Landslide (58 page)

I nodded and looked ahead. Aside from the minivan, the road didn’t look too badly blocked, but we were right at a section of the highway where it’s down to one lane going in either direction, so trying to pass with the chance of oncoming traffic was more risky than the boys’ father and I would’ve felt comfortable attempting right then.

“Travis, I’m cold. Can I wear your jacket?”

“Dude, you have your own on!”

“I know, but I didn’t wear layers like Mom told me to.”

Travis rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, too bad. I didn’t either so we’re both dumb-asses.”

Initially, I didn’t even think about it… “Oh, I have a blanket in my car…I’ll go get it.”

“Hey, wait a minute…I know you! You’re that wom—” Travis’ words stopped suddenly and his eyes widened, like he almost gave away the biggest secret in the world. It took me a minute to put it together, but when Travis’ eyes flashed to his brother’s disinterested face, it clicked. Travis is the boy who was trying to buy a Christmas skateboard for his little brother with his own money.

“Oh…
that’s
why you’re familiar,” I started, while Travis panicked and shook his head at me quickly. Then I winked at him. “You’re the kid who picked my keys up for me the other day when I dropped them at the store, right?”

His eyes rolled back in his head and he heaved a sigh of relief. “Yeah. That was me alright.”

“Thought so. I’m gonna go get that blanket for your brother…be right back.”

I didn’t take more than three steps away before I heard Travis calling after me. “Hey, wait up! What’s your name?” he asked, jogging in the snow to catch up to me.

“I’m Erica.”

“I never got to really thank you, Erica. That was really cool of you. I can’t wait to see his face when he opens it! He’s gonna
totally
flip his shit!”

I gave him a look out of the corner of my eye and tried to hide my grin. “You’re welcome,” I said and opened the passenger door of the Grenada, and grabbing the quilt, I spied a folded memory of when I got overly frustrated and gave up trying to ride a skateboard on my own. The picture is of Cole towing me down the sidewalk behind his bike while I was sitting on his skateboard. I never did learn how to ride one… “You’re gonna teach him how to ride it, though, right?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess so. If he wants me to that is.”

I handed him the quilt and closed the car door. “He will. Trust me. And it might take him a while to get the hang of it and he even might wanna give up, so try to not lose your patience and keep encouraging him, okay?”

Travis opened his mouth to respond and that’s when we heard the ear-splitting screech of tires. I shoved him ahead of me and we were both moving before either of us even whipped our heads around towards the sound of the oncoming semi-truck that was struggling to come to a stop before it swung sideways and essentially body-checked the side of the mountain. I don’t exactly know how I ended up on my back, but it didn’t hurt. For a still moment, it was quiet. Too quiet. Ominous. Then the eerie almost distant thunder and crack from above, below and all around me began reverberating through my body, gradually until it was booming and pounding down on me.
 

Then Cole was with me. Right next to me; comforting me…holding my hand in one of his and combing my hair with the fingers of the other one, silently watching a playback of our lives with me.

“I think she’s going into shock.”

“I don’t think we should move her, man.”

“Me neither but, we gotta do something. Like, give supportive care or whatever it’s called. Travis, gimme that blanket… Anyone else got blankets or coats we can put on her until the ambulance gets here?”
 

Cole turns his head from the slideshow to smile at me and lies down in the snow, snuggling up with me. I lie still and close my eyes, shadows of the brightest white hovering ever closer, he whispers in my ear, “It’s okay, beautiful. I’m here.”

I always thought dying would be scary or would hurt, but it hasn’t been like that. I’m not afraid. I’m not in pain. I’m not even cold. I feel warm. I feel peace. Because he loves me. And I know he does.

Because he’s with me.

46

“Hard Times (Come Again No More)”

—Erica—

I haven’t had the easiest life. I haven’t complained much, but rather, I’ve chosen to focus on what I do have and count every blessing. Maybe that was easy to do because aside from a very short time—after the fire—I’ve never felt like a true victim. I’ve been hurt and heartbroken—many times, undoubtedly, and I let myself feel it, although I did my absolute best to not dwell on that truth. But knowing me as absolutely as he does, Cole was right. While not endlessly lamenting all that’s gone wrong or been taken from me, I still denied myself. I refused to acknowledge wanting anything just on the off-chance my title belt for loss would continue to remain uncontested. So, I have actually been afraid and wallowing—I just wasn’t aware that I was.

This coming to terms with myself happened over the course of my stay in the hospital, surrounded by countless others experiencing trials even greater than mine; some of them going through things they will never heal from or be mended whole once all is said and done.

Clearly I didn’t die like I thought for sure I had. I just cracked my head open and got caught in a miniature landslide when the semi slammed into the mountain, the echoing force bringing down layers of packed snow that were already unstable due to that fallen boulder leaving the area without support. The boys’ father I was told was there in a matter of moments once the slide ceased and was easily able to clear the snow from on top of me, so I couldn’t have been buried under much and was never in any real danger of suffocating or anything like that. It was the smack to my head and losing consciousness that had me believing I was on death’s door. That along with seeing and hearing Cole.

It was
so
real. I could smell him. I
felt
him.

I guess I was in and out the whole ambulance ride, but I don’t remember squat about it. I came to and stayed conscious as I was being wheeled into the emergency room; I was completely out of it though. All I can recall was being asked what sounded like a zillion and one questions shot at me with rapid fire, and only being able to verbalize answers to maybe four of them. I knew my name, I knew my birthdate, even my social security number, and I was able to tell them that my family consists of my grandmother who’s in a nursing home in Hemet. Then I was whisked away for x-rays and a CT scan, both of which apparently came back with normal results.
 

After getting my head stitched up and I was waiting for a room of my own, being admitted for a grade three concussion, I called and talked to an administrator at the nursing home to give them a heads up on where I am and how they can reach me if they need to for some reason. Once I got to my room just in time for the dinner service, which I didn’t have the appetite to eat much of, I started thinking about where I wanted to go from here. I felt alone, but not. I felt like I’m in the world, but not part of it. I briefly considered calling Cole although I didn’t have his number, and that was enough to prevent me from making the effort to try to get it. Also, I didn’t know what I would say to him.

All I could think of was something like, “Don’t be scared, but just so you know, I thought I was dying, but I didn’t, and I’m sort of contributing that to the fact that I was ready to go because you were there to make sure I wasn’t alone and that my last thoughts would be certain knowledge of how much you love me, and then I realized I can’t die because if we swapped places, you wouldn’t know…you wouldn’t have that peace and the courage you gave me.” I remember thinking that. I remember feeling intrepid, wholly safe and ready, and then in the next breath, I was panicked and all I could think was that I can’t die. I can’t die because he doesn’t know. It was just that if I were to tell him anything like that, I had no idea what I would follow it up with; no clue as to what either of us would be able to do to make things different from the impossibility of our reality as it stands.

The truth was though, I was wavering. My inner voice was whispering to me. It was urging me to consider
trying
. I felt I still needed time though. I didn’t want to act on impulsive emotion again. Granted, emotion is the basis for much of what’s happened, however it’s also why I was running in the first place. I was kind of thinking that if I possibly took some time to truly digest and accept the situation without automatically shoving my head into a pile of dense dirt where it wouldn’t hurt so much, then, maybe… That pile of dirt though was awfully enticing, as cowardly as it is to admit.

It wasn’t until the following day though that I finally chose to be aware of wanting something I’d been honestly and truly convinced I didn’t. Actually, I didn’t exactly
choose
to be aware; it was more or less forced upon me in a way that no dank cave or any amount of dirt could ever hope to hide me from myself.

“We’re gonna get just a
little
more blood from you, m’kay, Erica?” The nurse asks me rhetorically, as he already has the tip of the needle inches from the saline lock on the top of my hand.

“Okay. What for?” I watch the tube fill with thick, burgundy fluid.

“
Well
, one of your tests came back a little iffy yesterday. Nothing to worry about though,” he answers, finishing up the draw.

“What test?” I ask, feeling jittery because I’m on the other side of the fence now and speculation is running wild in my head. “I’m a nurse, so…I know we tend to say there’s nothing to worry about and that’s not always true.”

He smiles at me. “It was your pregnancy test.”

“It was iffy? Like, how? It couldn’t be positive… Because that’s not possible. It’s not.” There’s no way. It’s
way
too early to know…

“Iffy as in inconclusive. The test detected just enough levels of hCG to give us both positive and negative results. Therefore, inconclusive. We’ll retest and hope for a clear plus or minus this time.” He sets the vial of my blood on a cold, sterile tray and picks up my chart to make a note. “What are we hoping for?”

“What?” I ask, slightly lightheaded now, like the world just toppled over on its axis without warning.

“I wanna cross my fingers, so I need to know which way to cross ‘em,” he replies with another smile lighting his face.

“Oh. Um…negative. Yeah. Definitely.”

“Alright, I’ll get this going and hopefully be back with good news in a little while.”

He walks out the door and leaves me sitting here staring down on my tummy in wonder. Instinctually—visceral—my hands slide over my lower abdomen, my fingers spread wide.

A baby.

Cole’s
baby…

47

“With Arms Wide Open”

—Cole—

“Whoa…cease fire! Cease—” my dad commands, walking up with a paper cup of coffee, snapping his mouth shut only when a snowball makes contact and explodes on his cheek. He glares at me.

“Don’t look at me,” I tell him with my eyes wide, pointing to the blonde, pint-size machine gun giggling and standing next to me, “she threw it.”

He lets out a
humph
and deadpan, he brushes his cheek free of crystalized powder and turns on his heel to leave the front lines again.

“Daddy! I’m out! Reload!”

“Okay, pumpkin, but this is the last batch. Santa should be here soon and you wanna get a good spot for the story,” I tell her and squatting down again behind the headless snowman we’re using as cover, I start building snowballs as fast as I can for her so she doesn’t fall behind in the war going on around us.

I strip my soaked gloves off with my teeth and wince when the iced air hits my damp and reddened hands. I suck it up though, especially because I’m a way speedier barehanded snowball builder than a gloved one. She’s faster at shooting than I am at building though either way and within a minute, her ammunition is gone again.

“Daddy, I need more!”

“Lola, honey, Daddy needs a break. Look at my hands!”

She narrows her eyes at them and purses her lips together. “Unless we puke, faint, or die, we keep going, ‘member?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I answer and then reluctantly building another snowball, I mutter under my breath, “What asshole taught
that
to a six-year-old…”

Resting my elbows on my knees, I blow out a breath and beg my dad with my eyes to deliver me a pass for some quick R and R. He saunters over, staunch, tall and proud, defiant and completely unafraid of being pelted by white bullets of various sizes that are zooming in every direction. Lola turns and spies him on his way over, her ringlets bouncing and one of the two pink camouflage bows she’s wearing slips even further down the side of her head when she whips it around again to look at me.

“You tapping out, Daddy?”

“Just for a little bit, okay, munchkin?” I readjust the bow back where it’s supposed to be, tightening it and matching the height of the one on the other side of her head. I don’t even know why I bother because I know it won’t last. The child will forever have lopsided hair adornments.

She nods, turns her head—the bow slipping down her silky curls again—and then hollers at the top of her lungs at one of Jerry’s kids hidden behind a solid white shrub about ten feet from us. “You better watch out, Alec Pearsall! I got reinforcements! My grampa’s fresh meat and we’re gonna destroy you!”

Clucking my tongue once and nodding, I mumble to myself, “Nice.”

From behind the shrub, a disembodied voice rises up, “Bring it, Lola, you cheater! Uncle Paul?!”

“Build ‘em yourself, Alec, or get Jenna to help you,” Paul yells over to Alec from behind the newspaper he’s reading.

“You okay?” My dad asks, picking his foot up and setting it down again on Frosty’s decapitated head. I almost laugh and then realize that he kind of looks like a winter-time Captain Morgan, and my stomach protests.

“Tryin’ to be. I’m gonna take a walk. I need some coffee.”

He nods. “What you need is to stop sleepin’ with a bottle, Son.”