“Aw, Sam, he’s not that bad.”
“You don’t have to live with him. You’re not the one he’s watching all the time. You don’t see him trying to take over everything. You’re not the one who can’t borrow your mother’s clothes because he’s in there all the time. He said he used to help my mother paint, and I’m like, ‘Why didn’t she ever tell us that?’ and he doesn’t have an answer. I’m sick of having him around. I can’t do anything right when he’s here. Know what he wants? He wants me to shut up. He wants me to be sweet and silent and obedient like Hope. But I’m not like Hope. I don’t want to be like Hope.”
“I don’t think he wants that. Did he ever say it?”
“He wouldn’t say it. But I know. I can see the way he looks at her and the way he looks at me. It’s different.”
“I thought he was pretty nice.”
“That was what he wanted you to think. It was an act.”
“He seems really worried about your mother.”
“Yeah. Because if she doesn’t get better, he’ll be stuck with us. That’d cramp his style. Why are you sticking up for him? You don’t know the half of it. You should meet the woman he dates. Jill. Jack and Jill. Can you believe it? She’s nice enough to make you sick.”
“Is he gonna marry her?”
“Poor her, if he does. He’s fickle. Before long, he’s out looking for better.”
“Is that what he did to your mom?”
“Why else would they get divorced?” Call waiting clicked. “Why are you taking his side? You’re supposed to be my friend, Lydia. Hold on.” She pressed the button. It was Brendan. Normally, talking with Brendan wouldn’t hold a candle to talking with Lydia, but Samantha was furious with Lydia just then, so she took the call. “Lydia’s being a dweeb,” she told Brendan straight out.
“So you know about the party?”
“Know what?”
“Didn’t she tell you? She was supposed to.”
“Tell me what?”
There was a pause, then a meek “Maybe you should call her.”
“Brendan. Tell me.”
“Her parents are staying home,” he blurted out.
“What?”
“Lydia let it slip that the guys were coming back afterward, too, so they changed their plans. They’re gonna be there all night.”
“Lydia let it slip?” Samantha sighed in disgust. “How could she do that?”
“Some of the other parents started calling her parents, so they started asking her questions, and it slipped out.”
“I should have known.” Lydia had been her best friend since third grade, but lately she was too soft. All along she had been nervous about the party. She was scared that someone would throw up, her parents would find out why, and she’d be the one punished. So now everyone would miss out. “She is a dweeb. This ruins the whole thing.”
“Why?”
“Forget the beer, if her parents are there.”
“Yeah, but my mother thought her parents were going to be there all along, so now I won’t get in trouble. Besides, they’ll stay in the other room. It won’t be so bad.”
“Oh, yuk! You’re as pathetic as Lydia is.” When he had nothing to say about that, she made a guttural sound. “This prom is going to be totally boring. I’m not sure I want to go.”
He was silent for a long minute. “What do you mean?”
“I may not go.”
He should have protested. If it had been her, she would have. But that was asking too much of Brendan. Instead, after another silence, he said, “What about me?”
“I think you should take Jana,” she decided.
“You do?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going with a wimp.
“You really don’t want to go?”
“I really don’t. Call Jana.”
He couldn’t think of a thing to say to that but a weak “Oh. Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Samantha hung up the phone and fumed. She had been waiting forever for a prom, for limos and all-night parties and beer. She had been to a zillion dances. If she’d thought this was going to be another one, she’d have bought the dorky blue dress her father liked. But this was a prom. It was supposed to be different.
Thank you, Lydia. Thank you, Brendan. Neither of them had any guts. Neither of them had a sense of adventure. They were big babies. Was she the only one who wasn’t?
She knew of another person who wasn’t. Picking up the phone, she pressed in his number. She knew it by heart, had called it many times. Before, she hadn’t done anything but listen to his voice.
Her pulse raced when it came to her now, a deep, cool, seventeen-year-old “’Lo?”
“Hi, Teague. It’s Samantha. You know, from the school bus?”
The voice turned smooth around a smile. “I think I know Samantha from the school bus, only she hasn’t been there all week.”
“My mom’s been sick, so my dad’s been driving me up. How’s things?”
“Better now. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”
She grinned. “I wouldn’t do that. I mean, I go to my dad, ‘I really want to take the bus,’ and he goes, ‘But I want to drive your sister, and she won’t go without you.’ So I’m stuck in the car.”
“Hey. Was it your mom who had an accident?”
“It was,” Samantha said, feeling important. “She was driving up to Carmel when someone hit her. The car went off the road and over the cliff. She was underwater for ages. They got her breathing again, but she’s in a coma, and they don’t know if she’s going to wake up. We’ve been spending every minute we can in her hospital room.”
“Is it gross?”
Samantha straightened her shoulders. “It’s actually fine. After a while, you forget about the machines and tubes. They want us to talk with her, so that’s what we do. They say she hears us and that if anything can bring her back, it’s our voices.”
“Cool.”
“The thing is that I’ve been so obsessed with my mom and the hospital that I haven’t been thinking about anything else, but my dad said that my mom would want me to go to my prom—it’s Saturday night—only I haven’t asked anyone yet. So. What do you think? Want to go with me?”
“Where is it?”
Her heart fell. Teague was a junior. His prom would be held in a hotel. “It’s at school,” she murmured and raced on, “but the thing is that we don’t have to stay there long. I mean, it’s going to be a dumb little prom, but if my mom would want me there, I think I should go. I have a gorgeous black dress that my dad says is too sexy for someone my age, which shows how much he knows. So, do you want to go?”
“Sure.” His voice was smiling again. “I’ll go.”
She smiled back. “Awesome!”
HOPE sat on her bedroom floor. A book lay open beside her, but she was studying her calendar, the one Rachel had made her, with a different watercolor for each month. Guinevere was on her lap, curled in a limp little ball, making precious few sounds.
Carefully cradling the cat, she rose and went out in her stocking feet to find her father. He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, wasn’t in the den, wasn’t in her mother’s bedroom. She found him in the studio. He was leaning against a wall, ankles crossed, arms folded. He was deep in concentration, studying canvases that he had lined up on the opposite side of the room.
She stood quietly by the door, telling herself that maybe she should leave and come back later. But she needed to talk with him.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said and looked at her feet. “Where are the boots?”
“In my room. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking at your mother’s stuff. She’s good.”
“Are you really going to finish her pictures?”
“I don’t know. It was just a thought. What do you think? Would your mother be angry with me if I did?”
Hope didn’t think so. She hadn’t ever heard Rachel say anything bad about Jack. Sam told her she just wasn’t li
stening, but she was. “Daddy?”
“What, sweetie?”
“It’ll be a week tomorrow. Do you think Mommy’s going to wake up?”
“I do. It’s just taking longer than I had hoped it would.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“Not much. They’re waiting, too. They’re pleased that she’s not getting worse.”
Hope guessed that if Rachel wasn’t getting worse, then the bad stuff she was feeling had to do with her cat. She raised her arms so that she could rub her face in Guinevere’s fur. It was as soft as ever. But something wasn’t right.
“Guinevere’s getting worse,” she said. “I don’t think she hears me anymore. I clap, and she doesn’t even turn her head. She’s going to die soon, Daddy.”
He pushed away from the wall, crossed the room, and rubbed Guinevere between the ears. “Is she in pain?”
“No. She’d meow if she was.” She swallowed. Her throat hurt. She had to force the words out. “Daddy, what’ll I do when she dies?”
He thought for a minute. “You’ll be sad. You’ll grieve for her.”
That wasn’t what Hope meant. “What will I do with her? I mean, I can’t just … throw her out like she was chicken bones.”
He looked cross. “You shouldn’t be worrying about this now, Hope. It doesn’t accomplish anything. This cat doesn’t look to me like she’s ready to die.”
But Hope felt the urgency of it. “She is. I know it, Daddy. I can feel it.”
“You’re just scared.”
“No,” she insisted. “It’s happening. So what am I going to do?”
He frowned, not so much cross now as unsure. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to bury her.”
He scratched his head and left his hand up there for a minute. She could see that he didn’t know what to do. Samantha was right. He didn’t think the way they did.
“Okay,” he said, surprising her. “You can bury her. There must be a pet cemetery somewhere around here.”
But Hope didn’t want a pet cemetery. She didn’t want to have to go driving to see Guinevere. She wanted the cat nearby, wanted Guinevere to know that she was nearby.
“Or we can bury her in the forest,” Jack said, glancing out the window. “Somewhere close. Would you feel better if we did that?”
Much, Hope thought, nodding.
“Done,” he said and pulled her close.
She didn’t say anything for a minute because her throat hurt again. This time it was in relief, because Sam was wrong. He did understand. That meant he cared.
“Daddy?” she whispered so Sam wouldn’t hear. “You won’t leave us alone, will you?”
“How could I do that?”
She knew that if Sam annoyed him enough, he could and would. “If Mommy doesn’t wake up and you have to go back to the city to work, you could hire someone to stay here.”
“I won’t.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
She sighed. Even more softly, with the smallest bit of breath, she said, “I love you.”
He didn’t answer, but she felt his cheek against the top of her head, and in that instant, the clock turned back and she believed.
WHEN SHE woke up the next morning, Guinevere hadn’t moved from the spot where Hope had put her the night before. Frightened, she leaned close, close enough so that the cat would feel her breath. “Guin?” she whispered, rubbing the cat’s cheek with a fingertip. When she felt the smallest movement against her finger, she let out a breath.
She draped an arm lightly around the cat and lay close, thinking, I love you, Guinevere, I love you, and heard the whisper of an answering purr. Then it stopped. For several minutes, Hope didn’t move. “Guin?” she whispered. She stroked the cat’s head and waited for a purr, stroked again, waited again. When there was nothing, she buried her head in Guinevere’s cooling fur and began to cry.
“Hope?” Jack called, coming to the door. “Are you up?”
Gulping sobs bubbled up from inside. When she tried to stop them, they only grew louder. She pulled Guinevere closer, hoping she was wrong, hoping she was wrong. Only, she knew better. She could feel it, a giant emptiness, a big hole, a huge aloneness.
“Sweetie?” He touched her head. “Hope, what is it?” He touched the cat, left his hand there a minute, and just when she was thinking that she didn’t know what she was going to do because everything she loved always left her, he slipped his arms around her and Guinevere both, and leaned over close.
He didn’t say anything, just sat there sheltering them, and when Samantha came in asking when they were leaving, he said, “Hope’s not going today. Guinevere just died.”
“I’m sorry, Hope,” Samantha said, softly now, close by.
“We’re burying her here,” Jack told her. “Want to take the bus today?”
Hope didn’t hear an answer. She had started crying again, because the words were too real. Guinevere just died. Besides, Samantha wasn’t the one she wanted just then. The one she wanted was holding her tight.
IF ANYONE had told Jack that while his wife was in a coma and his firm was floundering, he would be splitting firewood into planks to build a tiny coffin for a cat, he would have had them committed. But it seemed like the best thing to do.
Hope sat on the ground nearby. Guinevere was wrapped in the wash-worn baby afghan that Rachel had crocheted and that Hope had slept with for the first eight years of her life. Tatters and all, it was her prized possession. Once she wrapped Guinevere in it, she stopped crying. She held her bundle as though it were gold.
Jack found satisfaction splitting the logs and putting hammer to nail. When the small coffin was finished, he dug a grave, dug deeper than was probably necessary, but he didn’t want other animals digging it up. Besides, it felt good to work, felt good to build up a sweat and breathe hard.
The exertion also tired him out enough so that when Hope placed her little bundle in the coffin and he nailed it shut, put it in the hole, and began covering it with dirt, he didn’t feel quite so raw.
Hope cried. It was inevitable. Jack held her against his side and let her get it all out. Then they sat, just sat for a bit—and again it was absurd. The last thing Jack had time for was lingering in the forest on a Monday morning. He had to shower and visit Rachel, then drive on into the city to work. But Hope seemed to want him to do this. And he had to admit there was a peace to it.
They sat side by side facing Guinevere’s grave. After a time, in a voice that held the remnants of tears, and reverence, Hope said, “Know why I picked right here?”
“No. Why?”
“The view.” She pointed. “See through the trees? That drop-off? That’s the canyon opening up.”
Jack followed the line of her finger and, yes, saw the drop-off. Beyond, given depth and distance by a whisper of mist, was a palette of forest greens. He turned to Hope to remark on its beauty, but she had shifted her head and narrowed her eyes.
“If you look past it,” she said, “way past it—what looks like clouds is really ocean.”
“How can you tell?”
“If those were clouds, they would be whitish gray or blackish gray. Those are bluish gray. Can you see?”
Actually, he could.
“Mom taught me that. And to listen.” She cocked her head. “Do you hear it?”
“The silence? You bet.”
“No,” she scolded with a small smile. “The stream.”
He listened. “That’s silence.”
She shook her head.
He might have argued. But if Rachel had heard a stream, there was a stream. He knew not to question it. Rachel felt the outdoors. That was one of the things that had first intrigued him about her. In Tucson once, she had made him sit with her for hours in the desert with his eyes closed, listening. He had heard the scampering of a pack rat, the slither of a snake. He had heard wind whispering down the fluted trunk of a saguaro.
Remembering that a
s he sat here in this breathtakingly lovely place, he had a sense of what Rachel might have given up when she had moved to San Francisco with him. She lived and breathed the fresh outdoors. She connected with flora and fauna as many people didn’t. She knew her terrain.
So he listened for the sound of a stream. He swallowed to clear his ears and listened again, sorting the outside world from the flow of blood in his head. And he heard it, a faint, distant shhhhh far to the left.
“Over there?” He pointed.
Hope grinned and nodded.
“How far a walk?”
“Five minutes. It runs down the mountains into the ocean. I’ve walked it all the way down with Mom.”
“How does it cross the road?”
“It goes under a bridge. I’ll show you sometime,” she said, but her voice was less sure, and she didn’t look at him.
He knew she was thinking that once Rachel woke up, he would be gone. But even if Rachel woke up that very day, she would still need help. Okay, so she might not want him around all the time. But spring was full and summer approaching. There were new shades of green here. The idea of a streamside walk held appeal.
He smiled, feeling the same sense of anticipation that he had felt driving back to Big Sur the night before.
chapter ten
THE DRIVE from Big Sur to the hospital on a Monday midmorning took an easy forty-five minutes. Jack arrived feeling mellow—only to find another patient in Rachel’s room. He hurried to the next room, thinking he had made an innocent mistake, but an entire family of grim-faced strangers there told him he had been right the first time. His heart stopped for the fraction of a second it took for him to reason that he would have been called if Rachel had died. Then, surgery? Nearly as bad.
Holding Hope’s hand, he strode to the nurses’ station. “Where’s my wife?” he asked, and spotted Cindy emerging from a room at the far end of the corridor. He headed there with Hope in tow. “Where’s Rachel?”
Cindy waved them along and into the room from which she had just come. It was a regular hospital room, with a TV, a bathroom, and several easy chairs. Katherine was in one of those chairs. Rachel was lying on her side facing her, and for a split-second, unable to see her eyes, Jack thought the change meant she had woken up.
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