Page 23 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Uncle Alex, how do you know that Blondell didn’t shoot her children?” she asked one last time.

He plucked the string from the carpet and held it out proudly as if he were a five-year-old boy searching for worms and had found a night crawler.

“I’m going to speak to the administration here,” Aunty-Pen was saying as she returned to the room. “They’re supposed to keep you and all your things pristine, and these,” she held up his spectacles, “were far from it.” Frowning, she set her husband’s glasses onto his face, carefully making certain the bows fit over his ears. “Now, Alexander, isn’t that better?” she asked.

He looked through the sparkling lenses and really smiled for the first time since his wife and niece had entered his room.

“Hollis!” he said, spying Nikki as if for the first time. Again tears threatened. “Baby girl!” His throat caught. “I thought you were . . . I mean, I dreamed this horrible nightmare that you were gone.” He blinked back tears of relief and joy while Nikki withered inside.

“Oh, Alexander,” Aunty-Pen whispered under her breath, turning away to hide her own emotions.

Embarrassed, Nikki said, “I’m not—” but stopped short when she caught another of her aunt’s warning glances and quiet shake of her head. Instead she held her uncle’s hands in her own and felt a cold desperation slide through her as she realized he had retreated again into the fog that was his mind.

Looking into his suddenly happy eyes, Nikki smiled at him and decided her aunt was right to not try to force him to recognize her. For a few seconds she could be Hollis. What would it hurt? He seemed so relieved to see his daughter that once again Nikki didn’t try to dissuade him of a truth he so desperately wanted, even if it didn’t exist.

A gentle rap on the open door caught her attention, and a young woman in bright scrubs step

ped inside. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Alex had company. It’s time for his meds.”

“We were just leaving,” Aunty-Pen insisted, indicating to Nikki that their short visit was over.

Before Nikki could start for the door, though, Uncle Alex reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing her fingers with a surprisingly strong grip. “Please,” he said, an undercurrent of desperation in his voice, “About Blondell.” From the corner of her eye, she caught the sudden stiffening of her aunt’s spine.

“Yes?” Nikki said.

“Don’t tell a soul,” he whispered, then winked at her.

Again Nikki remembered Amity’s words that night: . . . please, please, please don’t tell a soul. If you do we’ll both be dead . . .

She stared at him, shaken, but whatever glimmer of awareness had been there was gone now, dissipating from his fixed gaze as he stared blankly ahead of himself.

Aunt Penelope suddenly looked very sad. “Let’s go,” she said, and Nikki released her uncle’s hand.

“Bye,” she whispered, but he didn’t respond, didn’t even act as if he knew she’d been in the room.

As the nurse moved in to give him his pills, Nikki and her aunt made their way down a long corridor where the walls were a creamy white and sturdy handrails ran between doorways. The carpet had a tight nap so that residents in wheelchairs could navigate the hallways, and the pictures hung between the rooms were copies of familiar pieces in soft hues. Aunty-Pen didn’t stop at the front desk. She appeared to have forgotten that she was going to lodge a complaint about her husband’s care.

“Such a shame,” she said as they walked through the main doors.

Outside, clouds were gathering, and what had promised to be a warmer day was now turning colder. Once in the car, Nikki adjusted the heat as she drove her aunt home.

“It’s difficult,” Penelope admitted as she stared out the passenger-side window. Biting the corner of her lip, she managed to shear off a flake of rose-colored lipstick. “He was such a dashing man, you know. Brilliant. That’s what really got to me way back when. He could have had any girl on campus, and he chose me.” She slid a glance toward Nikki, her mouth turning down at the corners, but then she visibly straightened her spine, the seat belt tightening around her shoulders. “Well, a lot has changed since those idealistic days when I was an undergraduate and he was a law student with his future stretching before him.” She looked through the windshield again, gazing into a distance only she could see.

Nikki, still mulling over her uncle’s warning, didn’t know what to say. She and Penelope hadn’t ever been close, and they had grown more distant with the deaths of Hollis and Elton. While Uncle Alex had embraced Nikki and her siblings, Aunty-Pen had found it too painful, a reminder of what she, as a mother, had lost.

And Aunty-Pen had another cross to bear: the persistent rumor that Uncle Alex had been involved with his notorious, beautiful client Blondell O’Henry. The stink of that gossip had never left Alexander McBaine, and along with his courtroom defeat, his rising star had fizzled. Soon thereafter the first signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s began to manifest themselves.

Before Blondell, Penelope Hilton McBaine had thought she would rise with her husband as he moved ever upward into the political arena. She’d even had her eye on the governor’s mansion.

“Hogwash,” Charlene had muttered upon hearing Aunty-Pen’s ambitions. “What a pipe dream! That could never happen with his clientele!” She’d never liked Uncle Alex and detested the fact that he would “stoop so low” as to represent the likes of Blondell O’Henry. “This has nothing to do with the law,” she’d confided to Nikki once after having come from a luncheon at the country club and, smelling slightly of gin and cigarettes, picked her daughter up after school. “It’s all about fame and money, let me tell you!” With a sly glance at Nikki in the passenger seat, she’d confided, “He has a thing for her, you know.” Then, as she’d concentrated on slowing for an amber light, she added more sourly, “All the men in this town do.”

“Oh, come on, Mom.”

“Trust me on this one. It’s just that Alex has the balls to do something about it.”

“You think he’s involved with Amity’s mom?”

“I’m just saying no good will come of his taking her case. Mark my words!” The light changed and the conversation ended, but Nikki had never forgotten her mother’s comments that day.

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