“I’ll stay here with Patty,” I said. “She’s shot pretty bad.”
“You too,” Syd said, looking at the blood running down from my ear.
“It’s not that bad. But… I’m feeling a bit weird.”
Then we both looked at Patty. There was a huge black spot rapidly spreading across her chest.
“Daddy,” Syd said, not able to take her eyes off the blood, her voice shaky. “You said she was my-”
“Hon,” I said. “Go. Now.”
She looked at both of us a moment longer, sniffled, nodded, then started running down to the end of the bridge.
I slid over, put my arm around Patty, pulled her into me, felt the warmth of the blood that was soaking her clothes.
If only I’d known. If only I’d known.
“They’re coming,” I said to her. “Just hold on.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I barely made out the words. They came out raspy, bubbly.
“Don’t talk,” I said, trying to comfort her, putting my face up against her cheek, our tears coming together. “Don’t talk.”
“I just wanted you to love me,” Patty whispered.
“I love you,” I said. “I do.”
I stayed and held Patty as she drew her last breaths while my other daughter flagged down the ambulance and the police.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I want to thank my terrific agent, Helen Heller, and at Bantam, Nita Taublib and Danielle Perez for their continued support. Also, thank you to Deborah Dwyer, for her usual meticulous copy-edit. My friends Carl Brouwer and Mike Onishi, two retired car salesmen who’ve both persuaded me over the years that I really did get a great deal, were generous with their time in explaining how their business works. Dale Hopkins filled me in on credit card fraud, and told me a slew of private detective stories I hope to rip off from him one day. Finally, none of this would mean anything without Neetha, Spencer, and Paige, who deserves a special thanks. Eating the eggs I’d made her one morning, she said, “Suppose you came to pick me up at my job, and found out I’d never worked there?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LINWOOD BARCLAY is a former columnist for the
