Key Lime Pie (15 page)

Sadie turned back to look at Layla, the question of what was wrong with the woman on the tip of her tongue. But she didn’t want to discuss it in front of Layla so she bit back her question and focused on rinsing her plate, realizing she had another reason to go with Eric, so she could find out what was going on with his ex-wife. Still, it seemed . . . irresponsible to leave her home alone.

“Layla,” Eric said, leaning his elbows on the counter. “Larry said he recorded a few more episodes of
How It’s Made.
Would you like me to turn one on?”

“Yes,” Layla said, still eating.

Eric nodded and headed into the living room. Sadie hurried to catch up.

“Someone broke in and burned the box,” Sadie reminded him when they were out of earshot. “Are you certain she’s safe?”

Eric looked at the clock. “Tia gets home in a little while. She’ll check in on her. Besides, the police will drive by every couple of hours. She’ll be fine.”

“And who’s Tia?” Sadie asked.

“A neighbor,” Eric said. “She helps keep an eye on things.”

Five minutes later, with Layla engrossed in how jet packs were built, Sadie closed the front door and headed toward the carport, overwhelmed with the heat—again. “You’re sure it’s safe for her to learn about making jet packs?” Sadie asked, looking over her shoulder and feeling bad that they hadn’t even said good-bye to Layla. Eric seemed so sure of things, but even that bothered Sadie a little bit. It was too easy to interpret his casualness as simply not caring.

“She doesn’t have any jet fuel,” Eric said. “She’ll be fine.”

Sadie couldn’t think of a good argument for that. She lifted a hand to her hair, frowning at the way her hairspray didn’t seem to have dried all the way, leaving her hair sticky and flat. On the way to the car she tried to fluff it back up, but it didn’t seem to do much good. She wondered how women who lived in such heat did their hair. Her spiky, curly coiffure was certainly not a good choice for this climate.

Sadie slid into the passenger seat and hoped she was doing the right thing by going with Eric instead of heading for the Miami airport. After putting a stack of papers on the dashboard, he buckled his seat belt, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the driveway. Sadie waited until they were on the road before she asked the question she’d wanted to know the answer to all day.

“So, what’s wrong with her?” she asked, trying to use her most diplomatic tone.

“Layla?” Eric answered, glancing at Sadie quickly.

Sadie gave him a look that said
Who else would I be talking about?

Eric took a breath. “Layla,” he said, almost sighing as he spoke her name. “Layla, Layla, Layla.”

Fruity Pasta Salad

2 cups mayonnaise

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1⁄2 teaspoon celery seed

1⁄2 cup honey

1 teaspoon salt

1⁄2 teaspoon pepper

2 to 3 chicken breasts, diced*

1 (16-ounce) package tri-colored pasta (Rotini, wacky mac, penne, etc.)

2 (15-ounce) cans mandarin oranges, drained (Shawn likes fresh mangoes, for a more tropical taste)

1⁄4 pound sugar snap peas, sliced diagonally

1⁄2 cup chopped green onions

Chow mein noodles

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the mayonnaise, minced garlic, celery seed, honey, salt, and pepper together. Cover and place in the refrigerator. Cook the chicken in a pan, then dice and place in a large bowl. While the chicken is cooking, cook the pasta, then drain and add to chicken. Add the mandarin oranges, sugar snap peas, green onions, and mayonnaise sauce to the bowl. Gently mix together until everything is covered with the sauce. Refrigerate for one hour before serving. Top with chow mein noodles.

Serves 12.

*Can use canned chicken in a pinch.

Sadie tried to read into the tone of Eric’s voice, wondering if there were any feelings for his ex-wife betrayed within it. She also realized she’d nearly forgotten about the little detail of Eric having stayed at Layla’s last night. But after seeing Eric and Layla together, she didn’t feel like her previous suspicions had any foundation. There was no chemistry left between them, and she’d bet a thousand dollars Eric had slept on the couch last night. Her wonderings came to a halt when Eric started talking.

“About eighteen years ago, Layla was in a car accident,” Eric said, leaning toward the driver’s side door and holding the steering wheel with his right hand. “She sustained a head injury that affected her frontal lobe and left her with a variety of problems including what they call
blunted affect.
”

“I’ve heard of that,” Sadie said. “Vietnam vets sometimes get it, don’t they?”

A boy from the neighborhood where she had grown up had left for the war a high school basketball star and came home a recluse who didn’t make eye contact or smile. He lived in a back room of his parents’ house and, up until Sadie had moved away and lost contact, never recovered from whatever happened to him in Southeast Asia.

“It’s similar to what some post-traumatic stress victims end up with, yes,” Eric said. “But no two cases are the same, or so I hear.”

“Eighteen years ago?” Sadie asked. “Were you married?”

Eric looked straight ahead as he rolled through a stop sign. “Yeah,” he said simply. Sadie wondered if he was glad to be driving as they talked about this so that he had something else to focus on. Even though he kept his tone level, she could hear the deeply buried hurt beneath the layers. “And I was warned from the start that most relationships crumble under the pressure of brain injuries. I had hoped to avoid becoming a statistic, but it was harder than I could have ever imagined.”

“She seems pretty functional,” Sadie said. “Just kind of out of it.” She hoped she wasn’t sounding critical, but ending your marriage after your spouse sustained an injury, even a serious one, was hard for Sadie to justify automatically.

Eric shook his head, and Sadie noticed his jaw was set, making her wonder if he was feeling defensive. “At first she couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t complete tasks. She got very angry and frustrated all the time. She went to all kinds of doctors and therapists and improved little by little for about nine months. Then she stopped improving. A couple months later, her neurologist dropped the bombshell—she had plateaued on her rehab. Whether it was due to her inability to cope or simply her lack of motivation, everyone felt she’d made all the progress she would make. The therapy stopped, the hope we’d been given disappeared, and she started watching TV all day. She’s made some improvements since then—she can take care of herself and the house—but she still doesn’t . . .
feel
anything. She doesn’t think about how other people are feeling, doesn’t comprehend other people’s emotional responses to things. She doesn’t cry or laugh or show affection. She just . . .
exists.
Except when she gets angry. And then she gets very, very angry.”

“Wow,” Sadie said, her heart softening as she imagined what Eric had been through. “That would be hard. How old was Megan when the accident happened?”

Eric began unconsciously rubbing his left thumb against his thigh as though trying to clean something off of his hand. “Seven.” He took a breath. “Layla was a wonderful mother before then—parks, books, dress up; Megan loved to have her hair brushed, and every night Layla would sit with her on the bed and brush her hair out while they talked.” He paused, and Sadie sensed he was very far away for a moment. “I’d sometimes stand in the doorway and just watch them. We called Megan Sweetie Pie—I know, lots of parents call their daughters that—but Layla had made up a song about her nickname, about how she was as sweet as pie.” He paused again and took another deep breath. “We’d wanted more children, but were trying to get on our feet financially before we did. Layla had to work and didn’t want to have another baby only to leave it in daycare, so I was working hard to grow my business; that’s what brought us to Homestead.”

Sadie wondered if he had ever told their story quite this way. Their story: his, Layla’s, and Megan’s.

After a few seconds, he continued. “Then Layla had her accident—it wasn’t even that serious—but the head injury was enough to change her into someone else completely. She didn’t like to be touched and had no patience anymore for a little girl. She’d stay up ’til three o’clock in the morning watching TV as though she thought it would disappear tomorrow. She’d lie if it helped her get what she wanted, or kept her out of trouble; she charged up a credit card she stole from my wallet. She’d leave the house and walk for hours and hours until I either found her or the police did. Her mom moved down from Gainesville so she could help while I was at work. We hoped and prayed that she would wake up one day. Instead she simply accepted that she belonged here and we were supposed to take care of her.” He looked down at the spot where he’d been rubbing his pants as though surprised to notice he’d been doing it. “Her mom wasn’t well, and taking care of Layla and Megan took its toll. After she moved back to Gainesville, everything just got worse—miserable, really.”

Sadie was intent on the story, but noted that Eric had gotten on the interstate toward Miami. Miami was fifty miles away. They weren’t going all the way to Miami were they?

Eric continued. “The rage subsided in part because her doctor finally put her on antidepressants that mellowed things out for her, but they also made her even more flat. Living amid the apathy for everything and everyone was like slowly drowning. She never called Megan Sweetie Pie after the accident, never brushed her hair before bedtime—it’s like she didn’t know Megan was her daughter.”

“She feels nothing?” Sadie said, thinking back over the exchanges she’d had with her. Certainly Layla was withdrawn and unresponsive. “But she got really anxious when she saw the driver’s license; she insisted it wasn’t Megan and left the room.”

“She did?” Eric said, looking at her quickly, surprised. He immediately turned his attention back to the road. “Really?”

Sadie nodded. “I mean, she wasn’t crying or anything. She just said over and over that the photo wasn’t Megan. Then she left and waited for me outside.”

“I wish I’d been there to see that,” Eric said, shaking his head with regret and changing lanes. “I’d have thought the only thing she’d worry about was the bracelet.”

“Well, she asked about that, too,” Sadie said after a moment, disappointed to have to share bad news. “What’s so important about the bracelet?”

“Layla’s father gave it to her when she graduated from high school; he died about a year later from colon cancer,” Eric said. “After the accident, Layla’s mom worried Layla would lose it or break it, so we decided to take it from her. She didn’t notice it was gone, and I assumed she’d forgotten all about it, since a lot of her memories had been affected by the injury.

“When Megan turned sixteen, I gave the bracelet to her, as a kind of gift from Layla in a roundabout way. When Layla saw Megan wearing it, she got really upset and accused Megan of stealing. Meg thought she should give it back, but I wouldn’t let her. After that, Megan only wore it when she wasn’t around Layla, and when Megan disappeared, Layla was most upset because the police talked about how Megan was wearing the bracelet at the club that night. Layla kept saying that the bracelet was hers and she wanted it back. I’m assuming the police didn’t return the bracelet?”

“They said it was evidence,” Sadie explained.

Eric nodded. “Our daughter was missing, and yet Layla freaked out over a
bracelet.
” He sighed before continuing, “It was a very ugly day for me.”

Sadie could only imagine. “How did Megan handle Layla’s problems? It must have been hard for her to grow up with that.”

“For the most part she seemed to take Layla’s injury in stride, but I know it was hard for her. Layla hated affection, got easily frustrated, and in time, Megan seemed to close in on herself more and more. One day when Megan was almost ten, I came home and found her hiding in the closet. She’d broken something—I can’t remember what—and Layla had just lost it. There were broken dishes all over the kitchen, and she’d ripped the pages out of Megan’s baby book while calling Megan horrible names and telling her she was a bad girl over and over again. My little Sweetie Pie was shaking she was so scared of Layla hurting her, and she melted into sobs when I found her.” Eric voice was soft.

“That’s when I decided to leave. Until then I had thought keeping the family together would be good for Megan, but that day I realized it wasn’t anymore. I convinced Megan to go to a counselor, and for a little while it seemed to help, but it was expensive, and we were really struggling to make things work. At some point I just had to trust that she could rise above all this.” He paused and Sadie wondered if he were questioning that decision.