"Or get rid of anything you want," Mrs. Harrison said.
"Except us, of course," Mr. Harrison said.
"That's right," Mrs. Harrison said, "I'm afraid we come with the
house." egina's heart was pounding so hard she could barely get her
breath.
Happiness. And fear. Everything was so wonderful-but surely it
couldn't last. Nothing so good could last very long.
Sliding, loovered doors covered one wall of the bedroom, and Mrs.
Harrison showed Regina a closet behind the mirrors. The hugest closet
in the world. Maybe you needed a closet that size if you were a movie
star, or if you were one of those men she had read about, who liked to
dress up in women's clothes sometimes, cause then you'd need both a
girls and boy's wardrobe. But it was much bigger than she needed; it
would hold ten times the clothes that she possessed.
With some embarrassment, she looked at the two cardboard suitcases she
had brought with her from St. Thomas's. They held everything she owned
in the world. For the first time in her life, she realized she was
poor.
Which was peculiar, really, not to have understood her poverty before,
since she was an orphan who had inherited nothing. Well, nothing other
than a bum leg and a twisted right hand with two fingers missing.
As if reading Regina's mind, Mrs. Harrison said, "Let's go shopping."
They went to South Coast Plaza Mall. They bought her too many clothes,
books, anything she wanted. Regina worried that they were overspending
and would have to eat beans for a year to balance their budget-she
didn't like beans-but they failed to pick up on her hints about the
virtues of frugality. Finally she had to stop them by pretending that
her weak leg was bothering her.
From the mall they went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. She had
eaten out twice before, but only at a fast-food place, where the owner
treated all the kids at the orphanage to burgers and fries. This was a
real restaurant, and there was so much to absorb that she could hardly
eat, keep up her end of the table conversation, and enjoy the place all
at the same time. The chains weren't made out of hard plastic, and
neither were the knives and forks. The plates weren't either paper or
Styrofoam, and drinks came in actual glasses, which must mean that the
customers in real restaurants were not as clumsy as those in fast-food
places and could be trusted with breakable things. The waitresses
weren't teenagers, and they brought your food to you instead of handing
it across a counter by the cash register. And they didn't make you pay
for it until after you'd eaten it!
Later, back at the Harrison house, after Regina unpacked her things,
brushed her teeth, put on pajamas, took off her leg brace, and got into
bed, both the Harrisons came in to say goodnight. Mr. Harrison sat on
the edge of her bed and told her that everything might seem strange at
first, even unsettling, but that soon enough she would feel at home,
then he kissed her on the forehead and said, "Sweet dreams, princess."
Mrs. Harrison was next, and she sat on the edge of the bed, too. She
talked for a while about all the things they would do together in the
days ahead. Then she kissed Regina on the cheek, said, "Goodnight,
honey," and turned off the overhead light as she went out the door into
the hall.
Regina had never before been good nighted, so she had not known how to
respond Some of the nuns were huggers; they liked to give you an
affectionate squeeze now and then, but none of them was a smoocher.
For as far back as Regina could remember, a flicker of the dorm lights
was the signal to be in bed within fifteen minutes, and when the lights
went out, each kid was responsible for getting tucked in himself. Now
she had been tucked in twice and kissed goodnight twice, all in the same
evening, and she had been too surprised to kiss either of them in
return, which she now knew she should have done.
"You're such a screwup, Reg," she said aloud.
Lying in her magnificent bed' with the painted roses twining around her
in the darkness, Regina could imagine the conversation they were having,
right that minute, in their own bedroom: Did she kiss you good night?
No, did she kiss you?
No. Maybe she's a coidtuh.
Maybe she's a psyche de'non chic Yeah, like that kid in The Omen.
You know what I'm worried about?
She'll stab us to death in our sleep.
lets hide all the kitchen knives.
Better hide the power tools, too.
You still have the gun in the nightstand?
Yeah, but a gun will never stop her.
Thank God we have a crowd We'll sleep in shits.
Send her back to the orphanage tomorrow.
"Such a screwup," Regina said. "Shit." She sighed. "Sorry, God."
Then she folded her hands in prayer and said softly, "Dear God, if
you'll convince the Harrisons to give me one more chance, I'll never say
shit' again, and I'll be a better person." That didn't seem like a good
enough bargain from God's point of view, so she threw in other
inducements: "I'll continue to keep an A average in school, I'll never
again put Jelly in the holy water font, and I'll give serious thought to
becoming a nun." Still not good enough. "And I'll eat beans."
That ought to do it. God was probably proud of beans. After all, He'd
made all kinds of them. Her refusal to eat green or wax or Lima or navy
or any other kind of beans had no doubt been noted in Heaven, where they
had her down in the Big Book of Insults to God-Regina, currently age
ten, thinks God pulled a real boner when He created beans. She yawned.
She felt better now about her chances with the Harrisons and about her
relationship with God, though she didn't feel better about the change in
her diet. Anyway, she slept.
2
While Lindsey was washing her face, scrubbing her teeth, and brushing
her hair in the master bathroom, Hatch sat in bed with the newspaper.
He read the science page fifft, because it contained the real news these
days.
Then he skimmed the entertainment section and read his favorite comic
strips before turning, at last, to the A section where the latest
exploits of politicians were as terrifying and darkly amusing as usual.
On page three he saw the story about Bill Cooper, the beer deliveryman
whose truck they had found crosswise on the mountain road that fateful,
snowy night in March.
Within a couple of days of being resuscitated, Hatch had heard that the
trucker had been charged with driving under the influence and that the
percentage of alcohol in his blood had been more than twice that
required for a conviction under the law. George Glover, Hatch's
personal attorney, had asked him if he wanted to press a civil suit
against Cooper or the company for which he worked, but Hatch was not by
nature litigious.
Besides, he dreaded becoming bogged down in the dull and thorny world of
lawyers and courtrooms. He was alive. That was all that mattered.
A drunk driving charge would be brought against
the trucker without
Hatch's involvement, and he was satisfied to let the system handle it.
He had received two pieces of correspondence from William Cooper, the
first just four days after his reanimation. It was an apparently
sincere, if long-winded and obsequious, apology seeking personal
absolution, which was delivered to the hospital where Hatch was
undergoing physical therapy. "Sue me if you want," Cooper wrote, "I
deserve it. I'd give you everything if you wanted it, though I don't
got much, I'm no rich man. But no matter whether you sue me or if not,
I most sincerely hope you'll find it in your generous heart to forgive
me one ways or another. Except for the genius of Dr. Nyebern and his
wonderful people, you'd be dead for sure, and I'd carry it on my
conscience all the rest of my days." He rambled on in that fashion for
four pages of tightly spaced, cramped, and at tunes inscrutable
handwriting.
Hatch had responded with a short note, assuring Cooper that he did not
intend to sue him and that he harbored no animosity toward him. He also
had urged the man to seek counseling for alcohol abuse if he had not
already done so.
A few weeks later, when Hatch was living at home again and back at work,
after the media storm had swept over him, a second letter had arrived
from Cooper. Incredibly, he was seeking Hatch's help to get his truck
driving job back, from which he had been removed subsequent to the
charges that the police had arrayed against him. "I been chased down
for driving drunk twice before, it's true," Cooper wrote, "but both them
times, I was in my car, not the truck, on my own time, not during work
hours. Now my job is gone, plus they're fixing to take away my license,
which makes life hard. enough, for one thing, how are you going to get
a new job without a license? Now that figure is, from your kind answer
to my last letter, you proved yourself a fine Christian genlleman, so if
you was to speak up on my behalf, it would be a big help.
After all, you didn't wind updead, and in fact you got a lot of
publicity out of the whole thing, which must've helped your antique
business a considerable amount."
Astonished and uncertain, furious, Hatch had read the letter without
answering it in fact he quickly put it out of his mind, because he was
surprised by how angry he grew whenever he contemplated it.
Now, according to the brief story on page three of the paper, based on a
single technical error in police procedures, Cooper's attorney had won a
dismissal of all charges against him. The article included a
one-sentence summary of the accident and a silly reference to Hatch as
"holding the record for being dead the longest time prior to a full
resuscitation," as if he had arranged the entire ordeal with the hope of
winning a place in the next edition of the Guiness Book of World Records
Other revelations in the piece made Hatch curse out loud and sit up
straight in bed, starting with the news that Cooper was going to sue his
employer for wrongful termination and expected to get his old job back
or, failing that, a substantial financial settlement. "I have suffered
considerable humiliation at the hands of my former employer, subsequent
to which I developed a serious stress-related health condition," Cooper
had told reporters, obviously disgorging an attorney-written statement
that he had memorized. "Yet even Mr. Harrison has written to tell me
that he holds me blameless for the events of that night."
Anger propelled Hatch off the bed and onto his feet. His face felt
flushed, and he was shaking uncontrollably.
Ludicrous. The drunken bastard was trying to get his job back by using
Hatch's compassionate note as an endorsement, which required a complete
misrepresentation of what Hatch had actually written. It was deceptive.
It was unconscionable.
"Of all the fucking nerve!" Hatch said fiercely between clenched teeth.
Dropping most of the newspaper at his feet, crumpling the page with the
story in his right hand, he hurried out of the bedroom and descended the
stairs two at a time. In the den, he threw the paper on the desk,
banged open a sliding closet door, and jerked out the top drawer on a
three-drawer filing cabinet.
He had saved Cooper's handwritten letters, and although they were not on
printed stationery, he knew the trucker had included not only a return
address but a phone number on both pieces of correspondence. He was so
disturbed, he flicked past the correct file folder-labeled MIlls and
cursed softly but fluently when he couldn't find it, then searched
backward and pulled it out. As he pawed through the contents, other
letters slipped out of the folder and clattered to the floor at his
feet.
Cooper's second letter had a telephone number carefully hand-printed at
the top. Hatch put the disarranged file folder on the cabinet and
couldn't read the number, so he put the letter on the blotter, in the
cone of light from the brass desk lamp.
He punched William Cooper's number, intent on telling him off. The line
was busy.
He jammed his thumb down on the disconnect button, got the dial tone,
and tried again. Still busy.
"Sonofabitch!" He slammed down the receiver, but snatched it up again
because there was nothing else he could do to let off steam. He tried
the number a third time, using the redial button. It was still busy, of
course, because no more than half a minute had passed since the first
time he had tried it. He smashed the handset into the cradle so hard he
might have broken the phone.
On one level he was startled by the savagery of the act, the
childishness of it. But that part of him was not in control, and the
mere awareness that he was over the top did not help him regain a grip
on himself.
"Hatch?"
He looked up in surprise at the sound of his name and saw Lindsey, in
her bathrobe, standing in the doorway between the den and the foyer.
Frowning, she said, "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" he asked, his fury growing irrationally, as if she were
somehow in league with Cooper, as if she were only pretending to be
unaware of this latest turn of events. "I'll tell you what's wrong.
They let this Cooper bastard off the hook! The son of a bitch kills me,
runs me off the goddamned road and kill me, then slips off the hook and
has the nerve to try to use the letter I wrote him to get his job back!"
He snatched up the crumpled newspaper and shook it at her, almost
accusingly, as if she knew what was in it. "Get his job back-so he can
run someone else off the fucking road and kill them!"
Looking worried and confused, Lindsey stepped into the den. "They let
him off the hook? How?"
"A technicality. Isn't that cute? A cop misspells a word on the
citation or something, and the guy walks!"
"Honey, calm down-"
"Calm down? Calm down?" He shook the crumpled newspaper again.
"You know what else
it says here? The jerk sold his story to that
sleazy tabloid, the one that kept chasing after me, and I wouldn't have
anything to do with them. So now this drunken son of a bitch sells them
the story about"-he was spraying spittle he was so angry; he flattened
out the newspaper, found the article, read from it-"about his emotional
ordeal and his role in the rescue that saved Mr. Harrison's life." What
role did he have in my rescue? Except he used his CB to call for help
after we went off the road, which we wouldn't have done if he hadn't
been there in the first place! He's not only keeping his driver's
license and probably going to get his job back, but he's making money
off the whole damn thing! If I could get my hands on the bastard, I'd
kill him, I swear I would!"
"You don't mean that," she said, looking shocked.
"You better believe I do! The irresponsible, greedy bastard. I'd like
to kick him in the head a few times to knock some sense into him, pitch
him into that freezing riven"
"Honey, lower your void"
"Why the hell should I lower my voice in my own-"
"You'll wake Regina."
It was not the mention of the girl that jolted him out of his blind
rage, but the sight of himself in the mirrored closet door beside
Lindsey.
Actually, he didn't see himself at all. for an instant he saw a young
man with thick black hair falling across his forehead, wearing glasses,
all in black. He knew he was looking at the killer, but the killer