Night Sins by Tami Hoag Page B

Troy hadn't come home yet at five-thirty.”
    Yes, I can.
The same thoughts were trailing through Hannah's mind in an endless loop, a litany of horrors. She paced back and forth on the other side of the breakfast bar, too wired to sit. She hadn't been able to bring herself to change out of the clothes she'd worn to work. The bulky sweater held the faint tang of sweat from the exertion and stress of working on Ida Bergen. Her black hose bit into her waist, and her long wool skirt was limp and creased. She had taken her boots off at the door only out of habit.
    She walked back and forth along the length of the counter, her arms crossed in a symbolic attempt to keep herself together, her eyes never straying from the phone that sat silent beneath a wall chart of phone numbers.
Mom at the hospital. Dad at his office. 911 for emergency.
All printed by Josh with colorful markers. A home project for safety week.
    The panic rushed up inside her again.
    “I tell you, I was a wild woman,” Natalie went on, pouring the coffee. She added a drop of skim milk to each and set them on the bar next to the plate of sandwiches. “We called the police. James and I went out looking for him. Then we damn near ran over him. That's how we found him. He was riding around in the dark on his bike, so obsessed with winning that damned toy, he couldn't be bothered to look out for traffic.”
    Hannah glanced at her friend as the silence stretched and she realized this was where she was expected to interject. “What did you do?”
    “I went tearing out that car before James could put it in park, screaming at the top of my lungs. We were right outside a synagogue. I screamed so loud, the rabbi came running outside, and what does he see? He sees some crazy black woman screaming and shaking this poor child like a rag doll. So he goes back inside and calls the cops. They came flying with the lights and sirens and the whole nine yards. 'Course by then I had my arms around that boy and I was crying and carrying on—
My baby! My baby boy!
” She shrieked at the ceiling in a hoarse falsetto, waving her arms.
    Rolling her eyes, she pursed her lips and shook her head. “Looking back on it, we probably didn't have to punish Troy. The embarrassment was probably enough.”
    Hannah had zoned out again. She stared at the phone as if she were willing it to ring. Natalie sighed, knowing there was really nothing she could do that she wasn't already doing. She made coffee and sandwiches, not because anyone was hungry but because it was a sane, normal thing to do. She talked incessantly in an attempt to distract Hannah and to fill the ominous silence.
    She went around the end of the counter, put her hands on Hannah's shoulders, and steered her to a stool at the breakfast bar. “Sit down and eat something, girl. Your blood sugar has to be in the negative digits by now. It's a wonder you can even stand up.”
    Hannah perched a hip on one corner of the stool and stared at the plate of sandwiches. Even though she hadn't had a bite since lunch, she couldn't work up any desire to eat. She knew she should try—for her own sake and because Natalie had gone to all the trouble to make them. She didn't want to hurt Natalie's feelings. She didn't want to let anyone down.
    You've already managed to do that today.
    She'd lost a patient. She'd lost Josh.
    The phone sat silent.
    In the family room, where the television mumbled to itself, Lily woke up and climbed down off the couch. She toddled toward the kitchen, rubbing one eye with a fist, the other arm clutching a stuffed dalmatian in a headlock. A fist squeezed Hannah's heart as she watched her daughter. At eighteen months Lily was still her baby, the embodiment of sweetness and innocence. She had her mother's blond curls and blue eyes. She didn't resemble Paul in any way, a fact Paul did not care to have pointed out to him. After all the indignities he'd had to suffer in the long effort to conceive Lily, he seemed to think he