by Amelia Wilde
“I have no opinion about your mural, Daphne.” He’s standing at the window, looking out.
“It’s going to be on a wall in your house. You could at least say if you want a forest scene or an ocean scene.”
“You only paint oceans.”
“Maybe I want to paint a forest.”
“Then paint a forest.”
Daphne gives a dramatic sigh and flings herself off the chair. She goes over and gets up on tiptoe to brush a kiss to Leo’s cheek, then flounces away. “We’re not done with this discussion,” she warns with a glare. He rolls his eyes.
“Go to bed.”
“You go to bed,” Daphne says, and then she’s gone.
I’m about to make a joke that’s not really a joke about going to bed when Leo pulls his phone out of his pocket. He takes one look at the screen, and then all the quiet of the evening is shattered. Leo’s phone hits the floor, forgotten. He strides across the room to the fireplace and throws open a panel in the wall above it to reveal a TV that’s brand-new and surrounded by fresh paint.
“I didn’t know you had—” The rest of the sentence never makes it to the air.
Because my dad is on the news. On TV.
My blanket pools on the floor, slipping off legs gone numb. The TV is partially blocked by Leo’s shoulder until I’m up next to him. So close. Too close. I reach to touch the screen before I know what I’m doing.
“He looks—” He looks so old. He looks so afraid. So tired. My dad is washed out in the bright lights from the cameras, his face pale, sweat gathering at his hairline. The podium in front of him is too tall. “Oh, Jesus.” He’s not alone. Caroline stands next to him, her arm looped through his. It’s meant to look like she’s steadying him, but I bet she’s not, I bet she’s keeping him there. Making him do this.
Leo pushes another button on the bottom of the TV, and I can hear him.
I can hear my dad.
“—her fiancé has already spoken to you, but it’s not enough. It hasn’t been enough. I’m asking you—asking as a father.” His voice is unstable. Trembling. He raises his sleeve to dab at his forehead. “Please return my daughter to her family. We are all worried sick. We need Haley in our lives. Our Haley. She’s about to graduate college next semester. Her whole life is ahead of her. All she ever wanted—”
He puts a hand to his chest, his fingers curled into a fist. I can feel it on my own chest, like a brand, burning through my heart. Goose bumps fly down my shoulders to my fingernails. I dream of Leo dying almost every time I fall asleep. This is a waking nightmare. It was one thing for Rick to work with Caroline, to agree to give a press conference, to lie. It’s another for her to scare my dad like this. I thought Cash would tell him I was okay after the party. And maybe he did. But Caroline obviously told him something else.
She’s been nodding along with everything my dad says. Caroline nods again. But she’s nodding at silence. I can’t take my eyes off my dad. He’s wincing.
“All she ever wanted—” He clears his throat.
“Dad,” I say, and I know it’s foolish, I know he can’t hear me. I know. The fist at his chest spreads out and a matching horror takes wing across my heart. “Something’s happening. Leo. Something’s happening to my dad.” I grab for his arm and hold tight.
“Haley,” my dad says. His face contorts. I think he might sob, or beg, but he doesn’t.
He collapses over the podium, his hand clutching his heart.
It’s chaos on the screen. Someone runs in from the side, and Caroline’s bending over him. I launch myself at the TV and get both hands over him before the picture cuts out, replaced by the news studio.
“Oh my god.” I let go of Leo and scramble for the couch. For my phone. “Oh my god. I think he just died on TV. I think he just died. I think he just had a heart attack and died on TV.” My face is numb. My heart is numb, or it hurts so much I can’t feel it. I don’t know who to call. The phone screen swims in front of me. “Oh, help. Help.” I go back over to Leo. “Please. I don’t know who to call.”
“It was for nothing.”
“What?” I try to push my phone into my hands. “What are you talking about?”
He turns, and all the worry, all the uncertainty of the past few days, is gone from his expression. He looks like the man I met in the street a lifetime ago. The mean, devastating man who took pleasure in my fear. The beast.
Leo glances down at me like I’m a stranger. He takes in my face. My clothes. My tears. And then he shakes his head, like I’ve overstayed my welcome at one of his business meetings. “This is over.”
My mouth falls open. I can’t close it. “Just—I just need to know who to call.”
“You can call anyone you want from the car, but you’re leaving. It’s over.”
“Leo, what—” He’s killing me. His eyes are so blank, so devoid of warmth, that they could freeze me in a blink. “What car?”
He walks away from me. Turns on his heel, and goes away. Picks up his phone from the floor. He dials a number and puts it to his ear. “Haley’s coat and a car out front,” he says into it. “Now.”
“No.”
“Time to go,” he says.
I turn and run. He’s not doing this. He’s sick, or he’s upset, or he’s in pain. He’s not actually doing this. I’ll barricade myself in the first room I find. I’ll make him understand.
Or I’ll run headfirst into Gerard, who stalls me long enough for Leo to catch me.
I fight him.
I fight him with everything I have. With fists and feet and all my weight.
I fight him, and I lose. Leo takes me to the front doors like a doll or a discarded piece of furniture. He holds out one of my arms so Gerard can put my coat on. The pink coat he bought me. I pull my arm back, fighting, fighting, fighting.
“It’s fucking freezing,” Leo snaps.
“Then don’t send me out. Leo. Stop.” He gets the coat around behind me, and no matter how hard I pull, I can’t stop him. It’s over both arms. “I want to stay with you.”
“You don’t belong here.” Gerard opens the door, his eyes unbearably sad, and stands by while Leo takes me out into the cold. To the waiting car.
The driver opens the door. Leo tries to put me in the back seat, but I fling both arms out and grip the frame with both hands. “Stop,” I scream at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sending you home, where you belong.” There’s no blank look in his eyes now. It’s fire and rage, heat and hurt. “I don’t want you here with me. You’re a complication. A liability.”
“You need me here. And I need you. I’m choosing you. I can just stay here with you. I only wanted to call and find out if he’s alive.”
“You’re going to do better than that, darling. You’re going to go see him. They’ll be taking him to a hospital. Gerard will find out which one, and Thomas will have that information before you reach the highway.”
I take one hand off the car and get my fist into his shirt. “I’m coming back to you. I don’t care what you say. I want you. I choose you. I love you, Leo. Please don’t do this.”
His eyes linger on my lips and hope tears through the air, through my lungs.
Leo brushes my hand away from his shirt and pushes me into the SUV. He traps my face with his hands. “You’re a Constantine.” He practically spits the name. It sounds so ugly when he says it like that. “And you’re sweet. You were fun to toy with, like the rest of them, but you’re not worth my life.”
“You don’t mean this. You don’t.” It’s half sob, half scream, like getting louder can get through to him. I grab for his wrist. His hand. My heart won’t beat. It hangs in pieces. “Please. Don’t do this. Please, let me stay.”
He pats my cheek, sarcastic and mean. “We’re finished now, Haley. Done. Don’t come back.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Haley
The public hospital at the outskirts of Bishop’s Landing is a threadbare place. It’s not like t
he gleaming hospital wing where Leo went when he was shot. Where I went. This place is all fluorescent lights and yellowing tile and the sharp smell of disinfectant. I look ridiculous in my pink coat. I feel worse than ridiculous. I feel like there’s a giant bloody hole in my chest that everyone can see and no one can fix.
“This way,” says the nurse who’s taking me to see my dad. “He’s in room number nine. We’re going to be monitoring him very closely through the night. The surgery will be first thing in the morning.”
“He’s—” I hate this. I hate this. “He’s awake? He’s talking?”
The nurse puts a compassionate hand on my arm. “He’s shaken up, but he’s talking. The man just survived a heart attack. You’ll have to take things slow.”
I don’t know what that means, but I don’t get a chance to ask, because we’re here.
My dad is tucked into a narrow hospital bed, the rails up on one side and a lamp burning behind him. He doesn’t look any better than he did on TV. His face is colorless and clammy and he looks so small. So helpless. His eyes go to me the second I step in the room. “Haley,” he says. “Sweetheart.”
He lifts his arms to me. I drop down on his bed and hug him back like he’s made of glass. He’s so much older now than he used to be. There’s so much more gray in his hair. I didn’t pay much attention before. The change was gradual, and we were busy, and he was happily consumed in his work. We weren’t rich. We were never that kind of Constantine. But life was simple. “Hi, Daddy.”
His sigh sounds off. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m sorry you had to see that.” A tired laugh. “I didn’t mean to have a heart attack in the middle of my speech.”
“Daddy—” I let myself listen to his heart for a few more beats, and then I sit up so I can see him. “Why were you doing that? Did you really think I’d been taken? I told you it was all right.”
The corners of his mouth tremble. “I didn’t think you’d been taken. I heard what you said. And Cash said you were doing fine.”
“Then why?”
“Caroline came over.” His eyes cloud. “You know my mind is always on my work. It’s hard to stop it from wandering. There’s so much to do, and now that you kids are grown up, I don’t have to worry. Not quite so much, anyway. But she said so many things, Haley. She had so much to say about you, and about Leo, and about my work. She said—” His brow furrows. “She said if I made this one speech, I could have you back. My work would be protected. There were more cameras than I expected. I didn’t feel well.”
I touch his cheek, and my dad closes his eyes.
“Caroline made it impossible to refuse that speech. But everything I said was real. Even if she forced me to say it. I want you to come home. I want you to be safe and happy. I want—” He closes his eyes again. “I just want you where I can see you. I know you’ll be out in the world soon enough, but it doesn’t have to—” His eyebrows lift like he’s trying to stay awake, but he doesn’t look at me. “Not quite yet. Not yet.”
My dad’s breathing evens out.
I ease myself off the bed and fold myself into a hard plastic chair nearby.
“Miss Constantine?”
“Yeah?” I watch my dad’s chest rise and fall under the hospital gown and scratchy sheet.
“Could we speak in the hall?”
“Of course.” I leave my coat on the chair and follow her out. This is a different nurse from before. One with green scrubs and a clipboard. She has dark hair and kind eyes.
“I wanted to talk with you about your father’s situation. The doctor can go over things with you in more detail in an hour or two, but I like people to have their bearings.”
I’m not going to have my bearings for a long time. Maybe forever. I feel perpetually off-balance, like my head is swinging heavily toward the walls, a different direction every time I move my eyes. My heart keeps searching for Leo. He’s not here, and he’s not going to be. I can’t go back.
And I can’t think about that now.
“Thank you,” I tell the nurse.
“You’re welcome.” She pats my elbow, then flips over the page on her notebook. “Your father has suffered a major heart attack involving at least two arteries. The surgeon can tell you more about the procedure in the morning, but for tonight we’re focused on keeping him stable. The event sapped a lot of his strength, so after the surgery, he’ll require a lot of assistance to recover. First steps, we stabilize his condition for the surgery. We have all the signatures we need to go forward with that, but we can’t help you with funding for in-home care.”
“Signatures?” My brain hangs up on that word. My dad is one person.
She flips another page and scans down it. “Your father is currently in a gap in his insurance coverage. There’s a chance you can apply for reimbursement after the fact, but hospital admin won’t let us proceed with the surgery without a funding agreement. It’s so lucky that his sister was here when he arrived.”
“That was my aunt. She’s his sister-in-law.”
“She’s a good one.” The nurse shakes her head, her eyes going wide and sympathetic. “It takes a little finessing with the paperwork, and we have to check for her approval at several points along the way, but your father’s surgery and care here will be paid for.” She leans in and studies my face. “Are you all right, Miss Constantine?”
“I’m—” Dying. I’m dying. “I should call my siblings. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Not for now. Go make your calls.”
Another plastic chair waits outside the door to my father’s hospital room. I lean in to check on him before I dial Petra.
He’s asleep, but it’s a restless sleep. His hand is up on his chest. Every so often, it flutters up and comes back down again. I can’t watch for very long, or else I’ll cry, and I have to hold it together.
I sink down onto the rigid plastic and dial Petra’s number with my hand over my eyes. She answers on the first ring. “Hey, Hales. What’s up?”
“Hey, listen.”
That’s all I manage before the sobs get the better of me. The more I try to keep them quiet, the worse they sound. Petra makes a bunch of soothing noises over the phone, but I can tell she’s freaked out. I would be, too. I feel like I’m swallowing broken glass but I do it until I can speak.
“So.” I wipe my whole sleeve over my eyes. “Dad had a heart attack.”
Petra drops her phone. It thunks against her kitchen counter and there’s a static sound as she grabs it back up. “Is he okay?”
“No, he had a heart attack. He’s not dead, but he’s in the hospital. I’m here with him.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Petra, no. No—don’t come over here. It’s late at night, and there’s nowhere to sit. He’s asleep anyway.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“I haven’t talked to them yet. But the nurse said it was a bad heart attack. There’s going to be a surgery in the morning. I think he’s going to be here for a while, and then—then someone’s going to have to be home with him. To help him. He’s really weak.”
“I should be the one to do that.”
“You’re married. You have a life. And Cash has school. I’m the only one with the time. I can—I can defer the last semester of college and graduate next winter instead.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I can see her pacing around her kitchen. Petra used to do the same thing when we were younger. Pace around any available space. “What are you saying? I thought you were staying with Leo Morelli. You said you wanted to be there.”
“I do want to be there.” I want to not cry in this hallway anymore. I want for this terrible night to unwind itself until I’m back in the den with Leo. I want for my father to say no to Caroline, and for her not to be so awful.
“So I’ll come and take over,” Petra says briskly. “I’m the oldest, and I’m most prepared to—”
“I’m already here.” My sister lapses into silence. “And things are over w
ith Leo. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Hales…are you sure? You don’t sound—I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Are you sure it wasn’t some kind of misunderstanding?”
You were fun to toy with, like the rest of them, but you’re not worth my life.
“I’m sure.”
“And there’s no chance you could talk it out with him?”
“Petra. You’re really trying to convince me to make up with Leo Morelli?”
“Yeah.” Her voice has a helpless shrug written all over it. “You’ve never sounded so sad. And you don’t say things you don’t mean. So I have to think you meant it when you told me you wanted to be with him.”
“I’m sad because Dad had a heart attack.”
The truth. Just not the full truth.
“Was it him or you?” Petra asks.
I want you. I choose you. I love you.
“Him.”
“Then you didn’t want to leave.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want.” I straighten up in my seat. “What matters is that someone has to be here for Dad. I have to be here for Dad. I’ll keep you and Cash updated, obviously, but it’s best for everybody if it’s just one of us.”
“Haley—”
“I have to go. The doctor is coming to meet me. I’ll text you after, okay?”
“Okay, but—”
I hang up on her. It doesn’t feel great, but it feels better than listening to my older sister talk about this. She gave up the man she loved to obey Caroline Constantine. She wouldn’t understand my dilemma. I tip my head back against the hospital’s concrete wall. It’s painted a drab sandy color that makes me vaguely sick. A white stripe runs along the middle of the wall. This place is in desperate need of a person like Daphne. I’d rather look at the ocean. I’d rather let the waves swallow me whole.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Leo