“I had no idea that you were going to do yourself in,” the man said, a sense of merriment in his voice, “but it does save me having to kill you myself. You know, the way you fought in the alley, I assumed you’d have fought harder to live, too. Guess I had you figured wrong. Why didn’t you just give in then? Oh, well, doesn’t matter much now. At least this proves I was right in not killing you the first time. What I did really made you suffer, didn’t it? I drove you to this! That feels so good.”

  He hovered over her limp form for a moment before asking, “You still with me?”

  Blinking three times in an effort to see more clearly, Leslie nodded her head.

  “I think I’ll stay here until I’m sure that you’re past the point of no return. I mean you need someone with you in these final moments. Besides, I owe you for giving me this incredible high.”

  Leslie’s eyes followed his blurred image as he strolled across the room and settled into her father’s favorite chair. Picking up a magazine, he began to look at the pictures, while occasionally glancing over at her. As her breathing became more ragged and shallow, he set the magazine to one side.

  The ringing of the phone caused him to jump, but as Leslie showed no reaction to the loud ringing, he relaxed. Getting out of the chair, he slowly crossed the room and bent over bringing his face close to hers. Nodding his head, he walked back to the chair; picked up the copy of Fashion and Style magazine he’d been reading and dropped it beside her body. After studying Leslie one more time, he turned, stepping on the middle of the magazine’s cover, and slowly walked out of the house. A few seconds later, the noise of an engine broke the nighttime silence.

  Would that be the last sound she heard? As Leslie edged even closer to death the phone rang again. This time she made no move to answer. In fact, she made no move at all!

  51

  Hunter slammed the phone down. If she wanted to hate him, that was fine. He could live with that. But she at least needed to answer the phone. Letting it ring and ring and ring showed all the maturity of a junior high kid.

  Walking back to his couch, he picked up a pillow, punched it a couple of times before tossing it across the room. As it flew it knocked over a framed photo of his late father, but fortunately didn’t do any lasting damage.

  What a day it had been! It seemed great for a while. It was just what he’d planned. Leslie had gotten out the house, she’d enjoyed the sun and decompressed. But then there was that scene at the cabin. She had changed the plans. She had demanded something he hadn’t expected. And he’d likely reacted wrong. He’d likely destroyed her fragile ego. So maybe he did deserve the cold shoulder.

  Sitting down he grudgingly decided to give her some space and time. He wouldn’t force her hand. It was best to let her call him. After all, what she was seeing in the mirror was probably a lot different than what those around her were seeing. She was likely hypercritical. She didn’t note the subtle daily improvements. And Flo probably wasn’t helping.

  Pulling out his cell, he scanned his directory until he came to a number he’d been given, but never called. It was almost ten. Was it too late? Probably, but he had to talk to someone. He had to explain. He had to get some advice.

  Hitting send, he waited for an answer. Unlike the half dozen calls he’d made to Leslie, this time someone picked up.

  “Hello.”

  “Meg, this is Hunter, sorry to bother you so late, but I think I messed up. And you told me if I needed anyone to talk to about Leslie, to call you.”

  “No problem,” came the even reply. “I was doing some laundry. What do you need?”

  It took only five minutes to explain what had happened. During that time Hunter did all the talking. As he concluded, he leaned back into the couch and waited for the advice he prayed was coming.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Meg said matter-of-factly. “Her whole identity has been predicated on how she looks. That’s how she judges every facet of her life.”

  “So now that I’ve hurt her,” he asked, “what do I do?”

  He waited for a response that took so long he wondered if the call had been dropped. “Hunter, don’t do anything,” she suggested. “Let her think about things for a while. At some point, she’ll need to turn to someone and when that happens I’m betting it will be you. And you didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, I think you may have been right-on with your response.”

  “So,” his voice was plaintive, “I just wait?”

  “For the moment, give her some space, let her see how stifling a life trapped in the same house with her mother is, and she will reach out. I think you’ll be the first one she calls.”

  “OK,” Hunter replied. “Thanks for talking to me. I deeply appreciate it.”

  As he slipped the phone back into his pocket, he nodded grimly. He’d never been good at waiting. He even gave birthday and Christmas presents early. So sitting on his hands and doing nothing would be the toughest test he’d had since when he tried to rehab his knee.

  52

  Why was the door not locked?

  Sitting her two-year-old daughter down on the Rhoads’s front porch, Meg opened the door and yelled out, “Leslie.” There was no response.

  “Well, Dawn,” Meg muttered as she reached down and picked up her toddler, “welcome or not, we’re going in.”

  Carrying the lively bundle in her right arm, she swung the door open and reached for the light switch with her left.

  “Les, wake up. You’ve got company!”

  Meg looked into the front rooms. Nothing. She ambled down the hall and was about to hit the stairs and march up to her cousin’s room when a voice stopped her.

  “Leslie,” Dawn cooed.

  Looking over to the girl, Meg smiled and nodded. “That’s why we’re here. We’re going to see Leslie. But first we have to find her.”

  “Leslie,” the toddler said, this time she pointed to a figure barely visible through the den door.

  Meg’s eyes followed her daughter’s tiny hand to a lifeless form sprawled on the floor.

  “My Lord. Leslie, what have you done?”

  Sitting her daughter down, Meg whispered, “Stay here.”

  “Les sick?” Dawn asked.

  “Yes,” Meg answered. “Now you stay right here and let Mommy help her.”

  Rushing to her cousin’s side, Meg grabbed her wrist. It took a few moments, but she found a very weak pulse. Pulling the cell from her pocket, she hit 9-1-1 and waited.

  “This is Meg Richards, I’m a nurse at Springfield Community Hospital. I’m at my aunt’s house at 1507 Maple Street, and there is a twenty-four-year-old woman barely breathing. I need EMTs and I need the ER ready to receive the woman at the hospital. She is weak and fading quickly.”

  Meg glanced around the room and spotted the empty pill bottle. Picking it up, she quickly noted the label.

  “This is an apparent suicide attempt,” Meg barked into the phone. “She’s taken an unknown quantity of Zaleplon. Get someone here stat!”

  “Mommy.”

  Meg glanced over to her daughter. “Dawn, go over and sit on the couch. Mommy needs to help Leslie.”

  As the nurse looked back down at her cousin, she knew why Leslie had done what she’d done. The rejection she’d experienced that night had hit her even deeper than Meg imagined. So with the why out of the way, the haunting question now was would she live?

  53

  It was almost five in the afternoon before Leslie began to come out of her deep sleep. When she did, Meg was at her side.

  “Welcome back is the term that I’ve used before when addressing folks who bought the same ticket as you did. It is a welcome I don’t take lightly. Hope you don’t either.”

  She patted Leslie on the wrist and softly added, “There has never been a time when I’ve meant it as much as I do now. I’m glad you’re back, kid.”

  Nodding, Leslie forced a small smile, before embarrassingly starting an apology, “I’m glad, too. Right before I faded off something inside me began to fight a little. I still don’t know what it was, but I think I determined I didn’t want to die. I think I may have just been trying to show Mom up. You know by using her pills and stuff.”

  “We’ll figure out all the whys later,” Meg assured her. “Just you looking at me with those beautiful baby blues is all I care about now.”

  Leslie shook her head as if trying to push out the fogginess from her mind before she glanced back to her cousin. She then posed a question that would have likely shocked anyone but Meg, “I guess I didn’t use enough of them to do myself in?”

  “Ah, that would be a negative,” Meg shot back. “You took plenty. If you’d been discovered a few minutes later it would have been mission accomplished. As it stood, it was touch and go for a couple of hours. It helped knowing what it was.”

  The patient nodded. She let her eyes drift to the ceiling as she posed her next query. “Who saved me?”

  “I found you,” Meg explained. “I came over to check on you after Hunter called me. He told me what had happened. In truth, my motivation was to give you a piece of my mind. But instead I found you on the floor.”

  “Hunter called you?” Leslie asked. “Why?”

  “He didn’t know how to handle you, and you wouldn’t answer his calls.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” she answered.

  “I think he loves you,” Meg said as their eyes met. “I really think he does.”

  “No, he feels sorry for me. He’s just too great a guy to love someone who looks like me.”

  Shaking her head, Meg shot back, “It is not your face he loves. It is you. He loves what you are and what you can be.”

  Leslie’s scarred brow tensed up as she formed a scowl and shot back, “What am I? I’m not a model anymore. And if I’m not that, what am I?”

  “Are you telling me that as a model, all you were was a face?” Meg questioned. “There has to be more to you than that. At least I always thought there was. Maybe my sister was right about you.”

  Leslie shook her head. “What did Terri say about me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Meg assured her. Patting her cousin’s hand, she pushed the conversation in a different direction. “Your mother was here until about an hour ago. I finally convinced her to go home. She needed some rest.”

  Leslie grinned for the first time since the lake, “Might be tough, I used up all her pills.”

  Meg smiled and nodded.

  “Now, Meg, what was it that Terri always said about me?”

  “Sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Meg leaned back in the chair and studied the woman in the bed. Normally hitting patients with the full force of the truth was not something that was recommended this soon after a suicide attempt. But she knew her cousin well. In this case maybe the unadorned truth was just what was needed to literally wake her up.

  “Terri always told me that without your face you wouldn’t be anything. Maybe last night proves that you feel the same way.”

  “I never did like her,” Leslie spat. “She always loved to pick on me. I can’t remember how many times she pushed me into the dirt when we were little.”

  “She was and is a character,” Meg admitted.

  The room grew silent for several minutes. Meg allowed Leslie to mentally roll over what she’d just been told. Finally, when she was sure Terri’s assessment had fully sunk in, she reached out to Leslie’s chin. Gently lifting her cousin’s face until their eyes met, she quietly, but firmly posed the question of the day.

  “Are you going to try to do this again?”

  Shaking her head, Leslie indicated she wouldn’t.

  “I won’t accept that for an answer,” Meg demanded. “You tell me if you are going to try to kill yourself again. I have to hear it from your lips, and you have to make me believe it. Otherwise, you and I are about to become Siamese twins.”

  “I’m not going to,” Leslie answered. “I was stupid. I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I know now that checking out is not it.”

  “So I can trust you?” Meg demanded.

  “Yes. You can trust me. Next time I feel like I did, I’ll call you and let you talk some sense into me. But Meg, living with mom, dealing with this etch-a-sketch face, having a man repulsed with the thought of even kissing me, my life is anything but easy.”

  “I know that, but you are wrong on the last part.”

  Ignoring the answer, Leslie moaned, “And it’s so easy to replace me.”

  She studied the light shining through the window and bouncing off the far wall, then turned her gaze back to her cousin. Leslie sighed, “The new issue of Fashion and Style is out. Another one of Carlee’s girls is on the cover. I’m sure Passion Nights has found someone as well. Even with the face I used to have, I was fooling myself. I just wasn’t that special.”

  “Maybe you don’t understand the word special,” Meg quietly explained. “I know a few folks who still think you’re pretty special and that judgment wasn’t based on what you see in the mirror.”

  “You mean like Hunter.”

  “I can’t speak for him,” Meg replied, her brown eyes now soft and comforting, “but I know a few others who I can most assuredly speak for.”

  “Bet it’s a short list. You know Carlee hasn’t called me once since her hospital visit.”

  “Not surprising,” Meg replied, “I didn’t view her as having much depth. Besides, the question is not who you were, the question is what will you become.”

  “And what is that? What will I become?”

  “Well,” Meg asked, “do you want to find out?”

  “What do you think?” Leslie spat.

  “Well, judging from that tone, I’d have to say at least your attitude is still tough. There was fire in that answer. Listen, Leslie, you have got to look deeper inside you—deeper than you’ve ever looked before. Yes, I’m sorry about what happened to your face, but you’d have had to literally face losing your looks some day. So what happened just accelerated the process. Now you’ve been freed to see the qualities and talents that make you really special. In a way, your beauty has handicapped you, blinded you, and kept you from becoming the real you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Leslie answered.

  “You will, as long as you don’t pull another stunt like you did last night.”

  There wasn’t time for an answer. Behind Meg the door swished up and a man strolled into the room holding a huge bouquet of flowers.

  54

  Hi,” Hunter announced his presence, “I hope that you two don’t mind another participant in this conversation.”

  Looking up, Meg waved, “Three’s a crowd, so I’m leaving. I’ll check with both of you later.”

  Meg quickly exited the room and closed the door behind her. As it eased shut, Hunter took a seat, leaned over Leslie’s bed, and softly said, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “I guess I owe you a big thank-you,” Leslie offered. “Meg said that your call is what angered her enough to come to visit me.”

  Putting his finger to her lips, Hunter stopped. “Les, I love you. It’s as simple as that. I called Meg for that reason and that reason only. Now how can I get it through your thick skull?”

  Shaking her head, Leslie tried to explain away his feelings. “No, you don’t love me, you care for me, and you feel sorry for me, but you don’t love me. You couldn’t. I know that.”

  “Then you don’t know me because I do love you,” Hunter assured her.

  “Hunter Jefferson, I know me. Even though I try to avoid mirrors, I see me every day, and I know that if I were you, I couldn’t and wouldn’t wait for those doctors to put Ms. Humpty Dumpty together again. Not all the pieces are there to complete the job. My face was my life, and without it, I’m a bad dream.”

  “Wake up, Les,” Hunter whispered and then in a much more demanding tone added, “When you wake up, the nightmare will end, and you’ll discover there is more to life than what you’ve imagined.”

  “Get this through your thick head,” Leslie barked as she stared deeply into the man’s eyes. “I just can’t believe you would love this.” She pointed to her face and then continued, “Maybe if you give me some time. Maybe then I’ll understand why you feel like you do. Right now, I just can’t accept it.”

  “Les … ”

  She raised her hand and cut him off. “Hunter, why don’t you try to forget me for a few weeks? Why don’t you date someone else? When you do then you can really find an answer to the question that I’m asking. I really believe you’ll discover that I’m just another one of your missions. And when you hold someone beautiful, when you kiss her, when you make love to her, you will thank me for yanking the wool from over your eyes.”

  “You’re wrong,” Hunter smiled, “there’s no wool there.”

  “Sure there is,” she replied.

  “No, there can’t be. I’m allergic to wool.” He flashed a smile, “It’s true! I am! But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll spread myself around, I’ll try to find the world’s most wonderful and beautiful women and take them out to the finest places, but only if you will still go out with me at least a night or two a week.”

  “Hunter,” Leslie began to argue, but finally just gave in, “Fine. As long as you do find someone else to go out with, and they have to be pretty. No, they have to be beautiful, like I used to be.”

  “OK,” he answered, “if you say that I must take out a fox, I will. After all, I must keep you happy, no matter the price I have to pay. You know your cousin Meg is quite a dish.”

  A tinge of jealousy crept up from Leslie’s heart and revealed itself in the flash of her eyes. “Not her. She’s off limits.”

  “But …”

  “No buts, you can’t take out anyone who’s related to me. That’s just too weird.”