Trial By Fire

Ali was struck by the fact that Serenity Langley seemed far more concerned about the missing painting than she was about her dying mother. It was easy to see why Hal Cooper regarded his stepdaughter with such contempt.

James’s mother exited her son’s room and came into the waiting room. Walking past the others, she made her way to her still sleeping former husband, sat down next to him, and gently touched his shoulder. He came awake with a start.

“What is it?” he wanted to know. “What’s happened?”

“One of the doctors just called the room,” she said. “They want to talk to us about-”

Breaking off, she leaned against his shoulder and sobbed.

“What?” he said. “They need to talk to us about what?”

“About scheduling surgery.” She choked on the words. “Surgery and skin grafts. He’s going to be scarred for life, Max. Our poor handsome boy.” With that, she began weeping, while he gave her heaving shoulder a series of awkward but comforting pats.

For the better part of two days, the warring couple had waged a very public battle. For now hostilities seemed to have subsided.

“It’s okay, Lisa,” he murmured over and over. “It’s okay. We’ll get through it somehow.”

For a time their family drama took center stage. When Ali looked away, Serenity was back on her phone.

“It’s me again,” she said. “My mother’s Klee seems to have gone missing. See if you can find out if anyone is offering a new Static-Dynamic Gradations for sale. Whatever’s become of our Russian friend, Yarnov? He’s a great fan of Klee and he’s not fussy about provenance.”

As in someone willing to buy stolen goods? Ali thought as she typed the name Yarnov.

Serenity was clearly upset to learn that her mother’s painting had disappeared, but Ali couldn’t help wondering if the woman didn’t know far more about it than she was letting on. The painting had come into the family under less than honest circumstances. Serenity had no qualms about what her father and grandfather had done in cheating Phoebe Pankhurst’s relatives-to say nothing of the IRS-out of what was rightfully theirs. Ali suspected that Serenity Langley had firsthand knowledge about Mr. Yarnov’s lack of concern about provenance.

James’s mother had finally quit crying. Once she dried her tears, she and her husband went to confer with their son’s physician. For a time after they left the only sound in the room was the clatter of Ali’s keyboard. Suddenly, Winston turned around and glared at Ali over his shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “It sounds like you’re writing down everything we say. Are you?”

Caught red-handed, Ali was groping for an appropriate response when Sister Anselm arrived at the waiting room entrance and came to Ali’s rescue.

“She’s working for me,” the nun explained. “I’m tired of having other people write whatever they want about me. I asked the diocese for permission for an authorized biography, and I’ve asked Miss McCa

Having thus quashed the Ali discussion, Sister Anselm looked around the waiting room. “Has anyone seen Mr. Cooper? I expected him back by now.”

As if on cue, the elevator door opened and Hal stepped off. “There you are,” Sister Anselm said. “Your wife is starting to wake up again. If she’s going to see her son and daughter, now would probably be a good time.”

Hal nodded. “I’ll see what she wants me to do. And thanks for your suggestion. The concierge says not to worry. He’ll send a bellman up to the room every couple of hours to take Maggie for a walk, and they’ll feed her later this afternoon. I’d hate to be gone when…”

He left the rest of the sentence unsaid. Setting his jaw, he marched past Agent Robson and his stepchildren and made straight for Mimi’s room, followed by Sister Anselm.

His arrival had been enough to take the focus off Ali and her computer.

“Can you think of anything else?” Agent Robson asked Serenity.

She shook her head.

“What about you, Mr. Langley?”

“Nothing to add,” Winston Junior responded. “I think that just about covers it.”

“All right, then,” Robson said, pocketing his notebook. “I need to make a few calls, but if your mother is able to give you any information…”

Serenity patted the pocket where she had stowed the business card Agent Robson had given her. “Yes,” she said. “We’ll call you immediately.”

Ducking her head, Ali resumed typing.

Before, she had fought desperately to wake up. Early on, opening her eyes was the only thing that had allowed her to escape the nightmare of flames. Now, though, she would have preferred to stay dreaming and asleep instead of having to return to this stark hospital room with its humming machinery and this strange bed.

This time Mimi had found herself walking along a sandy beach with her mother. Moments later her mother disappeared from the beach, but Mimi was still there, playing ball with her dog, her first dog, Rover. That had to be more than sixty years ago now, but in her dream, her bluetick hound had been alive once more, bringing the grubby sand-covered te

“Mimi,” Hal said from somewhere close at hand. “Are you awake?”

She was awake and yet she wasn’t. She didn’t want to leave Rover behind. Would she ever see him again?

But Hal was speaking to her insistently, and she needed to listen. She needed to pay attention. Struggling, she finally managed to open her eyes. Hal stood above her, smiling. He looked a little better. His hair was combed. He had shaved.

“I just got back from feeding Maggie,” he was saying. “If I’m gone for very long, the concierge says he’ll make sure someone walks her and feeds her.”

The concierge. What concierge? Our house doesn’t have a concierge. What is he thinking? But Maggie? If someone is walking her and feeding her, that must mean she’s all right. That means she didn’t die. They didn’t hurt her. Thank you, God. Thank you.

Hal was speaking to her again. She concentrated on the words coming out of his mouth, trying to make sense of them.

“Win and Serenity are outside,” he was saying. “Do you want to see them?”

See them? Of course she wanted to see them. Serenity could be a bitch at times, and there were occasions when Win looked and sounded so much like his father that she wanted to haul off and hit him. She sometimes wondered if he was like his father in other ways besides looks and voice. Was Win faithful to his new wife, or did he cheat on her the same way his father had cheated on Mimi? And what was her daughter-in-law’s name again?

Try as she might, Mimi couldn’t quite dredge it up. She knew the two of them were expecting a baby sometime soon, and that the baby was a boy-would be a boy. This would be Mimi’s very first grandchild, but she still couldn’t remember Win’s wife’s name.

Why are names so tricky? Why was it she knew Rover’s name so well, but not her daughter-in-law’s or, for a time, not even her own?

But yes, these were Mimi’s children, warts and all. Despite Serenity’s and Win’s shortcomings and despite their disagreements, she still loved them. She wanted to see them. One blink for yes. One blink for yes, absolutely.

“Sister Anselm says it might be better if you see them together,” Hal went on. “She’s afraid seeing them one at a time will tire you too much. I’m worried about that, too. So is it all right to have them both in at the same time?”