Coast Road (16 page)

She was twenty-one then. After the children were born, the freckles faded, then faded more when she entered her thirties.

They were more noticeable now than they had been in years. His father, God rest his soul, would have declared with disdain that a highly spirited person could be restrained for only so long. So, had marriage restrained Rachel?

The sun might be bringing them out. She was spending more time outdoors, said her work. He had seen several recent pieces in a SOMA gallery. She painted wildlife in its natural habitat.

Or did the freckles show more because her face was so pale?

He ran his thumb over the smooth, unbruised cheek. "Something's agreeing with you here. You're painting again. And you have friends.

" Suddenly that annoyed him. "What was the problem, Rachel? You could have had a slew of friends in the city. If you wanted them, why didn't you?

You went off and did what you wanted in just about everything else.

Why not that? " He felt the full weight of a confusion that had been hovering just out of reach. "And those pictures in your drawer�why are they there? I'd have thought you'd have cut them up and made them into a papier-mache statement. That would have been poetic. Kind of like the shower quilt. Are the pictures facedown because you can't bear to see them? Or because you're angry? What do you have to be angry about? Looks to me like you're doing better without me than with me.

" Sadness lurked under his anger. "What happened to us, Rachel? I never did understand. Never did figure it out." He paused. "Can you hear me?

Do you know I'm here? " Her skin smelled of lilies from the lotion he had spread. It taunted him with memories of a love that was supposed to have lasted forever. "I think you hear. I think you know. I think you're lying in there waiting and watching and wondering what's going to happen. Is this payback time for the traveling I did? You want me to spend more time with the gids?

Well, I gotta tell you, I'm spending time with them, and we're doing just fine, so if you thought we'd fall apart, you were wrong. I love my daughters. I always did. Believe you me, when you packed them up and took them away from me, it was hard." Pushing up, he stared at her, then paced to the window, muttering under his breath, "Damn hard.

Empty house. No noise. No smiles." He paced back to the bed. "You knew how I felt growing up, and how much I needed what we had. I relied on having family waiting when I got home from work. You took that away." He put his face in close and spoke softly, under his breath. "Fine.

It's over. We're divorced. You got that done nice and fast and clean, thank you. But this coma is something else. One day or two, okay.

But three days? Wake up, Rachel. I'm doing the best I can, but the girls need you. I'm just filling in. You're the main attraction in their lives, always were." After a minute, he said, "And I have to work.

People are depending on me for their livelihood. I'm being paid to make certain things happen, and I can't do it from down here. How long are you planning to let this go on? " She didn't blink, didn't flinch, didn't answer.

Okay, he wanted to say�because if she wasn't cooperating, why the hell should he? �that's it. I'm going back to the city. At least there I can accomplish something. At least there I'm appreciated. Ciao.

Sayonara.

See ya later.

He didn't know how long he stood scowling at her. But the scowl slowly faded, and in time, he pulled up a chair and sat down.

KATHERINE"S one o clock arrived twenty minutes late. She would have told the woman she had time only for a quick wash and blow dry, but the woman was a regular customer, flying out that night for a weekend wedding in Denver. So Katherine gave her the cut she needed and was late taking her one-forty-five, then had to deal with a minor uproar when a woman whose highlights had been done by Katherine's newest colorist stormed in with hair that even Katherine had to admit was alarmingly red. In the process of mixing the correct color, she splattered dye on her blouse, so she had to take a fresh one from the small collection she deliberately kept there, and with the bathroom door closed and her back to the mirror, she quickly changed.

She didn't reach the hospital until four. Looking nowhere but straight ahead, she made a beeline for Rachel's room. She felt a letdown the instant she reached it and saw that Rachel was still comatose.

Hope was reading a book on the bed, inside the rail, legs folded, boots on the floor. Jack stood facing the window with one hand on his hip and the other tossing a cell phone in his hand. The tray table beside him was covered with papers.

She gave Hope a hug. "How's your Mom? " The child turned a longing look on Rachel. "Okay." Katherine held her tighter. "What're you reading? " Keeping her finger in her place, she closed the cover so that Katherine could see the title. It was an aged hardcover, John Hersey's A Bell for Adano.

"Is this from a school list, or a Mom list? " Hope lifted a shoulder.

"A Mom list."

"Do you like it? " "Uh-huh. Mom said she did. Look.

" She opened to the inside cover, where Rachel's name was written in the precise hand of a schoolgirl who hadn't yet found her individualism. The date was below it.

"Wow, " Katherine said. "Twenty-seven years ago."

"She was my age then. I think that's kinda neat."

"Me, too." Jack turned around.

"How're you doing? " he asked, but headed off before she could answer.

"I'll be back." Katherine watched him go, then turned questioning eyes on Hope. "They wouldn't let him use the cell phone in here, " Hope explained. "It messes up the monitors."

"Ah. He seems distracted."

"It's work. Look." She pointed at a flower arrangement on the sill.

It was the newest, tallest, most lavish one there. "From Grandma."

Katherine might have guessed it. She also guessed it wouldn't be the last of Victoria's gifts. "That was sweet of her."

"Uh-huh." Hope refocused on Rachel, looking so sad this time that Katherine ached for her. "Do you think she knows I'm here?

" "Definitely."

"Really? " "Really." Hope considered that, then said, "Sam's down the hall."

"I know. I passed her on my way in." She had been tucked up in a phone booth with an algebra book in her lap, a pencil in her hand, and a huge wad of gum in her mouth. The sudden cessation of talk and the too-wide grin she gave Katherine suggested that she wasn't doing math.

"She was in here with Mom for a long time, " Hope said in quick defense of her sister, "but she wanted to use Dad's phone, and he had to make his own calls. She'll be back. I called Duncan's. Guinevere's sleeping.

She's been doing that a lot."

"What is it they say�that cats sleep eighteen hours a day? " "She's been doing it more. Sometimes I think she isn't really sleeping, just doesn't have the energy to move. Like she's in a coma. Like Mom's."

"Uh-uh-uh, " Katherine scolded gently.

"Not like Mom's. Guinevere has a tumor. Your mom does not."

"Then why doesn't she wake up? How can she hear me and know that I'm here, without waking up to let me know? Doesn't she want to? " "More than anything, I'd bet, " Katherine said. "She's probably trying her best and annoyed that she can't . . . can't break out of whatever it is that's holding her there. We have to be patient. We have to let her know we'll be here until she does wake up." Hope glanced cautiously back toward the hall, then whispered an urgent "Sam is scaring me." Katherine leaned closer and whispered back, "Scaring you how? " She imagined Sam was talking gloom and doom about Rachel, trying to act old and wise, trying to get a rise out of Jack. But it wasn't that.

"The prom, " Hope whispered. "I think they're planning something. I can't say anything to Daddy, because he'll get angry at her and then she'll get angry at me. And it's not like I know anything. I justfeel it." She hunched her shoulders, which made the rest of her look even smaller "She'll kill me if she knows I told you this. But I don't want anything else to happen."

"Tell you what, " Katherine suggested.

"How about I drop a few hints to your dad? No one needs to know you said anything. I'd only be doing what your mom would be doing."

"Mom would be talking to the other mothers. But Sam knows Daddy won't do that. That's what scares me most." Katherine figured it would scare Rachel, too. "I can handle this, " she said for the benefit of mother and daughter both. "Trust me? " she asked Hope, just as Jack returned. When Hope gave her a wide-eyed nod, she smiled and pulled a $5 bill from her pocket. "I'm desperate for tea.

Would you run down and get me an Earl Grey? Maybe your dad would like coffee? " Jack asked Hope for anything strong and black. Katherine waited until she had left before eyeing the work on the table. "Rachel said you were a workaholic."

"Not always. What you see here is my conscience. I'm holding people up because I'm not doing what I've committed to do. Except for picking up the girls, I've been here all day." Katherine hadn't expected that.

"I thought you were driving up to the city." He tossed the phone on the table. "So did I. I changed my mind."

"Why? " "Beats me." He pushed his hands through his hair. It looked like he'd done it more than once. Katherine had to admit that he seemed tired, and felt a trace of sympathy. He had a lot more on his mind this week than last week. She hated to add to it but had no choice. "Hope seems worried, but I think she'll be okay. How's Sam?

" "Actually, " he said, sounding surprised, "she was pretty sweet this afternoon."

"That could mean trouble."

"Yeah, well, I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth."

"Maybe you should, " she said, only half teasing. "Teenaged girls are wily. I know. I've been there. Is she all set for the prom? " "We're shopping for a dress this weekend."

"Want me to take her? " "No. I'll do it. It should be an interesting experience." Katherine would have gladly gone along. She had shopped with the girls before. Apparently, though, Jack was taking that responsibility he had mentioned earlier very seriously. Fine. Then she felt less guilty.

worrying him. "Is she still going to the prom with Brendan? " "In a manner of speaking, " Jack said, but he looked puzzled. "I can't get a feel for how paired up this is. In my day, you had a specific date, but Sam's pretty vague about who's with who. There are ten of them going in the limo from Lydia's house. The girls are spending the night there after the prom." He hmphed. "I think that's what did it. " "Did what? " "Changed her mood. She tossed the spending-the-night thing at me when she was leaving the car this morning, fully expecting I'd refuse, but I don't see anything wrong with it. It sounds to me like a big sleepover.

They've been doing sleepovers for years."

"Are you sure it's only girls? " That gave him pause, but it passed.

"She says it is. She says Lydia's parents will be there."

"I think, " Katherine tried, making a show of debating it herself, "that Rachel might want you to give them a call." Jack's jaw went harder. "If I did that, it would suggest I didn't trust my daughter."

"This isn't about trust. It's about checking in and being involved."

"I take it you've been through this. How old did you say your kids were? " Katherine didn't have kids, and it hit home. There had been a time when having a child had meant the world to her. Then she had been advised to wait a bit. Then Roy had left. And Byron had come and gone. And suddenly she was forty-two.

"Low blow, " Jack surprised her by saying. "Sorry, but I'm going through a tough time here. I've never parented a teenager before, not for more than a weekend, and not for things like this, but I'm trying my best to do what's right, and it isn't easy. Samantha and I don't exactly have a love fest going on down there in Big Sur. She doesn't like what I bring in for dinner, doesn't like the coffee I brew. She doesn't like my talking on her' phone, or sleeping in Rachel's bed or using Rachel's shower, or driving her to school. As far as she's concerned, I'm a major inconvenience in her life�like I was the one who caused the accident, like I'm enjoying all this, like I should sleep on the sofa night after night. She's given me lip about almost everything I've done�but maybe, just maybe we've turned a corner. She actually smiled at me when I picked her up at school." Pleading, he paused for a breath. "Let me enjoy it for a little bit, huh? " JACK thought about enjoying it a bit as he drove down the coast. It wasn't the first time he had used those words in response to the antics of Samantha McGill. The first time was fifteen years before, when she was five months old and vehemently opposed to sleeping through the night.

They had been living in San Francisco a full month, Samantha in a room that Rachel had painted the same hot pink and navy as her room in Tucson, so she didn't have the excuse of a strange place. She had been fed cereal at six, along with Rachel's milk then and again at eleven.

It was now two in the morning, and she wanted more.

The battle had been going on for two weeks, and they were exhausted.

Jack was working a new job, pulling sweatshop hours as junior architect in a San Francisco firm. Rachel was pulling similar ones caring for the baby, doing the last of the unpacking, sewing drapes, and painting furniture and walls. They had both been dead to the world when Samantha's wails blasted in from the next room.