Sound of the Tide (12 page)

“Well, what do you think? The barbecue
. . .
” I tried to jog her memory.

“Oh, that!” She inspected the vegetables on her plate as if she’d be able to detect any residual pesticides with her naked eye. “I didn’t tell you anything because there was nothing
to
tell. Your baby news took us both by surprise, I guess. A little making out—which I didn’t start, by the way—but nothing more.”

“Then why did you keep it a secret?”

Jenna glared at me.

“Jesus, Piper! Because I didn’t want to put him on the spot! It was clear from the beginning that the couple of kisses we had didn’t mean anything to him. He was just looking for a little comfort.”

“Comfort? How do you mean?”

“You, Daniel, the baby, everything! It must have been hard enough for him to see the two of you happy and not be jealous—but then you drop such a bombshell!”

She was saying all this as if I knew what she was talking about.

“What are you saying? What does your making out have to do with me and Daniel?”

“Everything! Kevin is in love with you—and always has been! Are you telling me you never knew this?”

She looked at me in disbelief, and now it was my jaw that fell open.

Suddenly the curry tasted like old feet, and I started feeling very weird. Was this how you feel when you’re having a heart attack?

“You’re out of your mind! Kevin was never in love with me! He was only ever into his music! Besides, he’s always in and out of relationships,” I said, trying my best not to fall off my chair.

“
I
am out of
my
mind? Why don’t you take a good look at that album I gave you? Every picture with the two of you in it speaks volumes! Those girls he’s dated, they were only ever a distraction to him, and he stopped making music the moment you dumped him over it! He had real talent, too!”

She got up to fetch the photo album, which I had been seeking refuge in these past few days, and opened it.

“How could you not have noticed this?” She shook her head in disbelief.

“That’s not true! You’re wrong, Jenna! Of course we liked each other! But it wasn’t working between us—we tried! And he knows that as well as I do!” I pleaded my case, wondering why I was even having this stupid conversation.

“For
you
it wasn’t working, Piper! It worked for him.”

Well, this was ridiculous! Kevin and I, we were friends! He and Daniel were
best
friends, even. Whatever Jenna was claiming, it was complete and utter craziness. Or was it? Why was I suddenly not so sure anymore?

I pulled the album over, convinced I wouldn’t see anything that would justify her suspicions. After all, I had been all but inhaling these photos these past few days.

Jenna looked over my shoulder.

“So, what do you say about that?” she asked, pointing her finger at Kevin’s face in several of the images.

I leafed through the pages for a long while and kept shaking my head. I didn’t need to say anything—because there was nothing
to
say.

The next night was a Thursday, and I had just cozied up on the couch. My feet were swollen because I had spent the afternoon with Ewan and Google at the beach. He kept shamelessly flirting with me but no longer seemed to expect a reaction. We got along just great, and I found it easy enough to feel comfortable in his presence. Still, I caught myself comparing him to Kevin again and again.

Sure, Ewan was devastatingly sexy, but Kevin had his charms, too. Not that it mattered. Because first of all, Kevin was in Portland—and second of all, he was only an old friend. A friend who, according to Jenna, was in love with me.

The more I thought about it, the less sure I was of myself. Had I really never known? Had I perhaps always been aware of it, at least a little? And if it was that obvious to Jenna, then had Daniel perhaps suspected it, too? Was that maybe the reason why he had been jealous at times when I was out with Kevin? Well, that was a stupid idea, because every man paled in comparison with Daniel.

He was my measure of all things.

But Daniel wasn’t around anymore, and so I had to face
Criminal Minds
Thursday all by myself.

The opening theme alone made me pull the blanket all the way up to my chest and hold my breath.

Dear Lord, how was I going to get through this? When the woman on TV walked through a dark parking garage, her steps eerily echoing off the concrete floor, I fought down the impulse to walk around the television set just to see if someone was hiding behind it. I nervously nibbled on my fingernails when she climbed into her van.

“Look in your mirror, dummy!” I mumbled into my blanket, which had wandered up to my chin in the meantime.

The woman turned on the radio and drove her van out of the garage and into the night.

I tried to distract myself by pondering what kinds of curtain would look good on my bedroom windows. Shit. I really was such a chicken. When, a little while later, the camera panned toward two dark eyes under a pair of bushy eyebrows in the rearview mirror, my phone rang and I screamed out loud.

Shaking, I reached for the remote, muted the sound, and uncoiled from my blanket.

My heart was pounding, and my knees were soft as butter as I assured Marcus on the phone that no, I had not yet had the baby. No, the time had not come yet, and yes, of course I would call if I woke up in a puddle and discovered that my water had broken.

When I was satisfied that Marcus had sufficiently expressed his worries about my health and well-being, I said good-bye and shuffled back to the sofa, feeling exhausted.

Fortunately, the show seemed only half as brutal with the sound off, as the backseat killer got to work and indulged in his perverted pleasure.

When the blood started squirting, I turned off the TV and sat back down. Now it was way too quiet. For the hundredth, no, the thousandth time, I cursed Daniel for having died on me.

“You son of a bitch,” I whispered and closed my eyes. “What’ll become of me now?”

A T
INY
M
IRACLE

January

E
ver since Daniel’s death I’d spent my mornings lying in bed and trying to listen to my inner voice. I listened to the pain, which had turned from an earsplitting scream to a gloomy background noise over the course of the past several months. Sometimes I even managed to ignore it.

Slowly, little by little, I had dug myself out of the hole that was Daniel’s passing. Breathing started to come easier, the rare times that I laughed no longer took me by surprise, and I didn’t feel awful every single time I forgot about him for a short while. I even allowed myself to think about Kevin from time to time, and to wish for his return on more than one occasion. Slowly, I had started accepting Daniel’s death as the truth.

But there were other moments, too, days when I stood closer to the abyss than ever, nights that I spent lying awake and weeping or dreaming of Daniel, which made it almost impossible to get out of bed the next morning.

With the turn of the year, those moments had become rarer. I appeared to be in the process of finding my inner balance again. If only there wasn’t this child, our child, wearing me out like a ticking time bomb.

I couldn’t bear to be pregnant a single day longer. I was already five days past my due date, and—except for a few erratic contractions—nothing was happening.

On occasion I would convince myself that the baby didn’t come because it could feel how afraid I was. I wasn’t afraid of the delivery (okay, that was a lie—I was deathly afraid of giving birth) but of my own feelings toward my child.

But, as I was listening to my inner voice that January morning, it didn’t take much for me to realize that something had changed.

That gloomy background music had faded. Instead, I now noticed the gurgling of waves. I could hear the sound of the sea up in my bedroom as if one of the windows were wide open.

I pulled on my bathrobe. Barefoot, I stepped over to the window, leaning my forehead against the cold windowpane just as I had done shortly after Daniel’s death. The window was fogging up under my breath, but this morning I didn’t mind.

Breathing meant living—and I was living.

Tirelessly, the waves kept washing up against the rocks.

The sound of the tide—the change taking place between low tide and high tide—the sound of change.

“I love you, Daniel,” I breathed against the windowpane as the first contraction hit.

It was surreal, lying in my curtained-off cubicle, wearing nothing but a hospital gown. Nothing gave me any sense of time: no daylight, no clock, only the muffled sounds of everyday hospital activity. Someone talked quietly in the cubicle next to mine, and sometimes the curtain moved when an orderly or a nurse hurried past.

Usually I was on the other side of this curtain. Being a nurse, I was as familiar with the sounds and smells as I was with the hustle and bustle. But today—on the
inside
of this curtain—everything seemed completely new. Was today even still
today
? How much time had passed since Jenna had brought me here? It could have been minutes, hours, days. My contractions were weak but came at regular intervals, and Dr. Travis, who had stopped by only briefly, didn’t seem particularly worried.

So now I was lying her
e . . . had
probably been here for day
s . . .
staring at the ceiling and counting the rings that attached the curtain to the rail running all the way around my cubicle (137, by the way). Waiting.

Christ! I was so bored! Who would have thought that giving birth—this all-changing moment—could be so dull? Why wasn’t anything happening?

I groaned and started checking the number of rings once more, just in case, when Miss America breezed in.

“Hey, sorry! Took me a little while. The stupid water cooler was broken, and Louise from reception almost bit my head off, saying I should refill the goddamn thing myself!”

Jenna sat down beside me on the mattress, checking at the same time that the drip was working as expected.

“I mean, what gives? I told her I wasn’t on duty but do you think she cared? Well, anyhow, I had to swap the thing so here you go: cup of water, as requested!”

I grinned and did my best to make my first sip demonstrate due respect for such a heroic deed. “Wonderful, thank you! Hey, listen, do you know what time it is?”

Jenna dug out her cell phone.

“Two in the afternoon. We’ve been here for four hours. Time to get down to business, don’t you think?”

I gave an awkward laugh. “Sure, I can’t wait for the excruciating pain to start!”

“I know, that kinda blows. But ooh, I’m going to be Aunt Jenna soon!” She was so restless, shifting around on my bed, and much as I didn’t want to be alone I almost wanted her to leave.

Giving birth with my best friend around must be like giving birth inside a hurricane—only with a lot more turbulence. Was this what I really wanted? Maybe I should have called Catherine instead. I moved a little farther up on the bed, feeling uncomfortable because the pressure on my pelvis was getting stronger. Was Jenna’s frenzy spilling over to me?

I wondered how I could break it to her gently that my strung-out nerves could not take her chattiness—well-intentioned as it may be—any longer. Maybe I could down my cup of water real quick and send her out for another one?

“Jenna, listen,” I began, but the curtain was being pushed aside.

And there he was. A little pale perhaps, but smiling. Tears welled up in my eyes. I had not realized how much I had missed him—until he was standing right there. Now, everything would be just fine.

“Hi,” Kevin whispered, a little sheepishly, awkwardly looking around my tiny kingdom.

“Thank God you’re here!” Jenna said out loud what I was only thinking, and flung her arms around his neck. “I was starting to panic!”

She looked at me, her guilt-stricken conscience written all over her face. “I’m sorry, Piper, but Jesus, giving birth! A head as big as a cantaloupe coming out through your lady parts! I don’t think I could handle that, which is why I called in Smokey. Hope you’re not mad?”

Mad? Because Kevin was here after all this time? I shook my head.

“No, I’m not mad at all, but
. . .
” I looked up at Kevin, searching his eyes for an answer I was afraid of. Especially after what Jenna had told me. “But are you sure you want to be here?”

He grimaced.

“Well, I could think of nicer places to be, that’s for sure, but not a nicer person to be with.”

He came over to my bed and gave me a hug. Right away I felt safe.

Jenna, on the other hand, saw her chance to make her escape.

“I’m going to see if I can find Dr. Travis,” she called before disappearing through the curtain.

The silence that now descended on Kevin and me felt as pleasant as an insect bite right in the butt. I found it hard to act as if nothing had happened, especially since his running away to Portland had only deepened the gulf between us. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I confessed, searching his eyes for something that would tell me how things stood between us. I would have loved to touch his chin, run my fingers over his dimple, and tell him what had become more and more obvious to me during these past few weeks: that I had missed him terribly.

He brushed a curl from my forehead and smiled as he sat down next to me. “I didn’t want to come.” He reached for my hand and pressed it softly.

“Then why are you here?”

“Daniel wouldn’t have wanted me to turn my back on you. He’s not here, bu
t . . .
but he wouldn’t want you to have to go through this alone.”

Right. So that was the reason. He wasn’t here on account of me, but because he felt he owed a favor to his best friend. I swallowed hard. Jenna couldn’t have been more wrong, that much was obvious—but why did his explanation hurt so bad? I smoothed down my sheets and refused to look at him. Those goddamn hormones, they were driving me insane! I found it hard to fight back the tears.

“I wouldn’t have been alone. Jenna’s here,” I said flippantly, as if his presence here was quite unnecessary.

“Hmm, that may be the case, but I know you, and I know that you were this close to kicking her out.”

The fact that he was absolutely right proved once again that he knew me better than I gave him credit for. I grinned.

“I was just about to do exactly that when you showed up.”

He smiled tenderly, and the way he pressed my hand gave me courage and strength. Things would be all right between us.

“Just as well that I’m here, then, even though I’m going to pass out as soon as you have your first contraction.”

I smiled and pointed at the contraction monitor next to me, which kept plotting endless jagged lines onto a roll of paper.

“Guess what, you’ve missed the first two hundred contractions already—and you’re still standing.”

“You’re having contractions?” He backed away from me as if I were contagious. “But you’re not screaming?”

I shrugged my shoulders. The pain had been quite manageable, and I was still optimistic as far as the va-jay-jay–busting giant head was concerned. Maybe people were exaggerating.

Or maybe I had been through so much pain these past few months that giving birth was laughable by comparison. Or maybe my nervous system was—plain and simple—no longer capable of passing this information on to my brain because it might implode otherwise.

“But if it’s that important to you, I will scream, no problem,” I offered, and actually did wince a little harder when the next contraction hit.

“Do you know yet if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?” He changed the subject, pulling in a chair without letting go of my hand.

“No, we wanted the baby to surprise us, remember? I kept asking them not to tell me. Daniel was convinced it would be a boy, though.”

“I know. He even had a bet riding on it at the station.”

Right! That! I almost forgot.

“And what was the bet?” I asked, fearing the worst. I knew Daniel’s betting stakes only too well. Once, he had dyed his hair blue for a week—another time, he paraded around Blue Hill in a pink belly shirt for days. Which—if I recalled correctly—didn’t look half-bad, thanks to his pretty respectable six-pack.

“If it’s a boy—which was what he was betting on—his work buddies would come out to the house in the springtime and build you a dock. He couldn’t wait to take you out in a boat,” Kevin confessed, and there was a sadness in his eyes.

I couldn’t help but swallow, because we had often fantasized about taking a boat out at sunset and making love under the night sky. I dug my nails into the covers and was thankful for the next contraction because this pain—hard and cruel—distracted me from the fact that I had lost Daniel and all my dreams along with him.

“And what if it’s a girl?” I managed to squeeze out.

“In that case he was going to host a massive barbecue on the beach.” Kevin smiled and shook his head at the memory. “If you ask me, I think he was hoping for a girl, because that would have been exactly his kind of party.”

“You’re right, it totally sounds like him.”

My throat hurt from mourning the man who had loved partying so much. I could almost hear him laugh.

“Hey, babe, come here. They’re playing our song,” Daniel had called and pulled me into his arms. The dance pavilion down by the harbor was lit by hundreds of festive lights, and the delicious aroma of grilled bread and fried fish filled the boardwalk promenade. The annual fishery festival attracted hordes of visitors, and even though Daniel was on duty and was meant to keep an eye on the road closures, he now pulled me with him underneath the canopy of lights.

“We have a song?” I asked in surprise and tried to listen to the tune that I wasn’t particularly familiar with.

He winked, and his hand went straight for my butt. He whispered into my ear so that I had goose bumps running up and down my body. “Of course we do. Lots of songs. Every song I want to play when making love to you is our song. And this”—together, we rotated in between the other dancing couples—“this song has just the right rhythm. Can you hear it, babe? Can you hear how much I love you?”