Anger built. Anger at Galen, for being selfish, for being careless with his life. For having choices Freddie never had. For wanting to die and managing to live.
Hitting the gas, Will tore along a deserted Highway 54 with his windows open. The night whipped around him, heavy with ozone and silent but for a distant rumble of thunder. An apartment complex with a space-for-rent sign shot by and his speedometer wavered around sixty-five. Let the cops pull him over, what did he care? Seventy, he was driving seventy in a forty-five-miles-per-hour zone.
Inigo was probably there by now, offering comfort. Will gripped the wheel tighter. It should be him; he wanted Hannah to need him.
A kaleidoscope of sound filled his ears—the roar of pumping blood, the alarm bells of a body feeding off adrenaline. His lungs tightened under some invisible clamp, and his arms started to shake. Was this panic, delayed grief or love?
Let it be anything but love.
Love didn’t belong in this uproar of death and devastation. How could he be so heartless, so disloyal to Freddie?
Will braked hard. No. He would not behave like his mother, behave like Cass. He would not be this out-of-control loser, driving with disregard for the safety of other people. An accident could be only seconds away. He knew better than anyone.
Turning onto Manning Drive, Will followed signs to the emergency department, hurtling into another parent’s tragedy while he was slowly choking on his own. He shouldn’t be here; he should have gone back to the city weeks ago, not dragged his sorry ass through Teflon-coated procrastination. No matter how many excuses he fed himself about wait lists, there was only one reason he was still here: Hannah.
The unlit road dipped and curved. Tenements of student housing rose into the darkness, each window a square box of orange light. On either side of him, black trees. He turned right. Ahead was a monstrous building with a huge red sign that spelled out Emergency. Will swallowed. He would not think about ambulances, flashing lights and crash scenes. He would not.
He pulled into the parking lot and stopped at the barrier. Tokens? For real? He swung around in his seat and watched two cars drive past him to stop under the concrete overhang. A valet! Thank God. He threw the car into Reverse, squealed toward the hospital entrance and abandoned his car—door open, engine running—by the valet station.
“Sir, wait!” The valet ran after him waving a ticket. “You need this, sir!”
Will took the parking stub and slid it deep in his back pocket. Not that he gave a rat’s ass about the Prius—a car was merely a means of travel—but without it, how could he drive Hannah home?
Back toward Highway 54, more thunder rumbled. If it rained he could tell Hannah; she might even be happy. So now he was delusional, thinking a woman could care about the drought while her son lay unconscious in the E.R. Four months out from his own son’s death he still didn’t care about anything. Except—Will slowed to walk through the glass doors of the emergency department—that was no longer true.
Fluorescent lights buzzed and the intercom called for doctor so and so to go to room whatever. One of the security guys acknowledged him with a nod, not rapid-fire Q and A. Where was the chaos and carnage he’d expected? And where was Hannah?
He moved to the windows that reminded him of bank teller stations. On his left, a large waiting area with a smaller glass antechamber labeled Triage Waiting Room. Hannah was alone in the far corner, curled up in a plastic hospital chair like a teenage girl: legs tucked into her chest, sweatshirt tugged down over her knees.
“Hannah?”
She didn’t look up.
He turned back to security, dumped his iPhone and wallet in the gray plastic container and passed through the metal detector. Behind him, a woman started screaming in Spanish. The intercom called for a translator.
Will reclaimed his possessions, then ran into the triage waiting room.
Blood, blood was smeared on her face. Why had no one told her? How could no one see that she needed help?
“Hannah,” he said, and rushed forward.
She stood slowly, her eyes red and her cheeks blotched. The intercom announced another page and there was a rhythmic wave of electronic beeps; the Hispanic woman became hysterical.
Yanking up his sweatshirt, he used it to wipe Hannah’s cheek. “You have a speck of bl—”
“Is it gone?” Her head fell to his shoulder as Galen’s had done an hour earlier. “Tell me it’s gone.”
“Gone, darling.” Didn’t mean to call her that. Really, really didn’t mean to call her that.
Hugging had never come naturally, but he began rocking her the way he’d rocked Freddie after a nightmare. Hannah clutched at him, moving so quickly he almost lost his balance. She said something, but it was muffled.
“I didn’t hear you, darling.” There it was again—that word.
She raised her head and stared at him. Eye-to-eye, exactly his height. Holding her felt so comfortable, so warm. So easy.
“Your dad?” she said.
Always she thought of other people.
“Poppy’s with him. She wanted to come, but I persuaded her to stay. I...I had to see you.”
Hannah laid her head back on Will’s shoulder. He pulled her into his body and wanted her closer.
“They asked so many questions,” she said. “And I couldn’t answer them. I don’t know what he took, how much. I don’t know anything. The most important thing is to figure out the combination of what he took, and I don’t know. I don’t know. The bag had so few, so few... And they asked about his medical history, and—” she gulped “—they asked about family history.”
“Shh,” he said softly.
“His vitals are good, they don’t have to intubate him, but they need to empty his stomach. Give him charcoal to absorb the drugs. If they’re worried about cardiovascular function, he’ll go to intensive care.” She was talking fast, dumping information. “Psychiatry will do a consultation when he sobers up, when he can talk, but since it was a serious attempt, it’s likely he’ll be transferred to the psych ward. Voluntarily or— Hospitalization isn’t really optional.” She clung to him. “He’s going back, Will. He’s going back.”
“Who are you?” said a deep voice.
Will turned, his arms locked around Hannah. Two men stood in front of them, but only one was glowering at him with hard, dark eyes—a broad-shouldered guy who was seriously ripped. Everything about Inigo was crafted with care: the citrus cologne, the graying hair trimmed to perfection like a presidential wannabe, the knit shirt he wore like a second skin, the faded jeans that fit a little too snugly around the groin. Christ, he was looking at another man’s package.
Still fastening Hannah to his chest, Will extended a hand. “Will Shepard. I rent your wife’s cottage. Sorry, man. I mean, your ex-wife.”
“Matt.” The other guy, the younger—much younger—one with small, frightened eyes, preempted Inigo and shook Will’s hand.
Inigo glared. “You’re the one who took Galen rock climbing.”
“Will saved our son’s life,” Hannah said.
An older African-American woman cradling a sleeping child blinked up at Will, then turned to stare at the Tar Heels game on the flat-screen TV in the main waiting room.
“Let’s all sit down.” Matt touched Inigo’s arm, but Inigo shrugged him off.
“Our son could have died, Han. Died. What were you thinking?”
“The rock climbing was my suggestion,” Will said.
Inigo ignored him. “You allow Galen out on some testosterone adventure with a stranger and yet you wouldn’t let me, his own father, anywhere near the house? You let our son go off on an adventure with this...this person, and twenty-four hours later Galen tries to end his life? You told me you could handle this.” He jabbed a finger toward Hannah’s face. “You told me you had everything under control.” Another jab. “You told me I would make things worse.”
One inch closer with that manicured fingernail, dickhead, and my fist will be crunching into the bridge of your nose.
“Well, it doesn’t get much worse than this,” Inigo said.
“Wow, time out.” Will raised his hand between Hannah’s face and Inigo’s finger.
Matt flinched; his glance jumped from Will to Inigo and back again.
“I wasn’t aware I asked for your opinion,” Inigo said to Will. “In fact, I don’t know why you’re here. This has nothing to do with you. I want you to go. Leave.”
“He’s here,” Hannah said, “because I want him to be. And that’s enough, Inigo. We need to concentrate on helping Galen. Come and sit down, please.”
Without warning, Inigo disintegrated into a flood of wails. Heads in both waiting areas turned and Will had a flashback to his mother at the powwow, to that awful feeling of being exposed under a spotlight, front and center stage. Will wanted to pity Inigo, wanted to say, I know, I understand the terror, but he was swallowing the urge to scream, You have no idea how lucky you are. No idea. Your son’s been alive for twenty-two years, that’s seventeen more than my son. My son will never play on a Little League team, have a first kiss, build the unopened Lego set in his bedroom.
And today is the four-month anniversary of his death.
Hannah stepped away, but it was as if she’d been snatched from him. Without the warmth of her breath on his neck, it was cold, so cold. He rubbed his arms and watched Matt and Hannah settle Inigo into a chair. Then Will claimed the empty chair on Hannah’s left side. Reaching for her free hand, he folded his fingers around hers and squeezed. She squeezed back.
Poppy had been right that day at Hawk’s Ridge—he made crap decisions. And that simple physical gesture was proof. Both he and Hannah knew he was leaving, and yet by holding her hand, he was blasting open whatever it was that hung in the air between them. Like they both needed an extra layer of emotion right now.
Even on the phone that first night, her voice had triggered a strange high as if someone had spiked his senses with a stimulant. When they met it was that plus the opposite: a sense of calm and well-being. Until the powwow tossed him into the downward spin of lust. Until half an hour earlier when he sat at a traffic light, paralyzed by the pain of love.
He was in the middle of Armageddon, and he was in love.
An old instinct was calling out to be heard, one that had served him well in the past, one that he was trying to ignore.
Run, Will, run.
* * *
Manhattan had killed Will’s night vision. After they left Chapel Hill, the traffic disappeared and the roads retreated into black stillness. The engine hummed; thunder clapped intermittently.
The evening had tethered him and Hannah in a never-to-be-forgotten string of events, and yet they were caught in silence. Silence that stung like razor burn. They had so much to talk about. Or maybe not. How many ways could he say, I’m sorry?
Inigo had nailed him with accusations about the climb. The guy was just lashing out, being the overprotective father, but suppose he was on to something? After all, one kid had died on Will’s watch. And the whole time he’d been holding Galen in the bathroom—the whole time—he’d imagined himself holding Freddie.
Watching for deer, Will glanced into the blockade of trees looming on either side of the car. A buck running out could do serious damage to the biggest big-ass pickup truck. Who knew what it could do to the hood of a Prius? He slowed down and squinted, pulling forward to search for the Nascar bar on the corner of Hannah’s road. His seat belt locked, cutting into his chest, pinning him in place.
“Bit farther,” Hannah said, her face angled away from him.
It was the first time she’d spoken since leaving the hospital. Galen had been smart enough to take the path of least resistance and go to the psych ward voluntarily. The doc had explained they were lucky to get a bed, since people often had to wait in the E.R. for days, or be transferred to another facility. Hannah had remarked, her voice cold, that there was nothing lucky about knowing your son was returning to a locked ward. She had remained calm, poised and distant, while Inigo had bawled into Matt’s chest. If only Hannah would do that now—lose her shit. Hysterics and tantrums Will could handle. Withdrawal was an unknown monster.
A streak of lightning lit up the road ahead.
“Man, that was close,” Will said
The last few fronts had rolled in blind, without rain, and recent pop-up thunderstorms had split around Saponi Mountain as if they were skirting the edge of a black hole. If it rained, would Hannah talk?
The wind picked up and low-growing branches snapped back and forth under the power lines. As he clicked on the turn signal, pellets of rain fired at the windshield with the force of hail.
“How about that? It’s raining.” Could he sound any more stupid? He half expected Hannah to reply with, Well, duh, but she didn’t even move.
“We’re home,” he said. More five-star inanity.
They bumped along the driveway and rain lashed the car. No rain for months and then a monsoon. Will shivered. If his mom were still alive, she’d be dancing barefoot in the mud, doing the escaped lunatic pirouette.
He parked as close as he could to Hannah’s porch. “I’ve got an umbrella in the trunk—”
But Hannah was out of the car and walking away. Too beat to protest, Will flopped over the steering wheel. He would check on his dad and then grab a few hours’ sleep before taking Hannah back to the hospital, as promised. After that? Pack up and return to New York with his dad.
Watching Hannah and Inigo ground themselves in happier memories had led to this decision. Recriminations vanished the moment they began to guide each other through their living, breathing family album with remember-when-Galen-did-this moments. The same had been true of him and his dad with Freddie’s trip.
Hannah and Inigo faced a long recovery with Galen. They needed to come together, and so did he and his dad. It was time to retreat into the family shell, to think small and close ranks. It was time to salvage happy memories before there were none left, before his dad forgot his grandson’s life as well as his death.
Since leaving New York, Will had repeatedly questioned his behavior, his lie. Not anymore. Lying to his dad had been the right decision, and so was taking him back to the city. Who knew how they would manage, but family was family, and the old man was not ending up in some shithole wearing Depends and being spoon-fed. His dad had once taken care of Will, and now the situation would reverse. Surely that was the natural order in normal families.
And his feelings for Hannah? Irrelevant. He’d left love behind before and survived. He could do so again. Decision made—New York or bust.
Hannah knocked on his car window and Will was out in the downpour before he could draw breath. Pathetic, but she held his strings. Needed to cut those, too.
“Come in?” she said.
He nodded and they ran for the porch.
The dogs welcomed them inside; Rosie went straight to Hannah and shadowed her as she slipped off her clogs. Will unlaced his Converse and lined them up nearby. Then he stood, playing with his watchband. Hannah began flicking off switches one by one, throwing the living room into darkness. He should have noticed, should have turned them all off before he went to the hospital. Should have done that one small thing for her, just as now he should talk, set the tone, do something guy-ish. If he suggested changing out of her wet clothes, would she think he was taking advantage?
“I’ll ask Poppy if she can stay with Dad while I drive you back to the hospital.” Will shook rain from his hair. “Any idea what time you want to go?”
“Visiting hours are flexible on the ward, but I can drive myself. You concentrate on your dad. I’m sure all the disruption has unsettled him.”
If he didn’t drive her to the hospital, they could be gone by the time she came home. No explanations necessary.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” he said.
“No. I’m exhausted but wide-awake. You?”
“The same.”
Hannah started walking toward her bedroom and stopped. “I can’t be alone. Stay with me?”
Did she mean stay with me in my bed? Or stay on the floor by my bed? Maybe she meant stay and talk with me. Climbing was so much easier than getting a foothold with a woman. What did an older, more experienced woman expect when she invited a man to “stay with me”?
She didn’t feel like an older woman, but she had a way of processing the world that made her seem so in control. They were both dealing with tragedy, but she was doing so as a full-fledged grown-up; he was doing it as a full-fledged screw-up.
Back to basics: stay with me didn’t mean standing in the living room like a moron.
She opened a closet door in the hallway, pulled out two white towels and offered one to Will. He declined.
“Would you like me to sleep on the sofa? Stay until I know you’re asleep?” Inspired, Will.
She had started toweling her hair but paused to throw him a puzzled look. Okay, so clearly he’d missed some clues. Older women—whole new game with separate ground rules.
“No. I meant stay with me in my bedroom.”
“Right,” he mumbled, and followed her. Did she just make a pass?
“Please don’t think I’m some desperate middle-aged woman making a pass.”
“Never crossed my mind.”
“Yes, it did,” she said. “You’re a crap liar.”
Crap decision maker, crap liar, crap friend to Galen, crap everything right now.
“You don’t have to explain,” he said. “I’m not sure I could be alone, either.” Although for reasons you can’t possibly guess.
Before he could stop himself, Will glanced up the staircase. Suicide cleanup was one task a parent shouldn’t have to face. Something else Galen had thought through. When Hannah was asleep, Will would find her cleaning supplies and take care of it.
The dogs lay down on the floor surrounding the bed, but he hovered in the doorway. Hannah closed the window, then disappeared into the adjacent bathroom.
A dark stain on the natural-colored carpet suggested she hadn’t shut the window in time. Sleeping on the ground floor with her window open was so dangerous. Almost as dangerous as him joining her in the room with the large, unmade bed.
Strange, he would have pegged her for an early-morning bed-maker, not a woman who left domestic tasks undone. Or was she in bed when he’d barged in hours earlier? He barely remembered the first part of the evening. Blood gushing out of a gaping wound was an effective mind-wipe. He’d researched and written worse, but witnessing the gore in real time, with someone he cared about...
The room was white and sparsely decorated, with a pine rocking chair in the corner. A turquoise see-through bra was draped over the back.
Definitely not leaving the safety of the door frame, then.
A strip of small spotlights illuminated a gallery of black-and-white photographs on the far wall. The still lifes of sassafras, sweetgum, tulip poplars and red oak drew him in. When he glanced down, he was standing over the stain in the middle of the carpet. He was inside her bedroom.
Will moved closer to peer at a panorama. It was taken from the tower on Occoneechee Mountain.
“Who’s the photographer?” he called toward the bathroom door.
“Me.”
Every time he thought he had her figured out, she surprised him. Finding the real Hannah was like exploring an exotic locale without a AAA guide. He stared at another stunning print, this one of a cloudless sky through the spiky needles of a loblolly pine.
“You’re really good.”
“Thanks.”
He turned to see Hannah sitting on the bed in her white dressing gown.
“My clothes were soaked. Your jeans?”
“Fine,” he answered quickly. God help him, she’d better be wearing something under that robe. He pictured the tattoo weaving toward her right breast and gulped.
Thunder boomed and rain rattled against the window. His heart was galloping all over the place. Did she expect him to sit on the bed next to her or in the rocker with the lacy bra?
“You could sell these,” he said, gesturing to the photographs.
“Why? I take them for me. Only me.”
Admirable.
“This one—” he pointed at the panorama “—reminds me of quiet moments soloing.”
“Soloing?”
“Climbing unroped and alone. It’s how I gain control when my life feels as if it’s being dragged off by a herd of wild horses.” He was jabbering, but the image had just popped up like spam.
“You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” Hannah said.
Will shook his head. “I would never have pegged you for a smoker.”
“I haven’t been for twenty-five years.”
“Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
Was there a wrong answer to that question? “You just don’t seem the type. I can’t imagine you doing anything unhealthy.”
“That’s because of what I do, not because of who I am.” She fell back on the bed and spread out her arms. One hand was balled up in a tight fist.
He had a flash-thought about getting laid, which was beyond sick. Maybe he should just leave.
“I don’t really have my act together,” she said. “I make everything up as I go along.”
“Hey, that’s my line.”
“I don’t think I can go through this again.” She raised the heel of her clenched hand to her forehead. “I lost my mother, I lost my father. I can’t lose my son. I can’t...”
He was across the room in two strides and then sitting next to her. Two damaged parents, just trying to drag themselves into another day. Lightning flashed in the space between them.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, “what you can get through when you have to.”
“Are you speaking as a parent?” She lowered her arm and stared at him, dry-eyed.
Tonight of all nights, he couldn’t talk about Freddie. An explosion of rain pounded against the window like the rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire. Thunder crashed overhead, and two of the dogs scrambled to get under the bed. Will fell back into her white comforter, letting it swallow him.
“Your father talks about Freddie nonstop, and yet you never mention him. Why is that, Will?” she said.
Will closed his eyes. Tell her. It would be so easy to tell her the truth, but he couldn’t, not after everything she’d been through tonight. Besides, he had made the decision, minutes earlier, to keep the lie alive, to keep Freddie alive. To do what he believed was best for his dad.
He rolled his head toward her and opened his eyes. She had propped herself up onto her elbows. She was so close. Close enough that he could feel her body next to his: thigh-to-thigh, chest-to-chest, heart-to-heart. Close enough that he could kiss her. A light kiss on the lips, as chaste as the kiss he’d given Ally in kindergarten, right before she’d bitten him and left the tiny scar on his bicep—the wound of his first, and until now only, love.
“I’m sorry.” Hannah stared out into the room. “I don’t know why I asked that. I understand that you don’t like to talk about your son, and God knows I don’t want to talk about mine.”
“We don’t have to talk,” he said.
She opened her palm and revealed a familiar orange capsule. “Matt gave it to me, to help me sleep. But I don’t want to be drugged—in case Galen needs me.”
“My dad takes those,” Will said. “They’re pretty innocuous. They just relax you. I gave him two earlier in the evening, and he still woke up when the ambulance came.”
She stared at the pill.
“Take it, get some sleep. I’ll listen for the phone, and I promise to wake you if there’s any news.”
She raised her hand to her mouth, tossed back her head and swallowed.
He sat up.
“Wait, where are you going?” She grabbed his arm and her fingernails dug deep.
“Just to the sofa, so you can sleep in peace.”
“No! No!” She burst into tears. “Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me alone.”
He reached out and wiped under her eyes. “Hey. It’s okay. What if we just lie here, together? And pretend nothing exists outside this room.”
“I’d like that,” she said.
I’ll hold you while you sleep, he used to tell Freddie.
“I’ll hold you while you sleep.”
* * *
The storm rumbled through, but the rain continued for another hour. Soft rain that seeped into the soil and fed the roots. Already it was the day after. The day after the four-month anniversary of Freddie’s death, the day after Galen’s attempted suicide. This dark morning should feel like a beginning, but it felt like a hole in time. A gap.
Mind the gap was the warning he’d heard over the intercom the last time he’d traveled on the London Underground. Mind the gap.
Hannah was breathing in a soft rhythm. His right arm, wrapped around her body, was numb, but he couldn’t move. He wouldn’t get up and clean the bathroom before dawn. That way if she woke up, she wouldn’t be scared and alone in the dark.
He planned out his day—or rather, his escape. His stuff would take twenty minutes to pull together, his dad’s not much longer. And all the boxes from Hawk’s Ridge were stacked and ready to go. He would talk to his dad, then pack up the car, then call a cleaning service. They could be on the road before midafternoon.
He made mental lists and thought about everything and anything except for the woman curled up asleep in his arms.
Hannah shifted and he buried his face in her hair. Lavender, she smelled of lavender. Maybe some things weren’t meant to have a future. Maybe they could just lie here, together, and never move. Maybe this was enough. Raised on tales of heroic acts committed in the name of devotion, he’d always believed in love that endured, love that never died. After Ally spurned him, he’d convinced himself he would never—could never—love again. And then he’d stumbled into someone else’s family crisis and reverted to that little boy who believed in the curse of happily-ever-after.
He kissed the top of her head. A stolen kiss. She would never know. He wasn’t taking advantage, being a douche bag. He just wanted one memento to carry with him after he left.
Hannah’s head moved up into the crook of his neck, and then kept moving. Her lips brushed his with a sweet, warm kiss, a sleepy statement of reassurance. Nothing that screamed sex, but his body hummed like a tuning fork.
Her hand fumbled with his zipper, and he reached down to stop her. She didn’t want this. She was drugged, half-asleep, seeking escape. And he wasn’t taking advantage of—
She kissed him again. Nothing chaste about the second kiss. It felt like hunger, like raw need. A primal yell stuck in his throat, and in that fragment of distraction, she tore at his sweatshirt, yanking it over his head.
Will grabbed at her robe, tugged it open and pulled her back against his chest until her heart beat into his. The perfect echo. He should slow down, create a golden moment, one that would last forever. But as his mouth found hers, his mind ripped into a thousand sparks. He was light-headed, dizzy, smashed on desire, and then he was spinning outside his body, no longer human. Drunken sex had always been his preference, but this? High on dopamine, he couldn’t figure out where he ended and she began. Didn’t want this; didn’t want to need another person this much. And then, he had no thought at all.
* * *
Gently repositioning her, Will slipped out of the bed and watched Hannah sleep. How could he walk away from this woman?
He had given in to mind-numbing sex without speaking a word, without saying I love you, without even stopping to ask, “Contraception?” And yet, he had no regret. Months of blackness had retreated into the corner. Soon enough he would, once again, be alone with his grief. But right now, it was just him and Hannah.
Raindrops from the night’s storm were splattered on the screen beyond her window, and the first streaks of dawn filtered across Saponi Mountain. He closed her curtains, shutting out the day.
He grabbed his boxers and, stepping over Hannah’s dressing gown, tiptoed out of the room and into the kitchen. It didn’t take him long to find what he needed. When it came to cleaning supplies, Hannah was unsurprisingly logical. Balancing his load—a mop, a bucket, bleach, rubber gloves and a roll of paper towels—he crept up the stairs and headed for the bathroom.
The door was wide-open, as he’d left it. A sour, rancid odor kicked him in the stomach. In his writing, he described the smell of blood as metallic, but this was more like rotting flesh. And urine, he could smell urine. Had Galen pissed himself?
Entering the bathroom, Will kept his eyes on the window as he squatted down, dropped his arm into cold, bloody water and pulled the plug. A few hours earlier, he had looked out of that window and seen flashing lights down below. An image sprung, of emergency vehicles surrounding a crash scene in New York. Had Freddie peed into his car seat in those final moments? Jesus. He ran to the toilet, flipped up the seat and puked.
Sinking to his knees, Will clung to the toilet bowl. How had he conned himself into thinking he could help Hannah when he could barely help himself? Pushing up to standing, Will looked at the blood pooled on the floor and splattered across the mirror. He would scrub until nothing remained but the scent of bleach, and then he would shower off the stink of attempted suicide and return to Hannah’s bed. For just a little while longer.