Always the Last to Know

by Kristan Higgins

  Brianna didn’t have to. Juliet already knew.

  A few hours later, when the girls were in bed, and Oliver was “thoroughly shagged” and sound asleep, Juliet went to her computer and typed an e-mail.

  To: arwenalexander@gmail.com

  Subject: job offer

  The firm’s name will be Frost/Alexander. I’ll get 33% ownership, the tie-breaking vote if one is needed, head of design. Take it or leave it.

  Juliet

  A few minutes later, the one-word answer came.

  Done.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  John

  Dog. Daw. Baby. Bay . . . bee. Barb. Baahr. Juliet. Zhool. Sadie. Say. Tired. Tahr.

  No. No. He has this one down.

  These are the words he can say now, though the effort makes him feel foolish and old. Most times, words come out of his mouth wrong, sounding huge and shapeless, or like other words. He can look at a tree and think tree, but the word that comes out is roo, which means root. Sometimes he’s understood, most times he’s not. His mouth muscles are tired, and the bossy lady doesn’t care.

  Sadie does, though. She can understand his connections. Not always, but sometimes.

  He wants to say, I’m sorry, Barb. Because she knows about the hard-faced woman who has never been to see him. He knows this. Barb told him, and Barb doesn’t lie. He wants to talk about the flower, but he can’t, and he doesn’t remember why it’s so important, but it is, and he tries to pull it close.

  Ted still comes to visit, and John is glad. Noah comes, too, sometimes to fix something for Barb, and sometimes to let him see the baby, who is solid and warm and harder to hold now because he is growing. His daughters come. Juliet doesn’t look at him much, which is better than Sadie with the hope in her eyes. John doesn’t know which is harder to see, the mad or the hope.

  Janet comes, too. She knows about the flower. Sometimes she brings him flowers that she grows. She works in a place that grows plants or babies, but the word is long and hard for his mind to remember. She talks and talks, gentle words falling around him like warm rain.

  He loves her. Not the way he loved Barb, or the hard-faced woman, but in a new way. She is the only one who wants nothing from him. She has no hope or sadness or disappointment or . . . what is the word? Tired. She has no tired on her face.

  He is not getting better. John understands this. The words he says are so hard and the trying is so heavy that he won’t be able to do more. He wants to stop trying. The way he talked long ago, the way other people have the words tumble out of their mouths is not for him anymore. The doctor says words, and Sadie with hope in her eyes . . . no. He can feel it. He knows. He isn’t trapped inside his body. This is himself. He will be this way always. His now-self, not his old self.

  With Janet, his now-self is fine.

  What he has to do is make his wife understand. He has to be the husband again, just for a little while. The father.

  Images flutter from the long-ago. John would come home from the place where he did the work. The office. He would drive the car into the driveway and go into the house. Sadie was little in the long-ago, and Juliet was bigger, and Sadie would run to him, and he would pick her up and smile, and Juliet would wait in the kitchen doorway, and he would remember to give her a hug, too.

  Then he would kiss Barb on the cheek, not really listening as she talked, but smelling the good smells of the kitchen, feeling like a husband, a father. A man.

  He needs to get to that place again, to be that man. It is like crawling through a snowstorm, up a mountain in a snowstorm on the darkest night. But he will get there. He will find the flower. He will be husband and father again for a moment, and then he can go back to being the now-self, who listens to the birds and the little baby and the warm rain voice, the now-self who likes to have the dog close to him, who can go to sleep whenever he wants.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sadie

  The storm was full of bluster and drenching rain, a nice old-fashioned nor’easter, raging all day long. My little house sang and shook in the wind, creaking and groaning, sounds I decided to like, rather than worry that the roof was going to blow off. The rain slapped against the windows in sheets, and I couldn’t have been cozier. I’d ventured into my attic the day before and nailed up some tarp until I could really fix the roof, and so far, I only needed one bucket for the leaks. The sound of the dripping was strangely companionable. Pepper was asleep on the couch, curled into her little cinnamon bun position, snoring gently.

  Me, I was painting. Painting something because I wanted to, not because it matched a comforter or a couch.

  Without a lot of forethought, I’d gotten out my paints, set up my easel, taken a canvas, prepped it and, before I could talk myself out of it, squeezed out the delicious, shiny blobs of oil paint onto my palette—cadmium red, cerulean blue, burnt umber, titanium white, Naples yellow, magenta, black—and put paint on canvas as fast as I could.

  The sky.

  I was painting the sky, lost in the smell of the oil paint, the bite of turpentine, the swirl of colors, the gentle, wet whisper of the brush against the canvas. The sun, the clouds, the sea.

  A sunset, the most painted scene in the world, and I didn’t care. I was lost in colors—and the infinite possibilities of mixing shades that created turquoise, lavender, purple, rose. Pushing the paint, dragging it, twisting it, dabbing, brushing, watching in an almost out-of-body experience as the sky began to form.

  This wasn’t a couch painting. This was an impulse. Instinct. For weeks, I’d been wanting to paint the sky, and I’d found all sorts of reasons not to start.

  Today was different. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. Lightening the red here, bringing up the blue, adding more black and purple to the water and the clouds. Time was marked by the dripping in the bucket and the shifting gray afternoon light, and that was all.

  I had nowhere to go. A branch had fallen just behind the car this morning (thank God it hadn’t fallen on the car, since it was Juliet’s). It was big enough that I couldn’t drag it out of the way; I’d need a chainsaw to cut it and move it. I’d called Mom and Juliet and let them know I was stuck for the day, and an hour later, the storm knocked out the power. I had a battery lantern on in the kitchen, and the gray, watery light poured through the new windows Noah had put in.

  So I was stuck, and I could do nothing outside, and I had to release some of the energy and electricity that had been building since my marathon make-out session with Noah.

  Somewhere around one a.m. that night, he’d said, “I better go,” and we disentangled from each other. I was barely able to stand, so turned on I felt like I could float, but also like my legs wouldn’t hold me. Noah was in no better shape.

  “Time for a swim in the Sound,” he said. “Hope the water’s cold enough.”

  “I wish I could come with you,” I said, and we were kissing again. It took him fifteen minutes to get from the living room to the door, because we just couldn’t stop kissing, touching, winding ourselves around each other, our hands stopping to admire, caress, feel.

  Finally, he caught both my hands in his and kissed them. Then he just looked at me, his hair tangled and wild, his eyes so dark and happy, and he smiled, and finally left the house, leaving me to collapse on the couch in a pile of raging pheromones.

  Joy. That’s what it was. It was joy. Whatever our future was, it was best to stay right here, right now, and let the joy fill me and lift me, because Noah and I were something. I didn’t know what, but we were something to each other, and something important.

  For now, that was enough. I didn’t let myself think past that.

  And it clearly had an effect on my mood. My house was immaculate, Pepper and I had gone for a five-mile run last night, knowing the storm would keep us inside. I sanded the butcher-block island I’d bought on Etsy, oiled it and then
made spaghetti sauce from scratch.

  Today, when the branch fell and the power went out, I busted out the paints.

  It was time. All that joy, that floating, buoyant emotion, needed to come out on a canvas.

  God, I’d missed this. It felt so good to see the painting bloom as my brush danced and bustled. All these weeks I’d been in this house staring west in the evenings, watching the sunset, the moon rise, the rain blow the reeds of the salt marsh. For the first time in years, painting once again felt like my destiny. For the first time since I could remember, I felt like myself again.

  The painting was nearly finished—half of art was knowing when to stop—when Pepper jumped up and started to tremble and whine, pressing her nose against the front window. She did this when a fox or coyote was in the area, or a deer, or a mouse, or a worm. Often, I couldn’t see what she saw, but I always took a look, because who wanted to miss out on seeing a little red fox, right?

  I set my palette down, rested the brush on the easel lip and went to see.

  Nothing. “Is one of your friends out there?” I asked. She started moaning, trembling violently now. I took my phone in case it was something cute and I could snap a picture for Carter, who loved hearing about wildlife, New Yorker that he was.

  “Okay. Let’s get your leash on, Pepper Puppy,” I said, and she wagged gratefully, still pressing her nose against the glass. I got my slicker and her shoulder harness, since she was a puller.

  The wind battered us the second we stepped out the door, but Pepper leaped and tugged me down toward the river. The tide was going out, so the river was getting more and more shallow, and the rain-soaked, salty mud made walking hard.

  “Easy, girl, easy!” I said. The rain had already soaked my face and the front of my jeans, but my good old L.L.Bean boots kept my feet dry. A gust of wind made me stagger back a couple of steps, my foot nearly coming out of the boot, but Pepper was on fire to get to the water.

  “Pepper!” I yelled. “Stay with me!”

  Then I saw what she’d seen.

  It was a beached dolphin. And it was alive! Holy crap. The storm must’ve pushed it up here, and it didn’t have enough water to swim. Oh, it was tragic, flapping and struggling there. Pepper was crooning at it, her tail wagging madly, and the dolphin blew hard out of its blowhole in a whooshing sound.

  Thank God I had my phone. I dragged Pepper a few yards away and tied her leash to a scrubby bush. She wanted to play with the dolphin, dropping her shoulders down, barking and wagging.

  “It doesn’t know what you are, Pepper,” I said. “Settle down. But yes! This is very exciting!”

  I pulled out my phone. One bar. I dialed 911, but the call dropped before it connected. I tried again. Same result. My one bar went away, and the dreaded words No Service appeared.

  I texted Noah, Mickey, Mom and Juliet—in a nutshell, every capable person I knew. Dolphin stuck in tidal river by my house, please call someone, I have no service.

  My phone told me the message was not delivered. “Shit!” I said.

  I went closer to the dolphin—it may have been dying. Sometimes they stranded themselves, right? She (I thought it was a girl for some reason) struggled a little more and made a squeaking sound, and the noise hit me right in the heart.

  “Okay. Hang on, honey. Help is on the way. I’ll be right back.”

  I went back to the bush, untied my dog, had to practically drag her back to the house and shoved her inside. “Sorry, baby, you’re not going to be much help here.” I checked my phone—still no service, which had happened a few times since I moved here. That was okay. I’d get in my car and drive to Mom’s or Noah’s—

  Right. My car was blocked by the tree branch.

  I took a deep breath and thought. Google would be real handy right about now, but I had no power, and therefore no Wi-Fi.

  Looked like I was about to become a dolphin rescuer. I grabbed a bucket, so I could pour water on her (because maybe she needed that?), and a shovel. I could dig the muck and maybe make a trench for her, and then as the tide came back in, maybe she could swim? Or I could carry her to deeper water, maybe? Oh, yes, a tarp. I could get her on it and drag her to deeper water.

  “You were right, Mom,” I said aloud. “I should’ve gone to college for something more practical. Marine biology, in this case.”

  Well, there was a little dolphin out there and she’d squeaked at me, and I wasn’t going to leave her alone to die. I grabbed my New York Yankees cap to keep the rain off my face and set off with my makeshift dolphin rescue kit.

  She was still there. Maybe not flipping her tail as much. I knelt down next to her. “Hi, honey. I’m going to try to help you.” I stuck out my hand, in case she wanted to sniff it, like a dog, and she lifted her head up a little bit, and I swore to God she looked at me and knew I was one of the good guys. You could touch dolphins and not hurt them, right? Of course. They let you swim with them at those resort places in Florida. I touched her just south of her blowhole, and she was cold and firm and smooth. “I’ll do my best, honey. Stay with me.”

  She flapped again, utterly helpless on the sand. I ran down the river to where the water was deeper and got a bucketful to pour over her. She did seem to like that, flipping and wriggling with more energy. Then I started digging the trench, which filled up with water immediately. Maybe if I could position her toward the river, she could sort of flop her way down . . .

  “I’m going to touch you now, honey,” I said. “Okay? I’m going to try to turn you.”

  She was, as best I knew, a bottlenose dolphin, and a little one. Maybe half-grown? I loved nature documentaries, but I was just guessing here. I knew dolphins were smart, maybe smarter than humans. And they traveled in groups—pods?—so maybe her family was waiting for her in the deeper water. Stoningham was the only town in Connecticut that had a little bit of oceanfront; most of the town hugged the very end of Long Island Sound. But out here, where I was, it was possible (if you were a dolphin, for example) to swim straight from the Atlantic, past Fishers Island to the east, and right here to the tidal river.

  Taking a deep breath, I put my hands on either side of her and moved her so she faced the trench. She flapped her tail up and down, seeming to know that she had to do her part. A foot. Two feet. I dug some more, moved her a few inches in the inch or two of water, dug some more. I tried to pick her up, then abandoned the plan, afraid I would drop her. She was awkward and heavy, maybe seventy-five or a hundred pounds.

  The tidal river was just too shallow, and getting more so every minute. Honey—I’d named her now—seemed to be getting tired. Her breathing wasn’t as loud or frequent, and her efforts weren’t as strong. The tide was going out too fast for my plan.

  “Okay,” I said after maybe an hour had passed. I was panting myself, my jeans wet and sandy, making my skin feel raw. I got another bucket of water and dumped it over Honey, then considered the tarp. If I could roll her onto it without hurting her, I could drag her closer to the Sound. It was better than nothing. I didn’t know if the rain was hurting her skin, or if it was good for her, or if she was hungry and I should’ve brought that envelope of tuna in my cupboard to feed her.

  I spread out the tarp next to her and knelt, putting my hands on her. If I rolled her, would it hurt her fin? I tucked it against her and looked in her eye. “I hope this won’t hurt you, Honey,” I said. “I just want to get you back to your family, okay? Okay. So on three, we’ll roll. One, two . . . three.”

  She was heavy, but she rolled over pretty easily onto her back, and I managed to tuck her other fin so it wouldn’t get hurt, and rolled her the rest of the way. She lay on her stomach, but now on the tarp. “You okay, Honey?”

  She didn’t answer, just blew hard. No more squeaks.

  I went to the front of the tarp and started dragging it. God! She was heavy! I had to walk backward, and after a few steps, I tripped a
nd landed flat on my ass in the wet sand. Got up and started trying again. She wasn’t even trying to flap her tail fin anymore. “Please don’t die, Honey,” I said. “I’m giving it my best here.”

  I had never been this soaked. Even my raincoat was soaked through, and I was sweaty and clammy and shaking with exhaustion, but we’d come this far, Honey and I. I wasn’t going to leave her now.

  “Sadie! Hey!” Noah, his hair whipping across his face, was standing on the hill my house perched on.

  “Oh, thank God,” I said.

  He ran toward me. “What are you doing?”

  “Just saving a dolphin. You know.”

  “Did you call anyone?”

  “I tried. No cell service out here, and my car’s blocked in.”

  “Yeah, I saw. No service in town, either. I tried calling you to see if you were okay, then came out to check.” He bent down to look at my new friend. “Have you named her?”

  He knew me well. He really did.

  “Honey.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “No, that’s her name.” I smiled at him. Noah, flirting with me over a baby dolphin. God! The feels! “Think we can pull her to the water? She’s getting tired, and the tide is going out.”

  “Let’s go.”

  It was a good quarter mile to the Sound. I talked almost nonstop to my little dolphin friend, telling her to be brave, be strong, relax and enjoy the ride. It was tough going, and Noah and I both fell once or twice more (fine, I fell twice, and he stumbled). By the time we reached the ocean, I could barely stand, I was so tired.

  “Okay, Honey, let’s go,” Noah said.

  We pulled her into the water, and my faithful L.L.Bean boots filled up immediately, the fleece lining acting like a sponge. The water was bitingly cold and stung my raw skin.

  Honey didn’t seem to rouse much. Flapped a little, but didn’t make it off the tarp.