Jack tried to be pleased, too, but he kept thinking about the possibility that she would be stuck at that point for the rest of her life. He meant what he’d told Katherine. He would take care of her. He would set her up in the canyon she loved and care for her much as Duncan cared for Faith, but, Lord, he didn’t want it to come to that. He wanted Rachel with him, in every sense of the word.
Sipping hot coffee, he stood in his boxers at the wall of windows overlooking the forest. It was another beautiful day. The fog had burned off, leaving the earth beneath the redwoods a rich mahogany broken by patches of deep sorrel green. Higher up, where the boughs hung, the needles were a lighter green. Pretty. Peaceful.
He turned around. Same with the house. Pretty. Peaceful. The floors were of natural wood, the sofa was red-and-maroon plaid. The church bench was green, with lilac flowers on fat cushions. The planters that flanked the bench were a deep purple with orange splashes, and brimming with chaotically leggy plants.
Pretty? Peaceful? But the house was. It was fun and full of life, very much the irreverent Rachel he had met so long ago. If the customary brush to use on a subject was a number five filbert bristle, she would use a number five bristle round just to see what she could do. In some cases she ended up with the filbert after all; in others she ended up with something wonderfully unique. That was the Rachel he felt in this house. It was the Rachel he had married.
With that thought, he set off for the bedroom. He searched the dresser and the night table, searched the closet and the bathroom. He searched the kitchen cabinets that he didn’t regularly use. He searched the storage pantry. He stood in the living room with his hands on his hips and wondered where she would have put it.
If she had kept it.
She might not have.
He went to the studio and stood, again, with his hands on his hips. He had been working here. He knew what was where. He had explored. But she had hidden pictures of a baby that had died. She had hidden charcoal sketches. Granted, Hope knew about this latter.
On a hunch, he strode back through the house to Hope’s room. Everything here was sweet. What better spot for a ceramic angel—and there it was on the dresser, a fat little postmodern cherub with wings, keeping watch over a crystal cut box filled with trinkets, a tiny ceramic cat that may or may not have resembled Guinevere, a comb and brush, a smattering of scrunchies, and a pile of acorns.
If Rachel had wanted something cherished, she couldn’t have chosen a better guardian than Hope.
He picked up the angel, turned it over, and slipped two small latches hidden under the wings. He lifted off a back panel, pulled out a velvet bag, and emptied its contents in his hand. There were the pearl earrings Rachel had worn at their wedding, given to her the night before by her father, who had died two months later. There was a National Honor Society key. There was a watch with Minnie Mouse on the face. And the ring.
It wasn’t the big flashy ring. He suspected that was in a safety deposit box along with numerous lavish pieces of jewelry given her by Victoria over the years. The ring in his hand was simple and gold. It was the only one that mattered.
JACK was heading for the car, bent on getting that ring on Rachel’s finger, when Duncan Bligh came striding down the hill, bellowing, “Saw your truck on my way up from the lower pasture, figured you hadn’t left.” He stomped to a halt. “My wife wants to see Rachel. I thought I’d drive her up after work. Any problem with that?”
“Uh, no. None.” When Jack got his bearings, he was touched. He knew that Faith didn’t get out often. “Rachel would really like it. I mean, she’s not awake yet, but it could help.”
With a single nod, the older man turned to leave.
“Wait,” Jack said on impulse and waved an arm back. “I’m heading there now. Since I have the truck, I could put the chair in the back. Show me what to do, and I’ll get her in and out.”
Duncan’s expression was unfathomable. “She doesn’t go far without me.”
“It means she’d be able to spend longer with Rachel.”
Duncan looked up toward his cabin. “I suppose.” After another minute, he started climbing. “Get the truck.”
JACK had selfish reasons for wanting Faith in his car. He envisioned forty-five minutes of conversation that would naturally turn on Rachel. There were gaps in his knowledge of her early years in Big Sur. If anyone could fill them in, it was Faith.
And the conversation was easy. Faith was chatty, sitting in her long flowered dress that hid pencil-thin, useless legs. What she chatted about, though, was Big Sur. She talked about the early cattle ranchers and those who traded sea otter pelts. She told of lime smelting and smuggling, of arduously long trips from Monterey by stagecoach. She gave a blow-by-blow of the building of the highway and had something to say about each bridge they passed.
“Tourism has been a mainstay in these parts since the turn of the century,” she said, “but tourists rarely understand what living here means. It’s an isolated life, and we like it that way. We keep our private roads unpaved and our lives simple. There’s little privately owned land, and even less chance for development. Electricity is a recent thing in some canyons. We all lose it regularly during storms. We have no fast-food chains, no banks, no supermarkets.” Daylight flashed off her spectacles. “It’s a quiet life. We socialize among ourselves from time to time, but people who decide to live here are usually self-sufficient sorts. Artists, yes. Writers. Ranchers, like us. Retirees. People who work at the resorts. Free spirits. Have you walked the beach?” she asked and went on to tell of solstice celebrations, whale sightings, and riptides.
Jack listened to every word, hooked not only by what she said but by the lyrical way she said it. It wasn’t until they reached the hospital that he realized he had been warned.
JACK and Rachel were divorced. The hospital personnel knew it. Rachel’s friends knew it. Faith Bligh knew it.
So Jack felt a little awkward about the wedding ring. Technically, he had no right putting it on her hand. But he wanted it there. He wanted to think it might help. He wanted her to see it when she woke up.
He thought he did it brilliantly. After parking Faith on Rachel’s right side, he went immediately to her left side. He took her hand while he kissed her cheek, then straightened. Holding her hand close to his chest, he worked her fingers through a round of exercises. Slipping the ring on was part of the motion. No matter that it was looser than it had ever been. It was on.
Faith saw it instantly. The eyes behind those small, round glasses flew there—stricken eyes, because she was grappling with seeing Rachel this way. Seconds later, still stricken, she looked back at Rachel’s face.
Jack sighed. “Well, hell, I’m trying everything. There’s part of me that says if she doesn’t want the ring there, she’ll open her eyes and tell me so.”
“She used to wear it sometimes,” Faith said. Her eyes searched Rachel’s face. He imagined she was looking for permission to speak.
“At the beginning?” he asked.
“Every year. On the Fourth of July.”
Independence Day. Their wedding anniversary. “Why?”
“She said there were good things to remember, but it wasn’t easy. She always breathed a sigh of relief when that day was done. I kept telling her to put it behind her. If I spent my days thinking about all I could do if my legs worked, I’d be a sour woman. Rachel, bless her, never turned sour. She learned to live with those memories.”
“Did you know about the baby?”
Faith tugged a shawl close on her shoulders. “She told me.”
“She should have told me.”
Faith thought about that. Her creased face was gentle with its little white cap. There was no accusation when she spoke, only resignation. “She said she was also pregnant on your wedding day, and that she wouldn’t use that hook again to make you feel guilty or get you back.”
He was startled. “We didn’t marry because she was pregnant.” He pushed his hands into his hair and l
aughed. “God, that’s funny. Victoria had that monstrosity of a wedding planned long before we knew about Sam. I was locked into the marriage by that, not by any baby. Victoria didn’t care that Rachel was pregnant. It didn’t show. No one knew. But if I’d decided I’d had it with that pomp and circumstance, Victoria would have had the shotgun out fast. No, I wanted that baby. Rachel and I both did. Why in the devil would she think I was forced?”
Faith’s brow furrowed. “Have you ever had a disagreement with someone? Hung up the phone and walked away and started thinking about the disagreement? Made assumptions and generalizations about the person, and built them up, built them up until they took on the reality of your anger or hurt? Then you saw the person again, and it was suddenly forgotten, just a petty disagreement that carried none of the weight you gave it?” She smiled that warm, sad smile. “Emotions can be potent. They shade things in ways that may have nothing to do with reality. Rachel was feeling the loss of that child. She was upset. She was hurt that you hadn’t wanted to come home from your trip even without knowing she was pregnant. It confirmed what she had been fearing for months, that you didn’t care. She thought using the pregnancy to manipulate you was the oldest, lowest trick in the book.”
That did sound like Rachel. She was principled. Sad here, but true. She should have told him. But he should have come home even without knowing. He should have let her know how much she meant to him, but he had stopped doing that. He had shut down. The trip to Toronto was only the last in a growing case for emotional neglect. He was guilty, and now six years had been lost.
He ran the pad of his thumb over the scrapes that were nearly healed. Her freckles were ready and waiting, as were her lips, her ears, her hair. Her broken leg still needed time in its cast, but her hands could paint.
Where are you, Rachel?
As though in answer to the question, she moved her eyes.
chapter twenty-two
JACK LEANED CLOSER. “Rachel?” Her eyeballs were moving behind their lids. “Rachel?” She could have been dreaming. “Rachel, wake up! Come on, honey. I know you hear me. Open those eyes. Open those eyes.”
The movement continued for a minute, then stopped. He waited. Nothing.
He grabbed her shoulders, finding them so thin and frail that he held gently, but he held. “Don’t go back to sleep, Rachel. Please don’t. It’s time to wake up!” But she was doing it again, using the round bristle brush because someone told her to use the bristle filbert. “Okay.” He removed his hands and straightened. “You want to sleep, sleep. It’s your choice. Me, I’d like to talk with the people who’ve been so kind as to come here. I’d also like to wake up in time for a showing at P. Emmet’s. I wouldn’t want to work so long and hard to build a career to the point of being invited by a gallery like that, only to sleep through the whole damn thing!”
He crossed his arms and stood back, frustrated enough to be angry. “She’s doing this deliberately,” he told Faith. “It’s a control thing. She’s getting back at me for years when she thought I was controlling her, but it’s her fault for not speaking up. She never talked about control. What did she say? I don’t like San Francisco. I don’t want to live in San Francisco. I don’t want to be alone in San Francisco. So what did she do? She left me alone there. Gave me a taste of my own medicine. Well, I learned. Isn’t that enough?”
Faith simply smiled her sweet, sad smile.
RACHEL didn’t move her eyes again, but by the time Jack brought the girls, her lids were ajar. Not much. Just enough to see a tiny rim of white. Just enough to spark the fear that she might open her eyes and spend the rest of her life staring at nothingness. The doctors couldn’t get a pupil dilation, but they called this progress. Jack called it torment. He was frantic with impatience.
“That looks totally gross, Mom,” Samantha said. “You always tell me to do things well or not at all. Eyelids like that aren’t doing it well.”
Hope was ducking down, trying to look under those lids and see something that might see her. She had barely straightened when she saw the wedding band. Her eyes flew to Jack. He was wondering whether she thought he had searched her room and would be angry, when she said, “Where did you find this? Did she send it to you? I always wondered where it was.”
“She kept it,” Jack said. Unsure, he looked from Hope to Samantha and back. “I thought it might help. Anyone have a problem with this?”
NO ONE did. The girls were as restless as he was as the hours passed, and as reluctant to leave Rachel. Ben stopped by. Jan stopped by. Steve and Kara came in and prodded and tested and talked. Nellie stopped by. Charlie stopped by. Cindy turned Rachel, who moaned, then settled back into place with those same barely open eyes. Duncan picked up Faith. Steve came again. Katherine brought in McDonald’s for dinner. They waved fries under Rachel’s nose.
By nine, Jack and the girls were the only ones left. Hope was pale and yawning, Samantha’s mood was sour, Jack was beat.
Still, they waited. They took turns talking to Rachel, saying the same things over and over again, badgering her, begging her, half expecting her to open her eyes if for no other reason than to shut them up.
By ten, they were ready to leave. They drove home in silence. Halfway there, it started to rain. Jack turned off the highway at the bank of mailboxes, downshifted, and felt an odd power climbing into the canyon. He pulled in at the house. They climbed out and stood in the rain.
“I’m taking a walk,” he said, suddenly needing action. Walking in the rain at night was something Rachel would do. “Anyone coming?”
“Me.”
“Me.”
The only thing they did before leaving was to check the answering machine. There were messages for Samantha from Lydia, Shelly, and Brendan. There were messages for Jack from his lawyer and the potential Hillsborough client. Victoria had called from Detroit, ecstatic to hear the news and promising another call. There was no message from the hospital.
Taking raincoats, Jack’s cell phone, and the large flashlights that Rachel kept on hand for the outages that Faith had said were frequent in winter, they pulled up their hoods and set off. In open meadow, the rain would have been harder, but the trees gentled the drops. Their pit-pat was a steady whisper. The air was cool and smelled of damp earth and wood.
Hope led the way to the spot where Guinevere was buried. After several minutes there, they moved on with Samantha in the lead, but she turned back and halted the others before they had gone far.
“I’ll take you to my place, but it is mine. You can’t come here again. Wait. Close your eyes. I’ll lead you.”
“Nuh-uh,” Jack said. “I’m not walking with my eyes closed. If you want to share, you share. Come on, Sam. It’s too dark to see a hell of a lot. I wouldn’t recognize anything in daylight.”
“Hope would.”
“No, I won’t,” Hope promised. “I swear.”
Short of shining a light in her face, Jack couldn’t see Samantha’s expression. But she turned and began walking again. Less than five minutes later, over a course so circuitous that Jack was as lost as he was sure Samantha intended, they arrived at her place. It was another redwood grove, this one with wide trunks that spread and hollowed and straddled uneven ground.
Samantha escaped from the rain into one. Hope slipped into another close by. Jack took shelter in the largest, to the right of the others, in easy view. He skimmed his light at each, saw small bits of color from their slickers, and turned off his light.
The night was thick and black. There was no moon, no fog, just a dense forest under a high, dense cover of clouds. The steady pit-pat of rain was the only real sound. The laughter beside him was pure fantasy, as was Rachel snuggling close. He heard, he felt, he craved.
He settled back, praying that nothing live was behind him, then nearly died when, after a quick scurrying sound, something hit his side.
He twisted away. “Jesus Christ!”
“It’s me,” Hope whispered. “Shhh. I don’t want her to kno
w I’m here. She’ll think I’m a wimp. But yours is better than mine.”
Jack laughed. “Damn it, Hope, you just took ten years off my life.” But he had an arm around her and was holding her close. When another scurrying sound came, they both yelled.
“What is wrong with you people?” Samantha cried, crowding in. “I mean, like, who do you think is out here? Jason? Pu-leeze.”
Jack was laughing again. He pictured the three of them filling a single redwood trunk, a jumble of arms, legs, and bodies not very different from the jumble on the hill in the photograph that lay facedown in Rachel’s drawer, and he was suddenly light-headed. Oh yeah, exhaustion did that, but there was more to it. Crammed in a pitch black hole with his daughters, with more than a few clods of mud and the smell of wet wood and raincoats, he had recaptured something he had thought forever lost.
It was one heartrending thought. Another was that Rachel knew the three of them were there.
She couldn’t, of course, unless she was dead and watching from above, but he refused, absolutely refused, to buy into that. No. She was still in a coma, and even if the phone in his pocket rang to say she had woken up, she couldn’t possibly know where they were. He was fantasizing again. But boy, was the feeling real.
IT STAYED real. Rachel was with them when they traipsed back through the woods to the house and shook themselves off. She took a shower with Jack, put on a robe that matched his, helped him make hot chocolate for the girls. She took her turn kissing them good night and followed him into the bedroom.
He shook off the fantasy when he climbed into bed, but it returned in a flash. He sat up and stared into the dark. He thought about how tired he was. He looked at his watch.
It was twelve-thirty. He had a sudden urge to drive back to the hospital.
He called there instead and was told that Rachel hadn’t woken.
He lay down again and slept for two hours. He called the hospital, lay down again, slept for three hours this time. He called the hospital. He lay down. He got up and opened the window. The rain continued, peaceful and clean, restorative. And he felt it, felt Rachel.
Coast Road Page 34
