Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  “Their voices . . .” I said in awe, imagining them again as we lay there. “Have you ever heard anything like it?”

  “Only in Christmas songs.” He laughed, but I didn’t get the joke. “Hark the herald angels sing? Imagine if it’d been those guys instead—would’ve blasted people right out of the church.”

  Some time later I expressed a thought that wouldn’t leave me alone. “Daniel, I’m not ready to go yet.” There was an edge to my voice that I hadn’t expected. “Despite everything that’s happened, I have to find her. I do! And I’m not going back till that happens.”

  “And I’ll never leave without you.” As he reached for my hands, the tenderness of his gaze rivaled that of the Angels. “I’ll stay till the end, till the very end, if that’s what it takes.”

  His face was close, mere inches from mine. I knew Daniel was going to kiss me and I knew I should have turned away—but I had loved him once so very much. And we were in this together. Till the very end, if necessary. What more could I want?

  Suddenly, my lips were on his and he was kissing me back as passionately as I kissed him. But in the distant recesses of my mind, I heard a faint voice. Though not loud enough to even qualify as a whisper, there it was. There, Ethan was. Just the sound of his voice made me long to be with him. A pain stabbed my heart. I pushed Daniel away, less gently that I had intended, and without any explanation. The expression on his face told me he had heard him, too.

  “I’m really starting to hate that guy.” His gray-blue eyes were dull as he spoke and the intensity of his anger knocked me back a step. The force of it was real. “Just remember,” he told me, “I loved you first.”

  I didn’t bother to explain to Daniel that if Ethan was correct, he had fallen in love with me over seventy years ago. Long before Daniel and I were even a thought.

  Signaling an inexplicable mood shift, his eyes seemed to turn a less stormy blue. He smiled thinly at me. After getting to his feet, he bowed gallantly, and offered his hand to help me up. Though we walked humanlike—too slowly—to the bluffs’ edge, I wanted to fly. His voice was getting louder, growing more insistent by the second. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard it earlier and kept lingering on the notion that Daniel had muffled it.

  But all of was nearly forgotten when I looked back into his too-innocent face. Daniel was trying hold onto his smile. He hugged me briefly then peeled back a corner of the sky. My shortcut was impossibly dark, but a full moon lit the way.

  “Hate to see you go . . .” he called, his words familiar, gently teasing. “But love to watch you walk away . . .”

  Before he dropped the flap, I cried, “That’s so ten years ago! You really need to get yourself a new line.” But I laughed anyway.

  18 Erratic State of Mind

  I ran up the footpath, ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, then tripped over the hem of my gown by accident. In my haste, I’d completely forgotten to change out of my stupid dress. I was totally horizontal when my body froze mid-air, my nose not more than a few centimeters from the paved trail. It was just a thought—a single thought—that caused me to flip instantly upright and land lightly on my feet. I was more surprised than shaken by what I’d done. After all, it wasn’t every day that a person outwitted gravity, but there it was. Was there be a reason for it? Like maybe I’d become so detached from my body that I no longer felt a part of the living realm? Or was Daniel having this effect on me?

  After making adjustments to my attire—something more appropriate for a visit with Ethan—I brushed the stray thoughts away as easily as I brushed a few stray leaves from the ends of my hair. Then I bolted up the darkened path in search of Ethan.

  I breathed more easily when I finally spotted him. He was sitting atop Erratic Rock, knees up, head in his hands. The forty-ton slab of stone, deposited there centuries ago by a prehistoric flood, wasn’t much to look at, but it was one of my favorite places to come and think. It sat at the top of a sweeping valley overlooking some vineyards and was just a short jog from downtown Mac. Seeing Ethan here made me happy knowing that—whether I had landed in the hospital or not, our paths would have eventually crossed, anyway. Destiny, it seemed, was at last on my side.

  “Ethan!” I cried, but he gave no response. Then more urgently, “Ethan!”

  When I was within a few feet of him, he glanced up. My first thought was that he’d been injured. I could see no visible wounds and yet . . . something was obviously wrong. His pale violet glow was absent, the ever-present light in his eyes dimmed. It was startling to see him so wild-eyed, but it wasn’t from pain. That much I could see.

  “Why don’t you ever ask me how you are?” His voice was a low growl.

  I kept my distance, only because I could feel something solid around him, something impenetrable. Not touching him bothered me so much it was almost painful.

  “Why don’t you ever ask me?” he demanded, his voice louder now.

  “What?” I struggled to make the connection. “Are you talking about my body?”

  “Yes, your body,” he bit out through his teeth.

  I thought he’d lost his mind. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s in bad shape.”

  “No,” he insisted, his jaw so tight I thought I heard his teeth grinding. “That’s just it. Until two days ago . . . aside from the fact that you weren’t waking up, and measured by all the standards we humans normally use . . . you were fine!” I heard the sarcasm in his tone and disregarded it. He was upset. Obviously.

  “That can’t be,” I argued, thinking back. “I was in a serious car accident. I’ve been in a coma for—” My brain caught up. “What do you mean, ‘until two days ago?’”

  He ignored my question, deliberately staring off at the oversized moon.

  After a moment, he said, “I’ve tried to make sense of it. I really have. Of course, I’m the only one who’s known where you’ve been all this time . . . and I’d mistakenly assumed that you and I would be together soon, that you were justifiably frightened by everything that’s happened, but soon—very soon—you were going to come back to me and it would all be worth it.” When he looked at me, I saw the strain in his eyes and heard the weariness in his tone. “Now I’m not so sure . . .”

  My mouth opened, though I had no idea what I was about to say, and he went on, his expression softening somewhat as he stared off at the moon again.

  “Deputy Washpun has been at the hospital since that first day, I told you that, and he explained to your family the details of the accident. It’s time you knew them, too.”

  I wasn’t the slightest bit enthused to hear specifics about my accident. Not because I thought it would make me feel bad, but because it was already past tense. Knowing there was nothing that I could do to alter the past, what was the stupid point of it?

  However, there was no deterring Ethan; I could see that. I held my ground, still a few feet from him (as close as I thought he would allow) and shut my mouth.

  “An elderly woman driving an ancient black Cadillac started the chain of events. She died at the scene, but for several minutes before that, she endured a massive heart attack. As she struggled through the pain, Washpun thinks she accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake.” Ethan sounded indifferent, as though he were speaking to a total stranger. “That’s when she collided with a 1970 Le Mans . . . the thing’s built like a tank. The accident might not have ended so badly except that your ex-boyfriend was speeding, probably trying to lose the deputy behind him. So when the Cadillac t-boned his car, he skidded, completely losing control.” His eyes, which had been staring darkly towards some distant point in the sky, flicked back to mine. “That’s where you come in.”

  “Ethan, none of this is new news, I already know about the—”

  He gave me a look that was cold enough to freeze the blood in my veins.

  “The streets were slick from the rain and oil,” he went on, “and when he tried to stop, the road conditions and his speed made for the perfect acciden
t.”

  I winced at perfect. It was a rude choice to describe what I went through.

  “And so it seemed to the casual observer that you were in terrible shape, but that wasn’t the case at all.” He emphasized, “Not by any means.”

  “A mangled leg and my head the size of a basketball?” I spat. “Not terrible?”

  “Your wounds were mostly superficial—a near impossibility in an accident like the one I described. By all accounts, you should have died that day.” He spoke in a raw whisper. I could hear the agony in it. “When his car struck you at the speed it was travelling, your leg should have sheared off at the knee. That front end is solid steel . . . Yet you bounced across it like a rubber ball with no internal injuries. Other than your left leg, nothing was broken. You didn’t even have a single cracked rib.”

  “But . . . I couldn’t breathe . . . that’s impossible!” I screamed. “After the accident, I couldn’t catch my breath. The pain was horrific! I insisted. “It was!”

  “Perhaps the shock of re-entering your body.” He slowly shook his head.

  I shuddered, thinking for the first time that it might have had something to do with the anguish of Mom’s death. That debilitating sadness felt far worse than any physical pain.

  “It’s difficult to say,” he went on in that same flat voice. “All I know for sure, you’ve amazed everyone—the deputy, the doctors, the nurses, your family. To them, you’re nothing shy of a miracle. As for me, I had no idea how you’d survived. I analyzed the facts so many times, trying to see how you’d made it through something so devastating while sustaining so few injuries . . . and there’s only one conclusion that makes any sense.”

  I had no idea where he was going with this—luck, chance . . . a divine hand?

  “It’s as though something was between you and the car.” His voice faltered. He looked at me. “As though something or possibly someone shielded you from the impact.”

  My knees gave way and I sank to the ground. I knew very well the someone he was referring to. It couldn’t be true.

  Ethan remained standing, seeming as dazed as I was. “There’s no reason you should be alive today, Hope. I believe you sustained the injuries you did because your mother must have missed the initial impact of your knee, and then your head must have slipped out of her arms.” I pictured it as he spoke . . . Vivienne cradling me . . . protecting me the only way she could, even in my final moments—

  “MOM!” I wailed, bursting into sobs.

  Suddenly Ethan was beside me, holding me. For how long he rocked me as the tears fell, I don’t know. Gathering myself together some time later, I made a random wish for one of Mac’s hankies. And when I opened my hand, it was there.

  Despite the awkwardness of it, I choked out a laugh.

  “Something I should know about?” Ethan’s voice sounded muffled. His chin, resting on the top of my head, stayed right where it was.

  “Nothing important,” I answered. I breathed in the scent of his shirt. Fabric softener and Ethan made for a soothing combo. If it were possible, I would have bottled it and made my fortune.

  “Ready to hear the rest?” His voice was soft and deep. A caress. I stifled a sigh.

  Leaning into him, gaining strength in the solidness of Ethan, all I did was nod. But it was easier to block out negative thoughts when I buried my face in his shoulder. It kept me from wondering about terrible girlfriends who kissed their former boyfriends and enjoyed it. Ethan’s black mood and mysterious lead-up wasn’t helping. Two days ago? Was that when I’d first kissed Daniel? For all I knew, that could have occurred moments, or even seconds ago. Had something unforeseen occurred—something to do with the choice I kept ignoring? I closed my eyes, buried my face deeper into his chest, and waited for him to speak.

  “You were in the ICU for only three days. Once you were stable, they moved you to another ward in the hospital. You were still in a coma, but everyone believed you were going to wake up at any moment. Medically speaking, there was no reason you shouldn’t have.” I couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded strange. Clinical. “The swelling on your brain subsided almost immediately. Your vitals were good. It was pretty much a sure thing—at least, that’s what I told your family. My insider information led me to believe that you were coming back soon.” As he said this, I giggled and cried at the same time. “You could say I was overly confident . . .

  “But that didn’t prepare me for the change that was about to happen. For five days, I waited for you to wake up. When my twelve-hour shift ended in the ICU, I was right back at your side.” He groaned a laugh. “Like I said, no one could have convinced me otherwise. I knew at any moment you were going to wake up and give me of your beautiful smiles.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. It sounded like nothing but mush in my head so I just let Ethan keep talking. He was doing a far better job of it than I ever could. I did pull my face out of his chest. Reaching for one of his hands that had been lying on the grass, I held it tenderly to my cheek.

  “You know, Brody thinks I’m crazy. I mentioned once that I’d been having dreams about you and must have implied that they seemed real to me. Imagine my surprise when he began telling me about a recent dream that he’d had . . . one where the three of us had gone climbing.” I gasped, thinking of repercussions for the future. Had Claire shared details of our visit with Brody? Had Brody also told Claire? “Tell me about it,” Ethan said. “Brody can’t remember what he ate for lunch yesterday, yet he recalled details from that so-called dream that I’d completely forgotten.”

  Sounding more exhausted as the story dragged on, he said, “Those five days were the longest five days of my life. It didn’t help that my dreams of you were so sporadic. Several days—nothing. Not even a glimpse. I thought it couldn’t get any worse.” Ethan paused for an excruciating moment. “And then on the sixth day, I was at your bedside when you started to convulse. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. To watch the girl I love die—all the while knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. At first, I thought you were having a heart attack, but your body wasn’t quite behaving like someone in the throes of one. My second thought was that your heart was being strangled from the inside out . . . Strange, I know, but that’s what came to mind. The horror-show ended nearly as quickly as it began, but I didn’t feel a sense of true relief. I still believed that I had lost you . . .” Ethan sounded half-dead himself, and terribly sad. “That was the most difficult part—believing that I had lost you a second time.”

  I lifted my eyes to his. When he looked back, I flinched. In the space of that instant, I’d felt his pain. “Ethan, you haven’t—”

  “Tell me what really happened that day, Hope.”

  When he’d said the strangling part, I knew. But I couldn’t just launch into the whole seduction scene. I considered it, imagined Ethan’s stricken and/or violent reaction, and then discarded that idea in a hurry.

  “There was a . . . um, complication when we went to rescue Daniel.”

  He groaned. “I told you he was trouble. Is he the reason you haven’t returned?”

  His tone bothered me. I was suddenly uncomfortable and irritated. I pulled out of his embrace. When I spoke, my voice was angrier than I had intended. “You have no idea how hard this has been! You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like to lose your mother—to want to see her and talk to her one last time. You’ve lived a charmed life, ridiculously perfect. There’s no way you could understand!”

  I slapped a hand across my mouth. Where had those awful words come from?

  The moon disappeared, and now the sun suddenly made an inexplicable appearance on the horizon. I stole a glance in every direction, quickly spotting his lanky, loping form on the hillside beyond the valley. My heart rate went up so fast I thought that Ethan could hear it. Though Daniel was too far away for anyone’s eyes (other than mine), I aimed imaginary laser beams at him, hoping
he would feel them and leave. Was he trying to make me hate him?

  Ethan’s voice interrupted my glaring. “Not so ridiculously perfect, Hope . . .”

  My attention, split in two directions, strained to focus on Ethan.

  Looking into his eyes, I heard the words he hadn’t yet spoken. It was both amazing and terrible to hear him in that moment—this uncanny ability that I’d wished for back at the Station now realized. His voice was just as beautiful (though sadder) in my head. Knowing what he was about to tell me—my mind skipped ahead to the very end, then worked its way backwards—I struggled to keep my face blank. When someone was about to disclose their most guarded secret, the last thing they needed to know was that the person they were about to tell had already heard every detail, had already experienced their pain—and all because they had intruded into a very private place that they didn’t belong.

  “There were two questions I didn’t answer on our first date,” Ethan began. I watched him as he spoke, but he was staring over my head at the shades of cinnamon illuminating the morning sky. It didn’t seem to bother him that in fewer seconds than it took to brew a cup of coffee, we had gone from midnight to dawn. But it bothered me. It bothered me immensely! It made me leery of what else Daniel might be capable of doing. Ethan looked back at me as he continued, “The first had to do with who I looked like. The second had to do with why I’d moved from Boston to Eugene, Oregon . . .”

  Of course! I’d assumed he skipped past those due to our limited time. Or maybe he’d pictured me—back at the hospital, ill and broken—and it was too much to deal with at that moment. I’d been wrong on both counts. At last, mind reading served a useful purpose.

  “Do you remember my tenth birthday, the one I told you about?” A yacht, sleek and white, came to mind. It didn’t look that small to me. “That day proved to be memorable for several reasons.” Ethan explained that later that evening, as he ran into his father’s study to find his first edition copy of Moby Dick—a gift from his beloved Aunt Elisa—he’d tripped over a corner of his mother’s silk carpet as he made his way out. The book in his hand went flying across the room and a stack of papers on his father’s desk sailed onto the floor.