Sea Change

by Karen White

  He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling slowly. “I only meant to protect you, Ava, and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. But the truth is very hard to hear.”

  I tensed but didn’t avert my eyes, remembering my mother’s words. What you need to decide is whether or not you’re strong enough to face whatever truth you find. “I’m strong enough to hear it now.”

  He leaned forward with his elbows on his spread knees, his hands clasped between them. Everything was silent except for the old house, sighing with its subtle creaks as it settled in to listen.

  “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant. I’d told her that we should wait, and she’d told me she was on the pill, so she didn’t think I’d be happy. But I wasn’t suspicious when she asked for help to stop smoking. She’d talked about it before, so it didn’t occur to me that there was a reason she’d chosen then to quit.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “Yeah. I said yes. I figured the worst that could happen would be that it was a waste of time for both of us, and the best would be that she’d quit smoking. I was inexperienced, and I didn’t take it seriously enough to understand that the process is different depending on the goals of hypnosis. My only mission was to access her subconscious mind.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “And I did.” He stood abruptly. “Mind if I get a drink?”

  I nodded, wishing desperately that I could have one, too. I didn’t say anything as I watched him move to the small table under the side window and pour two fingers of Scotch in a glass. He studied the world outside through the blinds as he took a sip and then another before speaking again.

  “It reminded me a lot of that when I put you under that first time, when I told you to close the door and you stepped through it instead. Maybe because you’re both so strong-willed.” He shrugged and took another sip. “The script I used was a basic one for smoke cessation—although it was very similar to the one I used with you. We spent time relaxing, and then I moved her down a flight of stairs to a walled garden with a key that represented the place she wanted to be as a nonsmoker. Her task was supposed to be to focus on weeding the garden of the stresses in her life, the triggers that caused her to smoke.” He stopped.

  “And what happened?” I prompted.

  He looked at me, his face half in shadow in the growing darkness. “She found another door, with another key, and she went through it.”

  I went very still, afraid he’d stop talking.

  Matthew continued. “She went back to her childhood, to before the McMahons adopted her. And she saw her biological mother.” He returned to sit in the chair across from me, and I reached up to turn on the lamp beside me, casting us both in its yellow glow but keeping his eyes hidden in darkness.

  “Her mother was confined to bed, unable to speak, and a nurse tended to her—there was no sign of her father. But what Adrienne focused on were the soap operas playing on the television on the dresser across from the beds, and how the nurse would wait to feed her patient until her show was over.”

  He sloshed the liquid around in his glass and stared into the pale amber. “She didn’t tell me any of this until much later, after I’d found the sonogram. And then I knew why she hadn’t told me.

  “What she saw prompted her to search for her biological parents, something she’d never even considered before. She found the adoption records, and discovered that both of her parents were deceased, about six months before she was adopted. Her father died in a motorcycle accident about a month before her mother.” He paused.

  “And her mother?”

  “She killed herself.” He glanced at me briefly. “Adrienne asked the McMahons what they knew about her birth mother, but all they knew was what was on the death certificate.”

  I sat up, listening to the persistent ticking of the clock, but neither one of us said anything as we waited for the old ghosts to gather around us.

  “Without my knowledge, she hired a private investigator, who told her everything she wanted to know.”

  I thought of what Diane had told me about Dr. Walker, and my breath turned icy cold. “And everything she didn’t.”

  His eyes were dark as they turned inward, and I felt an irrational stab of jealousy that I was excluded from his thoughts and memories.

  Carefully, he placed his glass on the table and clasped his hands. “Her mother had Huntington’s.” He was silent for a moment, as if to allow the word and all its implications to sink in.

  I knew about Huntington’s from classes on genetic diseases I’d taken while studying to become a nurse-midwife. As if Adrienne’s ghost were nearby, I felt her despair. In addition to being physically and mentally debilitating, Huntington’s disease was always terminal. If a parent carried the gene, his or her offspring had a fifty percent chance of inheriting it, and of those, one hundred percent would eventually begin showing symptoms and die.

  “She underwent genetic testing to see if she had the gene. It was positive.” He picked up his glass as if forgetting it was empty, then put it down, but not before I noticed that his hand was shaking. “Still, she didn’t tell me while she waited until the pregnancy was far enough along and they could test the baby for the gene. It was positive, too.”

  I felt Matthew’s grief as if it were my own, only imagining how he’d felt when he’d seen the faceless baby sketches in Adrienne’s studio, mourning the child he’d never have a chance to hold. I wanted to curl up on the couch and erase all that I had learned, no longer wanting to know the truth. But his story wasn’t finished, and I knew that to move forward, I needed to look behind me.

  I clasped my hands together so I wouldn’t reach out and touch him. “When did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t. I found the sonogram by accident. I was looking for the bottle of aspirin she always kept in her purse, and there it was. When I showed it to her, she told me everything. She shouldn’t have carried that burden alone for so long. And the whole time she’d been suffering alone, I’d noticed how she’d changed, but I was so ignorant. I even thought she was having an affair.”

  His gaze moved to my hands, which had found their way to my belly, cupping the soft life that grew there. I didn’t say anything, and waited for him to continue.

  “I told her that we would handle it together. That I would take care of her and the baby, that she didn’t need to be afraid of anything, that I would stay with her no matter what.”

  I didn’t want to ask the next question, content in my dark corner to believe only in possibilities instead of the truth. But the secrets were like silk scarves pulled from a magician’s hat, one connected to another, the beginning and end indiscernible, and the truth hidden somewhere in between.

  “How did Adrienne die?”

  Matthew stared down into his Scotch as if he were watching the events played back, and when he first started speaking, I thought he hadn’t heard my question.

  “You would think that with my training and experience, I would know the signs. But maybe when it’s somebody close to you, you’re blind to them. The light had gone from her eyes, but that was understandable under the circumstances. That’s why I suggested we participate in the regatta, to show her that she had so much more life to live. Most Huntington’s patients don’t begin to exhibit symptoms until well into middle age.

  “And it did seem to lift her spirits, enough so that she was almost back to normal. It wasn’t until…after that I understood why.”

  I sat up, a cool brush of air touching my neck. I remembered seeing Adrienne’s datebook, where I could find no more appointments after July, as if her life had ended then, and how I knew that wasn’t the case, because she’d taken the print to be framed, and had lunch with her brother.

  My eyes widened as our gazes met in mutual understanding. “She killed herself, didn’t she?”

  He nodded, the movement slow and labored, as if it hurt. “I’d been so happy to see that she was acting like herself again that it didn’t occur to me that she was happy because s
he had a plan. Everything she did leading up to her death was tidying up loose ends—a typical sign to look for in suicide risks. And I missed it all because I didn’t want to see.”

  I moved to him then, took the glass from his hand and curled up in the chair with him, my arms holding him tightly. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing my words were inadequate, but knowing, too, that he would understand. I laid my head on his shoulder and waited for him to speak.

  “She didn’t leave a note. But I knew when I got the phone call from the highway patrol why her car had run off the road. The only part that I didn’t understand was why she chose to drown.”

  Cold air like a breath moved across my skin again, and I began to shiver.

  “The one thing I think I understand is that she was so far from home because it took her that long to work up the nerve. Despite being a midwife, Adrienne was pretty squeamish. She never really got used to the smell of blood.”

  I recalled Tish telling me how Matthew encouraged Adrienne to be a midwife, and how she was good and competent at her chosen profession, but that it was never her passion. The shivering grew worse, and Matthew pulled me closer.

  I pressed my face into his neck, melding myself to him. “And you let John and his parents believe the worst of you so they wouldn’t know what she’d done.”

  He pushed me away, then cupped my head in his hands. “And you never doubted me. Despite everything you knew, you never doubted me.”

  I shook my head, then placed his hand on my heart. “Because I know you. It’s as if we share the same heart.”

  He brought his lips to mine in a gentle kiss. I pulled back, searching his eyes, hearing his words. She told me once that sometimes when I looked at her it was like I was seeing a ghost instead. “That’s not the whole story, is it? She went under hypnosis again, and she saw something else, didn’t she? That’s how she knew where the hiding place was in the old kitchen house, even though you didn’t.”

  I could feel him pulling away, but I held firm, my hands clasped behind his neck. “It’s your turn, Matthew. For your leap of faith. I want you to put me under hypnosis again. I can’t explain it yet, but I have a feeling that Adrienne and I were somehow connected…before. That everything that has happened was meant to happen.”

  He began to shake his head, but I took his jaw in my hand. “I never doubted you, Matthew. Please don’t doubt me now.”

  His eyes became dark and serious. He pushed back my hair and kissed me again. “All right.” His resistance softened beneath my fingers. “When do you want to try again?”

  I slid from his lap and reached for his hands. “How about now?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Pamela

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  MARCH 1815

  The light of the day began to dim as I headed back down Frederica Road toward the St. Simons Sound, glad for the faster horse. Remembering Georgina’s words to stop for nothing or nobody, I did not slow at the sound of horse’s hooves as I flew down the road on my race toward the beach, where the sand hugged the water by the St. Simons light. Judging from the sound, I was far enough ahead to avoid pursuit, but I dared not look behind me.

  When I reached the thick sand of the dunes, I pulled the horse up short, knowing I had a better chance of getting to the water’s edge on my own without stumbling, and I did not want to risk his breaking a leg. I slapped him on his rump, hoping he would find his way back home, then began running toward the water, my whirling thoughts distracting me from the cold.

  I found myself wishing that I had brought my birthing instruments, in case I reached Thomas before Georgina arrived with our mother’s jewelry, just in case I needed them either to barter my services or the instruments themselves. But I had left them in their leather case in the wagon, and trusted Jemma to keep them safe.

  As I climbed to the top of the dunes, I looked around me, hoping to spot Thomas. Nothing on this barren beach resembled the beach of our summer-afternoon picnic, when Geoffrey and Robbie had slept beside me, and the sun had warmed my face as I dwelled in my contentment. This desolate place and murky ocean were foreign to me, as if I had already left my beloved home behind, and for the first time I began to feel the cold.

  I looked out toward the horizon, where a giant warship lay at anchor and a smaller boat with about eight men had begun to row from the shore out to it. I began running, stumbling once in the hard, cold sand, shouting for them to stop. But the wind blew my words behind me, depositing them in the tall grasses of the dunes.

  “Thomas!” I shouted again, waving to the boat, the ocean taking it and all of my hopes farther out of my reach.

  A man in the boat turned, and I ran to the end of the beach, the water soaking my skirts, but I barely noticed. I strained to see Thomas’s face, but even with the dim light and the distance between us, I could see that the man turned to face me was not Thomas, but a familiar face nonetheless. It was the young man who’d first given me directions to Thomas’s tent, and whom I had seen frequently on my visits to the doctor.

  “Liam!” I waved frantically, my boots now in the surf, numbing my feet. I turned behind me, expecting to see whoever had been pursuing me so ardently appear on the dunes, ready to drag me away from the shore. “Where is Thomas?”

  It took two tries before he could understand me over the sound of the waves. “I haven’t seen him—must already be on the ship. Us here are the last to leave.”

  I nearly stumbled into the waves, my legs unable to bear me up any longer. “Liam—come back for me! I must get on that ship!” But again my words were lost to the winter wind.

  I heard a shout from behind the dunes, and I turned quickly to see my pursuer, fearing already that I had lost. But whoever it was remained out of view, giving me precious seconds to still escape. Panic filled me as I recalled Georgina’s words of warning about the desperation of deserters.

  I jerked my head back toward the sea, where Liam and the others on the boat had begun rowing again. I was a good swimmer from long summers as a girl growing up on the island. I tried to measure how far the ever-widening distance was between the boat and me, remembering Georgina’s words. If you need courage, remember that you are doing this for Geoffrey. That will give you the strength you need to do what has to be done.

  Liam was still looking at me, saying something that I could not hear. “Wait for me. I am coming!” I shouted. Without thinking further, I removed my cloak and let it slip to the sand before diving forward into the icy surf.

  The cold sliced me like a razor, stealing my breath. But I pressed on, my desperation moving me forward into deeper water more effectively than my frozen arms. I opened my mouth to shout to Liam, but he had turned his head, the oars continuing to move. A large wave washed over my head, filling my mouth with salty water and dying hope. They do not see me, my mind screamed. I pressed forward toward the boat, the current fighting me with every stroke. I tried to kick my feet, but instead found myself sinking downward, my heavy and wet skirts tangled around my legs.

  I managed to bob my head above the waves, clinging to the hope that Liam might see me and start rowing back, but all I could see was his boat getting smaller as it neared the great warship where Thomas waited.

  I heard my name—coming from the shore, not the boat. Blood pounded in my ears, and all warmth left my body as I struggled to keep my head above the water. I was so tired, my arms wooden. I heard my name again, closer, and my heart recognized the voice before my ears did. Geoffrey.

  A wave pushed me up, high enough that I could see him standing near the shore, holding a lantern that swung in the wind like a fleeting star, looking past me to the disappearing boat. But Liam was too far to hear, too far to see me.

  “Geoffrey!” I shouted, but my voice fell like brittle ice back into the water. I saw him turn his head, as if sensing that I was near.

  “Pamela—come back! Please come back.”

  Another wave pushed me up again and I saw him stumble to his knees,
the lantern falling from his hand and extinguishing itself in the sand. “I will find you, Pamela! Wherever you go, I will find you!”

  I wanted to call out to him that I would never leave him, but I had already begun to slip beneath the surface, my body having given up long before my spirit. The moon crept from the clouds, a beacon of light through the murky gloom of the quiet beneath the water’s surface. I reached upward, as if the moon could pull me out of the hateful winter ocean, as if it could place me back on the summer beach with my husband and son once again. But the moon drifted farther and farther away, the cold, faceless orb fading above me until I was no more.

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  AUGUST 2011

  I awoke, blinking into the darkened room lit only by the bulb of a single lamp. My face was wet from tears, a sense of loss squeezing my chest. Matthew helped me sit up, then joined me on the sofa, his eyes searching mine. “So Pamela died, and Geoffrey swore that he would find her, wherever she was.” He smiled softly, but his eyes were troubled. “And that has something to do with my leap of faith.”

  “Part of it,” I said. I touched his cheek with my palm, knowing this wouldn’t be easy for him, but, like pulling a splinter from a finger, it was necessary for us all to heal. “You remember how I said that I thought that Adrienne and I were connected somehow?”

  He nodded, the wariness not leaving his eyes.

  “I need you to tell me about the second time you hypnotized her. I need to know what she saw.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” he said, his voice very quiet.

  I realized how hard it was, as a scientist, as a psychologist who dealt with reality every day, to admit that there was something beyond his realm of knowledge. I took his hands in mine to let him know that he wasn’t alone in this. “I don’t either. Maybe we just need to open our minds to the possibility that the universe is bigger than we know, that there are things that can’t be taught, things that can’t be understood anywhere except in our hearts.”