Miles flash, stoplights change too soon and slow me down. I barrel through more than one red light, earning blaring horns and flashing middle fingers. Then I’m approaching my parents’ house and it’s dusk, but I know she’s not there, why would she be? I skid to a stop in the middle of the road in front of Nell’s parents’ house. I leave the car door open, leave the engine running. Unreasoning panic drives me, panic so deep I don’t understand it, but I can’t stop it. I can only move with it, let it have reign over me.
I burst through the Hawthornes’ front door, slamming it open violently. I hear a glass shatter and a woman scream.
“Colt! What the hell—what are you doing here?” Rachel Hawthorne has her back to the sink and has a hand pressed to her chest, confusion and fright in her eyes.
“Where is she?”
“Who? What—what are you doing here?”
“Where…is…Nell?” My voice is low and deadly.
She hears the threat in my voice and pales, begins to shake and back away. “Colt…I don’t know what you’re—she’s out running. She went for a run.”
“Where does she go when she runs?” I demand.
“Why do you want to know? Are you two…”
“Where does she go, Rachel?” I’m standing inches from her, towering over her, glaring. I should back down, but I can’t.
Rachel is trembling, white as a sheet. “She’s—the old county line road. North. It goes in a big arc and she—she cuts across Farrell’s field back this way.”
I’m out the door and running, full-on sprinting. Terror claws at me, and I can’t fathom it, can’t get out of its grip. It’s hounding me, pushing me. She’s pregnant, and she ran from me rather than talking about it, but that’s not enough for the kind of reaction that’s driven me since this morning. It’s coming from way deep inside me, a kind of psychological foreknowledge that something is horribly, horribly wrong and I have to find her.
My feet stomp in the dirt, pushing mile after behind me. Dark now. Stars out, moon low and round. My blood is on fire; my heart pounds and my head throbs and my hands are clenched into fists.
I’m shaking, I’ve been flat-out running for at least two miles and I’m not in that kind of shape, but I can’t stop. Can’t.
Not won’t…
Can’t.
Another mile, and I know I’ve slowed, but I’m pushing myself, because I have to find her.
Farrell’s property, a wide expanse of high grass and old fallow fields and lines of trees subdividing properties. If she fell in the grass out here, I could pass right by her and never know it.
But there she is. Jesus, thank you.
She’s just sitting, hunched over, face in her hands. She’s sobbing. Even when she told me everything and cut loose with years’ worth of pent-up grief, she didn’t weep like this. It’s…god, it’s the single most awful sound I’ve ever heard.
Worse even than the wet thunk of the bullet into India’s head.
Nell has been absolutely broken, and I don’t know by what.
I crouch beside her, touch her shoulder. She doesn’t even respond, doesn’t look at me. I scoop her in my arms, and something hot and wet coats my arms.
The ground where she was sitting is wet, black in the dim light. A huge swath of grass is blackened with dark liquid.
Blood.
Fuck.
“Nell? Baby?”
“Don’t call me that!” A sudden, vicious scream. She wrenches out of my grip and falls to the grass, crawls away, heaving so hard she’s close to vomiting. “It’s gone…it’s gone, it died…”
And I know what happened but I can’t even think the word.
I scoop her up again, feel hot sticky wet flowing from her. She’s still bleeding. “Nell, love, I’m here.”
“No, no…you don’t understand. You don’t—don’t get it. I lost it. The baby…I lost the baby.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know. I’ve got you, I’m here.” I can’t keep my voice from cracking. I’m as shattered as she is, but I can’t let on.
She hears anyway. She finally seems to realize it’s me. She’s limp in my arms, twists her head to look at me. Her face is streaked with red and sweat, hair tangled and plastered to her forehead. “Colton? Oh, god…god. You weren’t supposed to follow me.”
Anger billows out of me. “What the fuck, Nell? Why’d you run? I love you. You think I wouldn’t—wouldn’t…shit…what did you think I’d say?”
She pounds my shoulder with a weak fist. “It’s what you did say. A baby is the last thing you wanted. And that’s what I was going to have. A baby. A fucking baby.”
“No, Nell. No. That’s not what I said. I said a pregnancy is the last thing we need. I did not say a baby is the last thing I wanted. And regardless, running was…so wrong. You’re mine. The baby would—would have been mine. I’d take care of you. I’ll always take care of you.” I’m crying. Like a fucking girl, I’m just openly crying as I carry Nell across the field, stumbling over roots and branches and hillocks. “I’m here…I’m here.”
She’s too quiet. Looking up at me, half-lidded, weak eyes. Unfocused. Shimmering wet in the moonlight. Bleeding onto me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was just so scared. I’m scared, Colt.”
It’s the first time she’s ever called me Colt. “I know, Nelly-baby. I’ve got you. You’ll be okay.”
“No…no. It’s not okay. I lost the baby, Colton.” Her voice hitches, breaks.
“I know…” So does mine. “I know.”
“I didn’t want a baby. I didn’t want to be a mother. I’m too young. It was too soon. I begged to not be pregnant all the way here. But—but I didn’t mean this. I swear. I didn’t want this. I’m sorry… Not this way.” She’s barely audible, rambling.
She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m covered from the chest down. My arms are trembling, my legs are jelly. I ran so far, so fast, and I’m operating on adrenaline right now, pure determination. I’m half-running with her, stumbling in the darkness.
Then the yellow glow of the Hawthornes’ backyard appears, and I’m fumbling at the sliding door with bloody fingers. Rachel Hawthorne is frantic, begging, demanding to know what happened. Jim Hawthorne is on the phone.
“Colt, what happened?” Rachel’s voice from far away.
I won’t let go of her, can’t. She’s unconscious. Still bleeding on me.
A hand shakes my shoulder, brings me to reality. “Colton, what happened? Why is she bleeding?” Jim, harsh and demanding and angry.
“Miscarriage—” It’s all I can manage.
“Mis—she was pregnant? With your baby?” He’s even angrier now.
“I didn’t…didn’t know. She didn’t tell me. She ran. Came here…” I look down at her lovely, slack face. “Please, Nell. Wake up. Wake up.”
She doesn’t wake up. Her head lolls to one side, her hand falls free and swing. She’s barely breathing…or not at all.
Blue-gloved hands take her from me, gently but firmly. I try to fight them, but other hands pull me away. Rougher, harder hands, too many hands keeping me from her. I turn. Dad. Jim, Mom, Rachel. All pulling me away. Yelling at me, but there’s no sound. Just a roaring in my ears. A uniformed body steps into view, a young guy from EMS.
His eyes are brown and hard, but compassionate. Sound returns. “…Gonna be okay, Colton. She’s lost a lot of blood, but you got her help in time. I need you calm or I’ll have to have you detained, and you won’t do Nell any good like that.”
I’m panting. I meet his eyes. Hope swells in my chest. “She’s not dead? She’ll be okay?”
“She’s alive, yes. Unconscious, but alive.”
“So much blood…” I stumble backward, fall to my ass on a couch, hit the edge and tumble to the floor as if drunk.
“She’s hemorrhaging pretty bad, but the doctors will be able to stop it, I’m sure.”
I don’t hear anything else. I’m back in time, back in a hospital in Harlem and a doctor is explaining something to m
e, but I don’t hear him, either, since I tuned out after the words lost the baby. I’m back on the cold tile of the hospital waiting room, sobbing. India…dead. She never told me. Or she didn’t know she was pregnant. Either way, she’s gone, and so is the baby I never even knew about.
Hands move me, push me, pull me. Peel my sopping shirt off, wipe my torso with a hot, damp towel. I let them. I’m in so many places. Torn, mixed, shredded, broken.
Another baby I never got to know or hold, gone. I would have been there. But I never got the chance. No one asks me what I want. Just assumes because I’m a thug who can’t read that I wouldn’t want a baby.
Not fair, though. India didn’t get a chance, either. Maybe she would have told me. Let me be a father. We talked about kids, India and I. She wanted them. I kept quiet and let her talk, didn’t tell her what I thought. Didn’t tell her I would have loved the child and let him be whoever he wanted to be, even if he couldn’t read. It’s all I wanted, all my life, and never got.
And now it’s been taken from me again.
Sudden rage burns through me, white-hot, blasting and beyond powerful.
It’s not fucking fair.
I’m not me, suddenly. I’m an observer watching as someone who looks like me heaves to his feet, picks up the nearest object—a heavy, thickly-padded leather armchair—and heaves it through the sliding door. Glass shatters, scatters, the frame cracks.
Familiar yet foreign hands touch my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Colton.” My father’s voice, murmuring low in my ear. “Just calm down.”
But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know jack-shit about my life or anything I’ve gone through. I shove him away and stalk out the front door. My rental has been moved, and I climb behind the wheel. Jim Hawthorne slides in next to me.
“Sure you should be driving, son?” His voice is carefully neutral.
“I’m fine. And I’m not your fucking son.” I’m not fine, but it doesn’t matter.
I force myself to drive halfway normally to the hospital. Before I can get out of the car, though, Jim puts his hand on my forearm.
“Wait a sec, Colt.”
I know what this is about. “Not the time, Jim.”
“It is the time.” His fingers tighten on my arm, and I’m close to ripping his hand off, but don’t. He’s not afraid of me, but he should be. “She’s my daughter. My only child.”
I hang my head, drawing deep on my tapped-out reserves of calm. “I love her, Jim. I swear to you on my fucking soul, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let her go anywhere alone if I’d known. She…she ran. She was scared.”
“How could you put her in that position after what she went through?” He’s hurt too, scared and angry.
I get it.
“We were getting through it. Together. Things between us just happened, and I’m not gonna fucking explain shit to you right now, or ever. She’s an adult, she made her choice. We’re good for each other.” I force my eyes to his, and damn it if his eyes don’t look so much like hers it hurts. “I’ll take care of her. Now and always.”
He doesn’t answer, just sits and stares at me, eyes boring into me. I see the father in him, but I also see the shrewd businessman, the piercing, searching eyes of a man used to judging character quickly and accurately.
“She may be an adult, but she’s still my baby. My little girl.” His voice goes deep and low and threatening. “You better take care of her. She’s been through enough. Now this? You goddamn better take care of her. Or I swear to god I’ll kill you.”
It’s a threat he doesn’t need, but I understand him. I meet him stare for stare, let him see a bit of the darker side of me. The thug who learned early on never to back down, ever, for anyone. He nods, after a long time. I get out and enter the hospital, ask the desk nurse for her room number.
One-four-one. The ICU.
My boots squeak on the tile. Antiseptic tang stings my nostrils. A vaguely female-sounding voice squawks indistinctly on the PA. A young brunette in maroon scrubs hustles past me, tablet computer in her hands.
Then I’m counting rooms, one-three-seven, one-three-nine…one-four-one. The curtain is drawn. A monitor beeps steadily. I pause at the split in the curtain, my hand on the fabric, shaking.
An older, stick-thin woman with pale blonde hair pulled up in a severe bun appears next to me. “She’s asleep right now. They ran a few tests, and they’re going to do more later.”
“She still bleeding?”
“She’s not hemorrhaging anymore, but yes, she’s still bleeding.” She looks up at me, tapping the chart against her palm. “You’re the father?”
I nearly choke at the term. “I’m her boyfriend, yes.” My voice is low, nearly a whisper.
She realizes her gaffe. “I—I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.” She pushes past me. “You can go in with her, but let her sleep.”
God, she’s white as snow. So frail-looking, like this. Tubes in her nose, needles in her wrist.
I sit. And sit. And sit. I don’t talk to her because I don’t know what to say.
They come and wheel her bed away while she’s still asleep. Unconscious, not asleep. Don’t need any euphemisms. Will she wake up? They won’t say, which tells me maybe not.
I end up in the chapel, not to pray, but to feel the silence, to be away from the smell of the hospital, the stench of sickness and death, the sounds of the sneakers on tile and echoing voices and beeping monitors. Away from the faces like mine, serious, sad, concerned, afraid.
The stained glass gleams purple and red and blue and yellow, depicting something I don’t care to know about. The cross is huge and empty and mud-brown wood, machine-tooled.
My dad finds me in the chapel, and he has my first guitar in his hand. Battered, scratched case, no-name brand, tan wood and steel strings, left behind along with all my other shit. I don’t know why he brought the guitar, but I’m grateful.
We’re alone in the chapel. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “I owe you a lifetime of apologies, Colt. You’re a good man.”
“You don’t know me, Dad. You never have. You don’t know the shit I’ve done.”
“I know. But you’re here, and you clearly love her. You’ve made it on your own, without any help from us. We should’ve been there for you, but we weren’t. So…I’m sorry.”
I know how much it took for him to say that, but it’s nowhere near enough. It’s a start, though. “Thanks, Dad. I wish you’d said that to me a long time ago, but thanks.”
“I know it doesn’t make up for how we treated you growing up, for letting you go off on your own like we did. You were too young, but I just—I was—”
“Focused on your career, and your golden child.” I scrub my hair with my palm. “I get it. I don’t want to talk about this shit. It’s over and done and old news. I’m here for Nell, not to mend fences broken decades ago.”
I click open the case and lift the guitar out. It’s hideously out of tune. I flip open the little cubby in the case where the neck sits, pull out a packet of strings. I busy myself restringing the guitar, tuning it. Dad just watches, lost in thoughts, or memories, or regrets.
I honestly don’t give a fuck which.
He leaves eventually, without a word.
Then I start playing. The music just comes out unbidden, like a river. I’m hunched over my guitar, siting on a hard pew in the middle of the chapel, staring at my scuffed, oil-stained Timberland boots. I’m singing under my breath, and I’m lost in the songwriting haze, where the music is a flood taking me over, searing the words and the melody into me.
“Mr. Calloway?” A timid female voice comes from the door of the chapel. I turn my head slightly to acknowledge her. “Ms. Hawthorne is awake. She’s asking for you.”
I nod, pack up my guitar, and carry it as I follow the nurse back to the room.
She’s biting her lip when I walk in, scratching at her cut-scars with a forefinger. I pull the hard plastic visitor’s cha
ir next to the bed and take her fingers in my huge paw. Kiss her palm, each knuckle. Try not to cry like a fucking girl again.
She looks at me, and her eyes are red-rimmed, gray-green, so beautiful and so broken. “Colt—Colton. I—”
I touch her lips. “Sshh. I love you. Always.”
She still sees through me. “You’re not okay, either, are you?”
I shake my head. “No, not really.” I see the question in her eyes, so I sigh and tell her the story. “I told you about India, how she died.”
“Yeah?” She’s hesitant, as if she can guess where this is going.
“I was at the hospital, because some of my boys were hurt in the whole mess and I had to see to them. Make sure everyone was okay. Somehow one of the nurses knew me, knew I was with India. I think she lived in the same building as India or something.” I have to breathe deeply to keep my voice steady, even after all these years. “She told me…god—shit. She—she told me India was pregnant when she died. I didn’t even know. I don’t know if India knew. She wasn’t far, just like six weeks or something. But…yeah. Pregnant. I never even got to…she never got the chance to tell me.”
“Oh, god, Colton. I’m so sorry. I’m—oh, my god, Colton.”
“Yeah.” I can’t look at her, can only stare intently at my grease-stained fingernails. “I understand why you ran, Nell. I do. Just—just promise you won’t run from me ever again. You have to fucking promise me. Especially for shit like that. I know I’m—I know I’m just an illiterate grease monkey, but I can take care of you. I can love you and if you—if we—if…I’d take care of you, no matter what.”
She sobs. “Oh, god, Colton. That’s not why I ran. You’re so much more than an illiterate grease monkey, Colton. You’re not a thug. You’re not any of the things you think you are. You’re so much more. I was scared. I panicked.” She tries to breathe through the tears. “I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, Colton. I shouldn’t have left, I shouldn’t have been running, I should have—”
I squeeze her hand hard. “No, Nell. No. Don’t you fucking dare. This isn’t your fault.”
A doctor comes in at that moment. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” he says. He’s middle-aged, Indian, exuding practiced compassion and efficiency. “It is not your fault in any kind of way, Nell. Such things sometimes happen, and we have no way of knowing the why, no way of preventing it.” His gaze and his voice go intensely serious. “You must not fall victim to blaming yourself. The fact that you were running at the time did not cause the miscarriage. Nothing you did do or did not do caused it. It simply happened, and it is no one’s fault.”
The Nice Boxset Page 28