“Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m going to . . . ”
Andi hummed tunelessly as she traced an endless circle in the crisp white bedsheets. She stopped long enough to idly scratch the bandage on her forearm; the thirty stitches that lurked underneath it were beginning to itch.
The powerful sedatives injected into her bloodstream had dropped a pleasantly heavy haze over her brain, allowing her to regard her situation with numbness and even mild bemusement. Well, I guess I blew it this time . . . She had maintained enough of her faculties, however, to soberly ponder what she was going to do now that she had lost her family once again . . .
~*~
Nelson Dellin’s apartment, like his office, was sumptuously furnished and yet simple, bereft of gaudy artwork or sculptures. The dining room table was massive but plain, with only a small flower arrangement to break up the monotony of its dark brown surface.
Mike followed Andi’s uncle down the hall, a strange nervousness making his stomach jump. From what Dellin had told him, Andi had been half-crazed when her uncle’s car had picked her up the previous night and had been unable to sleep until the doctor arrived in the morning. Mike still found it hard to picture demure, composed Andi in hysterics. Still, he couldn’t forget the blind panic that had possessed her eyes moments before her abrupt departure.
When they reached the bedroom door Dellin stopped, placing a firm yet gentle hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Before you go in, Mike . . . Anna was injured last night.”
“Injured?” Mike snapped, his voice sharp with alarm.
“Easy, son. Apparently she took a nasty fall while she was running. They’re minor injuries but I thought I’d warn you all the same. I’d also ask that you not deal too harshly with her. I don’t think you could make her feel any worse than she feels now.”
Mike nodded mutely, and Dellin retreated. As soon as he had disappeared around the corner Mike quickly raked a hand through his hair and straightened his shirt, then pushed the door open.
The room into which he stepped was pure white, from the thick, spotless carpet to the walls to the fine lace curtains that softened the glow of the daylight that streamed through them. The only spot of color was Andi, whose black hair stood out dramatically from the ivory of her bedsheets.
She was lying on her side, turned away from Mike. The back of her shirt was pushed up nearly to her shoulder blades, and as he stared Mike realized with no small amount of alarm that he could clearly see the outline of her ribs and vertebrae. Because of her height Andi had always been on the slender side, but never that slender . . .
“Hey Andi?” he said gently. He watched the muscles in her back tense as she rolled over, fixing him with a wary, uncertain gaze.
“Yeah?” she said, her voice childlike and barely audible.
Mike felt his anger dissipate as he crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. His eyes moved from the raw scrapes on her hands and left forearm to the bandage on her right arm to the purplish gash on her forehead. “How . . . how you feelin’?”
Despite the medication flowing through her veins, Andi was able to fix him with a lucid and unamused glare.
“Okay. Dumb question.” He sat in silence, not sure whether he should touch her or not. “So . . . um, look, I know you’re not feelin’ good, but . . . I’m not gonna beat around the bush. I just want to know one thing, And—why’d you do it?”
She buried her head under the covers until only her eyes and the top of her head were visible. “Why do you ask? You know that anything I say is going to sound like a childish justification.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Your uncle gave me his theory but I wanted to hear it from you.”
She sighed and buried herself completely under the blankets. “You’re going to leave me, Mike. You and Micky and Davy and . . . Peter . . . are going to go out and be successful and famous and you won’t need me anymore.”
“Andi, that’s not true,” Mike said.
“Isn’t it? I’ve seen what happens to people when they become famous. They-they change. Their marriages fall apart, they start fighting with their friends, their egos . . . I . . . I just don’t want to lose you all so soon. For the first time in my life I’m home and I’m happy, and now . . . ” She trailed off.
Mike reached out and touched her gently. “Hey. That’s not going to happen,” he insisted. “I thought you knew us better than that.”
“I know,” she murmured, relaxing at the comforting touch of his fingers. “That’s why I feel so bad for what I did. I should know better by now.”
“So you didn’t plan it?”
Her head reappeared above the sheets, her eyes wide with a mixture of indignance and alarm. “No! Of course not!” She sighed and closed her eyes. “It wasn’t something I even thought about until Hank left the room. He had been showing me how to work the sound board, and I just . . . found myself reaching out and messing with the controls before . . . I really knew I was doing it. When he came back I kept hoping that he’d see that something was off and fix it, but he didn’t.” She clenched her fists tightly. “I should have told him. I should have . . . done something, but I didn’t. And now everything is ruined, and I can’t apologize—words are inadequate.”
“Yeah, well,” Mike murmured, reaching out to stroke her hair. “Words might be inadequate sometimes . . . but they’re a nice place to start.”
On to Chapter Five
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