Coast Road (7 page)

He sounded shaky. "You should have woken me up."

"I figured that if you could sleep, Mom's okay, " she said, holding her breath, watching him for the slightest sign of denial.

"She's okay, " he said. "She needs to do a lot of mending, but she's okay."

"Did you talk with her? " "No. She was sleeping. But I think she knew I was there."

"She isn't dead? " "She isn't dead."

"You're sure? " He seemed about to speak, then stopped, and her heart stopped right along with it. She drew herself straighter and didn't look away. She was thirteen. If her mother was dead, she wanted to know. She could handle the truth.

Something crossed his face then, and she knew she had made her I. E point. His voice was different, more reassuring. "No, Hope, she isn't dead. I would never lie to you about that. Deal? " She nodded, breathing again. "When can we go? " "Later this morning." He looked at the cat. "So this is the thing that showed up at the front door one day all bitten and bruised? " Hope fingered the tabby's ear. "The bites healed."

"Gwendolyn, is it? " "Guinevere. Did you learn anything about Mom's accident? Sam said she didn't know how anyone could survive driving off a cliff."

"Your mother didn't drive off the cliff. She was hit by someone else, and she did survive, so Sam was wrong."

"Is her leg in a cast? " "Uh-huh."

"Will it heal? " "Sure. Broken legs always heal." Hope hated to contradict him, but she knew better than he did on this.

"Not always. Things can go wrong. There can be permanent damage.

That'd be awful for Mom. She'd have trouble with the hills." Those hills meant the world to Rachel. She loved hiking them with Hope and Samantha. Hope had one favorite spot. Samantha had another. But Rachel? Rachel had dozens. Like the eucalyptus grove. Rachel said that a person didn't have to be sick to be healed by the smell of eucalyptus.

Hope couldn't count the number of hours she had sat in that grove with her mother, smelling that smell, listening to the distant bleat of Duncan's sheep, thinking about things that needed healing. Hope usually thought about Guinevere. And about Jack. She wondered if Rachel did.

"Your mom's leg will heal, " Jack said now. "Trust me on that." Hope wanted to but wasn't sure she could. He had missed every one of her birthdays for the last eight years, and only six of those had come after the divorce. He had promised he would be there those first two times, then had been out of town, away, somewhere else. It didn't matter that he called and apologized and celebrated with her later He had broken a promise.

Samantha said he cared more about buildings than kids. Samantha said that Rachel was ten times more trustworthy than Jack.

Only, Rachel wasn't there.

"This comes from the doctor, " Jack insisted. "Her leg will heal. " Hope lowered her head, smoothed Guinevere's ruff, and was starting to silently repeat the words in a precious mantra when Samantha's voice came from the door.

"WHEN DID YOU get here? " she asked Jack.

He looked up and, for a minute, muddled by fatigue and nerves, thought he saw Rachel. It was partly the hair�blond but no longer as fine as Hope's, now as wavy and textured as Rachel's when they had met. It was partly the figure, more defined even in the six weeks since he had seen her last. Beneath a T-shirt similar to the one that swam on Hope, Samantha stood confident and as subtly curved as her mother. But it was the voice that clinched it, the echo of caution, even hurt, that he had heard in Rachel on their last night together�and suddenly he was back in their bedroom that night, sorting through the closet for ties to pack while Rachel spoke from the door.

He could see her clear as day, with her tousled blond hair and gentle curves. She had just left the studio they shared on the top floor of their pink Mediterranean-style home in the Marina, and was wearing an old pair of slim jeans and one of his shirts. The once-white shirt was spattered with a dozen different colors, not the least of which was the aquamarine she had repainted their bedroom walls with several months before. Her face was pale and held the kind of disappointment that put him on the defensive in a flash.

"I thought you weren't going, " she said.

"So did I, but I had to change plans." He pushed ties around on the rack, looking for ones to go with the suits he had laid out.

"We've had so little time. I was hoping you'd be here for a while. " He didn't turn, didn't want to see her pallor. "So was I. " "Couldn't you just . . . just . . . say no? " "That's not the way it works, " he answered, more sharply than necessary, but she sounded so reasonable and he felt so guilty, and he was tired, it had been that kind of week.

"I've been hired to design a convention center. A big convention center. The basic design may be done, but that's the easy part. The hard part is fleshing it out for function and fit, and to do that, I have to feel the city more." He tossed down a tie and turned to her, pleading. "Think of your own work.

You make preliminary sketches, but so does every other artist. Okay.

Your skill sets you apart. But so do the choices you make on depth, attitude, medium, and you can't make those choices without spending time in the field. Well, neither can I. " She kept her voice low, but she didn't back down. "I limit my travel to one week twice a year, because I have responsibilities here. You're gone twice a month�three times, if you go to Providence tomorrow."

"This is my work, Rachel.

" She looked close to tears. "It doesn't have to be."

"It does, if I want to succeed." She folded her arms on her chest�he remembered that, remembered feeling annoyed, because she was such a slim thing, shutting him out with that gesture, and still barely raising her voice, which made what she said even stronger. "That leaves me alone here." Only in a manner of speaking, he knew. "You have the girls. You could have friends if you wanted to do things besides paint. You could be out every night, if you wanted."

"But I don't. I never have, never once, not when we met, not now. I hate dressing up, I hate small talk, I hate standing around on spikey heels munching on pretty little caviar snacks."

"Not even for a good cause? " Charity fund-raisers were an integral part of social life in the Bay Area, particularly for someone like Jack. He needed to see and be seen. It was good for business.

Sadly, she said, "I can't paint here." And painting was her world, which made him even more defensive and annoyed. "Every artist gets blocks."

"It's more than that." Those folded arms hugged her middle. "I'm dried up, creatively dead. I can't see color here. I can't feel subjects the way I used to. I don't need a shrink to tell me the problem. Art imitates life. I'm not happy here. I'm not satisfied.

I don't feel complete. You and I are apart more than we're together."

"Then travel with me, " he urged, shifting the responsibility to her.

She rolled her eyes. "We've been through this."

"Right. You won't leave the girls. You do it for your work, but not for mine. How do you think that makes me feel? Like a second banana, is how it makes me feel."

"Jack, they're babies."

"They're seven and nine. They can live without you for a handful of days here and there."

"Handfuls of days add up. And maybe it's me. Maybe I can't live without them.

It's different for mothers. Very different." They had been through that before, too. He tossed more ties on the bed.

"Look at those, " Rachel cried. "Look at those. They're so conservative.

We were going to be different. We were going to do our own thing, not get caught up in the rat race."

"We've done our own thing. You freelance, I have my own firm." She pressed her lips together. After a minute, she bowed her head.

"What? " he asked.

The eyes she raised were hollow, her voice low. "I won't be here when you get back."

"You said that last time."

"This time's for real." He sighed. "Come on, Rachel. Try to understand."

"You try to understand, " she cried, then quieted again. "If I have to be alone, there are other places I'd rather be. I'm moving to Big Sur.

" Softly, she asked, "Come with me? " "Are you serious? " "Very."

He was frightened. More, he wasfurious. She knew he couldn't move to Big SilL Big Sur was three hours from San Francisco.

"I've done fifteen years here for you, " she said, softly still. "Now it's your turn to live somewhere else for me."

"Rachel." Didn't she get it? "My firm is here."

"You travel all the time. You don't do much more than visit the city anyway. You can commute from Big Sur."

"That makes no sense." She was hugging her middle again, seeming in pain. "I'm going. I need you to come with me." Frustrated that she didn't understand the pressure he felt, exasperated that she couldn't give a little, angry that everything about her should suggest that .

.

. pain, he cried, "How can I do that, if I'm on my way to Providence?

" "Dad! " Samantha's shout brought him back to the present. "How is she? " He ran a hand over his face and took a steadying breath. When he was firmly back in the present, he told her about the leg, the ribs, and the hand. Then he reached out and touched Hope's hair, wanting desperately to ease the blow but not knowing how. "The thing is that her head took a bad hit. She's still unconscious." Hope's eyes flew to his. "Sleeping? " she asked on an indrawn breath.

"In a manner. Only, nothing we do wakes her up. The doctors call it a coma."

"Coma! " Samantha cried.

"No, " Jack hurried to say, "it's not as bad as it sounds." He gave them a shortened version of the doctor's explanation, then improvised on a hopeful note. "Coma is what the brain does when it needs to focus all its energy on healing. Once enough of the healing's done, the person wakes up."

"Not always, " Samantha challenged. "Sometimes people are comatose for years. Sometimes coma is just another word for vegetable."

"Not the case here Jack insisted. "Your mother will wake up."

"How do you know? " He didn't, but the alternative was unthinkable.

"The doctor had no reason to think she won't. Listen he began, looking down to include Hope, but she was bent over her cat, shoulders hunched and quivering. He slid to the floor and put an arm around her. "We have to be optimistic.

That's the most important thing. We have to go in there and tell your mom that she's going to get better. If we tell her enough, she will.

" Samantha made a sound. He looked up in time to see her roll her eyes, but those eyes were tear-lidded when they met his.

"Do you have a better suggestion? " he asked.

Mutely, she shook her head.

"Okay. Then this is what I think we should do. I think we should have breakfast and drive up to Monterey." Hope said something he didn't hear. He put his ear down. "Hmm? " "Maybe I sh-should stay h-here.

" She hugged the cat to her chest.

"Don't you want to see your mom? " "Yes, b-but�" "She's scared Samantha said with disgust. "Well, so am I, Hope, but if we sit home, we'll never know whether she really is alive."

"She's alive Jack said.

Hope raised a tear-streaked face to her sister. "What if Guinevere dies while I'm gone? " "She won't. The vet said she had time."

"Not much."

"Hope, she's not dying today."

"Am I missing something here?

" Jack asked, looking from one to the other.

"Guinevere has a tumor Samantha explained. "The vet wanted to put her to sleep, but Hope wouldn't let him." So the cat was terminally ill.

Jack was wondering what else could go wrong when Hope looked up through her tears and said, "She's not in pain. If she was, I'd let the vet do it. But I love Guinevere, and she knows it. I want her to keep knowing it a little longer. What's wrong with that? " "Nothing Jack said.

Samantha disagreed. "Priorities she told her sister. "Mom's always talking about them. The thing is that Guinevere isn't dying today. If the accident hadn't happened, you'd have left her home and gone to school. So if you leave her home now, she won't know whether you're going to school or to visit Mom. But Mom will." Jack was thinking that she had put it well, and that maybe there was hope for his elder daughter yet, when she turned to him in distaste and said, "You're gonna shave and stuffbefore we go, aren't you, Dad? You look gross. " "Thank you he said. Patting Hope's shoulder, he pushed up from the floor and, needing fortification after�what? �an hour of sleep, went to put on a pot of coffee.

IT WAS EASIER said than done. He had explored the entire contents of both the fridge and the freezer in search of coffee beans before Samantha said, "In the canister." He looked up. Both sisters were at the kitchen door, Hope a bit behind but watching as closely as Samantha. He tried to sound authoritative.

"She always kept the beans in the fridge."

"Not anymore Samantha replied, not loudly but with even greater authority. Rachel always did the same thing.

Knowing better than to question that tone, he pushed the fridge door shut. Rachel's canisters were brightly painted ceramic vegetables, all in a line on the counter. He opened a tomato and found sugar, opened a cabbage and found macaroni, opened an eggplant and found little nibbles of something he couldn't identify.