Kiss

by Ted Dekker

  The falling stars faded to a clear night, and the roar of the stadium fell to a murmur.

  And she heard herself screaming. She had never felt pain like this. Spears plunged the length of her legs and out her heels, plunging and plunging. An in-visible iron band constricted around her hip bones. Her pelvis would soon snap.

  Someone dropped to the turf beside her.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Oh! It was not okay!

  “Shauna! It’s okay. I’m right here.”

  Someone grabbed her wrist and held it to the ground.

  She cried out and opened her eyes. She saw stars . . . through a window. A window over . . . the head of a bed. Her bed. Wayne was sitting on her bed, leaning over her, holding her wrists down on the mattress.

  Khai rushed in and turned on a lamp on an old oak dresser. The room burst into warm yellow form. Dresser, bed table, overstuffed chair. Three card-board boxes. Woodblock prints on the walls. A historic map of Austin, Texas. Wayne, in a T-shirt and flannel lounge pants. Khai in a terry robe. She cinched the belt and held it closed at her throat.

  Shauna’s breathing settled, and Wayne released her arms.

  “You okay?” He rubbed his eyes and shifted to the edge of the bed.

  She could only nod.

  “That must have been a doozy,” he said.

  She covered her face with her hands. “It was so real. I’m sorry. That’s never happened to me before. Not that I remember anyway.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  How to talk about a nightmare like that? Did it even qualify as a night-mare? Her, playing football? Closer to a comedy.

  “I should make tea,” Khai said, and she left the room as quickly as she’d come in.

  “I wasn’t afraid,” she started. “In fact, I was playing football for some college team. I don’t know a thing about football. How could I have a dream that was so vivid?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Shauna told him, as best she could recall. To her surprise, the details of the dream hadn’t faded as they often did when she awoke. As she relayed the scene, Wayne did not interrupt her once.

  When she finished, he said, “The coach called you Spade ?”

  “Can you explain it?”

  “Sounds like a dream I would have had.”

  Shauna had thought she was dreaming of being Wayne, but dreaming his dreams? That was a knotty idea.

  “I used to play football,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He cleared his throat. “A little. Not really built for it. I was fast but got sick of getting nailed. I took a hit in college and called it quits. Not too unlike your dream there.” He stood and ran a hand through his hair.

  “That’s weird.” She shivered. “It was one of the most realistic dreams I’ve ever had. I can’t see the appeal of that sport, from the inside I mean. I’ve never felt pain like that.”

  Wayne nodded slowly and folded his arms. He looked at the floor. “Good thing it was only a dream.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured. “Good thing.” But though her shivering had stopped, her hands were still shaking under the covers, and a quiet, irrational voice at the back of her mind wondered if the whole episode was something far greater than a figment of her imagination.

  8

  The sounds of heavy Suburban tires grinding down gravel woke Shauna in the predawn hours of Friday morning. Landon’s entourage was putting him back on the campaign trail.

  At six, unable to go back to sleep, she stumbled out of bed.

  The five pill bottles on the nightstand suggested that she should put some-thing in her empty stomach. Shauna tapped out each pill into her hand and, cupping them, went into the kitchen.

  Khai was already working, chopping vegetables. Shauna set her medicine on the table, then found a loaf of sourdough bread and dropped a slice in the toaster. Khai’s wide ceramic knife click click clicked through an eggplant on a plastic mat. When she finished cubing the vegetable, Khai set down the knife and pulled a mug out of the cabinet in front of her. Without asking, she filled it with tea from a pot resting on the back of the stove, then set the cup in front of Shauna on the counter.

  “Thank you,” Shauna said. She sipped and closed her eyes. Jasmine. Mild and barely sweet.

  Khai put the eggplant in a bowl and resumed her work, crushing several garlic cloves with the broad side of her knife.

  The toast popped up, and Shauna balanced it on top of her mug as she went to stand by the window. Outside, at the bottom of a long hill, the river rushed toward town. She tried to eat, but the bread formed a hard ball in her throat.

  Khai glanced her way a few times.

  “That can’t taste so good,” she said after a minute, scraping the chopped garlic into the bowl with the eggplant. “I had a brother who would eat nothing but dry toast for a time.”

  Shauna tossed the bread into the trash and came to peek at the contents of Khai’s bowl. “With your fancy cooking?”

  “Well, I didn’t know a thing about cooking then. He was fighting cancer. That toast hurt his throat, but it settled his stomach.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s better now. God made a way. We came to the States for treatment.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Twelve years or so.” She rinsed her knife in the sink and reached for a towel to dry the blade.

  “You ever go back?”

  Khai shook her head.

  “My mother was from Guatemala,” Shauna said. “I go down there twice a year. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.”

  “I can understand that,” Khai said, smiling. “A strong sense of place keeps us close to our families.”

  Or alienated from them, Shauna thought. “Did you move right to Texas when you came to the States?”

  “No. New York, Florida. We were in Mexico for a while. My brother’s still back East.”

  “Is he your only family?”

  Khai’s hands, holding the knife and wiping it dry, stopped their motion so briefly that Shauna wasn’t sure if they’d truly paused or not. But then Khai nodded, barely. “I’m sorry about your brother,” Khai said.

  “They won’t let me see him.”

  The conversation lagged behind the women’s thoughts about their siblings. Shauna had the fleeting thought that Khai didn’t get to see her brother often if he was all the way out in New York. But that thought was eclipsed by her own sadness of being completely cut off from Rudy even while they were on the same property. Shauna returned to the window, scooped up the pills off the nearby table, and swallowed them with her warm tea.

  “Do you have any more of that soup?” Shauna asked. “What did you call it? Tom fam?”

  “Tom yam. That Wayne finished it off,” Khai said, jerking open a cupboard door. Shauna studied the housekeeper and leaned against the windowsill.

  “You don’t like him.”

  “I’m making namprik num now. A dipping sauce. You might want some.” She withdrew a can of green chilies, set it on the counter, and applied the can opener to it as forcefully as if it were a car tire and she were removing the lug nuts.

  “What is it you dislike about Wayne?”

  Khai took a deep breath and returned the can opener to its drawer. “He has been very attentive toward you.”

  “You don’t like him because he’s nice?”

  “I mean that my feelings toward him should have no bearing on yours.”

  “You have a run-in with him?”

  The woman shook her head, picked up her clean knife, and began chop-ping. She shrugged. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t. I have a sense of people.”

  “Well, he’s been better to me than any of my own family.”

  Khai chopped until Shauna was sure the chilies had been pulverized.

  “How long have you worked here?” Shauna asked.

  “Since July.”


  “Did you know me before I came to the house Thursday?”

  Khai shook her head and repeated the process of washing her knife. “No. I saw pictures. Never saw you visit.”

  “But you knew Wayne.”

  “He visited once.”

  “Without me.”

  “Business with your father. I’m not sure.”

  “Wayne and I were dating?”

  Khai looked at Shauna. “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t recall much of the last six months or so. I need some answers about . . . what I might have been doing then. All the circumstances surrounding the accident . . . People are saying some things.”

  Khai didn’t ask her to elaborate. She slipped the clean knife back into the block next to the sink.

  “What do the other house staff say about me?”

  “That you keep to yourself.”

  She did, in fact, keep to herself, but in her experience, seeking isolation only fueled rumor mills. “I’m sure gossip flies on this property just as freely as it does downtown.”

  “I don’t give much ear to gossip.” The housekeeper sealed the bowl of vegetables with plastic wrap and stowed everything in the refrigerator.

  “It’s that bad, huh?”

  “Not what I meant.” Khai frowned at her over the open refrigerator door. Those duotone eyes unnerved Shauna. Which one was she supposed to look at? “You kept your distance from this place. From the senator, they say.”

  “Did you ever hear anything about my trying to undermine Land—the senator’s campaign?”

  Silence.

  “What sort of things does Patrice say about me behind my back?”

  “Nothing she hasn’t said to your face, I’m sure. That woman doesn’t hold her tongue.”

  Shauna sighed and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window. She closed her eyes. Sorting out everyone’s reticence involved nothing less than beating her skull against the wall. If she kept hitting her head hard enough, maybe it would crack open and the memories would pour out—

  “You’re bleeding,” Khai said, causing Shauna to flinch. The petite woman was standing right next to Shauna, pointing to the front of Shauna’s bright blue shirt.

  She looked down. A rosebud of partially dried blood blossomed at her waist. Shauna lifted the cloth and found a larger stain expanding on her layered T-shirt, below her ribs where she’d been hurting. She examined her skin next. A gash looked to have been oozing awhile.

  “Oh.” She looked around for a paper towel and snatched one off the roll on the kitchen counter.

  “Wait,” Khai said, heading into her bedroom. She returned with a tote, which she set on the table. Shauna threw away the paper towel and accepted an antiseptic wipe.

  “I should do this in the bathroom.”

  “No need. Let’s look at it.”

  “It’s just a cut. I’ve got dozens of these. From the accident.”

  “A lot of blood for such a small cut. These should be healed by now.”

  “I can clean this up.”

  “Let me help.” Khai withdrew a wad of gauze from the bag.

  “Do you have gloves or something?”

  A pair of latex gloves came out too. “Lots of practice with first aid,” Khai said.

  She used the gauze to apply pressure to the wound, and Shauna felt a sharp pain. She bit her lower lip.

  “That hurts?”

  Shauna nodded and Khai withdrew the gauze. A thread of it snagged on something.

  “Ow!”

  Khai moved her into the morning light coming through the kitchen window, then fumbled around with one hand through her first-aid kit, with-drawing tweezers.

  “Hold still.”

  Khai bent over the cut and in seconds held the bloody tweezers up to the sunlight.

  “What’s that?” Shauna wrapped her hand around Khai’s wrist to see.

  The tweezers clasped a thin piece of metal, wet with Shauna’s blood, shaped like a boat sail but no larger than a pencil eraser.

  Khai shook her head. “Not something that should be in your body.”

  “Maybe I bumped into something.”

  “Not if your clothes are any indication.”

  True. Though her shirts were bloody, they were not torn.

  “This is like shrapnel,” Khai said, depositing the piece on Shauna’s out-stretched palm. “This came from inside of you.”

  “Probably something from the accident.”

  “You’d think that would have shown up in an X-ray.”

  Shauna lifted the metal and held it to the light of the window. “You’d think.”

  Shauna rapped on Wayne’s door, three quick hits. It was nearly nine, and she’d been waiting. She needed his help. And his soothing company. She’d gone to the house to see Rudy again, only to be turned away at the door, again. The forced separation from her brother had caused her to pace the bungalow porch for half an hour.

  Wayne appeared, one hand on the knob and the other tugging the hem of his T-shirt over the waistband of his jeans. He grinned at her.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “How long will you be able to stay in Austin?” she asked.

  Wayne laughed at that and took her hand, pulling her into the room and toward a love seat against the wall. “How long do you want me to stay?”

  She dropped onto the seat, and he sat opposite her on the corner of his unmade bed, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “That wasn’t what I meant to ask,” she clarified. “I was wondering if you have time to show me around.”

  “Around Austin? You’re more familiar with it than I am.”

  “Around places you and I have been. When we’d go out. If we went out. To places, I mean.” She exhaled a balloon’s worth of air. “What I’m trying to say is I want to get my bearings again. I feel so shut out of my old life. Literally. I thought maybe if I go somewhere. With you. Someplace we used to go. Maybe that would trigger something. Give me a start.”

  Wayne nodded his way through her request. Then he straightened and scratched his head.

  “You’re upset over that reporter, what he said about a third person in your car.”

  How did he know that? She hadn’t even realized that was at the heart of her request, not until he’d said it. She nodded slowly. “Among other things.”

  “That guy was up to no good, babe,” he said. “Reporters like him, they’ll cook up anything to get you talking. It’s how they get their scoops.”

  “You think he’s lying?”

  “I know he’s lying. I was at the scene—and so were several other people. No one saw anybody but you and Rudy.”

  “Maybe you could take me down to the bridge where the accident happened.”

  Wayne’s eyes widened.

  “And we could go to my old loft. Any of those things will jog my memory. Do you have a copy of the accident report? I’d like to read it.” It was the first bright idea she’d had.

  Wayne held up his hands as if he were police and she were a rush of oncoming traffic. “Whoa whoa whoa. One idea at a time.”

  She sagged against the love seat. “I know that’s all a lot of trouble.”

  Wayne moved to sit next to her, his body touching hers from shoulder to knee. He tipped her chin up to look at him.

  “What is it you want to get back?”

  She thought of yesterday’s kiss and dropped her eyes. “I want Patrice to be wrong, and I want Rudy to be the way he was. I want my life back. I want Landon to . . . to tolerate me at least.” She risked a look at him.

  “Remembering won’t really get you any of those things, will it?”

  Of course not.

  “Maybe it’s better not to know, so you don’t get hung up on things you can’t change.”

  “But I need to remember, Wayne. I don’t even know how to talk to Uncle Trent’s attorney about all this. How can he help me with the trial if I don’t have any information to give him? I might as well plead
guilty—I can’t defend myself.”

  Wayne rested his hand on her knee. “He understands what’s going on. Give yourself time to pull out of this. Give your body time to recover.”

  “This is all taking too long. I’d like to remember you sooner than later.”

  “You will. No hurry. But I think it would be good to get you out of here today.”

  “Where can we get a copy of the accident report?”

  Wayne rubbed his eyes. “I’m sure we can get one from the attorney. How about something more pleasant for starters? I liked your idea of me taking you out, like old times.”

  “What is it we used to do?”

  “Stereotypical stuff, I’m afraid.”

  “Dinner. Movies.”

  “Right. You came to Houston a few times—”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to leave Travis County right now.”

  “True. So we need to stick to Austin.”

  “Also, I have an appointment with Dr. Harding today.”

  Wayne stood and walked to the window, his back to her. “You like to swim in Barton Springs.”

  His claim surprised her. She had disliked swimming in public since she was a teen. “Really? I haven’t gone swimming there since I was a kid.”

  “Well, this summer we went more than once.” Wayne’s voice sounded surprised, maybe embarrassed, but he didn’t look at her.

  Shauna’s skin tingled with goose bumps as if she had stuck her feet into cold water. “I don’t think I want to swim.” She cleared her throat. “The muscles aren’t up for it yet.”

  “Maybe it would be enough to see it.”

  “Maybe. What else?”

  “We went to the indie theater up near the university. Saw Faded Humor there in July, and Eons in August.”

  Never heard of them. Surprise, surprise. “I like indies?”

  Wayne finally turned around, shoving his hands into his pockets. He avoided her eyes. “I do. I think you mostly just indulged me.”

  “Or maybe you showed me how to enjoy them.”

  “I can find out what’s playing tonight,” he said.

  “That’d be great.”

  A pool. A movie theater. Shauna didn’t hold out much hope for those. They didn’t sound like her. But at the very least, they’d get her out of this place.