The ladies’ room was spacious but not very clean. Kit avoided looking at the dirt-spattered sink as she washed her hands. She was combing her hair with her fingers when Rennie walked in. Their eyes met in the mirror for a second before Rennie looked away.
Kit leaned back against the sink and folded her arms across her chest. “I have a feeling there’s a lot you want to say to me,” she said.
Rennie picked up the filthy bar of soap and began washing her hands. “I just don’t understand how you and Cole could do what you did and then come here with Orrin and Cynthia,” she said.
What explanation could she offer? Should she label it a mistake—their second?
But Rennie didn’t wait for an explanation. “I thought it meant you two were finally serious. That you’d stay. Everybody thought that. Janni and Maris were talking about celebrating and everything. But now here we are at this stupid skating rink and you’re with stupid Orrin and Cole’s with stupid Cynthia . . .” Rennie shook her head. “I hate Cynthia. I know it’s not fair, but I do. She talks to me like I’m a child, in that high voice. She just pretends to be interested in me so Cole will like her. Why doesn’t he see through her?”
“Rennie . . .” She wasn’t sure what to say. “Some things are too complicated to explain.”
Rennie started to cry. “I don’t want you to go. I want you and Cole to be together.”
Kit hugged her. “I know,” she said. “I know that’s what you want.”
Orrin was waiting for her at the side of the rink. She skated over to him and boosted herself onto the wall.
“Aren’t we going to skate?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t seem to get into it.”
A young woman skated by, her eyes on Orrin instead of the herd of children in front of her, and she tripped and went flying. The kids helped her up and she smiled sheepishly, skating away with a limp in her stride.
Kit laughed. “You have an admirer,” she said. From this angle, Orrin’s thick eyelashes looked as though they brushed his cheeks when he blinked.
“I wish she weren’t the only one.”
“I’m sure you have many.”
“In this skating rink I mean.”
Did he have to pick tonight for that kind of talk? She was in no mood for it.
She took a deep breath. “Orrin, Cole and I made love this afternoon.” It was a relief to say it out loud. If it meant the end of her relationship with Orrin, fine.
But he laughed. It was the last reaction she’d expected. “Well, I’m not surprised.”
“You’re not?” She spotted Cole skating toward them and cringed at his timing. He looked as though his stomach hurt.
“I have a problem,” he said, speaking to Kit. “Rennie told me you two had a little chat in the restroom about . . . this afternoon.” He chose his words carefully, his eyes on Orrin. “I guess you didn’t realize that Cynthia was in there. Now she won’t come out.”
Cynthia was there? She played back the conversation with Rennie in her mind and shut her eyes. Poor Cynthia. “Oh, Cole, I’m sorry.”
He started to untie the laces of her right skate. “Will you go get her, Kit?”
“Me? I’m the last person she wants to see.”
“Please. I can’t go in there.”
“What can I say?”
“That I want to talk to her.” He pulled off the skate and began to untie the other, one hand holding her ankle in a way that was completely unnecessary to the task of loosening the laces.
He lifted her off the wall, keeping his hands around her waist for a few seconds after she was on solid ground. She shut her eyes, knowing the message in them was too raw for the moment, in a public skating rink with Orrin standing next to them. When she looked up, he was smiling at her. He could read her whether her eyes were open or closed.
“And I want to talk with you, too,” he said. “Later.”
She possessed power she didn’t want. Cynthia sat on a brown metal folding chair, the only chair in the restroom, and looked up at her with red eyes.
“Cole asked me to tell you that he wants to see you,” Kit said.
“And you do everything Cole asks you to do. Meet his every need, I’m sure.” Cynthia began to say. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to sound bitchy.”
Kit knelt at her side. “You couldn’t sound bitchy if you tried. I feel terrible, Cynthia. I know Cole does, too. We didn’t mean to hurt you or Orrin.”
Cynthia looked at Kit, riveting her eyes. “Will you finally let go of him when you’re in Atlanta? You bled him dry when you lost the baby and you’re still hanging on to him.”
Kit stood up. “He hangs on to me, too,” she said, turning to leave the room. She had no more to say. Any words she had left were for Cole, not Cynthia.
When she opened her eyes, the room was bathed in silver light from the moon and Cole was sitting on her bed, his back against the footboard, his legs stretched out next to hers.
“What time is it?” she asked sleepily.
“Quarter after one,” he answered without checking his watch.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching you. Watching the moonlight on your face while you sleep. Do you mind?” He squeezed her foot through the sheet.
She smiled at him. “It’s a little spooky, being watched while I’m sleeping.”
“Were you dreaming?”
She struggled to clear her head. “I don’t remember.”
“I was.”
She sat up. “But you’re awake.”
“I dreamt that you woke up and I told you I wanted to marry you and you said yes.”
She stared at him. He pulled something from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
“This is for you,” he said.
It was a ring, very old. A pool of diamonds set in silver filigree. She looked up at him.
“It was my grandmother’s. I drove to my parents’ house to get it after I left Cynthia last night. After I split with Cynthia.”
She felt a chill. “Cole . . .”
“Please, Kit. Put it on.”
She slipped it on the ring finger of her left hand. It caught the moonlight at a thousand angles. “I’m scared,” she said, covering the ring with her other hand, as if she were afraid she might lose it. It was the tiniest bit too large.
“I promise not to suffocate you.”
She leaned forward to kiss him. “I love you.”
“I’ve been waiting the whole goddamn day to hear those words from you,” he said.
She called the movers in the morning, the phone resting on the bed between Cole and herself. Don’t bother coming, she told them. I’m not going anywhere.
Then she called the PR director of the University Hospital in Atlanta. She couldn’t take the job, she said. Something personal had come up, something she hadn’t predicted. The conversation was polite on both sides, full of platitudes, and she was relieved to hang up the phone.
Cole wrapped his arms around her and she snuggled against him, thoroughly content. Some other woman must have planned that move to Atlanta, she thought. Some woman who thought she could survive outside the circle of Cole’s arms.
49.
The twentieth of September was a Sunday and she woke early with a headache. Cole was asleep next to her, his body curved around hers, his hand flat on her stomach above her scar. She got out of bed and swallowed two aspirin in the bathroom. Then she sat on the window seat, pulling the afghan around her shoulders. It was a sparkling morning. The sun glittered off the water and a crisp breeze blew against her from the open window. But the beauty of the day was offensive.
Today had been her due date. If everything had gone as it should have, she’d be delivering Alison right about now. A different Alison than the baby she saw in her hospital room. This baby would be seven pounds, maybe more, with a healthy set of lungs and a cry that would shake the rafters.
“Going for a run?”
She st
arted at the sound of his voice. “Headache,” she said without turning around. She didn’t want him to know what had her upset this morning. It would only add to his problems. He was already too harried at work, stretched too thin. Besides, she thought entirely too much about Alison, what might have been. Why did she have to hang on to the grief when she had so many good things going for her? She’d been promoted to Assistant Director of the PR department at Blair—her reward for staying. And in a few months she was getting married to the only man she could imagine marrying.
They’d picked the first of January for the wedding. It was the best way she could think of to start the new year. Cole would have been happy if they’d gotten married the night he asked her, but she needed time to put the events of this past year behind her. She wanted the year of her marriage to be unencumbered by memories of the past.
Cole got out of bed now and sat behind her on the window seat, wrapping the afghan around them both.
“I was wondering if you’d be all right today,” he said. “And you’re not, are you?”
He knew. She shook her head and leaned back against him. His chest was warm against the bare skin of her back.
“You weren’t going to tell me.” He spoke softly against her ear, but she knew he was scolding her.
“It’s about time I let go of it.”
“It hasn’t been that long.”
They were silent for a moment before he spoke again. “Please don’t keep things from me, Kit. I would have misinterpreted your sadness this morning if I hadn’t known. Can we make it a pact? No secrets?”
She nodded. She was relieved. She’d been afraid of losing that part of their relationship, that openness. She rested her head against his shoulder, wishing that he didn’t have to work today. They could sit here under the afghan and watch the day run its course on the ocean.
“Another dinner without Dr. Perelle.” Jay was the last to take his seat at the kitchen table the following night. “You can tell the month of the year by counting how many times Cole misses supper.”
“Well, one thing I’ve learned from living in this house is that I don’t ever want to be a doctor,” Rennie said.
Jay looked crushed. “How can you say that? Look at the glamorous lives Cole and I lead, sewing episiotomies and taking out gallbladders.”
Rennie wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you ever get tired of them calling you all the time?”
“You get used to it. It’s the price you pay for being able to live in luxury and eat like a king.” He held up a forkful of baked beans as the phone rang. He smiled at Rennie. “It’s probably ‘them’ calling me right now, don’t you think?”
He walked to the counter and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” He held up a hand to silence the others, a frown on his face. “Cheryl, slow down, I can’t understand you.”
Something in the tone of his voice made everyone turn to look at him. He grasped the edge of the counter and held tight, his knuckles white. “What kind of accident?”
Kit felt her pulse quicken in her throat. Jay glanced at her, then looked away.
“What was he . . . Cheryl, come on, head wounds bleed that way, you know that . . . oh, God.”
He looked directly at her, and she knew it was Cole. She stood up, scraping the tops of her thighs on the table and knocking over her water.
“How long has he been out? Yes, I’ll be right there. You calm down, okay?”
He hung up the phone and turned to her. “Cole was in an accident. He was riding in an ambulance with a patient and it was hit by a truck. The driver and an attendant were killed, and Cole has some kind of head injury.”
She struggled to keep her head clear, her voice calm. “How bad . . . ?”
Jay shook his head. “He’s unconscious. Cheryl really doesn’t know much, just that he looked bad when he came in because of the blood and . . .”
Jay seemed rooted to the floor. She grabbed his arm. “Let’s go,” she said.
For the first five minutes of the drive to Point Pleasant she and Jay said nothing to each other. She played the words dear God, let him be all right over and over in her mind. It was evidence of her helplessness, praying to a God she had little faith in.
When they turned off the ocean road, Jay took her hand and held it on his thigh. “This is bizarre,” he said. “I can see my own life passing before my eyes.”
“Do you think he’s okay?” she asked. Jay was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. He should be able to tell her something.
But he didn’t seem to hear her. “When I look back at my own life, it’s full of Cole. I’ve seen him practically every day for the last twelve and a half . . . thirteen years, except when he was in France. It’s like I’m married to him.” He laughed. She held his hand tighter, afraid of the calm in his voice, the faraway look in his eyes.
“When I look at the future,” he said, “Cole’s still there. He’s got to be.” He let go of her hand to turn the steering wheel. They were going over the canal bridge now. She felt sick when she looked down at the water. “He knows what his friendship means to me, don’t you think. Kit?”
“Of course he does,” she said, thinking how odd it was that she’d been given the role of comforter here. She’d gotten into the car fully expecting to fall apart and let Jay piece her back together again. But it was better this way. Better right now to think about Jay than Cole.
She’d expected to see a horde of physicians hovering over him but except for Cheryl and another nurse, Cole was alone in the treatment room of the ER. He was flat on his back, a cervical collar on his neck and a wide, blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his head.
Cheryl smiled at them, a damp washcloth in her hand. “He’s conscious,” she said. Kit saw his eyelashes flutter.
“Thank God,” said Jay. He walked across the room and leaned over to hug him, his lips brushing Cole’s cheek.
That’s from me too, Cole, she thought. She couldn’t move.
“I’m all right,” Cole said softly, his lips barely moving.
Her hand was still frozen on the doorknob. He didn’t look all right. His face was scratched raw in most places and the skin that was still intact was purple.
Jay turned to her. “Come over here, Kit.”
She walked toward them slowly.
“I can tell by your face that I look pretty bad,” Cole whispered. “Just a concussion.” He lifted an arm to point to his head and winced.
“And a few broken ribs,” Cheryl added. There was another bandage wrapped around the lower part of his rib cage, and EKG leads ran from his chest to a machine next to the gurney.
Kit leaned over to kiss his forehead, below the bloody gauze. “I love you,” she said.
“Mm. I’m afraid I’m going to be very sick.”
Cheryl produced a plastic basin from the counter behind his gurney and Cole swallowed hard.
“How am I going to do this, Cheryl?” he asked. “I can’t move.”
Cheryl looked at Jay. “We have to roll him,” she said. “The cracked ribs are on this side, so roll him toward you.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Gold about a nasogastric tube,” the other nurse said, heading for the door.
Kit watched helplessly while they turned him in one gentle movement, like rolling a log. Cheryl folded the washcloth and held it on the back of his neck.
Cole moaned.
“Hang on, Cole.” Cheryl held his head in her palm and slipped the basin under his cheek just in time. He vomited violently, his whole body shaking. Then he vomited again.
Kit felt the room spin. She glanced at the sink, wondering if she was going to get sick herself.
Jay took her by the shoulder and pointed her in the direction of the door. “Go call the others,” he said. “Cheryl and I will stay with him.”
She called the house and then sat in a chair outside the room. She watched doctors and nurses go in and out, ignoring her. She heard him vomit a few more times before they got the tube down him. It had to feel like yo
u were suffocating, having that thing stuck down your throat. She dug in her purse for a piece of gum, something to get the stale taste out of her mouth. She was useless. Too cowardly even to hold his head while he threw up. What would she have done if Alison had gotten sick in the middle of the night?
It seemed like a long time before Cheryl came out. She pulled a chair out of one of the other treatment rooms and sat next to Kit. “It’s bad,” she said, “but it could have been a lot worse. He has no memory of the accident at all. He doesn’t remember his patient or even that he was in an ambulance. He doesn’t know anyone was killed.”
“No one told him?”
“Dr. Gold said it’s better to let things proceed naturally. We answer his questions as he asks them instead of offering a lot of information. I told him his patient’s name but it meant nothing to him. She’s new.”
“I don’t understand why he was in an ambulance.”
“Neither does he. I pieced it together, though. His patient was in the ER at Shore Memorial and he wanted her transferred over here. She was in premature labor and terrified. She asked him to ride with her. You know Cole, he couldn’t say no.”
No, Kit thought, he wouldn’t.
“I’m so glad you were here,” she said to Cheryl. She hated to think of him waking to a bunch of cold, professional faces. Cheryl would have been almost like family.
“I was just about to leave for the night and the ER receptionist called and said, ‘I thought you might like to know that we’ve got Dr. Perelle down here.’ It was awful when they first brought him in. And the two who were killed. One guy’s head was attached to his shoulders by a thread of skin. I saw the two of them first and then I saw Cole and I thought for sure he was dying.” Cheryl looked away from her, toward the reception desk, and Kit saw the tears in her eyes. “I know I really upset Jay on the phone—I should have checked out Cole’s condition a little further before I called.”
“I’m glad you called right away.”
“Dr. Gold’s going to admit him to a private room. They’ll have to wake him up every hour or so. You can stay with him if you like.”
Secrets at the Beach House Page 29
