Love's Awakening (2 page)

No, not really. Oliver wasn’t fine at all.

Celia’s stomach became a lump of clay. David’s son had escaped whatever happened with a broken arm— and David had lost his life.
My
husband
is
dead.
Dead.
And
the
last
time
we
saw
each
other,
we
were
angry.
Celia’s last words to David had been: “Fine. Run away! You know what that tells me? That you’re guilty. You’re hiding another woman! Is she waiting for you at the hotel?”

Oliver shuffled over to Celia’s area of the room, and Shirley took the baby back from Richard. “Look. Isn’t he precious? Your little brother.”

Oliver managed a glance and a tight-lipped smile. At least he was trying.

“Hey, Celia,” Oliver said. He ran his non-cast hand over his cheek, and Celia’s heart squeezed. David had the same nervous tic.

Celia attempted a brave smile for her stepson. “Hey, Oliver. Are you okay?”

A quick nod, a hooded gaze. “Fine. Yeah.”

Celia let the lie linger a long moment until she could no longer bear the silence. Didn’t mean she was ready to hear David was dead. No, she’d comment on something else entirely. “Your eyes are brown right now.”

Oliver blinked. “What?”

“Sometimes they’re brown. Green other times. But rarely brown
and
green at the same time.”

Oliver frowned. “My eyes are brown.”

“They’re hazel,” Shirley put in. She held the baby in the crook of one arm and used her other hand to lift Oliver’s chin. “Yep. Beautiful hazel, just like your mother’s.”

“Grandma, they’re brown.”

Shirley chuckled and summoned Richard for his opinion.

Celia gave herself a figurative pat on the back.
How’s
that
for
a
stalling
tactic?

Hard to believe sometimes that David and Oliver were father and son. While David was militant about his appearance, keeping his hair perfectly combed, his face shaven and his business suits fresh and crisp, Oliver was all about jeans, T-shirts and comfort. The son was lanky and laid back in a way that the father, with his sharp lines, intensity and drive, was not. They were both toned, however. Both jogged and worked out, although the middle-age battle of the bulge had a thirty-pound advantage on David.

Celia’s husband liked the more material aspects of life, while Oliver did not care about money or status. He had gotten his bachelor’s degree in art history, and a month after graduation, decided art history was not for him. He spent the next three years backpacking around Europe, spending time with his mother’s family in England and “finding himself.” Much to David’s relief, Oliver was back in school, working toward a master’s in business administration. Oliver also worked nearly full time as a bartender and refused financial support from David for graduate school.

“Did you find your father?” Janet asked.

“Dad is…” Oliver glanced toward the doorway. As if on cue, a policeman and an unfamiliar doctor appeared.

The fight flashed before Celia’s eyes again. David’s scowling. David’s biting voice. David’s squint.
I’m
about
to
find
out
my
husband
is
dead.
Think
of
something
good
about
us.
David whisking her away on a picnic.
See.
We
used
to
have
good
moments.
A
decent
marriage.
More nice moments poured out: skiing at Snowshoe, getting lost in Paris on their honeymoon. Where and why had their marriage gone wrong?

Oliver sank onto the bed and met Celia’s eyes. That was how Celia knew for sure that something was wrong. Nothing hostile skulked in Oliver’s gaze. Just sorrow. Pity.

We’re
on
the
same
side
now
, Oliver’s eyes said.

He looked up at his grandparents. “Give us a minute.”

“No,” Shirley said, choking on the word. “I’m staying right here. What’s happened with your father?”

“Give us a minute, then I’ll explain.”

“I am staying right here. He’s my son!”

“Fine,” Oliver whispered. He swallowed then said: “Dad’s been in an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Shirley demanded.

“Car accident.” Oliver returned his focus to Celia. Took Celia’s hands in his. Oliver’s cast was sandpaper rough, but his skin was hot. Alive.

Celia’s flesh prickled. “You’re touching me.” Oliver and Celia had known each other four years, Celia had been his stepmother three and a half years, and Oliver had rarely condescended to touch her. When he did, it was for a quick handshake or in stiff acceptance of a hug. Now here Oliver was, touching Celia to
comfort
her.

Oliver lowered his eyes, and Celia became even more conscious of Oliver’s hands on hers. Of Oliver’s heated, smooth skin. Feeling a man’s warmth after months of being frozen out was nice.

Got Celia’s mind off her dead husband, at any rate.

Except Oliver let go.

Celia missed his contact immediately but did not reach out. Stupid her for making Oliver self-conscious about trying to comfort her.

Oliver’s eyes were still brown, but now they had gold flecks, too. Must be the lighting. Pretty eyes. Beautiful, alive eyes.
Please
don’t
tell
me
your
father
is
dead.

A couple of messages, both in thin green Sharpie, were scrawled on Oliver’s cast.

Heal
quickly!
–
Gino

Plenty
of
fish
in
the
sea
–
Dad

David’s message stopped Celia cold.
He’s
alive.
He’s
okay.

“What?” Oliver synced his gaze with Celia’s. “No, no, that…oh, geez.”

Celia barked a brittle laugh.

“Listen,” Oliver said earnestly, and in that moment, with his pale face, dirty hair and pained brown-gold eyes, he was unbearably lovely in the way a small, hurting child is. “Listen to me. Dad’s alive, but...”

Oliver continued speaking, and Celia escaped to a dark place in the recesses of her mind. Words filtered through, anyway:
Almond’s
bar...crash
truck
thirty-five
miles
per
hour,
surgery...might
not...driver’s
okay…but
Dad
has
to,
he
will
because
of
the
baby,
ribs,
arms,
legs,
brain
trauma…

Celia realized just how many things could happen in sixty seconds. Eating a candy bar. Texting someone. Making a phone call. Going to the bathroom. Orgasm. Crashing your car. Devastating a family’s life.

*****

Oliver told his stepmother what needed to be said. He was faintly aware of his grandparents, and of Janet and Chester, hovering at his side, of their sharp inhalations. No whimper from Celia, though. Just wide, unbelieving blue eyes. Thank God Celia was not crying. His grandmother crying, okay, he could handle that. But not his stepmother.

“Your arm,” Celia said. “What happened?”

“Did you hear me? Dad is—”

“I heard. Your arm, what happened?”

“It’s his wrist,” Shirley put in.

“What happened?” Celia repeated.

Oliver sighed. “I was running down the steps and tripped on a loose shoelace.” That was the story he had mumbled to his grandparents, too.

“Where?” Celia asked.

“Huh? Where did I trip?”

“Yes. Where?”

“Dad is—”

“Yes, I heard. Where did you get hurt?”

Oliver scoffed. “My apartment building. What does it matter?”

Celia narrowed her eyes. “Plenty of fish in the sea. Something happen with Lori?”

“I don’t get you,” Oliver snapped. “Your husband is fighting for his life, and you’re asking about my girlfriend—excuse me, my ex-girlfriend—and where I tripped?”

Celia’s chin trembled. Tears coming now. “I heard. Maybe I don’t want to think about it.”

Great. He’d made Celia cry.
You’re
a
shit,
Oliver.
He rose from the bed and waved the policeman and his father’s surgeon in. He let his grandmother hold Celia, and Oliver imagined he had told the truth:
Well,
Lori
and
I
were
at
my
place.
She
was
drunk
out
of
her
mind.
She
accused
me
of
being
in
love
with
you.
I
denied
it
and
walked
out
of
the
apartment
to
the
staircase.
Lori
tried
to
block
me
from
leaving,
and
this
guy,
this
six-foot-tall
muscular
guy,
ended
up
kerplunking
down
the
stairs.

Yeah. Embarrassing. Would not go over so hot.

Chapter Two

Celia had to pee but kept putting it off. One nasty secret she had not learned until after the birth: doctors told you to lay off the toilet paper. She had a little squirt bottle to help clean herself up, but a hose was what she needed. She was a gush of blood when she peed. The blood reached her thighs, calves, ankles. Celia wanted her body from nine months ago back. She hated her gargantuan vaginal lips, the stretch marks, the sore breasts.

Molly, the nurse who snapped the
Friday
the
13th
picture, patted a wheelchair. “Pee before we go. You have your squirt bottle?” That was all the nurses asked. Squirt bottle, squirt bottle, squirt bottle. Nothing about David; that was too tricky, too emotional. Therefore, the world would end if Celia did not have a damn squirt bottle.

“I can wait,” Celia said.

“Go to the bathroom.”

Celia sucked it up and peed. And bled.

Afterward, Molly patted the wheelchair again. “Let’s go.”

“Can’t you forget policy and let me walk?”

“Afraid not.”

Celia sighed and got into the wheelchair. Ten a.m. had turned into four p.m. Time to visit David.

Celia ignored the inhuman mass and humming of machines and tubes as best as she could. She stared at the spider web of thick, dark stitches marring her husband’s scalp. What kind of spider lived there? Tarantula, black widow? Definitely the kind that could kill. What did spiders eat? Flies, moths, ladybugs. Spiders were arachnids, right? Kind of like insects but with eight legs. Celia remembered her and Janet, both five years old, watching as Janet’s tarantula, Freckles, ate Celia’s pet baby mouse, Melody. She had nightmares for a week. The tarantula had towered above the mouse, and Celia felt something in her groin: fear, terror, something almost sexual, something
bad
, she knew. The tarantula lowered its mouth toward the mouse’s head. Celia watched, terrified and fascinated, as the mouse
squee
squee
oh
God
help
me
squee,
convulsed and was gone.

This mess was Celia’s husband. David’s head was bare, shaved to let the stitches breathe. Doctors said he probably would not live through the night. They had no idea how he had made it this far already.

Celia held up the picture of her and the baby. “Caleb Brandon Hall,” she whispered. “You win.”

She recalled enough from Oliver’s mumblings and the haze of conversations with the police and David’s surgeon to piece together how the accident happened. Yesterday, Oliver fell down the steps on his way to meet David for a late lunch, so he called David to take him to the doctor. Afterward, they went to Almond’s—a bar. Not the one where Oliver worked, which made sense. Why go to the place you work when you’re off duty? They talked a while, and then David drove away in his Lexus. He was going to the hospital to be with her, Celia. David stopped at the Almond’s parking lot exit, looked left, looked right, forgot to look left again, and pulled out in front of an eighteen-wheeler bearing down on him.

The eighteen-wheeler swerving, but not enough, plowing into David. The sickening, slow mashing of metal on metal, of Goliath pummeling David, Goliath hollering in victory.

The end of David, if not literally, then most likely for all practical purposes.

Celia felt a hand cover hers. “You okay, sweetie? You ready to go back to your room?”

Celia shook off Janet’s touch. “I need to stay.”

Lynn this time: “You need to rest.”

“I’m staying as long as I like. My husband will be dead the next time I see him.”

*****

Shirley sat in David’s room and read him a story when Oliver tiptoed in about midnight. “Hey, Grandma,” Oliver said. “Agatha Christie?” Agatha Christie was David’s favorite author. Shirley’s, too.