by Nancy Adams
“Why isn’t she responding?” Sam asked in a voice breaking with worry.
“It’s okay,” Jenna reassured him as she once again dove her mouth onto Jess’s and blew hard, puffing out the girl’s pale cheeks.
Seeing no response, she began pumping the little girl’s chest again with fury.
“Why isn’t she waking up, Jenna?” Sam asked softly from the water.
“Just wait, Sam. Just wait.”
“Please, Jenna. Please.”
The whole world went dark as Sam watched his little girl fade from life in front of him, Jenna frantically trying to bring her back. It was as though the sun had been covered over with a shroud of the darkest, thickest cloud. He couldn’t help but gaze into Jess’s dead eyes as she stared out into oblivion. His own eyes took on their same dullness and everything shrank around him.
“Oh, God no,” he mumbled to himself. “Please, God. Please. Not my little—”
Just then, Jess burst up and spat a mouthful of water out, her eyes coming back to life, and an instant gasp of relief erupted from both Jenna and Sam’s mouths.
Once Jess had emptied her lungs, she lay herself gingerly back down on her side, continuing to cough and spit out water, shivering all over. Sam burst into tears at the scene. All the darkness he’d experienced just before she’d come back to life had been replaced by a dazzling, bright light. The relief that flooded his body humbled him to tears.
“Daddy,” Jess exclaimed, bursting into tears herself and taking ahold of her father around the neck as he clung to the side of the ski.
As for Jenna, she merely sat at the other end, panting from the effort and relief of it all. Only seconds before Jess had come back, she had seriously contemplated that the girl could be lost forever. As much as she and the girl traditionally didn’t get on, the thought of Jess’s death had filled Jenna with an awful hollowness and as she sat there watching them embrace, she realized that she had feelings for this girl, no matter how much animosity often existed between them.
A minute or so later, Sam took Jess on the back of his ski, the girl clinging on tightly, and returned her to the yacht. When they arrived, the first mate had a look at Jess, stating that she’d received a bit of a bump on the head and a slight concussion. Even though Jess insisted that she was all right, Sam decided it was best to take her back to the mainland and to a hospital.
As they headed back to L.A., Sam left his daughter for a moment to join Jenna up on deck. Since they’d gotten Jess back, Jenna had been on her own outside, gazing out at the ocean. When Sam reached her and put his arm around her, she turned to him and smiled. Sam instantly noticed that her face was wet with tears.
“Oh! Sam,” she cried gently, thrusting her head into his chest. “I really thought that she was going to die.”
“Me too.”
Sam held her dearly then, feeling something mutual glow between them. Everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes had been like a hammer blow. First his daughter’s near-death experience and then Jenna saving her life. He had started the day feeling so far from Jenna, his head filled with Claire, but now he had so much to thank her for. Everything had put him in a daze.
“Thank you, Jenna,” he whispered to her as he held her close. “Thank you.”
Within an hour they were back at the L.A. harbor and Sam whisked Jess to the nearest emergency room. When he came through the doors holding Jess in his arms, people began turning around and nudging others to take a look. It wasn’t everyday that the richest man in the world came bounding through the doors of an ER holding his little girl.
When they reached reception, Jess was immediately taken into a side room where a doctor examined her and said that she was physically okay except for a little concussion. He prescribed a low dose of Amitriptyline for the headaches and then judged her fit to leave. Sam’s relief was palpable and he was soon walking out of the hospital, holding Jess’s hand as she gingerly walked alongside, people staring and whispering as they left.
When they were in the car, they sat in silence for a moment, both gazing blankly out of the windshield. As they did, Sam looked over at his daughter before reaching across and taking her warmly in his arms.
Holding her tightly to him, and with tears in his eyes, he said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
Shaken, Jess began crying and the two held each other for several minutes.
When they parted, they gazed into each other’s eyes for a moment and Sam was thankful that he was getting to see life in them again. He recalled how they had looked while she lay unconscious on the jet ski. They were so dull then and those lifeless eyes had put more fear into him than anything had ever done before.
Having rejoiced at the life returned to her eyes, Sam turned away and started the ignition. Before long, they were driving back to the mansion, a somber silence in the car.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jules was in the Toyota pickup with Jose. They’d just picked up the glass for the trailer from the wholesalers and were driving back into the trailer park. It had taken all week for the guys at the place to make the glass panels in the dimensions that Jules had given them, so for that whole time, his family had existed without natural light inside the trailer, the black sheeting placed over the top blocking it out. David had found it exciting, comparing it to the experiences of astronauts in spaceships. Juliette, on the other hand, had found it horrid without her view of the surrounding trees. As for Jules, it had been at night that he had most been annoyed by the sheeting. It kept him awake as it rustled in the wind.
When they pulled up, they unloaded the pickup, laying the glass gently on some wooden bearers, and went inside the trailer. Emerging into the kitchen, they found Juliette at the table with a tearful Gwen, her face still bruised from several nights ago. The poor woman had been crying and her hand was stretched across the table, where Juliette delicately had ahold of it. Jules was slightly stunned to see the woman and immediately thought of her brutal husband.
“Hi Jules,” Gwen said with tearful eyes when she noticed him enter, “I just wanna say how sorry I am for everything.”
“You don’t ever need to apologize for your husband, Gwen,” he replied, Jose standing beside him.
Gwen smiled at him and Jules returned her one of his own. Standing there, he could hear David playing with Gwen’s two sons at the other end of the trailer in his bedroom. By the sounds of things, they were playing video games.
“Well, me and Jose better get on with this,” Jules said as he stood there. “We’ve only got another few hours of sunlight.”
He left and went to work while Juliette and Gwen sat chatting. They were talking over one subject alone. And that was Charlie.
“Because of the drink, he’s drained of the last of his humanity.” Gwen was excusing her husband. “He loses the last pieces of what make him the good man I met all those years ago.”
“It’s no excuse,” Juliette coughed back. “You’re giving him a reason to do it, and you’re giving yourself a reason to let him back again. You don’t deserve to be hit, Gwen. Your children don’t deserve to be hit. Whatever ills the world has dealt Charlie, they are none of your faults. He should learn to be a decent husband and father, kick the booze and do his best to hang on to you. If you keep taking him back, he’ll never stop. My advice to you would be the next time he’s arrested, you press full charges.”
“He’d kill me. He told me before that he would. The last time I pressed charges—that time I woke up in the hospital with my head in a brace—it was only because my Ma forced me to. She got wind of it because the hospital needed a next of kin and they found her on my driver’s license. When the police arrived to question me, she was there at the hospital with me and she forced me to press charges. He got two months in County for it. When he got out, he was real sweet for a few weeks. But then one night he came back drunk and told me that if I ever put him in a cage again, he’d murder both me and the boys.”
As Gwen was imparting thi
s last part, Juliette became aware that someone was standing behind them. When she turned, she saw David.
“Momma,” he said, “is it okay if I get Randy and Casper a drink each?”
“Of course it is.”
“Are they behaving themselves in there?” Gwen inquired.
“Yeah. We’re playing Zelda on the Joy-Box,” David replied as he grabbed a chair from the table, placed it by a cupboard, stood on it and fetched three glasses.
“How long where you standing there?” Juliette asked him as he did.
“Not long.”
Once he’d finished, he placed the three glasses on a tray with a bottle of juice and took them to his friends.
Gwen had sat watching the boy with curious eyes.
“My gosh,” she exclaimed gently when he’d gone. “You say he’s only five?”
“Yes.”
“My eldest Randy is seven and I don’t trust him enough to get drinks for hisself yet, let alone three of them on a tray. He’d spill it everywhere and make a mess. But that boy of yours is incredible. The way he talks is so grown up, pronouncing all his words properly and all. And you say he reads?”
“Yes. He reads books for older children. He’s already read everything by Roald Dahl and he loves Harry Potter.”
“My word. It’s hard enough to get my two to read Dr. Seuss. That boy o’ yours is just incredible.”
“Yes, he is,” Juliette agreed with a warm smile.
While the women talked away, outside, Jules and Jose were busy placing the glass into the bathroom window. Having carefully done it, Jose held it in place while Jules added the seal to the edges.
As he did, Jose inquired, “So that’s the guy’s wife?”
“Yep. That’s her. How’d you guess?”
“By the bruises, jefe. She’s got one almost as big as yours.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s he at today?”
“He usually spends time during the days with some pals of his over in town. They drink and gamble, and then he comes home out of money and out of his mind. That’s when he decides to pick on his wife.”
“Man, you should take up my offer of bringing some homies over here and teaching big boy a lesson. Let’s see how good he fights with some brothers on his ass.”
“That’s a nice thought, kid. But I’d rather just keep the peace.”
“You don’t feel sore about him hitting you like that? Or the fact that we’re now fixing all your windows after he smashed them in?”
Jules felt a pang of fury rush through his heart and he momentarily saw red. The mention of it all had made Jules angry. In his decency, he felt that any act of violence would betray who he was. But at the same time, something inside of him compelled Jules to fight Charlie, to revenge himself this instant for all the misery that Charlie had poured onto his head for no better reason than that he was a bully. That animal part of Jules wanted to hit Charlie with all his force and keep hitting him until the thug was naught but a stain on the asphalt.
“I am sore,” Jules uttered after a moment or two. “But I gotta be the better man, Jose. When you’re a father, you gotta act in a way that you’d be proud of your son acting.”
“Man, I like you, Jules, you know that. But where I’m from, you get hit, you hit back harder. Being the better man against people that ain’t men is pointless. The only thing an animal like Charlie understands is the same medicine he been dealin’ hisself—the fist. You keep lying down in front of him and he’ll keep on trampling you.”
Jules thought about what Jose said as they finished up with the seal on the window. The kid was right in many ways, but so too was Jules. Lowering himself to Charlie’s level would be to lose himself in it all. Lose who he was, his humanity. The worst that could happen would be if Jules lost who he was in this all.
Once they’d finished the window, they picked their tools up, went to the next one and began work on it.
Inside the trailer, Gwen was still talking with Juliette. The poor woman was telling Juliette about her awful life with Charlie Mathieson. She lived an intolerable existence under his despotic fist, punished for any imagined indiscretion that he may have. Her boys never even spoke to their father, hid from him even when he was home. In Juliette’s imagination, she thought of the contrasting reaction of David when Jules came back from work each day. Those boys, like Gwen, were suffering unbearable lives because of her decision to keep her husband.
Looking Gwen square in the eyes, Juliette said, “You have to leave him.”
“But how?”
“Where do your family come from?”
“I’m originally from New Mexico. I came out here when I was twenty to get modeling work.”
“You still in touch with your folks out that way?”
“I speak all the time with my Ma in Alamogordo and I’ve got a sister out in Albuquerque.”
“Then why don’t you go to them?”
“I can’t,” Gwen said with a trembling voice. “They can hardly keep their own asses above water theirselves, let alone me and my two. Plus, the first thing Charlie would do the moment I went missing would be to call my Ma. He’d demand she tell him, and if she still told him that we weren’t around, he’d jump in his car and spend the next two or three days driving across country to retrieve us. He’d promise to be better. Tell the boys he’ll be a better dad. Then within a day or two of coming back, he’d begin shouting at me for leaving him and then I’d get a worse beating than ever before.”
“For Christ’s sake, Gwen. Have you heard yourself? You need to leave this man, period. That’s the reality. No matter how many excuses you find not to leave him, you’ll have none when he kills you. Do you understand?”
“I guess,” Gwen muttered with a blank expression.
“I’ve seen men like Charlie before. They only get better if they have to. While you keep taking him back, he’ll keep thinking he don’t need to change. He won’t change and he’ll only become crueler. He’ll get worse and worse until eventually he hits you or one of the boys too hard and he goes to prison for good. Do you want that?”
“No.”
“Then you must leave him. You must pack up the next time he’s out and take your boys to New Mexico. Ignore all his calls and all his visits. Call the police the moment he arrives, don’t hesitate. He’ll be a nuisance for a while, but eventually he’ll leave. You can’t continue with him and he can’t with you. His life is killing him, but until he hits rock bottom and wakes up, he won’t realize that. You leaving him could be the wakeup call that he needs.”
“This is all too much,” Gwen bleated, almost sinking back into tears. “I know I should but I’m just not strong enough.”
Juliette looked her deep in the eyes and pronounced, “You’re stronger than you could ever know, Gwen Mathieson.”
This had the effect of making Gwen smile, and the two women sat in silence for a while, Gwen going over Juliette’s words of encouragement in her head.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Jess and Sam returned from the hospital, Jenna was waiting for them in the hallway.
The moment Jess saw her, she walked up to Jenna and said, “Thank you, Jenna. Dad says that I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. It makes me sad…” She choked a little on her words here, tears welling up her eyes. Seeing her distress, Jenna came forward and took both of her hands in her own. “It makes me sad,” Jess went on, doing her best to keep it together, “to think that I’ve been such a bitch to you all this time. Everything that’s happened today got me thinking in the car on the way back. I’ve been really awful to you and I hope that you can forgive me.”
Jenna smiled, tears glittering in her own eyes.
“Of course, Jess,” she said.
With that, the two took hold of each other and hugged, Sam smiling gently in the background.
Having not had a chance to eat seafood in San Diego, they had the chef cook them some dinner immediately after the hug and, before long, they were s
itting down to eat.
Around the dinner table, none of them had much of an appetite and each played with the food more than they ate it. Jess was still feeling the effects of the earlier blow, so that was her excuse. Jenna sat in a daze contemplating what had happened earlier and how lucky she was that she’d gotten to Jess in time, finding the days events deeply profound. And as for Sam, everything swam in his head in a storm of confusion, the day’s events crashing into the previous week’s.
While he ate, Sam couldn’t help glancing occasionally across the table at Jenna. He had so much to thank her for and every time she spotted his eyes gazing across at her, she would return his look and smile sweetly. Each time she did, Sam’s heart would collapse in on itself when he considered that he had recently become strongly resolved to leaving her. The day’s events had confused him so much and he found himself consumed by guilt when he thought of his feelings concerning Jenna and his actions toward Claire.
He sensed that he was destined to fall into despair over it all.
Everything swarmed inside of him and he found his food unappetizing to his knotted stomach. The fact that he hadn’t received a call from Claire cut him adrift on one side and his gratitude to Jenna cut him adrift on the other. Nothing in his personal life anchored him at this time and he was floating toward the edge of the world, set to fall off and float through a black nothing forever.
Perhaps I should stop dreaming and face reality, he said to himself as he poked a piece of chicken around the plate with his fork. Jenna clearly loves me and I do have feelings for her. I always imagined that they’d grow, but that was the dream. The reality is much different from that. It always is. Jenna is loyal and she is good. She saved my company and she saved my daughter. She deserves my love. She is the reality. Claire is the dream. Claire hasn’t called me. She feels nothing for me but sadness. That glint I momentarily saw in her eyes when we faced each other backstage, and then that sadness that washed over and expelled it. That glint was her life without me—full of hope and warmth. The sadness that cloaked it, that was me. I brought that sadness. I reminded her of our betrayal, of our hopeless love. All her youthful hope was blotted out the moment she thought of me and what I represented. No wonder she hasn’t called. She’s too smart; she realizes that there’s no hope with me.
