Authors: Rachael Herron
Saturday, May 17, 2014
11:20 a.m.
K
ate felt as if the boat dipped out from below her feet, leaving her standing on nothing but wind. She was dropping, falling. Everything around them disappeared. Pree wasn’t watching with her careful eyes; Brian wasn’t there. There was just him—just Nolan. And the box she held, the box her boy was in.
Nolan looked as if he were going to pass out.
Fuck
, she wished she couldn’t read him so well. She wished she could go back to where she’d been just minutes, seconds before.
“Nolan. You don’t remember what happened. You never remembered.”
He shook his head. “I remembered in prison.”
She could only stare at him. The doctors had said then that his short-term memory of that day might come back spontaneously, or it might never return. Then did he know . . . ?
“I remembered every minute until I passed out.”
“Jesus,” she said.
Finally, he spoke, and the sound was dusty, as if the words had been so long unused they creaked. “Tell me.”
Pree moved silently toward the back of the boat, as if she knew this was just for them. Brian made himself busy with a manual of some kind.
“I left the search window open.” Kate took what felt like the last breath of her life. “The cops used the back button and found where I’d been.”
Without a sound, Nolan mouthed,
No.
But he knew. She had to go on. She’d done this to him, brought him to this. She had to finish it. “‘CO poisoning.’ ‘Garage death.’ ‘How long does death take?’ ‘Murder-suicide.’
It was all there. They could see every search I’d done, all the way back to the original one: ‘mercy killing.’”
“They didn’t care I tried to commit suicide—that was only a crime against myself. But those searches were why I got convicted. When I didn’t have my memory, I thought
I’d
looked them up. But it was you.”
“You planned to fall asleep. With my boy.” They were weak words.
“I never planned it. That’s the point, Kate. I would never have planned it.”
No. No more of this conversation. It was too much, too awful . . . She was crying then, and she didn’t want to be. The grief felt new again, and that kind of sorrow should never,
ever
feel new. It wasn’t fair.
Nolan’s arms went around her. She felt him shake so hard she thought he might break apart. Against her ear, he said, “I never would have left you.”
The fingers of her left hand dug into the flesh above his shoulder blades, her right hand still clutching Robin’s box. “You wanted to die,” she said. “With him.”
“I never would have left you,” he said.
Why did he keep repeating that? Grief and guilt felt like a dizzying leap, a twist in her stomach, a lurch she couldn’t recover from. “Did you think you were the only one who lay awake at night wishing that you could take the pain from him? I did the math while you were sleeping. If someone had told me that I could trade another little boy’s life for Robin, you know what? I would have done it. If I’d had to pull the plug myself, if it would have saved Robin, I’d have done it while I watched the boy’s mother throw herself onto his bed. If someone had said, ‘Here. Flip this switch, and a van full of six children will die in a fiery crash but Robin will live to see his twenty-first birthday’”—Kate’s voice failed but she kept speaking—“I’d have done it. In the middle of the night, I decided I couldn’t consign a whole village full of starving children to death as a trade. That’s where my line was. A whole fucking village. But six kids? I could have killed six of them for Robin. I would have.”
Nolan pulled away and rubbed his temples. There was a streak of gray in his hair she hadn’t noticed, and it hurt her heart to look at it. “I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well. I know there’s a top up there, and I know where I fell in, but I can’t ever see daylight. There’s no light at all. I’m trapped, and I can’t get out. I can’t help him. I can’t help you.”
She leaned her forehead against his chest. He smelled like Nolan, like soap. Like duct tape and pencils and, now, cold salt wind.
Nolan spoke against her hair again. “You should have told me the truth.”
Her fingers tensed against his back. “I know.”
His hands came up and pushed gently at Kate’s upper arms. He put her away from him, and there was an agony of space between them. “That’s why you didn’t fight for me.”
“What?”
“You chose Robin.”
“I—”
“Of course you chose him that day, when you brought us out. I knew you gave him CPR, not me, and that was exactly what you should have done. That’s what I would have done, too. But then, later. You never chose me, and I never knew why.”
“I stood by you every minute of the trial—”
“As I went down. I had no memory of what had happened—I assumed the search terms were mine. You didn’t testify for me. You said you couldn’t.”
She’d always been a bad liar. He knew that. “I was so confused. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I needed you to fight for me, like you’d fought for Robin, and I didn’t understand why you didn’t. You were so strong, and I needed you to do battle for me.”
“But you didn’t fight for yourself—”
“I couldn’t. That’s when I knew you were gone. It broke what little I had left of my heart.”
“But you’re the one—” Kate broke off, scrabbling in her mind for anything she’d done right, but she couldn’t think of a single fucking thing. She’d thought lying to him was her only choice. She glanced at Pree at the back of the boat. Always a lie, always. “But you’re the one who filed for divorce from prison. You sent me the papers.”
“Which you signed. You never protested.
You never fought for me
.” His voice broke. “And now I know why.”
Too much. He was totally right and at the same time completely wrong. Turning, Kate called to Brian, “Can we go back, please?”
Brian looked up, confusion on his face. “But you haven’t—”
“I’m not going to. This was a terrible idea.”
Brian said, “What if you just—?”
“Fine,” she said. “
Fine.
” She picked up Sonia’s box and opened it. Ripped into the plastic. Dumped it carelessly, in one heavy
whoosh
. The bag slipped from her fingers, and she regretted that part of it immediately, that she’d just thrown a toxic oil by-product into the ocean. She also
did
feel lighter, having tossed the ashes, but there was no way she was letting Robin leave her that way. She put his box safely under a seat. “I can’t put him here. That’s the thing. Robin loved the ocean, but I hate it. It’s cold. It’s rough. It’s not safe for a boy his age.”
Nolan looked past her, over her shoulder, as if she weren’t even there. Standing this close to him, standing as close to her heart as she had in years and years, Kate had never felt so alone.
She’d lost him. Again.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
11:50 a.m.
O
n their way in toward the bridge, the rocking motion made Pree feel ill again. Something huge had happened in the front of the boat, something devastating. Kate and Nolan looked as if they’d just lost their son only minutes ago, not three years before. And Pree couldn’t do a damn thing except wait for the invisible storm to pass.
Thank god she hadn’t been able to hear everything, not above the slaps of the waves against the hull. But Pree shouldn’t even have to see this. Didn’t they know they should keep this private?
But she’d signed up for it, she supposed. She’d chosen this by getting on the boat. Her
father
. That had come as a surprise. It wasn’t as bad as she would have thought, though. Nolan . . . he seemed kind. A man who’d loved a child as much as it seemed he had . . . maybe it would be okay to get to know him. A little.
Maybe. Maybe not.
The marina drew closer, and Kate came back and sat next to her quietly. Her hand slipped into Pree’s, cold and small. Pree almost pulled away, but Kate’s grip seemed to help the queasiness. Nolan, looking wrecked, sat silently on the other side of Pree.
Pree kept her eyes on the Berkeley hills.
The night before, she and Flynn had broken up. She’d told him about Jimmy. Flynn had flipped out, way more than she would have predicted. He’d shouted, his voice going more coral-colored than she’d ever heard it. Practically Isi-colored. He threw one of his shoes through a closed window. He said he would fight for her, that he’d go to the ends of the earth for her. Then Pree had said she cared for him; she just wasn’t sure she loved him.
“Did you ever?” he’d asked, tears wobbling, unshed.
“Yes.”
“Fuck, Pree. That makes it so much worse.”
He’d wanted things she couldn’t promise anyone. Not anymore. His voice went pale again, back to its normal simple pink, and she felt it, just like that: he’d given up on her. Really, it was what she’d wanted him to do. She didn’t love him, not like that.
Why did it hurt so badly, then, when he left?
Flynn didn’t say where he was going or when he’d be back. Her heart had broken then, walloping her with a thudding pain she could feel now in the backs of her eyes. Pree didn’t
want
Flynn—she really didn’t. But she wasn’t sure how to live in a world without him.
She’d called Isi and Marta, crying frantically, and she’d told them everything—all of it, from the pregnancy to Jimmy to forcing Flynn away. They were driving up now. They had said they would try to meet her at the dock, if traffic allowed.
They were coming.
She checked her phone. A text from Isi:
We’re here.
And at the pier, Pree saw them. Miraculously, the moms were there. Waiting.
Her Marta. She looked windblown and ragged. She had a white look under her eyes, a pulled tightness Pree had never seen before. Pree had put that look on her face, and she regretted nothing more. Isi, her crew cut bristling in the wind, looked as if she were about to throw herself into the water and swim to her. She kept her gaze squarely on Pree, as if pulling the boat toward her with the power of her mind.
Pree came down the ramp first, flying at them. They were there.
They were there for
her.
Isi caught her in a hug so tight Pree could barely grab her breath. Then the moms were apologizing, and Pree couldn’t figure out why. “I’m the one who let you down, and you’re saying
you’re
sorry?” That made Marta hiccup, and Pree got squeezed until she knew she’d have bruises later. Good bruises.
And in that moment, Pree knew. She finally got it. She already had her family. Right here. She’d had it the whole time, and while she’d known that superficially, she hadn’t really known it in her bones. She hadn’t known it in her blood. Not until now. She already had her people. Marta. Isi.
Hers
.
She looked over her shoulder and saw Kate coming down the ramp, followed by Nolan. Her birth parents. She knew about them now, just as she knew about her double-jointed left pinky and the fact that she was mildly allergic to strawberries. She was glad to know. But the knowledge mattered so much less when held up against the two women who stood in front of her, the ones who had driven to her as fast as they could. The ones who held her heart.
“We can get my car later. Can you take me home now?” she asked.
“Yes,” Isi said, and her voice was the most gorgeous shade of rosy joy.
Aftermath
November 2011
S
ix days after Robin died, Kate was still in bed, using every ounce of self-control she possessed not to go into Robin’s room, not to take up keening on his floor, the wailing that, once started, would never end.
My boy my perfect boy my love my boy my boy my child my boy.
Nolan was in the hospital, still unable to communicate. Sonia said his eyes didn’t function right—she’d checked on him every day. Sonia was as brusque as she’d always been. More so, perhaps, as if she had something stuck in her throat and couldn’t clear it.
But with Robin’s death, Sonia’s shell had cracked, and Kate could see something inside her mother, something she’d never known was there. Sonia knew the very bones of grief, and in sharing that with her daughter, there was a softness at the curve at her cheek, a kindness in the hand that efficiently drew the covers over Kate and patted her head. There were no kisses, no words of love, but there was a rough tenderness, and Kate could tell her mother was trying. It was all she had to give. Once, Kate had woken to find Sonia staring out the window of the bedroom, with the curtain pulled back. “What is it?” she’d asked.
“I was just thinking about your father.”
“What about him?”
“I should have tried harder, after he died,” said Sonia. “To give you more. I should have at least tried.” There was a pause. “I tried with Robin. My merman.”
Kate couldn’t answer around her swollen throat.
“But I’m still sorry . . .”
For one moment, Kate thought her mother was going to bring it up—would talk about the granddaughter she’d never met. She closed her eyes, as if that would keep her from hearing, but instead Sonia left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
On Kate’s sixth day in bed, the day before Robin’s funeral—which Sonia had planned, dry-eyed and matter-of-factly—Sonia said, “Nolan doesn’t understand it when I tell him. His eyes don’t change when I explain it again. What happened. Where he is now.”
Kate turned to the wall and closed her eyes. It wasn’t fair that she had to live in a world like this, feeling what she did, and he didn’t. After what he’d done.
“You have to go to him,” Sonia said.
“No.” It was the only word she was sure of.
“He needs you.”
Kate needed Robin. “No.”
“He loves you.”
“No.” He couldn’t.
“You love him. You love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone except your son.” Sonia left herself out of the equation of love.
“He took Robin from me.”
“Then go,” said Sonia, her face fierce. Furious. “Tell him.”
At the hospital, the ICU nurses knew the story. That much was obvious in the way they lifted their eyebrows at each other when they thought she was looking somewhere else. A nurse in green scrubs took her to Nolan’s room, and her glance was kind. The room was all glass and metal, and very cold, as if he were about to go into surgery. This wasn’t a normal recovery room. This was serious. “He just said his first few words this afternoon. It’s good you’re here.” And before Kate passed through the glass door to the nurses’ station just outside, the nurse said, “Don’t upset him. He probably won’t remember anything you tell him, so don’t expect much. His short-term memory is gone for now. It might get better later, but there’s no telling just yet.”
Kate pressed her lips together and nodded.
He was noticeably thinner. How could that happen in mere days? The fact that he’d grown a beard was an unexpected jolt.
“Nolan,” she said. God, what if he opened his eyes? She had no follow-up line.
But he did. He opened his eyes, those wonderful maple-colored eyes, and there he was. “Love,” he whispered.
And instead of screaming, instead of raining blows down upon him, instead of anything she’d originally planned on the way to the hospital, she did something else. She examined the side rail of his bed and pushed the right combination to drop the metal. Then, lifting the tubes that were connected to various parts of his body, she slowly and oh so carefully slipped under them. She shimmied under the thin blanket. Pressing herself against him, she felt him shudder.
“You’re right. It’s cold in here,” Kate said, as if they’d already been discussing it. Continuing their conversation. “Let me help. Come closer.”
Nolan didn’t move. She could feel he couldn’t, so she got closer to him instead. Her knee to his, body to body, her warmth heating his chill. “That’s right,” she said.
He lay on his back, tears running from his eyes, catching in her hair.
“Do you know what happened?”
“No,” he whispered. “But . . . something. Did.”
Kate waited. She tried to find the place inside her chest that would allow her to punish him.
You killed your son, my boy, our son. You took him. You killed my son. My boy my boy my little boy.
Each word a weapon. Each word another death that he had so unforgivably escaped.
She leaned her head close to his and softly said the words that were tangled in her mouth.
His body relaxed.
She said them again, and she kept saying them, over and over, until the words unwound and reknitted themselves together and made a blanket of words, draping a warmth over them both that allowed him to relax and fall back to sleep, pressed against her.
Robin loves you. I love you. Robin loves you. I love you. Come home to us. I love you. I found you, I found you, I found you. Come home. We love you. Come home.