When the doctor at the hospital told them what had happened, neither of them could believe it. Not their Tippi. There must have been some mistake. But there had been no mistake. She had already sunk into a coma because of the blood loss. However, the physical evidence was conclusive, they'd been told.
Cameron had left the room to get some coffee and Quarry had been leaning up against the wall, his jeans dirty, his shirt stained with sweat from the long ride over from Alabama in summer heat with no air conditioning. He'd come right from the fields after his wife had raced across the tilled dirt screaming about the phone call she'd gotten. The compressed, artificial air in the big hospital had been foul, suffocating for a man used to wide-open spaces.
The police had also come in and Quarry had had to deal with them. He'd become so enraged at their line of questioning that Cameron had been forced to make him leave the room, the only person on earth, other than Tippi, who had that sort of influence over him. The cops had finished and gone on their way. From their sour looks as they trudged past him down the hall, Quarry held out little hope of getting any justice that way.
And so he'd been alone in her room, just him and his little girl. The machines had been clunking, and the pumps pumping; the monitor making its little screeches that felt like the boom of artillery to Quarry. Even screaming shots of anti-aircraft fire aimed at his Phantom in the skies over Vietnam had never scared him as badly as the whine of that damn machine while it dutifully recorded his baby's desperately poor condition.
It was extremely doubtful she would ever recover, the doctors had warned them. One unsympathetic white coat with the bedside manner of a hyena had been especially pessimistic. "Too much blood loss. Brain damage. Part of her mind had already died." He added, "If it makes you feel any better, she's not experiencing any pain. And it's not really your daughter there anymore. She's already gone, actually."
This had not only not made Quarry feel better, he'd knocked the doctor's front teeth out and nearly been banned from the hospital because of it.
And then while he'd been standing there Tippi had opened her eyes and looked at him. Just like that. He remembered every moment of it precisely, vividly, as he flew along the thermals in his Cessna.
He'd been so shocked that at first he didn't know what to do. He'd blinked, thinking his vision was just messed up, or he was merely seeing what he wanted to see rather than what was actually there.
"Daddy?"
He was next to her in an instant, holding her hand, his face bare inches from hers.
"Tippi? Baby. Daddy's right here. Right here."
Her head started swaying from side to side and the monitor was screeching like it never had before. He was terrified he would lose her again to the shadows, to the part of her mind that was no longer there.
He squeezed her hand, gently held her chin in place, stopping the swaying so her eyes focused only on him. "Tippi. I'm right here. Your momma'll be right back. Don't you go away now. Tippi! Don't you go away!"
Her eyes had closed, panicking him. He looked around to maybe call somebody. Get some help to hold his daughter with them.
"Daddy?"
He jerked back. "I'm here, baby." Despite trying to hold them back, the tears came hard and fierce down his lined face, a face that had aged more in the last day than in the last ten years.
"I love you."
"I love you too, baby." He put one hand against his chest trying to stop his heart from ripping through. "Tippi, you got to tell me what happened. You got to tell me who did this to you."
Her eyes started to lose focus again and then closed. He searched frantically through his mind for anything to keep her attention.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," he said.
It was the first line from Pride and Prejudice.
They'd read the book back and forth to each other over the years.
Tippi opened her eyes, smiled, and a gush of air came out of Quarry, because he was convinced that God had just given him his little girl back, despite what the white coats had said.
"Tell me who did this to you, Tippi. Tell me, baby," he said as firmly as he could.
She mouthed only four words but it was enough. He understood them.
"Thank you, baby. God, I love you so much."
He looked up at the ceiling. "Thank you, sweet Jesus."
The door to the room had opened. Quarry turned. It was Cameron with two coffees. He nearly leapt the width of the room and grabbed her so violently that she spilled both cups. He dragged her to the side of the bed.
"Our little girl's awake, Cam, she's back."
Cameron Quarry's eyes had gotten so big and her smile so wide that Quarry hadn't known how her face had contained them. When she looked down at the bed, though, the eyes grew small and the smile had vanished.
Quarry had looked down too. Tippi's eyes were closed. Her smile was gone. She would never wake up again. He would never hear her voice again.
It was because of the smile he'd gotten, the last one from his daughter he would ever receive, that Quarry had read Austen's work to her all these years. It was a tribute to the author for what she had given him, he felt. A few precious last moments with his daughter.
The quartet of words Tippi had said that day were forever seared in Quarry's mind, but he did not act on them then, because they did not clearly point to one person. And, more maddening, even though the doctor had been called and Quarry had told him about Tippi awakening, it was clear that the physician didn't believe him.
"If she did wake up," said the doctor, "it was only an anomaly."
It was all Quarry could do not to break his teeth too.
No, he didn't act on those words, and he wasn't exactly sure why. But after Cameron died, he didn't have anything holding him back. And that's when he'd begun his long journey to the truth. To the point where now justice might be closer for him and Tippi than it ever had been.
As he flew along he thought that there was only one thing more terrible than dying alone, and that was dying unfinished.
He would not die unfinished.
CHAPTER 59
Michelle was sitting fully dressed on the edge of the bed in the guest room. Sean was just waking up, the towel still around his middle, the pillow wet from his damp hair.
He turned to look at her, working a kink out of his shoulder. "There's nothing to be sorry about. You've been through hell and back. Anybody would've broken down."
"You wouldn't have."
He sat up and stuck the pillow behind him. "You might be surprised." He looked out the window. It was growing dark. He glanced at Michelle in surprise. "What time is it?"
"Nearly seven in the evening."
"I've been asleep all this time? Why didn't you wake me?"
"I haven't been awake that long myself." She looked down. "Sean, did I say anything? I mean, while I was sort of out of it?"
He rubbed her arm. "Michelle, you can't be perfect all the time. You bottle stuff up until you blow. You've got to stop doing that."
She rose and looked out the window. "And speaking of which, we've blown a whole day." She whirled around. "What if something came in on Willa?"
She obviously didn't want to dwell on what had happened here.
Sensing this, Sean reached over to the nightstand for his phone. He scrolled through messages and e-mails. "Nothing. We're in a holding pattern until some of the leads we ran down click. Unless you can think of something else."
She sat back on the bed and shook her head. "It doesn't help matters that Tuck and Jane Cox have been basically lying to us from day one."
"No, that didn't help. But we're here now and maybe we can get something done on your mom's case. Like tracking down Doug Regan."