The Gatekeeper's Sons

Chapter 7A

Therese blinked her eyes as Carol leaned over her saying, "Wake up, sweetheart. The lieutenant is here."

Carol smelled like her mother. She smelled like Haiku perfume and Jergen's lotion.

A memory of her aunt teaching her to blow into the flute distracted her for a moment. They had given one another manicures and pedicures, and when the polish had dried, Therese had asked to try the flute, which Carol had played in high school years before. She had the scent of Haiku and Jergen's even then.

"Therese?"

"I'm still in the hospital? What day is it?" Therese tried to sit up. Her neck was stiff, but slightly better. She rubbed it and noticed the IV was still attached to her hand.

"It's Tuesday morning. You woke up from your coma yesterday," Carol said. "There's a tray of breakfast for you here. Are you hungry? You slept through yesterday's dinner."

Therese looked across the room at a short, round man with gray hair and razor stubble. He wore a policeman's uniform and looked to be in his late fifties.

"Maybe I'll eat something later."

"Hi there, Therese." The lieutenant approached her bed. The smell of body odor wafted above her head. "How are you feeling?"

"My neck is stiff, but I'm okay." She pulled the covers up around her.

"Good. I'm glad to hear that." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "Look, I know what happened to you was pretty scary. I'm really sorry it happened. But I want you to know that I'm going to do everything I can to find out who did this, okay?"

Therese nodded as the tears welled in her eyes.

"I'm Lieutenant Hobson with the Durango Police Department." Beads of sweat forming on his forehead dripped around his temples as if he had run all the way to the hospital.

"Hi."

"What can you tell me about what happened? What do you remember?"

She told them what she could, and then cleared her throat, her mouth suddenly dry, her chest tight. "I couldn't save them."

Carol stroked Therese's arm. "It's not your fault, sweetheart."

Therese grabbed Carol's arm. Panic overtook her as it had beneath the water trapped in her mother's car. Her throat burned, like it had when the water rushed through her lungs and she had hit at every space around her. "Tell me I'm dreaming!" Therese wailed. "Tell me I'm going to wake up and it will all be over!"

Carol kissed her cheek and started crying. "I wish I could."

The lieutenant took a small notepad and pen from his front shirt pocket and gave Therese a moment to recover. Then he cleared his throat and said, "Can you remember anything else?"

The face. It popped into her head and startled her as much as it had the night her parents were killed. "I might have been imagining this, but right before the shooting, I thought I saw a gruff-looking face outside my car window. It was a man."

"A man's face? Can you tell me what he looked like?"

"His skin was dark."

"Black?"

"No."

"Native American?"

"No, oh, I don't know. He had dark brown eyes, black hair, kind of short, like yours, and a scruffy beard."

"How old would you say he was?"

"I don't know. Not too old. Younger than my dad."

"Would you describe him as heavy-set, thin, tall, short?"