by Mary McNear
And this time, miraculously, somebody heard him. He knew they’d heard him because they answered him.
“Reid? Reid. It’s okay. I’m here.”
“You know my name?” he murmured, in amazement. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything yet.
“Of course I know your name,” the voice said gently. “I was worried about you.”
And then, “You’re all sweaty, Reid. Could I . . . could we take off your pajama top?”
Pajama top? He blinked and looked around as his bedroom, and then Mila, came into focus.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, his heart still pounding.
“It’s me,” she said, a little warily. “Look, I know you told me not to come in here uninvited. But tonight, your dream . . . it was worse than the others. It went on for so long, and you were thrashing around so much, I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself. Or hurt yourself more than you’re already hurt.”
He nodded but said nothing. He was trying to breathe normally. Strangely enough, the dream still felt more real to him than this room, which seemed somehow watery and insubstantial. Mila, he decided then, was the most concrete thing here, and he tried to concentrate on her now. She’d turned on the lamp on his bedside table, and he saw in its light that she was dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans, her auburn hair pulled back in a slightly messy ponytail.
“What . . . what time is it?” he asked.
She glanced at the clock on his bedside table. “It’s three A.M.,” she said.
“You’re dressed,” he pointed out.
“I got dressed before I came in here,” she said. “Now, why don’t we get you out of this, okay?” She gestured at his pajama top and Reid realized, for the first time, that it was damp with perspiration.
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t protest, either, when she started unbuttoning his pajama top. And then he watched, strangely detached, as she slid it off his shoulders and down his arms. It was such an intimate gesture, but Mila did it without any intimacy, her fingers moving with such lightness and sureness that their touch barely registered on his skin.
“Do you mind if I open the window?” she asked, laying his pajama top on the chair beside the bed. “It’s a little stuffy in here,” she added, almost apologetically.
“No, go ahead,” he said, realizing she was wrong about the room being a little stuffy; it was actually swelteringly hot. But he’d gotten into the habit of keeping his window closed, whatever the temperature outside.
“It’s such a nice night,” Mila said, opening the window. “You should see the moon, too,” she continued, almost conversationally, as she came back to his bedside. “It’s absolutely enormous. And it’s so bright. The lake looks like it has floodlights on it.”
“When were you looking at the moon?” Reid asked. “I mean, weren’t you asleep before . . .” Before my screaming woke you up.
Mila shook her head. “No, I couldn’t sleep. I was studying my test prep books, and when I couldn’t study anymore, I was looking at the moon.”
“You were studying at three o’clock in the morning?”
“Well, it seemed better than just . . . not sleeping,” she said, and there was something about the way she said it that made him think she was often awake at night. He considered asking her about this, one insomniac to another, but she chose this moment to reach down and press the palm of her hand, lightly but firmly, against his bare chest.
“Reid, you’re burning up,” she said, taking her hand away. “I know your brother’s the only one you’ll let give you a bath, but could I sponge you off just enough to cool you down? Just on your upper body?”
A breeze blew through the open window then, ruffling the window curtain and touching Reid’s bare skin with its delicious coolness, and he thought about what Mila had said about how enormous the moon was tonight. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “But could we do that out on the deck?” Because now, of course, he wanted to see that moon too.
Mila hesitated. “All right,” she said. “We can do that. Just give me a minute, okay?” She left then and he heard her turn off the cabin’s alarm, and open and close the linen closet in the hallway, and run water in the kitchen. And then she was back, with towels and an enamel basin full of water. She handed him his crutches, then, and positioned his wheelchair beside his bed, and looked away tactfully as he struggled into it. He had to work hard to keep his hands steady; the dream’s adrenaline was still pulsing through him.
After he’d gotten himself into his wheelchair, he wheeled himself out of his room, down the hallway, and into the living room, where he first saw the moon through the wall of glass that faced onto the lake. “Unbelievable,” he murmured as Mila slid open the door to the deck, and he propelled himself over its threshold. The moon was hanging, huge and low and heavy, its white iridescence bathing everything it touched—water, trees, deck—in a pale, silvery light.
“I guess we don’t need to turn on the deck lights,” he said, wheeling himself over to the railing.
“Not tonight,” Mila agreed, joining him there, and, commandeering a small table to put the basin on, she gestured for Reid to lean forward, and she draped a towel over the back of his wheelchair. Then she took the washcloth, dipped it into the basin, rung it out, and started to sponge him off with it, gently, first his shoulders, then his arms, and then his chest. And Reid, still tense from his dream, was, for a moment, tenser still. But gradually, he began to relax. Partly it was because Mila, who’d slipped effortlessly into her nursing role, was so unselfconscious about doing this that it made him feel unselfconscious about having her do it. And partly, it was because what she was doing felt so good, so different from his brother’s clumsy attempts to bathe him.
“It’s not too cold, is it?” Mila asked of the water in the basin, but Reid shook his head. It’s perfect, he almost said, as she slid the cool, nubby washcloth over his chest. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to interrupt her. She was settling into a rhythm now, dipping the washcloth in the bowl, ringing it out, and sponging his shoulders and chest and arms with it. He felt the memory of his dream receding, and, as it did so, he felt the fear, the panic, and the sheer adrenaline rush of it all ebb slowly away. And what flowed back into its place was an almost hypnotic calm, a calm Reid knew he hadn’t experienced since before the accident.
And once again, he was fascinated by Mila’s hands, just as he had been on the drive back from his doctor’s appointment. Their movements were so fluid and so graceful that they were a pleasure to watch. How was it possible that those small, pale hands, with their neat, oval nails, could be so capable, so confident, and yet so gentle at the same time?
“Your hands,” he said, without thinking, “you’re good with them, aren’t you?”
“Good with them?” Mila repeated, looking faintly surprised, and Reid realized that, like him, she’d been lost in the moment. Now she dipped the washcloth in the bowl, wrung it out, and sponged his shoulders with it. “I guess I am good with them. Someone told me once that I had nurse’s hands,” she added, musingly.
“Nurse’s hands? Is that what they are?” he asked, as the washcloth moved over his arms again. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You want to be a nurse.”
Mila nodded, sponging his chest with the washcloth now. And, without thinking, Reid reached out and took one of her hands, the one holding the washcloth, and gently pried the washcloth out of it. It wasn’t that he wanted her to stop what she was doing. He didn’t. But he wanted to take a closer look at her hand. He was careful not to look at her then as he held her hand by the wrist and, very slowly and very deliberately, turned it palm side up and looked at it from that angle. Is this a nurse’s hand? Reid wondered, studying it. He supposed it might be. But right now, it didn’t look like a hand that could ever do anything ordinary or prosaic. It looked beautiful. Smooth, and pale and lustrous in the moonlight. And it seemed to him to be almost impossibly lovely. Which was why he raised it to his lips and kissed it,
on what seemed to be its palest and most tender point, right on the inside of the wrist.
He heard Mila suck in a little breath of surprise then, and he understood. He felt the same way. It was one of the few times in his life he had done something without knowing he was going to do it first. He waited for her to admonish him, or draw her hand away, or make some joke about what he’d done to lighten the mood, but she didn’t do any of those things. And when he looked at her, he saw that she was watching him carefully. Intently. He couldn’t read her expression. But she didn’t look angry. She looked . . . she looked something else. Vulnerable, he decided. But not angry.
He let go of her hand, and he thought he saw it tremble, a little, as she drew it back. But he might have imagined that because when she began to sponge him off again, she did it with the same steadiness as she had before.
A few minutes later though, the wind strengthened, sending clouds scudding across the moon, rippling the surface of the lake, and stirring the branches of the great northern pines that towered above the deck.
“I think it’s time to go inside,” Mila said, putting the washcloth inside the basin and picking it up.
And Reid, knowing that it was over, sighed. Mila patted him dry with the towel she’d draped over the back of his wheelchair and followed him as he wheeled himself back inside. She paused to lock the sliding glass door behind them and detoured to the kitchen to reset the alarm. And then he was back in his room again. The room he was actually starting to hate.
“Do you need anything, Reid?” Mila asked him, from his doorway.
He shook his head, thinking that once again they’d returned to themselves, back to a studied calmness on her part and a familiar moodiness on his.
“Okay,” she said. She started to close his door and then she stopped. “By the way, Reid, thank you for asking Allie to teach me how to swim. My first lesson is in a couple of days.”
He nodded.
“Well, good night then,” she said, and she closed his door and retreated to her room. But Reid didn’t get back into bed. He stayed in his wheelchair, meditatively wheeling it back and forth, and thinking about the inside of her wrist. The skin there was so pale it was nearly translucent, and so soft it was like the velvety touch of the moonlight itself.
CHAPTER 11
Here, put this on,” Allie said, tossing Mila a bulky orange life preserver.
“Really?” Mila asked, holding it up. It looked like something a child would wear. A large child.
But Allie, standing in the doorway of the cabin’s boathouse, only smiled. “Look,” she said, “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I could give you something to wear that would be easier on your ego. A waterskiing vest, for instance. But our first objective is for you to get comfortable being in the water, and, Mila, trust me, with this on, you’ll know you’re not going to sink.”
Mila sighed, but she slipped the life preserver on over her new bathing suit and fastened and tightened all its straps.
“Good,” Allie said, satisfied. “Now let’s go.” She led Mila out onto the dock that adjoined the boathouse, sat down on the edge of it, and lowered herself into the shallow water. “When you get your confidence up a little, we’ll use the ladder at the other end. But for now, we’ll just walk in, okay?”
“Okay,” Mila said, and she smiled because Allie, in her sensible black tank suit and no-nonsense manner, had already slipped seamlessly back into swim instructor mode. All that was missing, Mila decided, was a whistle around her neck and a clipboard in her hands. But Allie was waiting for her, so Mila eased herself into the lake too. The water was only knee-high where she stood, so she didn’t feel nervous yet, just faintly ridiculous in her cumbersome life preserver. Still, she was surprised to discover that even though it was only the first day of July, Butternut Lake was already pleasantly warm. Funny, she thought. Its deep, alpine blueness had always made it look cold to her.
“Did you see the moon a couple of nights ago?” Allie asked, as the two of them waded out into deeper water.
“I did,” Mila said, thinking not of the moon that night, but of the impromptu sponge bath she’d given Reid on the deck. She saw herself, now, running the washcloth down one of his smooth, bare shoulders.
“In all the summers I’ve been up here, I’ve never seen the moon look that big before,” Allie said. “Even Brooke was impressed by it.”
Mila smiled, but now she was remembering something else: the way Reid’s kiss, scratchy from his beard, had felt on the inside of her wrist. She shivered suddenly, though the sunshine was warm on her shoulders, and the breeze was as gentle as a caress.
“You’re not nervous, are you?” Allie asked, seeing her shiver.
“Not yet,” Mila assured her, but that was only because the sandy lake bottom was still firmly beneath her feet. As they walked out, though, the water inched steadily up, first to her navel, next to her breastbone, and finally to her shoulders. They were flush with the end of the dock then and flush with the ladder Allie had pointed out to her a few minutes ago. So people just climbed, casually, into water this deep? Mila wondered. But of course they did, she reminded herself. They already knew how to swim.
“Everything okay?” Allie asked.
“Uh-huh,” Mila said. But she must not have sounded very convincing because Allie said, “Why don’t we stop here. I think that’s deep enough for today.”
Mila nodded. She was of the opinion that it was deep enough for any day.
“Do you think you could try floating on your back now?” Allie asked.
“Floating?” Mila repeated, mildly alarmed.
“Yes, floating. All you have to do, Mila, is lean back; your life preserver will do the rest.”
Mila swallowed nervously. She preferred to stand.
“Mila, trust me, you’re perfectly safe. That life preserver would keep you afloat in a tsunami.”
Mila sighed. She knew that Allie was right. But it didn’t stop her from imagining herself sinking, like a stone, to the bottom of the lake.
Allie only smiled, though, a patient, encouraging smile that Mila knew was as much a part of her swim teacher’s arsenal as the whistle and clipboard had been. She took a step closer to Mila and put her arm around her.
“Here, I’ve got you,” she said. “Just lean back and relax. I promise, nothing’s going to happen to you.”
So Mila leaned back, into the life preserver and into Allie’s arm, which was supporting the small of her back, and she realized, in the next moment, that she was floating, her legs stretched out in front of her, her toes poking out of the water.
“How’s this?” Allie asked.
“It’s . . . it’s okay,” Mila said, even though she felt a little strange, a little . . . unmoored, bobbing there on top of the water.
“Is it okay if I let go?” Allie asked.
Mila nodded, and she felt Allie’s arm disappear from beneath her.
“Keep your back arched,” Allie instructed. “Imagine that you’re trying to keep your stomach above the waterline.”
Mila tried this, and, amazingly, it worked. She continued to float on her back, legs stretched out in front of her.
“There you go,” Allie said, sounding pleased, and she stayed nearby while Mila looked up at the sky, which, from this new perspective, seemed endless, an enormous light blue dome hinging neatly onto the dark blue flatness of the water. She took a deep breath, her first since she’d gotten into the lake. This is nice, she thought. This is relaxing. And it was. Together, the life preserver and the water seemed to be almost holding her. Cradling her. A breeze blew, and Mila rocked gently on it and closed her eyes. She stayed this way for a little while, thinking, at first, of nothing in particular, and then thinking of the night on the deck with Reid. She saw Reid’s shoulders in the moonlight and felt the pressure of his fingers on her hand, the brush of his lips against her skin. When she opened her eyes, a moment later, everything seemed to have pulled away from her—the cabin on
the bluff above them, the boathouse, the dock, even Allie—and all that was left in their place was water and sky, sky and water. She didn’t feel the bulky life preserver anymore, either. Instead, she felt completely weightless.
“How do you feel, Mila?” she heard Allie ask, from somewhere on the periphery of all this blueness.
“I feel . . . I feel free,” she answered.
Reid? Reid! Wake up. It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re here, you’re at the cabin. Reid, please, open your eyes.”
He opened his eyes, and Mila swam slowly into focus. She was leaning over his bed, her hands on his shoulders, a worried expression on her face. “Are you awake?” she asked.
He blinked and stared up at her. It was hard, he thought, much harder than she knew, to leave the wreckage of his car, with the woods pressing in on it, and the chilly night falling all around it, and to come back to this place. To this cabin, to this bedroom, to this person. To Mila.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her hands still on his shoulders. He liked her hands there, he decided. He didn’t want her to take them away. She didn’t. He felt his heart slow a little, his breathing return to something approaching normal.
“Just say something, Reid. So I know you’re okay,” she said.
He said the first thing that came into his mind. “You look different.” And she did. He was used to seeing her dressed in her nondescript clothes, her hair trained back in a neat ponytail, but tonight she was wearing a white cotton nightgown, and her auburn hair was loose on her shoulders. And there was something else, too. She looked as if she might have gotten a little sun during her first swimming lesson that afternoon because her cheeks had a faint pink coloring that he didn’t remember being there before. She looked so young now, so unguarded, and so . . . oh hell, who was he kidding, she looked so lovely, too, and thinking this he felt that same shock of recognition he’d felt the day they’d skipped stones together at the beach.
