How did he know her father wasn’t in distress? Lucy wondered now. Her father couldn’t tell them anything one way or the other. And when someone wasn’t conscious and was barely alive, where were they? Looking down at themselves lying there, helpless, wondering what was next? Praying they’d come back? Or were they asleep in the nether reaches of their mind, really unaware of anything at all?
Lucy stared at her father’s face through the oxygen mask, all lean lines and seams and so much thick, dark hair, only streaks of white at his temples. She’d had dinner with him on Tuesday night, her vibrant, handsome father, laughing over a federal regulator who’d overdrawn his own personal account and was raising hell about it. But now he looked old, his flesh slack, as if his life itself was leaching out of his body.
But he wasn’t old, he was only sixty-two, at the top of his banking game, he’d tell her, and it was true. But now he was still, as if his beloved face was a facade, as if he’d already left and was simply waiting for the door to close.
No, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept that. There was a chance he could come back; there was always a chance. If he was breathing, that meant his heart was pumping, and that meant—what?
It meant hope, at least to her.
“I told you to work out, Dad, or take a walk every evening; that would have done it.” But he hadn’t. He wasn’t at all fat, but he spent most of his time either reading his favorite newspapers and mysteries or working on his endless deals and strategic loan plans for the bank. He always had something going on, something he was excited about. He’d always been involved and excited about his life, and that was a blessing.
Joshua Acker Carlyle was a very successful man and a loving father. Everyone she knew thought of him as smart and honest, a man to trust. He’d never dabbled in junk bonds or sub-prime mortgages or any of the other shenanigans so many banks had been involved with. His three banks were as solvent as most Canadian banks.
She caught herself already hearing his eulogy, delivered by his uncle, Alan Silverman, only ten years older than he was, a parental afterthought, he’d say, and laugh. He’d always banked his money with her dad and played golf with him most weekends. Uncle Alan and Aunt Jennifer, and their children, Court and Miranda, had been there all through the evening, but the doctors had asked them to leave. Only Lucy was allowed to stay with him. She’d turned off her cell phone because so many friends were calling and she simply couldn’t deal with their sympathy and their endless questions.
“Can you hear me, Dad?” Lucy lightly squeezed his hand. The skin seemed slack, as if it were hanging off him. They said it was from the medicines, to help his lungs, but she hated it. He’d awakened earlier but hadn’t said anything, simply looked at her through a veil of drugs and closed his eyes again. But maybe he could hear her. If he was hovering up there, looking down, of course he could hear her. Dr. Pellotti said he couldn’t, but one of the nurses rolled her eyes behind the doctor’s back and nodded.
And so Lucy talked. She told him about the case she was working on, the killer who targeted single women in neighborhood bars, and how he seemed to be coming this way, since he’d killed in San Francisco, Chicago, and now Cleveland. And why not Washington? There were so many single women here. She told him her partner on this case was Special Agent Cooper McKnight, a man she didn’t much like because he had the reputation of being a playboy. He always had a different woman on his arm, and he was too good-looking, and he knew it. She’d heard a couple of agents in the unit talking about all the women he dated, and they wondered, laughing in the way men did, about how he managed to keep them all straight. What did he think of her? She didn’t have a clue. So far he was polite and attentive, maybe checking her out to put her in his line to take to bed. He’d said a couple of funny things, and wouldn’t that make sense? Women tended to like guys who were funny. It fit with what she’d heard.
She talked and talked, and her father lay there, moving his legs now and then; sometimes, she’d swear, squeezing her hand. Once he’d mumbled words she couldn’t understand before he lapsed again into that frozen silence. He was breathing, so she’d hang on to that. She told him about her boss’s wild-hair adventure Tuesday night at his neighborhood convenience store, how he’d brought down two armed robbers with two children in the store. Dillon had said the kids were both champs, and their dad was a champ, too. “I wonder how I would have done if I’d seen that guy with a stocking on his face and a gun in his hand, while two kids were standing six feet away eating ice-cream bars.”