A January Chill

He laughed, sounding embarrassed. “Nah. Not unless Hannah wants to go.”

Hannah’s eyes widened; then her cheeks pinkened. “Tahiti? Me?” She waved away the idea. “What on earth would I do there? Besides, the winnings are yours, Witt.”

His face took on a strange tension, one Joni couldn’t identify. “So what then?” she pressed him.

“I haven’t had a whole lot of time to think about it, Joni. Jeez, I just found out last week.”

“Last week? You’ve been sitting on this for a week?” She couldn’t believe it. She would have been shrieking from the rooftops.

“Well, I didn’t exactly believe it. I wanted to verify it first. Then…well…” He hesitated. “I don’t want the whole world to know about it, not just yet.”

“That’s understandable,” Hannah said promptly. “But you must have been thinking about what you want to do with the money.”

But Joni’s thoughts had turned suddenly to a darker vein, one that left her feeling chilled. She’d heard about lottery winners and how their lives could be turned into absolute hell by other folks.

“Just put it all in a bank, Uncle Witt,” she said. “Put it away and use it any way you see fit. And just remember, you don’t owe anything to anyone.”

His blue eyes settled on her, blue eyes that she sometimes thought were the wisest eyes she’d ever looked into.

“I do owe something, Joni,” he said slowly. “Everyone owes something. I’m thinking about building a lodge on the property. You know how long this town has wanted something like that. It’d make jobs for folks around here, jobs that don’t depend on a mine. And if we had the facility, I’m sure the tourists would follow. God knows we’ve got plenty of snow and hills.”

But the chill around her heart deepened. Because the simple fact was, when there was a lot of money involved, nothing was ever that simple.

“Well,” said Hannah briskly, “this calls for a celebration. Let me get you a glass of Drambuie, Witt. What about you, Joni?”

“No thanks, Mom.” She hated to drink. Besides, something about this didn’t feel right. Witt was looking strange, and Hannah was looking disturbed, and there was suddenly an undercurrent so strong in the room that Joni could feel her own nerves stretching.

But she’d had that feeling before with her mother and her uncle. It had been there ever since she could remember, the feeling that things were being left unspoken. It was so familiar she hardly wondered about it.

But all of a sudden it seemed significant. And just as suddenly, Witt’s news didn’t feel like anything to celebrate.

The chill settled over her again, this time a strong foreboding. In her heart of hearts, she knew nothing was ever going to be the same again.

2

Hardy Wingate sat at his mother’s bedside and tried not to give in to the anxiety that was creeping along his nerve endings. Barbara was better, they told him. She’d passed the crisis. But he couldn’t see it. She was still on oxygen, she still had tubes running into her everywhere, and the only improvement he could see was that she wasn’t on a respirator anymore. Her breathing was still labored, though, and he knew things could change in an instant, no matter what they told him.

He touched her hand gently, hoping she could tell he was there. Since last night, when he’d brought her in, she hadn’t seemed to be aware of much. Which was probably a good thing. He hoped she wasn’t suffering.

But he was going crazy, sitting there with nothing to occupy him but worry and guilt. And memories. God-awful memories of sitting beside Karen Matlock’s bedside twelve years ago, just before she died. Just before Witt Matlock threw him out.

He didn’t blame Witt for that, but it had hurt anyway. And sometimes it still hurt. Like right now, when he was reliving the whole damn nightmare because he had nothing to occupy his thoughts.

He’d picked up a paperback novel at the gift shop earlier, some highly touted thriller, but it hadn’t been able to hold his attention. Either J. W. Killeen was losing his touch or Hardy Wingate just didn’t have the brainpower left to focus on it.

So he sat there holding his mother’s hand, trying not to think about how frail it felt, trying not to think about Karen Wingate and that hellish night twelve years ago. But trying not to think about things only seemed to make him think about them more.

Or maybe it was talking to Joni Matlock earlier in the cafeteria that was making him think so much about Karen. Back in high school, when he’d been dating Karen, he’d gotten to know Joni because the girls were close. But since Karen’s death…well, he hadn’t had a whole lot to do with the Matlocks since then.

And even in a small town like this, it was possible to avoid people if you really wanted to. Right after the accident, he’d gone away to college. By the time he got back, Joni had gone away to school, and since her return three years ago, the most he’d seen of her was across the width of the supermarket or Main Street. Which suited him fine.

But then today, out of the clear blue, she’d come up to him while he was having coffee in the cafeteria and had joined him. What had possessed the woman? She knew what her uncle thought of him. And she must have noticed that he’d been working on avoiding her. Hell, the reason the width of the street was always between them was that he was perfectly willing to cross the damn thing to get away when he saw her coming.

Then, like nothing in the world had ever happened, she plopped down with him at the cafeteria table. Weird. And he’d been within two seconds of jumping up and walking away when she’d asked about his mother.

Now, he couldn’t ignore that. He couldn’t be rude in the face of that kind of politeness. His mother had raised him better than that. So he’d been stuck, and he’d had to talk to her.

And all the time he’d been itching to get away. He supposed it was stupid, after all this time, but he didn’t want any more trouble with Witt Matlock. That man hated him.

Well, why the hell not? He hated himself.

He froze suddenly, his heart stopping in his chest as he realized that his mother was no longer breathing. Caught in a vise of fear, he lifted his gaze to her face. Then, just as he was reaching for the call button, she drew a long, ragged breath. Then another. The tortured tempos of life resumed.

He waited breathlessly for a long time, but Barbara seemed to have taken a firm grasp on life once more. The tightness in his chest eased a little, but as it did, he felt the burn of unshed tears in his eyes.

“Hang in there,” he heard himself tell her in a rough whisper. “Hang in there, Mom.”

Even as he spoke the encouragement, he wondered why. Maybe she was as tired of it all as he sometimes felt. As he felt right now. Sometimes it just didn’t seem worth the effort.

But he wasn’t ready to lose her yet. He probably never would be, but she was only fifty, and he figured he shouldn’t have to be losing her for a good long while yet.

As soon as he had the thought, bitterness rose in him, burning his throat like bile. Karen had been too young, too. Only seventeen. Life and death didn’t care about things like youth.

But Barbara kept breathing, difficult though it was, and the heart monitor kept recording her steady, too-rapid beats. He watched the lambda waves form on the display, one after another in perfect rhythm, checked the digital readouts and saw that her blood pressure was steady, her pulse a constant eighty-five. Too fast, but strong. Strong enough. Not like it had been with Karen.

For a few seconds he was suddenly back in the ICU twelve years ago, watching the monitor, all too aware despite his lack of knowledge that the ragged pattern of Karen’s heartbeats wasn’t a good sign. Aware that the rattling unsteadiness of her breathing was terrible. Aware that those low numbers on the blood pressure monitors were dangerous.

Aware that no one was doing anything for her just then. Wondering why, ready to go grab someone and demand they help her. Sensing that they had done all they could.

Then Witt had come into the cubicle behind him.

“Get out!”

He jerked, as if the words had been spoken behind him right now instead of twelve years ago. He came back to the present with the feeling of someone who had just taken a long, rough journey. His heart was pounding, and his face was damp with sweat. God!

There was a rustle, and the curtain was pulled back. Delia Patterson entered, giving him a slight smile and a nod as she approached the bed. She checked the IV and made a note on a clipboard.

“How is she?”

Delia, a slightly plump woman with the champagne-blond hair that a lot of older women adopted to cover the gray, looked at him. She’d known Hardy all his life. “You can see for yourself.”

“Delia…”

She shook her head. “I can’t make any promises. And I’m not the doctor. But…” She hesitated. “We might see some difference by morning. Maybe. The doctor put her on some pretty powerful antibiotics, Hardy. But no one can say for sure, understand?”

He nodded, hating the uncertainty. He’d always hated uncertainty, but life seemed to deal out very little else.

“You staying all night?” she asked.

“I plan to.”

“That waiting-room couch is mighty hard.” She glanced at her watch. “And you’ve been in here longer than the allowed ten minutes.”

“For God’s sake, I’m just sitting here holding her hand.”

She nodded. “Okay, I’ll give you another ten.”

“Thanks.”

On the way out the door she paused and laid her hand on his shoulder. “If she’s more alert in the morning, she’s going to need you then, Hardy. You might consider getting some serious sleep tonight.”

“I want to be here. In case.”

She nodded. “But I can call you if…anything changes. You could be here in ten minutes.”

“That might be too many minutes. Thanks, Delia, but I’m staying.”

“And probably catching pneumonia, too.” She shook her head. “We’re overflowing into the hallways. Have you been immunized?”

“Who, me?”

She shook her head, muttered something and walked out. Hardy felt a faint smile curling the corners of his mouth, but it faded as he turned back to his mother. She was fighting for her life, and if she could summon the energy to do that, then he could damn well stick it out with her.

After ten more minutes Delia kept her word and banished him to the ICU waiting room. Much to his relief, there were only two other people there. Given Delia’s description of patients overflowing into the halls, he’d figured the waiting rooms would be getting full, too.

There was one couch. It didn’t look too healthy, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and it didn’t offer any extra padding for comfort. In fact, he thought minutes after he’d stretched out on it, the floor was probably more comfortable.

So what? He could handle it for forty minutes until Delia would be obliged to let him back into the ICU.

But as soon as he closed his eyes, Joni Matlock filled his mind’s eye. Everything was determined to torture him, it seemed. There couldn’t be a worse possible time to start thinking about the Matlocks. Thinking about Joni inevitably led him to thinking about Karen, and tonight he didn’t want to remember how the best medical treatment in the world hadn’t been able to save Karen, not with his mother at death’s door.

But good time, bad time, right time, wrong time, it didn’t make a bit of difference. His thoughts wouldn’t leave him alone, and they seemed bound and determined to focus on Joni.

Okay, he told himself. Think about Joni. Think about her until you’re bored and your mind decides to go somewhere else.

So he thought over their conversation earlier. It had been brief. He figured she’d picked up on the fact that he really didn’t want to talk to her. She’d been polite, concerned the way any stranger would be. Nothing more. Nothing to get all bent about.

Except that he couldn’t forget those blue eyes of hers. It wasn’t just that they were pretty, though they certainly were. It wasn’t just that they were as arrestingly blue as a clear mountain-morning sky. It was the way they seemed to speak to him. They’d only talked for three minutes, if that, but when he’d walked away, he’d had the feeling they’d shared an entire subtext, her eyes to his.

But those eyes had always made him feel that way. They’d always drawn him and spoken to him. If life had treated them all differently, he might have gotten to know her better. Instead, he avoided her the way he avoided Witt. Because some things were better left buried, and there was no way he could talk to Joni Matlock without remembering Karen Matlock.

As easy as that, his thoughts turned on him and began to twist into dark corridors. Swearing under his breath, he sat upright and forced himself to remember where he was. He had to stop beating himself up over the past. He knew that. It was done, and he couldn’t change any of it.

But when it got dark, on nights when he couldn’t sleep, he could still hear Karen’s scream as the other car swerved straight at him, could still remember her screams as they lay in the mangled wreckage of his car. Could still remember Witt looking at him out of cold, dead eyes and saying, “You killed her, boy. You killed her.”

The sounds and smells of the ICU had brought it all back to the surface, bubbling up like explosive gases in the swamp of his brain. His hold on the present, he realized, was getting mighty tenuous.

Shoving himself to his feet, he went out into the brightly lighted corridor to pace. But that, too, was familiar, and he realized with a sickening plunge of his stomach that yesterday and today were starting to fuse in his weary brain. He wasn’t sure from one minute to the next which year it was and who was lying in the ICU near death.

God, he thought he’d gotten over the worst of this a few years ago, but now here it was again, rearing up to bite him on the butt. He deserved it; he knew that. But deserving this kind of torture didn’t mean he had to like it.

He passed his hand over his face, trying to wipe away the images that seemed to be dancing at the edges of his vision, horrific images that were burned forever into his mind. Feeling desperate, he glanced at his watch and realized it was only two minutes until they would let him in to see Barbara one last time before they shut down visiting hours for the night.

Stupid, he thought. Family members ought to be able to visit patients in the ICU round the clock. What difference did it make if it was midnight, 2:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m?

But they were strict about it, and he didn’t want to squawk too loudly right now, especially since he’d been pushing the limits all day and the nurses had been letting him.

He was standing right outside the ICU door when Delia opened it.

“Last call,” she said, pursing her lips. “Ten minutes and you’re outta here, Hardy. Then you’re going to go home and get some sleep. With this pneumonia going around, we ain’t got no room for exhaustion cases.”

He gave her a wan smile and made his way to the cubicle where his mother lay. No change. At once relief and disappointment filled him, but he reminded himself that he’d been told not to expect a miracle. Morning. He’d been told again and again that she might be better in the morning. It was so hard to believe right now, though, as he stood at her bedside, holding her hand gently and murmuring nonsense to her.

Ten minutes later, when he was evicted, nothing had changed. He had the panicky feeling that his mother was slipping slowly away from him, so slowly that it was almost undetectable. And he couldn’t really blame her.

Life had been hard on her for a long time. First there had been his drunken bum of a father. Then, when Lester had left, there had been the two jobs she worked to keep Hardy and herself clothed and sheltered. She’d even continued working two jobs so he could go to college. Then she’d helped him start his construction firm, working the endless hours right beside him as they built the business. Now that things were finally going good, it seemed somehow so unreasonably unfair that she should be at death’s door.

But maybe she’d had enough. He could hardly blame her. He knew he hadn’t lived up to her dreams for him. There was the accident with Karen’s death, which had certainly hurt her, too, and then his refusal to date anyone, though she kept encouraging him to. She wanted grandbabies, she said, but he couldn’t bear the thought of caring like that again.

So maybe she was just fed up. Her life had been one major disappointment after another.

And the thoughts running through his brain were doing nothing at all to ease his panic.

When he stepped blindly out of the ICU, he bumped into someone. It took him a moment to recognize Joni. “What are you doing here?” he demanded roughly. It was a question he had no right to ask, and he realized it almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

But she didn’t take it amiss. “I was worrying about you and your mother. How is she?”

“Pretty bad,” he admitted reluctantly. “We probably won’t know anything till morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

He gave her a short nod.

She reached out tentatively and touched his forearm briefly. “Let me buy you a cocoa?”

He looked down at her and shook his head. “Joni, you’re courting disaster. You know what Witt thinks of me.”

“Yeah. But I happen to disagree, and I’m over twenty-one. Cocoa?”

“The cafeteria’s closed.”

She gave him a wink that made him feel strangely light-headed. Lack of sleep, he told himself.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing his hand, “I work here, remember? I know where the good stuff is hidden.”

She took him away from the ICU toward the reception area, then steered him through a door that said Employees Only.

Inside was a staff lounge. A nurse was sitting on an easy chair with her shoes kicked off, eating a snack. A man in scrubs was stretched out on a couch with a cushion over his face.

Joni waved at the nurse, then put her finger over her lips as she looked at Hardy and pointed to the sleeping man. He nodded.

She made two mugs of instant cocoa, passed him one, then indicated he should follow her. They left the lounge and went to sit in the reception area.

“See?” she said. “Insider knowledge.”

“Thanks.” He hoped it didn’t sound as grudging as it felt, because the cocoa was hot and delicious and contained the first calories he’d put in his system since a sandwich at noon.

“You look awful,” she told him.

She hadn’t changed a bit, he realized. She was still the mouthy fourteen-year-old who’d pestered the living bejesus out of him and Karen sometimes. Even back then, he’d tried to be understanding. A kid who’d lost her daddy and moved to a town that didn’t easily make room for new arrivals—yeah, she’d had a reason to be a pest. Everybody else in the world had kind of ignored her.

“Have you slept within recent memory?” she asked.

“I’ve dozed here and there. Don’t give me hell, Joni. I’m not up for it.”

“Okay.” She sipped her cocoa and looked at him from those amazing blue eyes.

“Don’t you need to get home and get some sleep yourself?”

She shrugged. “I’m not on duty tomorrow. Day off.”

“Even with the epidemic?”

“I might be called in,” she admitted.

“Then go get some sleep.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

They stared at each other, letting her words hang in the air between them. Neither of them wanted to mention Karen, he realized, but she lay between them as surely as if she were there.

“I’m trying to keep you out of trouble with your uncle,” he said finally.

“My problem, not yours.”

He cocked an eye at her. “What put you in such a feisty mood?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s realizing that age doesn’t necessarily make a person wise.”

He sipped his cocoa, wondering what she was getting at, and almost afraid to ask. He didn’t know Joni at all anymore, he reminded himself. Since Karen’s death, until today, they hadn’t passed more than a dozen words.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked finally.

“Sure. But you shouldn’t be telling them to me.”

“I’ve got a reason.”

She always had a reason. He remembered that from way back when. According to Joni, she never did a thing without good reason. He had his own thoughts about that.

“Witt won the lottery,” she told him. “But don’t tell anyone else.”

“Yeah?” He felt a mild interest. “That’s neat. You all going to take a vacation in Hawaii?” His mother had always wanted to do that. It pained him that he hadn’t yet been able to make that dream come true for her. This year, he promised himself. Somehow, if she made it through this pneumonia, he was going to get her to Hawaii, if he had to move heaven and earth.

“I suggested Tahiti.” She gave him a smile that struck him as uneasy and sad. Despite all his overwhelming emotional exhaustion because of the last twenty-four desperate hours, he still managed to feel a pang for Joni.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not a thing,” she said. “It’s a lot of money.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” he said generously. “Witt’s worked hard in the mine all his life. You can’t begrudge him an early retirement.”

“I’d never do that. No, I’m really pleased for him.”

“So, is he going to Tahiti?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Seems a shame. But maybe it wasn’t enough for the trip.”

She looked at him sideways. “How about eleven million dollars?”

That set him back on his heels. Numbers like that were usually attached to major construction jobs, none of which he’d so far managed to garner for his company. “Wow,” he said after a moment. “Wow. But it doesn’t pay out in a lump sum.”

“No, but even with the payout schedule it’s a lot of money.”

“I guess he will retire.”

“Actually…” She hesitated. “He’s thinking about a career change.”

“That’s cool.” Like he cared.

“He’s…um…thinking about building a resort on that property he owns west of town.”

And suddenly Hardy understood why she was mentioning this to him. He looked straight at her and felt the entire world hold its breath for a few seconds. Then he said slowly, “Joni…are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Her mouth tightened, and she looked away. When she faced him again, her eyes were moist. “When Karen died, I didn’t just lose my best friend. I lost my other best friend, too.”

In spite of himself, he felt his throat tighten a little, and he cleared it. “Joni…”

She shook her head, silencing him. “It’s been twelve years, Hardy. Twelve years! And ever since we talked this afternoon, I’ve been thinking about how much Witt’s anger has cost me. And you, too. Karen would never have had to sneak out with you that night if Witt hadn’t thought you weren’t good enough for her. And you and I could still have been friends except for Witt. Damn it, Hardy, it’s not right. And Karen had the guts not to let it keep her away from you. Maybe I’ve got the same guts, finally.”

“Joni…Joni, it’s not a matter of guts. It’s a matter of not raking up a whole lot of…unpleasantness. Not at this late date. After all this time, Witt’s not going to change his mind about me. It’ll just open old wounds for everyone.”

“Maybe they need to be opened.” A tear spilled down her cheek. “This money’s a bad thing, Hardy. I’ve been feeling it ever since Witt told me about it. The only way to avoid the bad things is to turn it to some good. You could build that lodge better than anybody.”

“You don’t know that. There’s no way you can know that.”

“I believe it.”

He knew what she was offering him. Witt would never, ever, have asked him to bid on the project, would never even have let him know it was up for bid. But if he could just give Witt the best bid…maybe he’d get the job anyway. And it was exactly the kind of job he knew how to do, the kind of job he was constantly looking for. It could benefit them both.