I look across the table at my oldest son, meeting his eyes, so similar to mine.
“Of course I would. You just say the word, kid, and I’m there.”
Reed
Reed.”
I feel my body jerk as my eyelids snap open, confused, for a moment, about where I am. Then my eyes land on Paige, propped up on pillows in her hospital bed, and I draw in a breath. “Hey.”
She smiles and my chest floods with relief. I was dreaming about that first night, about those hellish hours of waiting and the clawing, overwhelming panic. It’s become a familiar dream, reappearing pretty much every time I’ve closed my eyes for the past week and a half.
“You fell asleep,” Paige says, reaching down to entwine her fingers with mine.
“Sorry about that.”
She shakes her head. “You’re exhausted, Reed. You should go home for a while.”
I had been home exactly once since the night I brought her to the emergency room. It had been on day six, two days after they took her out of the induced coma. By that point we were reasonably sure she was going to come through this okay—she was talking to us, her voice a little slurred, managing to stay awake for longer and longer stretches at a time. She was still weak, and experiencing numbness in her arms and legs. Still confused about what was happening. But she was there, smiling at me, still Paige. So I’d finally listened when my dad and Cash bugged me, for the hundredth time, to go home and get some rest.
I lasted not quite an hour before the panic of not being near her set in and I turned around and came back to the hospital. I’m not looking forward to making another attempt.
“I like it here,” I tell her, squeezing her hand.
“I feel good today,” she says. “Much better than yesterday.”
“I’m glad. Still not leaving.”
She rolls her eyes, the sight so perfectly Paige that I can’t help but grin, the happiness followed almost immediately by a sharp stab of oh God, I almost lost this. It’s been this way for the last few days, since she woke up, relief and panic and gratitude and nausea constantly mixing in my chest and stomach.
“Reed.” Her eyes are on my face and I have a feeling she can tell exactly what I’m thinking. I lean forward and kiss her cheek, trying not to notice the dark circles under her eyes, her skin so much paler than normal. She’s okay, I remind myself, the words my mantra these days. She’s okay, she’s okay.
“I think Lennon is coming by soon,” I tell her, wanting to change the subject.
Her face brightens. “That would be nice! I think Karen is coming too…” she trails off, frowning a little, and I know she’s trying to remember if she has it right. It’s been hard for her to keep details straight in her head and her memory is still spotty.
“She is,” I assure her. “She’s bringing Daisy.”
“So it sounds like I’ll have a lot of company.” Her voice is pointed. “The perfect time for you to go and sleep. On an actual bed, instead of that chair.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
I turn to see my father standing in the doorway and I glare at him, silently warning him not to take her side on this. He ignores me.
“You’ve probably forgotten what it’s like to sleep horizontally.”
I roll my eyes, turning back to Paige as he comes into the room and approaches the bed. “How are you feeling?”
She smiles up at him. “Pretty good today.”
“I’m glad.” He leans over and kisses the side of her head, and my heart suddenly feels too big for my chest. Something shifted in the last ten days. It isn’t just that my dad and I are talking, that my anger has slipped away, insignificant in the face of everything else we’re going through. It’s deeper than that.
My dad has been here pretty much constantly, since that very first night. He sat next to Paige in those hours when I finally succumbed to sleep, was at my side every time I talked to one of the doctors, remembering details when I was too overwhelmed to take it in. He made sure everyone had food, that my brothers were getting home and resting enough, that Nancy was as comfortable as possible. He used connections through the label to call medical experts all over the country, confirming with them that Paige’s doctors are taking the right steps, making sure we know what to look out for, what questions to ask. All of that energy, that drive, that attention to detail he so aggressively applied to our career over the years is now directed at this reality, this problem. Paige’s illness seems to be his sole focus.
But it’s more than that. There’s something different in the way he talks to us, the way he looks at us. There’s a softness in his face lately, an openness that I’m not used to.
“…I just really think you should be practicing,” Paige is saying, and I shake my head, trying to clear it.
“Practicing?”
She looks up at my dad, rolling her eyes, and he shakes his head in response, like they have this little private joke between them. “This,” she says, pointing at me, “is exactly what I’m talking about. You keep zoning out—”
“I wasn’t zoned out.”
She ignores me. “Because you’re exhausted, Reed.”
“She has a point,” my dad says.
“You guys are teaming up on me now?” I ask, looking between their nearly identical expressions.
“If that’s what it takes to get you out of here.”
A familiar stab of panic goes through my chest. “You think I could rest at home?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intended. Paige’s face softens, the teasing glint fading from her eyes.
“I know it’s hard to leave. That’s why I was saying you needed some practice. You guys have a show tomorrow and—”
“There is no way I’m playing in that show,” I snap. We postponed three shows last week before the other boys finally went back to work, bringing in a rotation of drummer friends to take my place.
“Reed, I’m fine. You’re going to have to go back to work sometime.”
I glance up at my dad, narrowing my eyes, but he holds up his hands, as if to say he has no opinion on the matter of my working. I snort in spite of myself. Yeah. Things are definitely feeling different these days.
“We’ll play it by ear,” I tell her, and she leans back into the pillow, apparently satisfied for now.
“Play what by ear?” Lennon asks, appearing in the doorway. Paige’s face lights up at the sight of him and he comes over, pushing me out of the way so he can lean down to kiss her cheek and hand her the bouquet of sunflowers he’s holding.
“You brought me flowers yesterday,” she reminds him.
“These are from Haylee,” he says easily, and she grins, clearly not believing him. Ever since she woke up, it’s rare for someone to come into this room without bringing her something. I have a feeling our family and friends, much like me, are eager to make her smile as much as possible, like we still aren’t quite convinced that her smile is going to be sticking around for a while.
“We’re trying to get Reed to leave for a few hours,” Paige tells him.
Lennon laughs, pulling another chair to the side of her bed. “Good luck with that.”
Paige starts to respond but yawns instead. “You should be resting,” I say, immediately worried, and her eyebrows narrow in a familiar expression. She’s plotting something.
“Fine,” she says, lips twitching. “I’ll take a nap. If you go home.”
I scowl at her. “You aren’t playing fair.”
“Come on.” She nods her head to my brother. “Len and I can watch some TV until I fall asleep and you can go rest. Then you’ll have some energy to hang out with me once I wake up.”
When I don’t agree she raises an eyebrow. “If you don’t go home, I guess I’ll just have to keep myself awake, even though the doctors all tell me I should be resting as much as possible. If you’re comfortable with that…”
I laugh, my dad and brother joining me. “Fine, you impossible woman. I’ll go home for a few hours.” I make
a face when she beams. “You know, I could take offense to this reaction. Are you really that eager to be rid of me?”
“Yup,” she says easily, making Lennon laugh again. “You hover worse than my mother.”
I shake my head and stand, groaning involuntarily as I stretch. Okay, maybe they have a point about getting horizontal for a while. It’s starting to feel like my body will permanently be folded into the shape of that chair.
After I kiss Paige and remind Lennon three different times to call me if she needs anything, my dad follows me out to the hall. “I’ll drive you,” he says.
“Trying to make sure I don’t just sit down in my car in the parking lot for a few hours?”
He smiles. “Wouldn’t put it past you.”
It feels good to stretch my legs a little on the walk down. But almost as soon as we get into my dad’s car, I start to feel restless. When I’m with Paige, I can force myself to concentrate on the present, on her and what she needs in that very moment. When I’m not with her, all the other thoughts start to creep in. Worries about Paige, of course. But everything else, too. Spending so much time in the hospital makes it hard not to think about Lennon, and all the lingering fears I still have for him. And that, of course, makes me think about everything that happened with Dad, about the talk we’d had that first night. And the talk we had about my mom a few days later.
“You’ve always done that, you know.”
I look over at my dad to see that he’s glancing down at my knee, where I’m tapping my fingertips. “Play little rhythms when you’re nervous,” he clarifies. “Or restless. Or bored.”
I snort. “I think I’m a bit of all three.” More accurately, I’m starting to feel like I might climb out of my skin. The thought of going home, of being in the silent, huge house by myself, sounds like torture.
“Can we go somewhere else?” I blurt out.
He raises his eyebrows. “Where do you want to go?”
I shrug, feeling silly. “I know I should sleep but—”
“Sleep would be good for you,” he cuts in. “But I mostly just wanted you to get out of there for a while. If there’s something else you’d rather do, that’s fine.”
The memory of our conversation about visiting mom seems to rise up between us in the car, growing larger and more solid the longer our silence stretches. “San Diego isn’t a bad drive from here, is it?” I finally ask, my voice overly casual.
My dad’s voice sounds the same when he responds. “Not too bad at all.”
* * *
Are we seriously going to do this? It seems absolutely crazy that I’m even considering it. Especially right now. No way should I be driving away from LA, away from Paige. Even going home seemed like too far. So why in the hell am I willingly driving to San Diego?
I had imagined doing this a million times over the last eighteen years. Somehow finding out where she was and seeking her out. Or coming across her by accident. Or seeing her because she came looking for me. It was kind of an obsession, something that I thought about late at night, when I couldn’t sleep. Sometimes when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. Or when I was in a large crowd, visiting a new city, surrounded by strangers. What if I saw her? What if this was the day? I’ve never told anyone about it, not my brothers or my dad or Paige. But it was constantly there, at the back of my mind. What it would be like to see her.
So when Lennon told us that he’d done that very thing, it felt like I’d been knocked over the head by something heavy. It wasn’t just a hypothetical anymore—she was actually out there, a real living person, easy to find. Easy to make all those fantasies a reality. I’d recoiled from the idea, pushing those old daydreams into a box in the very back of my mind and locking it tight. It was one thing to think about it but actually doing it? That terrified me.
Mostly it terrified me how much I wanted to.
So I wouldn’t let myself think about it after we left London, not anymore. But it had stayed there in the shadows of my thoughts, trying to push its way out. And when my dad brought it up the other day, it had finally broken free, lodging firmly in my chest.
There’s something about almost losing Paige that makes me feel desperate to see my mother. And I have no idea why.
“Almost there,” my dad says softly, pulling off the freeway onto a surface street. We haven’t talked much since leaving LA. He stopped once to get gas, calling her while he was outside to let her know we’re coming. I didn’t ask him what her reaction had been.
“Last chance to change my mind, huh?” I ask, my voice a little high-pitched. I wipe my sweating palms across my thighs.
“You can change your mind whenever you want,” he says. “We can sit in the car outside her hotel for hours, if that’s what you want to do.”
I take a deep breath, sure that this is all a huge mistake. But I can’t seem to tell him that, can’t seem to do anything about it.
He pulls into the parking lot outside an extended stay hotel and we sit there, staring up at the building in silence.
“This is crazy,” I mutter, feeling sick. “Why did I think I should do this? Right now, of all times?”
My dad clears his throat. “I think sometimes going through a scare makes us want to take care of unsettled things.”
I look over at him, surprised. “You think I’m unsettled?”
His eyes meet mine, steady and clear. “I know I am.”
I nod, feeling better for some reason. “Let’s get this over with then.”
It feels surreal, walking into that hotel. We take an elevator up to the third floor, my dad checking his phone to confirm her room number, leading me down the hall. My heart is pounding so hard I think I might pass out, a rushing sound in my ears. If my dad wasn’t here, I’m sure I would have slid down to the floor, unable to move my feet. Instead I keep my eyes on his heels, matching his steps on the soft carpet.
He stops outside a door, giving me a questioning look. I nod, wondering if I might actually throw up. He takes a deep breath, straightening his shoulders, and I realize suddenly that this must be just as hard on him. Maybe harder. But he hadn’t questioned it at all. I told him it was what I wanted, and he made it happen.
The door opens, surprising me a little. I hadn’t been watching it—I’d been watching him. My dad’s jaw tightens, the breath going out of him in a little whoosh as he catches sight of her after all these years. Only then do I tear my eyes away to face my mother.
She’s a lot shorter than I thought she’d be. That’s my first thought. I guess it makes sense—I remember her from the eyes of a nine-year-old. Her hair is different, too. Shorter, darker. She looks old, I realize. Much older than Dad. My eyes go to his face again at the thought. His breathing seems more than a little labored, his jaw still tight. I want to reach out and touch his shoulder, maybe wrap my hand around his arm the way he’d done for me that first night in the hospital. He seems to sway a little, and I wonder if his knees are feeling weak.
“Hello,” she says, her voice soft as her eyes flick from his face to mine and back again. “I’m so glad you decided to come.”
My dad nods, once, and I lean a little closer to him, letting my shoulder brush his, somehow sure that he needs the contact. That we both do. His face seems to relax a bit and when she moves to let us into the room, he walks with steady steps.
The room is basic, clean and impersonal, a small living space in front of us, a smaller kitchenette to the side. There’s an open door to our right, leading to the bedroom. I’ve been in dozens of rooms just like this over the years, on our early tours. These days our accommodations are much more luxurious.
“Have you had lunch?” she asks, her voice shaking a little. “I have things for sandwiches or…” she trails off. “Or a drink? Water or—”
“Do you have whiskey?” I ask, surprising myself. The first words I’ve spoken to my mother in eighteen years. Her eyes go wide and Dad lets out a short barking laugh.
“Whiskey sounds great,” he says, lookin
g at me.
She smiles a little, some of the tension going out of her. “I don’t drink much hard liquor. I have beer?”
“Sure,” I say and she sighs, sounding relieved. She moves to the fridge and Dad and I stand there in the middle of the room, looking around. I feel awkward as hell and he looks just as bad.
“Sit down,” she calls over her shoulder and we both move to the living room, sitting on opposite ends of a worn sofa. She joins us a moment later, handing us bottles of Heineken, and my dad swallows several times as he takes his. It looks like he’s battling some memory.
“You look wonderful, Reed,” she says, and I have to tear my eyes away from him, again, to look at her. It’s strange—I seem to be watching him much more than her.
“Thank you,” I mumble, watching as her gaze sweeps my face, something hungry in her expression.
“You look just like your father,” she says, smiling even as her eyes look sad.
“That’s what everyone says,” I agree.
We lapse into an awkward silence, drinking our beers. Finally she clears her throat. “You probably have so many questions for me.”
I shrug, looking down. What did I want to ask her? How could you do it? Did you miss us? Do you feel guilty? None of them feel right on my tongue. I swallow, looking over to my dad again. He nods at me, his eyes steady. There doesn’t have to be a point, he said back at the hospital. It doesn’t have to be some big revelation.
“Dad says you’re showing pieces at a gallery?”
Her face lights up. “That’s right. I paint.”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember that.”
“It’s not something I used to do. It was…” she swallows, uncomfortable, her gaze flicking to my dad’s face. “It was part of the therapy I did, when I was getting clean. I ended up loving it and…well. That’s what I do now.”
The Ransome Brothers_A Ransom Novel Page 30
