After Meghan's pillowcase sack of candy had been inspected and half-consumed and all the other porch lights on the street flipped off to signal the close to the evening, Timmie ended her long day awake and watching Megs sleep in her veil and lipstick. It was enough for her, even though Megs let Renfield be the one to wake Timmie the next morning from her place curled up in the armchair in the corner of the room. It had to be. The first thing Timmie had to do that Saturday morning was go see her mother.
* * *
"I suppose you think this is an improvement."
Timmie bent over to kiss her mother's taut cheek. "Hi, Mom. Good to see you, too."
Her mother, a prim, petite, precise woman of sixty-five, couldn't drag her eyes from her daughter's hair or mismatched clothing or jangling earrings. Not that Timmie was disconcerted. She'd spent most of her childhood bearing up to similar scrutiny.
Kathleen Leary saw the world as a place that never met her standards. All it took to remain in her good graces was to allow her to attempt your conversion. Timmie had not been in her good graces for a very long time. It didn't increase Timmie's self-respect to know that she'd spent an hour choosing the outfit most likely to elicit maternal outrage. It didn't keep the smile off her face when she saw her mother's reaction to the short brown skirt, oversized Insane Clown Posse T-shirt, and Doc Martens Timmie wore, either.
"I have the pictures you wanted," Kathleen said, closing the door behind Timmie and following her into the beige-and-peach living room Timmie had always thought of as her mother's ode to conformity. "You're more than welcome to them. Where's Meghan?"
Timmie's attention was already drawn toward the spotless white kitchen, where she could hear the distinct sounds of snuffling. Oh, hell. It was going to be worse than she'd thought.
"Meg is on an overnight," she lied rather than explain why her very opinionated daughter did not want to see the grandmother who'd never quite managed a kind word to her.
As for the grandmother, she pursed her features in a quick moue of displeasure. "Oh. Well, you'd think she could take a little time out to see me. After all, you two have been back over a month and haven't been up once."
"That's okay," Timmie answered, heading unerringly toward the center of her mother's life. "I figure Rose gives you enough attention for the two of us. Hello, Rose."
Her older sister by twelve years, Rose had been intended to be the last of the Leary children. Rose had never gotten over the fact that she wasn't. She was sitting at the teak kitchen table with a cup of tea and a box of Kleenex, a puffy, unattractive woman with lank brown hair and basset hound eyes.
"I'm... sorry, Timmie," she said, sniffling. "I shouldn't be intruding. I just needed to talk to Mom for a while. It's Bob. I just don't know what to do with him anymore."
Bob being her husband of fifteen years who was nasty, shallow, mean, and philandering. But without whose unending ill treatment Rose would not be able to play her favorite role of long-suffering martyr.
"I just want to feel better," she said with a much-too-familiar sigh.
Timmie found herself fighting off the urge to laugh. Poor Cindy. No wonder she got snapped at so much.
"I know," Timmie said and remembered all over again why she'd started tagging along after her father in the first place. "I won't be long. I just needed to get some pictures for the nursing home and talk to Mom about a little financial help."
Kathleen Leary stiffened as if Timmie had cursed or thrown a baseball in the kitchen. "I think we've had that discussion. After forty-five years of supporting that man, I don't think I should be expected to flush any more money down that toilet."
"It's not a toilet," Timmie protested. "It's the only place he's safe. It's not nearly as much as I thought, and I'm not asking for him. I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for Meg so she isn't afraid to live at home."
Wrapped around her hot tea and misery, Rose laughed. "Like she should have it so much better than we did?"
"You were never afraid," Timmie retorted, falling much too easily into old arguments.
"I was terrified," Rose insisted. "He was a drunk, Timmie. He never had a job, and we never knew what he was going to do from one minute to the next. Don't you remember?"
Timmie's smile was as cold as her sister's eyes. "At least he was interesting, Rose."
"Girls!" her mother snapped. Ever the guardian of propriety, she never allowed a harsh word in her house she herself didn't speak. "Enough. We'll talk about this later, Timmie. After I get Rose settled."
Kathleen, ever capable, ever doing, did. She refilled the teapot and set out cookies and patted Rose with a longtime nurse's absentminded efficiency. And Timmie, standing aside, had to wait to do her pleading.
"Besides," Kathleen said as she poured a cup of tea Timmie didn't want, "from what I've heard at work, Price is overplaying Restcrest. I don't think it's going to be what you think it is." She smiled with the relish of being able to dispense bad news. "I have it on good authority that they're courting GerySys." Then she laughed, and Timmie wondered just how her mother would have defined herself without her father's wild excesses. "It'd just serve that son of a bitch right."
* * *
It took Timmie forty minutes to drive from her mother's uninspiring town house in Brentwood to the restaurant in St. Charles where she was to meet Conrad. The day was another beauty, a perfect, crisp, St. Louis autumn, with sharp blue skies and trembling trees spread out beyond the highways like tumbled, variegated comforters that had been laced by frost. Timmie cranked up the car stereo until the windows rattled, and still she couldn't get the sound of her mother's voice out of her head.
"I'm sure it makes you feel better to be the martyr, Timothy Ann," she'd said with that tight cant to her mouth that conveyed both displeasure and distance. "But don't forget that we've been the ones dealing with him."
"I couldn't—"
"You could. You decided to run. While your father got more and more difficult you married the first man who asked you and ran as far and fast as you could. The only reason you came home was that you'd run out of money. If it weren't for your grandmother's house, you wouldn't have anyplace to go."
Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother. Timmie bit the acid back in her throat and downshifted into third to swing into the passing lane on Highway 70. She could see the sweep of the Missouri River Bridge ahead, and accelerated. Conrad would wash the bad taste away. He'd make her laugh. He'd make her forget that she wanted to belt her own mother for laughing because Joe could end up in a place like Golden Grove without any means of escape.
Her mother had finally lent her the money. But the price had almost been too high.
She'd also dispensed information Timmie didn't want. The other hospitals in town were nervous about Restcrest. Always a cutthroat business in St. Louis, the medical community had decided to focus on Alzheimer's care about half a beat after Alex Raymond had set up shop, and now they all wanted in. More important, they wanted Alex Raymond out.
The competition couldn't have something to do with the deaths at Restcrest, could it? Timmie deliberately shook her head. Nope. That would make it too complicated, and she had complicated enough for the rest of her life.