The call came in the early morning while Maggie and Jane were still in bed, lying under a patchwork quilt, wrapped in each other’s arms. Jane had been sleeping, the side of her face cushioned against the softness of Maggie’s chest. Maggie was awake. At that point, in the utter darkness, she remained sure that she would find a way through this crisis and they would be protected here together. And then Jane’s cell phone rang in the pocket of her jeans—insistent, demanding.
Jane sat up, disoriented for the moment. By instinct, as a matter of ingrained routine, she started to get out of bed to answer the phone. Maggie pulled her back.
“Please don’t answer that,” she said.
“This again?” Jane replied. She stood and tugged gently with her arm. Maggie let go.
“Please, Janey. Just think about it. That’s all I ask.”
“I’m a lawyer, Maggie. It’s what I am. And people need me sometimes.”
She picked up her pants and retrieved the phone. The call was from Harry Lesdock. He wasn’t a client, but that was no longer the point. Maggie could see by the expression on Jane’s face that the news Harry conveyed would bring about their end; it was their fate.
“Whoever it is does not need you as much as I need you right now,” Maggie said, but so softly that Jane could barely hear her.
Ten minutes later, Jane had packed up her things and hurried down the stairs to her car. Maggie did not follow her. She sat frozen on the edge of her bed, listening as doors closed one after another; the front door, then the screen door, then the car door; listening to the car’s engine roaring to life, the rumble of the tires moving too quickly along the rutted lane to the main road, the whirr of the back wheels losing traction for a moment, sending up a shower of gravel and dirt before they hit the asphalt with a squeal.
Dawn was still an hour away and Jane was gone; back to the city, to the hospital where David lay with a broken left arm, several fractured ribs, a punctured lung, cracked vertebrae—a long list, but he was the lucky one. There was no injury that would not heal. Heather was in a drug-induced coma. They had to remove her uterus, her bladder, and part of her colon. When she had reached consciousness after the surgery, and they had given her that news, she had waited for them to leave and then started to pull out the tubes that were keeping her alive. So they drugged her. Her parents had been notified and were scheduled to arrive the next day from New Mexico.
“What does any of this have to do with you?” Maggie had asked Jane, pleading with her.
“That’s a question you shouldn’t have to ask, and I shouldn’t have to answer.”
Jane stuffed clothes savagely into her bag.
“You have no answer!” Maggie shouted.
“I do! The city where I live is falling apart before my eyes.”
“Let others fix it. I need you more.”
“You say that, and yet when I am here nothing changes. You’re still distant from me, still hiding something.”
“I need to know you love me, Jane.”
“Half the fucking world knows I love you and only you can’t figure it out!” Jane replied.
“What do you mean?” Maggie crawled across the bed to her.
“I mean that the word is out, that’s all. Everyone knows. I saw David running yesterday around the reservoir. He knew.”
“So that’s what’s going on here.”
“What? For Christ’s sake, Maggie, stop talking in your riddles!”
“No riddles. It’s that simple. You found out something important. Being together is not worth the stigma.”
“I’m not even going to respond to that, Maggie. You know it’s not true!”
Enraged, Jane put away the last of her things, zipped the bag shut and looked up at Maggie. She seemed on the verge of saying something but stopped herself. What more could be said? A decision was made, irrevocably.
She threw the bag over her shoulder and left—down the stairs, out those doors.
When Maggie finally moved, it was only to follow Jane’s route through the house and to return her haven to darkness.
The irony was that Harry was not even looking for Jane; he had been trying to reach Maggie but had not been able to because her phone was turned off. So he had called Jane as a last resort. The first thing out of his mouth had not been about Jane’s former boyfriend lying in a hospital. He had wanted to locate Maggie because, with all that was going on, The Portal was ready to offer her a sizeable sum to keep providing them with articles on the Diana “phenomenon,” as he put it.
“Think of your readers, Maggie,” Harry had said once Jane had given her the phone, talking as fast as he could, desperate to have her agree. “They want to know what you think of all this.”
No they don’t, she had thought.
But she had made the deal, calling him back after Jane had left, after the sun had begun to rise, and she could see her way clearly through to the end now. Two final chapters. A fitting conclusion.