A Place of Hiding

of being given the doctor’s blessing. She’d taken up a position in an uncomfortable Scandinavian chair near the bed, and just to make sure there were no doubts about her wishes, she’d gone so far as to strip the mattress of its sheets and blanket in preparation for another patient. Her hearing was improving by the day. A medic had removed the stitches along her jaw. Her bruises were healing and the cuts and abrasions on her face were disappearing. The inner wounds were going to take a lot longer to heal. She’d so far avoided feeling the pain of them, but she knew a day of internal reckoning was going to come.

When the door opened, she expected the doctor and she half-rose to meet him. But it was Cherokee River who stood there. He said, “I wanted to come right away, but there...there was too much to handle. And then, when there was less to handle, I didn’t know how to face you. Or what to say. I still don’t. But I needed to come. I’m leaving in a couple of hours.”

She held out her hand to him but he didn’t take it. She dropped it and said, “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m taking her home,” he said. “Mom wanted to come over and help, but I told her...” He gave a rueful laugh that sounded mostly of grief. He shoved his hand back through his curly hair. “She wouldn’t want Mom here. She never wanted Mom to be anywhere near her. Besides, there wouldn’t be any point to her coming: flying all this way and then just turning around and going back. She wanted to come, though. She was crying pretty bad. They hadn’t talked to each other...I don’t know. Maybe a year? Two? China didn’t like...I don’t know. I don’t know for sure what China didn’t like.”

Deborah urged him to sit in the low and uncomfortable chair. He said,

“No. You take it.”

She said, “I’ll use the bed.” She perched on the edge of the bare mattress, and when she had done so, Cherokee lowered himself to the chair. He sat on its edge with his elbows on his knees. Deborah waited for him to speak. She herself didn’t know what to say beyond expressing her sorrow for what had happened.

He said, “I don’t get any of it. I still don’t believe...There was no reason. But she must have had it planned from the first. Only I can’t figure out why.”

“She knew you had the poppy oil.”

“For jet lag. I didn’t know what to expect, if we’d be able to sleep or not when we got over here. I didn’t know...you know...how long it would take us to get used to the time change or if we ever would. So I got the oil at home and brought it with. I told her we could both use it if we needed it. But I never did.”

“So you forgot you had it?”

“Not forgot. Just didn’t think about it. Whether I still had it. Whether I’d given it to her. I just didn’t think.” He’d been looking at his shoes, but now he looked up as he said, “When she used it on Guy, she must’ve forgotten that it was my bottle. She must not’ve realised that my fingerprints would be all over it.”

Deborah moved her own gaze away from him. There was, she found, a loose thread at the edge of the mattress, and she wound it tightly round her finger. She watched her nail bed darken. She said, “China’s fingerprints weren’t on the bottle. Only yours.”

“Sure, but there’s an explanation for that. Like the way she held it. Or something.” He sounded so hopeful that Deborah couldn’t bear to do anything more than glance at him. She didn’t have the words to reply, and when she said nothing, a silence grew. She could hear his breathing and then, beyond that, voices in the hospital corridor. Someone was arguing with a staff member, a man demanding a private room for his wife. She was “My God, a bloody employee of this blasted place.” She was owed some special consideration, wasn’t she?

Cherokee finally spoke hoarsely. “Why?”

Deborah wondered if she could come up with the words to tell him. It seemed to her that the River siblings had struck blow-for-blow upon each other, but there was no real balancing of the scales when it came to crimes committed and pain endured and there never would be, especially now. She said, “She never could forgive your mum, could she? For how it was when you two were children. Never around to be a mum. The string of motels. Where you had to buy your clothes. Only one pair of shoes. She couldn’t ever see that this was just the stuff that surrounded her. It was nothing else. It didn’t mean anything more than what it was: a motel, secondhand clothes shops, shoes, a mum who didn’t stay round for more than a day or a week at a time. But it meant more to her. It was like...like a great injustice that had been done to her instead of what it was: just her hand of cards, to be done with as she liked. D’you see what I mean?”

“So she killed...So she wanted the cops to believe...” Cherokee obviously couldn’t bring himself to face it, much less to say it. “I guess I don’t see.”

“I think she found injustice in places where other people simply found life,” Deborah told him. “And she couldn’t manage to get past the thought of that injustice: what had happened, what had been done—”

“To her.” Cherokee completed Deborah’s thought. “Yeah. Right. But what did I ever...? No. When she used that oil, she didn’t think...She didn’t know...She didn’t realise...” Hi s voi ce di ed off.

“How did you know where to find us in London?” Deborah asked him.