His face contorted in effort and his hands squeezed the breath from her body. She tried to scream but nothing came out. In the faraway distance she thought she heard someone calling her name, but she couldn’t answer. Stars swam in front of her face. Her lungs ached and burned. She beat her fists against Dr. Capello’s chest but couldn’t get him off her. So she kicked against him, kicked against anything she could find. The filing cabinet fell over, crashing into the display cases. Glass shattered, wood splintered, but nothing would break Dr. Capello’s vicious grasp from around her throat.
Frantically she grabbed at her pocket until she felt it, the can of pepper spray Deacon had given her. She pulled it out and let it fly, right into Dr. Capello’s eyes.
He screamed and collapsed on the floor in agony. The whole attic shook like a great fist was beating against the walls of the house. Was someone trying to save her? Or was that sound nothing more than the final beats of her dying heart?
She heard the voice again, someone shouting her name, and she tried to answer. Once free of the death grip on her neck, Allison could breathe again, but she couldn’t speak. She swallowed huge gulps of air, wheezing as she breathed, nearly vomiting in her panic and her pain. She fell onto her side. Through her watering eyes, she saw Roland yank his father to his feet and slam him back against the wall.
“She was going to kill you,” Dr. Capello said, his eyes bloodred and streaming tears. He coughed so hard it sounded like he was trying to vomit. Roland pushed his father away and ran to her, broken glass cracking to powder under the soles of his boots.
“Allison? Allison?” Roland knelt in front of her. He touched her face, stroking it gently.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
She struggled to her hands and knees. Her neck ached and her lungs were on fire but she could breathe, she could move. She was alive. Everything that happened next was a blur. She heard Roland calling his father’s name. She saw Dr. Capello trying to flee out the door. She heard the sound of a body falling down stairs. Allison grabbed the wall and used it to stand. She hobbled to the top of the narrow attic staircase and saw Dr. Capello at the bottom, sprawled on the ground, either dead or unconscious. Deacon appeared, falling to the floor, screaming, “Dad! Dad!” over and over, running his hands over his father’s body, trying to find the wound or the heartbeat. Thora stood by Deacon’s side, not touching her father, not touching Deacon. She looked up at the stairs and Allison met her eyes. Thora said nothing. She didn’t have to.
Dr. Capello was silent.
Roland took her into his arms and held her. She looked past his shoulder and saw the door hanging off the hinges. Someone had taken an ax to it.
And close by and growing closer came the sound of sirens.
Allison closed her eyes and didn’t open them again for a very long time.
Chapter 27
When Allison came to, she wasn’t sure if ten minutes had passed, ten hours or ten days.
She lay in her bed in her room, a white afghan over her. She blinked herself into awareness and tried to raise her head.
“Don’t move.” It was Roland speaking to her. She turned her head despite the order and saw him sitting in the white wicker chair at her bedside, the little bedside lamp glowing softly.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I think.”
“The EMTs checked you.”
“Am I okay?” she said.
“You fainted. The EMT said to let you rest. He said it didn’t look like you had any pepper spray in your eyes. You have some bruises on your neck but nothing broken. I need to get him.”
“No, stay. Please?”
“You were choked and you passed out. You need medical attention.”
Allison started to sit up. “Later.”
“Allison.” Roland said her name like a plea or like a prayer. She couldn’t say for sure.
“Is he dead?” she asked, suddenly remembering everything that had led her to this moment.
“Not yet,” Roland said. “Soon. Tonight.”
Allison closed her eyes, breathed, nodded.
“I don’t know what he said to you. Or did,” Roland said. “But—”
“Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”
She wasn’t sure if that was true but she needed to say it, needed to try to believe it.
“So he’s still here?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Roland said. “The EMTs want to take him to the hospital.”
“He wouldn’t want to go.”
“I know. I ought to let them take him. After what he did to you.”
“No,” Allison said. “He’s just sick. Let him die here in his home in his bed like he wanted.”
And let it be quick, Allison thought but did not say aloud.
“It won’t be long now.” Roland’s voice was hollow, empty of emotion.
“Why aren’t you with him?”
“Because I’m with you.”
“I’m fine. Go to your dad.” She lay back down again.
“No,” Roland said. “I’ll stay here with you.”
Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat. It hurt but not enough to scare her. She’d be okay. Eventually.
“I tried to do something nice for you today,” Roland said.
“You do something nice for me every day,” she said.
“I was going to finish the laundry you started yesterday,” he said. “I threw your jeans in with mine. This was in the back pocket.”
He held up a folded piece of paper. She didn’t have to look at it to know what it was. The note about Roland’s operation.
“Is that why you didn’t wake me up last night?” he asked. “You found that?”
“I needed time to think. Do you blame me?”
“You could have asked me about it,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d tell me the whole truth.”
Roland took the hit well. He nodded in agreement.
“The truth hurts sometimes.”
“It does, yeah,” she said. “But so do lies.”
She rolled over onto her side, facing him. His hand was there on the covers and she could reach out and take it if she wanted. She wanted, but she didn’t.
“I don’t think I lied to you,” he said. “Except by omission. It’s not easy to talk about...”
“What? Tell me. You told me you were in love with me, so I know you’re not a coward. I was with McQueen for six years and never told him I had real feelings for him.”
“This,” he said, holding up the page again with the notes on his surgery. “So, ah...when I was twenty, I met this girl in Astoria. We worked together. We went out on all of two dates, and I thought, yeah, she’s the one. Dad asked about her and I told him that. I thought he’d be happy. He was but he said he needed to tell me something. He said that what I had as a kid, that condition that made me violent, it could be genetic. And I needed to be really careful. He said...he said I shouldn’t have children. That is not an easy conversation for a twenty-year-old guy to have with his dad when he’s madly in love. Dad knew a doctor, he said. He...”
“Tell me, Roland. Just say it.”
“I had a vasectomy.”
“What?”
“This is not a comfortable conversation for a man to have with the woman he’s in love with, either. It’s humiliating. I know it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change that it is. So, you know, not the easiest thing in the world for me to talk about.”
Allison took a heavy breath. She hadn’t expected that, not at all.
“Is that why you joined the monastery?” she asked. “Because you can’t have biological children?”
“Terrible reason, right? I joined for a lot of bad reasons. I didn’t want to risk falling in love again. I felt tainted by what I’d done to Rachel. I felt like I maybe should go away for a long time. There were good reasons, too. I wanted to be forgiven. I wanted peace. I wanted to be a different person. But that doesn’t work. You’re still you no matter where you go.”
Allison touched his face, the scruff on his chin, pale as snow on sand.
“I remembered something else today,” she said.
“Like what?” Roland, she knew, was trying to sound normal but it wasn’t working. He sounded scared, and for Roland that wasn’t normal.