Shem Creek (40 page)

The door swung open and Robert came in with a cardboard tray holding our coffee.

“Here,” Robert said, putting the cup down on the table next to her bed. “Watch out. It’s hot.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to release Gracie’s hand to remove the lid and take a sip. “I can’t imagine the world without Gracie. It would be so empty.”

“Tragic,” Robert said. “It would be absolutely tragic. But don’t think about it. It’s not gonna happen.”

I looked over at Louise and she was watching me intensely.

“What do you think, Louise?”

“I think you have more feelings for Linda and her girls than you know. That’s what I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s saying you’re in love with her, pal,” Robert said. “You’re in love and you don’t even know it.”

“No, I’m saying that you’re in love with all of them,” Louise said. “Let me tell you gentlemen something. Linda Breland is a warrior. She loves with a fierceness I haven’t ever seen in anybody except myself. That’s just one reason why we get along so well. She is loyal to a fault and as hardworking as anyone I have ever known. She says what she thinks and I agree with almost every word that comes from her mouth.”

“Me too,” I said.

“She’s a helluva gal,” Robert said.

“Well, when you find somebody who’s got qualities like Linda, you love her. That’s all.”

Finally, I put Gracie’s hand down on her blanket and stood up. I was stiff from sitting for so long and I stretched a little. Mimi came back in and took my seat, so I picked up my coffee and decided to go outside for some air.

“What did the doctor say?” Louise said.

“How’s she doing?”

“No change,” I said. “So, what did he say?”

“Nothing. You would think that with all the education these guys have that they could think of something more than
Why don’t you go home and get some rest and come back in the morning?
First of all, it is morning—almost. Basically, he repeated everything he said when we all heard him. He said Gracie is fine and that she will come around.”

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” I said.

I walked down the short corridor and the doors opened automatically. It was around five-thirty and the eastern sky was streaked with the beginning of dawn. The early morning air was damp but more comfortable to me than the air-conditioning. I put my cup down on the low wall and rubbed my arms to warm them up. As I moved along a few steps toward the parking lot, I realized how exhausted I was. I couldn’t wait to see Linda arrive and I knew that I would be a wreck until she did.

Our children had accomplished something that night that adults would never have even considered trying. I wondered where Alex got his strength and where Gracie got hers too. But I didn’t wonder for long.

That night Alex had reminded me of my father in the way that he simply jumped in and did what needed to be done. Another man, maybe even Robert or me, we might have weighed the odds first and then decided it was a job for a professional.

And Gracie? She was Linda all over again. I smiled to myself thinking about what Linda must have been like as a teenager and thought that she probably gave everyone a good run for their money. I remembered the day she had given me hell for making that raunchy remark about hot babes versus mothers and even still, I could not help but smile again at her nerve. She would not have cared if I had fired her; she wasn’t staying if I didn’t apologize. God. I loved that!

And that Lindsey. I would have bet that she was as mad as a hornet for being left behind to return to school on her own, not being here, not seeing what was really going on.

First, Linda had been assaulted and now Gracie had this accident. I would ask Linda if she wanted to fly Lindsey home next weekend. I would pay for it. No problem. No, they were too close a family to be separated at a time like this. At the very least I would make a video of Gracie first thing and send it to Lindsey FedEx. Then she could see her sister and hear her sassy mouth. Yes, that was a good idea. I would do it.

The doors behind me opened and Robert appeared.

“Hey, Robert? Do you have a video camera?”

“Yeah, why?”

I told him my plan and he laughed at me.

“What’s so funny?”

“Ahem, Bradford. Do you think that your thoughts are the ordinary thoughts of an
ordinary
employer? You’re gonna
fly her daughter in
. No, wait! First, you’re gonna make a
video
and FedEx it to her and
then
you’re gonna fly her in—I mean, come on!”

“No, I mean, it’s just that . . .”

“Right! You kill me!”

“What?”

“Remember the old story about the guy rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic
?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, you’re going down! Ah ha ha! You’re going down!”

“I’m sinking? You know what? You and Louise drive me crazy sometimes.”

“Hey! Say whatever you want! It doesn’t matter. The truth is the truth.” He began walking toward his car and then stopped. “Things will happen as they should, when they are
supposed
to happen. I’m going to go grab a couple of hours of sleep and I’ll be back to look over the mess later on.”

“Give Susan my love,” I said. “Call me when you get up.”

“Okay. And, call me when Gracie wakes up.”

I nodded, watched him go and thought it was probably time to go back inside. Maybe Louise was right. If I was already in love as Louise said, it was certainly powerful stuff. I couldn’t remember caring so much about another woman. I was very worried about how she was handling it and I was not going to be happy until I knew she was all right. I had to have a part in it.

Linda wasn’t like Loretta. I didn’t feel about her like I ever had about Loretta—at all. Linda was kind. That’s a commonly used description of someone but boy, the world could use more kindness. And, in her way, she was very pretty. In fact, she was really beautiful. And she was funny as hell and as smart as anyone I had ever known. No, she was amazing.

God knows, the thought of my world without Linda and her girls in it was very damn depressing. I hadn’t even seen it coming but I knew then that I was fully immersed in her family.

Let’s be serious. What did I know about love anyway? Obviously, not much. Linda Breland was right under my nose and I had not even realized until that moment that I was, yes, damnit, I was completely captivated by her. How funny! When I thought about it further, looking back on conversations we’d had about the garage, our children or the restaurant, I could see that we talked to each other like an old married couple anyway. And as these thoughts have a tendency to lead to others, naturally I wondered what it would be like to kiss her. Probably . . . well, let’s see? If the energy she exerted for the everyday mundane business of living translated its way into the sack, she could be hot like all hell! I’ll bet she was!

Maybe it was time for me to do something brave, like step up to the plate and see what it felt like to really be in love. Let myself go. Really be Italian and enjoy life and truly fall in love. We were already committed to each other. We respected each other too. What would I say to her? I would just tell her the truth. I would tell her how frightened I had been when I saw the fire, and feared for Gracie and Alex’s lives and how I just realized I didn’t want to live without her. Or Lindsey. Or Gracie.

LINDSEY had promised to close up the house, call Gretchen to enlist her help with the distribution of the boxes, and get herself back to school on the train. I knew that I could depend on Lindsey and that if there was a way Gretchen could help, she would.

I was coming undone. I knew it. I was close to screaming. No one understood the importance of my daughters to me. They were an extension of the very kernel of flickering light that kept me alive and wanting to live the days left to me. If anything were to happen to either one of them, my own life would have fallen into peril.

There was never a slower plane in Christendom than the one I boarded to return to Charleston. I prayed the entire way. The Lord’s Prayer. Hail Marys. Any prayer I could recall. Mostly they went like this—
Dear God, please
. And then through God’s mercy, I slept a little as the plane bounced and rolled its way down through the clouds.

The airport at Charleston was already filled with the life of another day’s beginnings. I wondered in my panic if anyone else here was rushing to the side of a loved one because of an emergency like mine. No, there could be no one else who felt as I did that morning. My heart was so heavy and my mind so worried that I cannot recall how I found the wherewithal to continue the simple motion of one foot in front of the other. The same force of fear that held me back was counterbalanced by the overwhelming pressure to get to my child as quickly as humanly possible. It would only have taken the slightest brush of another traveler or one question of inquiry from a security guard for me to lash out and wail my story without a breath until I had unburdened myself.

I came through the terminal without incident and Louise was waiting in the baggage claim area. I was so relieved to see her face. I had thought that I would just grab a taxi, but you know Louise by now. She would never have stood for a friend of hers arriving alone, especially one carrying a sack of trouble the size of mine.

“She’s all right, Linda,” she said. That was all she said.

I burst into tears. Then Louise burst into tears. People passing us probably thought we had no self-control or that we were grieving the loss of a friend or family member. In reality, we cried because we were frightened and because we could console each other in small measures as the magnitude of reality set in.

“Let’s go. We’re just wasting time here watering this cheap carpet.”

We began our way to her car and she updated me on everything.

“Gracie is still unconscious, but they expect her to wake up and fully recover. Kids heal fast, you know. And, she’s on oxygen because of the smoke to get some clean air in her lungs. So don’t be upset when you see that. And she’s got an IV, but they always give you an IV. Now, they put a pin in her ankle because she really cracked the hell out of it, so she ain’t gonna be dancing for a while.”

“My poor child!”

“She’s okay. It will heal beautifully they said because she didn’t walk on it. Alex went in to get her and found her unconscious and carried her out. Something must’ve fallen and hit her on the head. They gave him a big oxygen mask last night and he’s fine but he’s been sitting by Gracie’s bed with Brad and Mimi and he’s awfully upset. They all are.”

“I just want to put my arms around her,” I said.

“Well, in about five minutes you can do just that. I called my church and we got the prayer circle going.”

“Thanks, Louise. Seriously. Thank you.”

I could see her smile and I knew we were both thinking that we hoped the prayer circle worked as fast as heaven could bring it about. We were quiet then, just remarking on Alex’s bravery, the loss of the restaurant next door in addition to ours, the shock and surprise of it all and of course, how the sinister hand of the devil himself was all over the disaster.

“You think the devil ain’t got himself all wrapped up in Jason Miller’s mind? Honey, that’s possession if I ever saw it!”

“You’re right, sister.”

“Yeah, but you know what? The scuttlebutt is that the other people he had with him didn’t know he had brought gasoline in his car and they said that when they saw him pouring it all around the foundation, that they tried to stop him.”

“He’s a total lunatic.”

“Well, that’s what the
Post and Courier
said this morning.”

“That’s some pretty fast reporting, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but by coincidence, this reporter named Bill Thompson who usually covers other stuff was at a friend’s house until late and on his way back to Charleston when he saw the flames and stopped. He was there and saw the whole thing.”

“Well, that’s pretty crazy.”

“That’s how life is though, ’eah?”

“Yep. That’s how life is.”

It seemed that an eternity had passed between the airport terminal and the moment when we pulled up in front of the East Cooper Community Hospital Emergency Room entrance.

I ran in the door and saw Brad in the hall outside of what I assumed was Gracie’s room. He waved me over, as though it was necessary, and I hurried so that I don’t even remember going from the door to Gracie’s side, except that Brad’s face was the first one I saw.

Mimi was there, washing Gracie’s hands and face, removing the remains of soot and talking to her.

“Your momma’s here, Gracie. Do you want to say hello to her?”

I was so startled by the sight of my beautiful daughter, unconscious and in a hospital gown, that I had to hold on to the foot of her bed to steady myself. My beautiful Gracie, damaged and battered and her mind only who knew where. What was she hearing? I think I may have pushed Mimi aside when I climbed on the bed and kissed Gracie on her forehead.