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“I’m done explaining myself to you,” Nick said.
He looked to Luc Mercier, the errand boy and chauffeur and apparent constant source of disappointment to his mother, andcouldn’t help but feel sympathy for him, having to deal with a daily dose of this woman.
“You’re gonna take yourmamanout of this building by another door,” Nick said. “Speak to no one, and go home now or she’s going to jail until she’s sober, and you can deal with the aftermath of that. Those are your choices, Mr. Mercier.”
“Might as well ask me would I rather be gouged with a stick or hit with a hammer,” Luc grumbled. He looked at his mother. “I should let them lock you up, if for no other reason than I wouldn’t have to listen to you bitching on the drive home.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’d only be worse after jail. I’ll take you home and you can drink yourself into oblivion tonight, fretting about your one worthy child. If there’s a God, you’ll choke to death on your own vomit later.”
“Oh, you’d like that,” Kiki snapped.
“I would, yes.”
“You’re an ungrateful, spiteful man.”
“Well, look who I learned from.”
“Arrête!” Nick snapped. “I’ve had it with the both of you!” He stepped back, hands raised. “Go! Go home. Now, before I change my mind. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know whether or not the body in the morgue is Marc’s.”
—
“These family meetings are so heartwarming,” Annie said, pressing a tissue to her bleeding eyebrow as they watched the Merciers walk away down the hall toward the main entrance of the hospital.
“To hell with them,” Nick grumbled, turning his attention to her. “Are you all right,chère? You’re bleeding. Let me see.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, but she let him look and fuss as he muttered a stream of curse words in French. “It’s just a little cut. I’m fine.”
“You hit your head!”
“No. I just caught the edge of the cabinet with my eyebrow. Really, I’m fine.”
He scowled at the cut. “I want you to get it looked at. That might need a stitch.”
Annie drew breath to object, but he cut her off with a stern look.
“No arguments, ’Toinette. We’re at the damn hospital. Have a nurse look at it while I go outside and deal with the press.”
She sighed in resignation. “All right.”
They walked together back to the ER, Annie turning to the triage desk as Nick went through the double doors to face the reporters waiting outside. She gave the nurse at the desk a peek at her bleeding eyebrow and then followed her back into the treatment area, where the physician’s assistant came to look at the wound.
“Please tell me I don’t need stitches.”
“You don’t need stitches,” the PA said. “We’ll just clean it up and put a butterfly on that, and you’ll be all set. It won’t take a minute. Just have a seat here.”
Annie hopped up on the end of a gurney to wait. The treatment bays were divided by curtains but open to the work lane, which was cluttered with various carts and machines pushed up against the wall. Privacy was minimal. She could hear conversations on either side of her—a mother consoling a daughter over a broken arm, a man complaining about his insurance, a nurse giving someone instructions about resting an injury.
“…Are you sure you don’t want to speak to a deputy, Mrs. Parcelle?”
Annie sat up straighter. Tulsie Parcelle, the young woman who had tried to duck her notice in the waiting area when she and Nick had first come in.
“No! There’s no reason for that,” the woman scoffed, laughing. “I just had an accident, that’s all. Quit making such a fuss!”
Annie hopped down off the gurney and walked down the work lane. Two beds down, she found Tulsie Parcelle, her right arm in a sling, cradled gingerly against her body. In her early twenties, petiteand curvy, she was a pretty girl when she didn’t have a black eye or a busted lip. She had a heart-shaped face with tiny blue eyes that disappeared when she smiled. Her honey-blond hair hung in a thick braid over one shoulder.
“Hey, Tulsie,” Annie greeted her, keeping her tone light and conversational. “I thought that was you in the waiting room. How are you?”
