The One Who Got Away: A Novel

by Bethany Bloom

  “I don’t know much. I would have been at the hospital, but it has taken me a while to find you.” Paul tossed his cell phone into her lap. “Call your mother.”

  Her mind went blank and she suddenly couldn’t remember the number. Her hands shook as she scrolled through his contacts. She couldn’t find it on his phone. What would he have listed it under? She took a deep breath. How could she forget her own mother’s number? Of course, she knew what it was. She began to dial.

  He slammed both hands on the steering wheel.

  “Paul! Take it easy.”

  “Shit, Olivine. What am I supposed to think or say or do right now?”

  “I told you it’s not what you think. I’ll explain,” she said, holding the cell phone to her ear. “She’s not picking up.”

  “Try your sister.”

  “Do you think he’s…he’s…. Do you think he’s okay?”

  “I don’t know Olivine. Maybe you should have been there. Maybe you should have been home. Then you’d be at the hospital right now. With everyone else.”

  Henry’s mother had died when she and Henry had last been together. Oh God. What if. Oh God. Yarrow, pick up.

  “Ollie! Thank God,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Get here.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s stable, honey. He’s going to be okay.” As she spoke, her words bubbled in her throat. Her voice cracked and she made a soft mewing sound. “He’s going to be okay, Ollie. But get here.”

  Olivine was careful not to look at Paul. His face had new edges to it, all of a sudden. His eyes were narrow, a burning green. Hard.

  He whipped into the circular drive at the entrance to the emergency room and slammed on the brakes, lurching her forward against her seatbelt. “Get out,” he said.

  She didn’t look back at him. She couldn’t look at his face this way, and then there was a blur of opening glass doors. The woman at the reception desk gave her a sad smile and pointed down a corridor, through a set of double doors. And at the end of the hall, in a bank of mauve vinyl built-in couches, sat Yarrow and Christine and when they saw her, they stood and threw their arms around her, and Olivine stood inside their embrace, and she willed her body to stop shaking, and when Christine and Yarrow finally let go, Christine said, “The doctor is in with him right now, and when he comes out, we can go back in.”

  “What happened?” Olivine asked.

  “We’re not completely sure. I thought he was going to die, Olivine,” Christine said. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, as though she were staring at something far, far away. And then they became glassy. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  Yarrow answered. “It was a myocardial infarction. A heart attack. But a mild one.”

  “We had some baby aspirin,” Christine interrupted. “because we’ve always had it there for Mom and Dad. You should always have some on hand. I mean, even young people can have heart attacks. Even Artie. The paramedics said it might have saved his life….He came in to the house. And he was sweating and he said he was having a funny pain, and I asked him what kind of pain, and he just slumped to the floor, and he went kind of gray. I thought he was going to die, Olivine.” Christine threw her arms around Olivine again. Her breath rattled in her chest. She squeezed Olivine hard, and then she grabbed her by the wrists and held her out, arms outstretched.

  “Where were you? We tried to call your cell. Your home. So many times.”

  Olivine shrugged and shook her head. Paul had arrived and was pacing the other side of the waiting room. He looked at the floor, at the khaki and ecru tiles. His face was long and his eyes heavy-lidded. Christine turned toward Yarrow and had just opened her mouth to say something when a brown paneled door opened at the end of the hall and a petite woman in blue scrubs came toward them, smiling. “Dr. Metcalf is still in there, but you are welcome to go in now.” Olivine turned to grab for Paul’s hand, out of instinct, to go down the hall with her, but he stayed back in the waiting room. He talked to the nurse for a moment, softly.

  And so Olivine grabbed for Yarrow’s hand instead, and they walked just behind their mother and as they reached Artie’s room, she saw Paul in a reflection of the glass on the door, three paces behind. And then she saw her father in the room, with the oxygen tubes in his nose, looking like Dad. His color was wrong, but he smiled at them, his familiar wry smile, as they marched in. “My tall beauties,” he said in a weak voice to Dr. Metcalf. “Look at my bevy of beauties.”

  The doctor glanced up from his notes to pull his lips back into a smile. He had a bald head and large features and Olivine felt suddenly like she had entered a cartoon. Everything seemed exaggerated and slightly off. When Paul entered, Dr. Metcalf shook his hand and they spoke softly together for a moment.

  Then Dr. Metcalf turned to them all, and he said, “He’s going to be fine. He’s going to need to go through some cardio rehab, which you can all help him with. We’ll be working to come up with the right combination of medication, as well, which can do a lot to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” He turned then to Artie and patted his leg. His hands were large, like paddles. “And we’ll be able to talk about all of that on a new day. For now, let’s let him rest as much as possible. He’ll be staying here for a little while.”

  “A little while?” Christine said, her hand going to her chest.

  “At least through the night. And probably tomorrow, too. All precautionary,” he said. “We will take good care of him, and…” he glanced at his clipboard, “Christine, you are welcome to spend the night. That bench folds into a bed and there are linens in the closet. I’ll have a nurse show you, if you wish to stay.”

  “Oh, I wish to stay,” Christine said.

  “The rest of you should probably make your way home soon. Dad has had a big day. And he’s going to be just fine.”

  He gave a tight-lipped smile to each of them, one and then another, and then he disappeared from the room. Paul walked toward Artie, clapped his hand on his shoulder, strong and resolute. His voice deepened, “I’ll make sure you will get the best care possible.” Then Paul turned and smiled at Christine. He put his arms around her, squeezed and released. Then he turned to Yarrow. “Could you give Olivine a ride home? I’m going to need to check on a few things here.” Yarrow nodded, and, without a word or a glance back to Olivine, Paul charged back through the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  The house was still and filled with the clean scent of her life with Paul. Candle wax and houseplants. Her cell phone lay on the kitchen counter just where she had left it. Nineteen missed calls and twelve voice messages, all from the night before, between eight o’clock and eight-fifteen. No new calls from Paul. Had he stayed at the hospital? Had he gone out to the cabin? Should she go out there, too? No, what if Paul returned, and she wasn’t here? That would be the end. She couldn’t go back there. Not tonight.

  The back of her throat burned each time she swallowed. Her stomach churned and growled, but she didn’t feel she had the energy to chew or swallow food. Standing at the dining room table, she deleted the voicemails from her phone without listening to them. And then she showered, turning the water so hot it made her light-headed. Dizzily, she walked to the closet where she chose something lacy and satiny but floor-length. She tied her hair in a towel and then she sat down at Paul’s desk, varnished and polished to a shine. She opened the top middle drawer where she knew he always kept fifty sheets of extra-white paper, and she pulled out three crisp pages.

  She felt so deliberate, suddenly. So reverent. She heard her breath echo in her head. She chose a pen, a heavy Montblanc, from the first drawer on the right. She held it, poised above the paper for a time, and then she began to write.

  The pen was just right: the ink flowed quickly and the tip never snagged as she slid her hand across the page. She never lifted her pen or stopped to read what she had written; she simply kept her hand gliding over the paper as quickly as she could, and, before long, her letters and words became loopy and
loose, and her words became honest and free.

  She wrote about her father and the look on his face when he saw her enter his hospital room. The heart monitors and tubes. The grayness around his mouth and near his temples. His lips the color of dust and ash.

  She did not write about Paul. She did not write about Henry. But she wrote about love. Her love for her father, for her mother, for her sister, for her grandmother and for her grandfather. She wrote about her sister’s love for Jon and for their children. She wrote about her love for the mountains and the lakes and the streams and the cabin.

  And when she had been writing awhile, she felt her chest lift and expand. She felt the fuzziness in her head begin to fade. And she sat for a minute, knowing just what she would do.

  She gathered the pages she had filled, tapped them once on the desk, and folded them in half. Where in her home could she keep them? Did she have a place of her own here? A place where Paul wouldn’t see them or read them? She thought for a moment, and then she folded the papers in half again and slipped them into her handbag.

  Then she slid between the sheets of her bed, and she turned toward the wall and pretended to be asleep, just in case Paul came home and wanted to talk. And this was how she finally drifted off.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sunlight flooded though the skylight, and Olivine’s eyes blinked open. She lifted her head toward Paul’s side of the bed. It was pulled tight. Pillows still arranged in neat stacks. He had probably spent the night at the hospital. Was he on call? She couldn’t remember.

  She wanted to call Henry, but she realized then that she didn’t have a way to reach him. She laughed to herself that this man—who dominated her every thought, who made her body come alive, in memory and, now, in life—hadn’t even given her his phone number.

  She grabbed for her phone on the nightstand and called Christine to check on Artie. He was feeling fine. He had a restful night and was eating breakfast. Yes, his color looked good, she said. Much better. Olivine promised she would come out right away. And she would, but first, she would go out, and she would see Henry. She would drive out there to see, in the light of day, if things were the same. If things felt the same. He would want to know, too. He would want to know that her dad was okay. That everything was okay.

  She felt like a schoolgirl then, giddy and elastic. She and Henry Cooper had nearly kissed. She giggled to herself. She had nearly let it happen. Her face was just rising to meet his… she played it over in her mind and the scene took on a dreamlike, cinematic quality. And then Paul had come and sent her world crashing down on her. But it would all be okay. Henry had found her again. He had cracked her world open again. He had made her feel the juice and the glow. The way she always felt with him. An ease, a safety. A sense that everything would be okay.

  *****

  Bare branches clicked against the side of the Jeep as she roared up the driveway. There was another car here, parked nose-to-nose alongside Henry’s bus. A silver sedan. Small with a few dents on the side.

  And there, on the porch, with the cut tables stood Henry. He held a hand up to her in greeting. Palm up. Olivine leapt out of the Jeep and burst up the steps to the front porch.

  “He’s going to be okay!” she blurted, and she moved close to him, ready to throw her arms around his neck, but here…here in the light of day, Henry stood stiff and cold. He gave her a curt nod as he took a step backward. His lips pressed together into a tight line.

  Everything stopped inside her. Her hands and face felt large and conspicuous, like they had taken a hit of Novocain. She watched as Henry turned to a man—or was it a boy?—who was standing off to the side of the cut table. The young man stared at her, and she struggled to place him. “Who is going to be okay?” he asked, looking only at Henry. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen, and tall, an inch or so taller than Henry, but his posture was rounded. He had dishwater blond hair, the same shade as his complexion, and he wore jeans and a green t-shirt emblazoned with a Mountain Dew logo.

  The quilt from last night was folded neatly in a corner, covered with a fine layer of sawdust. The cut tables and the sawhorses stood there just as they had the night before. A single yellow cord now snaked along them, connected to a circular saw which rested on its side near a series of chisels. The scent of cedar was suddenly cloying, suspended in the air.

  “Her dad. He had a heart attack last night,” Henry answered, turning to face the boy.

  Then he turned toward Olivine. “You must be so relieved.” His voice was angular and automatic. He looked at her as though she were a client, needlessly flitting about the jobsite.

  Olivine’s eyes beaded up. Her throat tightened. Damn him. He was going to do it to her again. Lure her in. Leave her.

  “This is Olivine,” Henry was saying to the young man. “She owns this cabin.”

  “Oh,” he said, and he buried his hands in his pockets.

  Henry continued to look at her blankly, coolly, as though just waiting for her to leave, so he could forget the interruption and return to his work, to his…whoever this was.

  Olivine cocked her head sideways. If she were going to be treated like a client, she would act like one. “And you are?” she asked, her voice suddenly tight, commanding.

  Henry shook his head at her. “This is Max,” he said. His voice was cool.

  Of course. Faced with his family, everything was different. She should have known. “Max,” she repeated. “Glad to meet you.” She thrust out her hand and looked him straight in the eye.

  He pumped her hand once and then dropped it. “I’m Henry’s son.” He punched each syllable. “Who are you?”

  Henry answered in a steely tone: “I’ve already told you, Max. This is Olivine. She owns this house. She is our client. She comes by on occasion to find out how progress is going.”

  Henry then turned to Olivine and said, “It’s going well. We can remove the clamps as soon as this afternoon. Then we’ll apply the stain and she’ll be done.”

  “So, we’ll be finished and out of here in a day or two,” the boy added, his gaze unflinching.

  “Perfect then,” Olivine said.

  She had been dismissed, and, not having any more to say, she nodded and started back to the Jeep.

  No. She wasn’t going to let it end like this. She whipped back around to face him. Henry’s jaw was set, his brow furrowed.

  “I won’t be by again,” she said, looking straight into Henry’s eyes, “So I’d like to give you my cell phone number. That way you can reach me if you need to. If you have any questions…or if you want to offer any explanations.”

  Henry folded his arms across his chest, and he stood still. She strode to the cut table where a carpenter’s pencil lay in the sawdust, and she snatched it up, willing her hands not to shake. And she wrote her cell phone number directly on the plywood cut table. And then she turned to go. She couldn’t look at his expressionless, blank face. Not again. She could not look at this man who, twelve hours before, she would have given herself to.

  Once again, he had shut her out, pushed her out, folded her up and sent her away. He had dismissed her and he had dismissed her memory, and she could do the same with him. She had done it before, and she would do it again.

  Thank goodness Paul had come along when he did. Into her life, and into the driveway last night. Before she had thrown it all away for…for him. Paul wasn’t perfect, but life with him was predictable. It was controlled. It was secure. It was never hot and cold like this. And it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t too late to find Paul and to get him back.

  As she popped open the door to the Jeep, she heard the whirring of a saw. He was back to work. Just like that. She slammed the door shut, whipped the car around in the driveway and roared away—snow and ice and pebbles pinging upward in her wake. Inside, she felt still. And alone.

  *****

  Once she reached the highway, she let the tears fall, without bringing a hand to her face. How could she have been so stupid? Again. Ten years
later, and it was the same. Again. Wait for Olivine to fall hard. Shut her down. Thank God she had gone out there this morning. To see. Before Paul was lost to her forever.

  She wiped her face now with the back of her hand and sat taller in the seat. Tall clouds had settled into the valley, and spring snow had begun to fall. Each flake was the size of a quarter, plunking downward on the road and on the landscape, obscuring it with a wetness and white.

  Where would Paul be right now? Home? The hospital? She took a corner too fast, and slid on the slush that was now collecting on the road. She steered into the skid and righted the car just as a sedan came around the corner. Her heart pounded hard.

  She glanced down at her phone, which she had tossed on the passenger seat. No calls, no texts. And still the snow fell. It piled on her windshield, and she turned the wipers on full blast. Ka-skwunk, ka-skwunk. Bits of ice and snow flew in all directions.

  Paul was always at the hospital. She would go there. She would check on Dad. She would go and be with her family. She would go where she belonged.

  The placid woman at reception directed her down a new hallway, to a new room. Yarrow was just coming out of Artie’s door with Jon and each of her children fanned around her. The older children held one another’s hands; baby Claire clutched at Jon’s shoulder. As Olivine approached, Yarrow waved them down the hallway and then she grabbed for Olivine’s hand and she squeezed at it and she said, softly, “He’s going to be okay, Olivine.” And Olivine’s mind flashed to Henry and to the young man who was now standing beside him, working beside him, and she realized that, for eight years, Henry had been this young man’s step-father. They had eight years of history, of loving one another, in just the same way she loved her family. Henry was simply not available to love her. It was too late. She would continue her life with Paul. She would continue making her own history. Olivine’s anger ebbed into a dull ache, straight in the center of her chest.