The Escape Collection: (The Escape Collection) (71 page)

I slowly turned to face her.
 

“I was wrong,” Sheena said. “You deserved to know the truth. I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, looking at the woman who was so much like me, I felt my anger melt a little. I had an urge that was almost unbearable; to go to her and let her hold me. For her to give me the comfort I’d needed from her all these years. I leaned towards her, drawn in.
 

Jason’s voice snapped me back into place. “I don’t think you were ready to hear it. You’re still too fragile, too—”

“What do you know?” I whipped around to face him. “What do you really know about anything? You think I’m a goddamned psychology experiment. Go read another textbook.”

“I told you that I couldn’t be your solution. That was fair.”

“No,” I said. “You took advantage of me.”

“I helped you.”

“With what?” I spat.

“I helped you find yourself.” He spoke so calmly, with so much self-assuredness, I had to fight the urge to slap him. “Because of me, our relationship, you opened up to yourself, to what you really want.”

A ringing noise filled the room and my head. It battled with the storm that was still raging in my brain. “Becca.” Dylan’s voice came from somewhere behind me. I half registered the sound, but I couldn’t focus on him.

“No.” I shook my head. The anger dissipated as I realized the truth. “You’re wrong,” I said to Jason. “It wasn’t because of you.” As I spoke, the realization crystalized in my mind. “I didn’t need you to help me find myself. I did that all on my own.” I glanced over to Sheena, who was smiling through a curtain of tears. I looked away quickly. I didn’t need her approval.

“I opened you up to feeling again,” Jason said. “You were finally able to—”

“No.” I cut him off. “I don’t know what kind of psychology classes you’re taking, and I’m sorry if—”
 

“Becca.” Dylan’s voice again.

“I care about you,” Jason said. He reached forward, placing his hands on my arms.

“You care about me?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t know the first thing about caring. Any of you.” I yanked away and he released me, just as Dylan grabbed my shoulder.
 

“Becca,” Dylan said, his voice firm.

“What?” I turned and snapped at him before I noticed the look in his eyes. A nugget of fear formed in my belly. “What’s wrong?”

He held up my cell phone. “I think you should take this.”

The tone of his voice chilled me. My whole body shuddered and I forgot about Jason standing right behind me. The room and everyone in it fell away as I reached for the phone.
 

Chapter 25

In slow motion I took the phone from Dylan and put it to my ear.
 

Jon’s voice. “Becca, thank God I got you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s been an accident.”

There’s been an accident. The words reverberated in my skull. The room started to spin. I reached out for something, anything to ground me.

“You need to come home.”

“Kayla?” No. I took a deep breath. “It’s Jordan, isn’t it?” As soon as I said the words, I knew. My heart knew. “Jon, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“I had a showing.” His voice sounded wrong. Scared. “She said Mac would pick her up. They were going to a movie.”

“Mac?” The man-child. My breath quickened; I couldn’t focus.

“The roads were slick…the car…’’

“Jon?” I didn’t recognize my voice. “Jordan? She’s okay?”

He couldn’t hide the quiver in his voice when he said, “She’s in surgery. I’m here, we’re…oh God, Becca.” I could picture him on the other end of the line, rubbing his face, trying to hold back tears. Trying to be strong.

The vise on my heart squeezed, sending waves of hot guilty pain through my body. “I’m coming,” I whispered.

I pushed the button on the phone, cutting off the connection. I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move.
 

“Becca?” Dylan’s voice reached me.

“I have to go,” I said.
 

I looked up then. All three of them stood staring at me. I focused on Sheena. Tears glistened in her eyes. “My baby,” I said. “Jordan needs me.”
 

Sheena nodded.

“I’ll take you,” Jason said, sliding up beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders and I shrank away from his touch.
 

“No.” I ducked away and turned on him. “I don’t need you.”

“Becca—”

“I never needed you,” I said. I pulled myself tall. “It was a mistake.” I met his gaze, challenging him to say otherwise. After a moment, I shifted and locked eyes with Sheena. “It was all a mistake,” I said. “All of it.”

I took a deep breath, letting the air fill my lungs, giving me strength. Finally, I turned and said to Dylan, “Will you take me please?”

“Of course.”
 

My big brother wrapped me in his warm coat and ushered me out the door, leaving Sheena and Jason behind.

***

We drove in silence. Dylan navigated the car as quickly as he dared down the slick mountain highway. The rain continued its drumbeat on the windshield and I focused my concentration on the droplets that formed on the window. Each drop slid backward with the movement of the car and I traced the water tracks with my eye, focusing intently on the patterns they created. The phone conversation replayed its continual loop through my head.
 

“Can’t you drive faster?” I asked, not for the first time.

Dylan spared me a quick glance. Worry clouded his eyes. “I’m doing my best. The roads are awful.”

I nodded and went back to tracing the rain tracks on the glass.

The drive was excruciatingly slow, which gave me far too long to think about what might be waiting for me at the hospital. I tried to take deep breaths and relax. But every time I inhaled, fresh flashes of pain pierced my chest. All I could think about was Jordan, caught in the twisted wreckage of the crash. Alone, hurt, and scared.
 

I should have been there.
 

“Do you think she’s still in surgery?” I asked Dylan.

“That was a few hours ago. It’s hard to say.”

“I need to be there when she wakes up.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m doing my best.”

I nodded. “Why did you answer my cell?” The question just occurred to me.
 

“What do you mean?”

“You answered my phone, back at the store. If you hadn’t…”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was in your purse and it just kept ringing. It was one of those things, you know? Sometimes you just get a feeling that you should look. So I answered it and it was Jon.”
 

“Well, thank you.”

Numb and exhausted, I looked out the window at the landscape that was beginning to change. The mountains and trees were giving way to fields with the occasional ranch or farm house. It wouldn’t be too much longer until the city began to spill out into the countryside.
 

“Do you want to talk?” Dylan asked. “About something else I mean. It might help to get your mind off things for a bit.”

I didn’t turn from the window. The images outside were a blur.
 

Was there anything else?

“I’m serious,” he said, reading my brain. “Tell me about Dad.”

“Dylan.”

“I mean it. Tell me. How are Dad and Connie doing these days?”

“You could go visit and see for yourself.”

“I will.”

“Really?” I stared at him then.

“Sure. It’s not that I don’t want to see them. I do care, Becca.”

“Then why don’t you ever visit? Or pick up the phone?”

“It’s hard,” Dylan said. He didn’t take his eyes off the road.

“Hard? Do you want to know what’s hard? Being the only one around to help Connie when Dad’s having a really bad day. That’s hard. Or having your dad look at you and see your dead…—or not so dead—mother. That’s hard.” When Dylan still didn’t look at me, I turned back to the window. The rain had stopped. The fields looked fresh and clean.
 

“I’m sorry, Becca. I am. But you were always closer with Connie than I was. I barely even know her. It’s weird for me.”

“That’s not my fault.” I struggled to keep my voice even.
 

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I just thought you guys always had things covered,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“She’s the only mother I ever had.” I didn’t acknowledge him. “I barely remember Vicki—Sheena—whoever she is. I needed a mother, Dylan, and you guys wouldn’t even talk about her. I guess now I know why.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It hurt too much.”

“It hurt? Did you ever think that I hurt, too? I was just a little girl, Dylan. I lost my mother and nobody would even talk about her. I needed to talk. I needed to know. But it was like she didn’t even exist. God, do you have any idea how that screwed me up?”

“I don’t know what else to say. It was Dad’s idea. He didn’t want you to think it was your fault, because it wasn’t. But I was only a kid, too. Don’t forget that. I lost my mother, too. She left me, too, Becca.”

“I know.” I softened my voice. “It couldn’t have been easy.”
 

“It wasn’t,” he said. He swiped at his face. I didn’t want him to cry.
 

“Are you okay?” It just occurred to me that I hadn’t asked him. But seeing her after all that time would have been intense for him, too. “I’m sorry, Dylan. I didn’t even think about what it’s been like for you today.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and turned briefly to smile at me. “I think part of me always knew she was back in Rainbow Valley.”

“Why didn’t you go look for her?”

“Why would I? She didn’t want to be found. She didn’t want me. Us. I know it sounds crazy, Becca. But after a while, I started to believe that she really was dead. She might as well have been.”

We sat in silence, letting the road go by. After a moment, I said, “Do you really think I’m like her?”

“In lots of ways, you’re a lot like her. But so different, too.”
 

I swallowed hard and looked out the window. The trees, blurred by the water still on the glass, looked like green smears as we rushed past.

“I think maybe you should talk to someone,” he said. “Get some help. The way Mom should have.”

“I can’t think about that right now.”

“You need to think about it right now. You need to be there for Jordan and Kayla the way Mom wasn’t there for you. It can’t happen again, Becca.”

I flipped in my seat to confront him. “It won’t happen again. It would never… I would never.”

“We didn’t think she would either,” he said.

“Dylan.”

“I’m serious, Becca. We knew she was unhappy. Dad said it happened after I was born, too. Mom fell into a ‘deep funk’, he called it. Why do you think there are so many years between us? It took her along time to snap out of it. I remember her spending a lot of my childhood sad and in bed. Even in Rainbow Valley.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It wasn’t until I was about six that she came around a bit. I have no idea what it was that did it. But the same thing happened after you were born. Only it was worse.”

“So you think it’s hereditary?”

He nodded. “What’s the age difference between the girls?”
 

He knew the answer.
 

“That’s not why,” I said. “Kayla wasn’t planned. I was going to stop at one.”

He raised his eyebrow at me.
 

“The thing is, Becca, it’s pretty clear that history’s repeating itself. I see it. We all see it.”

“I told you. I would never do what she did. I would never leave my children like that.”

“But don’t you see?” He spoke slowly. “You already did.”

Chapter 26

We didn’t say another word for the rest of the drive. As we entered the city limits, I started to get edgy. My legs bounced and my fingers tapped on the door. The sky was still gray and overcast. It was an ominous way to herald my return.
 

Dylan pulled up to the hospital doors and I jumped from the car before he even had it in park. I ran into the lobby and straight to the information desk.
 

“Jordan Thompson,” I barked at the clerk. She looked up painfully slowly from her magazine, her finger still poised to flip the page.

“Who?”

“I’m looking for Jordan Thompson. My daughter.”

The clerk, who couldn’t have been much older than Jordan herself, turned the magazine over and punched Jordan’s name into her computer.
 

“Fifth floor,” she said, and went back to her reading. “Check with the nurses, they’ll tell you what room.”

“She’s not in surgery? I was told she was in surgery.”

“Guess not,” she said, without looking up. “All I know is fifth floor.”

I resisted the urge to grab the girl and tell her that there were kids in an accident. Kids around her age. Maybe she knew them? Or went to school with them? And maybe she should show a little compassion if she was going to work at the front desk.
 

I turned and sprinted to the elevator bank.
 

I pushed the up arrow on the wall. None of the four doors opened. I pushed it again. And again.

“Come on, come on,” I muttered under my breath. I needed to get there before Jordan woke up. I needed her to know she wasn’t alone. I would never leave her.

Finally, a ding, and the door of the elevator furthest away creaked open with excruciating slowness. I jumped in and jabbed at the buttons.

Circling the small box, I paced like a caged tiger as the elevator creaked and lurched upwards. When the doors finally opened on the fifth floor, I launched out and dashed to the nurses’ station.

“Jordan Thompson,” I said to the first nurse I met. “Where is she?”

“Are you family?” the young nurse asked. She hardly looked old enough to be out of high school. Was the entire staff made up of children?

“I’m her mother.”

“Becca?” said a voice behind me.

I abandoned the nurse, turned and ran down the hall to Jon. It was a reflex of the heart to run to the man I’d loved so long, who’d comforted me so many times before. I stopped short and held myself back from going to him, seeking strength from his arms. I clenched my hands together instead.