“Coop,” I shout, “give me a slight fucking break, would you? What’s in the goddamn barn?”
He says simply, “You.”
His voice is so strange, it’s starting to scare me. “I don’t understand.”
“Me neither. I’ll meet you there at noon. I’ll text you the address.”
He hangs up before I can say I already have it.
* * *
I make the ninety-minute drive to Seaside in an hour and ten. When I tear into the driveway at Theo’s house, Coop is already there. He leans against his truck with his arms folded over his chest, gazing down at his boots. When he looks up and our eyes meet through the windshield, my heart stops.
Because my big, burly, confident Coop looks scared as shit.
I shut off the car and get out, the keys shaking in my hands. He speaks as soon as I’m within earshot.
“Did you ever meet Theo before you moved here?”
Suddenly, I’m breathless. My heart starts to hammer. “Why do you ask?”
He works his jaw, looking off into the distance for a moment. Then he pushes away from the car and pulls a set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s go in.”
I follow in rising panic as Coop ambles toward the barn, gravel crunching under his boots. It’s a bright, beautiful day, the air clear and cold. Coop unlocks the shiny padlock on the chain around the barn doors and drags the unwieldy wooden doors apart. They groan on rusty hinges, cantankerous as old men. With a jerk of his chin indicating I should follow, he disappears inside.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Hazy rays of light filter through cracks in the wood roof, lending the interior an otherworldly air.
Empty horse stalls line one side of the long room. On the other side, a tall, rickety wooden ladder leads up to a loft. Discarded pieces of lumber litter the dirt floor, and several of the wide beams supporting the roof show signs of water damage. A whisper of animal musk—dried dung from long-dead horses—hangs in the air.
So does the sharper, newer tang of oil paint and acetone, scents I’d recognize blindfolded.
“Doesn’t seem like a good place to store documents,” I tell Coop, trying to keep my voice steady though my pulse is racing and I’m starting to sweat.
“Guess Theo moved ’em out when he took up his secret hobby.”
He’s standing next to the ladder, looking at me with that odd, unnerved expression. I don’t bother asking which hobby he’s referring to, because I already know.
I look up at the loft, then back at Coop. He says quietly, “I hope you don’t spook real easy, ’cause this near scared the livin’ daylights outta me.”
He starts to climb.
I watch until he reaches the top and steps off the ladder, then I follow. When I get to the top, Coop grasps my hand to help me off, then steps back without a word, watching me closely to see my reaction.
But he’s already disappeared. I’m alone, all alone in what can only be described as a shrine.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of oil paintings in different sizes are stacked upright, leaning against the barn walls. More crowd every inch of the walls, hung haphazardly from nails. More are scattered carelessly on long rustic wood tables and all over the floor, piles and piles of them, an unending sea of canvas.
Some are unfinished. All are unframed. And every one of them depicts the same subject in various clothing, poses, and stages of undress:
Me.
Me walking in a vineyard with a glass of wine. Me in a bubble bath, laughing. Me riding a horse, washing the dishes, reading a book.
Me walking down the aisle in my wedding dress, holding a bouquet of purple sweet peas, the light of true love aglow in my eyes.
He even got the details of the scalloped neckline and the seed pearls on the bodice right. I press a hand over my thundering heart as tears threaten to crest my lower lids.
Coop’s quiet voice barely penetrates my cocoon of shock and memory. “They’re dated. I didn’t check them all, but enough to gimme the willies.”
I find enough presence of mind to turn my head and look at him.
Keeping his gaze steady on mine, he says, “Theo painted these before you moved to Seaside, Megan. The oldest one I found, near the back of that stack in the corner, is dated one month after his accident five years ago. How’s that possible?”
I drift over to the nearest table and run my fingertips over a half-finished painting of me sleeping, my hair spread over the pillow, a small smile on my lips. There’s a frenzied quality to the style, lots of quick, short strokes, as if he raced through it, abandoning it halfway in dissatisfaction.
You make all my broken parts bleed.
How awful it must have been for him, how terrifying, to finally see in flesh the person who’d been haunting all his waking hours like a ghost. No wonder he looked at me with such fury that first night at Cal’s Diner. He probably thought he was losing his mind.
I murmur, “Maybe he painted them since we met and dated them wrong. He’s been ill, you know that.”
Coop snorts. Spreading his arms wide, he says. “He painted all these since September? I don’t think so. And I found other weird shit in his office in the house too.”
“Like what?”
“Like two hundred fuckin’ recipes for key lime pie. Like an entire folder of clippings from magazines of pictures of Denver fuckin’ omelets. Like almost five years’ worth of invoices from some hydroponic flower growers in Holland and Japan—he’d been having flowers delivered here every week from halfway round the world! Like what the fuck is wrong with all the flowers in Oregon?”
Sweet peas aren’t always in season here.
I turn my face to a ray of light slicing through a crack in the roof and close my eyes.
“And he has all this fancy French wine in a closet—cases of the stuff—and he doesn’t even drink wine! He hates it!”
I form a mental picture of the elegant label of the Château Corton Grancey that Cass and I always drank on our anniversary. The wine we first enjoyed on our honeymoon, served to us by the old man we picked up on the side of a country road who turned out to be the head of one of the oldest and finest wineries in France. I whisper, “Burgundy’s always a good investment. Especially a grand cru.”
There’s a short pause, then Coop says, “I never said it was from Burgundy.”
I look at him.
His eyes intense, he adds more quietly, “Or a grand cru.”
“He told me he’d been collecting,” I hear myself lie, knowing the truth is impossible.
After a long time wherein we simply gaze at each other, Coop looks down at his feet. “You’re right. He’s been sick. This is all just…evidence of that. And him askin’ me how he could remember someone he’d never met, and his obsession with the Buttercup, and him never speakin’ another word after his accident…that’s all part of his sickness too.”
He glances at my wedding band, then once again meets my eyes. “Right?”
There’s a moment, one brief moment where I consider telling him and letting the chips fall where they may. But the moment passes when I decide this thing is so unbelievable, the weight of trying to understand it has almost broken Theo and me—it would be wrong to burden Coop with the knowledge of it too.
Some mysteries are meant to live in the dark, quiet places of our hearts, kept safe and sacred.
“You’re a good friend, Coop. And a good man. And now I have to go, because I need to be there when he wakes up.”
I hug him hard, then scramble down the ladder and run to my car, my spirit soaring and my heart on fire, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I tear out of the driveway so fast, a spray of gravel spits out from the tires.
I have to get to that hospital as soon as I can.
I need to be there when my midnight valentine comes back to me.
30
Only Theo doesn’t come back.
Not that day, not that week, not the next. The doctors take him out of the i
nduced coma, but he doesn’t wake up. They remove the ventilator, and he starts to breathe on his own, but he doesn’t wake up. By the time Thanksgiving arrives, he’s developed bed sores from lying in one position so long, and I’ve developed a hatred for myself so burning, I can’t even look at my reflection in the mirror.
I did this.
I pushed him so hard, his only choice was to run away. I could’ve let him come to it in his own time, or gone along with his treatment plan if it made him feel better to pretend schizophrenia was the root of all his problems. I didn’t have to shove the truth down his throat, but I did.
I punish myself in a variety of imaginative ways, but my favorite is denying myself food.
Which makes all the vomiting I’m doing more than a little strange.
“You’re sick again, honey?”
The head nurse on Theo’s floor at the hospital is a motherly Latina named Ana with big, brown eyes and a tendency to dispense random hugs. She’s gazing at me in concern outside the hallway restroom where I’ve just been puking my guts out.
I lean against the doorframe, wiping the beads of sweat off my brow with the back of my hand. “You heard, huh?”
She makes an apologetic face. “I think the whole floor heard. It sounded like an exorcism was happening in here.”
“Must’ve been that egg salad sandwich I had for breakfast.” I attempt a feeble laugh, avoiding her eyes. “Damn cafeteria food.”
She snorts, propping her hands on her hips. “I think you actually have to eat some food before it can make you sick, chica.”
I mutter churlishly, “I eat.”
“Ai!” She pinches my arm, startling me into looking at her. She shakes her finger in my face. “Don’t you lie to me! I have six kids—I’ve got a black belt in lie detection!”
I’m too tired to argue with her, so I sigh instead. “Okay, fine. I probably picked up a bug from hanging around this place so much. Didn’t I read somewhere that hospitals make people sick more than anything else?”
Her eyes round. “Dios mío. Do you have a fever?”
“No.”
“Body aches?”
“No more than usual.”
“A strange rash? Enlarged lymph glands? Extreme weakness or chills?”
I wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Why, is the plague going around here or something?”
Her eyes go from round to narrow. She pinches her lips and looks me up and down. “Well, I can tell you what—no matter what else might be wrong with you, you’re anemic for sure.” Clucking like a hen, she lightly slaps my cheek. “Look at this, pale as a ghost.”
“Thanks for that vote of support,” I say drily.
She grabs my arm and steers me down the hallway toward the elevators. “I’m sending you down to Tommy in the lab to get some blood drawn.”
“No! I’m okay, Ana, really—”
Glaring at me, she says something in sharp Spanish that shuts me up.
“Fine. But if Tommy doesn’t hit the vein the first time, I’m kicking him in his balls.”
She clucks again, pressing the call button for the elevator. “Such a temper. I heard about your performance in the emergency room in Seaside Hospital, you know.”
I look at the ceiling, shaking my head. “Unbelievable.”
Tommy turns out to be a hipster with sleeves of pinup girls tattooed on his arms, silver rings decorating his thumbs, and a bald head capped by a gray fedora set at a jaunty angle. When he catches me eyeing it, he grins.
“It makes my head look less like an egg. Have a seat.”
I sit, stick my arm into the squishy blue armrest on his small counter, and squirm in my chair when he pulls a lethal-looking needle from a plastic wrapper and jabs the opposite end into an empty vial.
“Make a fist.” He ties a length of urine-colored rubber around my biceps, and taps the little blue bulge on my inner arm. “Nice veins,” he says, impressed.
“Thanks. I’m an ass girl, myself.”
He laughs, displaying a set of dimples. “We all have our weaknesses, I suppose.”
To distract myself from the pointy spike of steel about to be jabbed into my body, I ask, “So, how’d you get into the vein business, Tommy?”
“After my brother overdosed from heroin when I was fifteen, I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”
He discloses that bit of personal information so nonchalantly, I’m stunned. “Oh. God, I’m so sorry.”
He slides the needle home expertly. I hardly feel a pinch. “Yeah. It sucked. I was the one who found him, slumped over the toilet with his arm still tied off. Shit like that really changes your perspective on things.”
I say faintly, “It sure does.”
He fills up one vial, exchanges it for another, casual and competent, talking as he works. “I enrolled in the premed program at Portland State but dropped out after a year. College wasn’t really my thing. I’m crap at taking tests. But I still wanted to do something in the medical field. I knew a guy who worked here, said the pay was decent, and they had on-the-job training, so I got my certification and that was that.”
He’s filled all four of his little vials by now and removes the heinous needle. I get a cotton ball topped by a purple Band-Aid to cover the tiny hole in my arm, then we’re done.
“Well, I can honestly say you’re the best phlebotomist I’ve ever known, Tommy. Good job.”
“Thanks.” He looks at me for a moment. “You doin’ okay?”
I’m taken aback by the question and run a hand over my hair in embarrassment. “I look that bad, huh?”
“I see a lotta people come through those doors. You get a feel for ’em.”
My laugh is uncomfortable. “Oh yeah? And what’s my vibe telling you? Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown?”
The corners of his lips lift into a small, mysterious smile. “Woman on the verge of something. You take care now. Happy Thanksgiving.”
He leaves me sitting in the chair, wondering what the hell that was all about.
I decide people who draw blood for a living are weird.
* * *
When I get back to Theo’s room, I pull up short, shocked to see Coop and Suzanne setting up a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner table on the empty bed next to Theo’s.
“You guys,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “What’re you doing here?”
“Are you kidding?” says Suzanne, hustling over to give me a hug and a kiss. She pulls away and beams at me, holding me by the shoulders. “Where else are you supposed to be on Thanksgiving other than with family?”
“But, Coop…” I look at him, taking up most of the space in the room with his blond bulk and his grin. “Your kids.”
“They’re with their mother today. I’m gettin’ ’em for Christmas. Which works out great, seein’ as how I can’t stand my mother-in-law.”
“Ex mother-in-law,” says Suzanne over her shoulder.
Coop grins at her. “Right. Ex.”
When Suzanne looks back at me, her cheeks are red, which tells me everything I need to know about what these two have been up to since I’ve been staying in Portland.
“That nice nurse lady Ana said she wasn’t supposed to let us in here with all this food, but most of those stuffy-ass doctors are gone for the holiday, so she snuck us in. And…”
Her signature skyscraper heels clicking on the floor, she trots over to a paper bag on the desk under the TV and pulls out a dish wrapped in aluminum foil. She holds it up like a trophy. “I made key lime pie!”
When my lower lip starts to quiver and my eyes fill with tears, she looks horrified.
“Oh, shit, don’t tell me you’re on a diet! Is that why you look like a stray cat?”
“I love you, Suzanne,” I say, and burst into tears.
“Sweetie, it’s okay.” She must have handed the pie to Coop, because her arms come around me in a gentle hug. Then she pats my hair as I fall apart, sobbing into her boobs. She murmurs into my ear, “I love you too. Even if you are r
uining my new silk blouse with your snot.” She sighs. “Why are the prettiest girls the ugliest criers?”
By the time I manage to get myself together and Suzanne and I break apart, Coop has finished putting out the food. Everything is there: turkey breast, stuffing, corn, sweet potatoes. They’ve even brought cranberry sauce. It makes me want to burst into tears all over again, but I’ve got something more important to focus on now.
The smell of the food is turning my stomach.
“You’re lookin’ a little green over there,” says Coop, glancing at me sideways as he pulls paper plates from a bag.
“I’m just tired. This looks amazing, you guys. Thank you so much.”
We each fill a plate with food, then drag chairs around Theo’s bed and eat in silence interrupted only by the steady beeping of Theo’s heart monitor.
After a while, Coop says quietly, “He’s thin.”
“You would be too if all your meals were liquid.”
Coop glances at the lump under the blankets where the feeding tube is inserted into Theo’s abdomen. His eyes register pain, and he quickly looks back at his plate. “Anything new?”
I pick at the stuffing on my plate with my fork, moving it around so I look busy. They went to all this trouble. I don’t want to insult them by not eating. Or, worse, eating and throwing everything right back up. “Nothing. His vitals are all stable.”
“What about the EEG?”
I whisper, “No change. His brain waves look like the surface of a lake.”
Suzanne says casually, “My grandma Rhoda was in a coma for two years before she came out of it. Just woke up one day and demanded chocolate pudding. She didn’t have any brain waves either. Didn’t mean a thing in the end. If God wants you to wake up, you’re waking up. If she doesn’t, you don’t.”
Sounding exhausted, Coop says, “Why does God always get blamed for everything? Maybe God’s just letting life do what it will, and watches us to see how we handle it.”
“God as watchmaker as opposed to chess player,” I say. “That’s what my dad thought.”
Suzanne says, “I have no idea what that means, but I do know that everything happens for a reason. Even the bad things. It’s all part of a bigger plan we can’t understand. God is the greatest force of love in the universe.”
Midnight Valentine Page 26