“You’re looking good,” he said, still scanning the pages of her chart. As she told him she was feeling good, too, he closed the chart and put it on the table next to the bed, moved her breakfast tray aside, and began a quick examination, listening to her heart and her lungs, peering into her eyes, and finally opening the hospital gown to check the bandages over the small incisions he’d made under her armpits.
“Perfect,” he pronounced. “No fever, no leakage, good appetite. My ideal patient.”
For the first time, Risa was certain she saw not only respect, but a little affection as well when Alison grinned up at him. “Better late than never, right? I’m starting to wonder why I was such a wuss about this.”
“You weren’t a wuss at all,” Conrad assured her. “You were a perfectly normal almost-sixteen-year-old girl with a very healthy fear of having anyone mucking around with your body, even when they’re as good at it as I am.” Deliberately ignoring the mutual rolling of his wife’s and stepdaughter’s eyes, he checked the level of the IV bag. “I’m going to leave the IV in until the bag is empty,” he told Alison. “Maybe another half hour or so, then Peggy will come take it out. Once that’s done, we’ll keep an eye on you for another hour, then you can get dressed to go home.”
“Home?” Alison and Risa echoed in shocked unison.
“Home,” Conrad repeated. “You’ll heal faster at home, but I do want you to stay in bed for the rest of the day and most of tomorrow, primarily to get over the effects of the anesthesia. Also, I want you to keep taking those homeopathics for another week.”
“What about the bandages?” Alison said. “How long do they stay on?”
“I’ll change them tomorrow and get them down to a reasonable size, but you’ll still have something on Monday.”
The door opened and a tall, perfectly made-up woman in a chic dove-gray suit came in, holding a pink box. “Alison?” she said.
Risa recognized her as Danielle DeLorian. But what would the head of the company that made the most expensive cosmetics in the world be doing visiting Alison?
“Hi, Danielle,” Conrad said. “You remember Risa, my wife?”
“Of course,” Danielle said, extending an elegantly manicured hand toward Risa. “And don’t get up,” she added as Risa started to rise from her chair. She held Risa’s hand for a moment, then turned to gaze appraisingly at Alison.
“This is Alison Shaw,” Conrad said, stepping back so Danielle could approach the bedside.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Alison,” she said, setting the box on the girl’s lap and lightly taking the hand that wasn’t attached to an IV. “Conrad’s been going on and on about you, and tells me you’ve got a birthday coming up that he promised you’d be ready for.” She leaned closer, dropped her voice, and winked at Alison. “Fortunately, I can actually keep the promises Conrad can only make.” She nodded toward the pink box. “I’ve brought you a supply of a salve my company makes. As soon as your bandages are off, rub this salve on the entire area, stitches and all. It will reduce swelling and bruising, make the incision heal faster, and keep scarring to an absolute minimum.” She shifted her gaze to Risa. “Most people think that’s just marketing talk, but it isn’t. The reason my products are expensive has nothing to do with the pink boxes — they cost a lot because they actually work.” She tapped the pink box. “And the public can’t even buy this one. Conrad gets all I can make.”
He nodded.
“Conrad gets all of it?” Risa asked. “What on earth is in it?”
Danielle smiled. “All-natural ingredients, and I can tell you I have no intention of telling you anything specific about it — I think I have more security on this formula than Coca-Cola has on theirs. I
“What kind of substances?” Alison asked as she opened the box. There was a small jar inside. She unscrewed the top and sniffed at it. “Smells good.” She handed it to her mother.
“This is so nice of you, Danielle,” Risa said.
“Believe me, it’s my pleasure,” Danielle responded, and patted Alison’s hand. “Conrad is important to me, and my formulas are important to Conrad’s clients. And he tells me that Alison is his most important client, so I intend to see to it that she gets nothing but the best.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Risa said. “Maybe I can at least buy you lunch sometime? I know it’s not much, but at least it’s something.”
“And not the slightest bit necessary,” Danielle said, checking her watch. “Oh lord, I’m going to be late for a brunch at the Polo Lounge — have to run.”
As Danielle turned to kiss Conrad on the cheek, Risa noticed a long scratch down the woman’s neck that she hadn’t managed to cover with makeup. Maybe she ought to put a little of her special formula on
“I have to go, too,” Conrad said. “I’ve got other patients, so I’ll see you both at home.” He moved Alison’s breakfast tray back to her. “Your eggs are cold,” he said, putting the cover back over the plate. “Drink your juice and I’ll have a fresh plate brought up.” He kissed her on the cheek, then did the same to Risa, grabbed the chart, and left.
“I don’t believe it,” Alison breathed when she and her mother were once more alone in the room. “Danielle DeLorian was just here. Danielle DeLorian! To see me!”
“I know,” Risa sighed. “But I guess we’d better start getting used to it — we seem to be part of that crowd now. I knew Conrad knows everyone in town, but I had no idea they liked him as much as Danielle obviously does.”
Alison started to laugh, then winced. “Don’t make me laugh,” she said. “It hurts.”
“Sorry,” Risa said, but found herself laughing anyway. After last night with Conrad and this morning with Alison, life seemed very much worth laughing about. Conrad loved her, and Alison would be home this afternoon, and suddenly life was even better than laughter.
Life, indeed, was perfect.
• • •
THE GENTLE STRAINS of Stravinsky filled the operating room with soothing music, the rhythms almost perfectly matching Jillian Oglesby’s breathing, as Conrad Dunn cut a solitary hair follicle from the patch of skin he’d taken from the back of the girl’s neck and lifted it with tweezers.
His hand hovered over the nearly microscopic socket he’d made for the follicle on her supraorbital ridge. The single strand of hair was perfectly aligned, but at the last moment he gave it a quarter of a turn before slipping it into its receptacle.
Teresa and Kate exchanged a look, and Kate frowned uncertainly.
“Doctor?” Teresa said.
“I know,” Conrad said, his tweezers already poised to pluck the hair out again. He stepped back and took a deep breath, then looked up at the computer screen, where Jillian Oglesby’s high school photo had been enlarged to show nothing more than her eyebrows a few months before she was attacked. “I wish Corinne had never mentioned it,” he went on as Teresa swabbed perspiration from his forehead. “I would never have noticed if she hadn’t pointed it out.”
“What are you talking about, Conrad?” Kate asked, her eyes never leaving the monitors tracking Jillian’s anesthesia.
“Look at them!” He gestured toward the monitor with his scalpel. “Don’t you see it? They were exactly like Margot’s!”
Teresa again looked over at Kate, who shrugged uncertainly.
“What right does she have to have brows as perfect as Margot’s?”
“She grew them that way,” Kate said. “Doesn’t that give her an even better right to them than Margot had?”
“I know,” Conrad sighed. “But somehow it doesn’t seem right that someone like this should have brows as perfect as Margot’s, especially without any help at all. And certainly not without having the rest of Margot to go with them. This seems…I don’t know…sacrilegious, I guess.” He tore his eyes from the monitor and focused once
