A Full House

Annie flushed at his words. She could feel the band of pain tightening in her temples as she crossed the room and regarded both her daughter and the man she’d been talking to. “I understand you’re the…the officer who arrested my daughter,” she said to Lieutenant Macpherson who had straightened out of his slouch at her approach. Up close she could see his hair was a dark tawny color and his eyes were pale. Blue or gray, she couldn’t quite tell, but they were clear, keen, intelligent eyes.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’d like to speak with you in private, if I may, before you take your daughter home.”

“I’m sure there’s been some mistake,” Annie said. “Sally doesn’t belong in here.”

“Oh, but she does,” Macpherson contradicted in a maddeningly mild voice. “She was in a vehicle full of kids smoking pot. I just happened to be working a stakeout when they stopped to ask me where they could buy some more.” He shrugged. “Guess I look like the type that would know. I brought them in. They’re a lot safer here than they were in that part of town.”

Annie stared at him, her face burning and her heart beating loudly in her ears. She turned to Sally. “Is that true?”

Sally kept her eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

Annie stared at the other kids. Five of them, all older than Sally. Two girls, three boys. One of the boys was perilously close to manhood, and when he glanced at Sally, Annie frowned. “Are you Tom?” she asked. At his sullen nod, her blood pressure climbed another notch. “Sally, you told me that Tom was your age and that he was on the honor role.” Aspirin. She needed a handful of aspirin…and a stiff drink.

“Dr. Crawford,” Macpherson said, shoulders rounding as he shoved his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “It’s important that I speak with you privately.”

Annie followed him reluctantly into the corridor, where he paused near the water fountain. He was tall, she noticed, having to look up to meet his eyes, and well built. “Once you sign for her release, you can take Sally home. She’ll need to be present at a court hearing, and the juvenile officer will explain that to you.” He hesitated for a moment. “We’d also like her to sign an agreement stating that she’ll have no further contact with Tom Ward. That boy’s only seventeen years old but his police record spans four years and includes shoplifting, vandalism and drug trafficking on school grounds.” Annie’s blood pressure soared to new heights at his words.

“Because this is Sally’s first offense,” Macpherson continued, “we’re recommending that she attend a ten-hour program held at her school for two hours every Tuesday evening. It’s called Jump Start and its purpose is to deter young people from getting into any more trouble.”

“I can assure you Sally will never step foot in a precinct house again,” Annie said grimly.

Macpherson nodded. “Probably not. She seems like a good kid and she’s pretty shaken up right now, but this program will make her understand the repercussions of bad behavior.”

“All right,” Annie agreed.

“I talked to Sally for a little while because she obviously didn’t belong with the rest of those kids. Her biggest fear right now is that you’ll be so mad you won’t let her visit her father this summer.”

“She told you that?”

Macpherson nodded. Annie’s stomach churned and her head pounded. She drew a deep, even breath. “Well, she’s right,” she said.

“I think that would be a mistake,” Macpherson said.

“Really.” Annie had to resist the urge to slap his arrogant, unshaved face.

“From what she told me, she misses him a great deal. Maybe I’m speaking out of place, but I have a daughter, too, Dr. Crawford. She lives with her mother in Los Angeles. I talk to her on the phone as often as I can, but it isn’t the same as being there.”

“Then might I suggest you move to California, Lieutenant,” Annie said. “That’s what any caring father would do.” She turned her back on him and returned to the room where Sally waited with the other teenagers. “You,” she said coolly to her daughter after signing all the appropriate release forms, “are under house arrest.” She paused. “For the rest of your life.”

They rode home in silence. There was nothing that Annie could say to bridge the awful void. Her thoughts were a chaos of conflicting emotions. Sally was unhurt. It could have turned out much worse. But how had she snuck out of the apartment past the night watchman? How could Ana Lise have let this happen?

Four in the morning and Ana Lise was waiting for them. She had made coffee, and the smell of it bolstered Annie’s flagging spirits. Ana Lise made rich, marvelous coffee. She took the offered cup and motioned Sally into the living room. “Sit,” she said wearily. “We need to talk.” She sank onto the couch while Sally perched uneasily on the edge of a chair. “How did you get out of the apartment?”

Sally’s eyes dropped. “I climbed into the dumbwaiter.”

“You climbed into the dumbwaiter,” Annie repeated woodenly. “You had prearranged plans to meet Tom and his friends and go out joyriding on a Saturday night to smoke some dope and get high.”

“Mom…”

“Sally, you’re just thirteen years old.”

“So what? I’m not a baby,” Sally said, becoming sullen.

“Then why are you acting like one?” Annie rose from the couch and paced across the room, clutching her half-empty coffee cup. Gray hairs, she thought. Millions of them. I’m well on my way to total gray and damn close to being forty years old… “Where did you meet those kids, and how long have you been hanging around with them?”

“Tom’s Melanie’s brother. He’s really nice…”

“Nice? Is that how you describe a guy who lures you out in the middle of the night and gets you arrested? A guy who has a four-year police record that includes selling drugs on school property? How can I ever trust you again? How can I ever leave here and not wonder where you are when 2:00 a.m. rolls around?”

“It’s not Tom’s fault. He didn’t do all those things they said.”

“No, of course not. Tell me something. Has he told you about the birds and the bees yet? Has he told you that girls can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex? That if he can’t have sex with you he’ll find someone else who really cares about him?”

Sally’s body language became increasingly defiant. “It’s not like that.”

Annie’s eyes lasered her daughter’s. “It had better not be. I don’t want you seeing him ever again.” She turned her back on her daughter and paced to the window. Looked out onto the blaze of lights that stretched out forever. Big city. Enormous city. City that never slept. She sipped coffee to steady her nerves. “Your father called tonight,” she said when she could speak calmly.

“Dad?” Sally’s voice was a poignant mixture of remorse and hope. “Does he know about this? Did you tell him?”

“He called before I knew myself.” Annie turned to face her daughter. “He told me that he wants you to spend some time with him this summer. Trudy’s going to have the baby soon, and he thought it would be good for you to be there for the birth, so you could get to know your brother right from the start.”

Sally’s eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. “He said that?” she said, her face working.

Annie’s heart turned over. She felt breathless and turned away, wandering to the cherry highboy beside the fireplace. She trailed her fingers across the satiny finish of the old heirloom and finished her coffee. “Do you want to go?” she asked.

“I miss Dad,” she said simply.

Annie nodded. The highboy was a beautiful piece, her great-grandmother’s. It had begun its life in Cotswold, had been shipped to Australia for two generation’s worth of family history and then had come to America when Annie had married. One day it would be Sally’s. Annie pictured her mother’s kind and patient face, so very far away from her now, and her eyes stung. “Someday you’ll have children of your own,” she said softly, turning to face her daughter. “And that, young lady, will be my revenge. Now go to bed.”

Annie should have returned to work but she didn’t. She phoned Matt, who told her not to bother. Everything was quiet at the hospital and only one hour remained of her shift. “Remember, you owe me that camping trip,” he reminded her before hanging up. She sat out on the balcony and sipped another cup of coffee while Ana Lise worked through her guilt in the kitchen by baking. She brought Annie a big piece of apple strudel, fresh from the oven, and hovered over her.

“I am so sorry about all of this, madam,” she said. Ana Lise had never called her “madam” before and it startled Annie, who raised her eyebrows at her housekeeper in surprise.

“Oh, Ana Lise. Go back to bed. It’s not your fault. But from now on I think we should put a lockout on the dumbwaiter after 6:00 p.m.”

“Ja, ja.” Ana Lise nodded vigorously, relieved. “I think so, too.”

Annie watched the sun rise over the city, heard the burgeoning swell of noise gather faintly and then grow until the peace was gone, obliterated by swarms of cars, buses, trucks and people. Millions of people, all going somewhere, doing something. Alive and living for the moment…

She sighed. The camping trip with Matt suddenly appealed very strongly. She was a country girl at heart, having grown up on a big sheep station that her father managed. Her father had been a great man and a great leader of men. Quite a shock it had been to a lot of people when he had died in the Outback soon after Annie’s seventeenth birthday. He hadn’t come in one day from riding the fence line, that endless wire fence erected to deter the dingoes, the wild dogs of Australia, from the sheep. They had sent search parties out that night and more the following morning. More than a hundred men had searched for three days, but he was dead when they found him, he and his horse, both.

They found the horse first, just three miles from the fence line. Broken leg. Shot. Searchers reconstructed the scenario. The horse had spooked and thrown John Gorley, then bolted three miles before the fall that fractured its cannon bone. Gorley had followed the horse, eventually finding and destroying it. He had been hurt himself in the fall, worse than he would probably have admitted, because John Gorley was not a man to admit to any sort of weakness.

Knowing where he was, he’d cut due south to intersect the fence line near the Boranga station, but had died two miles shy of his destination. The autopsy had proved his grit. Big John Gorley had walked over fifteen miles in two days of relentless heat with no food, one pint of water, a broken arm, six broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

The Outback had killed her father, yet it had nurtured him, too. Annie had not forgotten the harsh beauty of it, the smell and the taste and the feel and the sound of it. She was born in Australia and the land of her birth was in her blood. Sally had never seen the land down under, nor had she expressed any desire to, but that might change as she matured and became more curious about her roots. About her grandmother who lived in Melbourne now and her uncles, two of whom worked at Boranga and the third who had stayed on at Dad’s station.

“Daddy,” Annie said softly, marveling at how unreal his death still seemed, how impossibly remote the idea that she would never see him again or hear his deep, humor-filled voice or feel the intense glow of pride his words of praise could evoke in her.