Angel Falls

Page 27

She is in Hollywood now, in their home, waiting for Julian. She is staring out the window; all she can see is gray. Gray trees, gray flowers, gray sky; the only color is a black crow sitting on a branch, cawing down at her.
No, it isn’t a crow. It is her baby’s cry. She instinctively turns to go to her daughter, but she hears the nanny’s footsteps. She hesitates, afraid to intrude on the older, sour-faced woman who seems to know everything about taking care of baby girls.
She is tired of this life filled with laughter and drugs and sex that happens in other people’s beds. Tired of thin, beautiful women with vacant eyes who never carry photos of children in their wallets. She is lonely, more now than ever. Since Jacey’s birth, Julian is distant. He never holds his daughter or talks to her. Instead he hires other women to do the chores that Kayla longs to do herself.
How can it not have changed him, this bringing of a child into their lives? It has transformed her every cell.
She stands in the shadows of the living room, beside the ornate gas fireplace that holds the sounds and color of fire, but none of the heat.
When Julian gets home—late, as usual, and smelling of another woman’s perfume—she sees how old and tired he looks, and she wonders how long he has looked this way, how long she has overlooked his deterioration. The drugs and alcohol have left marks on his skin, on everything, even the way he moves, all slow motion.
“Jules?”
He turns to her, smiling before he even sees her. “Hey, baby.”
As he gets closer, she can see the red cast to his eyes, the way his nose is running from too much cocaine. He moves unsteadily, a marionette with broken strings, and it breaks her heart, seeing this so clearly.
She takes his hands in hers, trying not to notice the way his fingers are shaking, the dampness in his palms. “We have to talk, Jules.”
She sees the flash of irritation in his eyes. Even though he tries to hide it, she sees. “Not again, Kay. Jesus, not again … I know I missed the kid’s birthday party. Let’s not rehash it forever.” He pulls free and goes to the bar, making himself a cocktail, drinking it too fast. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Baggie of cocaine.
She watches him snort the drug, and there is no word to describe the depth of her sadness. She turns away from him. “We have to change our lives, Julian.”
“I know, baby,” he whispers, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, cupping her face in his hands. “And we will.”
It is the answer he’s given her a dozen times, but it’s not good enough anymore.
“I can’t watch you kill yourself, Jules. I … love you too much for that. And I can’t let Juliana grow up in this world. I want her to know how it feels to be safe.”
He frowns. “You mean it this time.”
She turns away from him and goes back to the big picture window. It is funny, she thinks, how fast a life can change. One minute, one set of words that really say nothing at all, and you see what you hadn’t seen before.
She feels him come up behind her. The window reflects his faded image. “You meant what you said in Sunville,” she says dully. “You didn’t really want to marry me.”
“I didn’t want to lose you.”
She wonders if he sees the continent that separates her question from his answer.
She can’t raise Juliana in this world. No matter how much she loves Julian, she can’t do this to her daughter. If there’s one thing Kayla knows, it’s the pain of a father who can’t be bothered to spend time with his child. “I’m sorry, Julian,” she whispers, feeling the tears fall down her cheeks.
His arms circle her, holding tightly. “I love you, Kayla, but I can’t give all this up. It’s who I am.”
She touches his face. “I love you, Julian, more than …” She can’t finish. There is nothing big enough to compare to her love for this man. “I wish we were old and gray and all of this was behind us,” she says at last. “I wish we were sixty years old and we could sit together by the fire with pictures of our grandchildren between us … and laugh about these times. I wish …” Her voice gets caught in the ache spreading through her insides, and she can’t say more.
It is too much for her, these memories. She closes her eyes and sinks again into the sweet, blessed darkness …
At dinner that night, Liam tried to smile and make conversation with his beloved children, but all he could really hear were the tinny silences that collected between his sentences. As he helped himself to another serving of rice, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the hollowed silver surface of an oversized spoon.
The fear hit him then; it was like plunging into Angel Lake on winter’s deepest night.
His hand started shaking. The silver spoon rattled against his pewter plate.
“Daddy?” Bret said, wide-eyed. “Are you okay?”
Liam dropped his spoon and held his hands out. If anyone was surprised by the suddenness of his action, there was no sign of it. “Let’s hold hands,” he said.
Around the table, they reached out for one another. Liam felt Bret’s small hand slip into his; then Jacey took hold of his other hand. Rosa reached out at the other end.
In their gentle, trusting touch, Liam felt it return, the faith he needed.
“Let’s pray. Rosa, will you do the honors?”
Across the table, she was watching him. He could tell that she understood. She nodded briefly and closed her eyes, bowing her head. Her lovely, lyrical voice was like music in the silence. “Heavenly Father, we thank You for the four of us at this table, for the love we share and the strength we find in each other. We thank You for Mikaela’s continued life, still as it may be. We know You are watching out for her and protecting her and blessing her with Your presence in the darkness of her sleep. Once again, we offer You our humble prayers that she will soon come back into the loving arms of her family. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
Liam opened his eyes and looked at his children. “I love you,” he said softly.
It was like that these days. The best of times were quiet moments like this one, tucked into the corners of what passed for everyday life. They were learning, each of them, to notice the things they’d once taken for granted.
And to be thankful for the life that was left.
Part Four
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.—SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Chapter Eighteen
The water is now a beautiful aqua blue. She is at the bottom of a swimming pool, staring up. Her limbs feel heavy; the water resists her movements, but she has learned that if she really concentrates, focuses all of her will, she can lift her fingers and wiggle her toes. She knows that at some time, long ago, this would have been next to nothing, something the tiniest newborn can do, but to her, in this pool of endless clear blue water, it is everything.
She is floating up through the water, rising, rising, her body weightless. The water moves easily aside for her and buoys her.
As she reaches the surface, the water slides away from her face. She gasps, breathing in the sweet, pine-scented air, then sucking greedily. Her fingers twitch, and she is reaching for something … the shadow in front of her.
She opens her eyes and immediately cries out. The light is so bright, she cannot stand the brightness.
“She opened her eyes. Jesus Christ, Mike … we’re here …”
She takes a deep, calming breath and opens her eyes again. At first the world is a confusing, jarring mixture of white-hot light and black, slanting shadows. She can feel something warm against her palm. She tries to grasp hold, but her fingers are weighted down again, unresponsive.
She blinks; it takes all her concentration to turn her head. Something stops the movement, a swell of cottony fabric.
The shadows spin in front of her, waving like mirages on a desert highway, then, slowly, slowly, they begin to take shape.
There are three people around her, men.
Julian. She sees him, sees those beloved blue eyes staring down at her. She reaches out for him, meaning to touch his face in the gentlest caress, but her control is shot, and she slaps him hard across the cheek. She means to laugh at the surprise on his face, but instead she bursts into tears. More water, sliding down her cheeks now, tasting salty, like the black sea that held her captive, and she is afraid. She can’t stop crying.
She tries to talk. It hurts, burns. Still, she pushes a sound up her cracked, broken throat, and when the word comes out, mangled and unfamiliar, she weeps even harder. “Ju … li … an.”
“I’m here, baby,” he says in the voice she remembers so well, the voice that seems connected to the tender cords in her heart.
“Kayla, baby, are you there? Squeeze my hand.”
She opens her eyes again, blinking slowly.
It seemed to take her hours to focus, but when she did, she saw him standing beside her, staring down at her, and she felt a rush of joy. “You came … back.”
Another man leaned toward her. On the front of his white coat, it read Dr. Liam Campbell. “Hi, Mike.”
She frowned and tried to turn her head to look for Mike. It tired her and she gave up. She tried to remember how she got here, but there was nothing. She remembered every moment of her life up to when she said good-bye to Julian. After that, there was a complete and utter blankness. It terrified her. “I … don’t … where …”
“You’re in the hospital,” someone says.
“Juliana,” she croaked. “Where’s my baby?”
“Baby?” Julian turned to the other man. “What the hell is going on?”
Something was wrong. She’d been hurt, she realized suddenly. Hurt. And they wouldn’t answer her question about Juliana. Oh, God …
The other man touched her face, and there was a gentleness in him that calmed her. She blinked up at his watery, out-of-focus face. He blotted her tears with a tissue. “Don’t cry, Mike. Your daughter is fine. She’s okay.”
She trusted him. Juliana’s okay. “Who …”
“Don’t rush it, sweetheart. Take it slowly.”
“Who … are you?” she asked at last.
Before he answered, she lost interest. Her head felt so heavy, so … broken. All that mattered was that her baby was okay.
She closed her eyes and sank back into the cool, blue water, back to the place where it was calm and warm and she was unafraid.
“Retrograde amnesia.”
Liam and Julian were seated in front of Stephen Penn’s massive oak desk. Stephen looked worn and tired.
Liam leaned forward, rested his arms on his thighs. “In posttraumatic—”
“Goddamn it, wait a sec.” Julian shot to his feet. He prowled the small office like a caged lion, repeatedly running his hand through his hair. “I haven’t had twenty years of college and I don’t know what you two are talking about. What in the hell is retrograde amnesia?”
Stephen removed the small, circular spectacles from his face, carefully setting them down on the cluttered surface of the desk. He didn’t look at Liam as he spoke. “At the moment of serious trauma, the brain stops accumulating memories. That’s why a victim of serious brain injury rarely remembers the actual incident itself. More often than not, the last clear memory is one that happened days or weeks … or even years before. These are often powerful, significant memories—weddings, births, that sort of thing. It appears that Mikaela’s mind is … trapped, if you will, some years ago. She seems to believe that Jacey is still a baby.” He paused. “Clearly she doesn’t remember her life with Liam at all.”