“Harris? Harris.”
Another voice, soft but firm, pulls him from the edge of a cliff, an abyss—some terrible, cold, dark place.
“Harris, wake up.”
He fights to obey, kicking, flailing.
“Harris! Wake up!” The voice repeats the order.
Harris recognizes Holly’s voice, sharp with annoyance. His wife has less and less patience for him nowadays, or for the nightmare that has lately and with increasing regularity plagued her sleep as well as his own. It’s childish in its imagery. She doesn’t understand why a man is having a boy’s bad dream, the same one over and over. He has admitted to having had it as a kid a few times. He’s gone so far as to say it’s related to his father, but he refuses to participate with her in speculation as to its meaning. It irks her, his silence on the subject. He’s closing her out. That’s her perennial complaint about him. His refusal to talk. It’s deliberate, she says. Willful. But when it comes to the nightmare, or certain aspects of his past, it isn’t that he doesn’t want to tell, to confide in her.
It’s that he can’t.
3
Caroline—Monday, January 8
Cold. It was so cold. She wanted to curl up, tried rolling onto her side, but she couldn’t move. Tethered somehow. Pain throbbed at her temples. Now the smell assaulted her, antiseptic, harsh, a more acrid underscore of panic. Her own? Was she dreaming?
“Hey, it’s all right.” A voice, soft, reassuring. “Be still now. You’re okay, or you will be.”
Caroline cracked open her eyes to light that was blessedly dim. Above her a woman’s figure took shape. “Where am I?” It was hard forming the words, pushing them through her dry lips. The pain grew, crashing around her skull, banging against its bony walls.
“Hospital, Our Lady of Grace in Omaha? You were in an accident a while ago. Do you remember?” The nurse held Caroline’s wrist, studying her face, waiting for it, the dawn of Caroline’s comprehension.
It came incrementally, a series of quick flashes. She was driving. Lost. Unfinished houses loomed like skeletons. Except for the heavy equipment parked alongside the curbs, the street was dark and empty. She recognized nothing. Headlights appeared behind her, coming closer. Closer still. Blinding her. Scaring her. She sped up, slowed when she briefly swerved. Ice. She hit a patch of black ice. What was the fool behind her doing, riding her bumper? There was no other traffic. Go around, she shouted as if the driver might hear. Dumbass!
“He hit me,” she said to the nurse now. “The car—I lost control on the ice, went into a ditch, I think. Cold. I’m so cold.”
“I’ll get another blanket.”
No, don’t leave me alone. In Caroline’s mind, the words were a whimper, a plea that surprised and confused her. Her heart pounded. The driver had waited there, at the accident scene. She’d felt his hand clamp her shoulder. Who knew what he might have done next? But as soon as he’d heard the siren, he’d fled.
But before that, he’d said her name.
Who in this town knew her name? Or even knew she was here? Only Jace and Coach Kelly. Alexa, the trainer whom Caroline had spoken to at Tillman State University. But it had been no woman driver in that SUV. Neither had it been an old man, which left Jace. Get the hell out of Omaha . . . his warning scrolled through her mind.
What if he was here?
He’d want to stop her, silence her, before she could name him, accuse him.
She lifted her head, wanting to sit up, get away. The pain and a wave of nausea took her breath, and she fell back. Black dots ate at her peripheral vision. Tears scored the backs of her eyelids. She felt helpless, and it irked her.
“Here you go.” The nurse was back. Caroline felt the warm weight of the blanket she’d brought settle over her, and now a small whimper of relief escaped her. “Oh, sweetie, I know.” The nurse dabbed Caroline’s damp cheeks with a tissue. “Just rest now.”
The nurse’s voice was soothing, and Caroline held on to it, letting the pain go, letting darkness overcome her.
When she woke again, though she had no concept of how much time had passed, her mind felt clearer. Still, she was cautious opening her eyes, anticipating the pain, shrinking from it, and it was there, but tolerable. She shifted her head on the flat pillow, running her gaze over the plain walls and institutional furnishings of the hospital room. The other bed, nearest the door, was empty. A machine sounded from the head of her bed. Linked to one hand, it monitored her vitals, a slow, even beeping that increased as her brain recalled the sensation of utter panic when she’d lost control of the rental car. Caroline brought herself upright now, slowly, raising the back of the bed. She tentatively felt her face, ran her hands down her thighs, shifted her legs.
She looked up when the nurse, a woman, appeared.
“Good morning,” she said. “I’m Charlotte. We met a few hours ago, but you got a good knock on the head, so you might not remember.”
“I do, but not clearly.”
“Well, you’re looking much better than you did when the paramedics brought you in. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good, I think. I have a bit of a headache.”
“The result of the concussion, although it’s not serious, which is a good thing. I can get you a couple of Tylenol.” Charlotte took hold of Caroline’s wrist. “Otherwise you’re in good shape. The doctor will be in soon, and your husband is on his way.”
“Rob? How did he find out?” Caroline shifted her glance, setting off a small crescendo of pain in her skull, but she wanted her purse; her phone was inside it. She wanted to stop him.
“I think your mother told him?” The nurse let go of Caroline’s wrist. “He was pretty surprised you were here. He thought you were with her in Texas. Houston, I believe.”
“I was. My mother’s moving into a retirement community. I’ve been helping her pack up her house. I’m in Omaha?” Caroline interrupted herself. Even as the nurse answered affirmatively, the details began to reassemble in Caroline’s mind. She recalled her flight yesterday afternoon, renting a car at the airport and checking into the Marriott near there. She’d gone to the campus, the athletic office, spoken to Alexa, a trainer—
“You’re at Our Lady of Grace,” the nurse continued. “You were brought in by ambulance around eleven last night.”
“I’m at Our Lady of Grace?”
“Yes,” the nurse answered.
“My dad was a patient here in the eighties, after he fell at the football stadium over at Tillman State.”
“The college.”
“Yes. It was winter, like now. The stadium steps were icy, and he slipped. He broke his leg and fractured his skull. The head injury was serious.” He was in such a bad way, could barely feed himself, tie his shoes. It embarrassed him. Coach Kelly’s voice spoke in her mind . . . “I wonder, since I’m here, if there would be a way to look at my dad’s medical records.”
“He was here in the eighties? I don’t think—”
“He was admitted on December twenty-seventh, 1988. His name is Garrett Hoffman, but everyone calls him Hoff.”
“I’m really sorry, hon, but I don’t think the hospital keeps records longer than ten years. Even if we do, I believe you’ll need your dad’s signature on a power of attorney, but maybe he’s done that?”
“No.” Caroline dropped her eyes. Of course there would be procedures, some legal instrument required, if she wanted to see her dad’s medical records. “Could you get my phone, please? It’s in my purse. I want to call my husband, tell him he doesn’t need to come.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s on his way by now. Melanie—the nurse who was with you in the ER?—she found his business card in your purse and called him right away.”
Of course, Caroline thought. What wife didn’t carry her husband’s business cards wherever she went? But she didn’t feel like Rob’s wife any more than she felt like the equal partner he would, even now, claim she was in their business. There might be paperwork indicating she was co-owner
of New Wheaton Transit, but paper was all it amounted to.
“Your husband said you live in Des Moines?”
“Yes,” Caroline answered.
“Well, that’s not too far. A couple of hours, right? You’ll feel better once he gets here.”
No, Caroline thought. Rob was the last person she wanted to see. “Was the man—the other driver—injured? Is he here?”
“Other driver?” Charlotte looked blank.
“Yes. He rear-ended me. Twice. That’s what caused me to lose control.”
“There wasn’t another driver; no other car was at the accident scene, at least according to what I heard. The policeman who came to the scene said it looked like you hit a patch of ice—”
“There was a car behind me. It caused me to go off the road. I hit my head. I think I passed out.” Caroline remembered the sharp pain that had seemed to cleave her skull at the moment of impact. “He was there,” she insisted to Charlotte.
“That’s the thing about your type of head injury. Things get mixed up. You might not remember certain details, or you add in details that never happened.”
“But I can see him; I can feel his hand on my shoulder. He said my name.”
“I know. It can all seem very real, but it isn’t. All that confusion—it’ll clear up, you’ll see.”
Was it possible? Had she made up the whole scenario?
“It was after dark,” Charlotte said. “You were near the TSU campus, in a new subdivision that’s going up. No one’s living out there yet. Do you remember the location?” Her gaze was intent.
“I do,” Caroline said.
“Good,” Charlotte said. “That’s good.”
“I visited a friend, an old friend of my dad’s. I was hoping he could—” Her memory of leaving the Kellys broke into her mind, bringing it all back—her disappointment and frustration. To have come all this way for nothing. It wasn’t right. She had to talk to Jace and his dad again. She had to make them understand Lanie had no time left for their games.
“Did you get lost leaving your friend’s house?”
Caroline looked at Charlotte. “I think I exited the freeway too soon on my way to my hotel.” She’d never know exactly. Foolishly, she hadn’t been paying attention. “There was road construction. It was confusing. I kept making turns, trying to get back to the interstate.”
“Well, luckily there was a security guard on patrol. People are always trying to steal building materials, you know. He heard it when your car went into the ditch and got to you right away. Maybe that’s who you remember seeing. Or the policeman who came,” the nurse added.
“Maybe,” Caroline said, because she could no longer be sure. The man she remembered, though—if he’d been there at all, she’d swear he’d been in street clothes, not a uniform.
Charlotte gave Caroline’s arm a final pat. “They’ll be around with the breakfast trays, and I’ll come back and check on you in a bit. Okay? Try and rest.”
Caroline agreed that she would and then asked Charlotte for her cell phone, but after pulling up her aunt’s name from her list of contacts once the nurse was gone, she hesitated. What would she say to Lanie? I’m in the hospital because Jace Kelly ran me off the road? I think he and his dad are hiding something? She couldn’t confirm that was even true, and such speculation would only worry Lanie sick—sicker. For widely different reasons, she hadn’t been any happier about Caroline making this trip than her mom was.
Fool’s errand. That was what her mother labeled Caroline’s mission to find her dad. But her mother resented that Caroline would do this, drop everything for Lanie. It was nothing new. The history between them, her aunt Lanie and her parents, was troubled. To escape it, Caroline had left Texas and gone off to college in Iowa, and except for the occasional obligatory visit, she hadn’t been back home much—not until Lanie’s first cancer diagnosis four years ago. Caroline had come back then, staying for weeks at a time, to care for her aunt, to see Lanie through the worst of her treatment.
Now the cancer was back with a vengeance. Caroline had been so oblivious, arriving at her mom’s house the week following Christmas, wrapped up in her own little dramas, her aging mother, her troubled marriage, and an unwelcome preoccupation with the memory of a boy from high school she’d once loved, whom she’d rejected . . . as if any of that was significant. Hearing of Lanie’s impending death just days ago had trumped all of it. Caroline had felt as if someone had vacuumed the air from her lungs.
They’d been in Lanie’s kitchen, having hot tea and slices of her homemade lemon cake, when she’d announced that she was dying, that it was only a matter of weeks, a few months at the most. Caroline couldn’t have felt more leveled if someone had come from behind and clubbed her over the head with a shovel. She cried and felt horrible when Lanie comforted her. After Caroline calmed down, she was surprised when Lanie brought up her brother, Hoff, expressing a strong desire to see him again.
Other than in passing, they hadn’t spoken of him in years, almost as if at some point after he’d vanished they’d agreed to let him go, that even memories of him revitalized through their words were too painful. When Caroline gently asked the reason for Lanie’s wish, she said she needed to make amends. We had a falling-out, you see. Caroline didn’t see and hadn’t asked. It didn’t matter. Finding her dad, bringing him to Lanie—granting her last wish—that was all that mattered now.
She set her phone on the table beside her bed and tried sitting up, shifting herself carefully, but it was no use. She could tolerate the pain, but she was unprepared for the nausea and lay back. She didn’t want to be sick all over the place. That was her last thought, the one she took with her when she tumbled into a fitful sleep.
When she wakened, the room was brighter, and Rob was sitting in a chair beside her bed.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” He bent toward her.
She closed her eyes. The edges of her mind were still fuzzy, malleable enough that for a handful of moments she felt herself transported back to the early days in their marriage when she’d waken to find Rob propped on one elbow, smiling down at her. Hey, sleepyhead, he’d say, or, Mornin’, beautiful. The rush of her longing for those days, the man she’d thought Rob was, warred with her regret over the loss of both. They weren’t that couple anymore, if they ever had been.
He straightened, folding the newspaper he’d been reading, setting it on the floor.
Caroline stared at the ceiling, spine rigid, mouth dry as sticks. She worked her tongue over her lips.
“They’ve brought lunch. There’s orange juice.” Rob held out a carton with the drinking straw already inserted.
Ignoring him, she fumbled with the bed control, getting herself upright. She waited for the pain, and it was there, but not as sharp. The nausea, too, had retreated.
“How are you feeling?” Rob asked.
“Better,” she said. “Ready to get out of here.”
“The nurse—Charlotte?—said you’re good to go as soon as the doctor signs your discharge. From the way she talked, I don’t think they’d have admitted you if you’d had someone to look after you, but with the concussion they couldn’t send you back to a hotel alone.”
Caroline caught Rob’s look, the one that asked, What is going on? His inevitable inquiry came next.
“What’re you doing here? After the hospital called me, I talked to your mom—”
“You called Mom? Oh, Rob, I wish you hadn’t.” Her mother was already annoyed enough at her for having made the trip. Only God knew what she’d make of this, Caroline in a hospital, raving about a man having forced her off the road. It’s a fool’s errand, Caroline.
Rob was on the defense. “I get woken up in the middle of the night by some nurse telling me my wife’s been in an accident, that she has a concussion, that she’s in a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, when I thought she was in Houston, Texas—”
“All right, all right.” Caroline raised and lowered her hands, the movement making her head throb. She
closed her eyes.
“What’s going on, Caro?” he asked, less hostile now. “Maggie said you came here to see some coach about your father? You’re on a mission to find him—”
“Did she tell you about Lanie, that her cancer is back?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I know how close you two are.”
“It’s spread everywhere, Rob. It’s in her lymph glands, her bones. Her doctor said the chemo might give her a little more time, a couple of months at most.”
Rob’s eyes widened. “Are you serious? Wasn’t she fine when you saw her in October?”
“Yes. They didn’t find it until her checkup right after Thanksgiving. She didn’t tell me until the other day because she didn’t want to ruin our Christmas holiday with Nina.”
Rob shifted his glance, possibly at the irony in Caroline’s tone. The holidays had been little more than a show they’d put on for their daughter, and although no one had acknowledged it, Caroline felt Nina must have sensed the tension between her parents. She’d always harbored a kind of regret mixed with sadness that Nina was an only child. It could be so lonely, and when things at home went wrong, it was that much darker and scarier, having no one to hold hands with, no one to whisper to in the night. At least Caroline had had Lanie to talk to. But Nina had no one, no aunt or sibling to share the burden. Unless she talked to Jessica, her college roommate. They seemed close. Caroline had been relieved when Nina flew to Vail for New Year’s to join Jessica and her family for a week of skiing before heading back to Denver University, where the girls were both sophomores.
“Have you talked to her? Nina? Since you’ve been gone?” Rob sounded nervous.
“About Aunt Lanie?”
“Well, that or, you know—the business, the jam we’re in.”
“We aren’t in a jam, Rob. You are.”
He opened his mouth, probably to argue. Caroline cut him off. “I haven’t spoken to her. She’s having fun, I hope, and I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t know how to tell her anyway. What should I say? Your dad’s a crook?”
Tell No One Page 3