Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “That’s better,” Malachy said calmly. “But no, I haven’t. And I don’t.”

  “Do me a favor, Mal,” Alan said. “Stay with Dianne. I’m going to call up there, talk to the doctors, see if I can arrange a transfer to Hawthorne. Will you see to it Dianne has all the help she needs?”

  “Aye.”

  “A ride to the airport, an ambulance for Julia if it seems warranted?”

  “Aye.”

  “Her mother’s with her,” Alan said. “Is she right there?”

  “Not that I can see,” Malachy said. He must have turned to Dianne, because Alan could hear him soothing her. “There, dear. There now. She’s a little angel, your Julia. She’s in the best of hands now. The doctors of Halifax are first rate. Maybe not what you’re used to in your own backyard, but nearly. Nearly. Where’s your mother, now?”

  Alan strained to hear. The sound of Dianne’s voice was soft and sweet, and he could hear the fear and tension. He wanted to jump through the telephone, hold her in his arms. He wanted to bring them home himself, and it took everything he had to pull himself back.

  “Her ma’s out with Amy,” Malachy said. “Whoever Amy might be. Seems they’ve got a young dog that needs walking.”

  “Orion,” Alan said.

  “Aye,” Malachy agreed. “That’s just what she said.”

  Staring at the Wall, Alan found Julia’s baby picture and stared at it. Dianne had been holding her on her lap: There were her two hands, laced across the baby’s chest. Her head had been cut out of the picture, but her fingers were long and slender, the most graceful hands Alan had ever seen. His eyes filled with tears, and it took him a moment to find his voice.

  “Take care of her, Mal,” Alan said.

  “Count on it, Alan,” Malachy said.

  “Can you put her on?” Alan asked.

  Malachy paused. “She’s not quite able to speak just now, son. You take care of those telephone calls, and I’ll look after things on this end. All right, then?”

  “All right,” Alan said.

  Blood was thicker than water.

  Hanging up the receiver, Alan thought back ten years and felt the same black rage at Tim he had felt then. Julia was one, in the hospital for a third surgery on her twisted bowel, and she had needed a blood transfusion. Blood supplies were down, and there’d been a shortage of her type at Hawthorne Cottage Hospital.

  Using the Coast Guard and fishermen friends, Alan had tracked Tim down. He was in port in Newport, Rhode Island, hardly an hour’s drive away. Leaving Dianne and Julia at the hospital, Alan had jumped into his car and headed north on I-95.

  Most of the time, Tim docked at Long Wharf. Alan knew his habits, and he’d driven slowly along the waterfront, staring at the fishing boats docked there. No sign of the Aphrodite. He had swung down Thames Street, checking all the wharves, found him rafted at Bowens to a dragger out of New Bedford. From then it had just been a matter of checking the bars.

  Hunched over his beer at the Ark, Alan found Tim telling his sad story to a girl with blond hair and tight jeans. She was wearing a halter, and her breasts pressed against the fabric. Tim was shaking his head, and although Alan couldn’t hear the words, he knew the story was about Dianne and Julia, but it was designed to garner pity for Tim.

  “Hey,” Alan had said, clapping his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Alan,” Tim had said, happy to see him. He pushed back the stool and grabbed Alan in a bear hug. From Tim’s steadiness, the way he moved, Alan could tell he wasn’t drunk yet. That was good.

  “It’s Julia,” Alan said. He’d wasted an hour driving up, and he had the same drive back. He wanted to get this done fast. As he faced his brother, looked into his sunken eyes, he realized he was doing this as much for Tim as for anyone. Giving Tim the chance to be a good guy and redeem himself.

  “Your daughter?” the blond asked with sympathy as if she had heard the whole story-Tim’s version anyway.

  “Yeah, my little girl,” Tim had said.

  That was too much for Alan.

  “Listen, Tim,” he said roughly. “Let’s step outside. I have to talk to you.”

  Disgruntled, Tim followed him into the street. It was summer, and Newport was teeming. Thames Street was ten-people deep, and Tim and Alan stood in the middle of the sidewalk being jostled right and left.

  “She needs blood,” Alan explained. “She’s having a series of operations, and they’re running low on her type. You and she have the same, type A, and I want you to donate some.”

  “Give blood?” Tim asked, red-eyed from last night’s drunk, but still close to sober tonight.

  “Yes,” Alan said.

  “Do I have to go to the hospital?” Tim asked, looking afraid.

  “If you’d rather,” Alan said. He knew Tim had a fear of hospitals. It was deep and primal, and it had been there ever since Neil had gotten sick. “But we can do it anywhere. I brought the equipment with me.”

  “What, you have it in your bag?” Tim asked, looking down. For the first time he seemed to notice Alan’s medical case. Alan had everything he would need in there to help Tim do the right thing: needles, the IV line, the blood bags. Tim could give a pint. He could lie on his back in Alan’s backseat or they could go to Tim’s boat.

  “I want to make it easy for you,” Alan said. “She needs blood, and you’re her best bet.”

  “I just had a beer,” Tim said, trying to get out of it. “That’s not good, is it?”

  “A beer’s not that much,” Alan said.

  “I’ve never given blood before,” Tim said, looking pale.

  “Don’t be scared,” Alan said, trying to be kind. “It won’t hurt.”

  “Hey, man,” Tim said. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” He gazed at Alan’s eyes, but he had to look away. It wasn’t quite dark yet. He stared down the alley between two buildings across Thames Street at a deep red sunset. Two passing girls in tight skirts caught their attention, and he watched them go by.

  Alan shoved him up against the wall.

  “Don’t look at them while we’re talking about Julia,” Alan said roughly.

  “Cut it out, man,” Tim said, breaking Alan’s grasp.

  “She’s your daughter,” Alan said. “She could die, Tim.”

  “Don’t,” Tim said, welling up. “Don’t lay that on me.”

  “You’ve got to help her. Don’t you want to? You think you’ll be able to live with yourself years from now if you don’t help her now?”

  “It would be a blessing if she died,” Tim hissed, the tears spilling over.

  “No,” Alan said, standing tall. “I don’t see it that way, and neither does her mother.”

  “Her mother. I left town and you got what you wanted,” Tim said, spit flying from his mouth. “You got Dianne. You get to be her hero. So don’t act so high and mighty to me. You’re the doctor-you can’t get type A blood?”

  “I wanted to get it from you,” Alan said.

  Tim shook his head. The cords stood out on his neck, and he was breathing as if he’d run a race. Tears were running down his face.

  “I’m not giving blood. Is that what you want to hear? So you can feel better than me? I’m against it. I don’t go to the doctor myself, I haven’t been once since Neil died. I don’t give a damn what you think. If you think I’m superstitious or a moron, I don’t care. Okay, Alan?”

  “Yeah, Tim,” Alan said, backing away. “Okay.”

  “Good, man,” Tim said, shaking.

  The crowd closed around them, pushing them apart. The red sunset had faded, and now it was dark purple and dull gold. Alan remembered the air being cool for summer. Standing there, he watched his brother take a few steps backward, then turn to go into the bar.

  Maybe Tim had been right. Maybe Alan had just wanted to feel superior. Somehow he had known Tim wouldn’t give his blood. Saving Julia was just an abstraction to him. He had already thrown her away; why would he want to save her life? But un
derneath his altruistic motive driving to Newport, Alan had discovered something about himself.

  He was capable of hating his own brother. His own flesh and blood. Speeding across 138, he gripped the steering wheel, hating Tim’s guts. For being a coward who could turn away from his own suffering child. Alan felt ashamed to be related to the grown-up Tim McIntosh. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to the boy Alan fished with off the sandy shores of Cape Cod.

  Now, a decade later, Alan felt the same way.

  Everything was arranged. Dianne and Julia would fly home, and Lucinda and Amy would drive. Dianne was beside herself. She didn’t know which panicked her more, worry about Julia or the thought of her mother and Amy on the road by themselves. Lucinda kissed and hugged her, trying to reassure her.

  “Don’t you think I’m a good driver?” she asked.

  “It’s not that,” Dianne said. “But I’m worried about emergencies. It’s such a long way. With me along, we were two drivers-in case one of us had trouble. What if you get tired? Or if you get lost?”

  “I’ll be there,” Amy said. “I’ll talk nonstop and make her drink lots of coffee.”

  “We’ll be fine, love,” Lucinda said, holding Dianne’s face in her hands. Dianne teared up, staring into Lucinda’s eyes. “And so will you.”

  Amy was gathering Julia’s things together, and when she called Dianne to check the bag, Dianne edged away. Alone beside the Winnebago in the airport parking lot with Malachy Condon, Lucinda faced him.

  “You’re the famous mentor,” she said.

  “I’ve been called worse things,” he said.

  “You did a good job with one of them,” she said. “The McIntosh boys.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. “I’m on the verge of fucking murdering the other one.”

  Shocked, Lucinda’s mouth dropped open.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, seeing her expression. “This has been an eventful day, and I’m not myself.”

  They stared at each other. Lucinda wasn’t used to checking men out, but she did find Malachy quite attractive. He was big and husky, what Emmett would have called a man’s man. His blue eyes were deep set, soulful, and contrite at the same time.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do,” he said, shaking his head. “I worry greatly. See, I’m alone ninety-five percent of the time, with no one but dolphins to talk to. Bad habits develop. My own dear wife, Brigid, would’ve let me have it good for swearing in the presence of a lady.” Digging into his breast pocket, he came up with a cassette tape. “Here’s a peace offering. For you to listen to on your ride home.”

  “Thank you,” Lucinda said, smiling, taking the tape.

  “The other thing is,” Malachy said, “I did love those boys. Both of them. In some ways, it was easy to love Tim more. He makes such a mess of things, your heart can’t help going out to him.”

  “Mine can,” Lucinda said.

  “I tried to talk him into coming to Halifax with me,” Malachy said. “But that was just me fightin’ a losing battle.”

  “Today?” Lucinda asked, shocked. “Tim’s here? In Nova Scotia?”

  “He was,” Malachy said.

  “What for?” she asked. “Did he ask about Dianne and Julia? What did he say when you asked him to come—”

  “Ah, what’s the difference?” Malachy asked with both palms turned upward. He sounded like a peacemaker, calm and serene, his voice tinged with regret and, underneath, something much darker. “He can’t do what he can’t do.”

  “No, he never could,” Lucinda said, her eyes blurring as she watched Dianne prepare Julia to get her on the plane.

  “I wrote him off,” Malachy said, his own eyes filling with tears. “God help me, I don’t understand such indifference. I told him never to call me again, and I meant it. The selfish bastard. Heartless man.”

  “Tim McIntosh made his own hell,” Lucinda said, patting the big man’s hand as they heard the loudspeaker call the flight, watched Dianne hovering anxiously by Julia’s stretcher. “Because he doesn’t know what this life is about.”

  The horizon seemed a million miles away, a place Tim would never get to. He steered the Aphrodite south-southwest. Occasionally he passed a deserted island, majestic with rocks and pines. Or he would see another lobster boat on its way somewhere, probably going home.

  Tim McIntosh felt the weight of failure on his shoulders. He had seen the disappointment, disapproval, hatred in Malachy’s eyes when he said he wasn’t going to Halifax.

  Hatred-from Malachy. Tim had felt it from Alan and Dianne before. But never Malachy. He shuddered. Burning bridges. Tim had become a first-class expert.

  Dianne and Julia were here now, and they needed help. What had Malachy called it-a miracle? In a way, Tim could see that it was. A series of events, coincidences, two people near the same place at the same time. All Tim would have had to do was say yes, follow Malachy up the coast, make everyone happy. All would be forgiven.

  Instead, Tim had followed his gut.

  Deep inside, he knew Dianne would rather spit poison than look at him. She would be justified, that was for sure. Driving into the wind, Tim’s eyes were streaming. The sun made him squint. He grabbed a cap from under his seat, pulled it on with the visor down low. He was crying, and even out there, where there wasn’t another human being for miles, Tim didn’t want to be seen.

  A shot of tequila would help, but Tim wasn’t much of a drinking man anymore. He wanted to escape these feelings he was having. He had thought that pulling out of Lunenburg would provide relief, and it had, but not enough. Thoughts of Dianne and their suffering child stuck to him like static. They raced through his mind, telling him what a bastard he was.

  He could have stayed.

  When Tim was feeling his worst, that’s what came to mind. He hadn’t had to run in the first place. Twelve years ago, when he and Dianne had gotten the bad news, Tim could have planted his feet beside hers and said they’d go through it together. He could have held her hand, he could have been present at the birth. Instead of leaving her to Alan …

  Tim blamed his parents. They had screwed life up for him. They’d been so wrapped up in Neil’s illness, in chasing their tails to escape it. So many times Tim had stared at the horizon, waiting for his dad to sail into Hyannis harbor from wherever he went to get away. If not for Alan, Tim would have been the loneliest kid in the world. He had missed his father so much.

  Tim had never wanted to be that kind of father. A scared loner who’d rather sail the seas than sit at the kitchen table hearing about his wife’s bad day. Or good day. Tim should have known he wasn’t meant for home life. He had needed Dianne’s love so badly; why did she have to get pregnant at all? And why had the baby turned out to be so sick? Tim had had no choice except to leave.

  No choice: That’s how Tim saw it. Life had left him no choice. It gave him a dead brother, damaged parents, a sick child. Tim was a rogue, and life had handed him tragedy. People found that romantic. He’d show up in portside bars, drink his whiskey, tell whoever would listen about his wife and sick baby. He’d make himself out as a scoundrel, wait for the bar women to say no, he wasn’t a bad person, he was just too sensitive for the horrible thing that had happened. Then he’d tell them about Neil, wait for them to put it together.

  They’d see too. Of course he had done what he did. Life hadn’t given him a fucking choice! Losing his brother had hurt too much; he wasn’t going to stick around and wait for his baby to die too. No one with half a heart could fail to see that.

  No one but Dianne, Alan, and now Malachy. The three people who should care about Tim, love him, feel sorry for what he was going through. But no, not them. Thinking about it, his heart was pounding. The injustice and unfairness of it all hit him hard.

  It made some people feel good to look down on others. That explained a lot of it. Dianne and Alan had been self-righteous for a long time. Malachy though …Tim shook his head and wiped tears from his eyes. That hurt him ba
d, the fact that Malachy had turned against him.

  Tim still remembered the look in Alan’s eyes the night Tim had refused to give blood. Down in Newport, with all of humanity streaming by, his own brother had looked at him as if he were a piece of shit. Wasn’t that what Malachy had called him just a few hours ago? Shit?

  Steaming away from Nova Scotia as fast as he could, Tim was traveling fast and far, but he wasn’t going back. He wasn’t passing anywhere near his family. Tim McIntosh was a loner, and he was going to stay that way. He had been planning to head for Maine, but that wasn’t far enough. Maybe New Hampshire, Massachusetts. Maybe he’d skip New England entirely, give up lobstering, try crabbing in the Chesapeake. Or shrimping in the Gulf.

  The sun was still bright, and Tim’s eyes were still watering. Cap pulled low, he just held his wheel and steered dead ahead. The sea was empty and endless. At least that was how it looked from the Aphrodite’s bridge. Julia would be okay. She’d made it this far, she’d get through this thing and be fine.

  Alan met the plane from Nova Scotia. A steady rain was falling, with low gray clouds blanketing all of southeastern New England. He stood on the tarmac by the ambulance, wind blowing his hair and jacket, staring at the sky.

  When the airplane came into view, it teetered like a dragonfly. It looked vulnerable and fragile. The wind rocked it from side to side, and Alan’s heart was in his throat as he watched the pilot land the small twin-engine at Providence’s T. F. Green Airport.

  Dianne and Julia were first off the plane. They stood at the top of the stairs, Dianne holding Julia in her arms, shielding her head against the weather. Two stewardesses were trying to urge them back, keep them inside. The EMT crew was ready, taking the stretcher out of the ambulance, but Alan ran up the steps ahead of them.

  “You came,” Dianne said, looking at him with wide eyes.

  “You’re here,” Alan said, putting his arms around them both.

  They formed a small triangle, their heads all touching, and Alan’s throat was tight and his chest was constricted and his mind was full of prayers and thanks that they had made it back to him safely, that Julia hadn’t died in Nova Scotia, that he was holding them both as close as he could.