by North, Will
“Waiting.”
“For what, love? Have you not slept at all?
“No. I don’t think so. What happened to you?”
He shook his head to clear it. Sand flew.
“Fight. With Tyler.”
Peggy March lurched upright. “Oh, no!”
“I had to tell him the firm wasn’t going to make him a partner. The vote Thursday was unanimous. The senior members asked me to tell him. I’d been holding off. I waited too long.”
“You voted against him, too?”
“It was the right thing to do. Hard, but right.”
“Oh, Rob…”
“Needless to say, he didn’t take it very well. Called me a ‘Judas.’ Well, that was maybe understandable from his point of view. But then he proceeded to try to beat the shit out of me on the beach.”
“Oh, Rob, I’m so sorry.”
The woman in the chair began to sob. It began, Rob would later recall, like hiccups. And then it seemed his wife was gasping for air. And finally, she held her belly and rocked and howled like a wounded animal.
Rob rolled out of bed, body aching, and knelt beside her chair.
“Peg, it’s okay,” He promised, stroking her freckled arm. “Tyler was crazed. I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell him. But I’m okay.”
It took a few moments before he realized it wasn’t about the fight on the beach. It wasn’t about whether he was okay.
“Peg? What is it? What’s this about, love?”
Peggy March struggled to control herself. Finally she grabbed both arms of her chair and looked directly at her husband. He noticed there was grass in her hair. Running mascara blackened her crow’s feet. Her clothes were dirty.
“He raped me.”
“What?! Who?!”
“Tyler. Last night. After you fought, I guess.”
Rob was momentarily frozen in place. Then he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his wife.
“Oh my God, sweetheart. Oh, my God. Wait. Are you okay? Why didn’t you wake me?”
Peggy stared ahead as if mentally checking her own body, then nodded. “I needed to think.”
“Shit, this is a nightmare, and I caused it.”
“No, it’s not your fault, Rob.”
“You’re right.” Rob rose to his feet, looked out the window and across the broad lawns toward the Petersen compound. “You’re right; he's a lunatic. I’m gonna kill the bastard.”
He walked to the bedside table and picked up the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the police.”
“No, darling, you’re not.”
“It’s assault, Peg!”
“No, it isn’t. Put the phone down, Rob. We were having an affair.”
Her husband glanced at her and shook off the crazy words. “That’s ridiculous; that asshole flirts with every woman he meets, not just you.”
“You’re not paying attention. We were having an affair. With sex.”
Rob March stood staring at her for a moment, then put the phone down and sat on the edge of their bed. His face was as blank as a flat screen television waiting for a signal.
“In a matter of a few weeks I’ve ruined everything we spent our lives building,” Peggy March said in a voice stronger and braver than she thought possible.
Rob stared at the carpet beneath his feet. It was the color of pale straw, tightly woven in a faint herringbone pattern. Peg had picked it out. Peg had wonderful taste.
“This is not happening.”
“It is, Rob; it has. And I am sorrier than I can even begin to express. I hate myself.”
Rob March fluttered his pudgy left hand, as if waving the white flag of surrender, but said nothing.
After several minutes during which the only sounds were their own breathing, Peggy March stood.
“I’m going into the bathroom now and I’m going to try to wash at least some of this filth off my soul. When I come out—and please don’t be here—I’m going to dress, get in my car, and leave this island. I will never return to the beach again. When you and the kids have packed up and come home, I’ll do whatever you want me to do, go wherever you tell me to go, including Hell. I have some money from Grandma Katie’s estate. I’ll survive. You’ve been nothing but wonderful to me from the beginning. I rewarded you with deceit and betrayal.”
She turned, walked to the other side of the bedroom, entered the bathroom, and closed the door.
Rob March did not move.
twenty-seven
“MOM?”
Pete’s eyes fluttered a moment, then settled on her son.
“Adam. Hello, sweetie.”
“I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I looked everywhere—around the house, in the neighborhood, over at Colin’s…”
“Colin’s?”
“He’s my friend. He’s your friend, too, right?”
She lifted her head and focused on the man behind her son.
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
She saw her grown daughter beside her friend.
“Justine.”
“We need to talk, Mom.”
Pete looked at her daughter, the beautiful grown women she had become; the woman to whom she needed to tell so much.
“Soon,” she said.
“Mom…” Justine pressed.
“Well, now that you’ve retched on every bed linen I own,” Edwinna interrupted, sarcasm shouldering aside the worry in her heart, “how the hell are you, girl?”
“Shitty,” she said. “Sorry, Adam.”
“Mom,” Adam asked from her bedside, “what are you doing here? Why aren’t you home?”
Pete couldn’t speak. All she could do was shake her head, moving it slowly back and forth across the pillows; and the tears came, as if the movement pumped them from a well. She reached a hand out from the covers and stroked the boy’s hair once, noticed the bruise on her wrist again, and shoved it back under the covers.
“Okay, everyone out,” Edwinna barked. “Visiting hours are over. Patient needs to rest.”
“But…” Justine said.
Colin put a hand on her shoulder. “Not now, Justine,” he whispered.
She turned on her heel and stalked from the room.
Edwinna shooed the boy out. Colin placed a hand on Pete’s head, then withdrew, closing the bedroom door behind him. He found Justine on the back porch, staring out at the harbor.
Justine wheeled on him. “What the fuck, Colin! Where’d that bruise come from? What the hell’s going on here?!”
“We don’t know yet,” he answered, hands raised in a gesture of helplessness.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Justine. How long have you known me?”
“All my life. What’s your point?”
Colin, ever the diagnostician, noticed that despite the young woman’s tan, the color had drained from her face. She wasn’t angry with him; she was frightened.
“My point,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder, “is that I’ve never lied to you. I’m not lying now. I don’t know what happened to your mother last night, but I intend to find out. Okay?”
Justine softened. “Okay. Thanks. But two heads are better than one.”
“Agreed.”
They went back into the house just as Edwinna brought a platter of glazed doughnuts and maple bars from the kitchen.
“Cool!” Adam said. He’d been playing with Eileen.
“I can’t believe you eat such garbage!” Colin said to the old woman. “Do you have any idea…”
“Yes, I do, young man, and I don’t care. At my age, I take my sins wherever I can find them. Doughnut?”
Colin made a face. Adam had a pastry in each hand. Colin leaned toward Justine and said, “Let’s go for a walk, okay?”
The girl nodded. They went back out to the porch and then across the back lawn to the edge of the steep bank above the beach. As they descended the aged staircas
e to the sand below, they tested the strength of each weathered tread. The tide was retreating and the beach was sequined with the bleached shells of sand dollars.
“So?” Justine said.
“I’ll tell you what I know, okay?” Colin said. “It isn’t much.”
“Whatever you have,” the girl said, squatting to pick up one of the fragile white disks.
“I found your mother, unconscious, in the middle of Vashon Highway just before dawn this morning.”
She sprang upright. “What?! Where?”
“I was doing my bike run. She was just around the curve at the bottom of that long hill as you come north toward Burton.”
Justine stood rooted in the sand, her mouth open slightly, her head tilted to one side in speechless question. For a moment she reminded him of Eileen waiting for a dog biscuit.
“I know. Makes no sense,” he said, shaking his head.
“No one speeding down that hill would see her until it was too late!” Justine said. She was very nearly shouting. “She was trying to commit suicide?!”
“I don’t know. Looks like it, though. She was comatose when I found her. Acute alcohol poisoning.”
“She was drunk?”
“Critically.”
“Wait. That bruise on her wrist…”
“Both wrists, actually.”
“Jesus Christ! Did someone rape her or something?”
Colin saw the panic in the young woman’s eyes and had a sudden realization that this was a fear every woman everywhere on the planet carried in her heart every day. He wondered how they could bear it. He wondered how they ever found it in themselves to step outside into the world. Or to trust a man. It made him ache.
He reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. The truth was, he didn’t know. It hadn’t occurred to him. A GP would have considered this possibility instantly. He hadn’t. He was a vet. He focused on the memory in his mind’s eye—he saw Pete on the blacktop again. No, there were no stains; there was no dirt. Her position was decorous, almost relaxed, as if she’d just decided to take a nap. He said so.
“Then what’s with the bruises?” the girl demanded.
“Justine, I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“What happened next?”
“I got her out of the road and Edwinna arrived.”
“You called her?”
“No. She just…you know…arrived. She knew, like she does sometimes. She’s…I don’t know what she is…she’s amazing.”
“If Mom was comatose, why didn’t you take her to the medical center?” Justine demanded. “No, wait, I know why; forget it…” The girl looked out at the water. A harbor seal raised a glistening head, saw them, and flipped beneath the surface again. “Shame. It’s all about appearances, and fear of shame, in this family—in all these families. Fear of what others might think. Fear that there might be a blemish on their glossy histories. They’re ashamed of me, too, you know,” she said looking up at Colin. “The family failure.”
Colin took Justine by the shoulders, squared her up, and held her still for a moment. “You aren’t, you know.”
“So far.”
“Not even so far. Your mother and I have been friends forever, right? Your father, too, I suppose. This morning I’ve been thinking about them both, and about this family, and all those years. And here’s what I decided: You’re the only one of the bunch with the gumption to go out and make your own way. I suspect Adam’s another. You must both be adopted. For what it’s worth, I’m very proud of you, young lady.”
This brought a smile, and he let her go.
“So why didn’t you take her back home?”
Colin looked at her but said nothing.
It took a moment, but finally the penny dropped.
“No.”
“Can you think of any other explanation?”
She looked away. “You think Dad gave her those welts.”
It wasn’t a question. It was like a stale crust of bread she was chewing so it could be digested.
“I don’t know, kid; it seemed to me my job was to make her safe first and discover facts second.”
Justine nodded and looked at him. “You love her, don’t you,” she said, regarding him as if for the first time.
“Did once. Yes. Still do, I suppose, but differently.”
“Meaning?”
Colin shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his jeans and looked up the bank toward Edwinna’s house. From this angle, all he could see was the chimney.
“I used to think we were like two halves of the same being, or maybe like Siamese twins joined at the hip. And because we were connected in this way we would know and understand everything about each other. But that was never really the case. I realized this morning that I don’t know much about your mother at all. And what I think I know is probably wrong, like a story I’ve carried in my head so long I believe it.”
He turned toward the girl and smiled.
“Some friend, huh?”
“The kind of friend who makes sure she’s safe, which is more than the rest of us seem to have done.”
“But not safe enough, and too late. I feel like a failure in a legend of my own creation.”
She slipped a hand into the crook of his arm. “Not to me and, I suspect, not to Mom, either. Let’s talk to her, yeah?”
“Not yet. And I think we may need some help from someone who’s not family.”
“Who? I mean, who’s left?”
They were at the foot of the stairs.
“Trust me, okay?”
twenty-eight
“PATSY? IT’S COLIN.”
“This is the twenty-first century, Doc. I have caller ID.”
“I need you, Pats.”
“Another emergency? Why didn’t my pager go off?”
“An emergency…yes, I think so. But not at the clinic. At Edwinna’s.”
“Shit, Colin; is Pete dying?!”
“No, no; nothing like that. But stuff has happened. I don’t even know what all. I can’t handle it alone. I thought I could, but I can’t. Can you come?”
Patsy looked at the phone in her hand. In all their years together, Colin Ryan had never really asked anything of her. Oh, yes, she assisted him in surgeries and examinations. He respected her training and skill and often consulted with her about cases. But ever since the disaster with that girlfriend years ago, he’d kept his emotional life to himself. Fact was, though, if Colin Ryan asked her to step off a cliff for him, she would. Problem was, he never asked.
“Of course I’ll come.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Edwinna? Yes; I picked up her spastic cat once when that great white whale of a car she drives wouldn’t start. On the bluff, east end of Madrona Beach, right?”
“That’s the place. Soon, Pats?”
“Be there in fifteen.”
Colin stuffed his cell phone into his pants pocket and stepped from Edwinna’s porch into her knotty pine paneled living room. Justine was staring out at the harbor through a wide, multi-paned window, as if trying to see into the future. Young Adam was curled up in a slipcovered easy chair beside Edwinna’s fireplace—a massive structure made of bowling ball-sized stones her mason had collected from the base of a storm-eroded bluff on the north end of the island—the twelve thousand year old detritus left behind by the last retreating glacier.
The slipcover of Adam’s chair was frayed at every corner; the cat Desmond’s apparent contribution to the cottage’s “shabby chic” décor. The boy was thumbing an ancient copy of the National Geographic. Eileen lay on the hearth as if anticipating winter and a fire.
Colin found Edwinna rummaging in her kitchen pantry.
“What are you looking for; something I can help with?” he volunteered.
“What, you think you know my pantry better than I do?” the old woman grumbled without turning. “Chicken broth. Girl’s gonna need something in her stomach soon, unless you have a superior suggestion, Mister
Doctor…”
They were all as frayed, Colin realized, as that chair in the living room. Colin had given in to Justine’s demand that they talk with Pete and it hadn’t gone well.
***
THE FOUR OF them tiptoed into the bedroom and found Pete curled in a ball on her right side, eyes open.
“Hi, Mom,” Adam had said, with more jauntiness than Colin guessed the boy felt.
“Hello, sweetie,” Pete said, smiling as if the action of lifting the edges of her mouth were painful.
Eileen plodded up to the bedside and nudged Pete’s arm with her muzzle. Pete’s hands were beneath the covers.
“Feeling better?” Edwinna asked.
“Not much.”
“Well, no. I shouldn’t think so.”
“Edwinna, please; how did I end up here? I don’t understand.”
The old woman looked at Colin, at the children, and back to Colin. He nodded.
“Colin found you at dawn, on his bike ride. In the middle of Vashon Highway. At the bottom of the hill south of Burton. You were unconscious.”
“How did I get there?”
“Good question, kiddo. Seems you walked to the end of the beach, went up to the road, headed toward the south end ferry, and just lay down on the double yellow line at some point. Given how drunk you were, it’s a miracle you even got that far…”
Pete tried to sit up, thought better of it, and sank into the pillows again, breathing deeply to calm her stomach. The pain in her head was diabolical.
“We brought you back here,” Edwinna said, as if that were an adequate summation. “I’ve told you how and where we found you; don’t you think it’s time you told me about those marks on your wrists?”
Colin wanted to throttle the old woman. They’d just got Pete talking, but there was no way she was going to reveal the source of her injuries with her son and daughter standing by the bed.
There was panic in Pete’s eyes. She curled up again. Her chest convulsed as she sobbed.
This time Justine didn’t need to be asked. She hauled herself out of the bedroom, dropped on the settee in the living room, and pounded a cushion against her thigh in frustration. Young Adam came out of the bedroom holding Colin’s hand, like a child who’d been lost in a department store. Edwinna followed, arms in the air in exasperated impotence.
