Keep Me in Your Heart (31 page)

He lived another two hours. When his last breath came, Trisha squeezed his hand and laid it gently on the covers. She walked to the nurses’ station, told Mrs. Kimble, and waited while another nurse went in to pronounce Mr. Tappin dead and to prepare his body for the funeral home. “How are you, my dear girl?” Mrs. Kimble asked.

“I’m not as sad as I thought I’d be,” Trisha confessed. “I’m glad he’s not suffering any longer. He’s free now.”

“You’re free too, Trisha.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to see you around this place, as much as we love your help.”

“But why?” Trisha hadn’t expected Mr. Tappin’s death to end her involvement with the nursing home.

“Because Mr. Tappin was the last tie you had to your friend Christina. It’s over now. You can stop feeling bad that you’re alive and she isn’t.”

Trisha flinched. “Is that what I’ve been doing?”

“Oh, dear girl … you been wishing for months that this old world would stop turning and let you get off. It’s been plain as day. But tonight a chapter has closed. Tonight you are free to go on living.”

Tears filled Trisha’s eyes as she grasped what Mrs. Kimble was telling her. With Mr. Tappin’s death, so many parts of her life with Christina were over. “I miss her so much.”

“Ain’t no shame in missing her. Ain’t no shame in living without her. She’s gone. You’re here. Those are the facts.” Mrs. Kimble leaned across the desk and took both of Trisha’s hands in hers. A smile split her wide face. “Besides, there’s something waiting on the side porch for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Your future.”

Trisha discovered Cody sitting in the dark in a rocker on the east-facing porch. “What are
you doing here?” She couldn’t hide how glad she was to see him.

“Your mother called mine and told us about Mr. Tappin. I’m glad your mother isn’t upset that you’re sticking by me. I thought I should come and take you home when it was all over and she agreed. I didn’t want you to be by yourself.”

His thoughtfulness almost made her cry. “Thank you.”

He pulled her into his lap. “You all right?”

“I’m all right. Since Mr. Tappin was so old and so sick, it wasn’t as hard to face this death. I think he’s with Christina in heaven now.”

“While I’ve been sitting here, I’ve been doing some thinking. A lot of thinking, really.”

“About what?”

“About how you stuck by me this year. About how you helped me make a comeback. I couldn’t have done any of it without you. My parents, of course, are the greatest, but you—you made me want to hurry up and heal.”

She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “I love you, Cody.”

He kissed her temple. “And I love you. I may not remember many things from before the accident. I may never remember all of my life
from before. Truth is, I don’t even try to remember it all anymore. I’m just taking it day by day. And the best part about every day is finding you in it.”

Goose bumps raced up her arms, and her heart filled to overflowing. “Well, get used to it. I plan to be around for a long, long time.”

“Forever?” he asked.

“Forever,” she answered.

They sat curled in each other’s arms and watched dawn spread rosy fingers through low, gray clouds and the sun slip over the horizon to begin a new day.

T
he motorcycle cut in front of Nathan Malone just as he was pulling into the high school parking lot. He slammed on the brakes and blasted the car’s horn, but the rider on the back, dressed in black leather and a streamlined helmet, flashed him an obscene gesture as the cycle’s driver sped off with a roar. Nathan took deep breaths. Another car snaked past him and a voice yelled, “Hey, buddy, park it someplace else! You’re jamming traffic.”

Startled, Nathan put his foot on the gas and shot forward, almost running over three girls crossing the lot. They shouted at him. He stomped the brake and clamped the wheel, his palms clammy, and inched forward, searching for the parking space assigned to him in his Crestwater welcome packet. His friend Skeet had
warned him that the first day was gridlock. Maybe Skeet was used to the bedlam, but Nathan wasn’t. Years of homeschooling hadn’t prepared him to spend his senior year in one of Atlanta’s biggest public high schools, but here he was—ready or not. He shouldn’t let the two idiots on the cycle determine his mood.

He found the space, marked by a bright yellow painted number, and pulled in, careful to park between the lines. His car was new—well, not
new
new, but new to him. His parents had given him the keys just a few nights before, part of his seventeenth birthday gift, but also a way to make up for shoving him into a public school from the relative shelter of his homeschooling experience. Not that Nathan minded. He’d wanted to be a regular kid for a long time. And being regular meant attending public school. “A cesspool, my man,” Skeet had always said. “Not for the faint of heart.”

Nathan shouldered his book bag and headed off for the entrance and the common area, where Skeet had sworn he’d be waiting for him. He’d better be! Nathan already felt tight as a string on his guitar, and that was
before
the incident with the cycle.

The halls were packed and so noisy Nathan wanted to cover his ears. How did people
think
, much less
study
, in this decibel purgatory? One good thing about his home classroom—it was quiet. Or it had been quiet until the twins, Abby and Audrey, were born in July and his mother realized in a panic that she couldn’t juggle two babies
and
teach Nathan’s senior class load. Not with
college looming. At first he’d felt euphoric, like he’d been let out of a cage, but now, in the teeming hallways, he felt dwarfed and lost. What every other kid in the school knew as normal, he saw as extraordinary.

“Nate!” Skeet’s voice cut through the noise. “Over here!”

Nathan worked his way over to Skeet, who was sitting on a short wall. The wall surrounded a monolith of concrete and brass: Crestwater’s mascot, a rising dolphin balancing on its tail. “Hey, man.”

“Find your space?”

“Yeah. But not before a cycle almost plowed me down. Aren’t they illegal on school property?”

“Not so.” His brow puckered. “Who was driving?”

“How should I know? There were two of them. The rider on the back gave me the finger when I honked.”

Skeet grinned. “Odds are it was Lisa Lindstrom.”

“A
girl
?” Most of the girls Nathan knew were homeschooled like him, younger, all giggly and silly, and they didn’t ride cycles and flash rude hand gestures.

“Was the cycle black and silver with a big red heart painted on the tank?”

“I didn’t take that close a look. It almost creamed me. I was just trying to get out of the way.”

“Not a guy in the school who wouldn’t give up his car speakers to get a tumble from Lisa. She’s a knockout—transferred in as a junior last January. Keeps to herself, though. I call her ‘a heartache on a Harley.’ ” Skeet pressed his hand over his heart.

“She sounds like a conceited pain.”

“No … she just doesn’t give a damn. I know, hard to believe, but she seems to be totally unimpressed by Crestwater’s movers and shakers. She’s my hero.” Skeet leaned closer. “She’s the one who stood up Rod Stewart for the junior-senior last year.”

Nathan put the pieces together. Rod “Roddy” Stewart, no relation to the rocker, was a football legend at Crestwater and on track for a full ride to Georgia and the Bulldogs after he graduated. Skeet had told Nathan all about the big dump the day after last year’s prom because it was all over the school and because Skeet didn’t like Roddy. “
That
was the girl?”

“Way the story goes, Rod went to pick her up and she was long gone—off to a frat party, according to her mother, who said, ‘Gee, you’re the second boy tonight who showed up to take her to the prom.’ ” Skeet cackled gleefully. “Seems she jilted some other poor punk too. We never did know who. Man, Roddy was steamed. I mean, who stands up Mr. ‘I’m Too Sexy for My Shorts’ and lives to tell about it?”

“Well, she still doesn’t sound like the kind of girl a guy gets all warm and fuzzy over.”

“You got that right. She’s—” He searched for words. “The stuff legends are made of.”

Nathan laughed. “You sound like you’re in love with her.”

Skeet looked self-conscious. “I’m not in her league. Besides, you haven’t seen the biker dude up close who
sometimes rides with her. He could squash your head with his bare hands.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s move on.” He dug out his class schedule. He was in all AP classes, nothing with Skeet. “Meet me here at the end of the day and I’ll drive us home.”

“Football rally after school on the field. We’ve got to go and drool over the cheerleaders.”

“Oh.” Nathan disliked that he was so out of sync with high school life that he didn’t know the basics. “I thought you hated football.”

“I
hate
Rod. There’s a difference. Come to the rally with me, then we’ll head home.”

“I’ll have to call Mom. You know how she freaks when I’m late.”

Suddenly Skeet’s eyes widened. “Here she comes,” he said under his breath.

Nathan turned to see a tall girl with long chestnut-colored hair striding past. She wore black leather pants, cowboy boots, and a trendy top. She carried a black leather jacket over her shoulder. “The diva?” he asked out of the side of his mouth.

“In the flesh,” Skeet said reverently.

Nathan eyed her. Skeet had been right about her being pretty. Yet everything about her body language said
Stay away
. A group of girls stepped aside when Lisa passed. A few of them giggled, and others started whispering. She ignored them.

“You’re staring. I thought you were mad at her,” Skeet teased after Lisa had gone.

Nathan reddened. “Pretty doesn’t make up for everything.”

The first bell buzzed. Skeet scooped up his backpack. “Time to begin our jail sentences. Catch you here after last period.”

Nathan turned and confidently headed to the stairs and his first period. He had come by the week before and followed his daily schedule from room to room just so he wouldn’t get lost and wander around like a ninth-grade newbie. He was the first one in the room and the teacher looked up, surprised. Nathan nodded and slid into a seat in a middle row, realizing that being early to class was not a badge of honor. At home, his mother started his lessons with great punctuality, making the case that it was insulting to keep others waiting. He shuffled through his notebook self-consciously as others trickled into the room, eyeing him suspiciously.

By lunchtime, Nathan had been stepped on, pushed, elbowed, splattered from a drinking fountain, and called an ugly name for encroaching on someone else’s perceived space. He took his tray outside into the courtyard, found a spot under a tree and ate alone. Everyone else seemed to be huddled into groups, eating and laughing together. He was the odd man out, friendless and nameless to others who’d gone to school together for years. He’d been placed in all accelerated classes because of test scores, and so far, his classroom work hadn’t sounded difficult. In fact, the classroom lectures had been painfully slow and shallow, so unlike
his homeschooling, which had allowed him to master subjects at his own pace. He had to hand it to his mother. She’d been a good teacher.

He recalled the worried look on her face that morning as she juggled his twin sisters, one in each arm. “I’m sorry I have to feed you to the wolves, Nathan.”

His father looked up from the paper. “Don’t be dramatic, Karen. He’s going to public school, not an internment camp.”

“Crestwater had a drug bust last year. I
hate
sending him there.”

Nathan looked up from his plate of scrambled eggs. “It’s all right, Mom. I’m okay about it.” Not that his parents hadn’t tried to get him into a good private school, but by the time his mother had realized she’d have to bail on teaching him, none of the area’s private schools had any slots for seniors.

“We’ve agreed,” Craig Malone said, sounding weary. “Crestwater’s close. He has a car. His best friend goes there. It’s only for one year. Can we move on?”

Nathan hated it when his parents talked about him while he was right in front of them. Was he transparent? Fortunately one of the twins started crying, so his mother left the kitchen to nurse her.

“She’ll adjust,” his dad said good-naturedly. “Her family’s everything. You know that.”

Nathan did know that. Automatically his gaze shifted to the front of the refrigerator. It was coated with magnets holding photos, memos, drawings—and
one in particular that claimed center stage, a frayed, yellowed piece of art paper of a child’s drawing showing a house, a family of four holding hands, a sun in a blue sky, green grass and a tree.
Molly’s last drawing
.