“Absolutely.”
He looked at the door. “Ready?” he asked, and then turned to me, not touching the door handle. He was giving me a last chance to back out.
“No, but let’s do it,” I said.
We got out of the car, and he went to the rear and brought out the cases. They weren’t terribly heavy.
“Remember,” he said, “this is a special delivery if anyone asks.”
“It is that,” I said.
He smiled. “C’mon. It’s going to be a piece of cake,” he said. “You’ll be in and out, and we’ll return to school and face the music.”
“I’ll face the music in more places than that.”
He laughed and then kissed my cheek. I wondered, was he really doing this to please me and help me, or was this simply some needed excitement in his life? He approached the door and looked at me. I nodded, and then he turned the handle and pulled.
It opened.
“Here we go,” he said. “There’s this little entry. To the right is storage, and to the left is the kitchen. We’ll go through the kitchen. That leads to the corridor I described. You’re just going to keep walking until you reach room one-oh-two. It will be on your right not halfway down that hall. I’ll watch you go out of the kitchen and then slip back out and wait in the car. We don’t want me to be noticed loitering,” he explained.
We stepped in. We could hear people talking, but no one was in the hallway.
“I’ll do the talking and distract as much as I can when we’re in the kitchen. You keep moving slowly.”
We turned into the kitchen. There were four people working, two preparing food and two cleaning dishes, glasses, and silverware. A man who seemed to be the head chef stepped away from the counter. He looked like someone from central casting, the stereotypical image of a chef, big, with rolling-pin forearms, wearing a full apron and a white hat.
“What’s this?” he asked gruffly.
“Special delivery,” Dillon said.
“Who called for that?”
“I don’t know, sir. We’re part-timers who were sent to another location nearby and asked to drop this off on our way.”
He stared at us. I held my breath. The two men cleaning dishes and glasses lost interest quickly and returned to work and their conversation.
“Drop it on that counter there,” the chef said, nodding at an empty space on a counter close to the door. We moved to it. The chef watched us and then turned back to what he was doing. Dillon nodded at the door. I didn’t look back. I went to it, opened it, and slipped out, expecting someone from the kitchen to start shouting.
No one did.
I closed my jacket to hide the T-shirt and stepped to my right. A nurse or nurse’s aide came out of a room, carrying a tray of some patient’s lunch. She didn’t look in my direction. I waited until she turned a corner and then started again. I didn’t want to run and attract any attention, but I couldn’t help nearly jogging until I reached room 102. The door was slightly open. I glanced back, and then I entered and closed the door behind me.
14
RYDER WAS SITTING in a teal-cushioned chair, his eyes closed and his right hand over his left in his lap, both hands resting on that book about birds he had received on Christmas. He wore a familiar blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans with a pair of matching blue loafers and white and blue socks. His hair was neatly brushed. Just looking at him, you couldn’t tell if he was a patient or a visitor. He looked quite relaxed. I hoped he wasn’t on some sort of sedative. That possibility hadn’t occurred to me until this moment. He might not even realize or remember that I had come. I wished it wasn’t so, but for the moment, it was hard to imagine that a short time ago, he had devastated his bedroom.
When he sensed I was there and opened his eyes sharply, I took a deep breath and braced myself. Was he going to shout? Jump up? What?
He stared at me silently, unmoving, suggesting that my initial fear might be right. He might be drugged. He didn’t seem to recognize me.
“It’s Fern. I came to say good-bye, Ryder,” I began.
He blinked as if he had something in his eyes but still didn’t speak. I imagined that if he wasn’t under the weight of some drug, he was thinking I might be a figment of his imagination or he was still in a dream.
“I can’t stay here long. I cut school to come here and snuck in.”
I couldn’t stand the way he was staring at me with that blank expression. I had to look away and gazed around the room. Everything appeared new in it, polished and clean. There were artificial red roses on a desk. The walls were panels of light oak with thin black swirls. Two large prints hung on opposite walls, both of rural scenes, one with deer at a small pond, looking up as though startled. The windows faced Lake Wyndemere. I imagined they wanted him in a room that had that view so he would feel more comfortable. The bed was queen-size, with a light blue comforter and matching pillows, in a dark brown frame with a padded light brown headboard. There was a square digital clock on the table beside the bed on the right and just a box of tissues beside it. There was nothing on the table on the left.
Right now, the simplicity of the room disturbed me. I couldn’t imagine Ryder being happy about it. Drugged or not, this had to bother him. He had grown up in a house with classic works of art, beautiful paneled windows, elaborate molding, chandeliers, and furnishings with character, heritage. Of course, he wouldn’t have that when he went someplace else, especially to college someday, but no matter how kind they were to him here, I was sure he felt lost. He was on some stopover from amnesia to confusion in a place that seemed deliberately created to be bland and anonymous so it could fit almost anybody.
I turned back to him. “I’ve come to say good-bye to you, Ryder, and to apologize.”
He continued to stare at me without a sign of any emotion in his face. If he wasn’t under the weight of some drug, then this was probably what my father had meant by telling me he was almost catatonic.
“I’m sorry it seemed that I wasn’t interested in you or only vaguely interested when you were brought home. Believe me, I was like a horse chafing at the bit. Remember when we were younger, how Mr. Stark always accused one of us of that, being impatient all the time?” I smiled.
His eyes did seem to get brighter.
I heard voices in the hallway and thought, Oh, no, they’ve already discovered I’m here, and they’ll get me out before I’ve said what I need to say. Ryder seemed conscious of it, too, and looked expectantly at the door. Whoever it was went past us, however. I let out a breath and continued.
“We were all warned about what we could and couldn’t say to you, especially when it came to the storm on the lake and what happened to you. Everyone accused me of defying the orders and telling you things I wasn’t supposed to tell you. I didn’t, but unfortunately, no one believes anything I say anymore, not even my mother. Now I wish I really had told you everything, especially about us.
“I think our little sister had a lot to do with what’s happened, but she’s good at covering up her lies and stirring up trouble to make herself feel more important. Remember, she’s also Bea’s daughter, which is reason enough to feel sorry for her.”
I waited a moment to see if the mention of Bea would stir up memories, but Ryder continued simply to stare without much expression. Frustration and disappointment began to build inside me. It was like talking to myself, practicing the speech I was going to give him.
“Dr. Davenport is convinced that I gave you that picture of us Mr. Stark took just before we left for the prom. Remember? You talked me into going with Paul Gabriel and helped me find one of your mother’s dresses to have altered. I found that prom dress in your room after you were brought here this time, and I thought I’d get it out before Dr. Davenport saw it there and accused me of giving it to you. Little Samantha and one of her conniving plots was responsible for that, I’m sure.
“Of course, that’s exactly what Dr. Davenport did do, accuse me. I didn’t know he had alrea
dy seen the dress. I sort of indicted myself by taking it back to my room and hanging it in my closet again, even though I was purely innocent.
“So I was called to his office so he could tell me that a decision had been made. I’m to be sent to a private school, a live-in private school. It could be some time before we see each other again. I want you to know how sorry I am about what’s happened to you. Please believe me. I never wanted to do anything that would hurt you, even in the smallest way. I’m sorry you’re back here.
“Now, thanks to Dr. Davenport, you know most of what I was supposed to keep hidden, what I was forbidden to even suggest to you. I imagine you’re still having trouble digesting it, and it was that frustration you felt that caused you to do what you did in your room at Wyndemere. Dr. Davenport blames himself for that, for rushing to tell you who I really am, but I do think he blames me as well. He’s convinced I was working against his and Dr. Seymour’s plan of treatment for you and he had no choice. The abruptness was surely like an overload of information for you. You blew out like a computer.”
I paused again, searching his face for some sign of awareness, recognition. It wasn’t there yet, but I smiled at my own words.
“Listen to me going on like this. I guess I sound like an amateur psychiatrist or something, diagnosing your behavior. Anyway, now that Dr. Davenport has told you the truth, you can probably imagine how I felt when my mother and then our father revealed the truth to me. This is probably horrible to say, but to me at the time, it was as if you really did drown that horrible day.”
His lips began to tremble a little. Get it all out, I thought, get it all out quickly.
“However, time’s gone by. Of course, I’m happy you survived, and I pray that soon you’ll get all your memory back and go on to do wonderful things. I couldn’t get myself to say it for so long, Ryder, but I still love you. As a sister should,” I added. “The Ryder Davenport I knew while I was growing up, the Ryder I went out with on the lake that dreadful day, is gone. Forever. Our father’s and my mother’s confessions drove him off.
“But my brother Ryder is here, and I want him to know that I will always love him. Someday we might be able to spend time together again, maybe even walk down to the lake and talk about our new lives, share things the way a brother and sister do. All these years, that was denied us, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to care about each other and think of each other as family.”
I waited a moment. He was still looking at me the same way. Tears came into my eyes. All I had said was probably lost like a scream in outer space. I pressed down on my lower lip to hold back any sobbing.
“I hope you understood some of this, if not all of it. I don’t think anything’s more important to me right now than your understanding what I’ve told you. You’ve lived in the darkness too long. I wanted to be sure I came here and gave you some light. I don’t know if I dare call it hope.” I smiled. “Listen to me. Me giving someone else hope? I suppose that’s a laugh. I haven’t enough of my own to last another hour, much less the days and months ahead.”
I sighed. This felt so futile.
“Okay, Ryder. I’d better go.”
I stepped forward, hesitated, and then leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
“Good-bye, Ryder. Please get well. I’ll be far away, but you’ll always be on my mind, always be next to me.”
My tears were free now to do what they wished, which was to trickle down my cheeks as I walked away.
Just as I reached the door, I heard him say, “Wait.”
I turned, surprised. There was a new look on his face, an expression without confusion, a face more like the face of the Ryder I had known, perceptive, smart, and self-confident.
“It’s my turn to confess,” he said, and he said it so clearly that I was the one thinking I was imagining things.
I walked back as he sat up. “Confess about what?” I asked.
“Samantha didn’t bring anything to me,” he said with a clarity and firmness I hadn’t heard from him since the accident. “I went into your room while you were at school, and I found our picture in the drawer. While I was looking at it, I remembered the dress well; I remembered us going up to the attic and searching my mother’s things until we found it.
“I went into your closet and discovered it hanging toward the rear on the rack, and I brought it to my room and kept anyone from seeing I had it for as long as I could. It was like having you beside me.”
I stood there, gaping at him, looking dumb, I’m sure. Then I felt myself smile. “You remembered all that? The prom, our being together afterward?”
“Yes. My memories were coming back to me, trickling at first and then streaming back in waves of images, voices, and places. At night, after everyone had left me, I would lie there and wonder why I was thinking about you so much, why I was eager to see you.”
“Were you?”
He nodded. “Dr. Seymour helped me work through some of my dreams. The lake especially. In one dream, you were with me in the rowboat, but I always woke up before I understood. What I didn’t understand were my feelings for you. When I asked about that, Dr. Seymour would tell me to wait, the answers would come. You have to spoon-feed your memory back to yourself, he said. It’s less damaging. I was always a little suspicious about it, and then, just as you said, my father rushed all that along. I’m sorry about what I did in my room, but you were right. I was frustrated and angry, very angry at him.
“Suddenly, there was my father, a liar, deceiving, hiding the truth, the great Dr. Davenport, who never backed away when it came to telling me what I should do, what I should think. Always forcing others to face the truth, the famous diagnostician who would never permit loved ones to face the reality of his patients’ sickness, was lying to himself and to us all these years.
“Think of it, think of how he permitted Bea to treat you and your mother. I realized that even when she wasn’t present, he never treated you as he should, but then in minutes, his solution was to take away my feelings for you, the feelings I wanted to have, I was hoping to have. You are right. I was so . . . frustrated. I hated where I was, what I was. I couldn’t stand looking in the mirror. I wanted to beat on the image until he disappeared. That’s really what I was trying to do.”
“Oh, Ryder,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry, just as I don’t. You and I, we’re the real victims. I have yet to tell them what I think, what I’ve done, but I will now. You’re not going to be anyone else’s scapegoat, least of all my father’s, or I should say, our father’s. Thank you for coming here, Fern. Thank you for risking so much for me.”
“For myself, too,” I said.
He smiled. It was the smile of the Ryder Davenport I had known all my life. He really was coming back. Maybe rage was good. Maybe it forced him to drive away his amnesia, to stop wondering about the meaning of small things and grasp the biggest truth of all: who he was and who I was, too.
He stood up, and we embraced each other, held each other for a long moment, a moment I had dreamed so many times since he had been brought home.
“I wasn’t pretending completely,” he said. “There was so much that just didn’t connect in my memories, but until they did, I wanted things to stay the way they were. I felt safe with all the attention I was getting. I guess I was being deceptive, too.”
“I’ll never blame you, Ryder. I hated myself for behaving so indifferent to your struggle,” I said.
“You were there, tantalizing, tempting me to remember it all. That’s all I cared about.”
We both heard the sound of many footsteps.
He backed away. “I’m so glad you came,” he said.
“So am I. No matter what,” I replied, just as the door was thrown open.
Two nurses and a security man entered quickly.
“Out!” the security man told me. “Now.”
I looked at Ryder. The nurses were trying to get him to sit. He wanted to resist, to help m
e, but I smiled at him and said, “It’s all right. I’ll be all right, Ryder.”
He smiled back. Then I walked out and was led down the hallway to Dr. Seymour’s office. Dillon was already sitting there, a security guard standing beside him.
“They came out and found me in the parking lot. We forgot about the video cameras.” He shrugged. “We’re television stars. So how did it go?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” I said. “Thank you.”
I was practically pushed into another chair.
“Hey,” Dillon said. “Watch it.”
“Relax,” the security guard next to him said, and put his hand on his shoulder to keep him down. “The police are on their way, big shot.”
Dillon smiled. “Maybe we’ll claim loss of memory and move in here,” he said.
That was my Dillon Evans, defiant, ironic, sarcastic, and very creative. Being with him was like riding a wild horse, but when he was relaxed and on a gallop, you never felt excitement as wonderful.
Of course, our boldness or, as my mother would say, “cheekiness,” was quite short-lived. Looking stunned, Dillon’s mother arrived right before my mother appeared, and he was led to another room with her. My mother entered and asked the security guard to please step out for now. She said Dr. Seymour had said it was all right. He shrugged and left.
“Explain yourself, Fern,” my mother said after she sat on the settee across from me.
Where should I begin? I wondered. Although I was in more trouble than I had ever been in, I felt strangely satisfied, even happy. Maybe I had caught Dillon’s carefreeness. I was amazed at myself, how I wasn’t at all afraid, even knowing what awaited me in school as well as at home.
Except for the truth about my father, my mother never lied to me. Like most mothers, I’m sure, she held back on other things, tried to get me to do what she wanted by unfairly emphasizing the dangers and discomforts of the other choices. It was always all in my best interest. But this was different. Oh, how different this was.
Echoes in the Walls Page 23