Was it something in me?
“Want to watch a little TV?” I whispered.
The mumbling of late-night syndication emptied my head at last. Politics and laugh tracks and Old Navy, still promoting their sale. Commercial breaks-the modern consumer’s mindlessly repeated prayers.
This is what I know about words-they can be like air, everything and nothing. Hot enough to choke. Cold enough to bite. Invisible but absolutely necessary.
Why couldn’t I find the words Jenny needed?
Did I even have them in me anymore?
I drifted off, comforted by a little girl’s even breathing and the modulated sound of happy, grown-up voices coming from the television.
I’m not sure how much later the faint trill of my phone had me up and scrambling. I grabbed for my messenger bag, trying to answer it quick, before the nurses caught me with my cell phone still turned on.
“O’Hara?” Gatt’s gravelly voice was even rougher than usual. “Did you send Ainsley off on a shoot alone?”
“What?” It took me a minute to organize my head. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“I’m not paying you to send the kid out by himself, O’Hara,” he said, in a voice rising in volume with every sentence. “I’m paying you to work with him.”
“I am working with him. He’s on a shoot for me.”
“And you are,” Gatt finished the question himself, “-in bed?”
I was sitting on the edge of Jenny’s hospital bed actually. No way was I ready to tell that to him. Personal problems are not welcome in my workplace. “Get to the point, Gatt. What are you asking me?”
“I just got a call from my sister. She wants to know why Ainsley is out there on his own, when he’s only done two shoots in his frigging life. So my point is this-get your ass out of bed and supervise him, or you can assume I won’t be requiring your services any longer. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said. He hung up. I hit Phone-Off.
The door swooshed and Tonya entered, her footsteps soundless. Her green neon track suit glowing loudly. “Hey baby,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“She’s asleep. They said she’ll probably sleep through the night.”
“Tell me everything. What happened?”
The recap didn’t take long. I remained sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone in one hand. Tonya stood towering over me, eyes shifting between Jenny’s monitor equipment and her face. As I filled her in, her frown deepened, then she added the slow head shake and the crossed arms, and finally, the
“And to top it off, Gatt just called,” I said.
“The new boss?”
“Right. He told me not to come in tomorrow if I don’t go out and hold Ainsley’s hand for a simple dawn pick-up shot. One lousy shot!”
“Shh.” Tonya pointed at Jenny.
“The man didn’t even ask me for the details.”
She must have followed my line of sight. “Does he know about Jenny?”
“No.”
“You should tell him.”
If anything, my feelings now were even more complicated. I could barely admit it to myself, much less aloud to my boss. I was ashamed.
“You need this job, Maddy.”
“I know it.”
With helpful enthusiasm, Tonya said, “Go. Check on Ainsley. I’ll stay here with Jenny.”
“No. Thanks. If Gatt decides to fire me-” I blanked. I’d never faced this kind of work dilemma before. I didn’t even have a vocabulary for this kind of scenario. “I guess I’ll figure something out. I want to stay. I want to be here when Jenny wakes up. She might need to see a friendly face, you know?”
“Sure, baby.” She didn’t smile but I heard warmth in her voice and the next thing I knew, she’d grabbed my head with her two hands and planted a big kiss on the top of my forehead. “You’re gonna do all right. You’ll do fine.”
Half a smile crooked my lips. “Took me long enough.”
“That’s true,” she admitted.
“The least you could do is argue a little.”
She took up residence in the sleeping chair and I curled up on the empty bed. And we waited.
When the phone rang the second time, it was with the brutally unfamiliar jangle of the hospital phone.
“What?” I answered in a hiss. It was still pitch dark around the curtained window and I had that nauseous disorientation that lack of sleep brings.
Across the room I could see Tonya staring. Jenny, thank goodness, didn’t budge.
“Maddy? You won’t believe it-”
“Ainsley, is that you? What the hell time is it?” My eyes were burning. My brain wouldn’t compute the numbers on my watch into anything meaningful.
“How’s Jenny?”
“She’s still asleep. They say she may sleep for hours. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Jost farm. I’m ready to go. I’ve got the camera all set and, you won’t believe this, there’s a car at the end of the driveway.”
“A car?”
“No! Absolutely not. You keep recording and-” I considered and discarded a couple of options before I settled on, “Call the cops. Call Curzon.”
“What if this guy’s up to something? There are other people in there. Rachel. Her dad.”
“Call the police, Ainsley! You stay right where you are.”
“Good idea. You call Sheriff Curzon; he likes you. I’ll try to get a little closer, so I can make sure that nothing bad is happening. I’m turning off my phone now, so I can be quiet. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“Wait! No!”
Too late. He’d clicked off.
“What is it?” Tonya asked.
“Ainsley’s at the Jost farm,” I said. “He saw somebody drive up and creep around the back.”
“Who’d be driving up to an Amish house?”
“Somebody not Amish.” I started digging through my bag for my phone. “I’m calling the cops.” I tried the number I had for Curzon, got voice mail and left a message. I called emergency, made a report to the woman who answered. She seemed skeptical and definitely unconvinced of the urgency I was feeling.
“I’ll make a report to the sheriff,” she said blandly. “They’ll send a car to do a drive-by.”
“When?”
“I’m sure they will get to it as soon as possible,” she assured me.
“Crap,” I said the minute I hung up. I speed dialed Ainsley’s phone but got no answer.
“Well?” Tonya asked. She looked worried. Maybe I looked worried, too.
“I don’t like this.” I started to pace the small length of floor to the end of the bed and back. “The car he saw at the house, Ainsley said it was an SUV.”
“Same kind of car ran you off the road,” Tonya said.
“And followed us that night we went to Tom’s apartment.” Car references flipped through my head and another one clicked. “‘A shiny car.’ The little boy that saw Jenny walk off the playground today, he said she got into a ‘shiny car.’”
“Shiny meaning silver?” Tonya guessed exactly where I was going.
“Whoever he is, if he did this to Jenny, he’s dangerous. Ainsley’s in trouble. Maybe Rachel and Mr. Jost, too.” I looked at Jenny. I looked at Tonya. I felt petrified.
