To Wear His Ring (48 page)

Then again, hot gooey baked goods and spoons and bowls to lick out were persuasive rewards!

Tucker, too, she mused, had loved still-warm cookies and the doughnuts she had made from scratch. His favorite sweet, though, oddly enough, had been cheesecake. He had grinned and cooed over every bite, from his very first. Would he have enjoyed baking with his mom, Nettie wondered? What would he have looked like at age seven, powdered in flour as she taught him to measure ingredients? Nettie’s lips curled at the image, but the corresponding pang in her heart made her pull herself up short. Thoughts like that were not helpful to her, not now when she had to remain positive and concentrate on the task at hand.

Turning the radio on, she focused on song lyrics and baking items. She whistled and she hummed, but while she tried to use her head to remain upbeat, her spirit began to feel weighty, a little more and a little more with each passing moment. The time of evening when she took a few minutes to privately commemorate her son’s birthday was rapidly approaching, and her body seemed to feel it.

With everything laid out on the counter and the oven preheating, Nettie began to wonder what was keeping Colin.

“Colin, where are you, bud?” she called from the door to the kitchen. “Hey, Colin!”

When there was no answer, she trudged upstairs to see what he was up to. Her body felt heavy and lethargic, too, so maybe she was down with something. As she reached the landing, Nettie noticed dark clouds gathering in the distance and wondered how much longer Lilah would be. The early evening was shifting rapidly from cozy to gloomy.

“Colin?” she called again as she rounded the door to her studio. “Are you in here? I’ve got everything ready down—Oh, Colin!”

Abruptly, Nettie came to a halt. She stood frozen in the doorway, surveying with awful apprehension the scene before her.

Sitting on his knees, Colin examined the sculpture of Nettie’s son. He held a piece of it in each hand, two large chunks. Smaller broken chips lay scattered on the floor around him.

“What have you done?” Nettie’s voice rasped. Her limbs felt like stone.

“I wanted to put it on.” Colin looked up at her, contrite but unaware of the full import of his actions. “You said it was a mask, but it’s waay heavier than masks are s’posed to be.”

Nettie felt pressure build inside her.

“I told you not to play with it! Weren’t you listening to me?” She knelt in front of him. “I told you it wasn’t a toy. It wasn’t meant for you!” She heard the sharpness of the words, saw the uncertainty and concern come over Colin’s face, but she felt such grief she couldn’t stop herself.

“I could fix it prob’ly.” Awkwardly, Colin tried to fit the two mask pieces together, like a puzzle. Another tiny chip dropped to the ground.

“No!” Nettie pulled the mask from his hands. “Leave it, just…”

All the breath seemed to go out of her. Sitting on her knees on the hardwood floor, she realized her hands were shaking as she looked at the broken plaster, sick with the feeling that she had somehow been careless or thoughtless. If she’d put it somewhere else, somewhere higher or hidden…

“My dad could get you another, I bet,” Colin offered, his confidence returning. “He knows where to get lots of stuff. I’m gonna ask him and then—”

“No!” Nettie raised her eyes to the robust little boy, brimming with childish conviction that what was broken could surely be repaired again. “There are things you can’t fix once you break them. That’s why you listen to people when they tell you, Colin.” She shook her head, unaware of the tears that welled in her eyes. “You…you have to listen!”

Colin stood a moment, uncertainty filling his small body. He had no idea what to do. Clearly he was frightened by Nettie’s strong response. Not knowing how to express it, however, his fear turned quickly to anger. “It was just a dumb ugly old mask, anyway,” he shot back at her, lower lip trembling, eyes blazing
with wounded pride. “You couldn’t even wear it!” Before Nettie could say a word or do anything, he tore out of the room.

Nettie wanted to call after him, later she thought she might even have tried, without quite realizing it. She couldn’t have made much of a sound, though; tears choked her throat and blurred her vision. Her arms and legs felt boneless. Pain gripped her stomach and for an indeterminate amount of time, she could do no more than sit where she was, caved in on herself, trying desperately not to give in to the pain. If she cried for her baby and Brian, if she ached for the mistakes she had made and could never recall, and for the awful, endless…void…she might never stop.

Taking breaths, she waited until she felt solid again and could stand. Then she got up, still holding the two pieces of plaster. They didn’t resemble anything, anymore. Feeling numb, Nettie set what was left of the mask on the shelf.

Just do what’s next, she directed herself.

Colin was downstairs, upset and confused. He’d made a mistake, and she’d answered it with another. It was up to her to iron out the clash before Lilah came home. Colin would be gone from her life altogether before she knew it; she couldn’t let him leave with anger creating distance between them.

The thought put an uncomfortable urgency in her step. There were so many things in this world you could neither control nor count on, but you could make sure that people knew you loved them before you said goodbye.

Outside, distant thunder had begun its slow, grumbling roll across the evening sky. It had started to rain, too, she noted with vague surprise, though inside the house the air was humid and still.

Nettie expected Colin to be in the living room, sitting in front of the television—his favorite evening spot when no other activities had been mandated—and she took a breath as she hit the base of the stairs, hoping for the right words.

She’d taken only one step into the foyer when she realized there was no sound coming from the TV. The living room was empty. Ditto the dining room and kitchen.

“Colin?” Grimacing in the too-warm kitchen, she glanced at the butter softening to a near melt on the counter and turned the stove down for the time being. “Colin!”

Nettie checked the bathroom, the downstairs coat closet and then ran back up to the bedrooms. Was he hiding? “Colin, I know you’re upset, but wherever you are, you need to come out now, so we can talk.” Again she investigated all the closets…and under the beds. He was nowhere. Standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of Sara’s bedroom, she raised her eyes to the ceiling as thunder rolled closer. “Bike,” Nettie murmured. “His bike’s outside.”

She sped down the stairs a second time, heading this time for the mud porch. They’d leaned his bike against the porch steps.
Be there…be there.

An impressive crack sounded overhead as Nettie opened the door. Lightning flashed and then sizzled, and the thunder rolled again. He couldn’t have ridden anywhere in this; he wouldn’t have—

No bike.

“Oh…” Nettie indulged in a cussword that would have done Sara proud. Unmindful of the pouring rain, she ran outside, sandals crunching on the wet gravel driveway. She scanned the distance in all directions, but saw no one, and she shivered suddenly, though not from cold. The rain was warm, the air thick and musky. Summer storms, with their deceptive temperatures and dramatic electrical displays could be the most brutal. Without the bitter cold, there seemed to be less to fear, but lightning and dry summer fields were a combustible duo.

Turning toward the house with the intention of getting her car keys, Nettie realized halfway up the porch steps that Lilah was driving Jezebel.

“All right, think.
Think.
” She thumped her forehead with a loose fist. “Sara!”

Racing up the remainder of the steps, she grabbed the phone and hit Sara’s number on the speed dial. The sheriff was out on a call. Swearing again, but determined not to waste precious minutes hesitating, Nettie simply took the next logical action—she changed from sandals to sneakers. If she had to go after Colin on foot, she would. Her shorts and T-shirt would be rainsoaked in minutes, but she had no time to deal with that. She grabbed the thin jacket Colin had brought with him and then, in shoes with no socks, dived back into the storm.

Like a good catastrophist, Nettie’s mind treated her to a rapid
series of visuals involving flash floods, lightning-struck trees that cracked in two or exploded into flame, metal bike frames as potential lightning conductors—

“Stop it!”
she hissed out loud. “Think of Colin. And safety and blankets and warm beds and hot cocoa.” She pursued the positive with all the relentless determination of Sister Maria in
The Sound of Music.
A mere instant before she began warbling about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Nettie had a flash of memory that propelled her jogging feet toward the garage.

Nearly a year ago, Sara had bought a truck from Ernie, an ancient, rust-pocked Ford, which she had stowed in the garage and was gamely trying to restore on her days off. She’d paid a hundred dollars and promised that she’d drive the truck in the annual Pioneer Days Parade with a sign that read Good Eats at Ernie’s, but most people thought Ernie’d got the better part of the bargain. Privately, Nettie had considered the heap a waste of good garage space, but right now she felt like kissing Ernie and Sara and maybe even the truck.

Raising the garage door, she searched a rack of hooks for the correct key. Once she had it, she opened a door whose aching hinges made so much noise it seemed possible the panel might fall off altogether. Nonetheless, she climbed into the driver’s seat, worked the key into the ignition, and started to pray.

At her sister’s request, Nettie had started the truck a couple of times and run through the gears while Sara had stuck her head under the raised hood and listened to the engine. Now as she turned the key, Nettie chanted, “Please work—oh, please work—oh, please work—oh, please work…”

To her undying gratitude, the engine turned over with phlegmy compliance. As the vehicle wheezed its way to life, Nettie wrapped her fingers around the floor-mounted stick shift and stepped on the clutch. Jezebel had similar manual controls, but they handled more smoothly, and that wasn’t saying much. Her first attempt to move the vehicle resulted in a giant lurch backwards, a neck-snapping halt as the truck stalled, and the threat of tears—her own—as she tried once more to re-start it.

This time, Nettie managed to back all the way out of the garage and to turn toward the road.

Rain obscured her vision and a sudden wind whistled against
the windows. For once, however, Mother Nature’s muscleflexing served to anger Nettie more than frighten her.

“Work with me,” she growled, hunkering over the steering wheel as she searched for something resembling wiper controls. “Howl all you want, but I will bring Colin home safe and sound!”

When she reached the end of the driveway, Nettie realized she had a decision to make: Which direction had Colin taken? Would he have headed back to Nick’s or into town? Over to the grammar and middle school? He liked the playground there…

Relax and it’ll come to you. As if someone were standing inside her head, the words arrived to calm her racing mind. Nick’s. It made the most sense that Colin would have pedaled home.

With sweaty palms, a racing heart and a glance at the thundering heavens, Nettie guided the truck onto the road and hoped that she was right.

T
hunder rocked the earth as Nettie arrived at the farm. In the cab of an old truck with no luxuries to insulate it, she experienced every shuddering ka-boom as if she were standing in an orchestra pit next to the kettledrum.

“Please be here, please be here,” she prayed as she opened the driver’s-side door, ducked her head and raced to the porch. Lightning struck the earth with angry velocity, as if someone were hurling javelins from the sky. Each wicked flash turned the dark gray sky into blinding daylight.

No lights were visible from the front of the cottage nor was Colin’s bike anywhere in sight. Nettie pounded on the door, anyway, shouting his name as loudly as she could, but the time and effort were wasted. She’d guessed wrong.

Diving into the shelter of the pickup, she shoved the vehicle into reverse, grinding the gears as she pointed herself toward the road again. It was slow going. Hitting every bump and dip on the unpaved path, she had plenty of time to consider where she ought to search next. If Colin had headed straight into town when he left the house, he would have found shelter by now. He might have headed for the jail, and even if Sara was out on
a call, he’d be safe from the storm. If, on the other hand, he’d headed away from the house, in the direction of the school, there would be no relief from the elements at all. The elementary school was closed for summer. The best Colin would be able to do was huddle in a doorway. Unable to bear the mental picture of him alone and unprotected, Nettie turned in the direction of the school when she reached the road. Each rotation of the tires took her farther from town—and from the people she relied on for the strength and resilience she no longer believed she possessed.

As she drove, she had to fight not to feel disoriented by the amazing constancy of the lightning and thunder. Was Colin frightened by electrical storms? she wondered. They had many in Florida. Having lived in North Dakota for most of her life, Nettie was certainly no stranger to storms, but she couldn’t remember ever having driven in one this aggressive.

Brian had.

The unbidden thought arrived with all the jagged sharpness of the lightning. Why was it that time washed crispness from good memories, leaving them as muted as if they wore veils, but did little to blunt the edges of less pleasant recollections? Nettie remembered so clearly Brian’s insistence on traveling to his parents’ house that bleak Christmas three years ago, despite the weather report of unfavorable driving conditions.

Unfavorable doesn’t mean impossible
, he had argued.

Very unfavorable
, she’d argued back. They’d been living in Chicago then, two struggling young art students with a new baby. Brian’s parents lived thirty miles outside the city. In the Midwest, harsh winter weather could make thirty miles feel like a cross-country trip. Tucker had been sniffling, Nettie insisted, and shouldn’t be out in the cold. Why couldn’t they wait until the weekend? There were still four days to go before Christmas…

But Brian had been stubborn that day, calling her a worrywart. The harder she’d fought, the more insistent he had become.

In the end, she had flatly refused to go; he had refused to stay. It was Christmas and his parents wanted to see the baby, and Tucker was excited about going. Rigid with disapproval, Nettie had watched Brian bundle Tuck into his car seat and drive off while the rain turned steadily into snow. If I stay here, she’d
thought, he won’t be gone long. He’ll reach the first freeway exit, and then he’ll turn back…

But she had guessed wrong, then, too, and Brian and Tucker had been alone in the car when it hit a patch of black ice. She hadn’t been there to warn Brian or to tell him she loved him. She hadn’t been there to hold her baby.

Gripping the steering wheel too tightly, Nettie told herself to stop—stop remembering, stop thinking, stop everything but what she was doing right this moment. Her racing mind, however, refused to quiet, and she wished with all her might that she had a cell phone so she could call Sara or Lilah, who might know what to do, who might make the
right
decision for this situation. It began to occur to her that she hadn’t driven this far by herself—or in a storm at all—for three years. Her hands began to shake.

“I should have gone by the house again after I left Nick’s to see if Lilah came home. It wouldn’t have taken that long.” Hindsight was a curse. “Damn. Damn, damn, damn!”

She was so busy shaking and chiding, that she almost missed it—a boy’s new Schwinn mountain bike sticking up from a gully, half in and half out, on the side of the road.

She slammed her feet on the brake and clutch, grateful beyond words when the truck stopped without stalling. In the horizon a grouping of clouds had turned almost black. Nettie spared it only the barest glance before hurtling out of the cab once again. Her heart was in her throat as she approached the gully, and she began calling Colin’s name before she hit the shoulder of the road. No answer came; no answer could. Colin lay at the bottom of the ditch, stomach down, his head turned to the side, facing her, one arm beneath his head, like a pillow.

Panic threatened, but not as the feverish, blinding desire to flee Nettie had grown used to. This panic was cold; it froze her heart and her blood. It froze time.

As if she were watching from somewhere outside herself, Nettie felt a vague surprise that she was able to keep moving. Half running, half sliding down the side of the ditch, she dropped to her knees beside Colin’s inert body. He looked so tiny lying there alone in a rough, gravel-lined ditch; by contrast Mother Nature’s rough howling seemed almost petty and mean.

Struggling under the dark sky and the consecutive, too-bright
flashes of light, Nettie checked for injuries. He was breathing evenly, thank God. There were no visible signs of bleeding, external or internal, and his skin was warm.

“Colin,” she said firmly, brushing hair from his forehead and bending close to him. “Colin, wake up, buddy. Come on, sweetheart, talk to me.”

Nothing.

A rush of emotions squeezed her chest. Anger, frustration and fear made her tremble; determination made her refuse to kowtow to the distress. She couldn’t crumble and she couldn’t cave in to worry or indecision. She was all Colin had.

Taking his hand, she began to rub it, smoothing her fingers firmly between his knuckles, over his wrist and up his forearm, willing energy into his small body. “I’m sorry that I yelled. Or that I made you feel you weren’t as important to me as that mask. Because you are. I think you’re wonderful—funny and brave and smart. Your father loves you as much as any man has ever loved a little boy, so you have to be okay Colin. You have to be okay.”

As she continued the massage, Nettie looked around, gauging their distance from the road and the steepness of the sides of the gully. She was going to have to carry Colin to the truck, and she knew she would have to take special care with his other arm, which looked as if it might be broken or dislocated.

“I’ve got to lift you now, buddy,” she said as she rose to a crouch. “I’ll be as careful as I can.” Moving around him, she searched for an angle where she would have better leverage.

She was about to slide an arm under Colin’s legs when the first pellets of hail struck the earth. Within seconds, knots of ice were being spit from the sky like hardballs in a batting cage. As the ice hit the truck, it sounded like a machine gun peppering metal.

Colin stirred and whined. “Owww. Stop it!” The sound of a child’s complaint had never sounded so dear to Nettie’s ears.

“Colin! That’s it, wake up, honey. I’m here!”

He turned toward the sound of her voice, but hail struck his face. Immediately, Nettie braced herself over him, forming a protective tent with her own body. Wind propelled the ice with such force that she felt as if she were being struck in the back
with fists. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that Colin was awake, and he was all right.

He began a litany of mumbled woes, about his aching arm and that he couldn’t breathe with her on top of him and that the “rain” was cold. Nettie answered in soothing murmurs, thrilled simply that he was coherent, not even bothering for now to think beyond getting him to the truck as soon as this ice show was over. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the hailstorm stopped.

There was a moment’s blessed, refreshing silence. Relief relaxed and filled Nettie’s lungs. But the relief was as brief as it was earnest. She glanced up to a thick sky the mucky blackgreen shade of a stagnant pond. A second later, she heard it: the sound of a waterfall where no waterfall could possibly be. There wasn’t even time to think the word before she heard the roar and saw the furious, spinning funnel.

Oh, my God.
“Tornado,” she breathed.

It was heading right toward them.

The emergency room of the small Queen of Angels Hospital in Detale, North Dakota, teemed with the kind of activity it rarely saw, save during flu season. Behind the check-in desk, the air hummed with barked instructions and other commotion; in the waiting room, complaints about the wait carried over murmured conversation and competed with the nightly news coming from a television set mounted high on the wall.

In sharp contrast to the bustling at ground level, all was relatively quiet on the second floor, where the patient rooms were located and where one heard mostly the soft sounds of a hospital at night. In fact, for the past hour, the only noise in the O-shaped corridor had been the rhythmic squish-squeak of rubber-soled shoes. Then the elevator doors opened and out hurried a different pair of feet with a decidedly different agenda. Pounding over the floor, unmindful of the Careful When Wet sign, these feet raced a man to the nurses’ station, where he hung over the desk and with neither “Hello” nor “How are you?” gave his name and then demanded to know which room his son was in.

Chase was moving again before the room number was completely out of the young nurse’s mouth. He didn’t stop running until he pushed open the door to room 2012. A pale blue curtain
divided the room into halves. In the bed closest to the door, a little boy lay beneath a thin acrylic blanket, his small body seeming to disappear into the large mattress. A bulky cast covered his right arm.

Colin appeared tired but animated as he regaled Lilah with an account of the tornado that “almost got us.” She nodded calmly as if she’d heard this information once or twice already this evening.

When Colin saw his father, his face creased in a wide smile. “Dad!”

Chase moved to the bed immediately. He placed his palm lovingly on the top of his son’s head, but realized quickly that the limited contact was not nearly enough. Lowering the safety rail, he sat on the bed and carefully took his son into his arms.

“I was in a tornado, Dad!” Colin’s voice was muffled against Chase’s shirtsleeve.

“I know that.” Grateful that his head was lowered, Chase felt tears fill his eyes. He’d been on the plane already, heading back to North Dakota a day early, when the pilot’s voice had announced that a tornado had hit central North Dakota. Chase had listened to the news with interest, but detachment, too. For some reason it had not once occurred to him that the people he loved might be affected. He was used to reporting the news, not being touched by it.

“What were you doing out in a tornado, huh?” Chase pulled back just enough to examine his son, to study his face and count his fingers, the mental tallies one might make with a newborn. “You scared me.”

Chase had called home immediately upon disembarking the plane, but there’d been no answer. He’d phoned Nettie’s house next and spoke to Lilah as she was heading out the door on her way to the hospital. Nettie and Colin had been caught in the tornado. They were at a small hospital in a town called Detale. That was all Lilah knew.

Chase hadn’t just been scared at that point, he’d been more frightened than ever before in his life. He turned toward Lilah now and with his eyes asked the question:
Nettie?

“I wasn’t scared at first because I didn’t know it was a tornado,” Colin said, speaking before Lilah had a chance to respond. “But then Nettie said it was, and she said stay down in
the ditch and don’t be frightened ‘cause she was takin’ care of me, and then the wind got so loud I couldn’t hear anything, and she laid down right on top of me and squeezed way too tight, but I wasn’t mad or anything. And then the wind stopped and she started to laugh and I told her I had to go to the bathroom really bad so she let me go next to the road where cars could’ve seen and everything, and then we drove here.”

As a nightly news special report, it would have been shy a few pertinent details and overgenerous regarding a couple of others, but Chase figured he caught the gist. Most importantly, Colin said Nettie had started laughing, which had to mean she was okay, right?

Once more he looked at Lilah. “Where is—”

“All right, everybody.” Knocking and bumbling her way through the door—using shoulder, elbow, and forearm—Nettie hopped into the room. “Who wants to be the first to sign my—” Her eyes widened when she saw Chase. “You’re here.”

“You got crutches! That’s cool!” Colin said as his father rose from the bed. The little boy looked at Nettie with interest, but his energy was obviously flagging.

Moving swiftly to the door, Chase assessed the rest of her quickly, and he frowned deeply as he noticed the tangled hair, small scrapes on her uninjured leg and a cut on her cheek. Dirt streaked her white top.

He wanted to hold her, kiss her, stare at her until he was positive there was no damage other than the obvious and until his heart had stopped pounding.

“That’s quite a load you’re hauling around,” Lilah spoke from behind them. “Here, take my chair.”

Immediately Chase moved away from the door. Of course she’d want to sit down! She needed rest, she needed care…“Why are they letting you walk around? Shouldn’t you be in a wheelchair?”

“A wheelchair? No, I—Chase! What are you doing?”

As carefully as he could, he scooped her into his arms.

“My crutches!”

“Drop them.”