John Lescroart - Dead Irish

And still it might be too late.

Erin had asked what they were doing as he pulled away from the curb in front of the rectory.

“What’s the quickest way to your house?” And tried to figure out what he was going to do or say to Erin if they weren’t in time.

And he could even be wrong. They could have called from the rectory and found out Steven was alone and all right. But he knew he wasn’t wrong.

He kept his hand on the horn through the intersections, hardly slowing at all.

WHAT HE thought he would do was make a couple of jokes as he came through the window. Steven was used to that from him. When he got to the bed he would hold a pillow over his face until he was unconscious. He would have to be careful- he didn’t want another investigation like Eddie’s getting started, and there was no way Steven could suffocate himself.

When the boy was unconscious he would take the switchblade he had once given him and that Steven always kept hidden in the drawer next to his bed, and he would cut his wrists.

It would make sense. After all, the boy had just run away and been abused a few days before. He was deeply depressed over his brother’s death. It would be compellingly believable. Steven had waited until he was alone-his mother had just gone out-then did what he had been building up to ever since his brother’s death.

“Steven?” he said again, hoisting himself up into the window.

Steven willed every part of his body to move. Even with the pills, the pain was awesome. The bandages seemed to be ripping the skin off his whole side, and with the cast on his foot and his arm stuck out at this weird angle.

Still, he got himself sitting upright, though it had to be on the right side of the bed, facing away from the open window. He was trying to stand, twisting to look back, when Father Jim boosted himself onto the sill.

“Hey, why didn’t you answer me?” he said, smiling.

Steven couldn’t stop him from getting in. The only hope was if he could maybe get to the bathroom and lock the door. He stood, wobbly, not yet putting any weight on the bad foot.

“Steven, come on”-still smiling-“what are you doing up?” His upper body was through the window.

He had to move faster. He stepped onto the foot in the cast.

“Steven, what’s the matter?”

It wouldn’t hold him. The leg crumbled and he came down on top of it. He didn’t mean to, but he cried out, a wordless scream of pain.

Father Jim in the room now, over him. Kneeling on one knee, still a gentle look on his face. His arms reached out as though to cradle him.

“Get away from me-”

“Steven…”

“You killed Eddie, you killed him…”

Father pulled his arms back, no longer reaching for him. He sank back on his leg.

“What are you talking about? You can’t believe that?” He was actually surprised.

“Now you’re gonna kill me, aren’t you? That’s what you came here for?” Father Jim widened his benevolent smile. How can he be so relaxed if he’s going to kill me…?

“Steven, Steven, Steven,” Father Jim said. “I came here to visit your mother.”

“But she just went to see you.”

“So that’s why she’s not home.” He just kept smiling. “You’d think after all these years we’d communicate a little better. I thought we were meeting over here.”

He reached down for Steven again. “I think those pills might make you hallucinate a little. Come on.” He put one hand under his head. “Just lean into me. Let’s get you back in bed.”

It was hard to keep up this charade.

He lifted him first to a sitting position, then up onto the side of the bed. He had to be in the bed-that was essential. But this movement was so awkward, all plaster and bone. The joints didn’t bend the way they should.

“I didn’t mean it about Eddie,” Steven said. “I don’t know, I just thought…”

“It’s okay, Steven.”

“But the other thing, the accident…”

“I did want to talk to you about that.” Put him at ease again. It was going to be all right. “Let me go get a beer,” he said. “You get comfortable.”

Out to the kitchen, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, like walking in a tunnel. He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle, started twisting the neck going back to the bedroom.

Good, he was back lying down. Okay, now put the beer on the bed table. (And remember to take it when you go.)

“Here,” he said, “let me get that pillow for you.”

“Whose car is that?”

Erin didn’t know, it wasn’t Jim’s car. But there was somebody there! In her house, with Steven. “Oh, God!”

Dismas pulled the Volvo up over the curb onto the lawn. She already had her door open, running.

Where’s the knife?

Steven always kept the knife in the bottom of the drawer here -he’d seen him pull it out a dozen times.

Now he was beginning to moan again. He hadn’t believed Steven had had that much strength.

Maybe in the second drawer. And if it wasn’t there, he’d try to put him under again, but the timing of that was tough. He thought he’d held the pillow down too long last time when he’d pulled it up and the boy’s lips were blue.

He opened the second drawer.

God! Dismas had the keys.

“The keys! The keys!” She pushed at the doorbell. “Steven! Steven!”

Dismas was up next to her, giving her the keys. Fumbling, seconds going by.

“Which one?”

Dismas taking the key, getting it in, turning it. Pushing it open, the door, pushing him aside, and running running into the hall, yelling her son’s name.

Cavanaugh was standing by the bed when Steven opened his eyes. He was holding a pillow in front of him with both hands. And there was Mom in the door to the room.

“He’s not dead? God say he’s not dead!”

Then she was next to him, her arms around his neck. He couldn’t move at all, or talk. Maybe he was dead.

And Mom saying, “You might as well kill me as kill my baby.”

Her hand running down the side of his face, again and again, like a cool breeze.

Her baby. She thought of him as her baby. He might as well kill her as her baby.

“Erin…” Father began.

Hardy was standing in the doorway, and his mom started crying. “Oh, he’s breathing, thank God!” She buried her face into the sheets up by his face.

He thought he heard Cavanaugh say his mom’s name again, but she kept herself up near him, holding him, touching his face, his hair. “Oh, God, I love you,” she said, still crying. “I love you, Steven, I love you. Please don’t die…”

Okay, he wouldn’t, then. He wouldn’t die.

“Leave ’em alone,” Hardy said, motioning with his head, taking hold of Cavanaugh’s arm and pulling him out to the living room. He still held the pillow.

Hardy sat on one of the stools near the bar. “Talk,” he said.

Cavanaugh even now tried his smile, but it didn’t work out just right. “I told you before, it wasn’t fair,” he said. “But you didn’t understand. You can’t know.”

“I can’t, huh?”

“You know what it’s like to live right in the midst of everything you want-day in, day out-and never get to have it? To see the kids growing, perfect. Erin’s kids, Ed’s. We could’ve had that, Erin and me. And she so happy with that, that goddamned gardener. And then it starting to go on, another generation of it, of the perfect Cochrans and their perfect happiness.”

“Well, you ended that,” Hardy said.

“I couldn’t accept it anymore. When Eddie told me they were pregnant. It was just for a moment. I didn’t really plan it.”

“You planned it enough. How’d you get him to fire the gun?”