“I …”
“Never mind the excuses. What are you doing about your father’s campaign finances?”
The smell of orange blossoms floated in from the open patio sliders. I sighed and settled on the couch. This could be a short or a long call.
“I asked Kat, Kathmandu, to look into it,” I said. “She’s been working on the accounts at Crowder Industries. You may have seen her at campaign headquarters …”
“That dreadful girl with the piercings and tattoos? I told your father …”
I let her run down till she stopped for a breath. “Top of her class at UCLA, Mom. Crowder Industries thinks she’s wonderful. Tina tells me …”
She interrupted again. I can’t remember completing a thought with my mother in years.
“If Tina thinks so, I can put up with her.” The comment about Tina Crowder brought her down an octave. Wealth and stature weighed heavily with her. “But those dodgy characters, she’s brought in? I want that stopped. Someone posted on your father’s blog about wrongdoings. I’m sure it was one of those hooligans.”
I shifted uneasily. I worried about Kat’s Westwood Irregulars, too. “With the campaign heating up … We needed more hands on deck … We thought …” I ran out of platitudes. I’d hoped she would have cut in by now.
“You thought?” Frost coated the words. “This campaign is critical to your father’s political career, and you send in ruffians?”
I swallowed. “Surely not ruffians …”
“Ruffians.” Her voice rose over mine. “The press here everyday, taking pictures, publishing in the papers, televising stories online, and what is at the center of every photo of your father’s campaign headquarters?”
Since she expected an answer, I asked with no hope, “Dad?”
She rolled on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Thugs. The dregs of society. In every picture.”
Her voice rose to a pitch that made me shiver. “A reporter has been calling everyday, demanding an interview about finance improprieties.” In a lower voice, she hissed, “Clean up this mess immediately, Leslie.”
She hung up.
Excellent. A short call.
I found Kat in the front courtyard, chewing basil leaves with a meditative air.
“That call was from my mother,” I said.
She frowned. “Why’d you answer …”
I interrupted, “I forgot to check caller ID. I should have called her back earlier. You’ve been covering for me way too long. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“No problem, but …”
I wasn’t about to let her start ranting about my mother for the millionth time, so I interrupted again. “She’s heard rumors about campaign finance irregularities, and a reporter wants to interview Dad about it. What have you been telling them?”
She shrugged, worry lines appearing between her eyes. “I’ve not said … we haven’t found … which reporter called her?”
Kat was never at a loss for words. What had shaken her? My heart beat faster.
“Kat?”
She exhaled and slumped onto the courtyard bench. With an anxious but stern look, I perched on a step.
“Les, remember when I told you last week that I’d found accounts with tax liability numbers that weren’t correct. And that we couldn’t find out who the companies were but that they may be holding companies?”
“Uh,” I said.
She leaned forward urgently. “Your parents can’t talk to the press till I figure out what’s going on. I need to know what the reporter knows. Can you get his number?”
My eyes widened.
She grinned. “Never mind. Let me handle your mother. I’ll warn her about talking to the press too. As they’re running a campaign, that probably won’t go over well.” She chewed a thumbnail. “I wish we could talk to Seb about this.”
“Maybe we could,” I said. Before she opened her mouth, I added, “Come on, Kat. Maybe flash cards aren’t what he needs. Maybe treating him like the old Sebastian will bring him back.” I stood and wiped my hands on my jeans with determination.
She jumped off the bench and grabbed my arm. “No, Les. You don’t get over extensive brain damage that way. Repetition will …”
I pulled my arm away from her. “Why not try?”
She started to say something, but I was already through the door. When I entered the study, Connor, who could easily match Dog’s brawny form, was sitting in the wing chair and reading a romance novel. Propped against pillows, Sebastian opened his eyes as I entered the room.
Kat was on my heels. “Les …”
I raised my voice. “Would you mind taking your break now, Connor? I’d like to spend a few minutes with my husband.”
He looked uncertainly at Kat, who was plainly agitated.
I stood a little straighter and narrowed my eyes. “Have some carrot cake,” I said. I meant it as an incentive to leave, but I may have sounded threatening. He bookmarked his page and hurried from the room.
While Kat hovered in the background, I settled in the vacated chair with satisfaction. I should have been more involved with Sebastian’s therapy from the beginning. Only knowing how to care for the nearly-dead was no excuse. Logic would serve me well now.
“I need to apologize. Sebastian. I’ve been accepting only what the doctors tell me. I should have been thinking about you.”
Instead of looking around the room for Dog or staring at Kat, Sebastian’s attention focused on me.
I took a deep breath and smiled. “We should be, I should be talking to you, not at you. I promise I won’t do that again.”
He frowned slightly. I couldn’t be sure he understood me.
“What I mean, Sebastian, is that much has happened since your accident. Stuff only you can explain. Like, you made a phone call to Kat that night. Can you tell us what you wanted to tell her?”
He looked at Kat and then back at me. I felt my heart jump a smidge. He seemed to be following what I said.
Since he remained silent, I asked, “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“No,” he said.
“We’re just guessing,” I said. “But we think it had to do with campaign financing. At my Dad’s campaign. Kat’s an accountant, so we think you wanted her to help you figure out what was wrong.”
This time I waited. When Kat started to say something, I shushed her. Let Sebastian try on his own.
The problem was that he didn’t. He looked at me and then at Kat leaning against the back wall, and then at me again. His frustrated frown about broke my heart.
“Seb, you could have called me for another reason,” Kat said. “You were to have dinner with Leslie that night, and you might have called me to talk about it. You see we suspected, or at least I suspected, that you were going to ask Les to marry you.”
I should have stopped her. The confusion only deepened on Sebastian’s face. If I had any hope that he’d planned asking me anything that night, it was dashed in that moment. Then, impossibly, his lips moved as he tried to find the words to respond.
“Who?” He looked directly at me.
Feeling compassion wash over me, I gently covered his hand with mine. “Kat is standing in front of you. You called her the night of your accident. You met her two years ago when your granddad was in hospice. You remember Kat, Sebastian. I know you do. She’s married to Dog who has been taking care of you.”
I glanced at Kat, but her gaze was on Sebastian. Her desolate look nearly crushed me.
He tried again. “Who is …” Then his voice faded out and his hand twisted with frustration.
This was worse than I thought.
Patiently, I said, “Dog was your grandfather’s hospice aide, Sebastian. Then he was Jordan Ippel’s aide. Remember Jordan? He taught you about art with potatoes. Then you asked Dog to take care of Professor Henry Telemann last summer. Your mentor, Doc T. You remember him? Now Dog’s taking care of you.”
He gripped my hand. I could see he was gearing up to try agai
n. Gathering my tattered patience, I waited.
“Who is…” He took another breath. “Les…lie?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I rarely used the small room across the hall from the loft upstairs. When Sebastian asked me who Leslie was, I fled the room and would have huddled in misery in the room across the hall. Before I flung open the door, I heard Connor moving inside.
Connor normally only worked days, but on the weekends when Dog caught double shifts at the hospital, he stayed with us through Sunday night. When I was with Sebastian, he slept in the room across the hall.
Instead I fled up the narrow stairs to the room across the hall from the loft. It was the only room that hadn’t received a makeover. The door had no lock and looked beaten. The wood floor badly needed sanding and polishing.
The springs in the trundle bed creaked. The rocking chair was the best piece in the room, and the cushions still had feathers. It faced the window at the rear of the townhouse. When the casement windows were open, you could smell orange blossoms and pick fruit from the branches brushing the glass.
This had been Sebastian’s room. When we first moved in after the accident, I could still smell him in the pillows and towels. When I couldn’t bear his battered visage or the stillness of his body, I would sit in the closet where his clothes brushed against me still smelling a wonderful mix of maleness, garden dirt, grease, laboratory formaldehyde, and ink.
Now his scent was gone. Everything in the room now smelled of laundry soap and me.
I levered open the window and leaned against the glass, glad of the smoky September chill and of the wind blowing from the ocean, smelling of brine.
He didn’t remember me.
I’d borne many things since the accident, and I would bear this too.
My grandparents had been married over fifty years and in the months before my grandpa passed, he hadn’t remembered my grandma. I never saw her crushed when he would look across the breakfast table and ask who she was. Or when she returned from the market, confusion would cross his face and he would ask if he knew her.
She would smooth his hair and say, “I am yours and you are mine. That is all you need know.”
I met Sebastian two years ago and had been his Abishag wife for a handful of weeks. I could bear him forgetting me and what we had. I would remember for us both.
Still I decided to move the eleven eggshell presents I’d brought to the room into the closet. Maybe Sebastian had wanted me to know that our love was secure. Since current evidence contradicted that, I didn’t need painful reminders.
I stacked his shoes in the corner and made room for ten mountains on the closet floor. I heaved the eleventh onto the shelf above the clothes rack. Something was in the way.
Sighing, I set the eggshell present on the trundle bed and reached as far as I could till I grabbed what had been in the way. I knew what it was as soon as I touched it. Another eggshell present.
I took it to the rocking chair and set it carefully on my lap. The small gold plaque said Mount Ararat, where it was said Noah’s ark rested after the flood. I told Sebastian once I thought it a romantic site for archeologists to dig, but he squashed the notion. Its elevation was over 19,000 feet and covered with snow and ice.
Then he gave me a speculative look. “It is the only mountain that comes with a rainbow promise.” When I badgered him to explain himself, he only laughed and said I would know soon enough.
Inside a wide crevice of the six-inch Ararat, the outside of an eggshell was painted like a rainbow. Inside a thread hung and dangled a ring.
My breath caught. I used a pen to lever the ring from the eggshell and aimed it at the window. Strong afternoon light illuminated four words: Sebastian Loves Leslie Forever.
Outside the battered door, I heard Kat’s light tread up the stairs. I quickly slid Mount Ararat with eggshell and ring under the trundle, and shoved the 11th eggshell present on top of the closet shelf. As I closed the closet door, Kat spoke.
“Leslie? May I come in?”
I flew to the rocking chair and settled there, my heart quaking.
She inched the door open and peeked in. “Do you want to talk?”
I shook my head. “Maybe later,” I croaked.
“You gonna be okay?” She paused. “I mean tonight when you have to be with him.”
“Of course.” I felt surprised knowing I meant it.
“Mrs. Timmons is still here. She wants to talk to you.”
I closed my eyes. “You told her about Sebastian not knowing me.”
“Yes.”
I pushed the duvet off me. “Tell her I’ll be right there.”
I waited till I heard Kat on the stairs before I left the room. I checked my face in the tiny upstairs bathroom, but saw no sign of tears or that something within me had died.
In the kitchen, I saw pizza cooling on the counter. I stared, totally shocked. Before I could say anything, Mrs. Timmons swept me into her arms. I patted her awkwardly on the back till she released me.
Cupping my face with her plump hands, she studied me anxiously. “You okay, honey?”
I smiled weakly. “Of course. It’s to be expected with brain damage of his sort. Newer memories are the first to be lost.”
My voice caught on the word “lost.”
“His poor brain’s still healing. Don’t you worry about this, sweetie. He’ll remember all about you soon enough.” She pushed me onto a counter stool and set two slices of pizza on a plate. I shot it another astonished look.
“He might not. Some parts of his brain may never heal.”
She handed me a napkin. “Then he’ll fall in love with you again. It’s meant to be.”
“Mrs. Timmons, you made pizza?”
Her eyebrows raised innocently. “And why shouldn’t I?”
“You hate pizza. You say it’s bad for our guts, our hearts, our …”
She waggled a finger at me. “It is all those things, but I believe our Lord gives us comfort in many forms and it’s not up to me to hinder His good work.” She added a third slice to my plate. “You enjoy, sweetie. Afterwards, you have a big slice of my carrot cake to wash that nasty oregano from your mouth.”
***
Connor woke me at 9:30 that night. Kat told him to let me sleep as long as possible before my nighttime duties began.
“Kathmandu returned to Irvine after dinner,” he said. “She’s working at your father’s headquarters.”
I felt a tickling down my spine. I hoped one of her nefarious crew was with her. She shouldn’t be there alone.
After my shower and bathroom in a steam-scented fog of orange blossoms, I left the downstairs wearing red flannel pajamas. The night had turned autumn chilly, and the rooms downstairs were cold.
“You need anything else, Mrs. Crowder?” Connor met me in the hall, carrying a plate with the remains of his dinner.
I had asked him to call me Leslie, but he was unfailingly polite in refusing. I covered a yawn, still feeling dopey after my long nap.
“Nothing, thank you. How is Sebastian?”
“He dropped off thirty minutes ago. We had a good physical therapy session this afternoon so he should sleep through the night.”
I sighed with relief. He’d been restive this past week, never quite waking completely, and never fully aware that I lay next to him.
“See you at six, Connor.”
I closed the door quietly and tiptoed to my side of the bed. Sebastian’s eyes were closed, and he breathed in slow, even breaths.
Peace like a river. Serenity like a lake. Calm like me.
I slipped into the bed as gently as a feather and draped my arm around his. He felt so familiar, my eyes prickled with tears.
His breathing changed, and he went rigid against me. “Who?”
“It’s Leslie, Husband.” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
He rolled onto his back, and I landed on the floor. “You …”
I scrambled to my feet. “I’m okay.”
“Hus…band?”
“Yes.” I settled into the wing chair, feeling the cold leather through my flannel pajamas. Somewhere in the house, I heard the ship clock in the living room chime the quarter hour and Connor washing dishes in the kitchen.
“I am your wife, and you are my husband. My name is Leslie. We’ve known each other for two years and been dating since last year.”
I thought about the ring hanging in the rainbow egg upstairs, but should I tell him about something that I hadn’t known and hadn’t been given?
As if his thoughts followed my thoughts, his eyes dropped to my left hand. The agency traditionally supplied all wedding rings to their Abishag employees when we signed the marriage certificates. A plain silver band engraved with a simple A on the outside and the husband’s name inside.
“I’m your Abishag wife,” I said. “Do you know what Abishag means?”
“No.”
This wouldn’t be easy. I took a deep breath. “When a man is not expected to live, some families contract an Abishag wife to bring him comfort.”
I saw his jaw flex. “I not live?”
“You were seriously hurt and expected to die, but you woke.”
“My fam…ly?”
“I didn’t tell your mother about your recovery. Maybe you could tell her yourself soon. She’ll be beyond happy.”
He took a shuddering breath. “Tell Granddad.”
I blinked back tears. He didn’t remember his grandfather’s passing. Which meant he also didn’t remember that I’d been his granddad’s Abishag wife.
“I’m sorry, Sebastian. Thomas died two years ago.”
He turned his face away.
I wondered how much I should tell him about that time but decided to keep it simple. “Your granddad died with all his family around. You’ve missed him but felt at peace with his passing.”
He turned slightly back. “Les…lie?”
I said quickly. “You call me Les.”
He went silent for a long space of time. I wished I hadn’t interrupted him. I suddenly thought that, though he was struggling with the words, not once had he responded by rhyming what I had said. I couldn’t tell how much he comprehended, but he seemed to be understanding some of it.
An Eggshell Present: An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery (Abishag Mysteries Book 4) Page 6
