Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

A wracking, phlegmy sound split the silence.

"Can't… breathe." The chief's voice was a whisper. Flynn nearly tripped over himself getting to Van Alstyne's side.

"I think you've punctured a lung," MacAuley said. "The EMTs will set you to rights. Listen." Far away, a faint siren sounded. "They're almost here."

The chief inhaled. It was liquid, choking, horribly wrong. Hadley looked down. The towel around his thigh was crimson. Almost here , she realized, would not be fast enough.

"Lyle… tell Clare…"-the chief breathed in again-"tell her…"

"You can tell her yourself when you see her."

Hadley's stomach turned. She looked at Flynn. Tears smeared his sunburned cheeks. Without thinking, she reached over and grabbed his hand. The siren was louder now.

"Russ?" MacAuley sounded panicked, which was almost as scary as the chief's struggle to breathe. "Don't you die on me, Russ!"

The sucking, gurgling sound was louder, accompanied by a hiss, as if Russ Van Alstyne's air was pumping out of him along with his life's blood.

"Clare," he said. And then there was silence.

Hadley pulled into the parking lot across the street from the church with a sense of relief she hadn't felt since she delivered Geneva. Maybe more. Three and a half days on the road with two kids under ten easily matched twenty-plus hours of labor in the awfulness sweepstakes.

She twisted around to check the backseat. Genny was asleep, her booster seat almost lost in a litter of stuffed animals, crayons, water bottles, and picture books. Hudson looked up from his Game Boy, his face pinched and tired. "Where are we, Mom?"

"We're here, lovey. Millers Kill. This is the church where your grampy works."

His eyes widened, giving him the appearance of a starving orphan. She kept stuffing food into him, but his jittery energy seemed to burn it all off before he could put any meat on his bones. The climate here was going to be hard on him.

"Why aren't we at Grampy's house?"

"I don't have a key to get in. We're here sooner than I thought, so Grampy's going to be surprised. C'mon, pull on your sweater and let's go say hi."

He looked doubtfully at his sister. "Are we gonna wake Genny up?"

Hadley unbuckled herself and twisted around to get a better look at her six-year-old. Out like the proverbial lightbulb. In LA, she wouldn't have even considered it-she never would have left one of the kids in the car. Here… she glanced at the ice-rimmed snowbanks framing the parking lot, the lead-colored snow-heavy clouds. Air weighted with chill slid in through her partly open window. "It's too cold," she said. "She'll have to come with us."

"Mo-om," he protested. "You could leave the car running. Nobody's going to steal it."

Wasn't that the truth. She opened her mouth. Transformed I've been smelling something since we left Ohio, and I'm afraid we have another exhaust leak into, "Fresh air will do her good."

"Fresh air," Hudson said, with all the scorn a nine-year-old could muster. "We've had two windows wide open since we got into New York."

"They're an inch open. Stop complaining." She leaned over the seat and shook Geneva gently. "Wake up, baby girl." Considered, as she wrestled her groggy daughter into her sweater, how much time and effort she took, every day, to avoid saying We can't afford that . The bag of toys and books from Goodwill. The Styrofoam box of sandwich fixings and no-name sodas. The tote filled with books on CD-which she had to mail back to the Glendale Public Library. All so that when she heard Can we go to Toys 'R' Us ? Can I get a book ? Can we stop at McDonalds? Can we rent a DVD player? she had a plausible answer. Something that wasn't we can't afford it .

For a moment, the outside didn't feel too cold. Then, as she waited for Hudson to finish saving his game, she could feel it against her bare skin and her hair, seeping in through her jeans and her sweater. She wondered if the frog-boiling analogy worked the other way. If you started out at normal temperature and it gradually got colder and colder, would you even notice when you froze to death? She shivered. This was where she had brought her children to, this cold place her own mother had abandoned at eighteen, never to return. Now she was doing the opposite, turning her back on the world and everyone who knew her.

Hudson spilled out of his door. Finally. "Close it!" she reminded him, then lifted Genny onto her hip. She hustled them across the street toward the church. Hadley had at least one parka stored in Granddad's house that would still fit her, but the last time the kids had visited in the winter they had been one and four. She would have to get them coats. Hats. Gloves. Boots. She hoped there was a Goodwill around here somewhere.

The interior of St. Alban's was marginally warmer than the outside. She had been here before, of course, over the ten years Granddad had been its caretaker, but the richness of the place, the stone pillars and the wood carvings and the elaborate stained-glass windows, always gave her goose bumps. Like walking into the Middle Ages.

Geneva lifted her head off Hadley's shoulder. "Momma, is this a castle?"

Hadley laughed. "No, baby, it's a church. C'mon, Hudson, this way." She headed for the door leading to the offices.

"Can I help you?"

Hadley choked back a screech of surprise. Beneath a window where stained-glass children were forever led toward the Throne of God, a woman emerged out of shadow and stone. Black shirt. Black skirt. It took a second before Hadley realized she wasn't wearing a turtleneck but a white clerical collar.

"I'm Clare Fergusson." She moved close enough for Hadley to make out her face, cheekbones, chin, and nose, all points and angles. "I'm the rector here at St. Alban's." She smiled a welcome, but there was a bone-deep sadness about her that the smile couldn't dissipate.

"I know," Hadley said. "I mean, I've heard about you. My grandfather's Glenn Hadley."

Reverend Fergusson's smile tried to brighten. "You must be Hadley Knox. Mr. Hadley's been talking about your visit for two weeks now." She glanced toward the church door. "Um, if you're looking for him, I'm afraid he ran out to grab lunch and go to the hardware store. He'll be another hour, I'm guessing."

Hadley let out an, "Oh, no," before she could catch herself.

Reverend Fergusson looked at her. Then at the children. "You've been traveling a long way." It wasn't a question. "How 'bout you come with me. You can wait for your grandfather in the Sunday school room. We've got a comfy sofa and some squishy chairs-and," she said to Hudson, "a TV with a VCR."

"Do you have movies?" Hudson asked, as they entered the hallway leading to the church offices.

"Yep. But I have to warn you, they're all religious. We've got Veggie Tales , and The Prince of Egypt , and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat , and the Star Wars movies."

" Star Wars isn't religious!" Hudson said.

"It's not?" Reverend Fergusson paused at the head of the stairs, her mouth open. "Darn it, why doesn't anyone ever tell me this stuff?"

It did Hadley's heart good to see her son's tentative smile. Divorce, disruption, relocation-these past months had been brutally hard on her little boy. She followed him down the stairs to the undercroft, watching him stick close to the rector.

"Next you're going to tell me Power Rangers aren't religious."

Hudson giggled. "They're not."

"Dang it, somebody is going to have to answer for this. Who bought these unsuitable movies?" Her eyes widened, and she pressed her fingers against her mouth. "Uh-oh."