David Baldacci Page 3

  The same two men were in the grassy parking lot. Freed from ecclesiastical confines, they were debating in normal voices the future of what remained of the Cardinal family.

  “Wish to God Jack hadn’t named us as executors,” said the older man as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit up and then pressed the match flame out between his thumb and forefinger. “Figured I’d be long dead by the time Jack checked out.”

  The younger man looked down at his polished shoes and said, “We just can’t leave them like this, living with strangers. The kids need someone.”

  The other man puffed his smoke and gazed off after the bubble-topped hearse. Up above, a flock of black-birds seemed to form a loose squadron, an informal sendoff for Jack Cardinal. The man flicked ash. “Children belong with their family. These two just don’t happen to have any left.”

  “Excuse me.”

  When they turned, they saw Lou and Oz staring at them.

  “Actually, we do have family,” Lou said. “Our great-grandmother, Louisa Mae Cardinal. She lives in Virginia. It’s where my father grew up.”

  The younger man looked hopeful, as though the burden of the world, or at least of two children, might still be shed from his narrow shoulders. The older man, though, looked suspicious.

  “Your great-grandmother? She’s still alive?” he asked.

  “My parents were just talking about us moving to Virginia to be with her before the accident.”

  “Do you know if she’ll take you?” the younger man eagerly wanted to know.

  “She’ll take us” was Lou’s immediate reply, though in truth she had no idea at all if the woman would.

  “All of us?” This question came from Oz.

  Lou knew her little brother was thinking of their wheelchair-bound mother. She said in a very firm voice to the two men, “All of us.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS LOU STARED OUT THE WINDOW OF THE train, it occurred to her that she had never really cared that much for New York City. It was true that during her childhood she had sampled many of its eclectic offerings, filling her days with trips to museums, zoos, and theaters. She had towered over the world on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, laughed and cried at the antics of the city dwellers trapped in glee or doom, observed scenes of emotional intimacy and witnessed passionate displays of public outcry. She had made some of these treks with her father, who had so often told her that the choice to be a writer was not the mere selection of an occupation, but rather the choice of an all-consuming lifestyle. And the business of a writer, he carefully pointed out, was the business of life, in both its uplifting glory and its complex frailty. And Lou had been privy to the results of such observations, as she had been enthralled by the readings and musings of some of the most skillful writers of the day, many in the privacy of the Cardinals’ modest two-bedroom walkup in Brooklyn.

  And their mother had taken her and Oz to all the boroughs of the city, gradually immersing them in various economic and social levels of urban civilization, for Amanda Cardinal was a very well-educated woman intensely curious about such things. The children had received a well-rounded education that had made Lou both respect and remain ever curious about her fellow human beings.

  Still, with all that, she had never really become that excited about the city. Where she was going now, that she was very eager about. Despite living in New York City for most of his adult life, where he was surrounded by a large supply of story material that other writers had culled with critical and financial success over the years, Jack Cardinal had chosen to base all his novels upon the place the train was carrying his family to: the mountains of Virginia that rose high in the toe of the state’s topographical boot. Since her beloved father had deemed the place worthy of his life’s work, Lou had little difficulty in deciding to go there now.

  She moved aside so that Oz could look out the window too. If ever hope and fear could be compressed into one emotion and displayed on a single face, they were now on the little boy’s. With any given breath, Oz Cardinal looked like he might either laugh till his ribs pushed through his chest, or else faint dead away from utter terror. Lately, though, there had only been tears.

  “It looks smaller from here,” he commented, inclining his head at the fast-receding city of artificial lights and concrete blocks stacked around welded threads of steel.

  Lou nodded in agreement. “But wait until you see the Virginia mountains—now, they’re big. And they stay like that, however you look at them.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never seen those mountains.”

  “Of course I have. In books.”

  “Do they look all that big on paper?”

  If Lou hadn’t known better, she would have thought Oz was being smart, but she knew her brother did not possess even a mildly wicked bone in his whole being.

  “Trust me, Oz, they’re big. And I’ve read about them in Dad’s books too.”

  “You haven’t read all of Dad’s books. He said you weren’t old enough.”

  “Well, I’ve read one of them. And he read parts of all the others to me.”

  “Did you talk to that woman?”

  “Who? Louisa Mae? No, but the people who wrote to her said she really wanted us to come.”

  Oz pondered this. “That’s a good thing, I guess.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Does she look like Dad?”

  This stumped his sister. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a picture of her.”

  It was clear this answer troubled Oz. “Do you think she’s maybe mean and scary-looking? If she is, can’t we come back home?”

  “Virginia is our home now, Oz.” Lou smiled at him. “She won’t be scary-looking. And she won’t be mean. If she were, she never would have agreed to take us.”

  “But witches do that sometimes, Lou. Remember Hansel and Gretel? They trick you. Because they want to eat you. They all do that. I know; I read books too.”

  “So long as I’m there, no witch is going to be bothering you.” She gripped his arm, showing off her strength, and he finally relaxed and looked over at the other occupants of their sleeper compartment.

  This trip had been financed entirely by the friends of Jack and Amanda Cardinal, and collectively they had spared no expense in sending the children off in comfort to their new lives. This included a nurse to travel with them, and to stay with them in Virginia for a reasonable length of time, to care for Amanda.

  Unfortunately, the hired nurse seemed to have taken it upon herself to act as the disciplinarian of wayward children as well as overseer of motherly health. Understandably, she and Lou had not particularly seen eye to eye. Lou and Oz watched as the tall, bony woman tended to her patient.

  “Can we be with her for a bit?” Oz finally asked in a small voice. To him the nurse was part viper, part fairytale evil, and she scared him into the next century. It seemed to Oz that the woman’s hand at any moment could become a knife, and he the blade’s only target. The idea of their great-grandmother having witchlike qualities had not come entirely from the unfortunate tale of Hansel and Gretel. Oz held out no hope that the nurse would agree to his request, but, surprisingly, she did.

  As she slid closed the door to the compartment, Oz looked at Lou. “I guess she’s not so bad.”

  “Oz, she went to take a smoke.”

  “How do you know she smokes?”

  “If the nicotine stains on her fingers hadn’t clued me in, the fact that she reeks of tobacco would’ve been enough.”

  Oz sat next to his mother, who lay in the lower bunk bed, arms across her middle, eyes closed, her breath shallow but at least there.

  “It’s us, Mom, me and Lou.”

  Lou looked exasperated. “Oz, she can’t hear you.”

  “Yes, she can!” There was a bite to the boy’s words that startled Lou, who was used to virtually all of his ways. She crossed her arms and looked away. When she glanced back, Oz had taken a small box from his suitcase and w
as opening it. The chain necklace he pulled out had a small quartz stone at the end.

  “Oz, please,” his sister implored, “will you stop?”

  He ignored her and held the necklace over his mother.

  Amanda could eat and drink, though for some reason unfathomable to her children she could not move her limbs or speak, and her eyes never opened. This was what bothered Oz greatly and also gave him the most hope. He figured some small thing must be out of sorts, like a pebble in a shoe, a clog in a pipe. All he had to do was clear this simple obstruction and his mother would join them again.

  “Oz, you are so dumb. Don’t do this.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Your problem is you don’t believe in anything, Lou.”

  “And your problem is you believe in everything.”

  Oz started to swing the necklace slowly back and forth over his mother. He closed his eyes and started saying words that could not be clearly understood, perhaps not even by him.

  Lou stood and fidgeted, but finally could not take this foolishness any longer. “Anybody sees you doing that, they’ll think you’re loony. And you know what? You are!”

  Oz stopped his incantations and looked at her crossly. “Well, you ruined it. Complete silence is necessary for the cure to work.”

  “Cure? What cure? What are you talking about?”

  “Do you want Mom to stay like this?”

  “Well, if she does, it’s her own fault,” Lou snapped. “If she hadn’t been arguing with Dad, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Oz was stunned by her words. Even Lou looked surprised that she could have said something like that. But true to her nature, Lou wasn’t about to take any of it back once it was said.

  Neither one looked at Amanda right at that moment, but if they had, the pair would have seen something, only a tremble of the eyelids, that suggested Amanda had somehow heard her daughter, then fallen deeper into the abyss that had held her so very tightly already.

  Although most of the passengers were unaware, the train gradually banked left as the line curved away from the city on its way south. As it did so, Amanda’s arm slid off her stomach and dangled over the side of the bed.

  Oz stood there stunned for a moment. One could sense that the boy believed he had just witnessed a miracle of biblical dimension, like a flung stone felling a giant. He screamed out, “Mom! Mom!” and almost dragged Lou to the floor in his excitement. “Lou, did you see that?”

  But Lou could not speak. She had presumed their mother incapable of such activity ever again. Lou had started to utter the word “Mom” when the door to the compartment slid open, and the nurse filled the space like an avalanche of white rock, her face a craggy pile of displeasure. Wisps of cigarette smoke hovered above her head, as though she were about to spontaneously combust. If Oz had not been so fixated on his mother, he might have jumped for the window at the sight of the woman.

  “What’s going on here?” She staggered forward as the train rocked some more, before settling into its arrow path through New Jersey.

  Oz dropped the necklace and pointed at his mother, as if he were a bird dog in search of praise. “She moved. Mom moved her arm. We both saw it, didn’t we, Lou?”

  Lou, however, could only stare from her mother to Oz and back again. It was as though someone had driven a pole down her throat; she could form no words.

  The nurse examined Amanda and came away even more sour-faced, apparently finding the interruption of her cigarette break unforgivable. She put Amanda’s arm back across her stomach and covered her with the sheet.

  “The train went around a curve. That’s all.” As she bent low to tuck in the bedcovers, she saw the necklace on the floor, incriminating evidence of Oz’s plot to hasten his mother’s recovery.

  “What’s this?” she demanded, reaching down and picking up Exhibit One in her case against the little boy.

  “I was just using it to help Mom. It’s sort of “—Oz glanced nervously at his sister—”it’s sort of magic.”

  “That is nonsense.”

  “I’d like it back, please.”

  “Your mother is in a catatonic state,” the woman said in a cold, pedantic tone designed to strike absolute terror in all who were insecure and vulnerable, and she had an easy target in Oz. “There is little hope of her regaining consciousness. And it certainly won’t happen because of a necklace, young man.”

  “Please give it back,” Oz said, his hands clenched together, as though in prayer.

  “I have already told you—” She was cut off by the tap on her shoulder. When she turned, Lou stood directly in front of her. The girl seemed to have grown many inches in the last several seconds. At least the thrust of her head, neck, and shoulders seemed emboldened. “Give it back to him!”

  The nurse’s face reddened at this abuse. “I do not take orders from a child.”

  Quick as a whip Lou grabbed the necklace, but the nurse was surprisingly strong and managed to pocket it, though Lou struggled hard.

  “This is not helping your mother,” the nurse snapped, puffing out the odor of Lucky Strikes with each breath. “Now, please sit down and keep quiet!”

  Oz looked at his mother, the agony clear on his face at having lost his precious necklace over a curve in the track.

  Lou and Oz settled next to the window and spent the next several rolling miles quietly watching the death of the sun. When Oz started to fidget, Lou asked him what was the matter.

  “I don’t feel good about leaving Dad by himself back there.”

  “Oz, he’s not alone.”

  “But he was in that box all by himself. And it’s getting dark now. He might be scared. It’s not right, Lou.”

  “He’s not in that box, he’s with God. They’re up there talking right now, looking down on us.”

  Oz looked up at the sky. His hand lifted to wave, but then he looked unsure.

  “You can wave to him, Oz. He’s up there.”

  “Cross your heart, stick a needle in your eye?”

  “All of that. Go ahead and wave.”

  Oz did and then smiled a precious one.

  “What?” his sister asked.

  “I don’t know, it just felt good. Think he waved back?”

  “Of course. God too. You know how Dad is, telling stories and all. They’re probably good friends by now.” Lou waved too, and as her fingers drifted against the cool glass, she pretended for a moment that she was certain of all that she had just said. And it did feel good.

  Since their father’s death, winter had almost given over to spring. She missed him more each day, the vast emptiness inside her swelling with every breath Lou took. She wanted her dad to be fine and healthy. And with them. But it would never be. Her father really was gone. It was an impossibly agonizing feeling. She looked to the sky.

  Hello, Dad. Please never forget me, for I won’t ever forget you. She mouthed these words so Oz couldn’t hear. When she finished, Lou thought she might start bawling herself, but she couldn’t, not in front of Oz. If she cried, there was a strong possibility that her brother might also cry, and keep right on going for the rest of his life.