His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  But it never came. Instead, she heard the sound of Sawyer’s heavy motorcycle boots, and he once again appeared in the door.

  “Alright,” he said, bending down. “Hold on.”

  He bent again, this time bracing a hand against the toilet as he stood up with her.

  “N-no,” she protested, limp as a doll against his side. “Just l-l-leave me. Tr-tr-trevor’s the important one.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but you look ten times shittier than he does. Kid’s not even running a fever, but you’re burning up.”

  She shook her head. “No, no, just take care of Trevor. Nothing else matters.”

  “Let him help you, girl!” Pappy yelled at her, blinking out to the hallway.

  “N-n-no, Pappy…he h-h-hates me now. I c-c-can’t…”

  “Okay, it might be easier if we do it this way now.”

  Her world tilted to the side as he swung her up into his arms, and the next thing she knew, she was looking up into his grizzled face.

  “Lucky, I’ve been keeping up with all those balance exercises you gave me,” he said with a rueful smile.

  Before she could protest again, he was through the bathroom door with her, and walking toward the front door with careful measured steps.

  She tried to protest again. Knew he didn’t want any part of her anymore, and was only helping her out of duty. She didn’t want his pity. But her body was too weak to go along with her pride.

  Trevor had summed it up right. It hurt all over. Hurt everywhere but inside Sawyer’s arms.

  A few moments later, he deposited her next to Trevor in the back seat of the car.

  “Hi, Mama,” Trevor said with a weak grin when Sawyer was done buckling her in.

  “H-hey, Tr-trev,” she answered just as weakly.

  Pappy appeared at the edge of the dirt driveway. He and Kate had been the ones responsible for getting Sawyer here. She didn’t know how they did it, but she now knew that was where he must have gotten off to when he disappeared from the bathroom.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed through the window.

  Pappy raised his arm and waved, still looking concerned. Man, she really must have looked as bad as Sawyer said.

  “Bye, Pappy,” she heard Trevor say in his booster seat.

  Then they were driving away, and before they were even halfway down the road, sleep claimed her, pulling her down into its black depths.

  19

  Willa woke up in a strange bed, her head resting on a stiff pillow. Her hand being held by another.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Sawyer?”

  He was sitting in a nearby chair, texting with one hand, while he kept her hand enfolded in his other. But he put the phone down and turned in his seat as soon as she said his name.

  “You’re awake,” he said, his voice husky and low.

  “Is this a dream?”

  He let out a sound, somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “If you’d known how many times I’ve had to ask myself that over the last few weeks. The secret’s in the leg...”

  He bunched up his left sweat pants leg to reveal the carbon one underneath. “If I’ve got two whole legs it’s a dream. If not, then it’s real.”

  “Okay, then I must be awake.” But she couldn’t stop smiling dreamily at him. So he really was real. Real and holding her hand in this hospital room—wait a minute. She jerked upwards.

  “I’m in the hospital? Why am I in the hospital?”

  She’d never in her life stayed in a hospital room. Not even when she had Trevor. He’d come out at home with no more warning than a sharp cramp, followed by her mother calmly walking into her room with a cup of tea and informing her, “He’s coming now, dear. Right this second. But don’t be too scared. I’m still a nurse.”

  “Where’s Trevor?” she demanded now, sitting up in bed and looking all around.

  That was how she found out she was now hooked up to an IV. The needle bit into her when she tried to sit up in bed. “Is he okay?”

  “Whoa, relax, he’s fine. He wasn’t near as bad off as you were. They put him on a drip for a couple of hours, then discharged him with a prescription for Zofran and orders to keep him on a B.R.A.T diet for a couple of days. Grace came and picked him up a few hours ago, and now she’s taking care of him at home.”

  “Oh,” Willa relaxed back against the pillows. “That’s good. Thank you for seeing to him. And I’ve got to thank Grace for picking him up.”

  Willa broke off with a frown. “Wait, why are you here with me, instead of home with Trevor? And how are you here with me when you’re not family?”

  He reached out with his other hand and stroked a couple of her braids behind her ear. “Well, I kind of had to tell them I was your husband in order to get back here.”

  She shook her head, not understanding. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I was worried about you,” he answered. “For good reason. Turns out the reason that stomach bug took you down so bad was because you’re pregnant.”

  Her mind blanked with horror. “What…no…I couldn’t be—”

  But she totally could be, she realized. She thought back to that night and morning they’d shared a month ago. The sex they’d had without any kind of protection. And last but certainly not least, the period that had yet to come. Just a little late, she’d thought, but…oh no, she realized with a sinking feeling. She’d had that thought days ago. Before the stomach flu from hell completely took her out.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, lying back against the pillows and clapping a hand to her forehead. Well, that certainly explained why the dehydration had affected her so much worst than it had Trevor.

  “You were passed out before I even got here. You didn’t even wake up when they stuck the needle in you for a drip, which is why they sent away for a blood test.” But the worry on his face faded into a gentle smile. “Looks like we’re having another kid.”

  She gasped. Unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth, yet somehow knowing they had to be true. She’d been dragging for weeks now. She’d thought she’d just been depressed, but she now remembered feeling much the same way during her first trimester with Trevor. Unable to do much more beyond eight hours of work with a lunch-time nap in between.

  Oh no, she thought. But when she turned to look back at Sawyer she was surprised to find a look of unmitigated joy on his face. “Okay, I don’t understand. Why are you so happy? Especially considering what you think I did to you?”

  He shook his head. “To be honest with you, I don’t know. But I guess I knew somewhere in the back of my mind this might be a possibility. I still haven’t told Josh and my dad the full version of what happened in Germany. I made it sound like we hooked up and you didn’t tell me about Trevor. For some reason I decided to sit on a few of the details. I told myself it was because I could win this case without them. But in reality, I think I was trying to protect you. Just in case something like this happened.

  “And now…?” he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. All I know is I want this baby. And I’m just so goddamn grateful I didn’t listen to you and leave you there. Because if I had, you might have…”

  He couldn’t even finish that sentence, and he let his head fall over their joined hands as his voice choked with emotion. “We’ll figure this out, Willa. I don’t care what it takes. We’ll get you the help you need. A whole team of therapists if that’s what it takes for us to be a family. Whatever mental state you were in back in Germany, you must have changed, because I can see the woman I thought you were inside of you. I know you and me can make this work.”

  She shook her head, overcome with emotion herself. That he’d still want to try to make it work with her, despite believing she used to be a patient-raping lunatic.

  “Sshhh,” he said, shaking his own head. “Just, try to rest. We’ll work on getting you discharged, and then we’ll figure out the rest. Until then, I don’t want you getting agitated.
”

  God, she loved him. And in that moment, she wondered how she could have spent even a few months of her life trying to deny that fact. He was so much better now than the entitled boy he used to be. Smart, kind, and loyal to a degree she couldn’t even comprehend, and she felt beyond lucky to have the man he’d become pledging himself to her in this way.

  There was just one problem. “Sawyer, I’m not now, and nor have I ever been, insane. I don’t need a therapist—”

  Her protest was cut off by the ringing of this phone. He looked down at the screen. “It’s Grace. I should answer this. Trevor probably wants to talk to you. He was worried and I told him I’d have you call when you woke up.”

  He cut off to answer. “Hey Grace, she’s awake. Put Trevor on the phone.”

  But in the next moment, the smile fell off his face. “What do mean Trevor’s gone? Have you looked…?”

  More rushed talking on the other side of the phone. Willa couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the muffled voice sounded frantic.

  As soon as he got off the phone, Sawyer would relay the news she’d already began to suspect. Trevor wasn’t at his house. Or hers. Or anywhere in town that Grace had looked. He’d disappeared without a trace.

  And was now nowhere to be found.

  20

  Sawyer found out two things the hard way that morning.

  One) His son was missing, and Two) he wouldn’t just have to get his son’s mother a little bit of therapy. He was going to have to fully commit her to some sort of mental institution.

  He never should have let her leave her hospital room. But after finding out Trevor was missing, she’d darted out of bed and pulled on the fresh pair of jeans Grace had brought when she picked Trevor up from the hospital.

  “You’ve got a choice,” she’d said, snatching her phone out of the bag. “They’re not going to force me to stay here for a stomach flu, so you can either drive me home or make me take a taxi.”

  Then she’d taken out her own IV and started running toward the floor’s elevator bank with more energy than someone in her condition should have had. He guessed what they said about mothers having super powers when it came to their kids was true, because she was all the way to the elevators before the floor nurse could catch up.

  Of course Sawyer hadn’t made her get a taxi. He ran after her, just as worried about Trevor and determined to do whatever it took to help her find him.

  …but that was before he found himself at the old cart behind her house, watching the mother of both his five-year-old and unborn child talk to a piece of thin air, she called “Pappy.” Pappy, he assumed, being the sharecropper who’d died of a heart attack while tending the field behind the house.

  It was a hot August day, but it felt at least thirty degrees cooler by the old cart. And a shiver ran down his back as he watched Willa talk animatedly with the thin air about “the well girls” and the “the willow tree.”

  “Okay, Pappy hasn’t seen him,” she said when she was done talking. “But he says I should skip talking to the Well Girls and go straight to the willow tree, since that’s on your side of the river and closer to the woods. We’re thinking he has to be in the woods, otherwise either he or Grace would have seen him by now.”

  “Good idea, I’ll go look for him in the woods. But how about I take you back to my place first,” he suggested, gentle as he could. “That way you can get some rest while I look for Trevor.”

  “You think I can rest when Trevor’s out there? No, I’ve got to keep looking. Come on.”

  She started toward the river, making a beeline for the tree.

  “And what do you think is at the tree?” he asked, easily catching up with her.

  She let his question hang in the air for a few seconds before answering, “I’m not crazy, Sawyer. I’m just strange. And too worried about our son to keep a lid on it.”

  She also looked tired, like she could drop any minute. But she kept going for Trevor. She really did love him. He could see that now. Even if she was certifiable.

  At least one good idea had come out of this. He needed to search the woods on their side of the river. If Trevor had grown up like him and Josh, he probably already knew these woods better than a navigator on his fourth tour.

  But still, Trevor was only five. And Sawyer didn’t like the idea of the little boy out alone in those dense woods. Or anywhere near the small but deep river that ran through them.

  “Does he know how to swim?” he asked Willa, vaguely remembering a New York Times article he read a while back about how few black kids knew how.

  “Yes, all of us do,” Willa answered, her voice weary. “The two slaves who drowned trying to cross the river insist on teaching anyone who can see them how to swim, starting from the age of three. In fact, if we don’t get the information we need at the Willow Tree, I’m probably going to double back and ask them. But they’re all the way down on the other side of the property, so I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

  Okay, he had to ask… “Who exactly do you think is going to give you the information we’re looking for when we get to the willow tree?”

  Willa kept her eyes trained on the willow tree as she answered, “I know you’re not going to believe me, but that’s where my dad lives. He was a Howard University undergrad who got out of his vehicle to help a white woman whose car had broken down at the side of the road. A group of good old boys saw him helping her and strung him up from the willow tree on your side of the river for daring to exchange words with a white woman. He and Marian had what she still calls ‘a romance novel without an HEA’ about a year after she returned home, pregnant with Thel. And that’s how she ended up having me just a year after Thel.”

  She shook her head with a dry smile. “Pappy’s still mad at him over that, although you’d think fifteen years living dead together would be enough to let bygones be bygones. Maybe if they lived on the same side of the river...”

  She was right about one thing. He of course didn’t believe one word of that crazy story. And as they crossed the bridge, he forced himself not to think about the several stints in rehab facilities that hadn’t seemed to help his mother at all before she died.

  It wouldn’t be like that for Willa, he tried to assure himself. He’d get her the best head doc money could buy, make sure she was around to be the mother Trevor and their unborn baby needed.

  But then they finally reached the willow tree, and he once again had to watch the creepy sight of Willa talking to somebody who wasn’t there. Had to experience the same weird mixture of cold and foreboding, as he tried to figure out exactly what it would take to get her the help she needed. If he’d be able to talk her into going into a facility on her own or if he’d have to get the authorities involved.

  However, this time the excruciating feelings and questions didn’t go on for quite so long. After less than a minute of her one-sided conversation, Willa’s face immediately lit up.

  “C’mon,” she called to them. “Trevor’s at the fairy bridge. He went there to help Marian. She fell down, and he brought her a few books to keep her company while they waited for help to arrive.”

  The fairy bridge…she must have been talking about the tiny stone bridge about a couple of kilometers into the woods. At least that’s what he wanted to believe she meant.

  He could only hope at this point that Willa didn’t believe in fairies, too.

  “DADDY! MAMA! YOU CAME!” Trevor yelled when Willa and Sawyer came around the grassy bend to the small stone bridge that connected their family’s properties. “Just like Grandma said you would!”

  “I’ll be damned…” Sawyer said beside her, clearly shocked when they came upon Trevor and her mother exactly where her father told them they would be.

  Trevor broke away from Marian, who was lying supine underneath a pitch pine, reading a book. “Grandma said you’d be here soon!” he said as he came running up to them.

  Willa grabbed the little boy as soon as they reached him
, hugging him hard and tight. Then pushed him back to say, “What have I told you about coming into these woods alone?”

  “I had to, Mama,” Trevor answered. “The spirits told me Grandma was hurt bad and didn’t have any more books left to read!”

  “Show me,” she said, taking him by the hand and going into total PT mode despite having just come out of the hospital herself.

  “Okay,” Trevor said. He looked over his shoulder at Sawyer. “You come, too, Daddy. Maybe you can carry her like you carried Mama.”

  “I knew you all would find me,” Marian said, putting a bookmark in her Ann Patchett novel as they approached. “The spirits told me the whole story to keep me warm at night out here. Though I wished they would have told me it before I fell. I would have brought a few more books with me to read.”

  “Oh God, Mama,” Willa said, dropping down beside her and running her hands over her body with medical efficiency.

  “It’s my right ankle, dear,” her mother told her before she got too far down her arm.

  The same as if she’d been given an actual x-ray, Willa’s hands immediately dropped to her mother’s right ankle, and she started to take off the old hiking boot Marian was wearing.

  “You don’t have to bother with checking me out. It’s a break,” her mother informed her, before adding morosely. “And it’s going to take a whole twelve weeks to heal, because I’m rather old now.”

  “Also, because you didn’t get immediate attention, which you would have if you’d brought your sat phone with you,” Willa answered in a chastising tone.

  Her mother glared. “I no longer work as a nurse, my dear. I carry no chains, technological or otherwise.”

  Willa rolled her eyes. Her mother hadn’t held a nursing job for nearly six years now. Not since she quit a week before she and Thel came home, stating as her reason, “the spirits told me my daughters would need some taking care of for a while.”

  But she still held a general mistrust of the technology she’d been forced to use back when she still held a job. And she always managed to “forget” the special satellite phone Willa bought her for her “reunion walks.” She also refused to so much as touch a smart phone. And friend, don’t even get her started on Kindles, unless you wanted to hear her rant for days.