Cheated By Death Read Free Page A

looked at me expectantly. “Sure,
I’ll take you to work. You’ll be safe with me.”
    “Thanks,” Brenda said, sat down again, and
took another slice of pizza. I wasn’t even half way through my
first piece. “Eat up,” she said, “it’s getting cold.” The food
could never get as cold as the frost generated by that
conversation.
    I thought about the slip of paper in my
pocket and felt colder still.

CHAPTER
    2

    Brenda and I are more in sync than either of
us care to admit. Even without touching her, I could sense her
radiating an assortment of emotions: trepidation, anxiety, and
dread. I wasn’t sure what it meant.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    She glanced at me then looked away. “Sure.
Just a little nervous.”
    “You didn’t tell us everything yesterday, did
you?”
    Her voice was small. “No.”
    I waited, and she exhaled loudly. “Somebody
egged my windshield last week. I had to pay extra at the carwash to
get it off.”
    “Was it only your car?”
    She shook her head. “Other cars in the lot
got it, too.”
    “And?”
    “And a couple of days later it was lipstick,
only that was on the doors and across the trunk.”
    “What was the message?”
    “ Death monger , among others.”
    “Is that it?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.
    Her mouth tightened. “I think somebody
followed me home the other night.”
    Brenda wasn’t the paranoid type. My fingers
gripped the wheel. “What kind of car?”
    “I don’t know, but it was blue.”
    “Have you seen it again?”
    “No, but I reported it to the heath center’s
security. They said to be careful. That’s why you’re driving me to
work. Did you call your father?” she asked, changing the
subject.
    “No.”
    “Are you going to?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Richard thinks you should. So does
Maggie.”
    “How about you?”
    She shrugged. “You have to do what you have
to do.” I braked for slowing traffic and she looked at me with wry
amusement. “Do I detect a little hostility here?”
    “After thirty-two years of indifference from
him . . . yeah, I’d say I feel hostile.”
    Those thoughts evaporated as we approached
the Williamsville Women’s Health Center, and I could see why Brenda
was nervous. Ten or more men and women marched up and down in front
of the parking lot across the street—more than the requisite
fifteen feet from the drab, one-story brick building, just as the
law demanded. The first amendment allowed them to “sidewalk
counsel” anyone who passed by. Each carried a placard: No More
Slaughtered Babies ; Pro-Choice = Death For Babies; Baby
Butcher Shop . Other signs bore grisly color photos of bloodied,
mangled fetuses.
    I pulled my car into an empty space along the
curb and watched as a Toyota Prius approached the lot. The
protesters broke formation only long enough to let it in. The
driver got out of her car, briskly crossed the picket line,
ignoring the protesters’ haranguing voices. She hurried up the
concrete steps and yanked open the plate glass door and escaped
inside.
    “Why hasn’t this been on the news?” I asked
Brenda.
    She glanced at the crowd. “Because they’ve
been at it for weeks. But it’s still upsetting.”
    “Why didn’t you say something about this
sooner?”
    “I didn’t want Richard to worry. He’s . . .
.” She caught herself, seemed to think better of telling me. “He’s
got a lot on his mind right now.”
    I let her words sink in. Something besides
his next blood test? “Anything I should know about?”
    “No. Not right now.” She pawed in her purse
for her office keys. “He keeps trying to talk me into quitting. And
I can’t. Not yet.”
    She’d sidestepped my question. Okay. Richard
had had a couple of bad days at the clinic. What else could be
bothering him?
    I eyed the protesters’ angry faces and got a
flash of something: Panicked protesters and clinic security,
running footsteps, a bloodied hand.
    “I gotta agree with Rich on this one. It
doesn’t look—or