Coast Road

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Did you call Grandma?”

  He let out a defeated breath. Incredibly, he hadn’t thought about Victoria Keats. But then, not incredibly at all. Victoria sent lavish gifts but rarely visited in the flesh. Since the gifts were largely unwanted and went unused, her presence in their lives was minimal. There were phone calls, but they were often more trying than not.

  “Nope,” he said as gently as he could. “Haven’t called Grandma. Think I’ll wait. If your mom wakes up soon, there won’t be much need.” He was taking the coward’s way out, but what the hell, he had enough else to deal with without that.

  He felt Hope even before she spoke, a tiny, timid warmth by his shoulder. “What’ll we do for dinner?” she asked.

  Jack thought of black tie and tails, beef Wellington, elegant dancing at the Fairmont with Jill, who adored him—and the same static he had heard earlier rang in his ears again. Dinner, shopping, doctor, dentist, picnic—with a glint of panic, he wondered if he was up for the task Rachel had set him.

  What were they doing for dinner? “Something,” he answered gruffly. “Now, shh. Let me rest.”

  “Are you going to fall asleep at the wheel?” Samantha asked, but the question was more frightened than snide.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “it’s your job to make sure I don’t. Watch my face. If my eyes close, hit me. Okay?”

  THE REST of the ride was accomplished in silence. Jack was aware that the sky was clear, that a low western sun skipped over the ocean to gild the hills, that it was spring and not winter. But he was too tired to absorb details, too numb to see color.

  The spot where the accident had happened came and went without comment. They reached the oak grove and the bank of mailboxes, left the highway, and were quickly immersed in the canyon’s growth, trees thickening as they climbed. The instant they pulled up at the cabin, Hope said something about seeing Guinevere and raced from the car. Samantha followed, squawking about urgent phone calls.

  Jack straightened and closed the car door, then stood rooted to the spot much as he had been earlier that day. Something about the air held him captive, something about the late afternoon shade, the grandeur of the redwoods, the silence, the smell.

  The smell. That was it. It was clean, strangely sweet, unique. He inhaled, exhaled.

  And the silence. Listening to it, he realized that the static in his head had cleared. He stood a bit longer, savoring the novelty.

  Then, having gotten a second wind, he went in to see about dinner.

  chapter five

  HOPE WOKE UP with a stomachache. Curling into a ball, she had barely pulled the comforter over her head and begun to wish that Rachel was there when she heard a plaintive meow. She threw the comforter back and was up in an instant. Guinevere was crouched on the wood floor, eyeing her beseechingly. Not far from her was a middle-of-the-night accident.

  “Ooooh, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Hope cooed, gently lifting the cat and cuddling her. “That’s no problem, no problem at all. I can clean it up right away. You’re such a good girl.” With exquisite care, she placed the cat in her bed and ran to clean up the mess before Samantha or, worse, her father could see.

  SAMANTHA woke up with a crick in her neck. It wasn’t until she clamped the phone to her ear with a shoulder and winced that she knew its cause. Repetitive tongue disorder, her mother called it. But what could she do? She’d had to call Shelly about math, John about science, Amanda about Spanish, and by the time that was done, Brendan was calling to talk about nothing in the annoying way he had of thinking she was interested in just the sound of his voice. And then there was Lydia. What time had they hung up? Twelve-thirty? One?

  “ICU, please,” she told the receptionist. When a nurse came on, Samantha identified herself with the confidence her mother said would get her answers. It was an act. She felt no confidence at all deep inside, in the place that feared Rachel might have died during the night. “How’s my mom?”

  “She’s doing just fine.”

  Samantha’s hopes soared. “She woke up?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  So what is “just fine” supposed to mean? Samantha thought. “Thank you,” she said with more disappointment than grace, and hung up the phone. Gnawing on her cheek, she wrapped tight arms around her knees and rocked on her bottom. So this was her punishment, this being left alone with her father. It was Rachel proving the point she had been trying to make the afternoon before, that though Samantha might complain that her mother wouldn’t let her get a tattoo, she had no idea how lucky she was.

  Samantha thought about that argument. If it hadn’t taken place, Rachel wouldn’t have been distracted. She would have put her book-group book down in the kitchen, instead of carrying it to the studio. If she hadn’t gone back there for it, she would have been on the road two minutes sooner, and if she had done that, she wouldn’t have been hit. So was the accident Samantha’s fault?

  It wasn’t fair. She studied as hard as she could and still got B’s instead of A’s. She couldn’t play the flute like Lydia or sing like Shelly. She had been best at gymnastics, then she had grown. So now her looks were her strength—and what good did it do? Rachel fought her at every turn. The coolest kids were piercing third holes in their ears and getting ankle tattoos. The coolest kids were wearing mascara and tight tops to school. Lydia wasn’t, but she wasn’t cool. Poor, sweet, dorky Lydia—who was getting cold feet; Samantha knew it.

  She also knew that if Rachel hadn’t liked her prom plans, Jack was going to like them even less.

  JACK woke up with a hard-on. He didn’t bother to think back on what he’d been dreaming. No need. Rachel was everywhere—in the rowdy billow of fabric topping the windows, the velour robe hooked on the door, the nubby shawl draped on the rocking chair, the dried flowers in a vase that was plump, green, and—so help him—fertile. She was in the overflowing basket of clothes waiting to be washed, the haphazard pile of books and magazines that sat on the floor beside a huge hand-sculpted piece of clay with multiple arms holding baseball hats and a cowboy hat that went with the boots below. The chaos was vintage Rachel, but hell, he could keep his eyes closed and see her. The scent of lilies permeated the sheets.

  Throwing grogginess aside, he grabbed the phone. When he heard a click and no dial tone, he pressed the button several times, wondering what else could possibly go wrong. Mercifully, the dial tone came.

  It was only a minute before he learned, with relief, that Rachel was still alive; with fear, that she was still comatose; and with unexpected pride, that Samantha had had the wherewithal to call the hospital on her own.

  He wasn’t used to feeling emotions so early in the day, much less three such hefty ones. At least his erection was gone. He didn’t want to have to analyze that.

  Pushing the covers aside, he went to the window, hooked an elbow on the frame, and peered out. Morning fog filled the canyon, but it was different from the fog that filled his courtyard in the city. This one was softer, gentler. It was flannel gray and fuzzy green, and for a minute, not understanding what lured him, he just stood there and watched. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. He saw trees, moss, and fog. His eyes lapsed into a sleepy stare.

  “Daddy?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the door. Hope’s face was all that showed through a narrow wedge of space.

  “I don’t feel good, Daddy. My stomach hurts.”

  Just that quickly, so did Jack’s. He straightened. “Hurts, as in pain?” If it was appendicitis, he would pull his hair out.

  “No. Not pain.”

  “Ache?”

  “I guess.”

  He went to the door and touched her cheek. “You don’t feel feverish. Think it was something you ate?”

  “I don’t know. But if I go to school and start feeling sick, they’ll have to call you, and if you’re in the city, you can’t come, so maybe I should just stay in bed.”

  She didn’t look sick to him. She didn’t feel sick to him. The freckles she ha
d inherited from Rachel lay soft on creamy skin. “Don’t you want to see your mother?”

  Her eyes widened. “If I sleep this morning, I can go when Sam goes, can’t I?”

  She seemed genuine enough about that. So it had to be the cat. “Where’s Guinevere?”

  Bingo. He saw instant worry. “In bed. I don’t think she feels good, either. If I stay here with her, the two of us will feel better.”

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck. What to say? “Well, that sounds fine. Except what if one of you isn’t feeling great tomorrow, either? Or the day after that?” The cat was dying. Dying didn’t get better in a day or two. “Between your mother and Guinevere, you could miss the rest of the school year. I don’t think either of them would want you doing that.”

  “But if I go to school and then go see Mom, Guinevere will be here alone for a whole, long day.”

  “Didn’t Sam say she’d sleep most of the time?”

  A meek nod.

  “Well?”

  A hard swallow. “She’s my cat. I can’t leave her all alone. Not … not now. I love her.”

  He pushed a hand through his hair, but the gesture seemed inadequate even to him. So he put an arm around her shoulders. They felt small and frail under a T-shirt that reached her knees and was nearly as wide. Bare bits of skinny leg showed between where the T-shirt ended and her cowboy boots began. “I know you love her, Hope.” He tried to think of a solution. If children were buildings, he could redraw the background. He was creative when it came to architecture, not parenting. “You’ll be with her all weekend.”

  She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him with fear on her face and the beginning of tears in her eyes, neither of which made him feel great.

  He had a thought. “What would your mom say?”

  Hope gave a one-shouldered shrug.

  “Would she let you stay home from school?”

  “No. But she’d be here to check on Guinevere.”

  And he wouldn’t. It went without saying. He was dropping the girls at school in Carmel, heading north to Monterey and the hospital, driving north again to San Francisco, back down to get the girls at school, up to the hospital again. Big Sur was forty-five minutes south of Carmel. It didn’t make sense to add ninety minutes, round trip, to all that other driving, just for the sake of the cat.

  “I can’t leave her alone, Daddy,” Hope begged. “Not all day. Not when she’s so sick. Would you leave Mommy lying there all alone, all day long?”

  “Mommy’s different. There are doctors and nurses—” He realized he had fallen into a trap when she began nodding.

  Sighing, he gave in. But he really didn’t want Hope missing school—okay, largely because he really didn’t want to have to drive down to get her midday. There had to be another way. “What about Duncan?” If the man was so all-fired devoted, he could do this. “Think he’d check on her?”

  Hope looked skeptical. “He’s gone a lot, too. But he comes home for lunch.” She brightened marginally. “I could ask.”

  DUNCAN had a counteroffer that Hope liked even better, though Jack had no idea why. He didn’t understand why Guinevere would be better off spending the day at Duncan’s than at her own house.

  “He has faith,” was all Hope said when Jack asked, and he didn’t push. He had been hearing about Duncan’s faith for years. The girls mentioned it in the same breath with the man’s name, so often that Jack had actually asked Rachel whether Duncan belonged to a cult. Big Sur had its share of free spirits, aging hippies, sun worshipers, he was told. Rachel had laughed roundly.

  So Duncan was religious. Fine. What mattered more to Jack was that in the rush to get dressed and carry the cat, litter, and food to the small ranch three minutes up the road, Hope forgot about her stomachache.

  Jack waited by the car while she got the cat settled. When Duncan came out, he said, “Thanks. This means a lot to her.”

  “How’s her mother?”

  “The same. I’m heading there now.”

  “Better call Ben.”

  “Who’s Ben?” he asked, but before Duncan could answer, Hope had taken the big man’s hand and was looking up at him with reverence.

  It was some picture—beautiful Hope, with sunny blond hair, hazel-gold eyes, and now, finally, just a touch of color under her freckles, and Duncan, who approached homely with his big white beard, long ears, and leathery hands.

  “I’ll come for her later,” Hope was saying.

  The big man nodded, gave her hand a squeeze, and nudged her toward Jack.

  WHEN JACK arrived at the hospital, Rachel was freshly bathed, lying on crisp white sheets, smelling as antiseptic as she had the day before. He had brought a tube of cream from her bathroom and began rubbing it onto those stretches of her skin that were bare.

  “Better,” he said when the scent of lilies rose. “More you. I’m flattered. I’d have thought you would switch.” He touched lotion to her cheeks, working carefully around the bruise. “Black-and-blue here,” he told her. “If they didn’t know better, they’d be wondering who hit you. Good thing I was in San Francisco.” Not that he had ever raised a hand to Rachel—or to either of the kids. For, whatever other faults he had, that wasn’t one. As the son of an avid disciplinarian, he had seen enough raised hands to last him a lifetime. “I’ll bet you have a headache.”

  She didn’t respond. Her hand lay limp, her arm dead weight. He studied her eyes for a sign of movement behind the lids. When there was none, he checked the monitor screen. Her heartbeat was undulating evenly. She was definitely alive. He wondered if she found his worry amusing.

  He told her about getting the cat to Duncan’s, about waiting ten minutes for Samantha to finish blowing her hair stick straight, about dropping the girls at school with minutes to spare. He told her his plans for the day. He told her that she was messing up his life in a major way, and when she didn’t respond even to that, he left the room in a fit of frustration.

  He found Kara Bates in the hall. The pearl earrings had been replaced by onyx squares, powerful in their own right on ivory lobes, a foil for black hair knotted stylishly in back. So, she wanted to be taken seriously? He could give her that chance.

  “Shouldn’t Rachel be reacting to something by now?” he demanded. “It’s been a day and a half.”

  Kara stuck a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s been a month and a half for the family in there. These things take time, Mr. McGill. Your wife isn’t getting worse. Her stats are stable. There’s been no drop in oxygen saturation, no rise in arterial pressure. We have to assume that something’s working the right way in there.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “No,” she said crisply. “Not easy at all. I want to do, not to wait. This isn’t easy for any of us.”

  “I have a neurologist coming from the city. He said he’d be by today.”

  She reached behind the desk and produced a business card. “He was already here. He suggests that you call him midafternoon.”

  “Did he see her file?”

  “Her file, her, everything. He says he agrees with our diagnosis. He doesn’t feel that anything else should be done right now.”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair. Another hope thwarted. “If you were to make a guess as to when she’ll wake up—”

  “I can’t do that.”

  If she wanted to play in the majors, she had to do better. “Try.”

  She simply shook her head. “I’d like to give you hope, but I just—don’t—know. Head injuries are like that. The best I can do is to say that Rachel is a good candidate for recovery.”

  That was only part of what Jack wanted to hear.

  HE SHOULD have felt better driving north toward San Francisco. This was his city, his turf. It was where his home was, where his business was. He had seen remarkable success here, had felt the headiness of landing plum jobs and the satisfaction of seeing his designs built. He was known here, respected here. He had a potential significant other here.

&nb
sp; But his middle grew tighter the closer he got and was joined by an odd grogginess. It was like his mind was a leg that had fallen asleep. Tingly. Dense.

  He stopped at his house first, hoping to get his bearings there, but the place felt cold. Frequent traveler that he was, he tossed a duffel on the bed, quickly filled it with clothes, packed up razor, shaving cream, hairbrush—seeing little of it, barely thinking. In the studio, he stuffed a briefcase with papers from the fax, a portfolio with plans in varying stages of completion. He didn’t bother to look out at the courtyard. Nothing to see—it was foggy again. He spent a total of ten seconds flipping through yesterday’s mail before tossing it aside, then started out the door, stopped short, and returned. Standing in the front hall, whose walls had been rag-painted a charcoal gray that he had thought handsome at the time, he called Jill.

  “How’d it go?” he asked as soon as she said hello.

  “Jack! Where are you?” The enthusiasm in the simple question invited more.

  “My place, but not for long. A quick stop at the office, then I’m headed back. I told the girls I’d pick them up at school. Rachel is still comatose. How was last night?”

  “It was fine. Successful.”

  “I knew it would be. You do things like that so well.” She was a warm, generous hostess, whether entertaining at home, at a restaurant, or in a ballroom. They had met as fellow guests at someone else’s party two years before, and he had been immediately impressed. She was poised and intelligent, knew how to ask questions, could discuss politics with the best of them, but—important, here—knew when not to. “How much did you raise?”

  “We’re still tallying the last of the raffle receipts, but it looks like we topped a quarter of a million.”

  “That’s great, Jill. Good for you. You must be thrilled.” He was pleased for her, even if his voice didn’t show the inflection. She had worked hard. She deserved good results.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  I missed you, too, he should have been able to say. But he was too preoccupied with Rachel’s condition to have thought much about Jill. “You deserve better than a guy who ducks out at the last minute, even though his reasons are good. Was it very awkward?” He was inviting her to yell at him, all the while knowing she wouldn’t.