Collide (29 page)

Shane arched an eyebrow, at his father’s
attempt at humor.

“Thought I would stop in.”

“Good to know,” Shane said casually, noticing
for the first time his father was still dressed in the clothes he
had worn to dinner at the Barker’s. “Is everything alright?”

James shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell
me.”

Shane rubbed his chin, running his fingers
along the thick stubble that was now nearly two days old. He didn’t
think he could do the buddy thing with his father. Not yet. Maybe
never.

When in doubt. Change the subject.

“How’s Celia? I’m sorry I didn’t ask about
her earlier. Eden said she started another round of chemo
yesterday.”

James nodded, his hands in his front pockets.
“She’s hanging in.” He paused. “So, this Barker girl…she means a
lot to you.”

Shane nodded, unsure where this was
headed.

“You know I was never a big fan of the two of
you.”

No shit.

“You both just seemed so,” James shook his
head and shuffled his feet. “You both did everything at warp speed
and I thought she was bad for you. I thought that the two of you
together would combust. I thought that you would crash and burn.
You both lived without boundaries. You lived like you were dying,
as if you needed to experience everything that there was to
experience right then, in that moment. It scared me, Shane. You and
her together scared the crap out of me.”

Huh. He hadn’t known that his father cared so
much.

“Not that this gives me any sort of pleasure,
but it seems as if you were right.”

“You love her.”

Shane exhaled, his chest tightening
painfully. “Yeah, I do.”

His father’s eyes glittered. Even through the
dim lighting Shane saw the tears and he glanced away, not able to
deal with a father who was flesh and blood. This wasn’t the father
he remembered. Who the hell was this guy?

“You’re so like her,” James said eventually,
looking away and for that Shane was glad. He didn’t know how to
handle the man who stood a few feet from him.

“I need you to know, Shane,” he stammered and
then swore. “Hell, I need you to accept my apology.”

“Dad, I really don’t want to get into all
this crap right now.”

But James carried on as if he hadn’t said a
word.

“I was hard on you. Damn hard on you. I did
everything I could to snuff out the light inside of you. The light
that reminded me so much of your mother. The light that
was
your mother. The two of you…” James shook his head, a sad, wistful,
smile on his lips. “The two of you were so much alike. You both
loved art. You both liked to laugh and how many nights did the two
of you wake me up because she let you of bed to watch those old
Charlie Chaplin movies?”

Hearing his dad talk about his mother was
bittersweet and Shane cleared his throat, that damn lump was
back.

“The thing is Shane, after your mother died I
pushed you away because you were a constant reminder of what I’d
lost. Of what she had been. I did my damnedest to turn you into
something totally different and it backfired. I lost you and you
lost yourself.”

Shit. Did he have the strength to do this
right now?

Taking a deep breath, Shane dug in. “Dad, I’m
done with the blaming. Sure, you were an asshole. An absolute prick
most of the time but I was no better. I hid behind you. I hid
behind your pain and your sorrow and I used it to justify every
shit thing I ever did. I did the same with Bobbi, but I’m done with
that. I’ve been done with that for a while now I just need to…I
just need to tie up all those loose ends before I can move on.”

For a moment James said nothing and then
spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “I love Celia. I do. And
Eden…she’s my life but there isn’t one day that goes by that I
don’t think about your mother. And sometimes I let myself wonder
what it would feel like if she was still here with us. Would she
have been able to hold us together?”

“But there’s no point in that. She’s dead and
we’re not.” Shane took a step back and motioned with his hands.
“Come here.”

James followed him back toward the light.
Back toward his easel and when he stood beside Shane and glanced at
the canvas, a sound escaped from between his lips—a sound halfway
between anguish and joy. It was the sound of the living.

“I sketched Eden yesterday while she was here
and drew Celia from inside my head. But I think it’s a good
depiction.”

The water color was a portrait of the two
girls—mother and daughter—Eden resting her head on Celia’s chest,
gazing out into the eyes of whoever was looking her way, while
Celia’s eyes were closed, a small smile gracing her lips, her arms
around her daughter.

It was poignant. Powerful. Emotional.

“Son,” James said, clasping his arm.
“It’s…it’s…perfect.”

“This is your reality and from what I can
see, you’re one hell of a lucky man. It’s yours.” Shane cleared his
throat. “I’ll get it framed and bring it over next week.”

James nodded and moved away, his eyes still
on the canvas. He was nearly to the door when he paused and held
out his hand. They shook, not like strangers, but not like father
and son either. They were still in that grey area—the in-between
area of acceptance—but they were headed in the right direction. For
now that was enough.

“I’m proud of you son. I want you to know
that.”

Shane exhaled roughly, not able to
answer.

“What are your plans?”

Shane finally managed to dislodge the damn
lump in his throat. “I’m moving into White Hall. I have to work for
Logan at least for the next few years to keep compliance with my
parole, but, I want to paint and make custom furniture and the farm
will continue to run the way it’s always done.” He paused. “I want
everything.”

James smiled and nodded. “That’s good to
know, Son, but I was talking about your girl. If you love Bobbi as
much as you say you do, then you had better get things cleared up.
You better do something about it right now because life is too
short to waste time on the bullshit that’s stuck between the
cracks. You need to fix those cracks and make them stronger, and
you need to do it before it’s too late.”

Shane stared at the door for a long time
after his father left, so long in fact that he was surprised to
note the time when he finally made it up to his loft.
Four-thirty.

He glanced outside the window above his sink.
Into the darkness that surrounded everything. And it was dark.
There wasn’t one star in the sky and the moon was nowhere to be
seen.

Four-thirty.

Goddamn early, he thought…and then, not
goddamn early enough.

He grabbed his cell phone off the counter and
hit speed dial, while shoving his feet into his boots and reaching
for his leather jacket. When he heard her, his heart twisted and he
started to talk, but then realized it was her voice mail.
Impatiently he waited for her message to finish and by then he was
outside, his long strides carrying him to the garage.

“It’s me,” he said roughly. “I’m on my way
over and I sure as hell hope you get this message because if I have
to break the fucking door down to get to you I will. We need to
talk and I’m not leaving until we do.”

Shane drove through the dark, deserted
streets of New Waterford, seeing only Frank McQueen, the paper man,
delivering newspapers to those who still slept. He turned along the
river and followed it up a few blocks until he headed down Bobbi’s
street.

He drove within the speed limits. This was
good. This was controlled. It was Shane acting like an adult. He
parked his truck in the driveway but felt his control begin to slip
as soon as he glanced up at the house. It was in darkness and with
adrenaline pumping through him, he hopped out and was charging up
the steps when the door flew open.

And it took everything inside him to keep it
together.

Bobbi stared down at Shane, her heart in her
chest—no it was in her throat because she didn’t think she could
speak if she wanted to. And that was going to be a problem since
she had a lot to say.

He took the last step and stopped inches from
her. So close that she could smell that hint of mint from the gum
he liked to chew. So close that she could feel the heat of him. The
largeness of him.

He filled the aches and pains inside her and
it was all she could do to not run into his arms and melt into his
strength.

“I’m glad you were up,” he said, his voice
low. “I don’t think Travis and Herschel would like waking up to a
splintered door.”

She was dressed in a white tank top and blue
pajama bottoms that had little pink panthers all over them, and for
a second Bobbi glanced down at her bare toes. At the sparkly blue
paint she’d decorated them with a few days ago.

It was chipped and worn. Kind of like her
heart.

She was hot but then she started to shiver
because she was cold, her teeth knocking together so badly that
pain fingered out along her jaw.

This was it. The end of the line. This was
her Helm’s Deep. Her battle for Gondor. Jesus Christ, where were
her riders of Rohan?

“Bobbi, we need to talk because I sure as
hell don’t know what’s going on or where we stand and I’m done
walking in the dark. I can’t do it anymore.”

“I know,” she whispered, moving aside so that
he could come in.

Shane followed her into the kitchen and
watched in silence as she busied herself making a pot of coffee.
She wasn’t sure she could stomach the hot brew at the moment, but
she needed to do something while she figured out how she was going
to do and say everything that she needed to.

In the end, she pressed the ‘on’ button and
turned around, her butt leaning against the countertop as she gazed
across the room at Shane.

There was nothing to do but get on with
it.

“I need to tell you some things,” she said
slowly. “And I need you to listen and not say anything until I’m
done. Because if you do, I’m not sure I can get everything out
and…” her eyes slid from his. “There’s so much.”

A heartbeat passed.

Then two and then three.

And on the fourth she began.

“Remember those last months…how we used
fight, break-up, make-up, then fight again?”

He nodded, but remained silent.

“And that one time you pissed me off so much,
I’m not even sure why anymore, but it was enough for me to say
screw you, and I went out Derek Danvers a few times.”

His mouth was tight, his expression grim, but
again, he was silent.

“It didn’t last and of course we made up and
then you found out about Derek and that was the end.” She closed
her eyes and wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to find
some comfort. Some small piece of bravery to help her get
through.

“And then a month later I found out I was
pregnant.”

The steady drip of the water into the coffee
pot filled the silence, each drop louder than the last. She took a
deep breath and continued.

“I lied. I didn’t have the abortion, Shane. I
couldn’t go through with it.” She shuddered, aware that he’d moved
closer to her. “I went to that clinic with every intention of
ending the pregnancy. I mean, I was twenty and we just had the
biggest fight ever. How could I have a baby? Betty was home from
one of her modeling assignments, thank god, and she took me one
bright, sunny morning. I remember the lilac bushes were in bloom
along the driveway. Purple and white. They were so pretty…”

Drip, drip, drip. She glanced at the coffee
pot.

“The room smelled sterile, like rubbing
alcohol. It was cold and grey, like all the color had bled out of
the walls. They wouldn’t let Betty come in with me so I had to go
into the procedure room alone.”

God, if she closed her eyes it felt as if was
there. As if the smell was inside her nose. Inside her heart.

So, Bobbi kept her eyes open, desperately
trying to keep her head above the water that lapped at her neck.
The cold, grey, dead water.

“I was on the table with my legs spread, in
some ugly gown and I wore purple socks. I stared at my feet in the
stirrups because I was afraid to look anywhere else. And then the
doctor came in and the nurse stood at the end of the table and they
were talking to each other about something stupid, something that
had nothing to do with me or the baby or…”

She swallowed hard and fought to keep the
tears from her eyes but it was no use. They pooled in the corners
and slowly made their way down her face.

“There was this big machine with tubes and it
was making this god awful suction sound. It’s all I heard. It was
so loud it even drowned out the doctor and the nurse. And when she
grabbed the tube thing and the doctor turned to me I froze. I tried
to speak but nothing came out and then I tried to close my legs but
they were in those stirrups.”

“Bobbi.”

But she held up her hand and he was
silent.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared as I
was then, in that moment, because I
couldn’t
speak. The
doctor must have seen something in my face because he stopped…he
stopped what he was doing and wiped the sweat off my forehead and
he asked me if I was sure. All I could do was shake my head, tell
him no with my eyes, and then I started to cry and the nurse called
for Betty.”

“Bobbi,” Shane said again. He reached for her
but she stepped back, her eyes on his, her heart in her mouth.

“You need to let me finish. You need to hear
everything. When I came to you that night, at your house, that’s
what I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t go
through with it. But then I walked in and found you with Jane
and…”

“Oh, god.” His face was white. “I told you
that you looked great and then I asked you how much money I
owed.”