Page 16 of Free to Fall

I couldn’t reply with words. Then.

To Alice in a later session, I said, “She captured who and what I believe in.”

“And that is?”

“I’m a woman, a doctor, and a victim. My heart’s going to bleed for what I believe in.”

Alice didn’t disagree. “Yes, because not only do you throw yourself into everything, you do it with your whole heart.”

I rub my fingers over the still tender skin. These remarkable dripping symbols of my life will also remind me of my capability to heal.

“One day at a time,” I reassure myself. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. Isn’t that what I tell my patients?

And most of them don’t have the support system I do.

My mother, father, and brothers have hardly left my side. Aunts, uncles, cousins—everyone who could be there physically has been and if they couldn’t be, they’ve only been a phone call away. “But now, it’s time to see what happens when I try to move forward instead of constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for life to happen to me again.”

I’m startled from my musings when I hear footsteps on the flagstone. Jolting, a mild twinge of pain I refuse to acknowledge, surges up my back when I find both of my parents staring down at me with open concern, both of them having noticed my flinch. Before they can ask, I automatically state, “I’m fine.”

My father holds a large white box in his arms. He chides, “I thought it was only your brothers who used to lie to our faces.”

Before I can manage a rejoinder, my mother mimics me, “‘Mama, I swear I didn’t mean to use your last lipstick on Jon and Chuck’” She tacks on, “‘They needed a heart and kidneys, Mama. The steak and chicken were perfect, but they weren’t the right color.’”

“How could I forget about Laura playing life-size Operation?” My father’s lips twitch.

My shoulders shake with the memory of having my brothers lie on our dining room table, torso’s painted in red lipstick and food coloring, and our dinner leftovers placed strategically on their bodies. Relaxing, I tip my head back to receive my father’s kiss, reminiscing, “Be grateful I only used tongs to remove the parts. Jon used to taunt Chuck he was going to get a knife.”

“Thank goodness you never shared that before your brothers were grown,” Mama agrees.

“They’re grown? When did that happen?”

“They’re out of the house,” she corrects herself before crawling to the far side of the chaise and encouraging me to curl up against her. She nods to the box still in my father’s lap. “You received a gift.”

He hands it over. I pluck at the florist bow for a few before my hands fall to the side, and I ask baldly, “Which cousin sent it this time?”

“My guess? Kalie and Grace. You haven’t received anything from them this week.” Kalie and Grace are both my roommates and my first cousins. The three of us own a home in nearby Darien—a home I haven’t stepped foot in since the night of the shooting.

I pull at the bow and flick off the lid.

Then I scream—loud and long. I’m immediately swept back, caught up in the moment the burn penetrated my shoulder.

My mother wraps her hand around my neck and presses my head into her shoulder.

It isn’t until I hear my father holler into his cell phone, “Motherfucker, you have a mole in your goddamned evidence room!” He pauses to listen for a moment. “No, I’m looking at it right now. Now send someone you trust with your damned life to my house,” that I realize this is actually happening.

This nightmare isn’t over. At least, not for me.

Even though my father whipped it away from me, I have to know what I’m up against. Crawling to the end of the lounger, I’m stopped before I touch it when my father wraps his arms around my waist. “No, Laura.”

“Daddy, I need to see it.” My words are certain, my voice is void of emotion.

Twisting, still holding me as he used to when I was a child, he lets me get a long look at what was just a glimpse before—something I thought was a cruel joke. Now that I know it wasn’t. “That’s the scrub top I was wearing the night Paulie Tiberi shot me,” I confirm.

My name tag is draped across. Both are splattered with blood—mine and at least Gino Tiberi’s. “Who knows who else’s is on there?” I mumble under my breath.

Before any of us can say any more, the sound of sirens comes down Farm Lane. My father places me back next to my mother. When the doors open and close, he yells, “We’re around back.”

“Yes, Mr. Lockwood.”

---