The House on Hope Street Read online

  Liz had still been in the kitchen in her bathrobe when they called. It was about ten minutes after Jack left, and she had a funny feeling suddenly that it might be Amanda. But she was surprised when it was a strange voice on the phone. The caller said he was a police officer and they had reason to believe that her husband had been injured at their office, and had asked them to call her. An ambulance had already been dispatched to their office.

  “My husband?” She wondered if it was a prank. It didn’t make any sense. He had only left a few minutes before. “Was he in a car accident on the way over?” But why didn’t he call her himself? This was crazy.

  “The caller said he had been shot,” the officer said gently.

  “Shot? Jack? Are you sure?”

  “They’re not on the scene yet, but the caller asked us to call his wife, and gave us your number. You might want to go right over.” As Liz listened to him, she thought about going upstairs to get dressed, and then decided not to. If it was true, and Jack was hurt, she needed to get there in a hurry. She thanked the voice on the phone, and ran to the foot of the stairs to call out to Peter and tell him to keep an eye on Jamie.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she called up to him when he acknowledged her, and she didn’t wait around to explain it. She just grabbed her car keys off the kitchen counter, and headed out the door in her bathrobe. And as soon as she got in her car, and backed out of the driveway, she found herself praying … let him be okay … please God … let him be okay … please…. The words on the phone kept ringing in her head … the caller said he had been shot … shot … shot … but how could Jack have been shot? That was crazy. It was Christmas and he had to make the stuffing. All she could think of was the look on his face as he had smiled at her and walked out of the kitchen in his khakis and red sweater … the caller had been shot.…

  She drove into the parking lot outside their office at breakneck speed and saw two squad cars and an ambulance with their lights flashing, and she ran inside as fast as she could to see what had happened. She raced up the stairs saying his name under her breath … Jack … Jack … as though to call out to him … to let him know she was coming, and she couldn’t see him when she walked in. All she could see was the cluster of police officers and paramedics hovering around him. The paramedics were working on him, and as she looked behind them, she saw the wall of blood where Phil Parker had shot himself, and she felt dizzy the instant she saw it. His body lay below it, covered by a tarp. And then, without thinking, she shoved one of the officers aside, and was suddenly looking down at her husband. He was the color of concrete, and his eyes were closed, as instantly she put a hand over her mouth and gasped, as she dropped to her knees beside him. And then as though he knew she was there, Jack’s eyes fluttered open. They had an IV in his arm, and were doing something to the wound in his chest. The sweater they had cut off lay on the bloodstained carpet beside him. There was blood everywhere, all over him and them and the carpet beneath him, and as she leaned over him, it was suddenly all over her too, but he smiled when he saw her.

  “What happened?” she asked, too frightened to even absorb what was happening, or understand it.

  “Parker,” he said in a whisper and closed his eyes again, as they moved him as gently and as swiftly as they could onto a gurney, but his eyes rolled back in his head as they did it, and then he looked at her again and frowned, determined to tell her something. “Love you … it’s okay, Liz.…” He tried to reach out to her with one hand, but he didn’t seem to have the strength, and as she ran beside the gurney with them, she could see him lose consciousness, and she was suddenly aware of an overwhelming sense of panic. They couldn’t stop the bleeding, and his blood pressure was dropping uncontrollably. Somebody grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her into the ambulance, the door slammed, and they careened away from the curb, and both paramedics were working frantically over him, and talking tersely to each other. But he didn’t open his eyes again, or speak to her, and she sat on the floor staring at what was happening, unable to believe what she was seeing, or what she was hearing. And then suddenly one of the paramedics was compressing Jack’s chest, as blood gushed everywhere. The ambulance seemed to be filled with Jack’s blood and she was covered with it, and she could hear the other paramedic saying over and over again … no pulse … no blood pressure … no heartbeat … as she stared at them in horror. And as they reached the hospital, they turned and looked at her and the one who had been doing the chest compressions on Jack shook his head with a look of sorrow.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do something … you have to do something … don’t stop … please don’t stop….” She was sobbing. “Please don’t….”

  “He’s gone … I’m sorry …”

  “He’s not gone … he’s not gone….”

  She sobbed, bending down and clutching Jack to her. Her bathrobe was stained red by then, but she could feel him lifeless in her arms, and the oxygen mask was hissing. And then they pulled her away from him and someone led her into the hospital, sat her down, and wrapped her in a blanket, and there were strange voices all around her. They brought the gurney into the hospital then, and when she looked up, she saw that they had covered him with a blanket, and his face was covered. She wanted to take the blanket off his face so he could breathe, but they rolled him past her. She didn’t know where they were taking him, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t speak. There was nothing she could do now, and she didn’t know where Jack was.

  “Mrs. Sutherland?” A nurse was standing in front of her and spoke to her finally. “I’m very sorry about your husband. Is there someone who can come and get you?”

  “I don’t know … I … where is he?”

  “We’ve taken him downstairs.” It had an ominous sound to it Liz hated. “Do you know where you’d like him taken?”

  “Taken?” Liz looked at her blankly, as though she were speaking in a foreign language.

  “You’re going to have to make arrangements.”

  “Arrangements?” All Liz could do was echo her words. She couldn’t think or speak like a normal person. What had they done with Jack? And what had happened? He had been shot. Where was he?

  “Is there someone you’d like me to call?”

  Liz didn’t even know what to answer. Who could she call? What was she supposed to do now? How had this happened? He was only going to the office for a few minutes to pick up a file, and he had to make the stuffing. And as she tried to make sense of it, one of the officers approached her.

  “We’ll take you home whenever you’re ready.” Liz looked at him blankly, as he and the nurse exchanged a glance. “Will there be someone at home when you get there?”

  “My children,” Liz said hoarsely, as she tried to stand up, but her legs were shaking and would hardly hold her, as the officer put an arm around her to support her.

  “Is there someone else you’d like me to call?”

  “I don’t know.” Who did you call when your husband was shot? Their secretary, Jean? Carole? Her mother in Connecticut? Without thinking, she gave them Jean’s and Carole’s numbers.

  “We’ll tell them to meet you at the house.” Liz nodded, as another officer went off to make the calls, and the nurse offered her a clean hospital robe to go home with, and helped her out of the robe she was wearing that was bright red with Jack’s blood now. Her nightgown was soaked with it too, but she didn’t change it. She knew there were friends she could call, but she couldn’t think who they were now. She couldn’t think of anything except Jack, lying there, and whispering to her that he loved her. She thanked the nurse for the robe and promised to send it back, and then she walked barefoot through the hospital hallway and outside to the police officers waiting for her in the squad car. The nurse at the desk told her to call them when she had made arrangements. Even the word sounded ugly to her. Liz made no sound as she got in the back of the squad car, and she didn’t even know
she was crying as tears rolled down her cheeks and she stared through the grille ahead of her at the backs of the two officers driving her home. They opened the car door for her, and helped her out when they got there, and offered to come in with her. But she shook her head, and began to sob as Carole walked down the driveway toward her, and Jean drove in at exactly the same moment. And suddenly both women were holding her, and all three of them were sobbing. It was beyond belief, this hadn’t happened to them. It couldn’t have. It was too hideous to be true. She was trapped in a nightmare. It wasn’t possible that Jack was gone. Things like this just didn’t happen to real people.

  “He killed Amanda too,” Jean said through tears as they stood there holding each other. The officer who’d called her had given her the details. “The kids are all right, or alive at least. They saw him do it. But he didn’t hurt them.” Phillip Parker had killed Amanda and Jack, and then himself. It was a wave of destruction that had hit them all. The Parker children were orphans. But all Liz could think of now was what she was going to say to her own children, and she knew that the moment they laid eyes on her they would know that something terrible had happened. There was blood in her hair, the blood-soaked nightgown had stained through the cotton bathrobe she’d gotten at the hospital, and she looked like she’d been in an accident herself. She looked like a wild woman as she stood there, staring blankly at the other two women.

  “How bad do I look?” Liz asked Carole, as she blew her nose, trying to regain her composure for her children.

  “Like Jackie Kennedy in Dallas,” Carole said bluntly, and Liz cringed at the image.

  She looked down at the gray cotton robe with the bloodstains still spreading on it. “Can you get me a clean robe? I’ll wait in the garage … and a comb …” She stood sobbing in Jean’s arms as she waited, trying to make sense of it, trying to get a grip on herself, and thinking of what she would tell the children. There was nothing she could tell them but the truth, but she knew that whatever she said now, and however she said it to them, would affect them for their entire lifetimes. It was an awesome burden. And she was still sobbing uncontrollably as Carole returned with the comb and a clean pink terry cloth bathrobe. She put it on over the gray cotton one, and combed her hair without looking.

  “How do I look now?” she asked them, she didn’t want to terrify her children before she even spoke to them.

  “Honestly? You look like shit, but you’re not going to scare them by the way you look. Do you want us to come in with you?” Liz nodded, and they followed her into the house from the garage, directly into the kitchen. They could hear the children in the living room, some of them at least, and she asked the two women to wait in the kitchen, until after she told the children. She felt she owed it to them to be alone with them, but she had no idea how to do this.

  Peter and Jamie were playing on the couch when she walked in, roughhousing and teasing and laughing, and Jamie looked up at her before Peter did, and his whole being seemed to stop when he saw her.

  “Where’s Daddy?” he asked, as though he knew. But sometimes Jamie saw things the others didn’t.

  “He’s not here,” Liz said honestly, fighting to keep control. “Where are the girls?”

  “Upstairs,” Peter said, with worried eyes. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “Go and get them, sweetheart, will you please?” He was the head of the family now, although he did not yet know it.

  Without a word, Peter bounded up the stairs, and a moment later, returned with his sisters. They all looked serious, as though they sensed that their lives were about to change forever, and they stared at their mother sitting on the couch looking dazed and disheveled.

  “Come and sit down,” she said to them as gently as she could muster, and instinctively, they huddled close to her, and she reached out and touched each one, as tears began to slide down her cheeks despite all her efforts to stop them. She was touching all of their hands as she looked from one to the other, and pulled Jamie close to her.

  “I have something terrible to tell you … something awful just happened….”

  “What happened?” Megan spoke with a ring of panic in her voice, and began to cry before any of the others. “What is it?”

  “It’s Daddy,” Liz said simply. “He was shot by the husband of a client.”

  “Where is he?” Annie asked, starting to cry, like her sister, and Peter and the others were staring at her in disbelief, as though they couldn’t fathom what had happened. But how could they? Liz still couldn’t understand it either.

  “He’s at the hospital,” but she didn’t want to mislead them, she knew that however terrible, she had to tell them, and deliver the blow that they would never forget. Forevermore, they would each have to live with this moment, and relive it a million times in memory … forever…. “He’s at the hospital, but he died half an hour ago … and he loved you all very much.…” She clutched each of them close to her, in a bunch, her arms around all of them, pulling them toward her as they screamed in anguish. “I’m so sorry….” Liz said through her own sobs “I’m so sorry.…”

  “No!” the girls screamed in unison, and Peter was wracked by sobs, as Jamie stared at his mother and stood up, pulling free of her embrace, and backing away from her slowly.

  “I don’t believe you. That’s not true,” he said, and then ran up the stairs, as Liz quickly followed. She found him crouched in a corner of his room, curled into a ball, crying, with his arms over his head, as though to shield himself from the blow of her words and the horror of what had happened to them. And with difficulty she picked him up and sat on his bed with him, cradling him as they both cried.

  “Your daddy loved you very much, Jamie.… I’m so sorry this happened.”

  “I want him to come back now,” Jamie said through his sobs, and Liz continued to rock him.

  “So do I.” She had never known an agony such as this, and she had no idea how to bring them comfort. There was none.

  “Will he?”

  “No, baby, he won’t. He can’t come back. He’s gone.”

  “Forever?” She nodded, unable to say the word herself. She held him for a few minutes more and then set him down gently, and stood up, as she took his hand in her own.

  “Let’s go back to the others.” Jamie nodded, and followed her downstairs, the others were holding each other and crying, and Carole and Jean were with them. It was a room full of tears and sorrow and anguish, and the Christmas tree and opened gifts looked like an offense now. It seemed incredible that two hours earlier they had all opened presents together and had breakfast, and now he was gone. Forever. It was unthinkable, unbearable. Where did one go from here? How did one do this? Liz had no idea what to do now. But inch by inch, piece by piece, bit by bit, she had to do what she was supposed to, and she knew it.

  She shepherded them all into the kitchen, and she began to sob again when she saw that his coffee cup was still there, and his napkin. Carole put them away quietly, and poured a glass of water for each of them, and they sat crying together for what seemed like hours, and then finally, she took them all upstairs so Liz and Jean could talk about the arrangements. People had to be called, his parents had to be notified. They lived in Chicago and would want to come out. His brother in Washington. Her mother in Connecticut, her brother in New Jersey. Friends had to be called, the newspaper, the funeral home. She had to decide what she wanted to do. Colleagues and former associates and clients would all have to be called. Jean made rapid notes as they talked. Liz had to decide what kind of service she wanted. Did he want to be cremated or buried? They had never talked about it, and Liz felt sick as they did now. There was so much to think about and do. Hideous details to be coped with. The obituary had to be written, the minister called, the casket chosen, all of it so grim, so unbelievable, so terrifying.

  And as Liz listened to Jean, she felt a wave of panic wash over her, and she suddenly stared at the woman who had worked with them for six years and all she wanted to do was
scream. This couldn’t be happening to them. Where was he? And how was she going to live without him? What would happen to her and her children?

  All she did in the end was bow her head and sob, as it hit her with full force again, like an express train. Her husband had been shot and killed by a lunatic. Jack was gone. And she and the kids were alone now.

  Chapter 3

  For the rest of the day, Liz felt as though she were moving under water. People were called. Faces came and went. Flowers arrived. She was aware of a pain so enormous it was physical, and waves of panic washed over her with such force she was sure she would drown in them. The only reality she could relate to now was her constant worry about her children. What would happen to them? How could any of them live through this? The agony on their faces was a mirror of her own. This couldn’t be happening to them, but it was, and there was nothing she could do to stop it or make it better for them. Her sense of helplessness was total and overwhelming. She was being driven by a life force so powerful it had no limits, and it felt as though she was being washed toward a brick wall, and could do nothing to stop it. But they had already hit the wall, the morning Phillip Parker shot her husband.

  The neighbors brought food, and Jean had called everyone she could think of, including Victoria Waterman, Liz’s closest friend in San Francisco. She was an attorney too, though she had given up her practice five years before, to stay home with her three children. She had had triplets through in vitro, after years of trying, and decided she wanted to stay home with them, to enjoy it. Victoria’s was the only face Liz could focus on and remember. The others all seemed vague, and she couldn’t remember from one hour to the next who had been there, and who she had talked to. Victoria arrived quietly with a small overnight bag. Her husband had agreed to take care of the boys, and she was planning to stay for the duration. And the moment Liz saw her standing in the bedroom doorway, she began to sob, and Victoria sat with her for an hour as she cried, and held her.