Second Shot

I heard the sound of my own name without initially registering the voice that cried it. Ella must have come downstairs unnoticed while we were arguing. Before I knew it, the tiny figure had threaded her way between Neagley and Rosalind and launched herself on top of me. I gave a grunt of pain and pushed her away weakly Rosalind hoisted the little girl off. Any other time I would have been heartbroken, but I felt only relief.

“Charlie’s hurt, Ella,” Rosalind said. She looked straight at me. Payback time. “Your mummy hurt her. That’s why your mummy got hurt, and the angels came and took her up to heaven.”

You bitch! Tou utter, utter bitch...

Ella’s confusion was writ large across her features. She turned a gaze on me that was suddenly wary and close to accusing as the connections formed and hardened. No doubt this wasn’t the first time Rosalind had fed her this line. Ella took a minute step back, sneaking her hand into that of the woman she’d learned to call Grandma, looking to her for reassurance.

“Is that why you hurt Charlie?” Ella asked, wide-eyed, frowning.

For a moment Rosalind just gaped at her before she turned and glared at me, defiance and anger and guilt all written there, as though it were all my fault for pushing her too far and letting the child see me do it.

“She didn’t hurt me, Ella,” I said, managing to produce a rough facsimile of a reassuring smile even though one side of my face was stiff and smarting. “I slipped and fell, that’s all. Don’t worry.”

“I want you both to leave now,” Rosalind said with dignity. In the kitchen the coffee machine was still making gurgling noises, but I didn’t think we were going to get that drink, after all.

“All right,” I said quietly. “But think about what we’ve told you, Rosalind. You can’t make a fight of this. Better to give in with good grace, don’t you think?”

Rosalind stiffened her shoulders. ‘And what would you know about that?”

She followed us to the door, but keeping her distance, Ella clinging to her hand as though her life depended on it and chewing a strand of her hair. On the front step I turned and smiled down at her.

“Bye, Ella,” I said, a part of me still hoping for some sign of remembrance, of the affection she’d previously shown me.

Ella just stared, confused and uncomprehending, until the closing door cut her off from my view. And that, I realized, stung far more than a slap to the face could ever do.

They’re on the run,” Matt said, sounding confident for the first time. “With what Mr. Armstrong’s told me, it’s only a matter of time before I get Ella back.” The underlying relief bubbled up through his voice, struggling to be contained. He was almost jubilant.

We were sitting in the bar at the White Mountain Hotel, having just had dinner at the Ledges Dining Room there. A young woman was playing a mix of soft jazz on the grand piano that stood on a raised platform between the two rooms, and a sports channel was showing highlights of last season’s baseball on the flat-screen TV behind the bar. One of the teams was the San Francisco Giants and Neagley’s eyes kept sliding to the action. I remembered her saying she was from California and guessed that she hadn’t switched her allegiance when she moved east.

We made an odd party in such elegant surroundings. I was still in the sweatpants that were all I could comfortably manage, and Matt always had that slightly untidy air about him. The kind that seems to make otherwise quite sensible women want to smooth his hair and do his laundry. Only Sean and Neagley looked as though they’d dressed for the occasion.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Matt,” Sean warned now, reaching for his glass. He’d had wine with the meal, but now he’d moved on to mineral water. “This thing’s a long way from over yet.”

“Why-what are they going to do?” Matt asked, unwilling to have his celebration squashed entirely. He looked round at the three of us, who must have appeared pessimistically subdued by comparison.

Neagley shrugged. “Who knows?” she said quietly, swirling her scotch round in the bottom of her own glass. “They’ve proved they’re capable of plenty so far.” And I knew she was thinking of her dead partner. We might never find out whether his death was an accident or not.

Matt gave her a rueful smile and squeezed her arm as though he read her thoughts. There was something intimate about the gesture that stopped short of invasive. He seemed to have a heightened female empathy. I could imagine he got more attention than his looks would have suggested. And Simone had been jealous, I remembered. Corrosively so.

Funny, when I’d first met Simone that day in another restaurant, some three thousand miles away, I’d thought of Matt as the enemy, someone from whom I had to protect my client and her daughter at all costs. Now he was the one we were all fighting for.