpable as smell. He wanted no part of it. He wanted to be gone. Far away, home already. “I guess you’d better keep waiting,” he said.
“I want to go home.” More false tears, dragged up and pushed out onto the bright clean face. “Can you take me home?”
Eric dropped the spoon into the beans. Cries of protest and disgust came from the people around him as the sauce spattered on their Sunday best. “No,” he said. “Go away.” He left his containers at the steam table and pushed through the crowd to the door.
In his car, he locked all the doors and leaned forward to press his forehead against the steering wheel. His heart jumped and skipped, as if he’d escaped a wreck—hit the brakes just in time and barely hard enough, swerved around the spilled bicycle, felt the tires grip the road after two rotations on black ice. He remembered them all at once, his there-by-the-grace-of-God near misses, and felt in a confused way that if things had truly gone wrong, his airbag would have deployed. No airbag, so he was safe. Lie down, lie down, he said to his skipping heart, nothing happened, lie down.
He’d seen that child before—in Dr. Vlk’s office, in the Skyview, in the backseat of his own car, in the bathroom mirror. Was this what Sammie had tried to describe? Had Lacey seen and felt these things, all these months in the house? Nothing happened, yet nothing ever felt more dangerous. He speed-dialed number one but Lacey wasn’t home, and she didn’t answer her cell, so he tried Ella Dane. She answered on the fifth ring.
“I left Lacey with Harry when I went to the hospital,” she said coldly.
“Why are you at the hospital? Are you okay?”
“Jack McMure fell down the stairs.”
People fell down stairs all the time. Second-most-common household accident, after drowning. There was no such thing as bad luck; it was just the way truth looked, working itself out in a messy world. How else were people supposed to die? There was nothing wrong with his house. “Is he hurt?” Eric asked.
“Concussion. He’ll be okay.”
“Does he have health insurance?”
“Do you have homeowner’s insurance?” Ella Dane asked, with a sarcastic tone he considered unnecessary, even redundant. It was going to cost him. Everything cost him; people thought because he was a lawyer, he’d built a tree house in the money tree. Everybody wanted something, and they all wanted it from him.
Harry Rakoczy wasn’t answering his phone. Lacey was in Harry’s house, with Lex and Theo, and if Cambrick MacAvoy called the cops, what might Lex do?
Anything. He might do anything. Eric peeled out of the parking lot, ignoring the no-right-on-red sign and the honks and shouts of other drivers. Home. Now.
Chapter Forty-nine
“SHE DIDN’T MEAN IT,” Harry said.
Lacey pressed a bag of frozen peas against her right shoulder, where one of Lex’s wild blows had connected. Lex squirmed and cried in his seat like a bee-stung child, furious and unwilling to be helped, as Harry tried to press a cool washcloth on his red face. Lacey resented it. What right did Lex have to fuss? She was the one who’d been hit, so where was her cool washcloth? But no, Harry just shoved the bag of peas into her hand. Theo, under the table with three copper-bottomed saucepans and a wooden spoon, made an intolerable noise.
“Junior!” Harry caught Lex’s flailing hands. “Look at me.” Lex didn’t raise his head, but Harry lowered himself awkwardly on his old knees to meet his gaze. “She didn’t mean it.” He pressed the washcloth against Lex’s forehead. Lex flinched it away. “Close your eyes.” Lex closed his eyes, and Harry spread the damp cloth over his face.
“Excuse me,” Lacey said in the coolest tone she could muster. “Hello?”
Harry pushed a small white bottle across the table to Lacey. “Have an aspirin.”
“Pregnant women can’t have aspirin.”
“There’s Tylenol in the cabinet over the sink.”
Lacey waited. Did he mean that she should get up, in her condition, and walk across the kitchen, and get her own medication? Yes, apparently he did. “Thank you so much,” she said. She meant him to notice the sarcasm, and she meant it to hurt.
“Look what you’ve done,” Harry said reproachfully. “He hasn’t been this bad for years. He’s been doing so well—even with Jeanne—I could have got him through that. Look at this.”