The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel

by Lennox, Piper

  “Okay.” I hold up my palms. He sneers and stalks back to the shadows of the car. “You weren’t drunk. I believe you.”

  “How kind.”

  “But can you at least try to see why I’d think that? You were hiding details from me like you were ashamed.”

  “Because I am.” He opens his door and gets in. I don’t know what to do, except follow.

  “Sorry, would you care to drive? Never know when I’m wasted.”

  “Ford, I’m sorry. It wasn’t right for me to jump to that conclusion.” I buckle up, mostly as a show of trust. He doesn’t look like he believes it, but pulls back onto the road and starts driving, anyway.

  “From what my mom told me,” I say, after we’ve ridden at least an entire minute without speaking, “it sounds like that overturned semi caused it. So—since you were sober—you shouldn’t feel ashamed.”

  “Trust me, I’ve tried telling myself that every day since his funeral. But it doesn’t change the fact that Caroline lost her fiancé, that Bentley lost his dad...or that the Hawthornes lost their son. In a car I was controlling. On a trip I convinced them to take.”

  There they are again, the tears I can hear, but can’t see. “Where were you guys going?”

  “Into the city, for dinner at the Acre Hotel. We were celebrating their engagement.” He turns on the high-beams, startling a deer a few yards ahead. It bolts into the brush. “I was just going to give them a certificate for it, but Bennett wanted me to come with them. I was the one he asked for the blessing to propose, actually.”

  “Really?”

  He nods. “Caroline had, uh...she’d always told him our dad wasn’t there for her like a dad. That I was. Until I left, at least. So when I came back, I guess Bennett figured he should ask me.”

  The trees at the turn to our houses blot out the moon; I can’t read his expression. “That was sweet of him.”

  “Yeah. He was a good kid.” He stops in front of the fence, trying to decide, I think, which driveway to take. “He would have made a great dad. And he treated Caroline like—well, honestly? Like a princess. It makes me wonder why....”

  Ford’s sentence tips into a held breath, an exhale, and then silence.

  I know exactly what he wonders: why a story as beautiful as theirs had to be cut short, and a disaster like ours was allowed to go on.

  And it’s still going on. I can tell myself the book is closed, filed away, locked up tight...but here it is. All these pages we’ve never gone through, all the blanks at the end suddenly being filled.

  “Talk about ironic,” he says, and gives another of those weird, choking laughs. “Everyone thinks the accident that was my fault, wasn’t. They have no idea I was drunk out of my fucking mind that day you and I.... Then I get into another accident, one that’s not my fault at all, when I was stone-cold sober—and suddenly I’m a drunk.”

  I’m about to apologize again, for thinking exactly that a few moments ago, when he adds, “Just makes me want to get out of this fucking place that much faster.”

  My hands find another loose thread in my clothes. I pull. I feel the fabric gather, the precise and clean stitching ruined. The thread snaps.

  “Ford?”

  He’s staring at our driveways, gaze dragging back and forth across that fence. The line that’s always separated his life from mine. “Yeah?”

  “When you left...it wasn’t just about being angry at yourself. It was like you said: you’d had plans. You didn’t want them to change over something that could be undone. And the miscarriage undid it. Not like an abortion would have, because that would have been a choice, obviously—but it still resulted in the same thing. No more pregnancy.”

  In the distance, I see a light turn off in my old bedroom.

  “I think that’s the real reason you left. Your plans weren’t going to be changed, anymore. There was nothing to tie you to Hillford.” My throat tightens. “Nothing to tie you to me.”

  “Easton....” He rests his head against his hands on the wheel a moment, then sits up, staring at me. “Why are you bringing this up now?”

  “The same reason you brought up the baby in the first place, I guess: because we’ve never talked about it. But we think about it every single day. At least, I do.”

  The cicadas are screaming from the trees, a grating, open-mouthed howl that I’d probably add to Ford’s playlist, if I could bottle the sound into a song. It reminds me of summer. And every single summer reminds me of him.

  “I wasn’t part of your plans, back then. And—and I’m still not. Am I?”

  “Who said I have plans?”

  “When your dad dies and Caroline moves in with her friends or your aunt again, are you staying in Hillford?”

  My challenge stops him short. He closes his mouth.

  I rest my head on the window, just to feel something cold when I admit to myself I’m as gullible now as I was back then.

  Of course Ford and I couldn’t start a new story. Not because the last one never ended—but because we did.

  We were over before we even began, as soon as that twelve-year-old in the tire swing told me he was as good as gone. It was just a matter of time.

  I got back with Ford because I let myself hope there would be a new ending, some surprise twist to make us work—when all along, he had the ending written right in front of me. He’d said it from the start: “Don’t worry about me barging in and ruining your life, Easy. I’m out of here as soon as shit settles.”

  “You can’t plan for everything in life,” he says, and suddenly, I’m eighteen again. We both are. He’s exactly who I feared most when I saw him that night in the terminal: the same boy who left when the high was over. When shit got hard.

  “But you can plan to let people in,” I tell him. “You can make your plans and then change them, when someone worthwhile comes along. That’s what you’re supposed to do. And I can’t be with someone who won’t plan for me.”

  He hesitates, but just for a second. “Yeah, well, maybe I can’t be with someone who...who needs me to decide, right this minute, what we are, where things are going, and what my plans are. I mean, God, Easton. Why can’t we just be this? Why can’t you and me ever be about right here, right now, and see what happens?”

  “Because I already did that once. Excuse me for not wanting to pin all my tomorrows on a guy who barely opens up to me. You’ve always been like that—just this...this brick wall, and—”

  “Brick wall?”

  “Yes,” I shout, matching my volume to his. “The second somebody gets close and wants to know where they stand, you shut them out.”

  “You want to talk about shutting people out?” he laughs. “As long as I’ve known you, your answer to anything even remotely unpleasant has been to cover your ears and keep your head down, buried in all those playlists. That’s why Hillford doesn’t fucking bother you, Easy: you drown it out. And don’t act like I just threw you for a loop when I left. Yeah, I would do it differently—”

  “There it is again: you can’t admit it was wrong. You’d do it differently, but you wouldn’t undo it.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t! Why would I stay here, Easton? So I can wallow in memories of my mom dying, or Dad getting drunk and beating me up? You have plenty of good memories in Hillford. You’ve got April and Jason, and a tire swing, and—and friends, swimming in the river....”

  He trails, spent. I’m beyond tempted to tell him that he had all those things, too. Not in the same way I did—but they were there. As much a part of his Hillford as they were of mine.

  “I would do it differently.” His volume shrinks. “I wouldn’t just vanish, when you were still in the hospital and needed me. But yes—I would still leave. And you always knew that.”

  Behind us, the cicadas stop, all but a couple in the distance. Ford turns into my driveway.

  When we stop, he cuts the engine. Already I feel the heat still trapped in the soil, rising around us through the floor of the car.

  �
�I can’t just ‘see what happens’ again, Ford.” The seatbelt slaps the door as I get out. “Especially when I already know what’s going to happen.”

  The slam of my door isn’t any harder than usual, but it cracks the entire night around us. I hear the frame creak as he gets out.

  “Easton.” He catches my arm. I turn and smell rust—the quickest burst, probably from his open garage door. Definitely not blood. But it reminds me of peeling bark and pain through my stomach, just the same. Of panic, of Gin Blossoms. A missing heartbeat that almost stopped mine.

  He kisses me like he has no idea what else to do. I guess I don’t, either, since I kiss him back. He holds my face in his hands. I ball my fists up on his chest and count his heartbeats.

  We go through all our old motions, but the kiss feels like an overplayed song on the radio. You know you used to love it. Sometimes, you can almost feel it again. But all you’re doing, really, is remembering. That song will never feel the same.

  “I don’t want to lose you again,” he whispers.

  “You never lost me, Ford. You gave me up.”

  And you’re doing it all over again.

  Finally, there are his tears. My eyes sting when I see them, silver along his nose.

  But all I can think is that it’s too late. Too little. Tears don’t mean anything if the face behind them won’t be here come sunrise.

  Twenty-Six

  I wake up to Caroline banging on the garage door.

  The phrase “wake up” is misleading, actually, because it implies I slept. In reality, I’m just as awake now as I was all night, straight into dawn.

  “Hold on,” I call down to her, and automatically reach for my blinds. Bad idea. My hand slides back to my side.

  As soon as I kissed her last night, Easton walked away. And I just let her.

  Bottom line, we both knew this had an expiration date. We didn’t know when, exactly, but it was there from the start. Convincing myself it wasn’t falls somewhere in the Top Five for dumbest things I’ve ever done. It was just an excuse to let myself have her again.

  Well, lesson learned. Expiration dates matter. Life goes on as planned.

  Caroline’s still kicking the door when I come downstairs. It’s perpetually unlocked, so I make a big show of throwing it open. Then I see she’s got Bentley in her arms, cell phone pressed to her ear with her shoulder.

  She’s crying, and probably hyperventilating.

  “What’s wrong?” I’m already running for the house. I don’t need her answer. I know what’s wrong.

  Dad is on the floor of the bathroom. The shower curtain has been ripped from half the plastic rings, crumpled underneath him. Water’s still pouring from the faucet.

  “Dad.” I crouch and verify he’s got a pulse, then shut off the water. “Dad, can you hear me?”

  There’s a knot on his head. I check for blood, steadying my nerves when I see how frail he’s become. I’ve known it for months, since the night I showed up on the porch with my suitcase: his wrists showed when he propped his arms in the doorway, blocking me, and asked what I was doing here.

  But catching glimpses underneath his sleeves is nothing compared to the full picture. His skin looks like crepe paper streamers, after you unfurl too much and try to rewind the roll, knowing it’ll never fit right again. Against the white tile floor, his yellowish hue looks that much worse. I can see every small vein under his eyes.

  “I was trying to call Aunt Tessa,” Caroline shouts upstairs, “but she’s not answering. I don’t care how mad he’ll be, I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “No.” I go to the hall, stopping at the top of the staircase. “I’ll get him dressed and we’ll take him to Unity. I can get him there in the same time an ambulance would get him to Memorial.”

  While I dig through Dad’s dresser in the bedroom he doesn’t use anymore, Caroline keeps protesting. She doesn’t venture beyond the stairs, too scared of seeing Dad either naked or hurt again. “Ambulances are for emergencies, and this is an emergency. Fuck all his stubborn pride bullshit—he could die.”

  “He’s already dying, Caroline.” This is guaranteed to make her cry, but then again, she’s already crying. No sense tiptoeing around either situation.

  I find a button-up shirt and some baggy sweatpants he used to wear when we changed the oil in the truck. Dressing him is a surreal feat. I can’t help but draw the comparison between him and Bentley, when he’s half asleep from a bottle and limp.

  When he’s ready, I fireman-lift him onto my shoulders and carry him downstairs. Caroline is still crying on the bottom step.

  “Caroline, you’ve got to move.”

  She does, but follows at such a close clip, she steps on my heels twice.

  “Ford, he needs an ambulance! You shouldn’t be moving him—”

  “What about Bentley?” I get Dad into the passenger seat of the truck, strap him in, and breathe the shortest sigh of relief when his eyelids flutter. He doesn’t wake, but I still take it as a good sign. I turn to Caroline. “Emergency or not, you can’t put him in the front. There’s not enough room, anyway.”

  “I’ll take him to April and Jason’s.”

  I look at the Lawrences’ house.

  “Fine. But go fast.”

  While she hurries through the gate to ask them, I turn around in the yard and start down our driveway, then pull into the Lawrences’ just as Caroline comes running down the porch steps. April waves from the doorway with a worried kind of smile, Bentley snoozing against her shoulder.

  “Thank you again,” Caroline shouts. April simply nods.

  If Easton knows what’s going on, or if she’s even home, I don’t know. I remind myself I can’t take the time to find out, or expend the energy to wonder. As much as I pretend it isn’t, this is an emergency.

  While I drive, Caroline tries to wake him. “We should have called an ambulance,” she sniffs. “This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

  I actually laugh. “Oh, no, it’s not.”

  “All because he doesn’t want anyone in Hillford to know he’s.... It’s the most idiotic, stubborn reasoning. Who cares about pride?”

  “It’s not about pride.” I slow at a stop sign, then roll through. “It’s about giving him some dignity.”

  I glance at her. She has the same perfectly centered crease between her eyebrows that Mom always got when she was worried.

  “Dignity,” she repeats. “Like...like how?”

  “Not letting all of Hillford know he drank his liver into a pulp, for one.”

  My joke deepens the crease. Know your audience.

  “And for another, it’s about...honoring his wishes. Logically, yeah, an ambulance to Memorial would have made more sense. Just like hiring a home nurse would have, instead of you and me doing everything. But he doesn’t want those things. Letting him decide, it makes him feel a little more in control of his life.”

  I downshift when we get to the main road. “Everything else is out of his control, suddenly. It’s not really about the town finding out, because they’re going to anyway—just like it’s not about someone taking care of him like a little kid, because he still had to let you and me do it. He can’t choose what happens to him, anymore. But he can at least choose how it happens.”

  Caroline doesn’t respond, but looks thoughtful all the way to the hospital.

  “I’ll go in and tell them we need a stretcher or something. You can unbuckle him, but don’t try and move him yourself, okay?”

  “I’m not the one who He-Manned him out of the house instead of calling an ambulance, but sure.”

  Despite everything, I smile. I rap my knuckles on the metal twice, reassurance I can’t find words for, and bolt inside.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re side-by-side in the waiting room, staring into cups of instant coffee. Aunt Tessa, trapped up north at a conference, makes us promise to keep her posted.

  “You think he’ll be okay?” There are teeth marks around the rim of Caroline
’s cup. “Or do you think this is it?”

  “Our father,” I tell her confidently, sighing as I stretch my legs, “is far too stubborn to leave this world drawing a bath.”

  “Ford.”

  “I’m kidding.”

  She shakes her head and, thankfully, misses the fact I never really answered her question.

  I think of his yellowed skin again, the blue veins and jutting bones.

  For the first time since I came home, he looked exactly as sick as his doctors kept telling me he was. For the first time, I think I fully understood he was dying.

  The minutes tick past. I get more coffee even though it tastes awful; Caroline smacks her flip-flops on the floor, lifting one heel and then the other, over and over.

  “Back to what we were talking about in the truck,” she says suddenly, “about how you wanted Dad to have his dignity?” I nod, then wait. She picks at her nail polish, the glow-in-the-dark pink I sent her for Christmas. “The way I look at it is, sometimes, giving up what you think is your dignity...it can actually be empowering. Like after Bentley was born and I went to the hospital—there was no damn dignity letting doctors, like, poke around down there—”

  “Hey, hey, I don’t need to hear that stuff.”

  She laughs. I’m happy to see her do anything that’s not sobbing, but she covers her mouth with both hands like she just said “fuck” in front of the pope.

  Even I get serious again, as a family nearby gets called back to the ER, and the gravity of the situation settles back into place.

  “What I mean is, when you accept something not because it’s what you want, but because you realize it’s the best thing for you, or someone else...you’re taking back some control. You said that stuff about how, if he can’t control what happens, at least he can control how it happens? I get that. But you can’t always control that, either. All you can really control, all the time, no matter the situation...is how you react. You get to decide how you’re going to stand up and face it.”