Notes from Ghost Town (27 page)

“Please, Stern. Please, let’s just stay here. We love each other. Let’s stay.” And it’s all I want to do. Stay here. Here I will never be alone, because Stern and I are wrapped in each other. We are made of each other. “I belong with you.”

“No, Olivia,” he says, his voice soft. His voice. The voice I’ll hear forever in my head, the voice I’ll hear until I’m too old even to move. “You have to live. And I have to die.”

“But I don’t want to go back. I don’t know how.”

“Just,” he starts—I feel his body leave my own, and then his lips, touching mine, a burning, fast, wild stroke of an instant. “Wake up.”

W
ake up, Livie. Livie, Livie, Livie.” Wynn’s voice. The beeping of monitors and wheels squeaking down a hallway. I stir, try to open my eyes—everything is very bright.

The brief imprint of Stern’s lips still lingers on mine, the cold dark Nowhere space that held us.
He loves me
.

I try to sit up, but with each tiny movement, I’m struck by the sharp, rib-ripped feeling I imagine being stabbed repeatedly must also bring. A big part of my shoulder feels half-numb with stinging pain. My chest feels hot all over.

My father’s voice somewhere close by: “Heather—get the nurse—she’s moving. She’s waking up.”

Waking up—I woke up. I’m alive.
No
. I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay there with him, in that silk-wrapped warm place forever. Why didn’t he want me to stay?

Heather’s voice: “Just push that button by the bed, Dave. That’s the call button.”

“Right here?”

“Yes, honey. Right there.” Their voices are soft, careful. Wynn’s is not: “I wanna push it!” she shrieks. “Shhhhh,” Heather says.

My lungs ache, and my eyes hurt—I struggle to open them, but everything is so bright. Stern’s face breaks over me like a wave. His voice singing as he leapt over the high dunes to Oh Susannah:
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dryyyy. The sun so hot, I froze to death, Liver, don’t you cryyyy
.

I wait. I wait for him to come as he has before. It was the last place he ever saw alive—Oh Susannah—my house. And somehow, it called him to me.

Every time except for now.

And I start to understand, finally: he is gone from me. My Stern. My love. My heart squeezes in my chest, curling into itself like a wounded animal.

I feel soft little fingers clasp over mine.

“Wynny.” I croak out.

Her little fingers wrap more tightly around my right hand. A set of larger fingers are wrapped around my other hand and another set smoothing at my temple, brushing hair from my eyes. “Dad.”

I turn my head and crack my eyes open further to see him smiling down at me, sunlight bright beyond his head, the ceiling wide and opened like the heavens. “What time is it? How long have I been here?”

“Liv.” The corners of his mouth tremble when he says my name. He sits beside me in the bed, he kisses my cheeks,
my forehead, my nose. “You’ve been out for almost thirty-six hours. We weren’t sure—it was a very close call.” He’s shaking his head, tears in his eyes. “Livia, you had us so scared. I don’t know what I would have done if we’d lost you. I really just don’t even know.” He kisses my forehead again, and I feel the wet of his face meet mine. Wynn is in Heather’s arms now, and Heather is rocking her gently on the opposite side of the bed, keeping her calm. “My sweet little girl,” Dad says, sweeping a strand of hair from my forehead. “Raina’s been camping out here, too. Pretty much two nights not sleeping, holding your hand—she was so tired, honey—I told her she’d better go home and get some sleep about an hour ago.”

The thought of Raina temporarily warms me in my middle, but then a colder reality sets in: I’ve been here practically two whole days. Two whole days wasted to coma.
Two days left
and then: Doomsday. “Does Mom know?” I blurt out.

Before he can answer, the door swings open. Several people come through it at once, including a short woman in doctor’s scrubs, her thin, dark hair arranged in a messy bun.

“She’s awake,” she says, smiling encouragingly at Dad. The three people behind her—interns, I’m guessing—approach my bedside and Dad gets out of the way so they can poke and prod me.

“Hi, Olivia. I’m Dr. Carey,” the short woman says, taking my wrist in her hand, checking my pulse. “I’ve been
looking after you since you were brought in and dressing your burns. Do you remember what happened?” A tall, youngish intern—almost cute, if not for the giant mole on his left cheek—rubs a thermometer strip across my forehead.

“The fire. I was in Dad’s office—and Ted—” But then the coughing starts.

She puts a hand on my chest, sits me up a bit higher to listen with her stethoscope to my lungs. “Okay. Don’t push it. Just rest—your lungs took quite a beating.”

Another intern—a tall, skeletal-looking woman—fiddles with the fluid bag at the end of my IV before strapping a blood pressure monitor to my bicep and squeezing. “One-twenty over eighty,” she says.

Dr. Carey nods. “Good,” she says. “Perfect.”

My coughing subsides. I try to breath.

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you say your body feels right now?”

I think about this. My heart is on a seesaw between one and ten, but my body …“Four. I feel weird. My chest really hurts, and my head. And my shoulder, and above my knee.” I glance briefly down myself and notice that most of the paces I’ve mentioned are bandaged, taped. Must be the burns she’s been dressing. And then, I think about my time in Nowhere, with Stern, how our lips touched there in the darkness when we were streamed together; there, I felt fine. More than fine: perfect.

But I came back.
You have to live, and I have to die
.

“We ran some tests while you were unconscious. It looks like there won’t be any permanent damage to your lungs, and your vital signs are good. But you inhaled a lot of carbon monoxide and smoke. For several months, it will be harder for you to breathe than normal. A lot like asthma. It’s pretty amazing you’re still with us. Maybe someone’s looking out for you.” She winks, her eyes wrinkling up a bit at the sides as she smiles. The interns smile, too. “You’ll also feel a little out of it for a few days, a little confused. Just make sure you get a lot of rest. If everything continues to look good, though, we’ll probably discharge you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I reply, weakly.
I don’t have that much time
. “But, what if I’m feeling fine? Isn’t there a way I can leave today?”

“Probably not, Olivia, but, anything’s possible. We’ll keep an eye on everything and see what we can do.” Dr. Carey retreats toward the door, interns in tow. “I’ll be back in a bit for some blood tests. Buzz if you need anything at all.” The door shuts behind them.

I turn back to Dad, and pick up where we left off. “Mom.”

He looks to Heather, wipes a bead of sweat from his upper lip. “We weren’t going to worry her if there was nothing to be worried about. And—thank god—the doctor thinks everything’s going to be okay.”

I sit further up in my hospital bed, try not to look at the IV poking out of my forearm. “Dad,” I start to cry, as he squeezes my hand. I was almost dead—could have stayed
in the solid center of the in-between place and then I wouldn’t be here, blinking in the too-bright light of this hospital room, solid and breathing. And then I cry harder, for Stern, for the final and ultimate loss of him. “Ted—he was there—he …” I start wheezing then, struggling to catch my breath.

“Shh, darlin’,” Dad says. Heather, Wynn still monkeyed around her neck, comes to stand beside him. “We know all about Ted.”

The shock of it gets me coughing again. I wait until the fit ends, and tug the words, hoarse and painful, from my throat. “You do?”

“He’s taken full responsibility.”

“
Really
?”

He sighs. “I didn’t believe it myself, when I heard. I really just couldn’t believe it. He might have gotten away with it if the cops hadn’t pulled him over. He was driving drunk.” Dad puts a hand on my forehead. “They found fire starters in his trunk, matches. The whole thing was an insurance scam, start to finish. He got me hook, line, and sinker. But Liv, he had no idea you were inside. No idea. He feels just awful. And, believe me, he should.” He sucks in a long swig of air. “Chances are, he’ll be going to prison, possibly for a long time. We’ll have to wait and see. It’s a big shock.”

I fight past the searing pain in my lungs. “Dad—that’s not what I meant.”

“Calm down, Liv. Less talk, more rest.”

“No—
more
talk.” I sit further up in bed and fix him with a stare. I take a deep breath. “Ted Oakley did not burn down Ghost Town for insurance money. He was trying to kill me.”

He lifts his eyebrows. “Why on earth would Ted Oakley try to kill you?” he asks gently. “I think this is that confusion business coming through—you heard Doctor Carey—things are gonna be a little foggy for a few days, darlin’.”

“I’m not foggy, Dad. Listen to me,” I say. “He killed two other people.” Dad’s eyes widen; he and Heather exchange a quick glance. “He knew that I knew, and he tried to kill me. He locked me in your office and set it on fire. There was no insurance scam! You have to believe me … you have to—” I start coughing, again, dredging up the blackness in my lungs.

“Liv,” Heather says gently, setting Wynn down, “You need to rest, okay, honey? And then we can talk all about this, in a few days, when you’re feeling better.”

“I’m feeling fine!” I howl, feeling completely helpless—all of them hanging around my bed, staring over me like I’m some brain-dead invalid. “You weren’t
there
. I know he’s Ted-fucking-Oakley”—Heather covers Wynn’s ears—“and you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. He framed Mom, and I figured it out, and he tricked me. He took Austin’s phone and—”

“Olivia, please—your mother
confessed
, Liv. And while Ted may have done some
very
awful things, accusing the man of
purposefully
going after you is—”

“Let her talk, David,” Heather cuts in. Just for that one second, I really love the woman.

Dad leans back in his chair beside my bed and rests a hand on his forehead.

“Ted took Austin’s phone. He knew that I’d asked Austin to leave the door to Ghost Town open for me. He knew I was going to be there, alone.” I push on: “Just before Stern died, a girl disappeared, Tanya Leavin—you can look it up. Ted and Tanya were having an affair. He
told
me they were. Austin told me he thought Ted was cheating, but I don’t think he knew anything for sure though. Tanya was going to tell, I think, and ruin Ted’s life, so he killed her. He killed Stern, too, and he blamed it on Mom.”

I wait for something to change in Dad and Heather’s faces, some moment of realization or clarity. But they stare at me with the same mirror images of pity. Even Wynn has picked up on the mood of the room, stands beside me, stroking the top of my IV arm like she’s petting a sick cat.

“I don’t know what you heard from Austin, or what’s going on with Ted and Clare, but none of that’s about Mom and what happened. We’ve been over this a million times.”

“She was
framed
!”

Dad looks me over and sighs. “You’re tired as hell,” he says, rocking forward in his chair, putting a hand over mine. “You’re in total shock. But we’re going to get you all fixed up.” He leans over and presses the call button for the nurse. “Let’s just get those tests over with already
so we can take you home soon as possible and let you get some real sleep.”

“Allll fixed up,” Wynn chimes in, smiling at me through the gaps in her teeth.

But they don’t know where I’ve just come back from. They don’t know there is only one way to get “all fixed up” from here.

Two days left. We have the answers, Stern
, I think to him, hoping my message might somehow reach him, wherever he is now.
Now, we just need proof
.

I spend the rest of the night in the hospital alternating between the mind-blank powers of the little overhead television and Dad’s regular dismissals whenever I try to bring up Ted again. As I grow more and more emphatic, he grows less and less attentive, to the point where I think he’s just tuned me out entirely, thinks I’m just ranting, delirious. Several interns come through the night to re-dress the more serious burns on my shoulder and chest and thigh, rinsing the areas that need it with cool water that stings like hell before patting me dry and applying sterile gauze, more bandages, surgical tape.

It’s not until the next morning that I’m finally released.
One day. One stinking day
. Dad and Heather fawn over me, tucking me into bed, bringing me a tray with drinks and soup, and setting up my computer on a chair in front of my bed in case I want to watch something on Netflix.
“Just holler if you want anything else, okay? We’re going to be right downstairs,” Heather tells me, as she and Dad stand, lingering in the doorway. I decide not to bring up Ted anymore. Until I have real proof, there’s just no damn point.

“I’m not crippled,” I tell them. “If I want something, I’ll just
come
downstairs.”

“You sure are proud, Liv,” Dad says, trying to joke. “If I had two and a half people at my beck and call, I’d be milking it like hell.”

He shuts the door. I lie in my bed and shut my eyes because the ceiling above me is spinning. There’s still one piece of this puzzle I haven’t placed yet: Tanya’s body. Ted threw Stern, still not quite dead, but unconscious and badly wounded, off the pier. That probably means Stern tried to run—run to Oh Susannah, where he knew he could find help. Ted must’ve chased him down the beach.

But Tanya’s body never turned up. Stern’s washed ashore—and couldn’t have taken too long to do so, for there was still blood, oozing from his wound and onto Mom’s hands as she cradled him. But not Tanya’s body. Hers never washed up. Why? How could a body just disappear? What did he
do
with her?

I roll over to my side in bed and heave, but nothing comes up.

I roll back, trying to breathe deep, trying to think, trying not to cry.

I can do this
.