those treatments again.
Chemotherapy."
She
waved the words away.
"They're
a bunch of witch doctors. They can maybe slow it down but other than
that they don't have a clue."
She
sighed heavily and reached out to Heck again, stroking his cheek.
"Heck
took it hard. Harder than Nicky. Heck—" She began to edit
herself. "To make a long story short—"
"No
need," I said. "It's probably best if I hear it all."
She
nodded resignedly. "Heck took it hard. Nicky meant everything to
him. He must have forced that poor kid into about a dozen second
opinions. Nicky was like a pin cushion, but Heck just had to do
something. Couldn't stand feeling helpless. He just had to do
something to fix things. He always had to fix things." She
paused.
"Anyway,
when he got more or less the same diagnosis from everybody, Heck had
this harebrained idea. He and Nicky were going fishing together. Back
into business. They were going to refit the Lady Day and hit the high
seas together." She shook her head. "I don't know what he
was thinking. Other than taking the Clipper up to Victoria, Heck
hadn't been out on the water in ten years."
Another
pause, as she reminisced.
"Well,
we did have a little thirty-foot Sea Ray for a while there, but
somehow it just seemed to make him sad." She flicked a gaze in
my direction. "So we sold it."
"Heck
and Nicky were going fishing," I prompted.
"Heck
said it would take Nicky's mind off it all. That the sea air would do
him wonders. None of it made any sense, but he wouldn't listen, and
Nicky— well—he just idolized Heck. Whatever his dad said was
gospel."
She
was winding up now. "He gave Nicky the Lady Day. Signed it over
to him. He gave Nicky his trust fund so they could refit the boat.
They knew damn well they wouldn't get the money from me," she
added defiantly.
Catching
herself, she went on.
"The
boat was sound. Heck always kept it up, but it needed new
electronics. The navigational equipment and radar were out of date."
She
shot a murderous glance at the inanimate Heck. Her hands closed into
bejeweled fists. I recognized the signs. Her resolve was waning.
Clients often reach a point where they'd rather live with the
problem than have to finish telling the story to a stranger.
"And?"
I said.
"And,
they almost got it finished." "Then?" A chill ran down
my spine like a drop of icy rain. She transferred her glare to me.
"And then Miss Allison Stark came along." This time I
waited.
"Nicky
met her at one of his therapy sessions. I
don't
know what she was doing there. He used to go to these meetings with
other cancer patients. You know, support groups. Where they could
share. Heck hated it. He kept saying that Nicky didn't have cancer
like those other people. Not like lung cancer or liver cancer. He
couldn't face it, just couldn't stand it."
She
was losing her thread. I poked her back on track.
"Allison
Stark?"
"Allison
Stark Sundstrom," she snapped, angry I'd reeled her in. "They're
married?"
"They're
dead," she said quickly, hitching her breath. "Or that's
what everyone except Heck thought."
I
could hear Heck's smooth breathing, the muted hum of machinery
somewhere in the bowels of the building, a toilet flushing next door.
"Let's
start back with Allison Stark," I suggested.
"She
came over Nicky like . . ." Marge mused, "like . . ."
She
read my mind. "Yeah . . . like I did over Heck. But"—she
wagged a finger at me—"this was different."
"Different
how?"
"There
was something about that girl. It's hard to describe."
My
eyebrows gave me away.
"I
know that sounds strange, Leo, but it's true. From the minute I met
her, something in me knew the girl wasn't real."
"You're
gonna have to fill this in for me."
Suddenly
we were in a movie that Marge had run before. The original definition
of the word rehearsal strolled across my mind: To raise up or
resummon the dead. Grief, anger, and guilt all give us pause for
rehearsal.
"First,
there's the basic situation." Her voice rising.
"We've
got this