by Kim Hooper
“How did it go?” Aria asks me, while accepting a plastic red apple from Evie.
“They’re taking him off his sedation medications,” I say. “So he might start to wake up in a few days.”
Her eyes go big with hope. “That’s great … right?” she says.
I shrug. “I don’t even know anymore. They still don’t know if he’ll wake up for sure. He said the latest MRI looked promising, but apparently it’s hard to know the damage. Lots of waiting.”
“I had no idea so much patience was involved.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
When Evie’s pretend meal is complete according to her strange toddler logic, she says, “All done” and proceeds to tend to one of her baby dolls, leaving Aria and me sitting cross-legged on the rug across from each other. I still haven’t told Aria about Tessa, about the note in Cale’s phone. I don’t want to get into it, specifically. She’ll have too many questions, questions that Sahana and I have already mulled over incessantly.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“You just did,” she says with a smile.
I make the “ba dum tss” sound to acknowledge her dumb joke.
“Do you think Cale would ever cheat on me?”
She looks truly appalled. “What? No. Why?”
I think I asked her because I knew this would be the response.
“I just can’t stop wondering why he was at that bar in the middle of the night.”
“I assume he wanted a beer.”
“Which he could have had at home.”
She twists her mouth to the side, considering. “You and I both know he was in a funk or something. He probably just couldn’t sleep and wanted to get out.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say.
“You don’t seem so sure.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I really think Cale loves you. Like, a lot.”
Sahana is the cynic in my life; Aria is the romantic.
“What if he doesn’t even know who I am when he wakes up?” I ask.
Tears start to come. They surprise me. After all, I’ve had this thought so often recently. I should be numb to it.
What if he doesn’t know who I am?
What if he has no memories at all?
What if he can’t speak?
What if he requires 24-7 care?
What if I can’t do that?
What if I don’t love him enough to do that?
While Cale’s brain is completely quiet, mine is spinning with these questions. There is no rest.
“You said they don’t know what the reality will be when he wakes up,” Aria says. “There’s no use tormenting yourself with what-ifs.”
There may be no use, but pondering all the possibilities makes me feel like I’m doing something, which is necessary for sanity in a situation in which nothing can be done.
“Before he wakes up, you need to forgive him for whatever you think he did,” Aria says.
Aria is a believer in things like energy and vibes. I’ve told her that being named “Aria” probably set her up for this proclivity.
“I don’t know what he did,” I say.
“Right. And you may never know that.”
Aria is also a believer in “surrender” and “letting things go.” It’s easy for the younger sibling to be this way; the older one usually does enough worrying and planning for everyone.
Just then, Evie turns around and says, “Where Dada?”
She has a look on her face, as if she’s just realized she has not seen him in a long time. It’s the look I get when I’m halfway to work and wonder if I’ve left the curling iron on.
Aria and I look at her, then at each other. There is too much purpose and conviction in her question for us to ignore it. But, even if we wanted to, she repeats it:
“Where Dada?”
I open my arms and she runs into them, burying her head in my shoulder. She is in a cuddly, huggy phase. It’s one of my favorite phases so far.
“Dada is taking a long nap,” I tell her.
It just comes out. It’s ridiculous. I’d contemplated a slightly more sophisticated explanation—your daddy is sick, and doctors are taking care of him—but I thought that would worry her too much. There is no sense worrying an almost-two-year-old.
“Dada nap?” she says, pushing away from my shoulder, her eyes scanning mine with this intense need to understand.
“Yes, Dada nap,” I say.
I see Aria staring at me out of the corner of my eye. I can tell she’s suppressing a laugh. The situation isn’t funny, obviously, but it’s impossible not to laugh at Evie’s inquisitiveness.
She doesn’t have the language to say much more. She can’t ask when he’ll wake up, or where he is, exactly. I’m sure her little mind wonders these things, but she seems content enough for now with the lame explanation I’ve given her.
She gets up and puts her baby doll on a dish towel that she uses as a blanket.
“Baby nap,” she says.
Aria and I nod effusively, which is the only way to nod with a toddler. We repeat after her: “Baby nap, baby nap.”
She starts to sing “Rock-a-Bye Baby” while draping the dish towel over the doll’s face. I don’t know why she does this. It makes me wonder if they put Evie’s blanket over her face during nap time at day care.
“Baby night-night,” Evie says, satisfied with herself.
We compliment her caretaking skills, and then I ask if she wants a snack.
She gives the biggest smile, a smile that shows no recollection of her concern about her father, and says, “Yogurt!”
TESSA
MY MOM HAS KEPT my room exactly the same since I left last year. I thought she would turn it into a home gym or something. She’d been talking for a while about buying a used treadmill on Craigslist, training for a 5K. Since she’d met Rob, she’d been on a self-improvement kick. It didn’t seem like she was motivated by a desire to impress him; it seemed like he made her want to be her best self. That, I think, is the definition of true love.
I managed a few consecutive hours of sleep, which is not bad. Since the shooting, I seem to wake up every hour. It’s like my brain is afraid to sleep long enough to dream, afraid of what images my subconscious might conjure.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, my bedspread pulled to my chin. Mom bought me the bedspread for my sixteenth birthday—a pretty, romantic, pale-pink quilt from Anthropologie that probably cost a week’s worth of groceries. It smells like home. My refusal to take it with me when I moved to Boise shows how utterly stubborn I was about starting anew.
The ceiling is still dotted with the glow-in-the-dark stars I begged for in elementary school. They’re probably impossible to peel off at this point. Everything of mine is still here— the twinkly lights strung across the wall behind my bed, my books in their cheap IKEA bookcase, framed photos featuring friends I’m barely in touch with these days. It’s sweet, in a way. But it also makes me think Mom expected I’d return. She didn’t believe my resolve.
I hear someone moving around in the kitchen, doing dishes, putting them away in cupboards. We had a feast last night, as Mom promised we would. I got into town around four o’clock and helped her make the marinara sauce. She kept saying, “You just sit,” but I wanted to help. I missed being her sous-chef.
She made penne pasta, macaroni and cheese, two trays of garlic bread, and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies with ice cream for dessert. Rob opened a bottle of merlot he said he’d been saving for a special occasion. My coming home was this occasion, apparently. My survival was this occasion.
We talked until one in the morning. Mom wanted to know everything about the shooting, of course. I told her about the man who had told me to run, about the storage closet, about the SWAT team. She and Rob were slack-jawed.
“I just can’t believe it,” Mom said when I was done.
“I can’t either,” I said.
It still feels like a dream
, or something that happened to someone else.
“You just never think it will happen to you,” Mom said.
It’s what people always say after things like this. It’s one of those overused phrases that is so true.
They had all kinds of questions about Jed Ketcher, and I told them what I knew. I didn’t tell them about meeting Joyce. I knew Mom would say, “Honey, do you think that’s a good idea?” I didn’t tell them about talking to Angie Matthews either, for the same reason.
“It looks like they’re doing a press conference on Tuesday,” Rob said.
He’d been googling while we talked, his glasses perched on the very tip of his nose.
“Oh, really?” I said.
I hadn’t heard anything about a press conference. I wondered if they had more information. I wondered if it mattered if they did. I thought about Joyce, how anxious she must be to hear what the police had to say. I didn’t want to text and ask if she knew about the press conference. I assume she knows. If she doesn’t, I’m not sure I want to be the one to tell her.
“And looks like there was another shooting,” he said, scrolling on his phone.
I thought he meant another shooting in Boise. Adrenaline shot through my body, startling and tingly.
“God, Rob, I don’t think we need to hear about that,” Mom said, probably noticing my discomfort.
He looked up, guilt on his face, and put his phone down.
“Where was it?” I asked.
I was expecting him to name somewhere in Boise—the Greenbelt, the capitol building, the farmers market.
“Vermont,” he said.
“Can we change the subject?” Mom asked.
And then we did. We talked about normal, usual things, and for a brief time, I forgot that life had become anything but normal and usual. We talked about Rob’s job at Avion, the local water company. We talked about Mom’s job at Berger Construction. She’s been their office manager for as long as I can remember. They seem happy—Rob and Mom. Mostly, that makes me happy too, but a small part of me is heavy with sadness. Their life together feels complete. I, on the other hand, have no idea what I’m doing. Floundering, that’s what I am. Floundering.
I get out of bed and go to the kitchen, thinking I’ll find Mom cleaning up after last night’s dinner. It’s not her though; it’s Rob. Like I said, he’s a good guy. He has no qualms about chores.
“Hey, good morning,” he says.
He has the coffeepot in one hand. He raises it to me, an offering.
“Please,” I say.
He pours me a cup, and I sit at the kitchen table.
“The yard looks nice,” I say, staring out the sliding glass door.
When it was just Mom and me, the yard was a mess. We promised ourselves we would turn it into something HGTV-worthy at some point. That didn’t happen until Rob moved in.
“Thanks, thanks,” he says.
He sits at the table with me.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask ya.”
He looks around, as if making sure Mom isn’t nearby. That’s how I know what he’s going to ask me. My heart sinks a little, though I know it shouldn’t.
“You want to marry her?” I ask.
He raises a finger to his lips, shushes me. “Quiet, you,” he says playfully. Then: “How’d you know?”
“It’s pretty obvious you two are crazy about each other.”
“I’m crazy about her. She’s just crazy. But I love crazy.”
I smile. I feel old, like I am their parent, giving permission to the young kids to follow their eager hearts. Will I ever feel young again? Will I ever feel carefree and irrationally optimistic and hopeful? Or did that all die when I survived?
“Do you have the ring?” I ask him.
The way his eyes light up, I know the answer is yes.
He gets up, goes to the pantry. “I’m hiding it at the bottom of a box of bran flakes,” he whispers.
We both know Mom wouldn’t go near a box of bran flakes. She’s more of a frosted flakes kind of girl. Rob is something of a health nut—not in an annoying way, but in an admirable way. He used to be a smoker, had a heart attack when he was forty-something, and changed his lifestyle. Now he wears one of those fitness trackers on his wrist and, apparently, eats bran flakes.
He takes out the cereal box and brings it to the table. Below the plastic bag containing the bran flakes is a black jewelry box.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Open it.”
The ring is beautiful—an oval-cut diamond, with two smaller diamonds beside it.
“It’s gorgeous. Did she help you pick it out?”
“No way. This was all me,” he says.
“Nice job,” I say, truly impressed. “When are you asking her?”
“Well, now that I’ve got your blessing, any time,” he says. “Wait, I do have your blessing, right?”
I smile. “Yes, you do.”
“And just so you know, you don’t have to call me Dad or anything like that,” he says.
I hadn’t even considered calling him “Dad.” I’ve never given anyone that title before, so I don’t know why I would start now. Maybe he thinks I’ve been missing that in my life. Maybe Mom told him something to that effect. I can picture that: She’s never had a father before. But the thing is, when you haven’t had something for twenty-three years, sometimes you don’t even know to miss it. It would be like saying, “Do you miss rock climbing?” to someone who has never been outdoors.
“You’ll be my first call if I need someone to walk me down the aisle,” I say.
“I’d be so honored,” he says, nodding his head reverentially. “Is that in the cards any time soon?”
“Negative,” I say.
During our marathon talk last night, they’d asked me how things were going with Ryan. I was vague because that’s yet another thing I didn’t feel like getting into. Ryan and I texted a bit last night. He asked again, “Are we okay?” I was honest. I told him I didn’t know. I told him I didn’t know much of anything anymore. He said we’d talk when I get back. When. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t sure I could call Boise home again.
I hear my mom’s slippers shuffling down the hardwood floors of the hallway. Rob puts the ring back in its hiding spot and returns the cereal box to the pantry.
“Teresa Rose, what the heck are you doing awake?” Mom calls out.
When she enters the kitchen, her hands are on her hips. She’s wearing a maroon robe, her frizzy hair gathered in a bird’s nest of a bun on top of her head, glasses on her face. Rob hugs her, lifts her off the ground, spins her around, as if she’s dressed in an evening gown for a fancy night out.
When he puts her down, she looks at me and says, “Seriously, Tess, what are you doing awake?”
“Sleeping hasn’t been one of my strong suits lately.”
“I thought we gave you enough wine last night to solve that problem,” Rob says.
“We can try again tonight,” I say.
“So you’re staying?” Mom says. She makes no apparent effort to hide her excitement.
“If I can.”
She waves me off. “That’s a ridiculous thing to say. Of course you can. You can stay however long you need to. Or if you’re staying for good, we have a job opening at Berger. And do you remember Shelley? Her daughter is looking for a roommate,” she says, a runaway train of possibilities.
“Slow down, Mom,” I say.
“She gets carried away,” Rob says, with a good-natured roll of his eyes.
Mom comes to me, puts her hands on my shoulders, squeezes my tense muscles. We used to trade massages on a nightly basis when it was just the two of us.
“I’m trying to take it one day at a time,” I tell them.
Mom knows a thing or two about this. When I was a teenager, she confessed that when I was a few months old, we had to live in her Ford Explorer for a week. It was after her landlord had refused to grant her another chance, and before her
first paycheck from Berger.
“Honey, sometimes one day at a time is the very best you can do.”
JOYCE
ON MONDAY MORNING, GARY and I make the twenty-minute drive to City Hall West, where the Boise Police Department is located. Gary asked if he could come, probably figuring I would need some kind of emotional support. We sit in the lobby, which is friendlier, less sterile than I imagined a police department lobby to be. There are upholstered benches, even a kids’ area with child-size chairs and a toy fire hydrant. The only reminder that this is a police department is the bulletproof glass at the front counter.
A female officer comes out to greet us. She’s young, twenty-something. She introduces herself as Officer Evans. Her handshake is loose, the kind of handshake that makes you feel insecure, the kind of handshake that makes you wonder if the person wants nothing to do with touching you. I wonder if this is how she shakes hands with everyone or if this is how she shakes hands with the mothers of murderers.
“Detective Kinsky will be right out,” she says.
She offers us cups of water from a cooler, but we tell her we’re fine.
A few minutes later, Detective Kinsky comes to greet us. He seems even larger than the first time I met him. He towers over Gary.
“Ms. Ketcher, nice to see you,” he says.
His handshake is firm.
“This is Gary, my friend,” I say. I don’t know what else to call Gary. I’m too old for “boyfriend” and it’s too premature for “partner.”
Detective Kinsky shakes Gary’s hand too, and then we follow him back to his office.
His office is clean and organized, as if he spends hardly any time in it. He sits in the chair behind his desk, and we sit in the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. I stare at the bookshelf behind him. There are a few framed photos of him with what must be his family. I glance at his hands, confirm a wide gold band on his wedding ring finger. There are two children in the photos—a girl and a boy, around the ages of eight and ten when the photos were taken. His wife is beautiful, with long, thick brown hair that most women in their forties can no longer maintain.