she’ll be later on — I know she’ll want to stay with her husband as much as possible.”
“Yes, I’m afraid your sister is the kind of person who will exhaust herself with dedication. And you’re wise to let her have some time to, well, to get used to things. It’s very hard to adjust to extensive, critical injuries to those we love. She may not be herself for a while.”
“I understand.”
She looked at me with those gentle eyes. I grew up thinking nuns had X-ray vision where your guilty conscience was concerned, so I never really enjoyed getting the old eyeball from them; but I didn’t feel uncomfortable with Sister Theresa.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “you’re a good sister to her.”
Damn. X-ray vision after all.
9
BEFORE I LEFT, I learned from Sister Theresa that Kenny was in a coma, had multiple fractures and facial injuries. Both collarbones and several ribs had received bone-breaking whacks from the bat. Brain damage might or might not be permanent. She explained that most of the beating had been on his face, which gave him a better chance of recovery than he would have had if the blows had landed on other parts of his head. Most of the blood probably had come from his face — especially the mouth and nose. He was also lucky that the broken ribs hadn’t punctured his lungs. His condition was listed as critical.
It was late afternoon when I got back to Lydia’s place. Cody was starved for attention and gave me a grand welcome, prancing and yowling and purring loudly. The phone rang.
I let the machine get it, but listened in, then picked up the receiver when I recognized Lydia’s voice.
“What’s up, Lydia?”
“I’ve been worried sick about you! Do you know what’s happened to O’Connor’s son?”
It dawned on me that as assistant city editor, she would have heard the police and paramedics’ calls on the scanner and sent some general assignment person out to check out the beach-house story.
“Yeah, I know. That’s where I’ve been, down at St. Anne’s.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“Don’t know. He’s a mess, but he’s hanging in there so far. Can’t get nuns to quote odds. How are things going with Wrigley?”
“He wants to take us both out to dinner tonight.”
“Are you game?”
“For an evening with Wrigley? Now we’re talking sacrifice. But I wouldn’t send my worst enemy out alone with that wolf.”
“I take it he’s not in the newsroom.”
“You’ll make a fine newspaperwoman someday.”
“Gee, thanks. So he took the bait?”
“Hook, line, and sinker.”
“So where’s dinner?” I asked.
“Cafe La Fleur, eight o’clock.”
“How trendy.”
“That’s our Wrigley.”
“Are you coming back home first?”
“Of course; I need to change.”
This struck a note of panic in me. “Lydia, I haven’t got anything fancy with me.”
“Fancy? My dear, the look at La Fleur is studied dishabille. Got anything left over from the hippie days with you?”
“No, gone to Goodwill. But I get the picture.”
“Anyway, I’ve got stuff you can borrow.”
LYDIA GOT HOME about half an hour later and invited me to go for a run. Paranoia about being out in the open almost made me beg off, but I decided I could use the stress relief. It was the perfect time of day to go running — still light and yet cooling off. We took a couple of turns and ended up in a nearby park. There were lots of other joggers and skaters and bike riders, and somehow we avoided being bumped into by all this fitness traffic. Lydia and I took off over the grass to avoid some of the crowd on the pathways.
We reached that point where all you hear is your own breathing, the air going past your ears, and the rhythm of your feet on the ground. I started feeling all the tension leave me; I was bathed in sweat and happy as a clam. We made a wide turn in the park and headed home. We slowed to a walk without anyone saying a word, just smiling and breathing hard.
We each showered, and I put on a simple blouse and long cotton skirt, a dark-blue number that showed off my eye color. Barbara has the green-eyed, redhead Irish looks of my mother, while I have the dark brown hair and blue eyes of my father. Unless you saw us with our parents, you wouldn’t know we were related.
Lydia had a sort of romper on, with a plain blouse underneath and all the buttons but one — the bottom one — open on the romper.
“You were serious about the dishabille. Shall I tuck my skirt into my panty hose?”
“Come on, now,” she laughed, “I got this look straight out of the
