Coast Road (44 page)

" Jack felt an instant letdown. "What business? " "I heard about your break with David Sung. I wanted to approach you before others do. My company specializes in building resorts. We like the designs you did in Montana. If you're wondering how we saw those, the answer is a spy, but I won't dwell on that, because I under stand that your time is short. We talked with David a month ago, but the price he quoted was, well, ridiculous. I was hoping you'd be more flexible." Totally aside from the fact that Jack didn't want to be thinking business, he was mildly put off. "Why would I be? " "You may be joining another firm or going solo, but in either case, you need to establish your name quickly. We're not as big as the group doing Montana, but we're getting there. We won't overpay, but we'll pay. We'll also offer you more than one project. That would take a load off your mind, wouldn't it? " It certainly would, if assuring a steady income was his major concern.

It was definitely a concern. But major? "Uh, look, I'm not sure I can think about this right now. I'm in the middle of a family emergency.

If you give me your number, I'll get back to you." He wrote down the number on the flap of an envelope on the counter.

"We'd like to move ahead on this immediately, " the man said. "When will I hear from you? " Jack pressed thumb and forefinger to his brow.

"Today's Tuesday. Give me a week? " "Can you make it sooner? I need to know if we're in the ballpark. If we are, we'll hold off on seeking other bids until we see something from you." Jack felt a gnawing in his stomach. The man was right. He needed work.

A group that promised more than one job would give him instant security.

But a resort? "Friday. I'll call you Friday."

"Good. Great. Talk with you then." Jack hung up feeling uncomfortable. He didn't want to be thinking about this now. But at some point he had to. According to his lawyer, David was claiming, as his, every prospective client that hadn't yet been signed. Jack could take him to court. Those clients had been developed on Sung and McGill time. They should be split half-andhalf.

Did Jack have the stomach for a court case? No. Did Jack want those clients? No. He wanted a smaller, more humane practice. That was all.

Tearing off the phone number, he stuffed it in his pocket and went to work. He moved in and out of the house like a man possessed, carrying framed canvas after framed canvas to the car that was, thankfully, a truck. When twelve were carefully stacked around foam buffers, he closed the hatch and drove right back to Carmel and P.

Emmet's.

Ben was waiting. They quickly carried the pieces inside and stood them against a wall not far from the three paintings already there. Ben's excitement was obvious. He hadn't expected there would be so many new ones. What kept Jack waiting nervously were the man's thoughts about what he saw.

Ben moved in, hunkered down before one, moved on to the next, moved back.

When Jack couldn't bear the suspense, he said, "Well? What do you think? " "I think she's brilliant, " Ben said. "She captured everything I wanted her to. These have the same feeling as the bobcat pups. She listened, she heard, she did." He darted Jack a glance.

"Nice job with the frames." Feeling validated and exuberant, Jack grinned. "Thanks." WHEN KATHERINE got a midmorning cancellation, she had her receptionist move the two appointments following it to the afternoon, and headed for the hospital.

Cindy was with Rachel, slow-talking as she exercised her limbs.

Katherine stood silently, watching in vain for movement. But Cindy was smiling. "Watch." She took a pen from her pocket and pressed it against Rachel's thumbnail. She pressed harder. Rachel pulled her thumb away.

Katherine's heart raced. "Do it again, " she said. The movement had been so small, she wanted to make sure it was real.

Cindy pressed with the pen, and there it was, a tiny recoil.

Katherine clapped her hands together, put them to her mouth, and beamed. She was enough of a realist to know they had a long way to go.

Reponse to pain was bottom-line basic, but it was a step beyond the random movement begun earlier that morning, far and away the best thing they had seen in two whole weeks.

JACK was at the hospital by noon, staking out a bedside spot. By two he regretted making so many calls. Rachel had a steady stream of visitors, but he wanted to be alone with her. When he imagined her opening her eyes, he wanted to be the first thing she saw. Wanted to be the only thing she saw. Wanted her to know that he had been there more than anyone else.

It was juvenile. But he was getting nervous. Charcoal sketches might suggest she still loved him, same with framed pictures stashed in a drawer. But the fact remained that she had chosen to leave him. He understood now why she had. It was his job to show her that things had changed.

So he sat beside her and talked with the friends who came. He kept track of her movements, looking for the little more that suggested she was coming further out of the coma. She continued to do small things with fingers and toes, occasionally twitching an ankle, elbow, or knee, but there wasn't anything new until that evening. He was helping the night nurse turn her when she moaned. When they repeated the motion, she repeated the moan. Then she settled into silence.

They were small sounds, but his heart soared. He called the girls, who were back in Big Sur after dinner with Katherine. He called Katherine, who had returned to Carmel. He kissed Rachel's pale cheek and told her that she was wonderful, that she was strong, that she could do it, and he waited.

The expectancy was so strong and his adrenaline flowing so fast that he didn't think he would feel tired. But nights on end of moonlighting in Rachel's studio and catching precious few hours of sleep took its toll.

He was dead asleep in his chair by the bed when the night nurse came to turn Rachel again.

There was no moan this time. Nor was there motion. Jack would have been discouraged if the nurse hadn't been able to evoke the thumbnail response. It was still there, that recoil.

"Go home, " she urged. "We'll call if there's any change. Once she wakes up, she'll need you even more. You should be rested for that. " Jack wasn't so sure about the needing-him-even-more part, but he liked the way it sounded, and the girls were alone. He drove home.

HE FELL into bed at eleven and slept straight until Hope shook his shoulder. His eyelids were heavy. With an effort, he raised one.

"We're taking the bus, " she whispered.

He came awake fast then, startled to see that it was light, and late.

"No, I'll get ready, " he said, pushing himself up, but his head was nearly as heavy as his eyes.

"Sleep longer, " Samantha said from the door. "I called the hospital.

She's doing the same stuff, but she isn't awake. They promised they'd call when she is." Jack wanted to get up anyway, but he made the mistake of putting his head down for one last minute after the girls left. He was asleep in seconds.

He slept for another three hours. When he woke up, he called the hospital. Rachel hadn't come any further, but she hadn't regressed.

They were pleased.

Jack tried to be pleased, too, but he kept thinking about the possibility that she would be stuck at that point for the rest of her life. He meant what he'd told Katherine. He would take care of her.

He would set her up in the canyon she loved and care for her much as Duncan cared for Faith, but, Lord, he didn't want it to come to that.

He wanted Rachel with him, in every sense of the word.

Sipping hot coffee, he stood in his boxers at the wall of windows overlooking the forest. It was another beautiful day. The fog had burned off, leaving the earth beneath the redwoods a rich mahogany broken by patches of deep sorrel green. Higher up, where the boughs hung, the needles were a lighter green. Pretty. Peaceful.

He turned around. Same with the house. Pretty. Peaceful. The floors were of natural wood, the sofa was red-and-maroon plaid. The church bench was green, with lilac flowers on fat cushions. The planters that flanked the bench were a deep purple with orange splashes, and brimming with chaotically leggy plants.

Pretty? Peaceful? But the house was. It was fun and full of life, very much the irreverent Rachel he had met so long ago. If the customary brush to use on a subject was a number five filbert bristle, she would use a number five bristle round just to see what she could do. In some cases she ended up with the filbert after all, in others she ended up with something wonderfillly unique. That was the Rachel he felt in this house. It was the Rachel he had married.

With that thought, he set off for the bedroom. He searched the dresser and the night table, searched the closet and the bathroom. He searched the kitchen cabinets that he didn't regularly use. He searched the storage pantry. He stood in the living room with his hands on his hips and wondered where she would have put it.

If she had kept it.

She might not have.

He went to the studio and stood, again, with his hands on his hips. He had been working here. He knew what was where. He had explored. But she had hidden pictures of a baby that had died. She had hidden charcoal sketches. Granted, Hope knew about this latter.

On a hunch, he strode back through the house to Hope's room.

Everything here was sweet. What better spot for a ceramic angel� and there it was on the dresser, a fat little postmodern cherub with wings, keeping watch over a crystal cut box filled with trinkets, a tiny ceramic cat that may or may not have resembled Guinevere, a comb and brush, a smattering of scrunchies, and a pile of acorns.

If Rachel had wanted something cherished, she couldn't have chosen a better guardian than Hope.

He picked up the angel, turned it over, and slipped two small latches hidden under the wings. He lifted off a back panel, pulled out a velvet bag, and emptied its contents in his hand. There were the pearl earrings Rachel had worn at their wedding, given to her the night before by her father, who had died two months later. There was a National Honor Society key. There was a watch with Minnie Mouse on the face. And the ring.

It wasn't the big flashy ring. He suspected that was in a safety deposit box along with numerous lavish pieces of jewelry given her by Victoria over the years. The ring in his hand was simple and gold. It was the only one that mattered.

JACKwas heading for the car, bent on getting that ring on Rachel's finger, when Duncan Bligh came striding down the hill, bellowing, "Saw your truck on my way up from the lower pasture, figured you hadn't left." He stomped to a halt. "My wife wants to see Rachel. I thought I'd drive her up after work. Any problem with that? " "Uh, no.

None." When Jack got his bearings, he was touched. He knew that Faith didn't get out often. "Rachel would really like it. I mean, she's not awake yet, but it could help." With a single nod, the older man turned to leave.

"Wait, " Jack said on impulse and waved an arm back. "I'm heading there now. Since I have the truck, I could put the chair in the back.

Show me what to do, and I'll get her in and out." Duncan's expression was unfathomable. "She doesn't go far without me."

"It means she'd be able to spend longer with Rachel." Duncan looked up toward his cabin. "I suppose." After another minute, he started climbing. "Get the truck." JACK had selfish reasons for wanting Faith in his car.

He envisioned forty-five minutes of conversation that would naturally turn on Rachel.

There were gaps in his knowledge of her early years in Big Sur. If anyone could fill them in, it was Faith.

And the conversation was easy. Faith was chatty, sitting in her long flowered dress that hid pencil-thin, useless legs. What she chatted about, though, was Big Sur. She talked about the early cattle ranchers and those who traded sea otter pelts. She told of lime smelting and smuggling, of arduously long trips from Monterey by stagecoach. She gave a blow-by-blow of the building of the highway and had something to say about each bridge they passed.

"Tourism has been a mainstay in these parts since the turn of the century, " she said, "but tourists rarely understand what living here means. It's an isolated life, md we like it that way. We keep our private roads unpaved and our lives simple. There's little privately owned land, and even less chance for development. Electricity is a recent thing in some canyons. We all lose it regularly during storms.

We have no fast-food chains, no banks, no supermarkets." Daylight flashed off her spectacles. "It's a quiet life. We socialize among ourselves from time to time, but people who decide to live here are usually self-sufficient sorts. Artists, yes. Writers. Ranchers, like us.

Retirees. People who work at the resorts. Free spirits. Have you walked the beach? " she asked and went on to tell of solstice celebrations, whale sightings, and . .

riptides.

Jack listened to every word, hooked not only by what she said but by the lyrical way she said it. It wasn't until they reached the hospital that he realized he had been warned.

JACK and Rachel were divorced. The hospital personnel knew it.

Rachel's friends knew it. Faith Bligh knew it.

So Jack felt a little awkward about the wedding ring. Technically, he had no right putting it on her hand. But he wanted it there. He wanted to think it might help. He wanted her to see it when she woke up.