Justice Denied by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

equipment. “Isn’t there something we should do? Some treatment? Something?”
    Lars shook his head and gestured toward the bright yellow do not resuscitate placard that had been affixed to the door. “No.” he said. “There’s nothing. She yust needs to rest a little.”
    “And so do you,” I said. “I’m here now. Why don’t you go take a nap?”
    I was surprised by his ready agreement. “ Ja, sure,” he said, getting shakily to his feet. “I t’ink you’re right.”
    Left alone in the room with Beverly, I sat there for a long time simply watching her sleep. She seemed serene, untroubled, and unafraid. Leaving her asleep, I went out into the corridorand placed the necessary calls, telling Scott and Kelly what was going on. They both wanted to know if they should drop everything and come home.
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
    “Have you talked to her doctor?” Kelly demanded. How my daughter somehow had transformed herself from a headstrong, dippy teenager into an amazingly practical adult is one of the mysteries of the universe, and it never fails to surprise me.
    “Not yet,” I told her. “But I will.”
    Ten minutes after I finished giving the news to my son Scott, my cell phone rang. “Sorry about this,” Dave Livingston said. “Anything I can do?”
    Dave is my first wife’s second husband—Karen’s official widower. He’s also my children’s stepfather. I suspected that Kelly was the one who had seen fit to call him and let him know, but it could just as easily have been Scott. Dave is a likable guy and both my kids look up to him. Either way, I was glad someone had notified Dave, and I was touched that he had gone to the trouble of calling.
    “No,” I said. “For right now, I guess it’s just a matter of waiting.”
    “Waiting’s tough,” he said. I understood without anything more being said that the man knew whereof he spoke.
    Back in Beverly’s room I castigated myself for not stopping by Belltown Terrace on the way and picking up Kyle’s picture. Not that it would have made any difference. She was asleep, and I doubted if she would ever waken enough to see the framed photo Kelly had wanted Beverly to have.
    My grandmother had been a young bride when she had my mother, and my mother had been a very young not-bride whenI was born. And so at a time when other men my age were losing their mothers, my mother, who had died young, was already gone, and I was losing my grandmother instead.
    I sat there for the rest of the long afternoon listening to Beverly breathe, thinking about the few short years we’d had together, and regretting the many years we’d spent apart. I was glad for the happy times she and Lars had shared and felt sad when I realized how much it would hurt for him to lose a second well-loved wife.
    In his day, Lars had been a serious drinker (that’s why he was my AA sponsor, after all). He had loved his first wife, Hannah, but I knew from things he’d told me over the years that he’d also neglected her—the way alcoholics often do, not out of any particular malice but because nothing’s more important to them than booze. Lars had done much better by Beverly, and losing her would be hard on him. I wondered, in fact, if he’d survive it.
    Lars came limping back into the room and resumed his bedside watch about the time the sun went down behind the grain terminal out in Elliott Bay. The sky was layered with banks of clouds that turned pink, purple, and finally gray as the setting sun sank beneath the western horizon. I went down the hall to the nurse’s station and brought back a second chair.
    “No matter what,” Lars said quietly, “I wouldn’t have missed this.”
    I nodded. That’s always the bottom line where love is concerned. Is loving someone ever worth the ultimate price of losing them?
    “And she’s very proud of you, Beau,” Lars added. “Always has been.”
    That got me. “I know,” I