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Might Have Been
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by Kat
Parsons
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part 4
Saturday, August 24, 1984:
Whatever had ailed Richie, it eased off throughout the day, and by the next morning he seemed pretty much himself. He wanted to go fishing again, but Tessa refused to let him out before dawn due to the deleterious effects of dew on little boys just getting over a virus. What with sleeping in, and breakfast, and other delays, they didn't, in fact, get out of the cabin till the sun was well up in the sky, and even then Tessa insisted on wrapping him in a blanket as he went out the door, on the grounds that it was a very chilly day for summer.
"It's too late in the day to catch anything, isn't it?" Richie complained after they had stood on the bank for half an hour without so much as a nibble.
"Not necessarily. But, well, we have missed the best time," Duncan admitted. He looked up at Richie and realized the boy was having a very hard time of it, standing still with no results. "Why don't we just put aside our poles for today? We can get up early tomorrow and catch enough to take some home with us."
"Okay." He watched intently as Duncan pulled in his line, imitating his movements. When Duncan hunkered down on the mossy bank and started collecting pebbles from the water's edge, he came and sat beside him.
"Are you sure you're warm enough?" Duncan asked, belatedly noticing the dampness of the ground. Richie had quickly abandoned Tessa's blanket.
"It's August."
"Well, you were still shivering last night."
"That was last night." Richie watched Duncan intently for several moments, until he apparently couldn't stand it anymore. "How do you do that?"
"Make the rocks skip?" Duncan asked with a smile. He placed one of the small, flat stones into Richie's hand, adjusting the boy's fingers around it just so. He then demonstrated the technique, sending one of his stones skipping four times before it sank into the water.
It took Richie seven tries, but he was at length able to make a stone skip, and he was so excited about his success he actually grabbed Duncan by the arm and shook him as he pointed and demanded to know if Duncan had seen it.
"Yes, that was very good." He passed him another pebble and took advantage of the opportunity to ask, "Richie, are you afraid of me?"
Richie fumbled his pebble and it landed with a decided plop. "Afraid?"
"I haven't done anything to make you afraid of me, have I?"
"No," Richie mumbled, and now he did shiver.
"You never call me anything. All these months, and you still don't call me anything. And when you woke up and found me beside you yesterday morning…"
"I was surprised, that's all. Just felt kinda…surrounded. And I don't call her anything, either."
"We've noticed, and we haven't wanted to push you. But…Why not?"
He shrugged. "Don't know what to call you guys."
"You know our names. On the other hand, we want to be your parents, so you could call us Mom and Dad. If you want to be formal, you could call us Mr. and Mrs. MacLeod. You could call us Bub and Toots, I suppose, but I don't think Tessa would care for it."
Richie chuckled, relaxing a little.
"Why are you afraid? Aren't you just a little happy with us?"
The boy looked up, alarm flashing across his face for a moment. "Yeah."
"Then why don't you like me?"
"I do," Richie protested, distress plain in his every move as he ripped at the moss by his knee. "I do. I can't help…"
"Richie, is it because some other man hurt you?"
He didn't look up, just stared down at his frantic hands as he stripped the ground bare. "Maybe."
Duncan took a deep breath, wishing he could give Richie back some of the innocence to which he was still entitled and knowing he couldn't. He couldn't even promise never to hurt the boy, because he had no way of knowing what the Gathering might do to those Immortals left. He wanted to take Richie into his arms and make all the fear go away, but he couldn't do that, either, if he himself was the object of that fear. "Richie, we didn't take you into our home to hurt you. The last thing I'd ever want to do is hurt a child."
Richie shrugged, still not looking up. "Can't help it."
Time and experience were probably all that could ease his fears; Duncan was ready to let the discussion drop for the moment.
"You remember a couple weeks ago, the big man that likes cats?" Richie asked suddenly.
Duncan frowned a moment. "You mean Mr. Brand?"
"I guess. Big noisy man. She likes him."
Tessa did indeed have an incongruous affection for Mr. Brand. "Yes. What about him?"
"He saw me, and he thought I was your kid."
"You are."
"No, I mean he thought I was your real kid."
"You are a very real kid."
Richie smacked his own knee in frustration. "I mean he thought I was your son and you were my parents. For real."
Duncan gave up on that point, too, for the moment. "What of it?"
"You said, 'Yes, that's our Richie' just like he was really right."
Duncan risked resting an arm on Richie's shoulders. "He was, tough guy."
"You really want me?" he asked, looking up now with brows knit in puzzlement. "Why would you want me?"
"We just do. We were a couple in need of something to make us a family. When we met you, we realized you were what we needed."
"And then I went and screamed and hit you yesterday," he mourned, quickly turning away once more. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I'm not gonna be a very good son."
Duncan pulled him close and, when Richie didn't struggle or complain, he buried a kiss in the rampant red curls. "You're gonna be a great son."
Wednesday, November 14, 1984:
Beginning to wonder what was taking Richie so long to walk Mr. Brand and his new Florentine tapestry to the car, Tessa walked over to the door to make sure he wasn't loitering on his way back. It wasn't much past five, but it was overcast and drizzly, and only two weeks from Thanksgiving; it was already quite dark. Looking up the street, she saw Richie leaning into a car, talking, and was about to withdraw when she suddenly remembered that Mr. Brand drove a dove-grey Cadillac--Richie was talking to a bearded man in a green compact. She popped her head back out the door. "Richie! Richie, come here, right now!" she hollered, starting after him.
Richie withdrew his head from the car, saying a hasty goodbye as the bearded man started his engine and pulled away from the curb in a U-turn. "Whatsa matter?" he asked, when Tessa reached hm and snatched his arm to drag him back to the shop.
Tessa saw Duncan emerging from the door and realized he must have been alarmed by her yelling. "Who was that man?" she demanded, stalking down the sidewalk with such force that her ankles wobbled in her high heels, and dragging Richie so that he had to trot to keep pace.
"His name's Joe."
"I do not know this Joe. You are not to talk to strange adults we don't know, Richie, and you are not to walk up to adults in cars."
"What's going on?" Duncan asked, having walked to meet them.
"Richie was talking to some strange man in a car--he was practically in the car-- and when I called him the man drove away, fast."
"What?" It was fortunate Immortals couldn't have heart attacks or strokes, because it appeared to Tessa that Duncan's blood pressure had just doubled--well, she knew hers had. "Richie, you don't talk to strangers, and you do not get in anyone's car. Ever. Do you understand me?"
"I wasn't going to get in the car, and he's not a stranger," Richie protested.
"Oh," they said, nonplused. "Where do you know him from?" Duncan asked. "Is he somebody's father?"
"No, he's just a guy who hangs around. Sometimes he's in the alleys, sometimes he's in his car, but he's around most every day. Sometimes he gives me candy." He held up a chocolate bar, to illustrate.
Tessa felt the blood drain from her body.
From the look of him, Duncan did, too. He tore the candy from Richie's hand and tossed it into the gutter, then dragged Richie home by his collar.
"Hey, come on, he doesn't even have legs!" Richie protested, his feet churning to keep up. "What do you think I am, a stupid little kid?"
Duncan ignored this specious interjection, lecturing all the way about the ground rules they had set the day they'd brought him home and adding a few more.
For some time after, Richie was permitted outside only with supervision, and Duncan haunted the alleys in search of green compacts and men without legs. The green compact never appeared again, however, and the MacLeods eventually concluded that being seen had scared the pervert away--but not before a restless Richie had attempted at least one abortive rebellion, not to mention causing two or three minor household disasters with chemistry experiments, an Eiffel Tower built of chairs, and attempting to get into the small suit of armor by the store window.
Friday, December 21, 1984:
Tessa shrugged, feeling very tired as she snuggled further into the couch with the phone. "Oh, Louisa, I don't know, sometimes it just feels endless. No sooner do we think we've solved everything and we finally can settle down to being a family, than something else surfaces. When the caseworker said we would have a complete record on him, we thought that meant a complete record. Now, we learn, it was a complete record of everything documented. Do you know what that means? It means only what they had enough proof of to prosecute someone for."
She "whuffed" with disgust and her friend made sympathetic noises. It was so comforting, now that she had been able to establish relationships with some other mothers, to sound off about some of her concerns. It allowed her to feel she and Duncan were not alone in their problems, that Richie was not so singular as he sometimes seemed.
"That's the problem, we don't know what isn't there." She brushed her hand over her eyes. "We get the ugliest suspicions sometimes, but…" She stopped herself. "But we don't know what's back there. It's as if Richie is an iceberg. When we adopted him, we knew there were problems, but we thought we'd been told what they were. We knew we were in for hard work, but our eyes were open, and we thought we could handle it. But what they told us was only the barest tip, and as bad as we knew things were, there's nine times more underneath it all. Sometimes, he's as sweet and wonderful as anyone could ask, and then, all at once…poof, we don't know this child in front of us, or what could possibly be happening in his head. We even think maybe he was molested, but he won't talk about things, and Social Services won't tell us anything, and how are we supposed to deal with it if we don't even know about it?" She felt herself getting a little shrill and reached for the glass of wine she had poured before sitting down.
As she put the glass aside once more, she thought she heard someone behind her, but, when she glanced over her shoulder, no one was there. "No, oh, no, of course not," she said in reply to Louisa's question. "We don't regret it at all. I wouldn't part with Richie for anything in the world. We needed him as much as he needed us, I think. It is only, sometimes I feel so very weary."
She definitely heard someone coming this time--footsteps on the stairs from the shop. "I'm sorry, Louisa, I had better go. Duty calls."
Louisa was perfectly understanding--her own children were due in any moment, and her au pair was at the dentist. But she did want to see Tessa sometime soon.
"Lunch? That would be lovely. Have you tried that new place, The Winery?" Tessa asked, glad of the excuse to get out for some girl-talk.
An appointment made to meet Louisa for Friday lunch, Tessa hung up, finished her wine, and saw Duncan coming in with a kiss for her. "Did you have a productive meeting with Sister Placida?" Richie's homeroom teacher had called for an extra mid-term meeting, but Tessa had had to stay home to meet with an official considering her for a commission from the city.
"I hope so. She wants to do more remedial reading work with him. She says he's been doing well in art--who knows, maybe he'll follow in your footsteps."
She chuckled. "I cannot imagine Richie ever putting up with the man I had to talk with today."
"Your meeting didn't go well?"
"Oh, it went all right. But I had to bite my cheeks and my tongue the whole visit to make myself be polite." She demonstrated, adding crossed eyes for effect, and was pleased to see him laugh. "What can we do to help with the reading beyond what we are already doing?"
"She said to just keep up the nightly reading, but she gave me a suggested book list. She, uh, she also recommended that I be the one to help him sound out words since my, um…"
"She doesn't like my English?" Tessa asked, her brows rising.
"How could anyone not like your English?" He snuggled up beside her and pulled her close. "She just thought my pronunciation might come a little closer to standard American pronunciation than yours."
"Um-hm. How will she feel when Richie comes to school saying 'hoot, mon'?"
"I have never--!"
She soothed him with a kiss. "Was that all? She could have done that with a phone call."
He shook his head and sighed. "What she really wanted was to let us know that he's been in a lot of fights with the other children."
"Oh, no."
"He and I had a long talk about it on the way home. You know, I think he may do it because he's trying to get in the first punch. He's on the small side, you know, and his old neighborhood was pretty rough. I was thinking, if I gave him some martial arts training, he'd have more confidence and he wouldn't feel like he had to--"
"No."
"No? Tessa, don't you think we should discuss this?"
"We are discussing it. No. He is too small. And he is too immature--how do you know he wouldn't just start more fights? And he has already seen too much violence. No. I will not permit it. End of discussion." She waited for him to argue, but he didn't. He would be bringing it up again, however--she could see in his eyes that she hadn't heard the last of that insane idea. "I will talk to him."
He shrugged. "Okay, we can try it your way. So, did he show you your present?"
"I haven't seen him, yet."
"Oh. Well, I suppose he's saving it for Christmas, now I think of it."
"What is it?" she asked. She loved getting presents, and Richie had been telling her he was working on one in art class for the last two weeks, but had refused to tell her what it was.
"I haven't seen it yet, myself. You can wait--it's only four more days to Christmas. Sister Placida said Sister Joan told her it was very good."
"I will grill him for hints at dinner." Dinner. With a cry of dismay, she launched herself from the couch, hoping she'd reach the oven in time.
*****
Duncan awoke to distant unidentifiable, but not terribly sinister, sounds. Odd to think how very recently they had been able to count on sleeping through the night. Well, after they had finished…He ran a hand over Tessa's bosom, lowering his mouth to kiss her on the-- What was that noise? Like faraway mice. Or a squeaky wheel.
It was not uncommon to discover Richie raiding the kitchen during the night. Or watching television. Or playing in the store. Duncan didn't really mind the kitchen raids as much as Tessa did, or wouldn't when Richie learned to clean up after himself; he was rather anxious to get some growth on the boy, and if midnight snacks were necessary to that end, then midnight snacks Richie should have. But watching television when he was supposed to be in bed asleep, or playing with valuable antiques without permission, were other matters. Not to mention the time he'd caught him playing with the swords in a manner which made the loss of a few toes almost inevitable. And there was always the possibility that it wasn't Richie. They had never had anyone break into the store, but it might happen someday.
Duncan disentangled himself from Tessa's nude body and reached first for his katana and then for his pants, and slipped out of the bedroom so quietly Tessa never stirred. It would be nice when Richie reached an age of discretion so Duncan could explain why he periodically turned up with a sword in hand.
The television wasn't on, nor was it warm. There was no one in the kitchen, and it was as tidy as when he had finished putting away the dinner dishes. He looked down over the store, but saw no movement; still, the sound was definitely coming from somewhere below. Padding soundlessly in bare feet, his katana before him and ready, Duncan crept down the stairs. The sound had changed to a small, dull roar, but Duncan recognized it. Someone was using Tessa's welding torch. And if that someone was under five feet tall, he was going to get a spanking. Yes, as he moved closer to the door, he could feel the small thrum of Richie's Buzz. Serve the kid right if I did come crashing in sword first. But he put it aside--less explaining--and stepped into the doorway.
Richie had his back to the door and the torch in his hand, and he appeared to be experimenting to see how hard to squeeze to get the ideal gout of flame. On Tessa's potter's wheel was a mound of fast-drying clay which might once have been a vase but now resembled half-kneaded pasta dough. Biting down on a demand to know what the hell the boy thought he was doing, Duncan moved swiftly and quietly up behind him and shut off the gas to the torch. He didn't want to startle a child holding a flaming welder's torch until he'd cut it off. There, now he could reason with Richie. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted.
Richie spun around with a gasp. "You startled me!"
"You surprised me, too." Duncan snatched the torch out of Richie's hand. "What were you doing with this? Do you have a deathwish? How many times have we told you not to even come in here without one of us?"
Richie glowered up at him. "I wasn't hurting anything."
"Weren't hurting anything?" Duncan waved the torch in his face. "Do you know what you could have hurt with this thing?"
"I wouldn't have hurt myself."
"Famous last words."
"God damn, does every grownup say that?"
"Watch your language, young man, and march right out of here."
"I'm working."
"Not with fire, you aren't. Or with any of the other equipment in here, not without supervision. What were you playing at?"
Richie hunched his shoulders.
"All right, that does it." Duncan took him by the collar of his pajama shirt and started to haul him out of the studio. Richie fought him, kicking his legs and pounding at his torso. It didn't hurt particularly--the kid was as barefoot as he was himself--but he did begin to have second thoughts. He didn't want to frighten the boy. He stopped in the middle of the store and glared down at him. "If you've got something to say for yourself, say it now."
Richie was breathing hard, but the expression he turned up to Duncan showed more defiance than fear. "I was just trying to make a present for her," he said finally.
"For Tessa? But you already made her a present--you carried it home this evening."
Richie dropped his gaze. "It's not good enough," he said so softly Duncan could barely hear.
"Who said?"
Richie shrugged, but he didn't look up.
Softened despite his better judgment, Duncan got down on his knees and took Richie's face in his hand. "Who said your present wasn't good enough?"
"I'm a big pain in the ass!" he exploded, tearing away from Duncan. "I knew it, I knew it would end up this way! The present I made isn't good enough to make up for that, but I thought maybe I'd try again, only I don't know how to use that stuff, and all I did was make a mess and get something in my foot! Well, I don't know why I even bothered; I knew I'd never make anything worth giving to her."
"Richie--!"
The boy ran, limping, back to the studio and reappeared almost immediately, colliding with Duncan in the doorway as he came to fetch him. He was holding a fat ceramic swan, brilliant yellow with a grey-black beak and a thick, lumpy neck. "It stinks, see?"
"No, it--"
"It stinks!" Tears popped into his eyes, but he swiftly drew his sleeve across his face and wiped them away. "It's the best I could do, but it still stinks. I'm nothing but trouble, and I can't even make her a damn stupid swan." Before Duncan could take it from him, he had flung it against the wall. "I couldn't give her a thing like that," he explained quietly.
Duncan viewed the shattered remains and felt very tired. "You could have, tough guy, and she would have loved it." He picked up Richie's left foot, but it was fine. The right one had a large sliver in it and was trickling blood. Looking about, he realized there were little red footprints all around him. "Damn it, this is one of the reasons you're not supposed to be in there--look what you've done to your foot."
"Who cares?"
"I do."
Tessa appeared at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a warm flannel robe. "What's going on down there?"
Duncan took Richie up in his arms, ignoring the boy's indignation, and carried him up to her. "We have an injured young artist here, sweetheart--why don't you scare up a pair of tweezers, the first aid kit, and a pair of socks, and I'll meet you in the kitchen."
"Injured?" she repeated sharply.
"Nothing we can't fix."
She frowned at him, but went for the requested supplies. Duncan sat Richie up on the kitchen counter and drew a chair close so he would be in a good position for podiatric surgery. When Tessa joined them, she settled into a chair beside Duncan to act as his OR nurse, forbearing to ask questions until the delicate operation was complete and the bleeding had been stanched.
Tessa put a sock on Richie's uninjured foot while Duncan waved at the liquid bandage he had applied to the wound, to speed its drying. She took the opportunity to study the child's profile. The sadness on his face was excessive for a punctured foot. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Richie muttered, the mournful look disappearing behind a facade of indifference.
"Richie broke the present he made you, Tessa. It's a shame, because it was very pretty, and I know you would have liked it."
She picked up the sliver Duncan had pulled from Richie's foot. It was metal. "This is from my present?"
"No, he just picked that up while he was trying to make you a replacement. I think you'll probably want to go clean up your wheel, or you'll need to use a chisel by morning."
She made a squawk of indeterminate meaning.
"We may also want to look into putting a lock on the studio door--Richie was experimenting with the welding torch."
Tessa went so pale he thought for a moment she might faint. "Richie? Chou-chou, you…you are still a little boy, and you are never, ever to use any of that…" She sat down again. "I will get a lock tomorrow."
"Why don't you just send me away?" Richie suggested. "It would be cheaper."
"What?"
"I'm more trouble than I'm worth. I knew you'd figure it out eventually. Now I've made a mess on your wheel and I've stained your carpet--"
"Stained the carpet?" Tessa echoed.
"Oh, yeah," Duncan added. "We may want to spray some rug shampoo or something down in the shop. Richie walked around on this foot awhile."
Tessa took the injured foot in her hand and looked up into Richie's big, expressionless eyes. "Chou-chou, we have been over this so many times," she said exhaustedly. "You are not more trouble than you're worth."
"I'm a lot of trouble, though--I know it and you know it. And I know better than you do what I'm worth."
Tessa looked over at Duncan and he saw the despair in her eyes. They seemed to have the same discussions with Richie over and over, and each time they would think the question was settled once and for all--only to have him come back with the same litany. "Richie, you wear us out sometimes, yes, but have we ever complained?" he asked. "We've punished you, when you needed it, but have we ever said you were a bad boy?"
He shrugged and began drumming his heels in that way that set their teeth on edge every time. "I am. And worthless, too. Just send me back--there are much nicer kids that need to be adopted."
Tessa had tears running down her face and Duncan reached out to her, but she ignored him. "I can't believe that," she said, glaring up at Richie. She lifted his injured foot and planted a kiss on the tip of the big toe. "There aren't any nicer kids. There is only one Richie, only one chou-chou for me." The tears were running faster, now. "Chou-chou, why can't we make you happy? We try and we try, but we can never make you happy, and I'm all out of words and ideas, and--"
"I told you so," Richie said, addressing Duncan. "Just send me back. Don't let her keep crying. I'm just a…an iceberg."
Tessa gasped, and Duncan looked at her in puzzlement. "What is it, sweetheart?"
"You heard me…oh, this is all my fault!" She jumped to her feet and hugged Richie fiercely, though he resisted. "Darling, oh, mon cher chou-chou, I am not angry with you, I am not tired of you."
He tried to pull away from her. "Yes, you are, and I don't blame you."
"No, I am never tired of you!" she insisted. "It is those people at Social Services who do not tell us what has happened to you, and those people who have hurt you, I am mad at them, I am tired of them. Oh, Richie, I could never be tired of you."
He actually allowed himself an expression at that, a sort of wistful smile. "You will be. And now I don't have a Christmas present for you."
Duncan still couldn't imagine what had precipitated this crisis, nor where Richie had gotten the notion he was an iceberg, of all things, but he couldn't bear to watch his wife and child suffer any longer. He shoved the other sock onto the injured foot, stood up, and took Richie into his arms again. "It's time to tuck you back into bed, tough guy. If it's important to you to make a Christmas present for your mom, then you and I will see what we can build tomorrow, okay? But you don't need to give us Christmas presents."
"No?" he asked, his dubious voice muffled in Duncan's shoulder.
Tessa trailed after them. "Chou-chou, you are our Christmas present."
Duncan thought he felt a slight moisture on his skin, perhaps a tear, and ached for the deep-seated pain that even Immortality wouldn't heal.
Monday, August 12, 1985:
By the time Richie had lived a year with the MacLeods in their apartment over the antique store, they had become so attached to him that the approach of their final adoption hearing loomed before them more like a threat of doom than a promise of blessing. Until they had passed safely through that hearing, Richie wasn't officially theirs, and until he was officially theirs, any contact with the social services system brought something very like terror into their home. To their dismay, the actual hearing wasn't scheduled until the thirteenth month, leaving them speculating as to the cause of the delay. And the fact that Richie was sick, and had been most of the summer, didn't help. How would that look to the judge?
Mycoplasmic pneumonia, the doctor had called it.
At first, it had appeared to be a cold. But it hung on for weeks, getting worse through two courses of antibiotics, and then Tessa caught it, too. It was, the doctor told them when he finally made the diagnosis, a hard illness to identify--no comfort for Duncan, who had spent half the summer watching his wife and foster son grow thin and fretful as they fought for air.
Tessa had put aside her artwork after a few days--she couldn't hold her hands steady, and just breathing was already hard work. Richie had stopped playing, except to watch his trains and remote-controlled truck, and got up only to watch television. Their apartment had echoed with the sounds of hacking, wracking coughs, and Duncan was reminded most uncomfortably of the days when consumption decimated slum populations and sometimes wiped out whole families. He put aside all his own usual activities, even his morning runs, to take care of them.
Once the mycoplasm was diagnosed, both had begun improving almost immediately with the help of erythromycin, antihistamine, inhalers, cough medicine, and some other medication Duncan couldn't even pronounce. Tessa was now able to walk and breathe at the same time, and Duncan had no difficulty believing she would be fully recovered in another week or so. Richie, having been sick several weeks longer, was recovering more slowly, but they still had another six days' medication, so Duncan remained confident it would work.
The night before the hearing, Richie had to be helped from the couch after "Star Trek" was over. He had been sick so long, now, that he was exhausted all the time, and he'd dozed through most of the episode.
"It's only seven o'clock, Mom," the boy protested at being rousted from his nest, the very effort of talking sending him into wracking coughs.
"But tomorrow's our court date," Tessa reminded him. "You want to be well for the judge, don't you? We don't want the judge to think we don't take good care of you, do you?"
He stopped and stared up at her in consternation, struggling to get past a wheeze to ask, "Would he take me away because of this?"
She pushed him along. "Let's not find out, chou-chou, okay?"
Duncan listened to them hack and argue down the hall, smiling faintly. Tessa never used to say "okay"--she had considered it too slangy, too vulgar, too bourgeois--too American. Richie was affecting her vocabulary.
The phone rang, a call from Father Andresson to enquire into the progress of the sufferers, and to pass on his best wishes for the hearing. By the time Duncan hung up, half an hour later, Tessa still had not reappeared, but the raw, sonorous coughs had eased into the occasional rasps they produced at rest.
Duncan went to Richie's room to wish him a good night, hoping he wasn't too late. He stopped short in the doorway. Tessa sat on the bed, her back resting against the headboard and Richie nestled across her lap. His golden-red curls brushed her chin; his face, angelic in sleep, was pillowed on her bosom as if he were an infant fallen asleep while nursing. Tessa looked up at Duncan with just the tiniest cough and made a "shhh" motion with her lips. It wasn't necessary; Duncan wouldn't have dreamed of disturbing that tableau. Instead, he withdrew and went to fetch his camera.
*****
"We don't have anything to worry about," Duncan assured her for the fifth time in an hour. "The only possible problem would be if my paperwork didn't hold up, and if they haven't found any holes in that yet, they're not going to. We've got Mrs. Branaugh on our side. Father Andresson, Sister Augustina, Sister Mary Benedict and Sister Placida have written letters supporting our case, there's never been a problem with any of the home inspections, his reading level has almost caught up to his age group. Why should they take him away?"
Tessa shrugged, nestling up against him for warmth--her chest still felt like a very heavy block of ice, and just at the moment her heart was trembling within it. "I don't know. I just know I won't feel safe until it's over and he is ours. I might not feel quite so terrified if your papers weren't forged, but I think I would be afraid no matter what. I…Duncan, I had no idea when I first suggested we adopt him how desperately I would end up loving him. If they take him away now…"
Duncan's arms tightened around her. "They won't. We won't let them."
"But, how can we help--" Even if he hadn't interrupted, her demand dissolved into a coughing fit.
"Tess, trust me? I won't let anyone take Richie away from us. One way or another, he's ours."
She couldn't imagine what other way there might be, but she took some small comfort from his confidence. The clock struck ten and she reluctantly pulled from his embrace. "I should take my own advice and go to bed. I accidentally saw myself in the mirror this morning and I don't know how you can stand lying in bed each night beside an extra from a zombie movie. I don't want to go to court looking that bad, or the judge will run screaming from his chambers."
"You're still beautiful," Duncan assured her.
"I know better, but I appreciate the thought." She started to kiss him, turned her head away to cough, then tried again. "I would like to kill you, by the way," she told him, not for the first time.
"Hey, it wasn't my idea for my immune system to get turbo-charged," he protested, also not for the first time. "I could fake a few wheezes if it would make you feel better."
Tessa left him opening the book he'd been reading the past couple days, a novel whose lurid jacket promised "murder, madness and lust" among other things. It made her sigh to leave him so, knowing that when he joined her in bed it would only be to sleep--every time they had tried to make love the last few weeks, it had only sent her into breathless paroxysms which--though he said they produced interesting sensations for him--seriously impaired her own enjoyment. Still, she was already much better; it couldn't go on much longer.
She stopped by Richie's room first and, seeing he had kicked away his covers, went to tuck him in a little more securely. It struck her as she bent to kiss his forehead that his breathing didn't sound right. She debated a moment, wondering what she should do. Sleep had been so difficult for them both with this illness, it would be a shame to wake him if nothing was wrong. But she had been mothering Richie for more than a year, now, and she was sure his breathing wasn't right, even allowing for the mycoplasm. Hesitantly, feeling a little foolish, she put a hand on his shoulder. "Richie. Wake up, chou-chou. Richie." She shook his shoulder a little, very gently. Children were heavy sleepers, she knew that. She raised her voice, "Richie!" and stopped to cough. "Come, chou-chou, talk to me." She patted his face. "Wake up, Richie," she implored, becoming seriously alarmed. "Richie!" She turned on his bedside lamp, then patted his face harder, almost slapping him.
Richie lay limply on his pillow, completely unresponsive. She pulled open one of his eyes, and found his pupil constricted to a pinpoint. "Duncan!" she screamed, the effort tearing at her raw throat as she pulled Richie into a sitting position.
Duncan appeared in the doorway moments later, his katana in his hand ready to defend them from whatever threatened. "What's wrong?" he demanded, looking around and apparently seeing no threat.
Tessa felt an hysterical urge to laugh. What use was a sword? "He won't wake up," she wailed.
Duncan crossed the room in three strides, tossed the katana aside on the bed, and lifted Richie into his arms. "Come on, tough guy, you're scaring your mom, wake up," he urged, jiggling him. "Wake up."
Richie lolled in the Scotsman's arms as if he'd been made of rubber bands. He barely seemed to breathe at all.
"Tessa, call 911. Hurry!"