Twilight Fall

Page 2

"Look up." When she did, he said. "That is a security camera we installed last week after your visit, when we found three of your brother's fingers broken. It has recorded everything you have done to him today."
"I don't mind if you watch me," she told him, almost purring with pleasure. "Would you like to help? I'm going to be so rich."
"Did you intend to harm your brother?"
Part of Diane, the sly, careful part, wanted to deny it. Money was a private matter. Daddy had always said. Something to be kept in the family. Like Danny's drugs. Like Danny's whoring. Boys will be boys will be boys will be boys will be boys . . .
The other part of her was lost in the sweet, soft fragrance of the flowers. The perfume grew stronger, and then she couldn't help herself.
"I have to do it," she told him, her voice rising to a childish octave. "Daniel was bad and wet the bed. He has all the money. I can help run the company. I had a business degree. I don't want a husband."
The hand moved to her shoulder and turned her. Diane smiled at him as she fell into his eyes, so beautiful and clean, like cool, pure water.
"What else have you done to your brother?" he asked.
Diane breathed in, and in a dreamy voice she told him everything. She began with the cocaine she had bought and carefully doctored to induce Daniel's stroke. Then she told him why she had done it and everything else.
It took a very long time.
Two men in uniform came into the room, and one of them pulled her hands behind her and put cold metal bracelets on them. She almost laughed at the careful way they handled her, their hands gentle and kind, as if she were the sick one. Couldn't they see that she was fine, now that he was here?
One of the uniformed men told her something about her rights, and asked her if she understood them. She knew she had never had any rights, not as far as Daddy was concerned, but said she did, and they walked with her out of Daniel's room.
Diane frowned when she couldn't smell the flowers anymore. She turned to see him watching her from the doorway.
Such a beautiful man, but he never smiled. "Can't I stay with you?"
His golden hair gleamed as he shook his head.
Diane understood why he didn't want her. She had told so many lies. She knew why. It hurt so much, too.
Women can't handle important business.
"Don't worry," she said to him before they took her away. "Danny will look after me. Daddy said he would."
Liling Harper carried a basket of pale apricot roses into the staff room, where half of the afternoon shift took their dinner break.
"I knew there was something wrong with her," Nancy O'Brien was saying to two other nurses. She shook three packets of sugar into her coffee mug and took a miniquiche out of the microwave. "Nobody that rich comes to visit a brain-dead brother three times a week."
"She give me the creeps, that lady," Sonia Salavera added as she reached into the lounge fridge for a Diet Coke to go with the sandwiches she'd brought from home. "You ever look straight in her eyes?" She mimed a violent shudder.
"You can't tell that someone is a killer by looking at them, Sonia." Martha Hopkins, head nurse of ward seven, poured a dollop of skim milk to lighten the strong black tea she favored. "She is such a beautiful woman, and so devoted to Mr. Lindquist." She sighed. "Now we know why."
Sonia blew some air over her top lip. "Does she still get all the money when he dies?" She looked over at Liling, who had busied herself with replacing the wilting flowers in the table vases. "Hey, Lili, do you know? About Mr. Lindquist's sister? They took her away last night in handcuffs. She want to murder him, right here in the hospital."
Liling had noticed the beautifully groomed woman who had strenuously avoided even the most casual contact with any other person. She had never guessed that Daniel's sister had been the source of his pain, or she would have done something to stop it.
Guilt still pulled at her. "Is Mr. Lindquist going to be all right?"
"He will be now that they've locked up that crazy bitch sister." Nancy glared at Martha. "Don't look at me like that, Marti. She had the heart monitor hooked up to her own chest so that we wouldn't know he coded." To Liling, she said. "That nice Mr. Jaus walked in and caught her in the act. Apparently he got her so rattled she confessed to everything, right in front of the police."
Liling had been rattled by the nice Mr. Jaus enough to believe that much. But as much as she wished she could talk with the other women about the mysterious European and how he had saved Daniel Lindquist, she knew administration would not want the staff openly discussing the incident.
"Joe from security told me that earlier today they caught some reporters who signed in under false names so they could question some of the patients about the Lindquists," she told the nurses. "You should be careful what you say, even when you think no one is listening."
Martha nodded her agreement. "We have to protect the privacy of the patients and their families." As Nancy began to argue, she added, "Remember the terms of your employment contract, honey. They can fire us for gossiping, if they want."
"Can we gossip about Mr. Jaus?" Nancy's eyes twinkled. "He is the best-looking visitor we get on the ward."
"Dios mío," Sonia breathed. "Now, that man, he make my heart race like Jeff Gordon driving it."
Liling smiled at Martha before she left the lounge and pushed her flower cart down the hall to the patients' rooms. Along with tending the facility's grounds and landscaping, she took care of the houseplants in the lobbies and waiting rooms, and restocked vases in every room with fresh flowers twice a week. She was no doctor, and had no formal training in patient therapy, but bringing a little nature in-doors helped lift everyone's spirits. Some of the nurses often joked about how calm and happy the patients were after Liling made her "rounds."
She also had to thin out the beds frequently, or someone would notice just how good she was at gardening.
Liling reached her last stop of the evening, a private room somewhat secluded from the rest of the ward. It had once been a treatment room that administration had specially converted for the use of the current occupant. An armed security guard sat on a folding chair outside the door, but he knew Liling, and only looked up once from the Sports Illustrated he was reading to give her a nod as she went past.
Liling knew how special Luisa Lopez was. A poor girl from the inner city, Luisa had struggled through dozens of operations to repair the horrifying injuries she had received after being attacked, beaten, raped, and nearly burned to death three years ago. Officially she'd come to the Lighthouse to begin an extensive regimen of physical therapy: unofficially she was being carefully protected. No one knew why, but the staff assumed it had something to do with her injuries. Whoever had been responsible for hurting Luisa had wanted her dead.
Liling had never felt strong connections to people, even other Chinese like herself. Yet from the moment they'd met, she'd felt an instant, inexplicable attraction to Luisa. As if the girl shared something with her that had no name.
" 'Bout time you got here," Luisa said as Liling came in with an armful of camellias. "I been waiting on you."
The doctors kept the girl's head shaved to allow the many skin grafts to her scalp to heal, but recently they had given her back eyebrows that arched black and sleek against the seamless grafts of her dark chocolate skin, as well as thick, curly black eyelashes that made her large, hazel eyes look like emerald cabochons with hearts of pure amber.
Liling smiled at her friend, whose hands were newly bandaged from the latest operation to separate and restore function to her burn-fused fingers.
"You have been waiting on me," she said, gently correcting Luisa's English. "Or are you grumpy because your other friend has not arrived?"
"Him." Luisa scowled. "He always… he is always late."
A few weeks after Liling had met Luisa, the girl had made a gruff request for Liling to help her learn to speak better English. To keep her charade intact, Liling had to suggest that an American would be a more suitable tutor, but Luisa had been adamant.
"I like the way you talk," she told Liling. "I doan wanna ax nobody else. Jes tell me when I mess up how I should say it."
Liling arranged the flowers in Luisa's vase before she drew a chair up to the side of the bed and took a copy of Sense and Sensibility from a drawer in the bedside stand. Corneal transplants had restored Luisa's vision, but she still struggled with reading, which she claimed gave her severe headaches. Liling had offered to read to her, and selected Jane Austen for the formal but beautiful English she had used to write her novels.
Liling looked for her bookmark, but it was missing from the pages of the novel. "Can you remember where we left off the last time?"
"Willoughby was supposed to propose to Marianne, but he made her cry," Luisa said. "She ran out the room."
"Out of the room."
Luisa sighed. "She ran out of the room. You sure? That sound like she ran out of Kleenex."
"Sounds like. Yes, I'm sure." Liling opened the novel to chapter fifteen and began to read out loud:
"Is there anything the matter with her?" cried Mrs. Dashwood as she entered. "Is she ill?"
"I hope not," he replied, trying to look cheerful; and with a forced smile presently added: "It is I who may rather expect to be ill—for I am now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!"
"Ha." Luisa made a rude sound. "Marianne is so in love with him that she would never say no. I bet Elinor had that Colonel Brandon chase him off 'cause he's too poor." When Liling started to reply, she shook her head. "Don't say it. I know it's 'because' and I have to say the 'be' part."
Liling suppressed a smile as she continued reading.
An hour passed as the twilight deepened to night, glossed silver by a ghostly full moon. No sound alerted Liling, but she knew the moment he arrived. He waited silently, listening along with Luisa as the charming Dashwood sisters had their hopes destroyed and their hearts broken.