Kiss Me Hello (20 page)

ON THE ROOF, SARA
stayed behind the wisteria and watched the people dancing on the lawn down below. A bouncy tune came to an end, and Spot pulled the guitarrón player aside for a chat. The next song was
On the Street Where You Live,
in Spanish. The lead singer had a lovely tenor voice, and the band played with slow, muscular sweetness.

Spot crossed the lawn and offered his hand to Peekie. He pulled her into his arms and into the music’s flow. So romantic.

“Your friends look happy together,” Joss said.

He’d met her on the widow's walk outside the aerie and showed her where to squeeze through the wisteria to this side of the house. The walk continued around the roof’s perimeter.

“It seems odd you can see and hear people now,” Sara said, “but they still can’t see you.”

“It’s you,” Joss said. “The world intensifies when you’re near me. You make everything clear and bright.”

And you’ve muddied all my waters.

“I shouldn’t have come up here.” She turned away from him. “I have to go.” She followed the walk back to the other side of the roof. On the ocean side of the house the stars blazed in the clear night sky. She held onto the rail to keep from falling, not because of the dark but because she couldn’t see through her tears.

Joss was waiting for her in the alcove. “Bram will be looking for me,” she said.

“I don’t think he will,” Joss said.

It was the truth, but it hurt to hear it. She had to get back to the reception, to her guests. To her husband. She turned away from Joss, and he followed her as far as the landing.

“Can’t you stay, for just a little while?” There was so much longing in the question she couldn’t bear it.

“I could,” she said. “But if I did, it wouldn’t be for just a little while.”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I can’t,” she said. He was a ghost. He wasn’t real. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”

He reached for her as she stepped onto the stairs. Creeping cold swirled over her shoulder and down her arm. Her foot twisted on the wobbly second tread, and she grabbed the rail.

“Who did you want to be sure was all right?”

Bram was on the stairs, four treads down from her. His blue eyes had a cold, flat look. She didn’t think he was drunk. “Who did you want to be sure was all right, babe?”

“No one.”

“After you made me feel so guilty.” His cold stare stayed fixed as a cruel smile crept over his lips. “You’ve been seeing someone behind my back?” He reached for her. “Now that would be ironic.”

“No, Bram. I…”

“I’ve hated you for so long.” He laced his fingers through her hair. “Never knowing what you want. Always sucking the life out of me. You wanted to be my muse? You’re the anti-muse, you…sponge.” He grabbed her forearm.

“Bram, that hurts.”

“I have to say I’m puzzled.” He pulled her closer, his breath hot on her neck. His lips grazed her jaw, and he kissed her hard on the mouth. He whispered, “How could any man want to stick it in
you
?” He yanked her arm, and she pitched forward. He was so strong, and the bottom of the stairs was so far away.

Her feet left the stairs, and she clawed at the air. Someone pushed her to the side, close enough to the banister to grab it. She wrenched her arms around the banister spindles and hung on. “Ack!” Her hip banged painfully against a tread’s edge, but she stopped falling.

“What?” A surprised yelp came out of Bram.

He fell backwards down the stairs. It took him forever to reach the floor. Someone screamed. Two people. Sara was one of them.

The other screamer was Bonnie, running toward the foot of the stairs and Bram’s crumpled body.

- 23 -
Intensive Care

“H
E LOOKS BETTER,” SARA
said. “Peekie, don’t you think he looks better?”

Bram’s hand was cold from the IV fluids, and he was so very pale. Machines monitoring his vital signs made evil arrhythmic music of beeps and clicks and whirs.

Her memories were a jumble. Thank god Dr. Kasaty was at the house when Bram fell. There were people yelling, and Chief Ken directed some men to put Bram on a board and carry him up to the highway when the ambulance couldn’t get through the driveway. Bonnie drove Sara to the hospital, the convertible top down, wind whipping their hair, the ambulance lights flashing ahead. The blare of the siren.

“He looks the same, dear,” Peekie said. “But you look like shite, if you’ll pardon my Scottish. You haven’t slept all week.”

“I’ve slept,” Sara said. “A little. I’ll go home in a while, I promise.” She looked up at the TV bolted to the ceiling in the corner.
The English Patient
was on. They’d both been half watching it with the sound off. The plane was trying to kill Ralph Fiennes.

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Peekie said. “Believe it or not, they make a decent cup in the cafeteria here. I’ll be back.”

“Bram?” Sara said after Peekie had gone. “You must be in there somewhere. They say talking to you couldn’t hurt.”

She closed her eyes, and thought about what to say. The neurologist didn’t hold out much hope for Bram’s recovery. He was in a coma. The sliver of a chance he’d come out of it dimmed with every day. Maybe he could hear her now in some near-death state of existence. These might be the last words he ever did hear. She had to make them count.

“You ass,” she said. “I didn’t realize how lonely I was. Yes. I was seeing someone. Technically. Kind of. Maybe you were lonely too, but you didn’t have to kill me over it. This isn’t Victorian England.”

He lay on the bed, silent and still but for the monitor sounds. On the TV, Ralph Fiennes was dragging Kirstin Scott Thomas from the wreckage.

“Mom thought that movie was so awful. Immoral. But then, she tried so hard to live up to Dad’s ideals. So harsh. That’s why I hate him, you know. Such a righteous bastard, quoting brimstone at anyone who stood still long enough. Until Mom died. Then suddenly he’s all about love and forgiveness and turn the other cheek. I call bullshit. He just wanted to justify running off with Cindy before Mom was cold in the grave.”

She clicked off the television.

“Mom was wrong. That story is highly moral. The adulterers were punished. Horrifically. The nurse and the Sikh soldier acted honorably, and in the end they lived and loved. Desire isn’t bad. It’s how you act on it that matters. And you acted badly. You’re going to hell, Bram.”

She let go of his hand.

“At least I’d believe that if I still believed in hell.”

“He might live yet.” She heard Joss before she saw him. He came into focus in the other corner, sitting in a molded plastic chair. “He’s weak, but his life force is still strong.”

“You can tell that.”

“I think I can. I don’t know. Maybe I’m full of bull.”

“Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “Again.”

“The best way to fix stairs,” he said, “is to get rid of the guy who wants to throw you down them.”

“You think?” He looked so real. But he couldn’t hold her. He couldn’t grow old with her. He couldn’t love her. And she couldn’t love him. “I know what I have to do now.”

“Stay with him.” Joss sounded bitter. “Make your marriage work.”

“Lord no. I was wrong about that too. Bram never loved me. The shocker is, I never loved him. I thought I did, but it was all just going through the motions, trying to make my marriage work. To make my mom happy, I think. I have to let Bram go. If he wakes up, I’ll divorce him. And then I have to forgive my dad. It’s no more my business where he finds his happiness than where I find mine. If I can stop hating him, maybe I can start loving myself.”

“And after that?” Joss said.

“After that I want to…I hope I can…find the kind of love you wrote about in your journal.”

“Oh, Sara. I wish I could love you. I mean properly. I hate that we were born out of time to each other. But I need to be dead now. Really dead, like Amelia, like Eleanor. I need to be free of these feelings. Of this…love.”

“I understand, Joss.”

“No. I don’t think you do. Sara, I’m not the one who’s keeping me here. You are. Your love won’t let me go.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s true. I love you.” If only she could breathe. “It sounds silly, but I think I fell in love with you that first night I read your journal. Do you think—do you think
I
put you in Bram’s body somehow?”

It was crazy, but what about this was sane? At that moment she believed her feelings for Joss were that powerful.

“You have to let me go, Sara, or I’ll never be dead—and you’ll never be fully alive.”

“Joss, I know it. But I’ve never loved anyone before. Now that I do, I’m greedy for more.”

Even as she said the words, she knew she had to let him go. Keeping him here in this nonexistent existence was like a murder. Worse than killing his body. She was killing his soul. She visualized divine light behind him, all around him.

He turned his head, as if listening to something. “Something’s calling me.” He faded a little. “Pulling me away.”

“Wait.” She tried not to blink. “I want to fix you in my memory,” she said. “Can I let you go, but keep the memory?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”

“Oh, Joss. I wish I could kiss you goodbye.”

“I wish I could kiss you hello.”

- 24 -
Some Rest In Peace

T
HE STARS WERE SCREAMINGLY
brilliant against the black night. The full moon hung low over the ocean, as if painted on, flat against the sky. Sara knew where the ocean started because that’s where the stars stopped.

She stood on the widow's walk in a flowing white nightgown, her arms and back bare, the lace bodice clinging to her breasts. A mourning dove cooed and hopped up on the rail, close enough to touch. It looked right at her, as if it knew her. A second dove joined its mate, and the pair flew away.

Her heart ached. Where had her soul mate flown?

Sara!
His voice echoed in the night.
Sara!
The stars burned brighter with the sound.
Sara!
He was in pain, alone, frightened. He needed her.

She floated off the widow's walk, over the courtyard, toward the eucalyptus grove. To Joss.
I’m coming, Joss. I’m coming.
Her heart swelled. He was there, standing among the snowdrops, waiting for her.

His eyes were full of sorrow, but also love. He rose up to her and took her into his arms. They floated in the air, on the mist that rolled in and covered the ground below. “This isn’t a dream,” he said. “I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

Without words, they danced on the mist. He was so cold. That’s why they could never be together, because he was cold, and she was warm. She rested her head against his cold chest and listened to his heart beat, beat, beating in rhythm with her own.
Buh
-bump, buh-bump, buh-bump.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Sara sat up straight in bed. Sunlight streamed through the open window, and someone was at the back porch downstairs, banging on the kitchen door.

“Just a minute!” she called through the window. She shook off her dream and the feeling of wrenching loss. The courtyard was full of pickup trucks. Bram’s over by the barn, one next to her car from Poole Haven Wines, and one she didn’t recognize. “I’ll be right down.”

She tore off her sleep shirt and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. When she opened the back door, she felt her face go red. She wished she’d at least brushed her teeth before coming down.

“Good morning.” Rafe Corazon smiled, eyeing her sleep-tousled hair. “We’re here to install the stairs.”

“The stairs?” In the courtyard, men were unloading sections of a staircase from the back of the second truck. “Oh, the stairs!” She’d forgotten all about it. Today they were going to put in the new staircase to the aerie. “That’s great, Rafe. I'm glad the first time didn’t scare you off.”

“Nah, I’m a tough bird,” he said. “I like to keep busy.”

“Thanks for coming out with the crew.”

“No problem.”

She had planned to go to the hospital to sit with Bram, but now she’d have to wait until Rafe and his crew finished. She went upstairs and brushed her teeth and hair and put on some shoes. When she came out, they were already tearing down the old stairs to the aerie.