Chapter 30
It’s a late night for me after I feed Matthew and fill Dom and Izzy in on all the events of the evening. We celebrate Emily’s safe return with an intoxicating concoction Dom whipped up that he calls a Kahlúa cream cake. It’s a heady mix of Kahlúa, pudding, chocolate, and sour cream that melts in my mouth, tastes like heaven, and leaves me feeling very mellow. I’m afraid to ask Dom how much alcohol is in the cake and figure I’ll just pump and dump for the rest of the night so I don’t get Matthew drunk.
“It sounds like Emily is finally coming around,” Izzy says after we have all stuffed ourselves on the yummy dessert. “Do you think it will last?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “She was scared and in shock when we first found her, and heavily medicated later on, but she seemed sincere. I’m hopeful.”
“Why don’t you take a personal day tomorrow,” he suggests. “I can get Arnie to help me with the autopsy in the morning.”
“Are you sure?” I say with a frown. “I’ve just come back to work after being off for eight weeks.”
“True, but technically you were entitled to twelve weeks, so we have some flex room. And right now, Hurley and Emily need you more than I do.”
“Thanks, and I’ll take you up on the autopsy part so I can be at the hospital in the morning. But after that I think I’ll be working with Richmond on our current case.” I then fill him in on the thoughts I had earlier.
“Makes sense,” he says. “It’s certainly worth looking into.”
By the time I head home it’s after eleven. I fall asleep easily and Matthew wakes me just before three. I get up and grab one of the bottles I have in the fridge and call the hospital while I’m feeding Matthew to see how things went with Emily. The nurse on duty tells me that Hurley is in her room and awake, so I disconnect that call and dial Hurley’s cell.
“She came through the surgery fine,” he tells me. “She’s pretty doped up right now but she seems comfortable.”
“She and I had a good talk last night. I think she may finally be coming around.”
“Let’s hope so,” he says.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m tired and this stupid chair is about as comfortable as a bed of nails,” he grumbles. “But I’ll survive.”
“I plan on being there first thing in the morning, around seven. If you want, I can stay a while so you can go home and get some rest.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll stay.”
“Just don’t tire yourself out too much.”
“I’ll be okay. Are you feeding Matthew?”
“I am.”
“Give him a kiss for me.”
“I will.”
“I’ll see you both in the morning.”
“Call me if you need me to bring anything.”
“I will. And Mattie?”
“Yes?”
“I know I don’t say it much, but I love you and little Matthew.”
It takes me a moment before I can speak. My throat is tight with emotion. “And we both love you,” I manage finally. “As does that child in the bed, though I’m not sure she knows it. Good night, Hurley.”
Matthew and I arrive at the hospital bright and early the next morning. Hurley is there in Emily’s room, asleep in a chair, his hair adorably disheveled, a two-day growth of beard on his face, and dark circles under his eyes. Emily is in bed, a cast encasing her lower leg. She, too, is asleep, though her rest is augmented by the hefty pain medication in the pump at her bedside. The sight of hardware protruding from either side of the cast makes me wince. Orthopedics has never been my strong suit.
A nurse comes into the room, an old-timer named Velma whom I know from my days working at the hospital. Velma is an institution at the hospital. She’s been here for more than thirty years and knows all of the deep dark secrets and where the bodies are buried.
“Hey, Mattie,” she says. “Long time no see.”
“It has been a while. How are you doing, Velma?”
“Can’t complain. Well, I can, but nobody listens, so what’s the point?”
I laugh and it wakes Hurley. He looks over at me and Matthew, smiles, and stretches.
“Who’s this little guy?” Velma asks, walking over and taking a peek at Matthew in his carrier. “I’d heard you had a kid. He’s a cutie.”
“Thanks. I think we’ll keep him. How’s Emily doing?”
“She had a good night according to the night nurses. Today will probably be a rough one for her and she has a lot of therapy ahead of her before that leg gets back to normal.”
Hurley gets out of his chair, walks over to us, and wraps me in a big bear hug.
“Whoa,” I say, pushing him back a ways and waving a hand in front of my face. “You should probably go home and take a shower.”
“I’m happy to see you, too,” he grumbles. Then he breathes in deeply through his nose and adds, “You smell fabulous.”
Velma smirks at our repartee and heads over to the bed to check Emily’s vital signs. The movement awakens Emily and when she sees all of us standing by her bedside, she smiles. “My whole family is here,” she slurs.
Even though I know she’s still under the influence, it’s nice to see that her new, more positive attitude has remained intact. I take Matthew out of his carrier and walk over to the bedside with him. “Say good morning to your big sister,” I tell him. And Matthew, bless his little heart, looks down at Emily, pumps his tiny fists spastically, and gives her a huge smile. She smiles in return, though hers has a stoned, dreamy quality to it.
“Can I hold him?” Hurley says. “I’ve missed the little guy.”
His request is as natural and normal as any could be and yet it fills me with a sense of dread. How will Emily react to seeing her father cooing over his other child? Not that Hurley actually coos, but any attention he gives Matthew right now might be perceived as rejection by Emily. Then Emily solves the problem for me.
“I’ve had Dad’s attention all night long. It’s Matthew’s turn.”
Relieved, I turn and hand Matthew off to Hurley. He holds his son cradled in the crook of one arm and Matthew immediately starts to cry. Hurley bounces him a little and tries to talk to him, but Matthew is having none of it. His face screws up into a tiny mask of discontent and he continues to bellow.
“Is he hungry?” Hurley asks, looking worried.
I shake my head. “I fed him right before we came here.”
Hurley then lifts Matthew up toward his face and takes a big sniff of his butt. And that’s when I figure out what’s making my son irritable. “His diaper is clean,” Hurley says.
“Yeah, but you’re not. Seriously, Hurley, you need to go home and take a shower.”
He hands Matthew back to me and just like that the little guy stops crying. Emily seems amused by it all, but Hurley simply looks annoyed. “Fine, I’ll go home and get cleaned up. Will you stay here with Emily until I get back?”
“Of course I will,” I say. “Now go before the staff starts breaking out the HazMat suits to come in here.”
Hurley grabs his coat from the back of the chair, walks over to the bed, and gives Emily a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be back in about an hour, okay?”
“Take your time,” Emily says in her happy state. “I’m not going anywhere.” Then she giggles at her own joke.
I get a kiss on the forehead, too.
With Hurley gone, Emily and I spend the next hour and a half getting to know one another a little better. We share openly and honestly about a lot of things: her relationship with Johnny, my relationship with Hurley, the sadness she feels over her mother’s death, and the fact that she’s also angry with her mother for lying to her all those years about Hurley. The topic of fathers and their influence in our lives takes up a good portion of our talk. I share with her how I felt like an outsider growing up because my father wasn’t a part of my life, and how I, too, harbor some anger toward my mother for her role in it all, even though I’m not sure yet just what that role was. When she asks me if she can hold Matthew in her lap, I agree without hesitation and watch how my son smiles and gurgles at her. Clearly he likes her and feels comfortable with her, and I’m heartened by the genuine warmth Emily displays toward him.
At one point I went back to a niggling fact about her disappearance that was bothering me, one that made me think perhaps she really did intend to run away. “Why did you take your father’s stash of money with you?”
Emily blushes and looks embarrassed. “I was going to try to pay it back,” she says. “Johnny’s father is in jail and his mom doesn’t have a lot of money, and I wanted him to have some cash so he could hire a decent lawyer and fight that school suspension thing. I knew how he felt about drugs and while I didn’t know where that pot came from, I knew it wasn’t his. I figured someone had slipped it into his pocket as a joke or something. I had no idea they did it to try to frame him.”
“Actually it was you they were trying to frame. Olivia thought the jacket was yours because you were wearing it. She slipped it in the pocket while you had it on.”
Hurley comes back a little after ten, looking—and smelling—refreshed. Around eleven I leave him and Emily alone for a while to nurse Matthew. The staff lets me use the break room for privacy.
While I’m burping Matthew, Richmond calls me to follow up on the message I left him the night before. “You were right,” he tells me. “I had Jonas scan through the log of the files from Lars’s offices and that file wasn’t there. I also had another look at the financials and the phone records, and you were right about those, too. Plus the dirt we found in the wheels of Jeff Hunt’s ATV was definitely not a match. That ground where we found Lars’s body is covered with pine needles and there wasn’t a single one in that dirt sample. You were right about it all and given what we found, I managed to convince a judge to give me the search warrants. I’m assuming you want to be along when we execute them.”
“I do,” I tell him. “But there’s something I think we should do first.” And then I tell him my plan. He agrees, and we arrange to meet around noon.
I head back to Emily’s room and find her occupied with physical therapists that have gotten her out of bed and are teaching her how to use crutches. Emily’s face is pale and covered with sweat, and I can tell she’s in a lot of pain. But she soldiers through it like a trooper. Once Emily is back in bed looking exhausted and worn out, I fill Hurley in on where we are with the case. Then we start discussing plans for Thanksgiving, which is only a week away.
“Desi is cooking this year,” I tell them. “We’re all invited and she wants me to bring some desserts.”
“I can make a green bean casserole,” Emily says. “My mom taught me and it’s really good.”
“You’re on,” I tell her, and I’m rewarded with a big smile.
I give both Hurley and Emily a kiss good-bye—Hurley on the lips, Emily on her cheek—and promise to return later in the day. Then I head off to hopefully catch a killer.