by Liv Rancourt
The first couple of policemen who passed her delivered the evacuation order. She had to fight to keep from laughing in their faces.
It was that or start screaming.
Chapter Nineteen
Robert installed Danielle in the guest room, or at least that’s how it felt, like he’d lifted her fragile self from the entryway’s tile floor, leaving behind a pile of soggy packaging and carefully carrying her upstairs. He was too reserved to strip her down, but he gave her some privacy and brought her sweat pants and a cable knit sweater from his own closet. He knocked softly on the door and passed in the clothing, then took her wet things away.
When his one question about Ryan went unanswered, he left the subject alone, giving Danielle another gift to be grateful for.
Over the weekend, both Robert and Uncle Jonathan treated her gently. They fed her, set up a desk in the guest room, and let her borrow a laptop when they determined hers was beyond help. They didn’t ask about Ryan. Maeve called once or twice, but Danielle let voicemail pick them up, despite her New Year’s resolution to answer all calls. She spent the weekend on the jagged edge of tears, a swarm of saline crystals she couldn’t seem to shed. There was no point in crying. She had three weeks before her flight back to L.A., and everything she’d accomplished since the beginning of November had turned to shit.
Monday morning, Danielle sat at the desk with a mug of Earl Grey tea and very little hope. Perkins Lane was still closed to vehicular traffic. Every hour that the mass of wet earth sat in the living room was damaging. Even if the blunt force trauma of the slide hadn’t knocked the house off its foundation, the ongoing exposure to water meant more repairs: replacing the plaster and lathe walls with sheetrock, putting down new hardwood floors, bringing the plumber and electrician back out. She would be starting from scratch.
Danielle kept browser pages open for each of the local news channels and watched a #Seattle twitter stream, hoping to catch the first announcement when Perkins Lane reopened. The mud had to be cleared from the road, and city inspectors had to go through all the houses first. A green tag meant the house was safe. An orange tag meant it needed work. A red tag meant the homeowner had a problem.
She opened a new browser page to the PubMed website and typed “preterm infant” and “insulin” into the keyword search. The NICU hadn’t shut down, and there was always more work to be done. When the mudslide hit the window, she’d caught some glass with her face, but her sweatshirt protected her arms and her hands came through without injury. If she could type, she could work.
Her phone rang while she scrolled through the list of journal article hits. She almost ignored the call. At the last minute, she answered. The number on the screen was from work.
Abbie greeted her with way too much enthusiasm and a huge project. “Thought I better warn you Sharon’s decided we’re running a skills lab in March.”
“Awesome,” Danielle said. She could picture Abbie sitting at the desk on her side of the office they shared, her long wavy hair doing the ombre thing from light to dark, her nails painted with a perfect French manicure.
“Yeah, I knew you’d be excited.”
Running a skills lab meant organizing presentations and teaching stations. It meant scheduling staff and listening to people whine about the extra work. It was an enormous pain in the ass.
“Oh, and Sharon said to remind you about evaluations,” Abbie said, still just as upbeat and enthusiastic as could be, like she didn’t know she was some kind of Monday morning nightmare come to life.
Danielle refreshed the twitter feed, distracting herself from the onslaught of work by looking for news of the mudslide. Nothing. “Yeah, um, they’re due at the end of May.”
Abbie paused, and from the subtle hiss in her ear Danielle guessed she was taking a hit off her ubiquitous bottle of diet soda.
“The hospital wants them by then,” Abbie said, pausing a few seconds for another slurp of soda, “but Sharon wants ours done by May first, May fifteenth at the very latest. She wants extra time to log them all in.”
Danielle couldn’t find the words to respond. Getting the evaluations done early reflected well on Sharon, but organizing evals for thirty-five nurses in two months would be almost impossible. From Abbie’s glib tone, Danielle guessed who the job of Sharon’s spunky right hand now belonged to.
“I mean, do you really need to stay in Seattle until February?” Abbie asked. “You got that carpenter dude running around. Put him in charge.”
“Yeah, well…”
“I was kinda surprised to see a guy like him crawling all over you the other morning. Braden was more the sapiosexual type.”
Abbie’s harsh giggle convinced Danielle they’d never really been friends. “Yeah, well…”
“Sharon and I just got a quick look, you know, but boy howdy he was hot.”
“Yeah, well … he was.” Danielle couldn’t quite keep the hitch out of her voice. The hard crystal tears threatened to go off like a cloudburst.
Abbie must have accomplished her mission, because she got off the phone before any real emotion got out there between them.
Danielle set the phone down on the desk, moving carefully in case her world was in imminent danger of shattering. She closed the PubMed browser page. She refreshed the Twitter stream. She sat with her hands in her lap, staring out the window at the distant view of the Sound.
On the plane flight up from L.A., it had all seemed so simple: get in, get dirty, get back to real life. But right now she didn’t know what real life meant. Could she be having a mid-life crisis at the age of thirty-three? She picked up her tea and rubbed the warm mug against her cheek. The citrus and nutmeg scent should have been calming. It wasn’t. More than anything else, she wanted to get back into her grandmother’s house, to assess the damage, and to wipe the mud off the damned fireplace tile she’d worked so hard to clean.
That did it. Her tears fell, long and hard and wet. She didn’t stop crying until Uncle Jonathan tapped on her door, asking if she wanted to drive down to Perkins Lane to check on the progress.
“We won’t know anything until the inspectors are done.” Uncle Jonathan pointed at Danielle with his fork, speaking over the muted crowd of diners. “I know it sucks, but we’re just going to have to wait.”
“I’m an ICU nurse. I’m not good at waiting.”
Jonathan had insisted on going out for Thai food before heading down to Perkin’s Lane. Danielle stirred the curried vegetables on her plate. She wasn’t hungry, the spicy smell choked her, and the gurgling fountain got on her nerves. Even the drooping orchids provoked her.
Her uncle grinned like some kind of benevolent Buddha come to life. “Patience, Grasshopper.”
“If I had patience I’d work in a rehab unit.”
“You won’t be waiting forever, you know.” He spoke carefully through a mouth full of curry.
“I just…” She set down her fork and massaged her temples. “There was meat in the freezer and the power’s been off long enough that I’m sure it’s rotted. I’ll probably have to have someone haul the fridge to the dump.”
“Why don’t you ask your friend Ryan to help?”
Uncle Jonathan’s expression stayed benign, but Danielle came close to shouting A-ha! This whole lunch thing was a search for information about a subject she really, really wanted to avoid. She took a swallow of her Thai iced tea and waited until she could respond rationally.
The silence between them lasted long enough to make Danielle twitchy. Uncle Jonathan seemed content to let her stew, the bastard. After another swallow of tea, she finally caved. “Ryan won’t be helping me anymore.” There. See? No tears. “He won’t be around at all.” And the reason is none of your business.
Her uncle tilted his head, but otherwise his Buddha smile stayed fixed in place. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah.” She made another halfhearted swipe at the curry with her fork. “Can we pack this up and go? Please?”
He tipped his head
at the waitress. “He didn’t seem like the type to do something stupid enough for you to give him the heave-ho.”
Ooo-kay. “As much as I’d like to blame this one on him, it’s me who screwed up.” Danielle paid strict attention to the fountain, because it was easier than meeting her uncle’s gaze. “Wasn’t meant to be, I guess. I’m leaving, anyway.”
“You could always stay long enough to make it right.”
Danielle snorted a laugh with so much bitterness it burned on the way out. “Sure.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve called your mother since the slide.”
More laughter. More bitterness. More burn. “Nope, Uncle Jonathan. There’s a limit to how much drama I can deal with.”
He shifted in his seat, not nearly uncomfortable enough in the face of Danielle’s anger. “How long has it been since you’ve talked to her?”
Danielle pushed her plate away. “Five years. Except for New Years, I mean.”
Uncle Jonathan’s slow blink gave Danielle a good idea of how frigid she sounded.
“She called me one night five years ago, drunk, and begged me to forgive her for hiding me away from my father.” Danielle squeezed her lips tight because a small Thai restaurant at lunchtime was not the place to unload a lifetime of hurt feelings. “When I asked his name, she said she couldn’t tell me because it would screw up my childhood.”
Her uncle’s cheery expression faded in response to Danielle’s barely-contained rage.
“As if our long-distance relationship wasn’t screwed up enough.”
“If I had to guess,” Jonathan said sadly, “you’re probably better off without him.” He laid a tentative hand over Danielle’s. “The men she brought home back in those days were pretty rough, and she never even brought this guy home.”
“Fantastic.” She shut her eyes and bent her head. After a minute, she took hold of her uncle’s hand. Her own parents might have been effed up, but Uncle Jonathan and her grandmother had done a lot to get her through.
Half an hour later, they were in Jonathan’s Mercedes, driving around the curve by Magnolia Park. A bag of Thai food sat on the back seat like a cilantro-scented air freshener. Fighting her jittery nerves, Danielle all but held her breath against potential disaster.
She’d have to hold it a while longer. A cop had parked his car sideways across Ray Drive, the street leading down to Perkins Lane.
“Damn it.” Danielle said.
Uncle Jonathan pulled off to the side and parked along the gravel strip near a stand of madrona trees. Danielle popped out through the passenger door. “Where are you going?” He raised his voice because she was already three steps away from the car.
“To ask when the road’ll be open.”
She took off before he could reply. Five minutes later she climbed back into the sedan, spewing a torrent of HBO-worthy profanity. “Officer Dickhead doesn’t know when we’ll be able to get down there.”
“Best not to let him hear you talk like that.”
She was pretty sure her glare would peel the bark off the nearest tree.
“Hey, I’m not a public defender.” Her uncle rubbed his mouth like he needed to hide a smile. “That guy’s probably sucking up some overtime, bored out of his mind, and up to his balls in bitchy homeowners.”
“Oh, and now I’m bitchy.” She slammed the heavy door with a solid thunk.
Uncle Jonathan put a hand on her knee. “Now come on, Dani. I didn’t mean you.”
She cooled down some because of the underlying compassion in his tone.
“It’s those other stressed-out crazies that got to him first,” he said.
Danielle’s sigh turned into a laugh, and her uncle joined in. When the giggles threatened to exceed her control, she tipped her head back against the leather seat, swallowing hard before the laughter morphed into sobs.
Later that afternoon Danielle got a text message from Maeve.
Giving up on work. Pedicure?
Lunch with Uncle Jonathan had put a dressing over the worst of her hurts, so instead of ignoring Maeve, Danielle responded when & where?
When was as soon as she could get there, and where was the nail salon next to Pagliacci Pizza in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood. Hoping to capture just a little bit of normal, Danielle borrowed Robert’s Prius and headed out.
The trickiest bit was finding a parking place on busy Queen Anne Avenue. By the time she reached the salon, Maeve was already in one of the big vinyl chairs with a built-in, foot-sized Jacuzzi tub.
A tiny Asian woman greeted Danielle with heavily accented enthusiasm. “Pick a color,” she said. Danielle grabbed a deep spicy red, slipped off her down jacket, and dropped into the chair next to Maeve’s.
“Danielle’s here. Yay!” Maeve said, her voice rising to a squeal. “How come you didn’t call me back this weekend?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. It’s been…” Danielle fussed with her seat rather than answer, unable to explain to her supposed best friend how hard it was to talk when everything sucked. Maybe normal had been too much to hope for. Maybe get-through-an-hour-without-tears was more realistic.
The salon girl came from the back room and took the polish from Danielle, then helped her remove her shoes.
“You want a manicure too?” the girl asked.
Danielle gave her shredded fingernails a quick inspection, more than ever conscious of the contrast between Maeve’s glam jeans and tunic combo compared with her borrowed sweater and the one pair of jeans she’d worn out of Grandmother’s house the day of the mudslide. “Not yet.”
“Here, my dear.” Maeve passed her a Starbucks cup. “The latte you wanted.” She leaned into the word latte like it was the clue to the Maltese Falcon.
Danielle tried not to look too perplexed and took a tentative sip. “Mm … coffee.” With a kick.
Warm water frothed around Danielle’s ankles and she eased back in the chair. Maeve had spiked the coffee with at least Kahlua and Baileys, and possibly also vodka. Danielle tried another sip. Then another.
“I’ve been calling you all weekend,” Maeve said. “Niall says your house was damaged by the slide. How bad is it?”
Danielle hit the Starbucks cup again, letting the alcohol soothe her fraying composure. “It’s bad. Mud came through the living room window. I don’t know how much damage was done.”
“Oh my God, that’s terrible.” Maeve patted Danielle’s arm awkwardly, as if someone along the way had told her physical contact was appropriate, but she wasn’t quite sure how to make it happen. “What does Ryan think?”
Now there was a question Danielle had no intention of answering. She really, really didn’t want to get into the whole Ryan thing with Maeve.
The salon girl squatted on a stool in front of Danielle and lifted one of her feet out of the water. She used the activity as an excuse not to respond.
“Dude, come on.”
Maeve yelped loud enough to make Danielle wonder if she’d had more than one latte. “What?”
“What’s that bandage on your face for?” Maeve asked, leaning over the armrest as if she could force Danielle to respond.
Relieved at the shift in emphasis away from Ryan, Danielle answered. “A cut from the flying glass when the window broke.”
“Oh shit. No one told me you got hurt.”
“I’m fine. Uncle Jonathan and Robert have been taking good care of me.”
“Well, if you get fed up with hanging out with old men, let me know.” Maeve’s grin promised good times of the party-girl variety. “You can always crash with me.”
After that, Maeve let the subject of the mud slide drop. Christopher had taken Maeve to a movie, and while Danielle had her toenails trimmed and her heels buffed they discussed the significance of the event. Was it a just-friends date, or a date-date? Maeve was uncertain. Danielle was amused.
Neither had the nerve to call Christopher and ask.
With a pink-jacketed worker massaging each hand, Maeve’s smile got a little a
bstract. “Since you’re kind of homeless, I’ll take you out to dinner tonight,” she said.
“We could just to go Pagliacci’s next door.”
“Sure.” Maeve’s concession was simply a feint, her relaxation an act, allowing her a moment to launch another attack. “Now, back to the house…”
Danielle kept her gaze on the table top, exasperated by getting caught off-guard.
“When will you and Ryan get to take a look at it?”
All out of dodges, Danielle tipped her head so a few strands of hair covered her face. “Ryan’s not working on the project anymore.” Staring at a scuff on the floor was easier than meeting Maeve’s gaze.
“Why not?”
Danielle didn’t bother to unravel the threads of surprise and concern in Maeve’s tone. Lying had caused her trouble. More lying would make things worse. “You know, the other night, when you called?”
“Yeah?”
The salon’s floral acetone scent made Danielle lightheaded. “After we hung up, he got mad and left.” She paused to catch her breath, the echo of his angry words slamming through her chest, amplifying her feelings of desertion. “He said I was treating him like a booty call.”
“That’s crazy.” Maeve rocked her head back, her gaze fixed on the big-screen TV on the back wall of the salon.
“I guess I screwed up, made him feel like I didn’t want people to know we were together.” Danielle rubbed a palm across her brow. “Which sucks because Ryan and I had something good.”
“Okay.” Maeve lifted her hands, palms aimed at Danielle. “You know I don’t want to hear details, right?”
“Whatever, Maeve. I really cared about him.” The words burst out, almost against her will. “A lot.” Danielle had to stop and clear her throat. “He was an amazing part of my life.”
Maeve interrupted her. “You’re using past tense.”
“What?” Danielle asked. She’d been too focused on blinking back tears to listen.