Where We Left Off Page 6

  Mom’s tears that day did not match her hard-earned consistency.

  “Heath,” her voice quaked out of her. “Heathcliff, honey, there’s been an accident.” Then she cried softly into the phone, and I knew this wasn’t any other patient. She couldn’t detach herself from this one. I knew how she’d grown to love Mallory as I had over these past months, and I instantly heard that reflected in her cry. Something in my blood and bones told me it had to be her.

  The rest I remember as a blur, both her words and my actions. Something about a drunk driver. Hit and run. Broken windshield. Crumpled steel. Unresponsive Nana. Broken and crumpled Mallory.

  I’d leaned over the side of the bleachers and vomited. Twice. Wretched a few more times. Wiped my mouth with the inside of my sleeve. The crack of the bat in the distance felt like it split my skull in two. The players shouting on the field sounded like a stadium filled with thousands of jeering fans, the volume megaphoned in my ears, ringing. Pounding.

  Somehow I stumbled my way to the car and the key found the ignition. I remembered sitting there, the engine idling, thinking I had to go somewhere, not knowing how to get there. Not even sure if I had my license or had ever been taught to drive. Brake on the left, gas on the right. That much I knew. It was a haze of starts and stops until I switched off the car in the driveway and sat there, trying to collect myself. Trying to remember how to breathe. The small space in the car was closing in on me, the edges of my vision blackening.

  He’s home by himself, I remembered thinking. They were supposed to be back before dinner. He’s got to be hungry. And worried. He’s worried. I’m worried.

  The front door had been unlocked and it fell open when I rotated the handle. I’d given them grief the week before about how Nana’s “crazies” would just welcome themselves into their home and take whatever their heart’s desired, but Mallory had corrected me.

  “She’s only worried about the crazies on the road.” She’d laughed over dinner, Nana not offering to deny her granddaughter’s statement. “Says no one knows how to drive these days, but have you seen her behind the wheel?” Mallory had looked at me above her glass of milk and mouthed, “S-c-a-r-y,” and then shot me a wink.

  I shook the memory violently from my head. Acid seeped into my throat as I raced down the hall, my feet only slowing up when my shoulder collided with the doorjamb to his den. “Tommy? Tommy!”

  Vacant eyes locked onto mine. Innocent, naïve eyes.

  “We have to go, Tommy.” My feet slipped on wet paint and I skidded toward him like I was on a hockey rink. Whatever he’d been working on broke my fall, my hand punching through the canvas as I landed on my ass. “Goddammit!” Anger blasted out of me and I grabbed the frame and slammed it against the ground, over and over, mangling it beyond any sort of recognition. The sound of my brutality mimicked the bat and I’d wished more than anything I had one in my hands. I’d slam it into any surface I could find. Smash it against everything I saw. “Dammit, Tommy!”

  That lopsided mouth drooped even more.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d cried. Snot ran from my nose onto my upper lip. “Tommy, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix this.”

  Fumbling with the piece, I smoothed out the canvas, trying to rejoin the torn sections. I was like a kid finger painting, smearing the colors into a horrible and disgusting brown. I’d ruined his work, but it was all ruined. Everything ruined.

  Tommy was terrified. I was terrified. I had to get to them. To her.

  “Tommy.” My mouth was dry and my tongue scraped with the words. “Tommy, we have to go.” He wasn’t suddenly going to get out of his chair and follow me. I knew he couldn’t do that, so I wasn’t sure why I stood there, waiting. I needed someone else to take control, to look at me and say it was going to be okay. Please tell me everything will be okay.

  “For once it would be nice if you could actually say something!” I screamed. My chest rattled as I roared at the man sitting in the dark in front of me. Then I threw up again, all over his painting, which didn’t really matter since it looked like vomit, anyway. Everything spiraled out of control. My words. My actions. My body. My world.

  “We have to go,” I said once more and his eyes answered me. Okay, they’d said. Okay. Let’s go.

  I pushed the mess I’d created out of the way and stooped down to him. He wasn’t a small man, necessarily. Standing upright he probably sneaked up upon six feet, but I’d only known the frailty of him, only seen him bent over his work or folded into a chair at the dinner table. I’d misjudged so much about Tommy, including the size of his love for his family.

  His eyes were webbed with red veins, cheeks smeared with wet, salty tears. I swiped my arm across my own face, feeling my tears slick on my sleeve. I gulped in air. “Come on, Buddy. We have to go to the hospital.”

  I picked him up. That was the only way we were going to get to the car. His weight cradled heavily against my chest, and I didn’t know if it was his sorrow that sunk his body, making him dead weight, or if this was all he was capable of, the only support he could offer. I’d left the front door open in my rush, but that didn’t matter. They could take everything from the house and it would never come close to what was taken from me that day. They could take it all.

  After I’d buckled Tommy into the passenger seat, I raced around to the driver’s side. Slammed the door behind me and shut us in, wanting to shut everything out.

  I locked my seat belt across my lap and threw my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes, welcoming the black.

  “Are you a praying man, Tommy?” My head lolled sideways, my gaze sliding to him as my eyelids fluttered open. “I feel like we should pray.”

  His eyes told me yes, I was certain of it.

  I’d never prayed before, but I hadn’t stopped praying since.

  When we showed up at the hospital, Mom was waiting at the entrance. I was grateful someone was there, readied with a wheelchair to help with Tommy, because truthfully, the moment I pulled up, I’d forgotten about everything except for the fact that I needed to get to her. I needed her.

  I’d left the car running. Someone shut it off. I’d left the keys in the ignition. Someone brought them to me later. I’d left the world outside those hospital doors outside because my entire world was held within them.

  It was hours and hours of waiting before I was let into the room.

  Family Only had been the policy, but having two parents who worked at the hospital offered something in the way of benefits. If you could call seeing your comatose girlfriend a benefit.

  She’d looked so small in that cold and sterile room. When finally given permission to visit her, I’d almost backed out. I hated myself for being too scared to join in her tragedy. If I could offer my support from my maroon plastic chair in the waiting room, then I would never know the magnitude of what had happened. My mind could fabricate something else, something easier, something less frightening. Something more hopeful.

  I was a coward, plain and simple.

  But even cowards did brave things once in a blue moon, so I put on that counterfeit brave face and walked to her room. Room 4D. She had one of those awful blue curtains draped around her bed, and when the nurse pulled it back, it made this horrendous screeching sound as the metal rings scraped on the rod.

  My shoulders shot up to my ears to soften the sound.

  What I noticed first was that Mallory had no reaction.

  She would’ve made some snide comment yesterday. “Nails on a chalkboard,” she would’ve said yesterday because that was her go-to with anything that made her uncomfortable. Yesterday.

  Yesterday.

  But it was today.

  And I didn’t know that I would be able to face my tomorrow.

  The nurses and doctors left us alone that night, except when performing their routine monitoring tasks. Overnight visitors of the boyfriend variety must have been off-limits, but no one questioned my presence in her room. And no one questioned me when I’d pulled back her cov
ers and climbed into her hospital bed with her.

  It wasn’t the same space as the couch, but I maneuvered enough to make myself her boat. “You’re safe now, Mallory,” I’d whispered into her hair. Her crusted, blood stained hair. I’d kissed her temple which was purpled and swollen. “You’re safe.”

  Nana was in critical condition, my mother told me. Thrown through the windshield, colliding with a tree stump, her body a heap on the pavement at West Street and Magnolia. That tank of a car hadn’t been the protection she’d thought it to be. But you couldn’t protect yourself against others’ mistakes, it seemed.

  Mallory was revived at the scene. Revived. The only need for revival was when someone had died, but I didn’t want to fit that piece into the story. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge just how close I’d come to losing her completely. She was here now, breathing along with the machine—or maybe because of the machine—but she was here.

  And I was with her. I would stay with her forever, I’d promised. I’ll never leave you, Mallory, I’d murmured against her cold skin all night long. When I kissed her black and puffy eyes swelled shut, I told her I’d always be there. When I held her hand, crippled and scabbed, I whispered my promise again. I’ll never leave you, I spoke against her mouth as I kissed her, over and over. I’ll never leave you. I love you. I love you.

  I.

  Love.

  You.

  The thing about promises made was that sometimes you didn’t hold the power to keep them.

  The thing about falling in love so young was that you weren’t always responsible for the path your life took, or the decisions that got you there.

  We moved three weeks after Mallory’s accident.

  Dad was transferred to Dignity Memorial back in California. Given a position as Chief of Surgery. A “once in a lifetime offer,” they’d said.

  I’d had my own once in a lifetime, though.

  Her name was Mallory.

  I never saw her again.

  Heath

  “You gotta catch those, man!” My voice carried across the field as the ball rolled to a stop against a tuft of unmowed grass. Summer heat beat down with a sweltering punishment and I felt the sweat collect against my collar and bead upon my brow. I swiped it from my forehead with the back of my hand and shaded my eyes against the glare. Northern California summers were brutal, and though I’d been back for a dozen years now, I still couldn’t say I was acclimated to the heat. Not sure I would ever be.

  “It had a funny hop to it!” Nico defended. His back was to me as he raced to the collect the wayward grounder. All legs and overgrown feet like a puppy, he stumbled his way to the ball with exaggerated clomping. “There’s no way I coulda snagged that!”

  “You gotta make the effort. Always. Your coach is going to expect it of you. One hundred percent at all times, Buddy.”

  “And remind me just how many years it’s been since you’ve been on a team, Uncle Heath?” He had his mom’s quick wit and smart mouth. Everything else was his dad’s—down to his unibrow and dimpled, butt chin—but it was those two inner qualities I adored. I absolutely loved that kid, cheap shots and all. He was free to fire them my way anytime.

  “As long as you are old, but some things you never forget.” I caught his pop fly with ease and lobbed it skyward. “Like the smell of a well-worn glove or the feel of a championship win.”

  Nico flashed a brace-filled smile. He was an awesome kid, for sure. Though the little brother in me hated to admit it, my sister had done a great job with him. I knew she’d loathe the comparison, but she was her mother’s daughter through and through. I watched her with my niece and nephew and it was like she channeled our mom to a T. Her mannerisms, her rules, her love. It was all passed down the family tree and blossomed out of her beautifully.

  “Come on, kid. We should head in. Nana’s got a killer smelling pot roast in the oven and I hear Papa made his infamous angel food cake, fresh whipped cream and all. We don’t want to miss out on that now, do we?”

  As he skipped my direction, I made sure to rough up Nico’s ebony hair with my balled up fist, and I hip checked him just hard enough that he didn’t fall down, but knew he was still lower on the food chain. I was a twelve-year-old boy once and vividly remembered the cocky, false confidence I tended toward. It was my job as an uncle to make sure Nico stayed humble, and it was a job I took incredibly seriously.

  Just as seriously as making sure my niece, Natalie, knew that she was an absolute princess. Because she was. I bought her a tiara with more rhinestones than any child had business owning. Whoever she ended up with best be rolling in the dough, because she’d become used to all things that glittered and shone, compliments of her Uncle Heath. That little girl had me wrapped around her ten-year-old finger and held my heart in her delicate, small and perfect hands. I loved that.

  Hattie said it was because I was in the delivery room when she arrived—that the bond we had was born out of that lifelong relationship—but I thought it was more than that. I saw so much of Hattie in her spirit, her passion, and her challenging smirk. There wasn’t anything that girl set her mind to that she didn’t accomplish, and it was an inspiration to me each and every day. I loved that I got to learn from these incredible kids. It was a gift I didn’t take lightly, and though I didn’t always show my appreciation, I hoped my sister knew how grateful I was to be a part of their lives. She’d given me so much by giving me them.

  By the time we reached the porch, my brother-in-law was already there, standing in the frame of the farmhouse doorway, waiting with an outstretched hand and an ice-cold Sierra Nevada for the taking. I swiped it from his grasp and felt the cool glass on my lips, the even cooler liquid sliding down my throat as I took a hearty swallow. “Thanks, man.” I tipped the bottle toward him in a gesture of appreciation.

  He cracked the cap off his own bottle with the help of his wedding ring and clinked it against mine. “Of course, Heath. Looks well deserved. Hotter than hell out here, isn’t it?” He threw his head back and practically drained his beer in one gulp.

  Anthony was a great guy—the perfect brother-in-law. He and Hattie met in college and married two months later, which was one month after finding out they had a bun in the oven. I knew it wasn’t the way Hattie had planned out her life, but plans weren’t all they were cracked up to be. I’d learned that firsthand. Multiple times. Hattie planned on falling in love and starting a family. Maybe the order was jumbled, but the outcome was the same. In the end, the timeline didn’t really matter. It all resulted in love.

  I nodded toward Anthony and took another swig. “Nico’s got a great arm on him. A few more seasons under his belt and I think he could easily make starting pitcher by high school.”

  “Really?” Anthony’s eyes sparked. With one hand, he tugged at his necktie and swiveled it loose, shrugging the day’s stress from his shoulders. He was a businessman, not an ounce of athlete or outdoorsman in him, which was fine because it allowed me to fill that role. That was what family was for, wasn’t it? Took a village or something along those lines. This was my village and I absolutely loved it.

  “Definitely, man. He’s got natural talent. You should be proud of your boy.” I took a long pull from the bottle and felt the welcome and intimate warmth of alcohol spreading through my veins. “I know I sure am. Love him like he’s my own.”

  Anthony looked at me—right at me—and his eyes softened, which was the exact look I’d been trying to avoid. Soft, sympathetic eyes. It had been six months, and you’d think sympathy had a shorter expiration date than that, but evidently not. It still clung to nearly everyone I came in contact with.

  “Listen.” I settled the empty bottle on the chipped, white railing and leaned up against its frame, my hands gripped over the rickety ledge. Dad asked for my help last week in repainting the decking, and it looked like it was something that needed finishing sooner than later. I made a mental note to come by this weekend to help him out. “I’m fine. Honestly. Moved on.”
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  “Oh yeah?” With a cocked head, Anthony challenged me. “With who?”

  “No one, necessarily. But the idea of someone, and that’s something.”

  “Heath.” Two hands dropped onto my shoulders. I wasn’t sure why everyone felt the need for physical contact when attempting to comfort, but it was getting a bit tired and overdone. I’d been hugged, coddled, stroked, and pet. I was beginning to feel like a damn golden retriever. All I needed was a, “Hey man, your ex-wife was a bitch,” and that would suffice.

  Instead, I got actual caring and affection, which was not what I wanted.

  “I’m fine.” I pinned him with a stare and he backed off. When he bent down to fetch another cold one from the open ice chest on the porch, I knew he’d made the right decision. Beer—a better comfort than any hug or sage advice.

  Anthony knew to leave well enough alone and I appreciated that. We shared a half dozen more bottles on the porch, the dry summer heat oppressive and undesirable, but oddly inviting all the same. We could’ve easily escaped the temperatures by finding shelter in my parent’s air-conditioned, expansive ranch home, but I’d escaped so much already that sometimes it felt necessary to suffer. To stop running. To avoid the false comfort and soak in the real discomfort. Life was not all sunshine and roses. At least not mine. It was once, but that changed, and it seemed like every day since I’d been chasing that lie—the one that said happiness was meant and purposed for everyone.

  Because there was nothing happy about the fact that right now—as I drained frosty beverage number eight—my ex-wife was at the local hospital delivering her first child, the one that supposedly belonged to me, but, in reality, shared her boss’s DNA.