Ascension of Larks

by Rachel Linden

  A few minutes later Dr. Yamamoto peered into the room, taking in the scene. He smiled, for a second erasing the tired lines around his mouth. He motioned to Maggie, who cast one last glance at the group around the bed and stepped into the hall, knowing she would not be missed.

  Dr. Yamamoto led the way to a small waiting lounge around the corner. Maggie stood next to him near the lone window as he consulted Lena’s chart, shaking his head in amazement. “Most remarkable,” he murmured, flipping through pages of charts, test results, and doctors’ notes. “It appears Mrs. Firelli has sustained no major damage to the brain. She is exhibiting some short-term memory lapses, which are to be expected, but her motor functioning is not impaired, and she shows every sign of being able to make a rapid and full recovery.” He met Maggie’s eyes. “She is very, very lucky,” he said quietly. “I was not expecting such a positive outcome.” He consulted the charts again for a moment, then nodded decisively and made a few notations. “I want to run several more tests and keep her here for a few days of observation, just to make sure we haven’t missed anything. If everything looks clear, you can take her home after that.”

  Maggie felt her legs give way beneath her. She sat down in the nearest chair. She had not even realized the tension she’d been holding, the adrenaline that must have been keeping her going all these weeks. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to burst into tears. It must be the relief, she thought, the letdown now that she did not have to be strong and stoic.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said. She closed her eyes, feeling the knowledge seep slowly through her body, sweet as honey. Lena was coming home. They would have to face other hurdles in the next days, but at least they could face them all together.

  Later that day, when Ellen had driven the children home and Lena had fallen asleep again, Maggie wandered down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. When she returned, Lena was awake, staring out the window with a far-off look in her eyes. She turned when Maggie entered the room, watching as Maggie settled herself in the chair by the head of the bed. Maggie proffered the sandwich. “Want a bite? It’s not very good.”

  Lena shook her head, her eyes never leaving Maggie’s face. “Maggie,” she said finally, a little hesitantly. “What happened while I was asleep?”

  Maggie’s heart skipped a beat. Lena hadn’t mentioned Marco at all, and Maggie hadn’t known quite how to broach the topic. She thought briefly of the phone call from George about the loan and the letter to the lawyer, but decided they would have to wait awhile longer. Lena couldn’t handle all the bad news at once. Maggie set the sandwich on the bedside tray and took a deep breath. She couldn’t keep something like Marco’s death a secret from Lena, even if she was still fragile. Lena deserved to know.

  “Lena,” Maggie said slowly, “do you remember Marco’s accident?”

  Lena’s gaze was searching, her answer clear. “I remember the water. I know Marco’s dead.”

  “Oh.” Maggie sat back, relieved. “I thought you might not remember. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Lena turned her face away. “I remember everything about that day,” she said, her voice catching on the last word. She paused for a long moment, composing herself. “And I remember about the phone call from George and about Marco’s debts. Is there anything I should know about what happened after the accident?” She studied Maggie’s face.

  Maggie hesitated. “Nothing that won’t wait,” she said finally, honestly. She would break the news about the bank calling the loan later, when Lena was stronger. And she would wait to ask Lena about the letter she and Marco wrote to the lawyer as well. But she did ask the other question that had been bothering her since the visit from Officer Burns.

  “Lena.” Maggie leaned forward and took Lena’s hand. Lena looked at her, blue eyes wide and trusting. “Do you remember anything about the car crash?” Maggie asked.

  Lena shook her head. “No. Is there something I should remember? What happened?” A new thought dawned on her, and she weakly gripped Maggie’s hand, suddenly alarmed. “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “No, it was just your car. You hit a retaining wall going fifty miles an hour. But, Lena . . .” Maggie paused for a long moment. Lena looked at her questioningly. “It doesn’t look like you touched the brakes before you crashed.”

  Lena furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “It means,” Maggie said very gently, “it looks like it might not have been an accident. Do you remember what you were thinking before you crashed? Had you taken any medication before you went out? I found some antianxiety pills in your nightstand. Did you take any of them that day?”

  Lena shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t know. They make me feel funny, so I don’t like to take them.”

  Maggie nodded. She had not really expected Lena to be able to answer her questions, but she had to ask them all the same. “Lena,” she said, “did you mean to crash the car?”

  Lena looked confused for a moment, puzzled by the question. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t have any idea. I can’t remember.”

  A few days later Maggie drove the rental car onto the ferry and went alone to pick up Lena from the hospital. Ellen had opted to stay home with the children, who were busy making a giant welcome-home banner out of construction paper and yards of tape. Maggie waited quietly in the room as the nurse bustled in and out, checking last-minute details, making final notations. At Lena’s instruction, Maggie helped Lena into the outfit Maggie had brought with her—a linen sundress the pale, translucent green of sea glass and a cream-colored cardigan sweater. The ferry ride could be chilly.

  Lena brushed her hair, freshly washed with the help of a nurse, and with shaking hands tried to pull it back in a French braid. After a few moments she looked beseechingly at Maggie. “I’m so weak,” she admitted. “Can you help me?”

  Maggie sat on the bed behind her, braiding the strands of hair until they lay neatly, if a little lopsidedly, in a plait against Lena’s neck.

  “It’s not exactly straight, but it’ll do,” Maggie said, eyeing her work critically.

  “It’s fine.” Lena smoothed a strand of hair from her temple and tucked it into the braid. “Thank you.”

  The nurse popped her head into the room. “We’re just finishing up the discharge papers. You should be ready to go in a few minutes,” she assured them before hurrying away.

  “I’ll bring the car around.” Maggie made a move for the door, but Lena grabbed her arm, her grip surprisingly strong.

  “Maggie, wait. I need to tell you something before we go.” Her face was grave.

  Maggie sank down in the chair, and Lena released her arm. “What is it?”

  Lena took a deep breath, not looking at her but staring fixedly at the foot of the bed.

  “I need to tell you something,” Lena repeated. She glanced sideways at Maggie and then dropped her eyes. “Maggie, Marco was leaving us at the end of the summer. He’d requested a legal separation, and our lawyer was working on it when the accident happened.”

  Maggie went very still. So it was true. The letter had not been a mistake. “Why?” she asked, still stunned by the admission even if she had already seen the letter.

  Lena sighed, brushing a few crumbs off the blanket on her lap. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times. I don’t know. I didn’t want it. I fought it every step of the way. But Marco said he was sure. He said he didn’t want this life anymore, our life. He wasn’t even going to come to the island this year, but I begged him to. He said he couldn’t afford to take the time off work. I reminded him this was part of our arrangement. Nine months in New York and then the summer here. And he came, but as soon as we got here, he sat me down and told me he couldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Couldn’t do what?” Maggie asked. She didn’t understand. “Couldn’t you have made some sort of compromise? A month on the island, something like that?” She heard the desperation in her own voice, trying to fix the situation although it was
far too late for that.

  Lena met her eyes, her own sorrowful and resigned. “I tried, Maggie. I offered him everything. And at the end of the day, he said he was done, that he’d made his decision. He said our life was pulling him away from his work, from his designs. He said he couldn’t think with the noise; he couldn’t plan with the kids always in the background. He wanted a clean slate, a blank space for a while, to see if he could get his inspiration back. He planned on supporting us financially and seeing the kids regularly, but he just didn’t want a life with us anymore. I tried everything, I really did. But he chose his work over us. He always chose it over us.”

  Lena blinked hard, two tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away, just bowed her head and let them come, her shoulders shaking. “I think he felt so much pressure being out on his own and not with the firm anymore. He was desperate for his next project to be a success, desperate enough that he used our money and the money that he borrowed to fund it. George told me a lot of our debt is because of that. It was an experimental project in Chicago, developing sustainable office spaces around shared green space. It was a completely new direction for him, and Marco hoped it would be recognized and give him the boost he needed. I think he must have felt the pressure to perform and thought we were holding him back somehow.”

  Maggie was furious. How could he? How could he abandon them like that? But in the depths of her heart, she knew. She’d almost done it a few weeks ago when Alistair told her about the Regent. She understood more than she cared to admit. As much as Marco had loved Lena and the kids, he’d desired something else more.

  Maggie scooted her chair closer and wrapped her arm awkwardly around Lena’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Lena,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lena covered her face with her hands and leaned into the embrace, tears dripping from between her fingers onto Maggie’s shirt. She smelled like lemon verbena and the clinical hospital shampoo.

  “I wanted to tell you so much,” Lena cried, her voice muffled, “but I didn’t want to worry you when you were so far away. So I decided to wait and tell you face-to-face. Except then Marco’s accident happened, and it was too late.” Lena looked up at Maggie, her face streaked with tears, not red or swollen, but pale and mournful, like a glazed porcelain bust of some conquered Greek goddess. “I know we’re all the family you have, and I didn’t want you to feel like we were coming apart at the seams when you were away.”

  “But maybe I could have helped,” Maggie protested, appalled that Marco had been planning to leave his family. “I could have talked to him, made him see reason. Lena, maybe I could have changed his mind.”

  Lena sniffled, reaching for a tissue on the bedside cart and blotting her nose. She sat up straight and folded her hands, gazing calmly at Maggie. “You of all people should know that’s not true,” she said gently. “You know nothing gets between an artist and his art. You understood Marco in a way I never could, but I don’t think that understanding would have helped us.” She met Maggie’s eyes, and in that bright-blue gaze, Maggie suddenly saw how much Lena really did know. Maggie had underestimated her, assuming that because she didn’t give voice to certain things, she didn’t see them. Lena held her gaze, and Maggie flinched, wanting to look away from the knowledge there.

  She dropped her eyes, suddenly ashamed. For too long her feelings for Marco had created a distance from Lena. She had felt a little scornful of her best friend, who would never understand Marco as Maggie did, who would never know what had transpired between them, the words he had spoken that long-ago night. But perhaps Lena had sensed these things all along. Perhaps she had known and had chosen to love them both anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally, not looking at Lena. Her words encompassed so many things she regretted. At least now she had a chance to start to make things right.

  After a moment Lena reached out and took Maggie’s hand. “I loved you both,” she said softly. “And I knew you loved me. I always trusted that.” She said no more, but when Maggie raised her head, she found only a calm acceptance in Lena’s gaze.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “HOW COULD YOU DO IT, MARCO?” MAGGIE demanded. “What were you thinking, planning to leave Lena and the kids like that?” She sat in the chilly darkness on the half circle of private beach below the house, on the same log she’d shared with Daniel that early morning. It seemed so long ago now. The night was quiet around her, the only sound the rhythmic lapping of the water. Hunched down into the warmth of her old fleece, she stared out across the black expanse of sea.

  Above her the household slept, peaceful now that Lena was back with them. The moment Lena had stepped through the doorway there had been a sense of rightness about the house again, as though things were falling once more into their proper place. But Maggie could not rest.

  Although the beach was deserted, she didn’t feel alone. Marco felt strangely close to her tonight, as though she had summoned his presence with her words. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but more than once after her mother’s death she could have sworn she felt Ana’s hand on her head, soothing her, comforting her. She’d turn suddenly, and though the room was empty, the air was warmer, redolent of oregano and a whiff of her mother’s Charlie perfume. It felt the same tonight. Marco was so close she half expected to turn and see him sitting where Daniel had sat. She could almost smell him, his clove cigarettes and the spicy scent of his skin.

  “How could you?” Maggie demanded again, staring at the empty space on the log as though he were sitting there beside her. She shook her head, outraged by his actions. They seemed so callous, so selfish. How could he want to trade his family for a pile of drawings, for something made of steel and glass?

  “It isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth that,” she said with conviction.

  She pictured him on the log, leaning away from her, long legs crossed, casually lighting a clove cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame to shield it from the breeze blowing in off the water. He smiled, that knowing half smile that was part of his charm but could irk her so.

  “What are you really angry about, Maggie girl?” she heard him say, his tone light. “Would you still say that if I had left them and come to you?”

  And there it was, the traitorous thought she’d been dodging ever since Lena told her about the separation. She had not allowed herself to voice it, but she could not avoid it. Marco had pinpointed it exactly. The ugly, painful, tantalizing truth.

  If Marco had left Lena, he could have been hers.

  Maggie felt for the pocket of her travel pants, her fingers brushing the familiar shape of the leather wallet holding her photos. It could have been real. She could have had Marco. The thought made her heart race. For so long she had wanted him, ached for him, dreamed about what their life together could be.

  She closed her eyes, riveted by an image—she and Marco rolled up together in a Bedouin tent in North Africa, keeping each other warm in the cold desert air, laughing with the sheer adventure and improbability of their lives spent together in this way. In an instant she saw it all, their days together spinning out before her like threads of brightly colored silk, a vivid jumble of ruby and canary yellow and turquoise—the future they might have had. She saw them standing wind-burnt and carefree in the thin air on the high salt flats of Bolivia, the glistening salt stretching away before them like a vast, solid ocean. In the jungle in Fiji, balancing in an overloaded canoe on a rain-swollen river, soaked through from a summer rainstorm. Cross-legged at a low wooden table in a tent in Turkey, drinking alma chai and eating gözleme as the smoke from a wood-burning oven stung their eyes. Together, always together, traveling the world, living the life they should have shared all along. The images felt so real that she was rooted to the spot, struck with a longing so intense she couldn’t move.

  “It could have been real,” she murmured. “I could have had him.” She tried to draw a breath around the terrible longing choking her, the truth lodged like a stone in he
r throat. It would never happen now. Marco was gone for good. His life had ended that day in the cold, black water. In those few bleak moments, all her hope had ended too.

  A sharp breeze whipped in off the ocean, chilling her face. She touched her cheek, expecting to find tears, but it was only the salt spray from the water. She sat for a long while, thinking of Marco, whose life was over too soon, and the tragedy of what he had left behind, the mess and puzzle and sheer loss of him. He would never be hers. He had never been hers. It felt like such a waste of life, an irrevocable waste.

  “Why did it have to happen like this?” she demanded, half expecting an answer. “When we finally could have been together.”

  She stared at the spot beside her, willing Marco to answer, conjuring him with her despair. She saw him there, arms crossed, listening to her. His hair was longer than it had been for years, and he was wearing the old bomber jacket he’d had since Rhys, the leather so broken in it felt like butter to the touch. She wondered briefly, if she went into the house, where the jacket would be. Would it still be hanging empty over Marco’s loafers in the mudroom? She wanted so badly for it not to be so, for Marco really to be here beside her tonight.

  Marco cocked his head and looked at her, curious. “Would you have wanted me, if I had left them and come to you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she answered him immediately. “You’re the only one I ever wanted.”

  The words rolled off the tip of her tongue by instinct. She accepted them as true. They had always been true.

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow, challenging her reflexive response. He tapped the glowing end of his cigarette, ash falling to the stones below. She glanced down, opening her mouth to repeat her affirmation. When she inhaled, she could taste cloves. She looked up, but the space where Marco had been was empty. All was still around her. There was only the soft shush, shush of the waves in the darkness and the chill breeze that tossed her curls across her face. She wrapped her arms around herself, cold to the core.