Gavin’s phone beeped, so I opened my eyes. “Where’s my phone?” I asked.
He reached beside the bed to open a drawer, pulling out a plastic bag filled with rice. “We’re trying to salvage it.”
“Has Jenny called?” My best friend had been with us on the beach just before I walked into the waves. I could still picture her worried look as I was carried to the ambulance.
“Yes, she’s asked me for updates. She had my number first, remember?” He grinned, and the expression was so spontaneous and charming that I had to smile. We were going to be okay. Despite everything, we were going to get it all back.
Except Finn. I listened to the subtle beep of the monitor that seemed so loud upon waking. I concentrated on the sound, aligning it with my memory, and could see Finn’s Isolette, a clear bubble, his little face against the pillow inside. Sometimes his fingers would twitch, or his arm jerk, and that was the only way I could tell that he was real, and not a doll inside a case.
“Well, hell,” Gavin muttered. His happy smile was gone, lost to dismay and then a flash of anger.
“What is it?”
He sighed. “Your parents. They just landed and they don’t want me to pick them up.”
“Why not?” I tried to sit up a little straighter, but my body wouldn’t obey, and I sagged back into a slump.
“I can think of a lot of reasons.”
I held out my arm, the movement sending a shock wave though me. “Give me that.”
“You calling them?”
“I’ll try a text first. They might not answer a call from you.”
“Then let me type it.”
I sighed. “Okay. Say, ‘This is Corabelle. Remember when I told you I was pregnant, and I said to trust me, that I would be okay? Well, I’m saying it again. It will be okay. Gavin will meet you outside baggage claim.’” I no more got the sentence out when the coughs erupted. I couldn’t calm them down, turning to my side to manage the pain and the frightening wetness of each breath.
Gavin clutched me, fear all over his face. “Should I get the nurse?”
“It’s…stopping…” I managed to get out, gasping, forcing my body to relax.
“Your parents are going to kick me out.” He leaned in to rub my back. “I guess they’ll be sleeping here instead of me.”
I curled up tight, relieved the coughs had subsided. “I’m surprised they let you, but I’m glad.”
“I don’t take no for an answer. Not when it concerns you.” His face warmed over with that beautiful grin again, and even though I was exhausted and in pain, my heart sped up, and I felt that need for him that had ruled my youth.
“I never stopped loving you,” I said.
He lifted my hand to his lips. “I think I love you more now than I did before.”
His phone beeped again. He glanced at it and frowned.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I think your dad just told me to go to hell.”
2: Gavin
Corabelle was out again. One minute she was upset at her father, the next, asleep.
The nurse set the cup of water on the side table and said, “Buzz me when she wakes up.”
“I will,” I said. “Hey, is she supposed to cough like her guts are coming out? She hadn’t been doing that before.”
“It’s part of the process. At least she’s strong enough to cough now.” She hurried out of the room.
I leaned back in the chair. I was torn between blowing off her parents, who didn’t want to see me anyway, and doing what Corabelle asked. But, my motorcycle was here. I couldn’t pick them up on that. By the time I could get to her place, pick up her car, then jet to the airport, they’d be in a taxi.
I hadn’t planned this well. Corabelle had always been the organized one.
I turned over the phone and texted them the name of the hospital and the room number. They’d be here soon enough. I would smooth things over. We would get back to where we used to be.
I needed to call Bud, tell him I’d be taking off yet another day from the garage. And e-mail the professors, mine and Corabelle’s, to let them know how she was. God, this was a mess. They might not excuse me, but I didn’t care. I had no direction anyway. Not true. Corabelle was my destination. I’d do whatever I needed to do to make things right with her.
Her black hair was a harsh contrast to her pale fragile face. I could still see hints of the girl she once was, the one who sheltered me when I dashed across the alley from my house to hers as a child escaping a difficult father. The last four years without her had been such hell. I hadn’t seen it until I had her back. Nothing made sense without her. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
My stomach rumbled, so I shoved myself out of the chair. The cafeteria food was passable, and one of the staffers always had pity on me and gave me the staff discount. This was my new life, for a while. Eventually I had to get back to work, pay the bills, figure out our next step.
Another text message buzzed me as I stepped into the elevator. I suppressed a snorting laugh when I saw it. You’d never know that I’d once been a favored son, that the same hand that typed these words had once clapped me on the back in approval.
It said, “Don’t be there when we arrive. I mean it.”
I dumped my leftovers in the cafeteria trash and stacked my tray, wiping my hands on my jeans. My hair was all over the place. Corabelle’s parents would think I was a vagrant. Or a mooch. God, no telling. The way they were acting, you wouldn’t know that the first door I ever walked through that wasn’t my own was theirs. Of course, their daughter was the first thing I ever walked away from.
I stepped into the elevator, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain myself. A nurse got on with me, holding an apple, and nodded in my direction. “Which floor?” she asked.
“Four,” I said.
We lurched up from the basement to the first floor and stopped again. The doors slid open, and the time for me to figure out what to say was over, because Corabelle’s parents were standing right outside.
“Oh!” Mrs. Rotheford said, her vivid red lipsticked mouth open with shock.
“Hey,” I said with a wave. I tunneled my fingers through my hair one more time, not that it was going to help.
Mr. Rotheford glared at me from behind heavy-rimmed glasses, different from the ones I’d last seen him wear, now with a line across the centers. I’d thought of them as ageless, but the four years had not been especially kind to him.
“I’ll have you thrown out,” he said with a growl.
The nurse shifted next to me, her arm partially outstretched, as if trying to decide whether or not to push the button to close the doors. I glanced at her. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Should I?”
But Mrs. Rotheford grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him forward, pulling a petite roller bag. “Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur.”
He didn’t resist, and the nurse and I scooted to the corner. The elevator was deep to accommodate hospital beds, so we were not crowded together.
Mr. Rotheford’s shoulders were hunched, and his fingers on the handle of his rolling suitcase were tightened into fists. I couldn’t imagine him manhandling anyone. He had always been such a calm and gentle man, endlessly patient with Corabelle’s teddy-bear classrooms, sitting obediently in a little chair to be her student if she held her playschool on the weekends.
Her mother glanced back at me, her hair an intricate black sweep into a silver comb. She had always been elegant and kind, the sort of mother you might see on television. I knew they had their sorrows, a string of miscarriages after Corabelle, and in the days Finn was in the hospital, I knew her grief was magnified by the thought of all those children, and what tragic genetic code might have been passed on to her daughter. If I was going to make inroads with them, it would be through her.