The Light Through the Leaves

by Vanderah, Glendy

  January 24: Hi, Ellis. Could you just send one word so I know you’re okay?

  February 2: One word. Or maybe just randomly type letters.

  February 2, a minute later: Give the pony my regards.

  She hovered her finger over the buttons. The only personal call she’d ever made from the phone was to him. She pressed her finger down. The ringing in her ear felt more like a fever hallucination than a real sound.

  He picked up on the third ring. “Ellis?”

  “You remember me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  She started crying.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “Tell me. Please stop crying and talk to me. What’s going on? Do you need help?”

  “Yes. Yes,” she sobbed.

  “Where are you?”

  “Sweet Dreams Motel. Room 133.”

  “Where is that? What town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What state?”

  “I’m near you. I think I was trying to get to you after it happened . . . but I was afraid, and I stopped here and now I can’t leave.”

  “I don’t understand. What happened? Why are you afraid?”

  “I need antibiotics. Will you bring me some?”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Yes.” She started crying again.

  “You’ll be okay. I’m coming. If I can find the motel, I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Wait a second. Let me look it up on my computer.”

  She waited. She was afraid it was all a fevered delusion. Had he said he was coming?

  “I found it,” he said. “On Long Lake Road?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I think so. Are you really coming?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Will you bring antibiotics?”

  After a pause he said, “Yes, I will.”

  “Keith?”

  “What?”

  “Promise me you won’t call the police.”

  “What happened? Why would you say that?”

  The alarm in his voice scared her. “Promise or you can’t come!”

  “Okay, I promise. Hold on tight. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m already walking out the door. I’m on my way.”

  The phone went silent. Ellis stared at it until the screen went black.

  She held Gep against her chest and tried to sleep. A few minutes later, she threw up in the trash can, then fell back asleep.

  Brown leaves madly spinning. She ran and ran through a forest. Someone was screaming. Screaming in her ears.

  Pounding. Pounding. It stopped for a while. Then started again.

  “We’re coming in,” someone said.

  Ellis opened her eyes.

  The ceiling light flashed on, and Keith rushed over. Everything was too bright. Glowing light shined off him, and she had to squint to look at him. There was another man who stayed by the door.

  “Ellis!” Keith said when he saw her face. “This man says you were in a car accident. Is that true?”

  She had lied to the desk clerk when she checked into the motel. She was afraid he might call the police when he saw how battered she was.

  “You’re burning up!” he said.

  “I . . . know.” It was so hard to talk. “Do you have medicine?”

  “This isn’t from a car accident! Who did this?”

  Keith pulled off the covers to examine her. He saw Gep clutched in her hand and stared at the pony for a few seconds.

  “Who hurt you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you have tape on your stomach?”

  She tried to pull her T-shirt over the bandage.

  “Let me see. Please.” He gently lifted her shirt and peeled back the duct tape and gauze. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “That’s a knife wound. It’s infected. You have to get to a hospital fast.”

  “No!” she said with a sudden surge of vigor. “You promised!”

  “I never promised not to save your life!”

  “No police!”

  She had stabbed someone. The police would ask a hundred questions. She could already see their judgmental looks when they found out she’d gone alone to an isolated campground. She couldn’t bear more of what she’d been through when she left Viola.

  Keith scooped her into his arms. “Where’s your wallet?” he asked. “Ellis, where is your wallet?”

  “Backpack,” she said.

  “Would you please bring that backpack?” he said to the motel clerk. “And don’t remove anything from this room. Keep her checked in.”

  “Got it,” the young man said.

  Keith sat her on the back seat of his car and wrapped his coat around her. When he pulled her hand in the sleeve, she had to let go of Gep. “Will you put him in my backpack?”

  “Him?” he said, smiling. “I can’t believe you still have it.”

  “He’s good luck.”

  His expression said the pony’s luck didn’t appear to be working.

  “This has nothing to do with him.”

  “Who does it have to do with? Tell me who did this to you.”

  “Why? How will that change it?”

  “This person deserves to be brought to justice!”

  “I did that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sank into the seat, curled up tight and shivering.

  3

  She had a broken wrist and cracked nose. The knife wound was infected but required no surgical repair. The doctor said it was a deep slice that had just missed her ovary and bowel. He said Ellis was very lucky.

  Almost everything Ellis hadn’t wanted happened. She had expensive treatments with no health insurance to pay for them. She was given an IV and pain medication that made her loopy.

  But she prevented them from contacting next of kin. She told them she had no family, and they let that stand. Jonah, the boys, and the senator and his wife would never know about her latest screwup.

  An hour after she’d been admitted to the emergency room, two police officers arrived.

  “So you’re saying you don’t remember anything about getting stabbed?” one of the men asked. “Where you were, what the attacker looked like—nothing at all?”

  Ellis felt the burning pain of the knife in her side. Saw the man with red-blond hair standing over her. The fierce arousal in his blue eyes as he unzipped his jeans.

  She tried to hold back the stinging tears.

  “You know him, don’t you?” the other officer said. “Is he your boyfriend, a family member?”

  “No!” she said.

  “If you know he’s not an acquaintance, you must remember the attack,” the officer said.

  She shouldn’t have answered. But she was so tired. So sick.

  She felt Keith’s look of concern almost physically. He knew she was lying because of what she’d said in his car.

  Ellis imagined telling them everything. The blond attacker was probably dead. His friend would have buried him where no one could find him, and by now he could be anywhere. The men would be forever vanished while Ellis suffered for their crimes. Just like when Viola was abducted.

  It would all be her fault again. Hadn’t people told her for years that a woman shouldn’t camp alone?

  She couldn’t hold back. She wept in gasping sobs.

  “She needs to rest,” Keith said to the policemen. “Let’s talk outside.”

  He drew the officers out of her room, and Ellis never saw them again.

  She insisted on leaving the hospital after less than a day. They didn’t fight her when they learned she had no health insurance. But she was in no shape to drive. She had to depend on Keith.

  He set her up in the back seat of the car with blankets and pillows. She was so groggy, it took her a few minutes to realize it was her SUV.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry. It’s safe. And I got
all your stuff from the motel.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  “Yours?”

  “You should rest,” he said. “The doctor said you should sleep as much as you want for the next several days. He said that’s all you’ll want to do.”

  It was all she wanted to do.

  “Go to sleep,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon, and this is a long drive.”

  “How long?”

  “You’re safe, Ellis. Everything is okay.”

  She slept. And slept and slept. She woke in darkness needing a bathroom. He helped her into a McDonald’s restroom, then made her take a pain pill.

  After he fueled the car, she asked, “How far are we from your house?”

  “A ways still. Go back to sleep.”

  The pain medication helped. She didn’t care how good it felt. She wanted to be dead to everything that had happened in the campground.

  It was still dark out the second time she needed a bathroom. She was confused about how long she’d been in the car. “Why is it taking so long?” she asked.

  “We had to take a little detour,” he said. “How’s the pain?”

  “Coming back.”

  “You’d better take another pill with your antibiotic.”

  She took the pill. Much too willingly. She was getting used to the feeling again.

  When the sun came up, she was still in the car.

  “Why is it morning?” she asked.

  “That’s what usually happens after night,” he said.

  “Seriously. What are we doing? We’ve been in the car for too long.”

  “It’s been good rest for you.”

  Had he been driving around all night to let her sleep? Ellis sometimes did that with the boys. When they fell asleep in the car, she kept driving. She didn’t want to wake them, and she always needed the quiet time. She never had to do that with Viola. Viola was a sound sleeper, even when taken out of the car. Ellis wondered if she still was.

  They were in a town somewhere. She noticed that the car kept stopping.

  Ellis watched a palm tree stream past the window. And another. How could palm trees grow in Ohio? She sat up.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  “Where are we?”

  “Don’t you recognize it?” He looked at her in the rearview mirror.

  She peered around. Palm trees. Signs with alligators. Everything was “Gator” this and “Gator” that. It wasn’t early spring. It looked like summer.

  A truck that said GAINESVILLE’s #1 FLORIST drove past.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Taking you home.”

  “This isn’t my home!”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Stop saying that! Stop the car! Stop!”

  “We’re nearly at your house. We’ll talk there.”

  She couldn’t believe it. She had trusted him. Fully. And he had done this to her. He had put her in her car, drugged her, lied to her, and driven her to damn Florida.

  He pulled the car into the driveway of a pastel-blue cinderblock house with fake white shutters. Ellis recognized the address. It was the one she had given to the bank, Dani’s address.

  The last time Ellis and Dani were together, Dani was trying to put her back together after she lost Viola. Ellis couldn’t face her like this. Not again. A friend shouldn’t have to deal with screwups this big.

  Keith parked the car and turned off the motor.

  “How could you do this to me?” Ellis said.

  He twisted around to look at her. “I assume you know this house?”

  “I’ve never seen it before! I don’t live here!”

  He looked alarmed. “I hope you’re joking.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Shit!” he said. He pushed his hands through his hair.

  She saw how exhausted he was. He had dark circles under his eyes and at least two days’ stubble on his face.

  “I need to stretch my legs,” he said. He got out, slamming the door hard.

  She clambered out of the soft bed he’d made for her and got out.

  He was standing in the driveway, staring at the house. He turned to her. “This is the address on your driver’s license. It’s what you gave the hospital. And to make sure, the cops and I verified it from your car’s plate.”

  “How dare you do that!”

  “There was a crime! You were beaten and stabbed. They needed to make sure there wasn’t more.”

  “More what?”

  “More anything!” He strode up to her. “You have no family. No job. No health insurance. And for some reason I can’t fathom, you live in campgrounds. But you can’t do that right now. You’re too sick. I knew you’d be too stubborn to see that, but I can’t take you to my house. I live with someone now. I had no choice but to bring you here. I thought there would be someone who could help you.”

  She was too sick to fight the tears. She turned away, trying to hide them, but he took her into his arms. His scent was strong from the long car drive, but he smelled good. Like the night they’d made love in her tent.

  “Don’t cry,” he crooned. “We’ll figure out what to do.”

  “Who are you with now?”

  He held her out in his arms, smiling. “Don’t tell me that’s why you’re crying?”

  “No. It’s good. But won’t she be angry you’re with me all this time?”

  “She’s away—spending the weekend with her parents in Michigan. But I’ve told her I had to help a friend. She knows I’m here with you.”

  “She’s lucky to have you.” She wiped the wrist that wasn’t in a cast across her running nose. “I’m sorry I’m being like this after everything you’ve done.”

  “It’s okay.” He looked at the house. “Is there anyone here you know?”

  “A friend. She and I roomed together for three years at Cornell.”

  “Maybe she can help? She must know you use her address.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why do you do that when you’ve never been here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why didn’t you report the assault as soon as it happened? Why did you nearly die in a motel room rather than get help? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Neither do I.”

  She truly didn’t. She’d felt like one of her paper notes in the river ever since she’d found out she was pregnant with twins. She’d let the current take her wherever it threw her.

  “I don’t feel good.” She walked to the grass and sank down.

  Keith crouched and put his hand on her forehead. “Your fever is spiking.”

  The front door of the house opened, and a young man stepped onto the small cement porch. “Do you guys need help?” he asked. He must have been watching them from the window.

  “Is Dani here?” Ellis asked.

  “Yeah. Who should I say is asking?”

  “Ellis.”

  The man disappeared. Seconds later, Dani burst through the door, apparently straight from bed. She was barefoot, wearing loose shorts and a T-shirt, and her shoulder-length black hair was tousled.

  “Ellis! What happened to you? Oh my god!”

  Ellis stood with Keith’s help.

  “I ran into a little trouble,” Ellis said.

  “A little! Can I hug you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Ellis opened her arms.

  Dani held her softly. She smelled of things Ellis had forgotten. Floral shampoo, Dove soap, laundry detergent, food cooked over a stove.

  “I’ve been so worried about you,” Dani said into her ear. “That day you called . . . it scared me. And then Jonah called . . .”

  Ellis pushed out of her embrace. “When did he call?”

  Dani glanced at Keith. “Last July.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to know if I knew where you were. I told him I didn’t.”

  Dani was eyeing Keith, clearly wanting to know w
ho he was.

  “Dani, this is Keith Gephardt,” Ellis said. “Keith, this is Danielle Yoon.”

  “Just Dani,” she said, holding out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Dani glanced at Ellis, waiting for more explanation.

  “Keith was nice enough to drive me here,” Ellis said.

  Ellis detected a bit of amusement in Keith’s eyes.

  “He’s a friend,” Ellis said. “And now we have to figure out how he’s getting back to Ohio.”

  “I’ll drive a rental back,” he said. “I’ll take a cab to the nearest rental place.”

  “I can take you,” Dani said.

  “That’s not necessary,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but Sunday is laundry and cleaning day, and I’m the roommate who will make any excuse to get out of it.”

  “You’ve been on the road all night,” Ellis said to him. “You need to rest first.”

  “I do,” he admitted.

  “We have a spare room you can use,” Dani said. “One of my roommates moved in with her boyfriend, but her bed is still here. I can put on clean sheets.”

  “Give the bed to Ellis,” he said. “If you have a couch I can sleep on for a few hours, that will be fine.”

  “Good. Now I have a reason not to vacuum the living room,” Dani said. “Are you guys hungry?”

  Ellis shook her head, and Keith’s silence probably meant he was.

  “Do you eat bacon and eggs?” she asked him.

  “I do. But I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “You can bother as much as you want. You brought Ellis.” She wrapped her arm around Ellis’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Come inside. Ellis can put a clothespin on her nose while I cook the bacon.”

  Keith asked for a bathroom, and Dani sent him to the nearest, warning, “I take no responsibility for the state of this bathroom. It’s Brad’s.”

  Brad walked out of the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal. “He doesn’t care, Dani. He’s a dude.” He held out his hand to Keith and introduced himself. He tried not to stare at Ellis’s bruised face when he shook her hand.

  “You should see the other guy,” Ellis said.

  “I hope you deep-sixed him,” Brad said.

  Keith cast a shrewd look at Ellis before he entered the bathroom.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Ellis asked Dani.

  Dani took her to her bedroom and closed the door. “Did a man really do that to you?”