To the Ends of the Earth

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Motionless, Cat watched color seep into the starless arch of sky beyond her window. She lay on her side, trying to ease the cramps that held her lower body in a vise. She could feel the dampness between her legs.

  After three weeks of bed rest, the bleeding wasn’t better. If anything, it was worse.

  Like the pain of not hearing from Travis.

  Below Cat’s bedroom window, surf exploded over black rocks beneath a slate-colored sky. The ranks of storm waves were enormous, rhythmic, almost reliable. Almost. The ocean was like a person, never truly predictable. Sometimes a larger set of waves would sweep in without warning, booming and tumbling onto the shore, making the house tremble with the power of the unleashed sea.

  Cat held her breath, waiting for the beautiful violence of the biggest waves, waiting for the clash of fluid force and stone. Eagerly her eyes searched for the telltale dark lines of the larger waves looming out of the brightening day. And when the huge breakers came in their fives or sevens, bringing their own vicious thunder, she smiled triumphantly, glorying in the violent sea.

  It was like having someone scream for her when she was too proud to scream for herself.

  She made a low, pleased sound when she finally spotted another dark line looming on the horizon, the first of another series of smooth-backed monsters leaping up out of the sea.

  Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught a slight motion partway down the cliff. Cold horror drenched her when she saw Jason darting down his stairway to the beach, coming to visit her as he had on so many dawns. He was too young to understand the danger of the big waves humping up on the horizon, rolling toward shore with lethal power.

  Cat screamed even though she knew Jason couldn’t hear. “No! Jason, go back!”

  Still screaming, she raced for the back door. She yanked it open and sprinted across the deck to the stairway that went down to the beach.

  “Jason, go back! Jason!”

  But even Cat’s screams couldn’t cut through the relentless roaring of surf and wind. Cataracts of water smashed over rocks, burying the lower quarter of her stairway in a deceptively creamy froth.

  Jason paused on the beach, but not to go back. He was waiting for the pause between waves. When the pause came, it would be shorter than he expected and the following wave would be larger, the first of the big ones Cat had seen leaping darkly on the horizon.

  Bruising her bare feet without feeling it, she bolted down the stairs. Her whole being was focused on the distance between her and the boy who was even now dashing over the foamy beach.

  Somewhere in her mind she counted off the seconds since the wave had retreated, counted the steps Jason had made along the beach, counted the stairs he had to climb before he would be beyond the reach of the combers that were rising up out of the sea to explode in blue-green violence on her stairway.

  Too much distance.

  Not enough time.

  Cat didn’t scream again, even when she saw the next wave come apart, burying the beach in a powerful, deadly wall of surf. She simply ran faster than she ever had in her life, racing down the steps with reckless speed.

  Not enough time.

  Heart bursting, breath sawing, Cat reached Jason at the same instant the wave did. She wrapped her arms around him and the twisted iron railing and hung on with all her strength.

  A wall of water slammed into her, over her. She held her breath and Jason and the rail until the wave reversed, trying to suck everything back down to the sea. Coughing, strangling, blind, she managed to stagger up three stairs with the boy when the force of the water pulling at her weakened.

  Cat neither heard nor saw the next wave. It burst over her, burying her in a violent explosion of green and white. Before she could recover, the third big wave hammered her to her knees. With a burst of strength that came from desperation, she hung on to Jason and the railing.

  The retreat of the third wave combined with the incoming power of the fourth. It was a cold ocean slamming over Cat, bruising her, crushing her, and not retreating at all. The fifth wave hit before the fourth was gone. There was no time for breath, no air to breathe. Her head was spinning from lack of oxygen, yet it was the thought of Jason that frightened her. He was a slack weight in her arms, threatening to slip away.

  Half-conscious, Cat forced herself to her feet. Desperately she tried to lift Jason’s limp body above the reach of the devouring sea.

  It was like trying to lift the world.

  The clock in her mind ticked off the seconds between waves, telling her that it was already too late.

  The sixth breaker consumed Cat, dragging her down, clawing at the boy who was too heavy for her to carry. Barely conscious, she sensed the brief second of calm while the wave was balanced between advance and retreat.

  She knew that when the balance shifted, when the wall of water rushed back to the sea, it would take her with it.

  I’m sorry, Jason.

  But she couldn’t even say the words, nor could Jason have heard her if she spoke.

  The wave hesitated, then began its powerful retreat.

  Cat felt the rough railing slip away beneath her clutching hands. Before she could renew her grip, the world jumped crazily, throwing her off her feet. Dimly she thought another wave had come in, a wave so strong that it was washing her up the stairs on its crest.

  Then she realized that someone was carrying her, carrying Jason, taking them both beyond the reach of the violent sea. When she saw her own deck, she struggled free and reached for Jason.

  “He needs—”

  It was all Cat could manage for the water choking her, strangling her. Fighting for breath, retching water, she went to her knees on the deck next to Jason. She tried to give him artificial respiration, but she was coughing too violently to breathe for herself, much less for him.

  Hands crisscrossed by fine scars reached past Cat and wrapped around Jason, hands strong enough to defeat the wild sea and gentle enough to coax breath back into a small child.

  Travis.

  Cat closed her eyes, braced herself against the wracking coughs, and kept counting seconds in the back of her mind.

  It seemed like a lifetime before Jason coughed, yet she had counted off less than eighty seconds before the child was breathing on his own.

  She coughed wrenchingly again and again, clearing water from her lungs. Then she felt something break inside, felt a single searing pain. Warmth rushed out of her, taking her remaining strength. With a small cry she sank to the deck.

  Travis heard, and turned to her. His face was grim, his eyes haunted, his voice ragged.

  “You’re bleeding, Cat. You must have cut your leg.”

  She looked down, saw the blood mixed with sea water on her legs, blood pooling on the deck.

  Blood flowing out of her womb.

  The scream that clawed from her throat was a savage denial that she could lose everything she had wanted out of life, that in the space of a few weeks she could be peeled like a living shell until nothing was left but a transparent, bleeding core.

  And then nothing at all.

  The scream was still raw in Cat’s throat when another kind of wave surged up and broke over her. She gave herself to its blackness with a passion she had once saved for life.

  Travis waited for Dr. Stone to emerge from the hospital room that Cat shared with three other people.

  “How is she?” Travis asked.

  “Sleeping. I gave her something.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” He met and matched the doctor’s cool, assessing look.

  “Are you related to Cathy?”

  Travis’s eyes narrowed. “Not legally. But we’re . . . close.”

  “I see. Have you had those cuts and bruises looked at?”

  “There’s nothing worth looking at.”

  “Does Cathy have anyone who should be notified?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “Come with me.”

  Sh
e led Travis to what looked like an interns’ lounge. Scarred plastic chairs, ratty tables, battered food and drink machines. The magazines were old enough to vote but too worn to make the effort.

  “Sit down,” Dr. Stone said.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “Did I ask?”

  Travis measured the doctor’s calm determination. Then he lowered himself into a nearby chair.

  “Well, you don’t limp and your legs are still flexible,” she said crisply. “How is your back?”

  “It will be stiff tomorrow. Nothing that a swim or a hot tub can’t take care of. How is Cat?”

  “Cat? Oh, Cathy. She lost the pregnancy.”

  Travis hoped the knife turning in his guts didn’t show. He sensed that the good doctor would probably enjoy his pain.

  “Nothing to say?” Dr. Stone goaded.

  “Just tell me how she is.”

  “I have. She’s not pregnant.”

  “Are you saying she’ll never have children because of this?” he asked tightly.

  “No. Cathy had a relatively simple miscarriage. No complications, physically speaking.”

  Travis closed his eyes and let out his breath. The relief made him weak. “Thank God. She’ll be all right, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His eyes snapped open as relief vanished. “What?”

  “My dear young man,” Dr. Stone said, yet her eyes said Travis was anything but dear to her, “Cathy has spent the last three weeks flat on her back in bed, alone, terrified of miscarriage. She described her feelings to me very well—a hole at the center of everything. She stumbles in and then she falls and keeps on falling.”

  Grimly Travis fought to keep his emotions from showing. “If Cat knew she was at risk of miscarrying, why wasn’t she in the hospital?”

  “No insurance. No money.”

  Travis flinched as though the doctor had struck him. “Are you saying that she would still be pregnant if she had been in the hospital?”

  “Odd. She asked me the same thing.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “The truth.”

  “Damn it!” Travis exploded. “Do I have to drag it out of you word by word?”

  Abruptly Dr. Stone sighed. “However satisfying it would be to torment you for your callus treatment of your lover, I find I haven’t the stomach for it. I can see, despite your attempt at a poker face, that you’re already doing an excellent job of tormenting yourself.”

  “Don’t stop now. Twist the knife again. Tell me about Cat.”

  The doctor smiled slightly, liking the fierce-looking stranger in spite of herself.

  “Mr. Danvers, no matter what care Cathy received, she was simply too physically depleted to sustain a pregnancy. Everything we did was too little, too late. Her body started trying to shed the pregnancy as soon as conception occurred. She wanted that baby. She fought for it. She is a very strong-willed woman. But in the end . . .” The doctor spread her hands, palm up, empty.

  Travis forced himself to breathe past the pain he wouldn’t reveal. “Cat’s money worries are over. Move her to a private room. Get her whatever she needs that money can buy. Do it now.”

  “Too little, too late.”

  “Shit,” he said, closing his eyes for an instant. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m telling you that money is too small a bandage to put on a wound like Cathy’s.”

  Ice settled in Travis’s stomach. “You said she was all right.”

  “She is, physically. That’s less than half the battle after a miscarriage. Depression is common. The male doctors call it hormones and shrug it off. But hormones are only part of it. The rest is something fundamentally female. I doubt if a man could understand the loss.”

  “Try me.”

  This time when Dr. Stone measured Travis, he made no attempt to conceal his own grief. There was no need. He could see the doctor’s pain; she was talking about her own loss as well as her patient’s.

  For a time she was connected in the most intimate possible way with another life. Now that is gone.

  For everyone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  WHEN CAT woke up she thought she was still caught in the last violent wave, green and white pouring over her, surrounding her. Her heart squeezed and then beat frantically before she realized that the green was pale, calm, and the white was clean, smooth, and dry.

  Sheets. Walls. A bed.

  Quiet.

  Her body ached everywhere. When she moved to ease her muscles, she realized that a man’s hand was wrapped around her wrist.

  Cat blinked, focused, then blinked again in disbelief. Travis was asleep in a chair next to her bed. His hand was around her wrist, fingertips resting on her pulse as though even asleep he needed to be reassured that her heart still beat.

  With a small shudder she closed her eyes. At a great distance she heard the waves breaking, cataracts pouring over her, drowning her and the boy she couldn’t have loved more if he had been her own.

  But Jason was safe now, thanks to Travis.

  Jason is safe and I drowned.

  That means I’m safe, too. Nothing can hurt you when you’re already drowned.

  The thought soothed Cat, surrounding her with numbness. In being close to Travis she had lost far too much, more than she thought she could lose . . . more than was hers to lose and still survive.

  Deliberately she eased her wrist from his grip.

  The motion woke Travis. His eyes opened, blue-green, vivid, seeing through Cat to her core. Something inside her moved beneath his look, something very like pain. She couldn’t bear that, couldn’t bear him seeing her empty core.

  When he took her hand again she removed her fingers with cool finality.

  “Jason,” she said.

  A single word. It was all she could say, for her throat was raw from salt water and screams.

  “He’s fine,” Travis said quickly. “The ER doctor checked him over, read him the riot act about storm waves and common sense, and then turned him over to his mother for scolding and hugging.”

  Even as Travis spoke, the last stubborn bit of Cat’s emotions that had struggled against numbness quietly gave up.

  Jason was fine.

  That was all she needed to know, the best she could have hoped for since she saw blood pooling around her on the deck.

  “Thank you for saving him,” Cat said, closing her eyes, her voice colorless. “I wasn’t strong enough.”

  Silence came to the room, an emptiness haunted by the sounds of surf breaking against black rocks. But the waves lived only in Cat’s mind. She hoped if she slept, they would go away, leaving her in a silence to equal her numbness.

  Warm fingers touched her hand, then closed around her wrist in hard demand.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about yourself?” Travis said.

  Cat opened her eyes. She saw nothing but the emptiness inside her where an ember of life had once burned. She didn’t need to say anything, ask any questions. There was nothing to say, no reason to ask after the dead.

  The utter lack of animation in Cat made her a stranger to Travis. He had seen her in so many ways—exhausted, furious, passionate, laughing, focused in work—but never like this. Indifferent. Completely.

  Fear slid cool claws over Travis’s skin, stirring the hair at his nape. He had prepared arguments for her, pleas for her, reasons for her . . . but she wasn’t there.

  Slowly his fingers loosened on her wrist. Tenderly he stroked it, feeling for her pulse. Finding it reassured him at a primitive level.

  “Dr. Stone told me you would be depressed,” he said quietly, “even though you knew how great the odds were against a successful pregnancy.”

  Cat didn’t even blink.

  “She said that your depression will pass,” Travis continued. “Physically, you’re fine. Exhausted, a little bruised, but nothing that rest won’t cure.”

  She said nothing.

  H
e turned her face so that she had to look at him. When he saw the emptiness in her eyes, he whispered her name and gathered her against his chest to comfort her, rocking her.

  Cat neither responded nor retreated. She was as still as a photograph in his arms.

  Fear condensed in Travis’s stomach. He smoothed the cool fire of Cat’s hair away from her face. Her eyes didn’t change as he touched her, didn’t focus on him, didn’t even see him. She was looking through him to the hallway beyond.

  It was as though he wasn’t there.

  “Listen to me,” Travis said urgently. “We’ll be able to have another baby. Cat? Do you hear me?”

  She heard him, but his voice was far away, muffled by layers of blessed numbness, layer on layer of icy water enfolding her, a whole silent ocean to drown in.

  His arms tightened as though he knew she was slipping away finally, irretrievably, drowning in silence. He held her close again, rocking her slowly, trying to warm both of them.

  “I know you hate me,” Travis said in a ragged voice. “I came back to you too late. If you don’t want my baby, then another man’s. Anything, Cat, anything, but don’t look like that. Scream and call me names. I deserve all of them. At least cry. Tears will heal you faster than anything else.”

  There was no answer, no movement, nothing.

  Travis looked down at the woman who lay motionless in his arms. If he hadn’t felt Cat’s weight, he wouldn’t have believed that he held her. She was not there.

  No matter how he searched, he didn’t see the woman whose photographs hummed with passion and intelligence, the woman whose mind and body had become a part of him, the woman whose incandescent fury had burned through all his hours since she had taught him how little money could buy.

  Too little. Too late.

  She had retreated beyond his reach, beyond the reach of anyone or anything.

  With aching tenderness Travis kissed the tumbled mass of auburn hair.

  “This isn’t you,” he whispered, plea and command at the same time. “In a few days you’ll feel better. You’ll take your cameras and catch the waves coming up over the edge of the world, waves that came thousands of miles just to touch your feet. Smart waves.” His lips brushed her cheek. “Lucky waves. I learned from them, but I learned too late.”