In the motel, the woman officer helped me bathe and undress Catherine and get her into a nightshirt. I spent a long time under the shower myself, trying to stop my skin from feeling as though it were turning inside out. When I got into bed, I collapsed into sleep so fast I couldn’t even remember lying down. I woke once around noon, because Catherine’s cast was digging into my back, but was asleep again as soon as I turned over.
When I finally came to at three that afternoon, she was still sleeping, her narrow face gray and puffy. I stumbled to my feet and into my well-worn clothes, wishing the woman officer had brought something clean in my size last night.
I roused Catherine to tell her I was leaving to find food, but would be back within an hour. She blinked at me dopily and went back to sleep. When I returned with a bag of groceries and a hot pizza, I was stunned to find Darraugh Graham waiting for me. He had hired a small plane to
collect his mother, he said, and he planned to fly Catherine and me down to Chicago with him. I explained that I already had two cars at the cottage, but he told me he’d send up a team later in the week to drive them back.
“Mother told me what you did the last twenty-four hours. For her, for the boy, for Catherine. It’s enough for one week. I’m going to collect Mother at the hospital now; I’ll swing back for you and Catherine. My pilot is instrument rated, but it’s a small plane, it’s better to fly while we still have light.”
I said I needed to check with the local lawyer to make sure everything was settled with the local police, but Darraugh had taken care of that, too. I think I was twelve the last time anyone took care of things for me. I thanked him shakily and went down the hall to rouse Catherine.
On the flight south, we sat in a stupor for most of the journey. At the little airport on the lakefront where we landed, Darraugh had a car waiting. He sent his driver out to New Solway with his mother and escorted Catherine and me into the city in a cab. When he directed the cab to the Banks Street apartment, Catherine started sobbing again: she couldn’t see her grandmother, she wouldn’t see her father, not now, not after seeing Benji die and listening to everyone call him a terrorist. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I said she could come home with me.
CHAPTER 56
Death Notices
At my apartment, Darraugh paid off the taxi and walked us to the door, saying he wanted to talk to me.
“That’s good, because I want to talk to you, too,” I said. “I have to explain to my neighbor what I’ve been doing and get Catherine settled in. Do you want to meet tomorrow?”
“Tonight. I need to go to Washington tomorrow. I’ll use your phone while you do what you have to do.”
Mr. Contreras and the dogs boiled out of his apartment just then. Darraugh withstood the onslaught remarkably well. He and Mr. Contreras had met once or twice, but they had about as much in common as a fish and a giraffe-they were both animals, but that was as far as it went. Catherine, on the other hand, took to Mr. Contreras at once. Peppy helped, but Mr. Contreras’s direct, unpretentious personality reassured her as little else had these last few days.
My neighbor came upstairs with me to help set up a portable bed in my dining room for Catherine-and to hear the blow-by-blow details of our adventure. I had called him from Eagle River, but he wanted to know everything, from the moment Geraldine and I left Chicago, until we got on the plane to return this afternoon.
Darraugh sat in my living room with the phone while I showed
Catherine how to work the locks and where things like toilets and tea were. I wondered how long she’d be comfortable staying in four rooms, with no housekeeper to get the dust out of the corners or make sure she had the Bulgarian yogurt and particular tofu she required.
While I showed her around, Mr. Contreras had been poking in my refrigerator and cupboards. “You don’t have no food in here, doll. You been living on the fly, like I keep telling you is bad for your health. You going out with Mr. Graham? I’ll make spaghetti for this young lady.”
“No meatballs; she’s a vegetarian,” I said.
“Tomato sauce. I make my own tomato sauce and your own ma couldn’t do a better job, that’s a fact,” Mr. Contreras assured Catherine.
She smiled shyly, apparently not bothered by the reference to the mother who’d died when she was one. The old man took Catherine and the dogs downstairs. I changed out of my rank clothes and washed, putting on wool crepe trousers and a rose silk shirt. Whatever Darraugh had to say to me, I wanted to feel alert and attractive.
When I joined Darraugh in the living room, he wrapped up a complicated conversation with Caroline, his personal assistant. I offered him a drink, but he wanted to go out; he didn’t want Mr. Contreras or Catherine coming in on us midconversation.