didn’t quite meet J.D.’s eyes. “Alone,” she added.
Gladys planted herself in the center of the hallway, her expression all but daring him to try to push past her. J.D. wasn’t about to take on the nurse. He’d learned a long time ago when to back down from confrontation. And this was definitely one of those times. He watched Tory disappear into the last room on the right.
For the next forty minutes, he sat in a small lounge under the watchful eye of his self-appointed guard. J.D. thumbed through the paper, wondering what Tory and her mother were discussing. No reaction at all. The words filtered back through his brain. He finished reading the paper and piled it on the seat next to him. He looked up to find Gladys away from her post.
Feeling restless and a bit intrigued, J.D. got up, telling himself that he was only going to walk far enough to stretch the cramped muscles of his legs.
His walk took him past the lookout station, down to the last door on the right. The door was ajar and he gave a soft push, widening the crack.
He was shocked by what he saw. At first glance, he could have been looking at a child, she was so tiny. Then he saw her face. Tory’s mother couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds. The white sheets nearly swallowed her frail, limp body. But it wasn’t her size as much as her face that forced him to suck in a breath. She looked barely older than her daughter. Her pale skin was smooth, nearly devoid of lines. The difference was in the eyes. The woman in bed stared blankly into space, apparently untouched by the things and people around her.
“You would have laughed, Mama.” He heard Tory’s voice and followed it. She was framed by the light from the window, her back to him. “You remember when I was ten and I started to develop? That nasty David Coultraine paid two of his friends to hold my arms while he peeked down my blouse? And I screamed that I’d hate all boys until my dying day?”
She paused, as if awaiting a response that never came.
“After I stopped crying, you told me one day I’d be swooning over boys. Well, you should have seen me last night. I fell right into a man’s waiting arms, just like you said.”
J.D. nearly jumped back when she turned and moved to the bed, sitting on, but barely rumpling, the neatly tucked bed coverings. The woman didn’t move, he noted. She gave no indication that she was even aware that her beautiful daughter sat at her side. J.D. swallowed the lump of emotion in his throat.
“The doctor said he told you about Daddy,” Tory said as she continued her monologue. The pauses, he quickly realized, were the result of a long history of these one-sided conversations.
Tory lifted the woman’s limp hand. Something glittered in the light. J.D. moved closer to pull the object into focus. It was a ring, a copy of the one that the cops had found with the skeleton. From its placement on the lifeless hand, he guessed it was her wedding band.
“He didn’t leave us, Mama. No matter what else, he didn’t run off.”
Tory took the hand to her face and forced it along the side of her cheek, simulating a loving, motherly stroke.
“That day after he left,” Tory began, her voice dropping to a hard-to-hear whisper, “you told me he wasn’t coming back. You sat me on top of the bar and told me that.”
J.D. could easily imagine the scene. He felt it in the twisted knot of his stomach.
“Please, Mama,” she begged, holding the hand to her heart. “Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”
Chapter Four
J.D. backed out of the doorway slowly, soundlessly pulling on the door as he made his exit.
Confusion caused deep lines of concentration to tug at the corners of his mouth. Glancing down the corridor, he spotted Dr. Trimble flipping through a chart near the nurse’s station. J.D. reached him in three purposeful strides.
“Dr. Trimble?”
The man peered at him over the top of his half glasses. His graying eyebrows thinned above his clear brown eyes.
“I’m J. D. Porter,” he said, offering his hand. “I came with Tory.”
The doctor nodded, apparently approving on some unspoken level. “Nice of you to come along. I’m sure today has been particularly difficult for her.”
“Yes,” J.D. agreed quickly.
“Of course, she’d never admit it,” Trimble added with a wry smile. “But I’m sure you already know that about her.”
“Sir?”
“She has this incredible capacity for only focusing on the positive. Heaven help her if she ever loses that defense mechanism.”
J.D. stifled a groan. This guy sounded exactly like his brother. Why the hell couldn’t they just say it in plain English? he wondered.
“About her mother,” J.D. began.
The doctor nodded, making him wonder if the gesture was some sort of technique taught in medical school. Wesley nodded a lot, too.
“Mrs. Conway didn’t respond when she was informed of her husband’s fate,” Dr. Trimble said.
“Stroke?”
The doctor’s eyebrows drew together and he regarded J.D. with sudden interest. “Tory hasn’t explained her mother’s illness?”
J.D. shook his head. “You know Tory,” he said with a shrug.
His seemingly innocent remark appeared to relax the other man. “I suppose it’s still quite difficult for her to verbalize her feelings.”
“Very,” J.D. agreed.
“I’ve suggested counseling on several occasions,” he said as he placed the chart on the counter and pulled the glasses off the bridge of his nose. “Especially after her grandmother died. I felt, and still feel, that Tory is unwilling to accept the finality of her mother’s condition.”
“Cancer?” J.D. said.
The doctor smiled sadly. “Nothing quite so socially acceptable, Mr. Porter.”
“AIDS?”
The doctor’s laugh was even sadder than his smile. “Tory’s mother has suffered a complete and total personality break. It is my opinion that she will never recover.”
“Personality break?”
“Nervous breakdown times ten,” Dr. Trimble explained. “She hasn’t moved or spoken for almost fifteen years.”
“Sweet Jesus,” J.D. uttered between clenched teeth.
“I don’t think Jesus will listen if you speak to Him in that tone,” a familiar female voice said.
J.D. spun on the heels of his boots, feeling his face burn under the accusation in Tory’s eyes.
“I wasn’t trying
