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“I’m all right, too,” Polk said, grinning at her.
“We’re fine, Melody,” Amy agreed. She patted the woman’s hand in a most patronizing way. “Now, you just get dressed yourself and don’t worry about us, all right?”
Melody counted to ten. “We’re going to see your father,” she said calmly. “Don’t you want him to think you look nice?”
“Oh, Emmett never notices unless we go naked, Melody,” Amy assured her.
“And sometimes not even then,” Polk said with a chuckle. “Dad’s very absentminded when he’s rodeoing.”
“He sure doesn’t seem to notice what the three of you get up to,” she said quietly.
“We like our dad just the way he is,” Guy said belligerently. “Nobody bad-mouths our dad.”
“I wasn’t bad-mouthing him,” Melody said through her teeth. “Can we just go to the hospital now?”
“Sure,” Guy said, folding his thin arms over his chest. “But I’m not changing clothes.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, all right,” she muttered. “Have it your way. But if your clothes set off the sprinkler system, I’m climbing into a broom closet so nobody will know who brought you.”
At the hospital, Melody herded them off the elevator and down the hall to the nurses’ station.
“Look at all the gadgets.” Polk whistled, peering over the counter at the computers. “Wouldn’t I love to play with that!”
“Bite your tongue,” Melody said under her breath. She smiled at an approaching nurse. “I’m Melody Cartman. You have an Emmett Deverell on this floor with a concussion…?”
A loud roar, followed by, “You’re not putting that damned thing under me!” caught their attention.
“Indeed we do,” the nurse told Melody. “Are you a concerned relative anxious to transfer him to another hospital?” she added hopefully.
“I’m afraid not,” Melody said. “These are his children and they want to see him very much.”
“Do you have him tied up in one of those white things?” Amy asked.
“No,” the nurse said with a wistful sigh. She turned. “Come on, I’ll take you down to his room. Perhaps a diversion will improve his mood.”
“I really wouldn’t count on it,” Melody replied.
“I was afraid you were going to say that. Here we are.”
“Dad!” Guy exclaimed, running to his father as a practical nurse laid down a trail of fire getting out the door. “How are you?”
Emmett stared at his eldest blankly. His pale green eyes were bloodshot. His dark hair was disheveled. There was a huge bump on his forehead with stitches and red antiseptic lacing it. He was wearing a white patterned hospital gown and looking as if he’d like to eat half the staff raw.
“It’s almost noon,” he informed Melody. “Where in hell have you been? Get me out of here!”
“Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll spring you,” Guy promised, with a wary glance toward the nurse.
“You can’t leave today, Mr. Deverell,” the young nurse said apologetically. “Dr. Miller said that you must stay for at least forty-eight hours. You’ve had a very severe concussion. You can’t go walking around the streets like that. It’s very dangerous.”
Emmett glared at her. “I hate it here!”
The nurse looked as if she might bite through her tongue trying not to reply in kind. She forced a smile. “I’m sure you do. But you can’t leave yet. I’ll leave you to visit with your family. I’m sure you’re glad to see your wife and children.”
“She’s not the hell my wife!” Emmett raged. “I’d rather marry a pit viper!”
“I assure you that the feeling is mutual,” Melody said to the nurse.
The woman leaned close on her way out the door. “Dr. Miller escaped. When he comes back, I’ll beg on my knees for sedation for Mr. Deverell. I swear.”
“God bless you,” Melody said fervently.
“What are you mumbling about?” Emmett demanded when the nurse left. “And why haven’t these kids changed clothes? They smell of pizza and dirt!”
“They wouldn’t change,” she said defensively.
“You’re bigger than they are,” he pointed out. “Make them.”
She glanced at the kids and shook her head. “Not me, mister. I know when I’m outnumbered. I’m not going to end my days tied to a post imitating barbecue.”
“They don’t burn people at the stake,” he said with exaggerated patience. “That was just gossip about that lady motorist they kidnapped.”
“That’s right,” Polk said. “Gossip.”
“Anyway, she got loose before she was very singed.” Amy sighed.
Melody gave Emmett a speaking look. It was totally wasted.
“Are you really okay?” Guy asked his father. He, of the three children, was the most worried. He was the oldest. He understood better than they did how serious his father’s injury could have been.
“I’m okay,” Emmett said. His voice was different when he spoke to the children; it was softer, more tender. He smiled at Guy, and Melody couldn’t remember ever being on the receiving end of such a smile. “How about you kids?”
“We’re fine,” Amy told him. “Melody has a very nice apartment, Emmett. We like it there.”
“She has a cat,” Polk added. “He’s a big orange tabby named Alistair.”
“Alistair?” Emmett mused.
“He was a very ordinary-looking cat,” Melody said defensively. “The least he deserved was a nice name.”
He leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes. “Saints deliver us.”
“I don’t think the saints like you very much, Mr. Deverell, on present evidence,” she couldn’t resist saying.
One bloodshot pale green eye opened. “The saints didn’t do this to me. It was a horse. A very nasty-tempered horse whose only purpose in life is to maim poor stupid cowboys who are dim enough to get on him. I let myself get distracted and I came off like a loose hat.”
She smiled gently at the description. “I’m sure the horse is crying his eyes out with guilt.”
The smile changed her. He liked what he saw. She was vulnerable when her eyes twinkled like that. He opened the other eye, too, and for one long moment they just looked at each other. Melody felt warning bells go off in her head.
“When can you come home, Emmett?” Amy asked, her big eyes on her father.
He blinked and looked down at her. “Two days they said,” he replied. “God, I’m sorry about this!” He glanced toward Melody. “I had no right to involve you in my problems.”
That sounded like a wholesale apology. Perhaps the head injury had erased his memory so that he’d forgotten her part in Adell’s escape.
“I don’t mind watching the children for you,” she said hesitantly. She pushed back her hair with a nervous hand. “They’re no trouble.”
“Of course not, they were asleep all night,” he replied. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”
“Aw, Dad,” Polk grumbled. “We’ll be good.”
“Sure we will,” Guy said. He glanced at Melody irritably. “If we have to.”
“It’s only for a day or two,” Emmett said. He was feeling foggier by the minute. “I’ll reimburse you, of course,” he told Melody. He touched his head with an unsteady hand. “God, my head hurts!”
“I guess it does,” Melody said gently. She moved closer to the bed, concerned. “Shall I call the nurse?”
“They won’t give me anything until the doctor authorizes it, and he’s in hiding,” he said. His eyes closed. “Can’t say I blame him. I was pretty unhappy about being here.”
“I noticed.”
He managed a weak chuckle. “If Logan had been at home, you wouldn’t be landed with those kids….”
He was asleep.
“Is he going to be okay?” Amy asked. She was chewing her lower lip, looking very young and worried.
Melody smoothed back her hair. “Yes, he’ll be fine,” she assured the girl. “Come on. We’ll go home and I’ll make lunch for all of you.”
“I want a hot dog,” Polk said. “So does Amy.”
“I hate hot dogs,” Guy replied. “I don’t want to stay with you. I’ll stay here with Dad.”
“You aren’t allowed to,” Melody pointed out.
He took an angry breath.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” she murmured. “But we’re stuck with each other. We’d better go.”
They followed her out, reluctantly. She stopped long enough to assure the nurse at the desk that she’d bring the kids back the next day to visit their father. She was concerned enough to ask if it was natural for Emmett to go to sleep, and was told that the doctor would check to make sure he was all right.
Guy’s dislike of Melody extended to her apartment, her cat, her furniture and especially her cooking.
“I won’t eat that,” he said forcefully when she put hot dogs and buns and condiments on the table. “I’ll starve first.”
She knew that it would give him the upper hand if she stooped to arguing with him, so she didn’t. “Suit yourself. But we’ll have ice cream for dessert and you won’t. It’s a house rule that you don’t get dessert if you don’t eat the main course.”
“I hate ice cream,” he said triumphantly.
“No, he doesn’t,” Amy said sadly. “He just doesn’t like you. He thinks you took our mom away. She won’t even write to us or talk to us on the telephone.”
“That’s right,” Guy said angrily. “It’s all because of you! Because of your stupid brother!”
He got up, knocking over his chair, and stomped off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Melody took a bite of her own hot dog, but it tasted like so much cardboard. It was going to be a long two days.
She didn’t know how true her prediction was going to be. Guy sulked for the rest of the day, while she and the other two children watched television and played Monopoly on the kitchen table. While they were going past Go for the tenth time, Guy opened the apartment door and deliberately let Alistair out….
Melody didn’t discover that her cat was missing until she started to put his food into his dish.
She looked around, frowning. “Alistair?” she called. The big cat was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have gone out the window. The apartment was on the fourth story and there was no balcony. She searched the apartment, including under the bed, but she couldn’t find him.
“Have any of you seen my cat?” she asked.
“Not me,” Amy murmured. She was watching cartoons with Polk.
“Me, neither,” he said absently.
Guy was staring out the window. He jerked his head, which she assumed meant he hadn’t seen the cat.
But he looked odd. She frowned. Alistair had been curled up on the couch just before Guy had stormed off into the bathroom. She hadn’t seen the cat since. But surely the boy wouldn’t have done something so heartless as to let the cat out. Surely he wouldn’t!
Melody had found Alistair in an alley on her way home from work late one rainy afternoon last year. He’d had a string tied around his neck and was choking. She’d freed him and taken him home. He was flea-infested and pitifully thin, but a trip to the veterinarian and some healthful food had transformed him. He’d been Melody’s friend and companion and confidant ever since.
Tears stung her eyes as she searched again, her voice sounding frantic as she called her pet’s name with increasing urgency.
Amy got up from the carpet and followed her, frowning. “Can’t you find your cat?”
“No,” Melody said, her voice raspy. She brushed at a tear on her face.
“Oh, Melody, don’t cry!” Amy said. She hugged her. “It will be all right! We’ll find him! Polk, Guy,” she called sharply. “Come on. Help us hunt for Melody’s cat! She can’t find him anywhere!”
“Sure,” Polk said. “We’ll help.”
They scoured the apartment. Guy looked, too, but his cheeks were flushed and he wouldn’t meet Melody’s eyes.
In desperation, Melody went to the two apartments nearby to ask her neighbors if they’d seen her cat, but no one had noticed him. There was an elevator and a staircase, but there was a door that led to the stairwell and surely it would be closed…
All the same, she checked, and was disturbed to find that the stairwell door was propped open while workmen carried materials to an apartment down the hall that was being renovated.
Leaving the children in the apartment, she rushed down the steps looking for Alistair. She called and called, but there was no answer, and he was nowhere to be found.
Defeated, Melody went back to the apartment. Her expression was so morose that the children knew without asking that she hadn’t found the cat.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “I guess you love him a lot, huh?”
“He’s all I have,” Melody said without looking up. The pain in her voice was almost tangible. “All I… had.”
