“Thank you for understanding,” she said. She heard the hint of regret in her own voice, and it sparked a memory of a day long before, when she had stood at his front door and rebuffed his advances. She had been certain about her decision at the time, but sorry, in a way. And she was sorry to cause him pain now. It was strange, this link between them.
“So, what is the bottom line? Have you told her to steer clear of Patrick?”
She hesitated before replying. “Yes, that’s about the sum of it.”
He nodded and looked back toward the water.
“Well, I’d better be heading back. I need to get dinner on the table. Bye, Finn,” she said, turning to head home.
“Maren,” he called. She looked back.
“That’s it?” He tried to look nonchalant. “The antiwar stuff? That’s the only reason?”
“That’s it, Finn,” she lied, and headed toward Fourwinds.
* * *
Annie spent that evening and the following day in a state of high dudgeon, moving about with the look of a caged animal. She paced and fretted, unable to concentrate on any activity. She barely spoke to Oliver. His stubbornness was equal to Annie’s, though it presented as unshakable certitude. This was a good quality in a doctor trying to reassure a patient, but had the effect of further irritating Annie.
Annie finally went sailing with Charlie at midday, and out with her camera in the afternoon. Maren hoped fresh air would help. But when the sky took on a sickly hue and began to spit rain, she was forced back indoors. From the moment she walked into the kitchen, it was clear the time outside had not worked its usual magic. She was surly and tense, snapping at everyone.
Maren was pleased when Annie announced at dinner that her friend Sarah was having some kids over. She would get out of the house and among friends, but as Sarah didn’t consort with the Donnellys, there was no danger of Annie seeing Patrick. Annie helped Charlie with the dishes, grabbed a slicker, and marched out the kitchen door with a mumbled good-bye.
Maren sighed. With a pang of guilt, she realized she was looking forward to Oliver’s departure on Sunday. She would have sole responsibility for keeping Annie and Patrick separated, but it would surely be less tense.
* * *
“Georgie, you are making up the rules as you go along!” Cappy said, looking at the card she had laid down.
They sat at the folding card table in four mismatched chairs, playing an obscure and incomprehensible version of poker Georgie claimed to have learned from her brothers.
“I am not! This is exactly how I explained it.”
“Stop arguing or we’ll have to go back to playing bridge at the country club,” Maren said.
Maren had hated bridge night. With Oliver often absent, she was forever rotating partners, invariably feeling she let them down, since she cared little about the game. Bridge night had been even worse for Georgie and Cappy, who bickered like the eighth graders they had been when they first met.
“It’s not worth the end of your marriage,” Maren had finally said a couple of years before, when she proposed card night as an alternative. They played poker, gin, hearts—anything but bridge.
After a few hands, Maren glanced out the window. The wind was picking up and rain clicked at the window like fingernails. She felt uneasy and struggled to keep her mind on the game.
“What’s Annie up to tonight?” Georgie asked, after a while.
“She’s at Sarah Echelson’s house. I actually thought she’d be back by now,” Maren said.
“I’m going to give her another half hour or so, then go fetch her,” Oliver said, looking at his watch before throwing out his card.
Maren went to the kitchen, ostensibly to get more snacks, but really to shake off her strange mood. She wanted to kick herself for saying she expected Annie home by this time. It had only aroused Oliver’s suspicions. She refilled the bowls of nuts before returning to the table.
As she took her seat, she heard the kitchen door. She felt a surge of relief, thinking Annie had come home, but the sound was followed by neither greeting nor footstep.
The wind, she thought. That, or her imagination, which was on high alert. About a half hour later, Oliver checked his watch again, then looked back at his cards. Once they were through with this hand, Maren suspected he would make good on his promise to find Annie.
He did not have the opportunity. They had not quite finished their game when they heard banging on the front door. Maren went to answer it, mystified as to who it could be. Few people used that door, and almost no one on Haven Point knocked. She opened it to find Finn Donnelly, dripping wet on their front porch.
“Finn. What is it?” Maren asked, as Oliver, Georgie, and Cappy materialized behind her.
“Maren, I’ve got some bad news. You and Oliver need to come with me.”
“What’s going on?” Oliver asked.
“Charlie is on his way to the hospital in Bath. He had a fall on the rocks.”
“Charlie? But he’s…” Maren started, mystified. She gestured vaguely up the stairs, which Oliver was climbing, three at a time. She stopped and listened as Oliver opened Charlie’s door. In seconds he was back on the landing.
“He’s not there.” He descended the stairs, brow furrowed.
“I don’t understand.” Maren felt stuck, as if in quicksand. She turned toward Cappy and Georgie.
“We’ll stay until Annie comes home,” Georgie said quickly.
“Maren,” Finn said, a look of surprise and consternation on his face, “Annie’s with Charlie.”
“Good God, what on earth is happening?” Oliver said under his breath. They grabbed raincoats from pegs by the front door and followed Finn to his car, which was parked at a careless angle, engine running and driver’s side door open. Maren had a flash of memory to the first time she met Finn, how he’d picked her up in a downpour, how she’d worried about soaking the seat.
“We can take our own car,” Oliver said.
“Just get in, Oliver, please,” Finn said. “I have my houseman there with another car. We’ll get you back.” This was as many words as the two men had exchanged in all these years.
“I think we should have a car there, too. Maren, go with Finn and find out what happened. I’ll see you at the hospital.”
Maren climbed into the passenger seat of Finn’s car, and they sped off as soon as she shut the door. A million questions churned in her mind. She wished Oliver were there. He would know what to ask. Finn was his usual enormous presence, staring intently into the rain, now pouring down in great sheets. His massive hands gripped the steering wheel in a way that unnerved Maren. She finally managed to pluck a question, the most obvious, from the jumble.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Finn’s voice was thin, devoid of its usual cocksure manner.
He is frightened, Maren realized, and her stomach began to roil.
“Patrick came running up to the sliding glass door and said Charlie had fallen on the rocks. He said it was pretty bad. I ran out to see. He was bleeding a lot.”
“Was he conscious?”
Finn didn’t answer at first. Maren looked at his profile. He finally shook his head. She gasped.
Just stay in control. Just stay in control and it will be in control. Maren repeated the mantra to herself, despite creeping dread.
“He came to for a moment, and I asked him his name. He said ‘Charlie,’ but then he was out again. We put blankets around him, wrapped clean towels around his head, and put him in the back of one of our cars. Annie got in the back with him to keep him stable. My houseman drove them, and I came for you. He’s not far in front of us. It takes so long to get an ambulance. I didn’t think that was the thing to do.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “I still don’t understand what Charlie was doing there, or Annie, for that matter.”
Finn was silent for a moment. “I gather Patrick was with Annie when Charlie showed up,” he finally replie
d.
A picture began to form in Maren’s mind, a notion of how it had all come to be. They rode in silence. Finn drove swiftly but with expert care on the wet roads. The lights from Oliver’s car were in the rearview mirror. He was close behind, and Maren could practically feel his anxiety.
An ambulance would indeed have taken longer. The volunteer service would have to come from Phippsburg before turning around to go into Bath. She cursed the remoteness of Haven Point.
The eighteen-mile journey seemed to take forever, but they finally pulled up to Bath Memorial Hospital, the best facility outside of Portland. Oliver caught up with them as they walked briskly to the entrance.
“Where did he hit his head … I mean, what part of his head?” he asked Finn unceremoniously. This was obviously the question that had most pressed on him during the drive.
“On the side,” Finn replied. He reached up and touched the right side of his head. Oliver grimaced. They ran in and looked around the small waiting room.
Annie was curled in one chair. A burly man with dark, greased hair was in the chair next to her; his sad, helpless expression was incongruous with his rough exterior. Finn’s houseman, Maren assumed. Despite her great height, Annie looked so small, and so terrified. She sprang up, burst into tears, and ran to Maren.
“Mom, he came looking for me. He was looking for me,” she gasped through her sobs.
Maren opened her arms for Annie, who melted into her, shoulders shaking. Finn sat next to his houseman and began asking questions in hushed tones, as Oliver approached the tired candy striper behind the registration desk.
“Annie, love. Come sit with me.” Maren led her to a bank of chairs. Annie leaned her head on Maren’s shoulder and continued to cry. As Maren sat quietly and waited for the sobs to ebb, Oliver rejoined them.
“The doctor will be out soon to talk to us,” he said. “Annie, what happened?”
Oliver’s gentle tone somehow triggered more tears, but after a moment she composed herself and lifted her head from Maren’s shoulder.
“I went to meet Patrick.” Annie hesitated and looked at her father.
“It’s all right, Annie,” he said. “I just want to know what happened.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Her voice rose again, and she struggled to get the words out. “I told Patrick I had to meet him. I just had to see him, to explain, so he didn’t think I just disappeared. I asked Charlie to get me if he thought … He heard you say something…”
Oliver looked confused, but the puzzle pieces snapped together in Maren’s mind. It was as she had suspected.
“You mean Charlie heard us say we would come get you at the Echelsons’ if you didn’t come home soon,” Maren said.
“Yes!” she wailed, her voice thick with regret and dismay. “He came to tell me. He was calling to me, saying, ‘Dad is coming to find you,’ when he fell.”
It had not been the wind Maren heard during the card game, but Charlie slipping out the door to summon his sister home. Loyal Charlie, always seeking a way to repay Annie’s kindnesses.
“I was supposed to meet Patrick on the beach, but he was on the rocks because the tide was up. We heard Charlie calling and saw him climbing up, but it was so wet. He was almost to us when he fell.…” She trailed off then, struggling to get the words out amid sobs and uneven breaths.
“He fell hard, Dad. He fell really hard,” she managed. She looked terrified.
Maren looked around for a second. “Where is Patrick?” she asked.
“He didn’t come,” she said. “His dad left him there. Mr. Donnelly…” She trailed off again. Finn thought we wouldn’t like it, Maren thought.
A set of double doors to the waiting room opened, and a doctor emerged, bespectacled and somber. He looked around, spotted Maren and Oliver, and approached.
“Dr. and Mrs. Demarest? I’m Frank Griffin,” he said. They nodded. “Won’t you come with me?”
“Annie, you stay here, love. We’ll be back soon,” Maren said.
Annie nodded, eyes wide with anxiety. She pulled her knees back to her chest and curled her hair around her finger, as she had done as a little girl when she was tired or fretful. Maren hated to leave her, but Finn would come to her aid if need be. She followed Oliver and Dr. Griffin through the double doors into the hallway beyond.
The harsh lights and smell of antiseptic resurrected a mélange of memories from Walter Reed, of doctors and nurses trying to heal, trying to repair, and sometimes failing. She felt the return of the monstrous anxiety that had plagued her for so many months. First Billy, then Annie, and now Charlie.
“I am going to take you to your son’s room. He woke up and was speaking, though he’s asleep now. His vital signs are stable. His wound is clean and bandaged.”
“He was speaking cogently?” Oliver asked.
“He was,” Dr. Griffin said as he pushed the door open to a room off the hall. Oliver looked relieved and Maren allowed herself a glimmer of hope.
Charlie’s eyes were closed, and a large bandage covered the wound. A nurse was at his bedside, her appearance and movements crisp and efficient.
“I understand he was hit on the side of his head,” Oliver said.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Dr. Griffin replied. “In front of the temple.”
“Is it bad? The injury?” Maren asked.
“I have seen worse. Our concern is intracranial pressure. The fact that he was reasonably alert is encouraging, but I am concerned about the location of the injury. They can better monitor that at Maine Medical in Portland. I think he should be moved as soon as we can arrange it.”
Maren felt bile at the back of her throat and wondered how much more she could hear without vomiting. She knew about intracranial pressure. It was common on the battlefield, but she never saw it at Walter Reed, because it killed a soldier long before he made it stateside. There were ways to relieve it, crude and imprecise back then and better now, but it was still a terrible danger.
“If there is bleeding, they are better equipped to pinpoint the source. There is always some risk in moving a patient in his condition, but I cannot in good conscience suggest we keep him.”
Oliver nodded in agreement. While he and Dr. Griffin talked through arrangements—An ambulance is waiting, you’ll follow behind, Maine Medical has everything you need—Maren went to Charlie’s bedside. He was still, except the subtle rise and fall of his chest. He looked calm and peaceful, with no trace of his usual agitation. She touched his hand. It was warm, but he showed no sign of recognition or response. She gently squeezed it.
“Charlie?” she said quietly. “Charlie. It’s Mom.”
She looked up from his hand and saw his eyes move behind closed lids. A gentle moan came, and his lids fluttered. His eyes opened and roamed a little before settling on his mother’s face.
Please know me, she thought. Please know who I am.
He moaned again and his lids dropped, as if the effort of keeping his eyes open was beyond his poor powers. She waited and prayed silently. Then she heard him mumble:
“Mom…”
“Charlie, love, we are here. Your father and I are here.”
“I fell,” he said. “I’m sorry.…”
“Shh, it’s okay, Charlie. It was an accident. We love you.”
“Love you,” he mumbled, his voice thick and lazy.
“You just sleep, Charlie,” Maren said.
Maren felt some relief from her crushing anxiety. How bad could the damage be if he communicated sensibly, if he recognized her? Maren left Oliver and Dr. Griffin to the frenzy of activity that would precede the move and returned to the waiting room, where Annie again rushed into her arms.
“He woke up and spoke to me a little,” she told her daughter.
“So, is he going to be okay?” Her expression was cautiously hopeful.
“We are going to move him to Maine Medical to be sure. You should go home with Mr. Donnelly now. Your father and I will follow the ambulance.”
/> Annie’s eyes widened and she gripped her mother’s arms.
“No!” she practically shouted. “I’m coming with you. I couldn’t go home. I can’t go home!”
Maren thought for a moment. She didn’t think she could fight Annie even if she wanted to, and perhaps it was cruel to keep her away.
“All right then. I expect we’ll be leaving soon.”
She approached Finn and told him the plans. He looked alarmed, but she explained it was just a precaution. She called back to Fourwinds and updated Georgie, and then they were again on the road, traveling the forty miles south to Maine Medical, rain still lashing against the windshield.
When they arrived, they raced to the front desk, a more complex affair than the one in Bath, and learned Charlie was with the doctors. Someone would find them when there was news.
The waiting room was a ghoulish place, even by hospital standards, with shabby orange love seats in an easy-to-clean faux leather. The fluorescent overhead lighting hummed and cast a greenish hue. Magazines cluttered the surfaces of mismatched end tables. A middle-aged woman in a wrinkled housedress snored in a corner, a newspaper spread across her chest. They moved to the opposite corner and began the vigil.
They waited calmly for a while, but as time ticked by, Maren grew restless.
“I don’t understand why they won’t tell us anything,” Maren finally whispered to Oliver. “I thought they were just checking on him?”
Oliver looked concerned, too. He approached the nurses’ station. The nurse on duty disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned, she and Oliver engaged in an earnest conversation.
Something is happening. Maren watched Oliver grip the side of the counter, his face grim. He appeared to be asking urgent questions, ones the nurse was ill-equipped to answer. He finally returned to Maren.
Her heart resumed its unpleasant racing. She knew whatever Oliver was about to repeat would threaten the sense of well-being she had so carefully constructed when she saw Charlie’s eyes open, when she heard him speak. Oliver led her to another corner of the waiting room, away from Annie, who had her nose in a magazine and was not watching.
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