Resurgence: Book 2 of the Second Chances Trilogy

by M. M. Mayle

  He’s as apt to cry as display one of his diffident smiles when he’s waking. Toward encouraging the smile, she singsongs the first Jeremiah Barely-There verse she ever heard and is rewarded with a snatch of laughter sufficient to chase away any lingering specters of Aurora, headless or otherwise.

  “Silly,” he says.

  “Yes, darling . . . silly indeed.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Afternoon, May 10, 1987

  Three days after the phone session with the Denver neurologist, Christian Thorne is unexpectedly available to add his contribution to the writing project.

  “I didn’t think you’d have time for this until after the memorial concert,” Laurel says as they enter the winter parlor, his choice of venue—apparently everyone’s choice of venue when it comes to private discussions. The most recent, last night’s argument with Rachel about her wrongheaded desire to leave Terra Firma, is still fresh in her mind when Laurel, armed with a fresh legal pad and a clutch of pens, gets comfortable in her usual armchair with the usual little cat on her lap.

  “I’m making time,” Chris says and settles on a straight chair at the game table, where his pensive demeanor reminisces the day they all tried to make sense of an untimely death. He begins without urging, falling somewhere in between Rayce Vaughn and Nate Isaacs as a narrator. He’s neither as voluble as Rayce, nor as adept as Nate, but that doesn’t hamper his ability to get the story across. Well spoken despite an admitted lack of formal education, he does, however, have a tendency to wander. Her first page of notes therefore includes a generous sprinkling of doodles reminiscent of the written record of the phone interview with the Denver doctor

  After his lengthy and disjointed description of Colin’s first few months at home, impatience gets the best of her and she intrudes with questions that probably should wait until later.

  “What did he say first?” she asks. “Were you there for it?”

  “You mean was there a fuckreka moment?”

  “Fuckreka?”

  “Sorry, that’s a Rayce expression. He’d say that instead of ‘fuckin’ eureka’ whenever there was one of those big light bulb moments of comprehension. But that’s not the way Colin came out of it, luv. His reentry was gradual-like. He came back to us a little at a time.”

  “I see.”

  “One day he’d show a flicker of interest in one thing, another day he’d spark on something else. The lot of us were most hopeful the day he scooped up Simon, who was screaming as usual, and attempted to quiet him. I guess if you wanted to pick a first word, it could be ‘shhhh.’”

  Chris goes on to describe a dozen other instances when Colin reacted either to Simon or Anthony, not always with utterances, sometimes with actions. Gestures. Fatherly gestures. She lets the word pictures warm her for a moment before posing the obvious question about the boys’ reaction to their father’s reemergence.

  “Our Simon didn’t show much reaction beyond his usual need to be comforted. You gotta remember this started happening almost a year ago, so the lad wasn’t yet two, and not that practiced at walking and talking himself when Colin started coming round.”

  “Oh, of course. And Anthony, how did he respond to his father’s renewed attention?”

  “Anthony . . . well, I guess you know the lad’s had a bit of a rough go of it, so getting his dad back was a massive event in his young life. When communications really began opening up—when Colin began talking to him regularly and telling him funny stories, the lad could hardly be torn away from his dad to go to school. Didn’t want Colin out of his sight for a minute, and who could blame him, virtual orphan he was for all those months.”

  “What of you and the others who rallied around the cause? Were you following any specific protocol?”

  “If you mean professional protocol, no. We called ourselves the band of mates and went at him without a song sheet, as Rayce liked to put it.”

  “So by exposing him to constant stimuli—your presence, evocative music, pertinent readings, reminders of his stage career—you were just winging it. No one from the Fortescue Center laid out a plan for you to follow.”

  “If you mean Dr. Kice—again, no.”

  “Then you know the good doctor and what he felt was the catalyst to Colin’s disconnect.”

  “I met with Dr. Kice both times I looked in on Colin in Denver, so I was familiar with what he was doing. But I wasn’t always in agreement. Especially not near the end of Colin’s stay there when Kice went rather brutal with all the emphasis put on the blood and gore of the matter.”

  ‘Blood and gore of the matter’ readily translates to ‘gruesome nature of Aurora’s death’ in Laurel’s mind. Until now, she didn’t realize how much she wanted Chris to share her disdain for that theory until her held breath came out in a quiet sigh of relief at his reply.

  Leaving nothing to chance or misinterpretation, she then dares ask if Chris and the so-called band of mates ever raised the subject of Aurora in a less jolting way.

  “Yeah, she inevitably got mention, goin’ all the way back to when Nate first told the unresponsive Colin she died in the accident. That was back in Michigan, but I guess you’d know that. What you maybe don’t know is that when Colin came back to us, it was like he already knew she was dead. Nobody had to tell the responsive Colin. In fact, early on in the coming-out period I heard him telling Anthony his mum was gone for good, and he didn’t sound at all broken up about it—he sounded like it was old news he was telling over for the hundredth time.”

  “Well, they say comatose patients often absorb bits and pieces of what’s said in their presence,” Laurel says.

  “I think you’re forgetting he was never in a conventional coma, and because he wasn’t, I think he’s actually aware of everything that went on round him at the time, and just chooses not to dredge some of it up.”

  “I see. He’s told me he can’t remember much of anything that happened after . . . after he recovered Aurora at the truck stop.”

  “Can’t or won’t? And who’d blame him if he did want to keep all that shite buried.”

  Before she can pursue that theory, Gemma Earle raps on the open door and enters carrying a tea tray with Simon fast on her heels.

  “She fixed me,” Simon says of Gemma, and clambers onto Laurel’s lap without thought for either the cat or the writing materials resting on the arm of the chair. No real harm is done, so he’s allowed to remain while she and Chris go through the motions of taking a break neither of them want. When they resume, with Simon playing on the floor with his endless supply of snap-together blocks, Laurel takes a new direction.

  “Nate said that when you and Susa came to Michigan to take the baby home, you all recognized that even if Colin could be fully restored in mind and body, he’d never be the same person he once was.”

  “True. That would’ve been anyone’s impression, layman or professional alike. Inevitable, it was.”

  “Can you say how he’s different now? What the biggest changes are?”

  Chris rakes back his shoulder-length dark hair with both hands and stretches his long weedy legs before answering.

  “I keep forgetting you didn’t know him before—you didn’t even know of him, I’m told.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So I could tell you any damn thing I wanted to about the before.” Chris flashes one of his rare smiles.

  She smiles back. “Yes, you could, and I could always check with Rachel. I doubt she’d whitewash anything, and all kidding aside, I have considered asking her. I’ve even considered asking Colin, but he’s still reluctant to talk about himself except in the most general way—almost as reluctant as he was at the inception of the biography project.”

  “‘Reluctant’ is the nice polite word for his stubborn refusal to just get on with certain things, and that’s the main reason I barged in on you today. He’s struggling, Laurel, he’s having a bad time of it with the old Verge standards.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. I
s he struggling to remember them?”

  “Hell no. Nothing like that. If anything, he’s remembering too well—remembering the period they represent. He knows I’m onto him and soon everyone’ll be aware of the problem, if he goes through with his threat to omit most of our best-known tunes from the tour playlist.”

  “If I’m reading you right, he’s trying to distance himself from the period when he was most heavily involved—”

  “Embroiled.”

  “Yes, thank you—embroiled with Aurora. Can you tell me why on earth this should matter now? Who could possibly care?”

  “You could.”

  Laurel gulps audibly, bows her head as though vestiges of the jealousy felt while listening to Dr. Kice’s opinion might show on her face. “That’s ridiculous,” she says.

  “Ridic’lous,” Simon says with more conviction than she mustered.

  “I was hoping you’d see it that way,” Chris says.

  “How could I see it any other way?” Laurel says, a defensive edge sharpening her tone. “I’ll speak to him about it.”

  “Can you do it in a way that doesn’t point the finger at me?”

  “No, I can’t. I already learned that lesson when I didn’t tell him right away that I was in touch with Nate. I can’t expect him to confide in me if I’m not completely open with him.”

  “I suppose that’s only fair, but you sound a bit pissed about it.”

  “I am pissed. He’s showing a remarkable lack of faith in me, and violating his own rule by not coming straight to me with his concerns,”

  “You want me to tell him that?”

  “Absolutely not! Did you hear anything I just said? All this go-between business is symptomatic of my annoyance. I’d like to hear straight from Colin how he’s changed since the accident. And I’d like him to be the one telling me he thinks I might be bothered by musical references to his late wife.”

  Before she digs herself deeper into a pit of jealousy and resentment, she thanks Chris for his input and assures him he’s in no danger for having been the messenger. She says nothing about when they might next get together for the purpose of adding to her research. At the moment, she’s not sure she wants to hear anything more about Colin Elliot that doesn’t come direct from Colin Elliot.

  NINETEEN

  Late afternoon, May 10, 1987

  Chris has been gone a half hour before Laurel attempts to utilize what’s left of an afternoon she had planned to spend selecting textbooks and lesson outlines for her upcoming stint as Anthony’s tutor. With Simon and the little cat in close attendance, she moves to the north wing office, where her efforts are desultory at best. Her thoughts won’t crystallize while dominated by Chris’s revelation, and she’s too close to anger to be much company to Simon right now.

  Although rain threatens, she decides a long walk will benefit her legs, if not her mind. Simon objects to being left behind with Gemma, but his outcry isn’t enough of a deterrent to hold her back.

  She starts out at a brisk walk and is soon jogging. She’s running by the time she reaches the specimen copper beech tree, and doesn’t slow down until she reaches the high meadow, where the helicopter landed—where she first set foot on Terra Firma—where she first came to earth, one could say. Remembering the landing in those terms could make her wonder if she’s now looking for another do-over—if she ran all this way to find her footprint and either refresh it or erase it. That notion brings her to a standstill. That, and the electrical whine of a farm conveyance coming her way.

  She turns in the direction of the house, expecting to see Sam Earle or one of the gardeners approaching with a load of mulch or a day’s accumulation of brush. Instead, it’s Colin at the wheel of a converted golf cart, waving as though she’d just returned after a year’s absence, and closing in on her at a fact clip.

  “Oi there! Baby girl! I came home early and you weren’t there,” he shouts across the diminishing distance.

  She tries not to smile; she’s annoyed with him, after all. But she’s not very convincing when he jumps off the cart and grabs her in a bear hug. She’s not very convincing when he kisses her repeatedly, and repeatedly tells her how much he missed her today, and how they’ll have to book rooms in London because the commute’s killing him and he doesn’t fancy leaving her behind every time he’s needed there.

  He doesn’t want to hear her argument that she can go as many as eight hours without him, or that she’s needed here during the day. She’s unable to overcome his insistence that she return to the house now, in the golf cart, with him. She offers no resistance when he demands that they have a late supper alone tonight, and she’s helpless not to be touched when they’re under way and he makes a big deal of stopping at the magnificent copper beech and sheltering for a few hushed minutes within the cavern of its dark-leaved branches.

  At the house, Laurel insists on taking over supper preparations for the boys. Anthony kibitzes, makes a real pest of himself while she peels apples for a Chandler family favorite. To lessen the irritant factor, she puts him to work assembling the other ingredients.

  “Is this for pudding?” he says of the sugar and cinnamon he’s asked to bring from the pantry.

  “No, darling, it’s for a pancake, even though it’s baked in the—oh, you mean dessert. I keep forgetting pudding means dessert in your country. One of these days I’ll have to learn British English, won’t I?”

  “I guess.”

  “This is a treat my family liked a lot. Sometimes we’d have it for breakfast and sometimes for supper if there wasn’t anything else in the house.”

  “Do you have children?” Anthony says when he brings eggs and milk from the big double refrigerator.

  “No. If I had children they’d be with me, wouldn’t they?”

  “Some mums go away without their children.”

  “Well I don’t, so you can put that worry aside.”

  “But you’re not my mum.”

  Laurel groans a trifle dramatically and sets aside the batter ingredients. “Sit down.” She indicates a high stool opposite her work space and fetches another stool for herself. “Anthony, how many times have we been over this?”

  “Dunno,” he mumbles and stares at the floor.

  “I think you do. Too many. You tempt me to have you write on the blackboard a hundred times: ‘Laurel is my acting mum till August when she’ll marry my father and make it official.’”

  “We don’t have a blackboard.”

  “Don’t push me, Anthony. You’re still on probation, you know. And look at me when I’m talking to you!”

  He looks up and she’s instantly ashamed of making him suffer for a crime he didn’t commit—if she can even call it a crime now that she sees his concern as an extension of Colin’s.

  “Come here, sweetheart.” She holds out her arms and he edges around the work island, slowly, warily, the way he accepts her hug.

  “I think we need to begin again,” she says and gives him an extra squeeze while pretending it’s the cooking that needs to be started over. “I forgot that you should have bacon and sausages—no, that would be rashers and bangers wouldn’t it?—with this great delicacy we’re concocting, and I need you to help me find some.”

  “You don’t have to invent things for me to do so I’ll feel important.”

  “Believe me, I’m not. I don’t know where the damn bacon and sausages are kept. And yes, I cursed in your presence. Get over it.”

  She’s not proud of that outburst either, but it did seem to clear the air. After rolling his eyes no less extravagantly than she did when she groaned at him a minute ago, he locates the requested items in an overlooked compartment of the refrigerator and preparations get under way.

  The sweet and savory aromas attract first Gemma, who brings Simon to the table, then Colin, who is only passing through after his workout. While Laurel serves and supervises the meal, talk centers on the European tour, something even Simon can show interest in without knowing exactly why. After
Anthony has been excused to finish his homework, she sits for a while with the little one, plays a few games of very tangled cat’s cradle with him until he starts rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  She leaves the dishes to be cleared away by the help—as she’s been told to do nearly as many times as Anthony has been told he’s no longer motherless—and carries Simon upstairs to the children’s suite. She bathes and dresses him for bed in record time, and is just tucking him in with a worn copy of Goodnight Moon under her arm, when Colin comes in, fresh from his own bath and dressed in a black silk shirt and tuxedo trousers.

  As if that’s not enough to dispel her anger with him, he sits down beside her on the edge of the bed, and spouts one of his better emergency rhymes.

  Bees are known to bumble

  Biscuits tend to crumble

  Footballers sometimes fumble

  Malcontents do grumble

  But though it’s not that humble

  My home is just a jumble

  So excuse me as I mumble

  Please overlook the rumble

  As up the stairs I stumble

  And tumble into bed.

  This produces a sleepy grin from Simon and a sigh of resignation from her.

  “I’ll see to Anthony whilst you get into something . . . more comfortable,” Colin says with an eye to her wrinkled shorts and batter-spattered camp shirt.

  “I think you mean appropriate”

  “Yeh, I do,” he says, and bends to kiss Simon goodnight.

  Laurel interprets “appropriate” to mean “alluring.” After a quick shower in the master suite, she selects the grey chiffon with the draped bodice purchased to understudy the evocative black dress which has now seen better days. She puts it on over minimal underwear, stabs in her regulation diamond stud earrings, and slips into a pair of high-heeled silver sandals.

  Because she forgot to turn on the fan or open a window prior to showering, the bathroom mirrors are fogged over, so she arranges her hair by feel and dabs on mascara and lipstick hit-or-miss.