Waking Savannah

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  No more swearing. No more hurling. I have to be as brave as Savvy. I have no idea what happened after the cold water filled my lungs. And I don’t know if anyone ever solved my murder. All I know is I’m the Drowned Girl, and hardly anyone knows my story beyond the rock. No name. No date. No story bearing any resemblance to mine. People don’t want to remember the bad things, even if they remember them best. Maybe that’s why no one seems to get that I’m the one who puts stuff in their shoes at the Hunter’s Moon. It’s all connected, and they have no idea.

  Chapter 18

  familiar voices, deep

  “There are a lot of people in the yard,” Ade shouted over the roar of the engine.

  Savannah sat forward in her seat. He was right. A lot of people. Too many for after closing hours. A hole opened in the pit of her stomach. “Can you see who it is?”

  “Taytay and Tío,” he said. “And Benny. I think…is that Margit?”

  The wheel jerked but Savannah didn’t lose control. “It is.” Oh, no. No, no, no. “Something’s happened.”

  The last yards to the house vanished in a roar and dust. Margit was coming forward while the others stayed back. Not just Edgardo and Raul, Benny and Margit, but Johanna and Charlie and Dan. Savannah slammed the coot to a halt, switched off the ignition and hopped out before she could gain her bearings. “What’s wrong? Is someone hurt? Margit, what are you doing here?”

  Margit took her into her arms, held her close. “It’s Bea, Savvy. She’s gone.”

  * * * *

  Ade gave the space beside Savannah to her oldest and dearest friend who took her inside, made her tea, and sat with her while she cried. Taytay and Tío made sure the last of the beans were brought in. Ade directed the high school kids when the foremen’s English didn’t cut it. By the time they finished for the day, Johanna and Benny had put together a feast. Dan and Charlie were waiting in the yard.

  “Get your dad and uncle to come in and eat,” Charlie said. “You know my wife. She way overdid it. It’s a Coco thing.”

  “I will try.” Ade brushed off his jeans. “They are stubborn hermits.”

  “Tell them Savvy asked them to,” Dan suggested. “They’ll come.”

  And they did, after cleaning up in the doublewide. Everyone gathered in the rarely-used dining room, ate from the abundance Johanna prepared. Everyone but Savannah. Once the food was cleared away, Johanna kissed Margit, who had to leave first thing in the morning, before turning to Savannah and hugging her close. “You okay?”

  Savannah nodded, murmured something Ade couldn’t hear. The magical afternoon had turned so quickly. Was life ever such? Had he ever noticed before?

  “Emma’s got a lasagna going,” Johanna said. “Either she or I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Savannah began, but her lip trembled and she said no more.

  Ade walked Johanna and Charlie to the door, stepped out onto the porch with them.

  “She’ll be okay.” Johanna hugged him around the waist. “She’s been through worse.”

  “I know.” Hesitant arms encircled her, his eyes all the while on Charlie, who only smiled and squeezed his shoulder.

  “You call if you need us,” Johanna said, stepping back and letting him go. “We’re only a few minutes away.”

  “Thank you.”

  They said their good-nights. Ade stood on the porch until they drove away, waving as they did. Good people. Good friends. Again, so soon. He laughed softly despite the sorrow emanating from the house. He went inside.

  “I’m going up,” Savannah said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Margit started to rise, but Savannah pushed her gently back into her chair.

  “Finish your wine. I could do with a few minutes alone. Okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay. You shout if you need me, hear?”

  Savannah nodded, her gaze moving to Ade. He took her into his arms, kissed her tenderly despite his father’s glare. “Corazón. Sleep sweet. I will see you in the morning.”

  Savannah kissed him again, lingered there against his lips, breathing him in as if she could. And then she let him go, headed up to bed. Alone.

  He watched her. They all did, even Taytay and Tío, who had been mostly silent all evening.

  “It’s a shame the family didn’t let her know before it was too late to get there.” Benny was first to speak. “Heartless.”

  “To be fair,” Margit said, “no one has seen her in years. Savvy was close to Bea, not to anyone else, and no one knew Savvy had been calling her auntie regularly the last few weeks. She’s just not on their radar anymore.”

  “And that’s what makes it worse,” Benny added. “She can’t even be angry with them. Only with…her…self. Did anyone just feel that?”

  “Oh, no. Here she goes again,” Dan drawled. He put an arm across his wife’s chair. “Cold? Or was it the spider-web thing this time?”

  “Spider webs. Don’t tease me or I’ll never tell you anything again.”

  “Sorry, love.” He kissed her cheek. “Honest.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Margit asked.

  “I’m sensitive to…things,” Benny said. “There’s something in this house. A not-so-nice something, and something else. I felt the not-so-nice something once, and it was…not so nice. This is different.” She got to her feet. “It’s nothing. I don’t know how to explain it anyway. Dan, if you’ll take care of the last of these dishes, I’ll get Irene ready. We should head out too.”

  Dan cleared dishes. Margit helped him despite his protests. There was little left to do, Johanna and Charlie having done most of it already. Left alone with his father and uncle, Ade was all too aware of their continued silence.

  “I am going to bed,” his father finally said in their native tongue. “We will start on the zucchini tomorrow. They’re getting seedy. Raul, are you coming?”

  “In a moment, Eg.” He lifted his cup. “When I finish my coffee.”

  “You should not drink coffee before bed. You know it keeps you awake.”

  “And you should not be such a hen, old man. Go to bed. I will be along soon.”

  Edgardo shook his head, glared at his son, and left them. Ade grimaced. No one was eavesdropping, but he spoke to his uncle in their native language anyway. “He is still angry with me.”

  “You promised him, Ade.”

  “I did not break my promise. I fell in love.”

  “You sleep in her bed and there was no marriage vow made. My brother has gotten conventional in his old age.”

  “Taytay needs to mind his own business.”

  “You know that does not happen in our family.” Tío reached across the table, patted his hand. “In time, he will see your heart is true.”

  Ade blew a breath through his lips. “It’s my own fault. My past does not speak well for me.”

  “Your past is the past. You love Savannah, and she loves you. Any fool can see that. My brother is not just any fool. He is a big one. And a stubborn one. But you are his son and he is very proud of that. He’ll come around.”

  Tipping back his cup, Raul drained it.

  Ade could almost taste his uncle’s coffee by the smell of it. Thick and black and deeply roasted. “How do you sleep after that? That has to be the equivalent of three regular cups.”

  Raul winked. “It’s decaf. Your father might be a fool but I am not. Don’t tell him, okay? Provoking him is one of the few pleasures of living with him.” Raul rounded to Ade’s side of the table, kissed his cheek. “You are a good boy, Ade. Be patient with your father. He loves Savvy like she is his own daughter.”

  Ade sat alone at the dining room table, absorbing the peace of the house. Dan and Margit, talking softly in the kitchen, said good-night to Raul as he passed through. The screen door slapped closed. Benny crooned to her baby in the living room. Irene must have woken when her mother picked her up. Perhaps Benny was nursi
ng her. The peace combined with the sounds of a summer night to fill him up and soothe his soul. Ade smiled, amazed that such domesticity could stir his heart into contented thumping. It was akin to but not the same as the way his heart used to race during a heated debate. Gentler, but no less intense.

  He waited for Benny and Dan to leave, walked them to their car and waved them off as if he were indeed the man of the house. Margit left the kitchen light on for him, but had already gone up to bed. Ade switched off the light, stood alone in the dark house. He tried to feel whatever it was Benny did—cold or spider webs or even just a sense of not being alone after all. Lita always told him there was more to the world than what was readily seen. It took a special kind of person to not only understand it, but to be truly aware. He had been such a person once. Maybe even that, he could regain.

  Heaving a weary sigh, Ade started for the stairs. He trudged up, his legs strangely and suddenly leaden. The higher he climbed, the harder it became to take that next step. By the time he reached the top, he could barely cross to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Brushing his teeth was a chore. Had he worked so hard that day? Whatever it was, Ade could not wait to go to sleep.

  He grasped the doorknob to his bedroom. It wouldn’t turn. Ade tried again. He tugged. Harder. It finally gave way, nearly sending him toppling backwards.

  Standing in the doorway looking at his hand on the knob, behind him, back to the knob, Ade shuddered, shook off the chill. Exhaustion, physical and emotional, did strange things to a body. He closed the door behind him and began to undress.

  “Did the door stick?”

  He nearly ripped a button from his shirt. “I did not see you there, corazón.” He crossed to the futon that served as his bed, sat on the edge. “Yes, the door was stuck.”

  “It did that to me too,” she said.

  “I will lubricate it in the morning.”

  “I think I have some WD40 out in the barn.”

  “I saw some. It looked old.”

  “Probably is. You’d have to ask your dad or uncle.”

  “Why are we discussing lubricants when you are obviously naked in my bed?”

  Savannah didn’t smile. In the glow of moonlight coming through the windows, her earnest eyes glistened. “My head hurts. I thought the Box would help but it didn’t.”

  Ade stripped off his clothes, left them on the floor as his fastidious nature never allowed. Slipping between the sheets, he caught the sweet scent of her. It aroused him, but it stirred something deeper within, and despite his body’s ache, he only held her in his arms.

  Savannah snuggled in beside him, her head on his shoulder. She breathed in deeply, and out.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Curious, how that happens.”

  “It’s psychological, I’m sure. But who cares. It works. And I love being in your arms.”

  “Then that works for both of us, because holding you is all I want to do for the rest of my life.”

  Savannah came up on her elbow. “Do you really mean that, Ade? Or is that just something romantic you said without thinking?”

  Ade mulled it over. “I said it without thinking,” he admitted. “But it is nonetheless true.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have never wanted to hold anyone forever before. I could not imagine my future with any one person. I imagine it with you all the time.”

  “Like this afternoon, at the old foundation.”

  “Exactly like that,” he said. “I said that without thinking, too, but what you don’t understand, corazón, is that I might have said such things to other women before, but I was wholly aware I said them, because I did so with a purpose. With you, there is no ulterior motive, only spontaneous wanting.”

  “Wanting?”

  “Yes. Wanting. I want you. I want a life with you. I want things I never wanted before.”

  “Then you meant it when you told me you love me.”

  Ade’s heart stuttered. He wiggled his hand out from under the sheets to touch her cheek, her lips. “I was beginning to fear you hadn’t heard me,” he said. “It was better than fearing you did not return the sentiment.”

  “Can you doubt that I do?”

  “No. You showed me your daughters’ things. You shared your past. That is love.”

  Savannah snuggled into him again. “I’m not going to Georgia for the funeral,” she said. “I should have gone before Auntie Bea died. Now that she’s gone, there’s no point. There’s nothing for me there.”

  “You have family...”

  “No, I really don’t. I have people who raised me, not people who love me. The only one who did is gone.”

  Warm tears pooled on his skin where her cheek rested. Ade held her closer, kissed the top of her head. He moved slow circles along her shoulder, arm, the curve of her waist.

  “I wanted her to meet you,” she whispered. “I wanted you to meet her.”

  “I would have liked to hear her call me a Spaniard.”

  “I really screwed up, Ade. She loved me best and longest, and I couldn’t get past my own issues to go see her.”

  Shifting so they were face to face, sharing a pillow, Ade’s heart and body warred. She was so beautiful. And so sad. So desirable. And she needed him. To soothe her headache, and her grief.

  “I was raised Catholic,” he began, “but Lita’s mountain version. A devout woman who had crucifixes on every wall, a Virgin Mary on every flat surface, but had no idea she was a raging heathen.”

  Savannah laughed softly this time.

  His heart leapt. “There are worlds within worlds, outside of worlds, she told me, where we live alternate lives, die different deaths. Maybe she was right, corazón. Maybe in another version of you and me, I did meet your aunt. Just not in this one.”

  “But this is the one we have.”

  “Right now,” he said. “But, according to Lita, when all the possibilities of who we are or might be are no longer in this world, we meet one another, and become whole.”

  “Round about what is”—Savannah tilted her head, grinning—“lies a whole mysterious world of what might be.”

  “A psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.” He quoted, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Longfellow, correct?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know there was more to it.”

  “It is one of my favorite quotes.”

  “Benny’s too. She has the first half of it tattooed across her lower back. It’s also quoted on her blog, Spirit Reckonings.”

  “Benny has a blog?”

  “Apparently a spiritual one. Maybe it’s more paranormal.”

  “I imagine it’s a bit of both.” Ade shifted closer. Their bodies pressed together. Skin to skin. Her legs entangled with his, the top of one foot caressing his calf.

  Savannah closed her eyes, leaned in, kissed his lips so tenderly. “I love you,” she said. “Much as it scares me, it makes me happier than I’ve been in a very long time.”

  “We have both traveled long and painful roads to get to this moment, corazón. I have much to regret, and yet how can I? All of who I was brought me here. To you.”

  She stiffened in his arms, and only then did Ade realize his horrific mistake.

  “I…that does not mean…you have a…your past…” He closed his eyes to the tears in hers, took a deep breath. “Your sorrow was visited upon you, Savannah. You have done nothing to regret.”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “How can you even wonder?” He kissed her cheeks, mouth, anything his lips could find without letting go of her. “What you endured…my darling, you can’t—”

  Savannah kissed the words from his mouth. She rolled on top of him, straddled his hips. Her warmth nearly undid him. Her need pushed him closer to that edge beckoning in flashes of electric hunger. Ade forced himself back from the edge. Her curves were a silhouette his hands had to touch,
his fingers demanded he caress. Savannah needed him to make it last, to tame the demons she still held inside. That he could do. He’d done it before for reasons less than noble. He could do it now even if his body burned for release.

  * * * *

  She watched him sleep a long time. On his back. Naked on the sheets mostly discarded in a tangle at the foot of the bed. The even rise and fall of his just-hairy-enough chest. Mouth slightly open. His eyes twitching dreams. What did Adelmo Gallegos dream? New dreams, she hoped. Dreams that involved her. No matter her past or his, no matter the baby that might be but probably wasn’t his, Savannah couldn’t imagine her present without him in it. As if he had always been part of it, like Edgardo and Raul, Benny and Dan. How did such a thing happen after so many years determinedly alone? In so short a time?

  She wanted to touch him, to run her hands along every rise and contour of his lean body. Doc had not been the one and only lover in her life, but until Ade, he was the only man she had seen so completely. So vulnerable.

  Hand hovering just an inch or so above Ade, she let it float the length of him. Already, she knew its shape. She knew the scar on his abdomen earned after the appendix within burst. His pelvis, his hips, thighs—Savannah never fancied herself a woman enamored of the male form. As a doctor of women, her appreciation for the female body as a work of great beauty could never be compared to the more utilitarian body of a man.

  Doc’s body had been beautiful, though. Tall and burly, fair and freckled. And hairy. Doc had been so hairy. Savannah loved every tickly inch of him. Adored every scar, every lump and bump. Big hands. Big heart. A Great Dane who thought he was a lapdog was her favorite tease. Whatever he became in the desert couldn’t take away the joy he had once brought to all who knew him. Even after all he’d done, the horror he had inflicted, Savannah didn’t hate him. For all he had done, neither could she admit how much she would always love him, always miss him, always wish she could go back in time and talk him out of enlisting after September 11th changed everything. It had been the patriotic thing to do. And sensible. The military would pay off the med-school loans already incurred if he enlisted as a field doctor, then continue his specialty training after the conflict was done and they all came home. It would be over in no time. Field doctors didn’t see action. They were the heroes patching up soldiers who did. Savannah had been all for it, even if it meant not seeing him for long stretches. She was still in med-school herself, and was hardly ever home. They’d been too busy to miss one another.