“Of course it will.”
Morgan raised the banana to her nose, sniffed and discovered the scent strong, full. The skin felt thick and she guessed it was less to the ripe side than the overripe side. Bravely she found the correct end and broke the skin. She slowly lowered the peel from all sides and ate the perfectly delicious piece of fruit.
She was munching dry cereal when her mother breezed into the room. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. The cafeteria line was a mile long.”
“It’s okay. I’m just groping my way through breakfast.”
“You made a joke. You must be feeling better.”
Morgan wanted to say that her nocturnal visit from Trent had made the difference in her outlook, but she kept her promise to him and said nothing.
“You want milk on that cereal?” Paige asked.
“I wasn’t sure I could pour it without spilling. Chewing it dry is fine. I’ll drink the milk afterward. It all goes to the same place, doesn’t it?”
Paige laughed and Morgan liked the sound of it. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in the office dealing with piled-up work. He’ll sleep here tonight and I’ll work tomorrow.”
“I guess this is a big mess for you attorneys.”
“Everyone’s scrambling. The only thing the cops are certain of is that a bomb went off. No leads yet on who might have done it.”
Someone set a bomb? At Edison? On purpose? “Why? Who would do that?”
“That’s a mystery.”
“Tell me what you know,” Morgan said. “Kids must have been hurt.”
“Thirty-seven were wounded, not all seriously, though.”
Paige was going to back into the statistics, Morgan realized. “And what else?”
“Seven people are still in the hospital.”
“And?” She urged her mother to tell her everything and steeled herself for what might be coming.
“And nine people died—seven students, two teachers.” Paige’s voice caught. “You were so lucky.”
Morgan felt nauseous. “Who?”
“A history teacher. Principal Simmons. He was just coming down the stairs when the explosion happened. The staircase fell.”
Morgan began to tremble. Simmons was a good guy. She saw him in her mind’s eye pushing his glasses up on his nose, as was his habit. “And the kids?”
“Perhaps now isn’t the time—”
“Tell me!” She flung the miniature cereal box across the room. “My friends? Oh my God! Where’s Kelli?” Morgan recalled that Kelli had been sitting, sullen and uncommunicative, farther down the wall from her and Trent.
Paige grabbed Morgan’s hands. “No, no. It’s all right. Kelli was hurt—a concussion, several broken ribs—but she’s going to be fine.”
Weak with relief, Morgan sagged. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs on another floor.”
“I want to see her. I want to visit her. Take me to her.”
“And you will. She’s fine, honey. Really.” Paige paused, squeezed Morgan’s hands. “Unfortunately, though, she lost her baby.”
“So how’s the local hero?”
Roth glanced up at Liza as she marched into his living room. He was stretched out on the sofa, bundled in Carla’s quilts, holding a joystick and firing torpedoes at alien life-forms on the TV screen. He pressed the pause button to hold his place in the game. “He’s crazy bored.”
“How are your hands? Look hammered-up to me.”
Band-Aids covered the worst of the deep cuts. He’d torn a fingernail off digging through the rubble and needed ten stitches in one palm. His forehead had taken five stitches to repair. “The scars will give me character.”
The coffee table was laid out with snacks, drinks, books and a pile of game cards. “How can you be bored? Looks like you’ve got everything you need right here.”
“Everything except my freedom. Max took my keys, won’t let me drive for another few days.” He held up a fruit platter. “Want some health food?”
Relieved that Roth was talking to her after the argument they’d had in her bedroom weeks before, Liza sat in the recliner beside the sofa. She’d had to suck up her courage to drop by unannounced, afraid he might have told her not to come over if she’d called first. She’d been frantic to see him, to know he was all right.
“I want to apologize for what I said—” she started.
He waved her off. “I shouldn’t have gotten so twisted up about it. After this bombing, it doesn’t seem important, does it?”
She agreed with a rush of gratitude. She hated being estranged from Roth. “Max and Carla at the shop?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Yes.” They had gone to work at the Ink Spot for the first time in four days. The whole town was in mourning, but things were beginning to settle down. Life went on, no matter how heavy the losses. “What’ve you been doing now that school’s shut down?” Edison was closed until further notice. Makeup days would be tacked onto the end of the school term.
“I’ve been to two funerals and a memorial service.”
“Sorry,” Roth said. “Were they friends?”
“No. I didn’t know the kids who were buried, but I felt like I should go. Popular kids have lots of kids who attend their funerals, but the not-so-popular ones? Not so much. Crappy way to go out. One girl was buried on her thirteenth birthday.”
Roth spat out a swearword, turned on his game and killed several more aliens before pausing again.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“No.”
“You hear anything … you know, about suspects?”
He put the joystick on the coffee table. He wasn’t ready to say he might be a suspect. “Just what’s on the news. Sick of the talking heads hashing it over. How about you?”
“Drove past the school yesterday. The cops and crime scene people are still crawling all over the place. FBI too. Bombs are taken real seriously.”
Roth recalled his fireworks prank. Stupid of him. Nothing funny about things blowing up. “Were you there the day it happened?”
“I was standing across the street finishing up a cig. I had a note from home, though, so I wasn’t in any hurry to get to class. I saw you running toward the front door.” She almost added, I didn’t want you to go inside, but didn’t.
“I was running at first because I was late, and I didn’t have a note,” he said. “So you saw the atrium explode from across the street?”
“Boom,” she said. “Scared the crap out of me.”
“What did you do?”
“Just stood and watched the building clear. I wanted to run too, but it was like I was glued in place. Couldn’t move my feet. Kids were running and screaming, but I was in a trance. Nothing seemed real even though I saw all this dust and glass shoot from the atrium. The kids, the ones who got out, well, we all just stood there staring like it wasn’t really happening. The cops had the place surrounded in no time and finally they herded us all onto buses and drove us to the civic auditorium. Our parents came to pick us up if we weren’t hurt. You were busy rescuing people, so you missed the roundup.”
“It was one hell of a day.” Roth ran his hands through his hair. “You been by the hospital?”
Liza’s radar went up. “I haven’t seen your girlfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Knock it off. Morgan’s not my girlfriend. I’m just trying to keep track of the kids I helped.”
Liza bit her tongue. She didn’t want out of his good graces again. “Okay, sorry. Cheap shot. Just not used to thinking of you as a Rescue Ranger.” She took a deep breath, decided to make a peace offering. “Would you like me to drive you over to the hospital so you can check in on her yourself?” Please say no….
She saw anticipation spring into Roth’s eyes. “You’d do that?”
Disappointed by his reaction, she shrugged with pretended indifference. “Got nothing else to do.”
“Let me do a couple of things first. Back in a jiff.?
?? He threw back the quilts.
She’d been the one to make the offer, so she had no one to blame except herself for his taking her up on it. “You going to call Max and Carla to let them know we’re leaving the house?”
“Easier to get forgiveness than permission,” Roth said, pushing himself off the sofa.
Liza watched him limp from the room, wondering with all her heart if he’d have gone to see her if she’d been the one hospitalized.
“You want to come up?” Roth asked once he and Liza were in the hospital lobby.
“Don’t want to crash your reunion.”
“Your call.”
“Some other time,” she said, backing away. She grabbed a seat and started thumbing through a three-year-old magazine from a nearby table as if it were just off the rack.
“I won’t take long.”
“I’ll wait here.” She blinked back stinging tears but never looked up.
Roth ducked into the hospital’s gift shop and looked around for some small gift so that he wouldn’t show up in Morgan’s room empty-handed. The store was full of chintzy junk that made him gag, but he finally settled on a small stuffed dog. It was meant for young children, but so what? He knew girls liked stuffed animals. He paid for it, crossed to the information desk and asked for Morgan’s room number. During his elevator ride to the fifth floor, he wasn’t remembering Morgan covered with cement dust and debris from the explosion. He was remembering her at the homecoming dance, twirling on the stadium grass in the moonlight. He was seeing her face turned up to his, her lips moist and soft, her hair spilling around her shoulders and his fingers tugging through the long strands.
When he arrived at her room, he paused, peered in. Morgan was sitting upright in the bed, a tray table in front of her with an assortment of objects on it. She was fingering each object, carefully defining it in her hands, then putting it down and moving on to the next item. It was then that he saw that her eyes were bandaged. Shock hit him like a wall. For a moment, he teetered, undecided about entering the room. Without warning, her head lifted and her face turned toward the door. “Who’s there? I know someone’s there. Who is it?”
Making up his mind in an instant, he went inside. “It’s Stuart Rothman.”
“Roth?”
“One and the same.”
Morgan held out her hands. This was the person who’d made her emotions go haywire for months, and now here he was. She had no way of knowing what she looked like at the moment, but she was sure that she in no way resembled the girl he’d been with on the night of the dance. “Oh, Roth … I—I didn’t know … I can’t see….”
“Your eyes—”
“Temporary,” she said quickly. “That’s what my doctor believes. I was looking right at the bomb when it went off. I didn’t even have time to blink.”
“But you’re going to be all right?”
“That’s what I’m being told. What about you?”
“Stitches. A few cuts and bruises. Banged up a leg crawling over chunks of concrete. I’m fine.”
She asked, “Do you mind if I hold your hand? It helps ground me, so I’m not floating in a void with voices coming out of nowhere.”
Of course he didn’t mind. “Suits me.”
She took hold of his hand, which was covered with a large gauze bandage. “Mom told me that you were the one who pulled me out. She said that the rest of the staircase fell just after you did. Thank you for saving me.”
Self-conscious, he shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see any of his gestures or movements. “I saw your red hair under a pile of junk. If you hadn’t had that red hair, I would have missed you.” He playfully tugged on a generous hank of her hair. “I’m glad you’re all right.” After a moment of embarrassed silence, he asked, “So what’s with all this stuff on the tray?”
“Therapy,” she said, glad for the distraction. She ran her free hand over a couple of objects. “Hairbrush, toothbrush, makeup brush. I need to figure out how to do things for myself until the bandages come off.”
“Makes sense.”
“Why would someone do this, Roth? Why would anyone blow up our school? What did we do to deserve such hate?” Her voice caught, trembled, the magnitude of the disaster descending on her like an anvil.
“I guess that’s the million-dollar question.”
“People died, Roth. They died!”
He slipped his arm around her, rested his cheek on the crown of her head. He felt her stiffen, then relax and lean into him. “The cops and the FBI will figure it out. They’ll catch the jerks who did this.” He didn’t add that he was somehow a suspect. And Paige, as his attorney, obviously hadn’t mentioned it either.
She felt warm and safe in his arms. Guiltily she remembered that Trent was just down the hall and pulled away. “Tissue, please.”
He passed her the box from the bedside table. She fumbled, pulled out several, held the wad against her bandaged eyes. “I keep crying and soaking my bandages.” She laughed self-consciously. “I’m driving the nurses crazy, making them change my bandages all the time.” She eased back onto the pillows.
He wanted to soothe her, make her feel better. He remembered the toy dog he’d bought, fished it out of the pocket of his hoodie. “I brought you something to keep you company.” He set the dog in her hand.
She turned it over, sniffed the freshness and newness of the fuzzy material, rubbed it against her cheek. “A dog?”
“Bingo.”
She laughed. “That’ll be his name—B-I-N-G-O. Thank you.” She hugged the stuffed animal to her. “What color is he?”
“White. Black ears and nose. Red tongue.”
“I love him.”
Roth’s eyes swept over her. No need to pretend now. He could look at her all he wanted because she wouldn’t know. “Can I come visit you again?”
“I’m supposed to be going home tomorrow. But you can come to my house and visit me anytime.”
“I might do that.” He silently swore that he would.
She rested the stuffed dog on her chest and continued to stroke its softness. “One thing I’m grateful for, though.”
“What’s that?”
“At least my friends made it through. I’m so happy they’re all safe.”
Roth straightened, reeled slightly as realization washed over him. He clenched his jaw. She didn’t know! No one had told her. Morgan didn’t know!
“I’m sorry, Morgan. Really sorry I didn’t tell you before now. Will you forgive me?”
The plea came from Kelli. Her mother had brought her down from her room to Morgan’s room in a wheelchair because that was hospital protocol. Jane and Paige had left the room, leaving the girls alone. Seeing her friend in the bed, eyes bandaged, broke Kelli’s heart, made her feel guiltier than she already did. “How are you?” Kelli asked.
“I’ll be all right. What about you?”
“They said I’ll be fine. I ache all over, but I’m going home today.”
“Wish I were,” Morgan said. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’ve been friends forever, and yet you couldn’t confide in me that you were pregnant?”
“I—I don’t know. I was so ashamed, I guess. I mean, Mark dumped me like a bad dream when I told him in August. I kept telling myself that I could change his mind. That I could make him want to get married. I couldn’t.”
“Did Trent know?” If he did, Morgan was going to skewer him the next time he visited her in the night.
“I don’t know. Guys don’t talk to other guys like girls—” She stopped. “I mean, like girls are supposed to talk.”
“And all the times I asked you, ‘What’s wrong?’, you just pushed me away.”
“I wanted to tell you more than anything. I started to a hundred times. When Mom found out, she made me swear to keep it a secret. But I should never have kept it from you.”
Morgan picked at the bedcovers, needing something to do with her hands. She longed to see people’s expressions when they spoke. Without her s
ight it was like filling in a puzzle piece that didn’t exist. She could fall back on images of people she knew, but with strangers, she had no road map, no way to gather an image except through their voices and touch. In many ways Kelli was a stranger to her at the moment. “How did she find out?”
“You know Mom.” Kelli offered a short derisive laugh. “She watches my weight like a hawk. She saw I was gaining around the middle.”
Morgan had seen it too but had said nothing. She should have. She’d watched Kelli change right before her eyes but had been too caught up in her own life to press her friend very hard. She realized she shared some of the blame for Kelli’s silence. “I might have helped you figure it out,” she mumbled. “I should have helped you.”
“Once Mom figured it out, I was almost five months along. I’d already made up my mind I was going to have the baby. What I hadn’t decided was what I was going to do after he was born.”
“You were going to have a boy?”
“Yes.” Kelli’s voice quavered. “But I didn’t know it was a boy until …” Her voice trailed off, ebbed into a heavy silence. Morgan felt Kelli’s pain and loss. “Mom took me to a free clinic in Grand Rapids because I hadn’t been going to a doctor.”
“Not at all?”
“Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Kelli quoted the old joke. She forced herself to smile, but realized Morgan couldn’t see her effort.
“And after he was born, what were you going to do?”
Kelli didn’t answer right away, and when she did, Morgan heard the resignation in her tone. “There were only two choices—keep him and raise him or put him up for adoption. I kept bouncing between the two. Couldn’t decide. One day I wanted to raise him. The next day I wanted to give him up.”
“What did Mark want?”
Kelli took a deep rattling breath. “He said he didn’t care, but I knew he wanted me to give him up. Mark said that he loved me, but that nothing was going to derail his plans for a football career.”
Morgan heard the forlorn hopelessness in Kelli’s voice. The words made her mad. How could Mark be so cruel? “And your mother?”