Pieces of the Heart (12 page)

“And you’re wearing a nightgown.”

Margaret’s lips tightened in a smile. “Why don’t you take drink orders, dear. I have a papaya-and-spinach smoothie in the refrigerator for you.”

Drew felt as if he should be keeping score, but the barbs were flying so fast he was afraid he’d lose track. Jewel came up to stand beside him and he realized she was also wearing jeans. He felt as if he’d made some huge social gaffe, but Margaret appeared not to have noticed. It seemed almost as if everyone was off her radar screen except her daughter.

Jewel tugged on Caroline’s arm. “Come on; I’ll help.”

Drew looked at the retreating form of his daughter, seeing Shelby in every step she took. It wasn’t just the red hair or the tilt of her head—it had more to do with the human awareness that had always appeared to guide Shelby’s actions. It had never bothered him that Jewel seemed not to have inherited a single thing from him. She had received the best from Shelby, and that was enough.

When they took their seats at the dining table, Caroline pulled her linen napkin out of its ring and looked pointedly at her mother, and Margaret answered with a matching expression. Caroline wordlessly put the napkin in her lap. Drew wasn’t exactly sure what that had been about, but he could at least see who’d won that round.
Score one for Margaret.
He smiled, then quickly coughed into his napkin.

Margaret looked up at her daughter. “Where’s your medicine?”

A slight flush appeared on Caroline’s pale cheeks. “I’ll take it later.”

Margaret folded her napkin and put it next to her plate as she stood. “You know your stomach tolerates the pills better if you take them with a meal. I’ll go get them.”

Caroline looked down in her lap, her cheeks now flaming red and a small tic visible in her jaw, as if she were clenching her teeth very tightly. Her chest was moving in and out very rapidly, and he could hear the breath whistle out of her mouth. She reminded him of Shelby in childbirth, practicing the breathing techniques she had learned in her Lamaze classes when she was pregnant, and he had the absurd urge to laugh.

Margaret appeared with a green slushy concoction—presumably the papaya-and-spinach smoothie—and placed it next to the glass of iced tea Caroline had poured for herself. Then Margaret placed four pills of varying colors and sizes next to the glass before seating herself again.

“Could you please pass the bread?” Drew asked, trying to switch everybody’s attention from Caroline, whose chin now seemed to be firmly pressed into her chest in an apparent attempt to disappear.

“What are those pills for?” Jewel asked at the same time.

Unfortunately, Jewel was sitting on the far end of the table from him, so he couldn’t pinch her. Along with all the good traits she’d inherited from Shelby, she’d also received an uncanny forthrightness that took no prisoners.

Caroline finally lifted her head from her chest, meeting Jewel’s eyes. “They’re organ transplant antirejection drugs. I have to take them every day of my life.” She took the breadbasket and handed it to Drew as if she had just made a comment about the weather.

Jewel’s eyes widened. “Wow,” she said, and Drew did a quick mental calculation to see if his leg was long enough to reach under the table and kick her gently in the shins. It wasn’t. “What sort of organ transplant did you have?”

Without blinking, Caroline faced Jewel again. “Heart. I had a heart transplant.”

Drew saw Jewel lean forward, as if prepared to play Twenty Questions. Without thinking, he picked up the breadbasket and knocked it into the glass of thick green liquid, sending its contents spilling out onto the white linen tablecloth and Caroline’s pale pink T-shirt.

They all sat in appalled silence for a brief moment, watching the spread of green form abstract elementary artwork. At the same moment, all four of them stood and began mopping up smoothie and moving plates and silverware out of the way. Caroline mumbled a quick, “Excuse me, I need to go change,” then turned from the table and walked away without another word.

Caroline sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror, not really seeing the pink shirt with the growing green stain across the chest. Instead she saw the white walls and white ceilings of a hospital room, could almost feel the tubes in her arms and smell the sickly clean aroma that had clung to her skin and hair.

She closed her eyes, not wanting the memories to take her to the places that had led up to the hospital room. She rubbed her arms hard, turning the skin pink and waiting for the burning sensation to bring her back into the present. Standing, she slid the soiled shirt over her head and tossed it in her bathroom sink to soak. Her serviceable white cotton bra was tinged green on the left cup, and it soon joined the shirt in the sink.

Pulling open the lingerie drawer, she dug past all the lacy confections her mother had sent her from Victoria’s Secret that still had the tags on, and pulled out a plain beige racer-back bra whose straps had begun to fray. After yanking a T-shirt from another drawer, she turned her back on her reflection, unwilling to look at the puckered pink scar that bisected her chest like a line of demarcation outlining the before and after of her life.

The neck of the shirt snagged on her ponytail as a soft knock sounded on the door. Resigned to another confrontation with her mother, Caroline faced the door with her head and arms still stuck in the top of the shirt. “Come in.”

“It’s me.”

Caroline recognized Jewel’s voice and gave a huge tug on her shirt, yanking so hard on her ponytail it made her eyes water. Jewel’s face peered at her through a crack in the door, a wide smile on her face. “Room service.” She bumped the door open wider with her rear end, then leaned over to pick something up before entering the room. She carried the breadbasket that had been spared the green deluge, and Caroline’s untouched glass of iced tea. “You didn’t come back right away, and I thought you might be hungry.”

Without being asked, Jewel sat on the bed next to Caroline and held out the bread. Unable to deny the hunger pangs that had been hitting her at regular intervals for over an hour, Caroline took a wheat roll and bit into it. “Did you bring any butter?”

Jewel shook her head. “There wasn’t any on the table—I guess your mom doesn’t believe in it or something.”

Caroline rolled her eyes and took another bite. “Thanks anyway.”

“I also brought these. I figure they must be important.” Jewel opened her hand to display the four pills Caroline’s mother had put on the table. “I’ve never met anyone who’s had a transplant before.”

Caroline stared at the pills suspiciously. “Did my mother send you in here?”

Jewel shook her head. “They’re busy cleaning up. The smell of that smoothie was going to make me puke, so I figured I’d come see you instead.” She picked up her own bread roll with her free hand and took a bite.

Caroline grabbed the pills and started popping them one by one, followed by a gulp of iced tea, until they were gone.

Jewel looked at her with somber eyes. “What are those for?”

Caroline leaned back on outstretched arms. “So my body doesn’t treat the heart as a foreign object and reject it. The other pills are to counteract the side effects of the antirejection drugs.” There was something about the girl that made her easy to talk to. Caroline thought it might have been her eyes, and the way they reminded her so much of Shelby. Or maybe it was the open attitude Jewel had about her that made her seem so nonjudgmental. Or maybe it was because it was easy to talk to someone who didn’t know the whole truth and couldn’t be appalled by it.

They sat for a few minutes on the bed, quietly chewing their bread rolls and listening to the clink of china and silverware from the other side of the door. Jewel finally broke the silence.

“So, are you going to coach me?”

Caroline gave a deep sigh. She wasn’t prepared for this conversation at all. “I haven’t decided.”

Jewel turned to look at her again with those eyes that seemed so much older than her face. “Does your not wanting to do it have anything to do with that scar on your chest?”

The air seemed to thin, and Caroline was left gasping for breath. How could she know? Her hand clutched at the part of her shirt that covered the scar, and she was unable to answer.

Jewel continued: “It’s probably not the scar itself but something else—something that it reminds you of?”

Caroline narrowed her eyes and stared at Jewel. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, either. I just want you to coach me to be a better competitive swimmer.” She leaned back on her arms, imitating the way Caroline had been sitting just a few minutes before. “My mom loved this lady called Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a president’s wife, you know? And my mom had this book of quotes where she’d cut out her favorite ones and hang them on our refrigerator, or tack them on my bulletin board in my room if she thought I needed it.” She sent Caroline a half smile. “Anyway, her favorite quote was one from Eleanor that said something like, ‘Find the one thing that scares you the most and do it.’ ”

Goose bumps filtered down Caroline’s spine, as if somebody had blown a breath on the back of her neck. It was the same thing Shelby had told her on the day that Caroline had finally found the strength to get up out of her hospital bed and begin her life again.

Caroline cleared her throat, unable to meet Jewel’s eyes. “So what’s that got to do with me?”

Jewel leaned toward Caroline, their foreheads almost touching, and spoke softly. “I’m afraid of the water. And that’s why I have to make the swim team.”

Caroline closed her eyes, seeing the ten-year-old Jewel struggling to bring her mother’s body in to shore. She opened her eyes, gasping for breath as if she had drowned but had somehow found the strength to break above the surface at the last moment. Caroline looked at Jewel and felt the oddest impulse to hug this strange, brave girl. There was something about the set of her shoulders and the firm jut of her jaw that seemed to give Caroline strength, too.
Find the one thing that scares you the most and do it.

Caroline wiped her hands over her face and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll coach you. But I’m not getting in the water. I can do a good enough job on the sidelines.”

A look of triumph passed over Jewel’s face. “All right! Can we start Tuesday? School starts on Monday, but I figure I can just start getting up early to get my swimming done before the school bus comes at eight thirty. My dad usually leaves for Rainy Days at seven thirty every weekday—he’s learning the business from Rainy, so he’s there most mornings. I figure we can start at seven thirty-five.”

Caroline stared at Jewel’s eager expression, trying to remember the last time she had felt like that. But all she could recall was the cold numbness that had taken over her body thirteen years before. She smiled wearily. “How about seven forty, just to make sure. And I’ll talk to my mother about keeping it under wraps from your dad.”

Jewel nearly bounced off the bed. “I can’t wait!” She picked up the breadbasket and the empty water glass. “I’ll bring the gelatin powder—I heard somewhere that it’s what swimmers use to give them an extra boost of energy.”

Tucking her knees under her chin, Caroline smiled. “I like cherry flavored, by the way.”

Jewel opened the door and paused for a moment. “Are you not allowed to go in the water because of your heart?”

Caroline paused a moment before answering. “Not exactly. I’m a little more susceptible to infection than most people, so my doctors would want me to swim in a chlorinated pool instead of a lake. But I’m supposed to be as active as the next person. I just choose not to swim anymore.”

Jewel stared at her for a long moment with Shelby’s eyes. “Okay, then. Tuesday morning at seven forty on the dock. There’s a community center with a pool in Truro we can use when the weather gets nasty and when I’m ready to be timed. I figured we can use the lake at first to work on my strokes.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Caroline waved her hand. “Tell my mom I’ll be out in a minute.”

Jewel nodded, then closed the door behind her. Caroline remained where she was, with her forehead pressed against her knees, and wondered what she had just gotten herself into. Ever since she had returned to Hart’s Valley, people had been trying to make her do the things she had long since relegated to the secret place in her heart she had thought sealed forever.

She stood and walked to the bathroom, where she began filling the sink. The water turned a light green as it reached the shirt, and Caroline had a flash of memory of Drew pushing the breadbasket into the glass, almost as if he’d done it on purpose.

Caroline reached her hands under the tepid water, watching her outstretched fingers warp and bend under the ripples caused by the running faucet, until she no longer recognized them as her own.