Standing was another matter. Her knees started to straighten and then she was back on the toilet, groaning.
“Fucksakes.” Paula yanked up Andy by the armpit. She zipped and buttoned Andy’s jeans like she was three, then shoved her into the room. “Go sit down at the table.”
Andy kept her back bent as she navigated her way into the rickety chair. The side of her body lit up like a bolt of lightning.
Paula shoved the chair underneath the table. “You need to do what I say when I say it.”
“Fuck you.” The words slipped out before Andy could stop them.
“Fuck you, too.” Paula grabbed Andy’s left arm. She clamped a handcuff on her wrist, then jerked her hand under the table and attached the cuff to the metal base.
Andy pulled at the restraint. The table rattled. She pressed her forehead to the top.
Why hadn’t she gone to Idaho?
Paula said, “If your mother caught the first flight out, she won’t be here for at least another two hours.” She found an ibuprofen bottle in one of the bags. She used her teeth to rip off the safety seal. “How bad does it hurt?”
“Like I’ve been shot, you fucking psycho.”
“Fair enough.” Instead of being mad, Paula seemed delighted by Andy’s anger. She put four gelcaps on the table. She opened one of the bottles of water. “Barbecue or regular?”
Andy stared at her.
Paula held up two bags of potato chips. “You have to eat something or you’ll get a tummy ache from the pills.”
Andy didn’t know what to say but, “Barbecue.”
Paula opened the bag with help from her teeth. She unwrapped two sandwiches. “Mustard and mayo?”
Andy nodded, watching the madwoman who’d shot and kidnapped her use a plastic knife to spread mayonnaise and mustard onto the bread of her turkey sandwich.
Why was this happening?
“Eat at least half.” Paula slid over the sandwich and started adding mustard to her own. “I mean it, kid. Half. Then you can take the pills.”
Andy picked it up, but she had an idiotic flash of the sandwich squirting out of the hole in her side. And then she remembered, “You’re not supposed to eat before surgery.”
Paula stared at her.
“The bullet. I mean, if—when—my mom gets here, and—”
“They won’t operate. Easier to let the bullet stay inside. It’s infection you should be worried about. That shit’ll kill you.” Paula turned on the television. She channeled around until she found Animal Planet, then muted the sound.
Pitbulls and Parolees.
“This is a good episode.” Paula swiveled back around. She squirted mayonnaise onto her sandwich. “I wish they’d had this program at Danbury.”
Andy watched her use the plastic knife to evenly spread the mayo across the bread.
This should’ve felt strange, but it didn’t feel strange. Why would it? Andy had started the week by watching her mother kill a kid, then Andy had murdered a gun for hire, then she was on the run and kicking a thug in the balls and getting one, maybe two more people killed, so why wouldn’t it feel natural to be handcuffed to a table, watching parolees try to reform abused animals with a psycho ex-con college professor?
Paula pressed the sandwich back together. She tugged at the scarf around her neck, the same scarf she had been wearing two and a half days ago in Austin.
Andy said, “I thought you’d been suffocated.”
Paula took a large bite. She spoke with her mouth full. “I’m getting a cold. You gotta keep your neck warm to stop the coughing.”
Andy didn’t bother to correct the asinine health advice. A cold explained Paula’s raspy voice, but Andy said, “Your eye—”
“Your fucking mother.” Food dropped from Paula’s mouth, but she kept talking. “She whacked me in the head. They didn’t do shit for me in jail. The left one went white, I got an infection in the right one. Still sensitive to light, so that’s why I wear the sunglasses. Thanks to your mom, that’s been my look for thirty-two years.”
Interesting math.
Paula said, “What else you wanna know?”
Andy felt like she had nothing left to lose. She asked, “You sent the guy to Mom’s house, right? To torture her?”
“Samuel Godfrey Beckett.” Paula snorted, then coughed when the sandwich went down the wrong way. “Worth the money just for his stupid name. I thought for sure Jane would give it up. She’s never been good at confrontation. Then again, she killed that kid in the diner. I about shit myself when I recognized her face on the news. Fucking Laura Oliver. Living on a goddamn beach while the rest of us rotted in jail.”
Andy pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. The gun was still tucked into Paula’s jeans, but her hands were occupied with eating. Could Andy push the table into Paula’s gut, reach over with her free hand and grab the gun?
“What else, kid?”
Andy mentally walked herself through the motions. None of them worked out. Her handcuffed wrist was stretched too far under the table. She would end up impaling herself if she reached for the gun with her free hand.
“Come on.” Paula bit off another chunk of sandwich. “Ask me all the questions you can’t ask your mother.”
Andy looked away. At the ugly floral bedspread. At the door almost twenty feet away. Paula was offering her everything, but after searching for so long, Andy didn’t just want answers. She wanted an explanation, and that was something she could only get from her mother.
Paula looked for a napkin in the bag. “You turning shy on me?”
Andy did not want to, but she asked, “How will I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I’m more honest than that whore you call a mother.”
Andy chewed at the tip of her already sore tongue to keep from lashing out. “Who did you kill?”
“Some bitch who tried to stab me in prison. They couldn’t prosecute me for Norway. Maplecroft wasn’t my fault. Quarter was the one who snatched her. The other stuff wasn’t on me.” She stopped to chew. “I pleaded guilty to fleeing the scene of a crime. That got me six years, the bitch I shivved was self-defense, but they took me up to two dimes. Ask another question.”
“How did you get your job at the university?”
“They were looking for a diversity hire and I lucked up with my sad sack reformed felon story. Ask another.”
“Is Clara okay?”
“Ha, good try. How about this: why do I hate your dumb bitch of a mother?”
Andy waited, but Paula was waiting, too.
Andy made her tone as bored and disinterested as she could, asking, “Why do you hate my mother?”
“She turned on us. All of us except Edwin and Clara, but that was only because she wanted to control them.” Paula waited for a reaction that Andy could not give her. “Jane was put into witness protection in exchange for her testimony. She got a sweetheart deal because the clock was literally ticking. We had another bomb ready to go, but her big fucking mouth stopped it all.”
Andy searched Paula’s expression for guile, but she saw none.
Witness protection.
Andy tried to wrap her brain around the information, to figure out how it made her feel. Laura had lied to her, but Andy had become accustomed to the fact that her mother lied. Maybe what she was feeling was a slight sense of relief. All of this time, Andy had assumed that Laura was a criminal. And she was a criminal, but she had actually done something good by turning them all in.
Right?
Paula said, “The pigs still put her in prison for two years. They can do that, you know. Even with witness protection. And Jane did some heinous shit. We all did, but we did it for the cause. Jane did it because she was a spoiled bitch who got bored spending her daddy’s money.”
“QuellCorp,” Andy said.
“Billions,” Paula said. “All from the suffering and exploitation of the sick.”
“So you’re holding me ransom for money?”
“Hell no. I don’t want her fucking blood money. This has nothing to do with QuellCorp. The family divested years ago. None of them have anything to do with it. Except raking in the dough from their stock options.”
Andy wondered if that’s where the cash came from in the Reliant. You had to pay taxes on stock gains, but if Laura was in witness protection, then everything would be above-board.