Just Between Us

“What are you barking at, dumbass?” Fortini’s voice was so close that we could hear his own, heavier breathing as he walked around. Then he drew closer to the dog and said in a softer voice, “Hey, there, buddy, what’s got into you tonight?”

There was an ominous silence for a moment, but then the crunch of his footsteps again and the tiny red light disappeared around the side of his building. A few seconds later we heard the sound of the metal steps clanging against the brick.

“C’mon,” Alison said, pulling me by the arm she’d been clutching. “Now’s our chance.”

We crept out of the bushes and I hobbled after her as fast as I could around the other side of the house and over to our car across the street. I didn’t know if Ray Fortini had gone inside his apartment or whether he was still outside, standing on the landing. I was afraid to look back.

*

We found Sarah six blocks away, lingering in the back of an all-night Laundromat. She’d taken the wig off and was carrying it like a long, hairy purse. Her real hair looked matted and her makeup smeared. She’d taken her heels off, too, and was massaging one bruised foot as we pulled up. “Why did you come here?” I asked as she hobbled into the car.

“Having other people around seemed safer.” She handed over the phone she’d taken from Fortini and we pulled over so Alison could clear all the data from it.

“Maybe we should drop it back off at the bar?” Sarah said. “What if he reports it stolen?”

“We can let Heather return it to him,” Alison said darkly.

“What does that mean?”

“He’s her lover,” Alison told her, and Sarah responded to the details first with shock and then with fury.

“We should go to her house and confront her,” she began angrily, but stopped short, digging in her purse for her phone. “I forgot—she’s not at her house, she’s at the hospital.”

She told us about the miscarriage and I couldn’t help it, I felt the anger over Heather’s betrayal tempered by sadness.

“Where is she?” Alison said. “Text her and say we’re coming.”

We drove to Sewickley Valley Hospital, and I don’t know about the others, but I felt shaky. I had been in the ER only once before, when Owen broke his arm in first grade, and I hadn’t remembered it as so busy and chaotic, but maybe that was because I’d been there on a weekday morning and now it was after nine at night. As we came through the sliding doors we could hear a child screaming. It was jarring, an old woman groaning in pain as her middle-aged daughter fussed over her, a man wearing a dazed expression and holding an ice pack against his head, and a teenage mother, heavy black eyeliner smeared, trying to hush a screaming, red-faced toddler. Sarah led the way to the front desk, where a harried-looking woman sat wearing a lab coat over a Penguins jersey. She had a phone against her ear as she typed away on a computer keyboard, eyes fixed on the monitor. We stood there, the child howling behind us, as the woman said, “Yes, they’ve been moved upstairs.” She hung up and shifted one hand from her keyboard to tap a clipboard on top of the desk without making eye contact. “Just sign in and we’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

“We need to see—” Sarah began.

“Just sign in,” the woman repeated in a louder voice, whapping the clipboard harder. I would have just done it at that point, but I wasn’t Sarah.

“We’re not patients,” she said. “We’re here to see Heather Lysenko.”

The woman looked up then, clearly annoyed, but all she said was, “Spell the last name.”

Sarah rattled it off and the woman typed it in, frowning at the screen and moving the mouse for a moment with beringed fingers, before jerking a thumb toward the doors. “She’s still here. Through those doors and down on the left.”

The child’s howling seemed to intensify as we passed through the heavy doors, but when they closed behind us the noise faded, replaced by beeps of various machines and the rapid footsteps of doctors and nurses hustling past us on the shiny linoleum floors. I’ve never liked hospitals, with their strong disinfectant and rubbing-alcohol scents that can never fully cover the smell of blood and disease. I tried to avoid touching anything as we walked past empty or curtained beds. A nurse in a purple smock stopped us. “Who are you looking for?”

“Heather Lysenko?” Alison said, and the woman led us down the row to the one bed whose curtains were completely closed. She pulled it back just enough to poke her head around and said, “There are some people here for you, Mrs. Lysenko.”

We heard Heather say, “Okay,” in a low voice, and I felt a tug at my heartstrings. She sounded sad and exhausted. The nurse stepped aside to let us through, briskly pulling the curtain closed again around us. Heather lay on the bed wearing one of those horrible hospital gowns, tightly clutching the thin sheets and blanket covering her lower half. Her face relaxed when she saw us. “Thank God,” she whispered. “I thought you were the police. They’re the ones who brought me here.”

“Sarah told us,” I said. “We’re so sorry about the, well, the baby.” I felt awkward, and Alison and Sarah sounded equally awkward as they echoed me.

“She’s gone,” Heather said, tears filling her eyes. “I thought the bleeding would stop, but she’s gone.” A sob escaped and she pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, but the tears spilled over. I turned to Alison to whisper that this could wait, surely a day wouldn’t matter, but Sarah spoke before I got the chance. “Viktor wasn’t the father, right?”

Typical Sarah—abrasive and straight to the point. Heather looked as stunned as I felt. Through her tears she said, “What are you talking about?”

“He couldn’t be because he had a vasectomy, didn’t he?”

“Really?” I said as Alison said, “What?”

Heather’s already pale skin blanched and she tried to hide her reaction, bringing her hands up to cover her impossibly beautiful face. Perhaps she thought we’d stop Sarah, but nobody did.

“So who’s the father? Ray Fortini?” she said.

Heather’s gasp was muffled, but we heard it. She tried to cover it with a cough, before saying, “Who?”

Sarah snorted. “Nice try, but it’s too late to lie to us.”

The sudden churn of a motor made three of us jump, but it was only Heather raising the bed. She repeatedly jabbed the button on the bed’s remote control, struggling upright with it, swiping at her face.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said.

“Cut the crap. We know he’s your lover,” Alison said. “What we don’t know is when the two of you came up with the blackmail plan.”

“What are you talking about?” Heather frowned and I was surprised as a look of confusion overtook that Little Miss Innocent expression she’d been giving us. She was a skilled liar, but I searched her face and the confusion seemed real.

“The decision to blackmail us—was it yours or his?” Alison said.

Heather just stared at her.

“Ray Fortini,” Alison said. “He is your lover, isn’t he?”

Now there was a flash of something else—anger? “That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, it’s very much our business,” Alison countered. “Especially since you’ve both been terrorizing us for the last eight weeks.”

“Terrorizing you? What the hell are you talking about?” Heather grabbed a tissue from the box on the rolling stand next to her bed and blew her nose.

“You are the blackmailer, you and your asshole of a boyfriend,” Sarah said.

“Don’t bother denying it,” Alison added. “We’ve been to his apartment, we know everything.” She pulled out her iPhone and opened one of Ray’s videos that she’d copied, wordlessly turning the screen to Heather.

Heather flushed, looking more embarrassed than I’d ever seen her, but she pushed the phone away, sounding defensive. “Fine, I’ve been having an affair with him, but that has nothing to do with the blackmail.”

“We also found the photos on his computer,” Alison said. “Stop lying.”

“What are you talking about? What photos?”

“The photos of us that Ray Fortini took that night. They’re gone now, by the way. I’ve seen to that.”

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