Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

  “Don’t borrow,” Justin said.

  Darlene said, “Goo’ boy.”

  Justin signed off with his mother and I turned off the speaker. “I’ll let you know the minute I have more information,” I said to him.

  “Do you think I should come now?” There was an anxious edge to his voice.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. She’s doing better than she was a few minutes ago. Her speech. Her focus. If she keeps on improving . . .”

  “Okay. I’ll have a bag packed just in case. If there’s no significant improvement or medical verdict in a couple hours, I’ll be on my way.”

  Darlene said something I couldn’t quite understand after we hung up. I leaned closer. “Say that again?”

  “Told you it would be an ad—venture.” A slight smile curved her lips and a trace of the old Darlene was in it.

  “You outdid yourself this time, my friend.”

  Chapter 22

  Darlene continued to improve over the hours that followed. She had some weakness and lack of coordination on her left side and her speech was still impaired, but her clarity and muscle function were getting better by the minute. A doctor I hadn’t seen before came in halfway through the night to give me an update. The scan had shown that she’d indeed had a small stroke and that this probably wasn’t the first one. More importantly, it had revealed a lesion on the frontal lobe of her brain. Small. Potentially benign, but with her recent medical history, likely serious.

  “I can’t be certain the mass caused the stroke, but I do know that without the TIA, it might not have been found for a while. We can certainly keep Darlene here and do some more testing to determine what it is, but . . . maybe we should get her well enough to go home and let her own doctors take it from here.”

  I went out to the waiting room to call Justin and get a cup of coffee.

  “What are you two doing in Hannibal anyway?” he asked once I’d filled him in on what I knew.

  “Well . . . ,” I began.

  “No need to sugarcoat it. My mom is known for two things: impulsivity and a total disregard for potential consequences. Whatever it is, it won’t surprise me.”

  I attempted a light laugh, but my nerves and emotions were still too raw for it to sound authentic. “We drove to Missouri in search of her father,” I finally said. “She found some letters of his a while back and—long story short—she decided someone needed to visit his old home in Kinley to find out if he was still alive. When she asked me if I’d be willing to make the trip, I was the idiot who figured she should come along too.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “The man whose name alone can shut down a perfectly good conversation?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I heard him sigh. “After all this time . . . ,” he said. “She never spoke to my grandmother about him. Or to me either. It was always, ‘That doesn’t matter anymore’ or ‘All in the past, Justin, all in the past.’”

  I heard his frustration and tried to soften my revelation. “I think her last diagnosis—her prognosis—kind of threw her for a loop. It was the perfect storm, really. Someone sends her letters written to her father when he was in Normandy, her doctors tell her the cancer had spread and . . . Well, you said it—‘impulsivity and a total disregard for potential consequences.’ She just wants to learn more while she still can.”

  I heard him sigh. “Can I speak with her again?” There were equal parts love, concern, and exasperation in his voice.

  I walked to Darlene’s room and handed her the phone. Her improvement in a few short hours was remarkable. Her color was brighter and her eyes held traces of the fire that defined her.

  “I hear you’re doing a bit better,” Justin said.

  “Fit as a fiddle missing a few strings.”

  “And Ceelie tells me you’ll be cleared to travel in a day or two. That sounds like a good report.”

  “Except for the marble-sized something-or-other on the old brain. Am I a frickin’ smorgasbord of medical conditions or what?”

  “Language, Mom,” Justin said wryly.

  I interjected, “The mini-stroke seems to have unchained her inner truck driver.”

  I heard Justin chuckle. Then there was a brief silence. “What were you thinking, Mom? Going off to who-knows-where on a wild goose chase.”

  “Seemed like a great idea at the time,” Darlene said, not in the least defensively. “But I’ll admit I never thought it would land me in the hospital.”

  “Are they taking good care of you?”

  “I think the CAT scan technician has a crush on me.”

  Justin laughed. His voice held affection and patience as he continued. “So . . . remember how Nana and I would go off to the library together for hours at a time when we visited her?”

  Darlene seemed confused by the question. “I— Yes. Of course I do.”

  “Did you ever wonder why we spent so much time there?”

  “My son picks the oddest times for jaunts down memory lane,” Darlene said to me. Some of her consonants were still too soft and the vowels too broad, but the eye roll she aimed in my direction was executed with so much flair that it seemed to be more proof of her quickly recovering brain.

  “No, I did not wonder that,” she said to Justin. “I figured you were enjoying the time together.”

  “We were researching a man by the name of Callum McElway, Mom.”

  Her gaze locked on mine. “You were what now?”

  “You may not have wanted to know anything about him, but . . . he was a legend to my little-boy mind. And I think Nana loved that one of us was intrigued enough to ask questions.”

  “Well, I’ll be.”

  “We never did figure out what happened after he left you and Nana, but I’ve got a binder full of the little we uncovered and the lot she remembered.”

  “Well, I’ll be.”

  “So you’ve said. See what happens when a person refuses to communicate with her son on important topics?” There was a smile in his tone. And a soft reprimand.

  “What exactly did you learn?”

  “His rank. Some of his deployment details. There was a fire at the National Archives in the seventies that wiped out a bunch of military records, so we had a hard time getting specifics. Plus, he seemed to fall off the face of the earth after he . . . left. Most of what I know just came from Nana’s memories and the documents that came with his medals.”

  “Medals?”

  “Get well. Come back home. I’ll tell you everything I know, Mom.”

  I left them chatting and returned to the lobby for the coffee I’d never poured. The fact that Justin had some additional information about Cal should have been exciting, but Darlene’s condition was a greater concern now than the unanswered questions about her father. I sat in a chair and tried to envision a positive medical outcome, but the more I contemplated Darlene’s diagnosis, the less likely her survival seemed.

  I put my coffee down and rubbed my hands over my face, realizing I’d left my wig in the bathroom back at the hotel. It had been twenty-four hours since I’d showered or looked at myself in a mirror, but it didn’t matter to me. Darlene’s wellness was my sole, overwhelming concern.

  I recognized the footsteps before I opened my eyes. There was something about their cadence and calm that immediately identified their owner.

  “Ceelie?”

  I hesitated. I breathed in once. Twice. Then I looked up into Nate’s face.

  Chapter 23

  There was an interminable moment when I couldn’t conjure up a single rational thought. It was too much for my mind to absorb and process. The shock of his presence in a place where neither of us belonged. The aching relief of his familiar, capable nearness at a time when I couldn’t fathom leaning into his strength. The frightening realization that he’d dropped everything to make the trek to Missouri in the middle of the night, and the odd, angry confusion that notion inspired.

  I stared at N
ate. He stood a few feet away, his hands in the pockets of the camel-colored jacket he always wore for travel. He was unshaven. His hair was longer than it had been in our two decades of marriage. His expression was sincere, somehow both hesitant and sure. He hunched his shoulders. It was a gesture that looked like passive readiness. He was there. He was willing. But he was going to let me take the lead.

  I wanted to close the gap between us and wrap my arms around his waist. I wanted to yell at him that he had to go away—that this crisis belonged in my single-woman-world and that his presence was bringing the bile of my broken-marriage-world into an already untenable situation. I wanted to shrink down in my chair and stop being strong and let him make the decisions that would get my friend home without complicating her condition.

  “What are you doing here?” I said instead.

  “I . . .” He frowned as if he truly wasn’t sure of the answer. “I thought you could use some help. When you called—you sounded upset on the phone and . . . I thought you could use some help,” he said again.

  I knew the civil response would have been gratitude, but I shook my head in confusion instead. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

  “I know.”

  There was something about his presence that felt diminishing. It filled me with a rebellion that was as deep-seated as it was out of place. I told him, “You shouldn’t have come,” which seemed a better alternative to, “You make me feel weak.”

  He nodded and continued to stare at me as if he was trying to read on my face what my lips couldn’t formulate. “I nearly didn’t. I got out of the car twice before finally hitting the road. I know I’m . . .” He looked up at the ceiling and blew out a long breath. “I realize I’m the last person you want to see, but you sounded like you were in over your head and—I wanted to be here. Just in case I could do something for you. And if I can’t . . .” He raised his hands in a gesture that told me he’d leave just as easily as he’d come.

  I thought of Darlene. I remembered the seizure. The stroke. The terror of wondering if my friend would die there in that motel room. The doctor’s somber assessment. Her broken, confused words. The fear on her face and the need in her grip.

  “It was a TIA,” I murmured as much to myself as to Nate. “A mini-stroke. But there’s something else on her brain. A mass. They don’t know yet what it is, but . . .”

  “Can they Medevac her?”

  I shook my head. “No need, apparently. At the rate she’s improving, she’ll be cleared for the drive home in another day or two. But that tumor—it’s not good.”

  “Do you want me to stay and drive her back?”

  “I’m still capable of driving, Nate.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that you didn’t sound like you were a few hours ago.”

  “So you swooped in like the conquering hero?” Sarcasm dripped from the words, fueled by the terror I’d felt since Darlene’s seizure and the utter powerlessness that had followed. “You’re good at being the hero, Nate—right up until you’re not.”

  “I came because I wanted to help. Period.”

  I looked at him then and realized how desperately I was fighting gratitude—the kind that softens sharp edges and enlivens numb emotions. At that moment, it seemed a much heavier burden than hate.

  Seconds passed. We still stood facing each other in the waiting room at the end of Darlene’s floor. If there were people around, I wasn’t aware of them. Nate was the searing focus of all my cells and synapses. “You said you wanted to talk. On the phone two days ago. You said . . .” I straightened a bit and squared my shoulders. “I don’t want to talk.”

  I’d known him long enough to recognize the tensing of his jaw. “I didn’t come here to corner you.”

  His expression was still sincere, but I saw the glint of frustration in his eyes. I suspected my face conveyed nothing but spite. The words I’d stifled every time I’d crossed paths with Nate since he’d so brutally exited my future surged to the surface again. I hadn’t spoken them when he’d turned up at our old home to get the items he’d forgotten. I hadn’t spoken them when he’d informed me that the divorce papers were about to be delivered. I hadn’t spoken them when he’d entered the loft on the eve of my departure, as if his penitent countenance could soothe my angry wounds.

  But I chose to speak the words in the waiting room of a hospital in small-town-Missouri. “What part was the sham? That’s what I want to know. The part where you married me? The part where you stayed with me for nearly twenty-four years? The part where you carried me—sometimes literally—through a devastating battle with cancer? Or the part where you sat in the car outside the Shake Shack on the same day I celebrated the end of the ordeal and told me you were done?” I watched the words hit home but felt little satisfaction. “I trusted every piece of our lives together, but for the Nate I knew then to become the Nate I know now, some huge part of our past had to be a sham. Which was it?”

  He seemed taken aback. I saw surprise cross his face, followed closely by determination, as if this opening, as bitter as it was, was a chance he couldn’t let slip away.

  “If you want to talk about this now—”

  I hitched my chin a notch higher. “I do.” The words surprised me, coming on the heels of the statement to the contrary I’d made moments before.

  He looked around the waiting room. “We could sit back there—”

  “Fine.” I swiveled and walked to the corner he’d indicated, where a small table and chairs were surrounded by artificial ferns. I hoped he couldn’t see how unsteady I felt.

  Nate sat across from me, his hands folded in front of him. Rebellion, need, and rage fought for supremacy, paralyzing my lungs and chilling the blood in my veins. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and I pinched my eyes closed against the panic encroaching on my momentary courage.

  Then I met his gaze with what I hoped was a defiant invitation to speak. He dropped his head for a moment. When he looked up again, there was determination and conviction on his face.

  “It was all me.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. I’d expected a long diatribe about the complexity and toll of the past few months. I’d expected explanations and excuses. I’d expected him to say something—anything—that would give me permission to rant, accuse, and demand. His simple statement left me bereft.

  So instead of the monologues I’d been writing in the sleepless nights since he’d abandoned his vows, I said, “Why?”

  He blew out a breath and sat back, his eyes soft and regretful as they connected with mine. “I wish I had a good answer. I wish I did. But the fact is—I don’t know.”

  “You seemed mighty sure when it happened.”

  “I was as shocked as you.”

  “And yet you said you’d been contemplating it for a while.”

  “But not as something I’d actually do. I’d envisioned it sometimes, but . . . I loved you.”

  I laughed. It was a cynical, acrid sound. “What an odd way to show it.”

  “There’s no way of saying this that won’t sound . . . infantile.”

  I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of encouragement. So I sat and waited for him to go on.

  He finally said, “I was exhausted.”

  “Really.”

  He shook his head. “I know, Ceelie. Believe me, I know.”

  “What do you know? How stupid that sounds or how selfish that sounds?”

  The acid in my voice made him wince. “Both. Stupid and selfish.”

  “Cruel.” I blinked back tears and cursed the fact that anger had always brought them out in me.

  “That too,” Nate said. He reached for my hand. I pulled away from him. “Sorry.” He attempted a rueful smile. “Force of habit.”

  “I’m familiar with the concept. The last few months have been a master class in ‘force of habit.’”

  “I . . .” He hesitated. “I panicked, Cee.”

  “There’s no such thing as premeditated panic. The timing might ha
ve surprised you, but you made it clear that the decision had already been made.”

  “Not a decision. I’d fantasized about an escape route. I’ll admit to that. But honestly, I never made a decision to leave you.” He pushed his chair back and ran his fingers through his hair. I remembered the first time I’d noticed the gray lightening his temples. “My already-hot husband is becoming Clooney-esque,” I’d joked. Back when I thought we’d be aging together.

  Everything about Nate indicated effort. He took a breath and sat forward again, arms propped on the table, intensified purpose on his face and in his posture. “Brace yourself for a deluge of ‘stupid and selfish,’” he said.

  “Believe me, Nate, there’s nothing you can say that will make my opinion of you worse.”

  He cringed a little at that, but forged on. “Nothing was a sham,” he said. “We had our ups and downs over the years, but I didn’t stick it out because of some martyr’s complex. I stuck it out because . . . because what we built together felt worth staying for.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Bitterness gnawed at the essence of my spirit, deepening the wound that had been festering since Nate’s departure. “That’s not what you said the day you walked out.”

  There was something courageous in the way he marched on—ignoring the acrimony and anger slithering across from my side of the table.

  “We drifted. I get that. Life, careers. We drifted into a routine, and our closeness probably suffered from it starting well before your cancer.” Something that looked like defeat descended over his face, darkening his gaze and slackening his jaw. “From the moment you were diagnosed, though, I made a pact with myself and with you. We’d get through it together. Whatever it took—we’d get through it. There was no sham, Ceelie. I wanted to be there with you. I wanted to drive you to and from appointments as often as I could. I wanted to make sure you ate and were comfortable and stayed hopeful. All of that—it wasn’t marital martyrdom. It was a choice. A responsibility and a choice.”

  He seemed to struggle to find the next words. “I gave it all I had.” He held up his hands before I had the chance to retort. “You gave it more. I get that. You gave it everything. And I . . . I gave it all I had.”