by Lisa Preston
Hospitalization, that was Dr. MacLean’s recommendation for helping Greer. In-patient treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Oh, God. How long?” Maddie asked when Doug told her the news.
He made finger quotes. “An unspecified duration. The folks both have to go to the hospital without Greer next Thursday—”
“That’s my mom and Malcolm’s wedding.”
Doug nodded. “So they’ll have to miss it. My mom talked to yours. Everybody’s cool with it. You and I have Greer that day. We take him to school, we pick him up, we take him to the wedding.”
Maddie gaped, considering the implications as Doug added, “It’s an all-day thing ’cause hospital staff is meeting with both folks, then just with her, and maybe they’re touring the facility. At some point, they talk to just Dad. The next day, the folks take Greer with enough clothes to stay, but they can come and visit.”
She frowned. “This thing with Greer is really urgent, isn’t it?”
“Sounds that way. Hey,” he said, thumbing a tear off her cheek, “that’s why they’re going. To take care of the problem. Why are you crying?”
Maddie shook her head. “So much can go wrong in raising a kid.”
He wrapped his arms around her body. “Do you know why we’re taking him that day? Because we’re the ones who would raise Greer if anything happened to both of my folks. That’s what they said.”
“Oh, God.” She cradled her abdomen. “Who would raise our child? Have you thought about that? What if we had this baby and then we died? No one even knows yet, but us. We have to pick someone to take care of our baby if something happens to us. Who? My mom and Malcolm? Your folks?”
“Do you really want to choose right now?”
“Yes.”
He stuck out a thumb, the way Donners did when they sounded off the siblings, and began. “Ben …”
“Yes. Stop. That’s it. Ben and Ryan. Should we talk to them now?”
“Um. I don’t think so. We’re going to announce at the wedding, right? Just to your mom at first? There’s time. We’ve got time.”
Sitting beside her husband as they pulled up at his parents’ house at 5:30 a.m., Maddie felt nauseated and knew it was more than morning sickness. The frightening word, suicide, had haunted her ever since she’d talked to her in-laws about their fast-tracked appointment at the private children’s psychiatric facility in Seattle.
Doug smiled, caressing her face. “You didn’t have to come, but I’m glad you did. I want to be with you when you’re feeling like you are. I don’t want to leave your side. We could have just stayed here last night.”
“I like the cabin. It’s home.”
He nodded and started to get out of the Jeep. She grabbed his hand. “I have to tell you something. This thing with Greer, maybe being … wanting to die. I can’t stand it.”
She released his hand, clasping her belly again. Dodie. They’d started calling that wisp inside her Dodie, a meaningless nickname that put them in fits of giggles.
Doug shook his head, more in wonder, she decided, which was part of the feeling she had about this news from her in-laws, but it wasn’t the worst part.
“The thing is, Greer had a gun. Your dad’s gun. And I knew. I was the only one who knew, who noticed anyway, and I didn’t say anything then I kind of forgot about it. It was that time he fell off Clipper and had to walk all that way home in the dark. Remember? That night when we all came inside, your dad put his coat on Greer. I’m pretty sure there was a gun in the coat pocket.”
He cocked his head and waited, one eyebrow lifted. “Then you just should have said something. My dad should have secured the weapon, if he did have one. And you’re probably right, he probably had one. But it’s okay.”
“How is it okay? It’s not even a tiny bit okay.” She started crying in earnest.
“Maddie, it will be okay. Whatever it takes, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll get Greer through this. The folks need to see about this hospital in Seattle. They need to get on the road now for their appointment. Let’s go inside. Don’t worry about the gun thing again. That was weeks and weeks ago. Besides, I’ve got all his guns now.”
“You do? Since when?”
“Since the shrink told him Greer said he wanted to die. Dad brought his pistols, rifles, and shotgun to our place. They’re in the rafters.”
Maddie watched her in-laws pad into their hall.
“You won’t have to go, not yet,” Bella promised her sleeping son at the doorway. Then she looked up and explained, “He’s so worried about going to the hospital.”
Ardy held out a fleece sweater for Bella, slipped it over her arms, then shouldered into his canvas coat. Maddie remembered that coat on the night when Greer had fallen off the horse and taken forever hiking home alone. Guilt washed over her again. She’d guessed the kid had had his father’s gun and, bent to the momentum of the group, she’d not raised an objection.
To hear her in-laws tell it, the Donner kids had all but juggled guns growing up.
She’d dodged a bullet.
The trepidation she felt in minding a disturbed child unwound inside her, made her clamp her mouth shut lest she scream. Everybody had Greer stories now. In a restaurant with Ben and Ryan earlier in the week, he’d screamed an ear-splitting shriek for no apparent reason. And she’d heard Ardy talk to Doug about the boy moving furniture in his bedroom, barricading himself in. Ardy and Bella had shoved their way into Greer’s bedroom and taken him to their bed.
“You have one of those bags?” Ardy asked as they handed Greer over for the long day he and Bella had to spend in the city.
Doug patted his shirt pocket. “Right here.”
Maddie winced but decided she could handle the hyperventilating better than the spurts of rudeness and super-weirdness Greer had dished out of late. Then she made her face a mask, hugged her husband’s parents. Watching her father-in-law falter—the man had aged this winter—Maddie saw Doug try to lighten the mood with a punch to his old man’s shoulder.
“You’re a rock,” Ardy told Doug as he shut his car door.
“Hey there,” Maddie greeted Greer when the boy came down the hall in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes.
“School or, if you get dressed in two minutes, go fishing?” Doug asked.
“Doug.” Maddie stared at him.
He winked. The boy scurried down the hallway for his room, ripping off his pajama top as he went.
“Seriously?” she asked. “Our one job is to get him to school, and we’re going to blow it? We’re going to make awesome parents.”
He shrugged. “The folks said it’d be okay to play hooky. I’ll go by the school later and get his homework, find out what they covered in class today. Ben or I will do it with him over the weekend.”
Then he phoned the school office and relayed that he’d not be sending Greer to class. Grinning and shaking her head, Maddie followed him into the kitchen to sack up snacks, maybe some fruit or sandwiches, maybe some of those frosted things Emma left the other day, enough to last the three of them for a day on the river.
This was not at all the way she’d thought her mother’s wedding day would be.
Doug called for Greer to get his jacket, to make sure they had some fly-tying gear ready to go. “C’mon, we’ll try by the embankment.”
They stepped through the kitchen doors to nothing. Now where was that kid?
“Greer?” Doug hollered, striding through his parents’ house.
Maddie stopped, seeing the boy tucked under the dining table. She beckoned to Doug and pointed.
“I don’t want to go there.”
“What?” Maddie watched the boy’s sharp looks at the doors, the braced legs, the thin chest rising and falling faster.
“Come on out of there,” Doug told him.
Greer crawled out. “Let’s stay home.”
Doug rocked on his heels in front of Greer. “We’re getting out of the house, buddy.”
“But y
ou said …” Greer froze.
“What did I say?” Doug asked.
Greer kept his gaze off his brother, replying in a small voice, “I don’t want to go to the bank.”
“Em-bank-ment, I said. This is fun, not the bank, not errands, Greer. Not even school. Fun. The embankment where the river cuts under the old bridge. Where we shoot sometimes?”
Enlightenment filtered across the kid’s face. “Promise?”
“Yep.”
Maddie was still trying to make sense of things when she sat streamside, a book on her knees. Her husband and little brother-in-law worked the lesser tributary by the river in the course of the early-and late-morning hours. Less than three dozen words passed between the brothers. When they reached her at the embankment, she glanced up from the page and saw Greer relax one notch.
Doug was always relaxed. His family teased him about this truth. Is Doug awake or asleep or upset or fishing? It all looks the same. The others didn’t understand he went super-happy on the river. Fishing was living for him, what he knew for sure.
The night before, he’d said his littlest brother was always upset. Always. But they knew the boy hadn’t always been this way. This winter, the kid was wound tighter than a spring, asking things only after miles of deliberation, closing up when any adult tried to figure out what was making him tick. Making no sense. Doug was sure he’d come around, respond to their questions once he could ask a good one.
They fished into the afternoon’s waning light, snacking on their lunch instead of stopping for one meal, switching out reels, swapping flies. Doug gave wry smiles. Greer kept his face impenetrable for hours until he chanced to ask, “Do the stars and stuff see everything?”
Maddie watched Doug look up at the sky. Venus would be out tonight, but the stars had long faded. The moon was not yet a vague glow in the east, its light having not cleared the near hills.
“I suppose they see a lot. But no, not everything.”
Greer twisted his face and suggested hopefully, “But a lot?”
“Plenty.” Doug nodded.
She wondered if her husband was being tested because he wanted to be a father. She’d talked unashamedly about fearing their child could have problems, big problems. There were so many things that could go wrong, countless horrors. Doug looked nonplussed and drove her nuts when he wouldn’t come with her in worry, but the specter of potential problems just didn’t shake him. No sense in worrying about maybes. Even now, with everyone ready to go to pieces with Greer, Doug exuded calm, waiting for a chance to help.
When he’s ready, Doug had told her while the boy slept that morning.
“Are you going to fish some more?” Greer asked.
“’Course.” Doug returned to the riverbank, slipping his daypack from one shoulder then the other, piecing together the tiny four-weight rod and attaching the packed little reel.
“I’ll watch.” Greer sat among the dead grasses at the water’s edge.
Sounds of the reel clicking and zipping, the gentle splash, and Doug’s occasional hum were all that came. For another quarter of an hour, he fished within feet of Maddie and Greer. He was a man who possessed the extraordinary patience necessary to wait and watch before going after his quarry. But she knew the shallows held no fish. Considering the oddness of him breaking his first and only law of how to catch breakfast, lunch, and dinner—fish where the fish are—she decided he just wanted to keep the family close. Her husband was an old soul.
The sun was warm and the spot was secluded. They were alone, together. Doug said there was no better place for them this day. He stood with the water licking the tops of his folded hip waders. When he held a trout high then released it, Greer smiled. Maddie raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t dunk,” Greer said at last.
“Don’t want to dunk,” Doug agreed.
Greer sat up straighter. “You’d find out that the water’s cold.”
He sounded just like his old man there, in tone and words. Maddie smiled, seeing that the boy wanted to be just like his dad, just like Doug.
“Finding out is what it’s all about,” Doug said, one hand pulling the fly line in, his gaze ever on the rippling water in the river’s center.
“Maddie?” Greer had her alone at what used to be his papa’s cabin.
She’d heard he was sorely jealous of the family stories about living here. The older kids, except for Frankie, had spent early childhood in the cabin, before the divorce that was before the remarriage. Greer touched the log wall, eyed the wood shakes in the loft, and admitted to pretending he’d been around way back then, that he was grown up now, like his brothers and sisters.
Please, Maddie prayed, let him not have one of his little freak-outs. Doug had just dropped them off and headed for the school. She would be alone with the kid for a good forty minutes. Were there paper bags in the cabin? Where? In the cupboards? And let the kid not get snotty either.
He looked inspired. “Don’t you ever think of going back to Canada?”
“Well, I do go. I go to Vancouver Island. Doug and I go a lot. You know that.”
“But you live here.”
“Sure.” Hands on her hips, she considered him. Her sense was that he was plying his best charm, but without much hope.
“A whole other country would be a good place for hiding.” He scuffed one Keds knockoff on the plank floor.
Maddie folded her arms across her chest, cleared her throat, and saw whatever hope he’d had for his agenda fade. “I wasn’t hiding when I grew up in Canada. My dad took me there when I was very young. Um, are you thinking of … running away?” She tried to sound casual, just sort of interested, but the last two words scraped out with more emotion than she intended.
“Yeah,” he breathed.
Fear spiked inside her. “Greer, you—”
The boy waved her off, shaking his head. “Just kidding. I would never do that.”
She could see him realize he’d made an alarming answer. “You aren’t thinking about running away, right?”
He hunched over, chin trembling.
The underarms of her shirt grew damp. Sinking to the little wicker settee, she pulled him down beside her, kept her warm arm over his shoulders, stroked his hair. One hand went to her stomach.
“Oh, buddy,” Maddie said, “I know you’ve told your folks you don’t want to go stay in the hospital—”
“You guys all talk about me behind my back.”
“Oh, Greer, I know you’re scared. We all love you and want you to feel better. So you might need to go to this special hospital, just for a little while.”
Greer shook his head. “I don’t want to go away without my family. We should all go together. Please don’t let them make me go away by myself. Not all alone.”
She bit her lip, ready to bawl. Eyes wide open to stem the tears, she asked, “What is it you think is going to happen?”
“They’re going to send me away.”
“It’s not for sure,” Maddie said, guilt plaguing her with the half lie. “That’s why they’re checking it out. To decide.”
Greer frowned. “They’re maybe going to send me away.”
“Let’s not worry about maybes, okay?” Her voice brightened, sounding fake as she said, “Shouldn’t we get ready for the wedding? There’s a big party afterward. Doug’s going to be back any minute. I hope he’s here soon.”
“Me, too,” Greer said so fast Maddie thought she and the boy were on the same wavelength with dread about the kid going crazy on her. He stepped on the wall ladder for the loft and she lunged, clapping her hands on his shoulders.
Ardy’s pistols, rifles, and shotgun are in the rafters.
Greer stared at her, startled.
Distraction time. “Hey, I know Doug told you I was trying to get pregnant.”
He nodded, his face solemn. “I didn’t tell.”
She smiled. “Well, we did it. I am pregnant now. And we’re telling everyone tonight.”
His face was
stern. “I’d never ever tell a secret. I’d never betray my family.”
“Um, well, that’s fine, it’s not that big of a …”
“I didn’t tell.”
He pushed away from her and stepped outside, crying. She wished with all the silent shrieks mustering in her mind that Doug would show up and help her help his little brother. The kid was unhinged. Unless …
“You didn’t tell what, buddy?” she asked, one hand again caressing her belly, thinking Dodie, Dodie, my future devotee, my devotion, don’t be like this.
She turned Greer around to bring him back inside the cabin. She’d heard of the kid taking off, bolting, and didn’t want to be chasing all over the National Forest looking for him again, scared out of her wits.
Greer looked back miserably at the forest floor as she half-pushed him inside.
Such a little man, with the weight of the world on him. Like the stories she’d heard of Frankie, when he was young, before everyone realized there was no problem, the guy was just a genius. But Greer was no genius. He was disturbed.
Disturbed and plotting. And begging. “Please, can you talk them out of sending me away?”
“Greer, I want to help you. Everybody does.”
“You’re going away.” His tone turned sullen, full of an ugliness that spooked her.
Please God, let my child never be like this, Maddie prayed, even as she reddened with shame over her thoughts, hands on her abdomen. “Listen, Greer, Doug and I are going back to my island for a couple of weeks and you know that—”
He tucked his chin to his chest and muttered through nearly closed lips, “Take me with you.”
She tilted his chin to make him look up. “What did you say?”
He made his case. “I’m the only one who’s close in age. I would be like a brother.”
“What do you mean?”
“A big brother. To your baby.”
“Of course,” Maddie assured him. “You’ll be just like a big brother to our baby. And you will be to the next baby, too.”
“Then could I come live with you and Doug on the island? Could we move there?”
“Greer!”
“Please?”
“Greer …” Maddie sucked in her lower lip, the boy’s quaking intensity and rabid unhappiness unsettling her to the core. Daggers of guilt taunted her about how angry she had been when the boy wrote the note, duped her about being with Doug when he had absconded with his mother’s horse. She frowned, trying to grasp the ungraspable, watching her little brother-in-law kick a pebble on the cabin floor.