Keep Me in Your Heart (26 page)

“But a whole lot sadder,” Trisha added. “Oh, Abby, so much sadder.”

On Saturday, with Gwyn’s permission, Trisha visited Cody again. The March day had turned springlike, with temperatures in the fifties. Sunshine shimmered through still-bare tree branches. She and Cody found a spot on the back deck of his house, sheltered from any chilling breezes by a short brick wall. They lifted their faces toward the warming rays of the sun.

“They say this is bad for us,” Trisha commented. “That the sun causes skin cancer.”

“I don’t care. It feels good, and I’m going stir-crazy being stuck inside the house all the time.”

“I don’t care either.” At the moment, cancer didn’t seem like half the threat that everyday life did. She asked, “Did you know that spring break’s in a few weeks? Some of the seniors’ parents have rented a bus to take a group to Florida. Everyone has to pay their own way, but there’s a nice place to stay right on the beach.”

“Are you going?”

If Christina had been alive, they would probably all have been going. “No,” Trisha said.

“Do you want to go?”

Not without you
, she thought. “It wouldn’t be much fun for me.”

“I’d like to go somewhere … anywhere. But Mom won’t let me out of her sight.”

Trisha knew from talking to Gwyn that Cody was still not in any shape to go anywhere. He got confused easily and lost his temper frequently. His comeback was slow, taking longer than she had ever imagined. “How’s the tutoring going?” she asked.

“All right some days. Not so good others. Sometimes I read a page in a book and it makes perfect sense. Other times, it’s gibberish. I lost it the other day and threw the book across the room. The tutor wasn’t real happy about that.” He glanced over at her. “How’s real school?”

“I feel like I’m wandering the halls and filling up chairs in classes. I really don’t care about it anymore.”

“But you have to care. Your head’s fine.”

She smiled ruefully. “You think so? Some days I’m not so sure.”

He looked puzzled, then smiled. “You’re joking again.”

“Just a little.” She felt sad around him, as if he was missing in action and someone had sent an impostor to take his place. Yet she couldn’t give up on him. It wouldn’t be right to abandon him just because he was different now. Just because he couldn’t remember their past together and all they’d meant to each other.

“Could I ask you a favor?”

She started, realizing that her thoughts had wandered and that he was looking at her searchingly. “Sure,” she said.

“Could I … Would you mind if I touched your face?”

“Why?”

“My doctor says that sometimes fingers have memories even when the head doesn’t. He said that touching can trigger things for some patients. I want to touch you, Trisha, because I want to remember you from before.”

Her heart began to thud. “It’s okay with me.” She leaned forward and he very carefully stroked her cheek, then her hair. Shivers shot up her spine. It had been so long since Cody had touched her, really touched her, that her skin was starving for him. “We used to play a game sometimes,” she said. “You’d come up
behind me in the hall and ask, ‘Who loves you, babe?’ and I’d say, ‘Have we met?’ and you’d say, ‘Don’t tell me you’re spoken for. Am I going to have to take some guy out before we can live happily ever after?’ And I’d say, ‘No. You’re the one I want.’ And you’d say—”

“Forever.” Cody interrupted her.

“Yes, yes. You’d say, ‘Forever,’ and I’d say ‘Forever’ back to you. Do you remember that?” She felt her heart beating really hard and searched his eyes for some light of recognition.

“Not all of it. But the word was there for me. I knew what word to say, didn’t I?”

“You knew.” Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes.

He grinned and dipped his forehead so that it touched hers, and together they sat in the heat of the sun, their fingers intertwined, holding on to the sweet moment of victory.

Trisha returned home, fairly bursting to tell someone her news. Her mother rushed out of the kitchen waving an envelope, her face beaming. “Look what came for you today in
the mail,” she said. “It’s from the admissions office of Indiana University, Trisha. It’s a big fat envelope filled with paperwork. I’m certain it’s your acceptance for fall classes. Oh, honey! Open it right away.”

Fifteen
 

“C
ollege?” The news had come so far out of left field that Trisha felt off balance, as if she’d been shoved and couldn’t regain her footing.

“Yes, college. Remember all those forms we filled out last fall? Well, here’s the payoff for twelve hard years of schoolwork.” She shoved the envelope into Trisha’s hands. “Come on, open it. The suspense is killing me.”

Trisha’s fingers trembled, but not from excitement or expectation. She tore open the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Her mother stood beside her, peering over Trisha’s shoulder. The letter began,
“Congratulations. You’ve been accepted for fall semester.…”

Her mother clapped and hugged her. “I knew it! I was right! Oh, honey, congratulations! I’m so proud of you.”

Trisha thrust the envelope at her mother, took a backward step. “Mom … I don’t know what to say.”

“Say ‘Thank you, the check’s in the mail.’ Wait until your dad sees this. He’s going to be so pleased.” Trisha’s mother glanced at Trisha and must have noticed that Trisha wasn’t jumping up and down the way she was. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be thrilled. We’ve been planning this for years.”

“
You’ve
been planning this for years,” Trisha corrected.

“But you’ve always worked hard for grades good enough to attend college. We’ve discussed it for years. Saved for it for years.”

“So much has changed now.”

“What?” Her mother looked genuinely bewildered.

“How can you ask that? My best friend’s dead. My boyfriend, who was planning on going to IU with me, probably won’t be able to go at all. Everything’s changed.”

“Trisha, the accident’s behind you. September is months away. You’ll feel differently
when all your other friends are packing up to go off to college. You’ve got to start focusing on your future.”

Trisha threw up her hands in frustration. “Get a clue, Mom! I can’t handle the future right now. Don’t you understand? Why can’t you understand?”

Trisha spun and ran toward the stairs, her mother’s voice calling her name, chasing her up the stairs with its shrillness. She slammed her bedroom door, flung herself across the bed, and cried harder than she had since Christina’s funeral.

Trisha didn’t come down for supper. She remained in her room, sitting in the dark. Her father came up to her room eventually and sat down next to her on the bed. “How are you, honey? Can we talk?” he asked.

“I’m sure Mom’s told you that I’m horrible. And that I’m an ungrateful brat.”

“No. She’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be.” Trisha hunkered down against the headboard, holding a pillow against her chest as if it offered some defense.

“Look, we all know that these past weeks
have been hell for you. No one is trying to ignore what happened. It hasn’t been easy on any of us.”

It seemed like a strange thing for him to say. To her way of thinking, life had gone on quite normally in their household. “I know I’ve not been myself—”

“Honey, the accident isn’t just about you. It’s involved all of us.” He sat silent for a minute, then finally asked, “Remember the time you fell off your bike and skinned the whole side of your leg?”

“You kicked the bike and bent it.”

“I was so mad at that stupid bike for allowing you to get hurt.”

Even at the time she’d thought his anger was irrational, but it had made her feel good to see him get even with the thing that had hurt her. “You put medicine on my leg and took me out for ice cream. Then you had to come home and fix my bike.”

“I couldn’t stand seeing you cry. I never could. But that night when the police showed up and said there’d been an accident … When I think about it, when I consider that we almost lost our little girl—” His voice cracked, and Trisha was jolted. She’d never
seen her father get emotional this way. He got mad and yelled, but never teary.

“Daddy—”

He took a deep breath and regained his composure. “You have a future, Trisha. You have a lifetime of tomorrows. I want you to live every one of them.”

“I do too. It’s just so hard to think about all of them now. I’m so mixed up. I—I miss Christina so much.” She began to cry softly.

“I know, baby. For a very long time you’ll be dividing your life into two categories: before the accident and after the accident. The wreck is the line, the place where your childhood ended and adulthood began. I’d give anything if I could take you back to the other side of that line. But I can’t. No one can.”

“I know what you and Mom want for me, Dad. I once wanted it too. I don’t know how to go forward. I feel stuck in the middle of a nightmare.”

“You are stuck. But you’ll find your way out, because you’re smart and beautiful and wonderful.”

She eyed him and offered a slight smile. “Says you.”

“And I’m never wrong about such things.”
He took her in his arms and held her. “How about we come up with a plan. We’ll fill out the paperwork to secure your entrance into IU. Then at the end of the summer, we’ll see how you’re doing, and if you want to go, you’ll be all set.”

“And if I don’t?”

“We won’t make you, Trisha. We can’t. This has to be something you want bad enough to go all out for. College isn’t easy, so you’ve got to want it. You’ll know a whole lot more about yourself in another six months. Trust me.”

“I do, Daddy.” She hugged him hard, holding on for dear life.

“Get out of the bathroom, Charlie—now! Don’t make me late for school.” Trisha pounded on the door of the bathroom she shared with her brother. By Monday, she’d forged a truce with her parents, with no one bringing up the subject of college. It would be one more thing for her to think about, but at least she didn’t have to think about it anytime soon.

“I’m busy.” Charlie yelled.

“Get
un
busy, and I mean right now.” She rattled the doorknob.

“I locked it.”

“Listen, you little dork-face, I’ll get a ladder and come through the window if—”

The door flew open. Charlie stood wrapped in a towel, his hair slick with water. “What did you call me?”

“A dork-face.” She leaned forward as if to threaten him.

He broke out in a smile.

“What’s so funny? You look like a grinning fool.”

“You called me a name.”

“I have others for you.”

“Don’t you get it?” His grin was wider. “You’re yelling at me again. You haven’t yelled at me since the accident, and now you are.”

She straightened. “And it makes you happy to have me yell at you?”

“Sure does. It means you’re back!”

The power of his logic struck her profoundly. She
hadn’t
been yelling at him. Wrapped in her own pain, she had been ignoring him. She thought back to the night she lay in the hospital and to his frightened little face and trembling voice. Despite her present irritation, she felt a smile creep across her mouth. “You’re definitely a dork-face, so, yes, I guess I’m back.”

“All right!” Charlie leaped up and gave her a high five. She slapped his hand, then grabbed his wrist and pulled him past her into the hall. “Hey!” he yelped.

She ran into the bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. “I won’t be long,” she called out to him, laughing heartily about what Charlie considered a breakthrough.

When Trisha pulled up to Cody’s house after school on Tuesday, Tucker Hanson’s truck was parked in the driveway. Tucker’s dad had bought him a small black pickup truck with a roll bar to replace the car that had been totaled in the accident. “It’s supposed to be a whole lot safer,” Tucker had told his friends. Trisha wondered what Christina would have thought of it, because they’d often made fun of guys in trucks.

“What do you call a guy with a pickup truck and a horn?”
Christina would ask if guys in a truck passed them, honked, waved, and shouted for attention.

“Multitalented, because he can burp and say his name at the same time,”
Trisha would answer. And the two of them would break into peals of laughter and ignore the boys.

Trisha found Cody and Tucker in Cody’s basement; in the background the TV replayed a football game. Cody held out his hand to her. “This is my girl,” he announced, a look of pride on his face.

“Tucker knows that,” she said.

“Cody and I were getting reacquainted,” Tucker told her. “I brought him a tape of the Super Bowl we watched together in January.”

“I don’t remember watching it,” Cody said. “But I remember football. That’s good, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s in your DNA code,” she said. Both boys grinned. She felt awkward, suddenly thinking that Christina should have been there.

“I came by to show Cody my new wheels.”

“I like the truck. Your other car was black.”

“Yes, a Pontiac.”

Cody scrunched up his forehead. “With silver hubs. And mud flaps.”