“I hate to leave her alone,” Bennie said, her throat thick with emotion. “Her husband’s not here. He’s at the wrong hospital.”
“Husbands can stay, but you can’t.” The nurse’s brown eyes softened. “We’ll take good care of her and the baby. She’s getting blood now. The baby’s on the monitor. The doctor will be right here. He’s dealing with another emergency.”
“What’s the matter with her? She’s in so much pain.”
“We think it’s placenta abruptio,” she said, and Bennie looked puzzled. “An abruption. The placenta peels away from the uterine wall. It’s terribly painful.”
Oh my God. “How did she get that? She was fine.”
“No one knows why it happens, but it does.”
“Is there a phone, so I can call her husband? I left my cell phone.”
“You couldn’t use a cell here anyway. Use our L and D phone.” The nurse pointed to the station behind them, covered with baby photos and thank-you notes, but another nurse in a puffy scrub hat was already on the phone. “There’s a pay phone, but it’s quite a ways, because the new labor wing is under construction. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but take the shortcut.”
“Where?”
The nurse pointed down the hall and to her right, at a makeshift plywood door with a handmade sign that read NO ADMITTANCE! CONTRACTION SITE. “Take that door, go through the double doors, take a right at the sign for the elevators, and you’ll see the pay phones. I think they’re still there. But tell Dad to get here quick. We go in five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Bennie took off. She hustled down the hallway to the door, flung it open, and found herself in a construction site, with temporary drywall where corridors evidently used to be. Her house had looked like this for two years, while she’d rehabbed it. The air was warm here-the air-conditioning hadn’t been put in yet. She ran down the hall of exposed drywall and raw concrete subfloor, but it ended in another corridor of drywall, which she also ran down, then stopped.
Shit! There were no double doors. Just another makeshift corridor. A trash bag against one wall overflowed with empty Mountain Dew cans, Tastykake wrappers, and bunched-up paper bags. There were no workmen around to ask for directions. It was after five, and they would have cut out by four.
Bennie spun around. Two glass doors lay on their side, resting on a pile of two-by-fours, and next to them hung a bright blue tarp, duct-taped over a hallway entrance to keep the dust out, which everybody knew never worked. On the tarp hung another sign that read DANGER-KEEP OUT. Maybe the tarp had become the double doors, or vice versa. The phones must be on the other side of the tarp. Bennie didn’t have time to be law-abiding.
She ducked under the tarp and came out the other side, into another drywall corridor, almost finished and painted with white prime coat. The floor was bare cement, spotted with drips of paint. What had the nurse said?
Damn. Go! She ran down the corridor, which angled into another corridor, less finished than the first, partly unpainted. She ran down it, too, and it was longer, some twenty-five feet. The drywall was completely unpainted in the corridor, and the air smelled like something burning. It didn’t seem more finished, it was obviously less so, and Bennie couldn’t believe phones were anywhere near here.
Fuck! She must have gone the wrong way. It was like a maze of drywall! She didn’t have the time to run back, but this couldn’t be right. She heard a sound and spun around on her pumps.
And came face-to-face with herself.
35
Alice!” Bennie said, startled. Her twin stood directly in front of her. She was Bennie’s double. Same blond tangle of hair, same light makeup, same linen suit. Bennie could have been standing in front of a mirror, but for the gun. A Beretta, it was small, black, and deadly. And its snub nose was aimed at her heart.
“Scream and I’ll shoot you dead.” Alice’s voice had the same tone and timbre as Bennie’s. She raised the gun, sending a tingle of fear through Bennie.
Stay calm. At least Marshall is being cared for. Bennie sensed that talk was her only chance of getting out of this alive. David was up at Penn. She was on her own. “I am curious why.”
“Why what?”
There are three two-by-fours on the cement floor, by the drywall. “Are you kidding? The whole thing.”
“This is a hard one? To take everything from you.” Alice’s lips-Bennie’s lips-curled into a sneer. “To take every last thing you owned, worked for, built, or created. Because you got all of it at my expense.”
The lumber is about ten feet away, slightly behind Alice and to the right. Bennie took a step closer to the plywood, as if she were startled, which wasn’t hard to fake. “I didn’t even know you until two years ago.”
“And I didn’t know you either. But it doesn’t mean you didn’t take from me.” Alice cocked the gun, and it made a mechanical clik. “Every day you lived in the nice house, with the boyfriend and the furry doggie, those were days that belonged to me. Things that I would have had, but you got instead. And once I knew that you had it all, I wanted it, too.”
I have to get close enough to dive for the wood, then swing it at her. Bennie inched closer to the lumber. Nine feet away now. “I defended you when you were charged with murder, Alice. I got you out of jail, free.”
“You didn’t do it for me. You did it for yourself. You’re the famous one. You’re the one with the degrees and the cool job. You were the one who got the glory.” Alice’s eyes narrowed, and Bennie was reminded of herself. “Tell the truth, Bennie. Isn’t there a part of you that feels guilty that Mommy gave me up, and not you? But for that one little thing, my life would be yours, and yours would be mine.”
It’s true. Bennie swallowed hard.
“You’ve thought about me since we met, haven’t you? You’ve tried to find me, I know. I heard.”
Bennie couldn’t deny it. She looked into the eyes of her twin. Her own eyes. Denying her would be denying herself.
“So it’s true. That guilt tells you something. It tells you how wrong you are, and how right I am. You want justice? I’ll give you justice.” Alice took aim.
“Did you know that Dad died?”
Alice blinked behind the gun.
“Obviously not.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I went to see him, to find you. He’s gone. I found out.”
“When?” Alice seemed to falter. “I was… going to see him.”
Just like me. “You waited too long. Too bad. I guess you were too busy wreaking havoc.”
Alice’s lip twitched. “When did he… when did this happen?”
This could work. I know how to get to her, because she is me. Bennie took a step closer to the discarded lumber, eight feet away now. “Don’t tell me that you care about him, Alice. You don’t have a bit of human emotion in you.”
“I do, too.”
“You didn’t even know the man.”
“I knew him better than you.” Alice’s tone echoed a child’s. “He knew me better than you. He knew that I was the one who cared about him, not you. You were Mommy’s girl.”
Bennie felt something happening under their talk. Alice wanted her to know that she was their father’s favorite. And if that was true, then Alice needed her approval. Power shifted from Alice to Bennie, but the gun didn’t. Bennie inched closer to the lumber. Seven feet away. “So you were Daddy’s girl?”