Sleeping Beauty (31 page)

Rev pulls his from his pocket and glances at it before doing the same. He turns to Ben. “Do we have a deal here?”

Ben’s response is interrupted by the insistent, second simultaneous ring of our phones. This time I fish mine out of my purse. “
West Cell”
it reads. I silence it a second time, and notice that the call I m a few seconds ago was also my brother.

Only once in my life has my brother called me a second time when I didn’t answer the first time. Only once, and it was after he got a call from the police telling him our parents were dead.

Rev looks at his phone, then up at me. I can see his screen, the words “
Number One Cell
”–Grayon in other words–blinking off and on in insistent, blue letters. I shrug my response:
I have no idea
.

“Just keep your eye on the prize,” says Rev, “before you lose sight of the motivations at work here, Doc. In a few weeks you’ll walk free, but you’ll go home empty-handed, you understand? And you’re to have absolutely no contact with my client from this moment forward unless it has been previously arranged, and both Ben and I are present.”

Once is pure coincidence, twice is peculiar chance, but three times is something else altogether. When the synchronized ringing happens a third time, I don’t even bother to look at Rev’s phone to see if it’s Lieutenant Commander Grayson working the “three time’s a charm angle.”

“Something’s wrong,” I say.

Rev must agree because he jumps up from his seat, both of us walking in separate directions.

“Hello?” we say into our respective phones at the same time from opposite sides of the room. About ten seconds pass while we listen to our own callers. We turn towards each other at the same time, our faces identical masks of alarm. I have no doubt he’s hearing from Gray the same thing I’m hearing from my brother.

We respond at the same time, but at least our words are different.

“There’s got to be a mistake, West,” I say. “It has to be someone else.”

“Are you shittin’ me, brah?” says Rev. He listens for a second and then hangs up without even saying goodbye.

I’m frozen to the spot, unable to process what I’ve heard, unable to move.

“This is bad, dally,” Rev whispers. He looks, well,
flustered
, like a guy who’s definitely used to orchestrating events down to the shrimp and salad forks. Now, all of a sudden events don’t spool out according to plan, and it’s like he’s looking at
me
for the next move.

I break out of my trance and run past Brendan and Ben without so much as a glance or an explanation, in a blind panic for the door. I don’t have to look to know that Rev is right behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

November 4
^th

I take an hour-long shower before wrapping myself in sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, pulling the strings of the hood until only my eyes, nose and mouth poke out. I drag the coverlet from Evan’s bed and wrap myself up in it like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Then I shuffle out onto the balcony, prop myself on the gliding love seat, and watch the waves roll in below.

The bedroom door opens. “Claire?”

West steps onto the balcony, looking emotionally exhausted, sunburned, and unwashed, a baseball cap turned backwards on his head. His long blonde hair is tied back in an unkempt ponytail. His face falls when he sees me.

“You know what I think about most?” I muse. “
Why
. Why you guys didn’t tell me. I can’t figure it out. I mean, you’d think I’d be thinking about Davin, you know, where he is and if he’s okay, but instead I’ve spent most of the day thinking about
this
.”

“Claire–”

“I mean, I get why you wouldn’t do it right away, but why would you guys break up, and then go for
five months
without saying a word to me?”

West sighs. He lifts up my legs, sinks onto the loveseat, and drops my feet into his lap.

“It’s like you guys think I’m this frail little girl,” I continue, “who has to be protected at all costs from the big, bad world.”

“It was Wib’s idea,” says West. “He thought, you know, that it would be too much to deal with right after you woke up from your episode, and then I went on tour, and then one thing led to another…” He looks towards the setting sun and trails off. “It just got harder and harder to explain, and I was away so much that it seemed like we might never have to.”

“That’s why you went on that long tour after I woke up back in July,” I say softly. “Isn’t it? To get away from Davin?”

“Yeah, that was part of it.” He shifts in his seat and clears his throat. “But it–it was Wib who ended it. Just so you know.”

My head snaps up. “Davin? Davin broke up with
you
?”

“Yeah.” His voice is soft, sad.

“But–but
why
? Did you guys have some sort of fight while I was sleeping?”

“No, nothing like that.” He sighs. “I don’t know exactly what happened. It was a couple of days after you came home from the sleep lab. He stayed with you when I left to play a gig in Santa Monica.” He shrugs. “I came back the next morning, and he told me we couldn’t be together anymore.”

“He told you he didn’t love you?”

He frowns. “No. He didn’t say that. He just said he was going through a lot, he felt really confused and depressed. He said he wanted some time to clear his head and…well that was about it.”

I shake my head, trying to understand. “When I fell asleep in May, you guys were talking about moving in together. Did he meet someone else? I mean, was he seeing someone else the whole time?”

“I thought so at first. But it wasn’t that or I would’ve heard about it. He never started up with anyone else after that. The crew all says the same thing, so I guess he just didn’t want
me
.”

“But why would he hang around and take care of me for seven weeks? Why would he do that?”

West snorts. He turns his baseball cap brim forward, lifts it up, pulls his hair back with his hands, and pushes the hat back down. “I don’t know. You’re going to think I’m a jerk, but I really didn’t want to ask him. I wanted to get out of there, and the tour was perfect timing. I figured you’d be okay with it, you know? You were always better with Wib taking care of you than me.”

“Oh, come on, West, that’s not–”

He pats my feet through the blanket. “It didn’t bother me,” he said. “I’ve always been happy that you guys were close.” He shrugs. “Wib said he’d take care of you, I was relieved. And then Brendan…” He unconsciously squeezes one of my ankles, his tone shifting to overt hostility in a single breath. “God, I want to kill that son of a bitch.”

“How could you have known?” I say. “It wouldn’t have made any difference at all if you’d been there, West, not during the episode or afterwards.” I sigh. “It all would have played out the same way.”

We sit in silence for awhile, letting the rhythmic sounds of the shore break wash over us. I lean my head against the back of the glider and close my eyes.

“Claire?”

“Hmm?”

“How come you didn’t tell
me
?”

I sigh, exhaling heavily through my nose, knowing he’s talking about the pregnancy. “I don’t know. I wanted to have something I didn’t have to share with the whole world. Just for awhile, you know? We were–” I stop myself. “
I
was going to tell you the day after the wrap party.” I stretch out my arm, reaching for his hand. “I promise.”

He looks like he’s about to say something, but he’s changed his mind.

I squeeze his fingers. “What?”

He shrugs. “I just wish you’d let me help you more. You’re my favorite sister, you know.”

My lower lip starts to quiver. I bite it until it stops. “I’m your only sis, tool.”

“Never said you were a sis.”

“Never said you were a bro.”

I wait for him to deliver his final line. Instead, he pushes my legs off his lap, and scoots over until he’s next to me. He puts his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder. “But I am,” he says. “I
am
your friend, Claire-Bo. And your brother. I can be both, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess you can,” I say, trying to force the words through my tears. “I guess you can do that.” I never used to be much of a crier until I got pregnant; now I can’t stop crying over anything and everything. I’m sick of it.

I sniff, trying to buck up. I pat his his hand. “Davin’s going to be fine, you know?” I say. “We’re all going to be laughing about this in a few days.”

“Claire...”

“What?”

“We’ve had every surfer and search-and-rescue team between here and Hawaii looking for him.”

“I know. I saw a Navy team on the news. Was that Lieutenant Commander Grayson pulling the strings?”

“Number One reporting for duty,” he mutters. “He pulled some strings alright. The Navy doesn’t usually send out a platoon of search and rescue divers just to look for some civvie donk stupid enough to try the Ghost this time of year alone.”

“And?”

“And we still don’t have anything more than we had forty-eight hours ago: one of his boards busted in half, a broken ankle strap, a few scraps of a wetsuit.”

I pull my hand from his, withdrawing back into my blanket burrito. “What do you think?” My voice is a hollow whisper.

West won’t meet my eyes. “Well it’s kind of hard to say until–”

“West!” His name comes out louder than I mean it to, but I am aware how close to the breaking point I am. “Don’t treat me like an invalid, okay? Hiding my cell phone and not telling me what day it is won’t work this time.”

He turns away, watching the waves roll in below us. “What do I think? I think he was stupid. The Ghost is a jack magnet on the best of days. With a storm coming in on top of that…” He kicks the bottom of the iron railing with his shoe. “I think he saw the crap conditions and anchored anyway. I think he got caught inside over the reef break, and got drilled unconscious on the rocks. ”

I shake my head. “No way. Davin would’ve worn a bucket.”

West sighs and looks down. “Yeah, I know.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“They found his helmet, busted all to hell. He probably got caught in the rip and dragged away from shore.”

“But his boat–”

“Gray’s Navy team found a fresh anchor scar on the seabed late yesterday. They followed it about two hundred yards offshore until they found the anchor. His boat probably got tossed in the storm and dragged until the anchor snapped off.”

Like one of those robotic vacuum cleaners, my brain bounces against the wall, automatically spinning around, trying to find a clear path.
Bounce-turn, bounce-turn, bounce-turn
.

It finds nothing but more walls.

“You–they…” I stop and take a deep breath, dreading what I’m about to say. “Are you saying that you think that Davin is–”

West’s hand flies out and grabs my forearm. “Don’t say it!” He releases my arm and jumps up from the loveseat. “I know it, everyone knows it! But I–after all these years–I know it doesn’t matter, you know, it’s been five months but…” He leans against the railing, his head bowed. “I just can’t hear that word right now.”

I pull the blanket around me until I feel like I can’t even inhale anymore. “No, me neither.” The words come out in a sort of wheeze, squeezed out on my last breath.

“They’re doing a tribute at the Ghost in two hours,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go. I’m not sure how many people will be there since it’s so cold.”

“Oh.”
Everything
, I think. “
Everything’s
been broken on the rocks.
Broken on the rocks and dragged out to sea
. “I’d better not. It’ll turn into a media circus if I do.”

“We’re all meeting up at the Rip tonight.”

I snort. “That’s ironic, isn’t it?”

“It’s
coincidence
. You’ll be cool there, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ll go.”

The steady, reliable drone of the surf puts me in a trance, leaving me lost in my private thoughts.

“My anchor,” I whisper.

“You going to be okay?” says West.

I startle. I’d forgotten he was still here. Out of habit, I shift into big sister mode and roll my eyes. “I’m fine, West, quit eyeballing me.”

He stares at me, his mouth screwed up in a strange way. He sniffles a few times and says, “If you’re so fine then why are you buttoned up like Kenny from
South Park
?”

Unbelievably, I laugh–a hoarse bark that quickly dissolves into tears, and just as quickly into gut-wrenching sobs. West sits down and scoops me up into a hug, rocking me back and forth, weeping softly on my shoulder. The only other time we’ve cried with each other was when our parents died.

We cry enough for Davin, for West, for me, for Brendan for our parents. For us.

“We’re going to be okay,” I say.

Even then we hold on to each other, like we’re all we have.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Riptide is packed that night, wall to wall, with surfers. Every square inch contains a body that’s more at ease balancing on a mountain of water than standing on the stable, hardwood floor of a bar. I watch them holding their drinks away from their bodies at an awkward angle, like they’re using them as weights for equilibrium on a strange, unsound surface.

We’ve pushed six tables together at the back of the bar, unconsciously creating a gauge by which one can measure the degree of one’s relationship to Davin. West and Evan sit on either side of me, Rev, Tag, Gray, and most of the rest of Davin’s tribe lining out the rest of my side. Across from me are Alex, Charley, Andy, Jonathan, Ivanna (who I’ve taken to calling “babushka” with genuine fondness), and other friends of mine from the
Evensong
set.

Those on our side of the table are subdued. Most of these guys have been out every day for ten to twelve hours at a time, in and around Ghost Point, still searching. The fact that Gray officially switched it from a “search and rescue” to a “recovery operation” yesterday didn’t exactly boost flagging morale. Everyone looks ground down to the bone, physically and emotionally, with faces red from sunburn and (I have no doubt) private bouts of grieving.