The One Who Got Away: A Novel (19 page)

“Where
were
you? We tried
to call your cell. Your home. So many times.”

Olivine shrugged and shook her
head. Paul had arrived and was pacing the other side of the waiting room. He
looked at the floor, at the khaki and ecru tiles. His face was long and his
eyes heavy-lidded. Christine turned toward Yarrow and had just opened her mouth
to say something when a brown paneled door opened at the end of the hall and a
petite woman in blue scrubs came toward them, smiling. “Dr. Metcalf is still in
there, but you are welcome to go in now.” Olivine turned to grab for Paul’s
hand, out of instinct, to go down the hall with her, but he stayed back in the
waiting room. He talked to the nurse for a moment, softly.

And so Olivine grabbed for
Yarrow’s hand instead, and they walked just behind their mother and as they
reached Artie’s room, she saw Paul in a reflection of the glass on the door,
three paces behind. And then she saw her father in the room, with the oxygen
tubes in his nose, looking like Dad. His color was wrong, but he smiled at
them, his familiar wry smile, as they marched in.  “My tall beauties,” he said in
a weak voice to Dr. Metcalf.  “Look at my bevy of beauties.”  

The doctor glanced up from his
notes to pull his lips back into a smile. He had a bald head and large features
and Olivine felt suddenly like she had entered a cartoon. Everything seemed
exaggerated and slightly off. When Paul entered, Dr. Metcalf shook his hand and
they spoke softly together for a moment.

Then Dr. Metcalf turned to them
all, and he said, “He’s going to be fine. He’s going to need to go through some
cardio rehab, which you can all help him with. We’ll be working to come up with
the right combination of medication, as well, which can do a lot to ensure this
doesn’t happen again.” He turned then to Artie and patted his leg. His hands
were large, like paddles. “And we’ll be able to talk about all of that on a new
day. For now, let’s let him rest as much as possible. He’ll be staying here for
a little while.”

“A little while?” Christine said,
her hand going to her chest.

“At least through the night. And
probably tomorrow, too. All precautionary,” he said. “We will take good care of
him, and…” he glanced at his clipboard, “Christine, you are welcome to spend
the night. That bench folds into a bed and there are linens in the closet. I’ll
have a nurse show you, if you wish to stay.”

“Oh, I wish to stay,” Christine
said. 

“The rest of you should probably
make your way home soon. Dad has had a big day. And he’s going to be just
fine.”

He gave a tight-lipped smile to
each of them, one and then another, and then he disappeared from the room. Paul
walked toward Artie, clapped his hand on his shoulder, strong and resolute. His
voice deepened, “I’ll make sure you will get the best care possible.” Then Paul
turned and smiled at Christine. He put his arms around her, squeezed and
released. Then he turned to Yarrow. “Could you give Olivine a ride home? I’m
going to need to check on a few things here.” Yarrow nodded, and, without a word
or a glance back to Olivine, Paul charged back through the door. 

The house was still and filled
with the clean scent of her life with Paul. Candle wax and houseplants. Her cell
phone lay on the kitchen counter just where she had left it. Nineteen missed
calls and twelve voice messages, all from the night before, between eight
o’clock and eight-fifteen. No new calls from Paul. Had he stayed at the
hospital? Had he gone out to the cabin? Should she go out there, too? No, what
if Paul returned, and she wasn’t here? That would be the end. She couldn’t go
back there. Not tonight.

The back of her throat burned each
time she swallowed. Her stomach churned and growled, but she didn’t feel she
had the energy to chew or swallow food. Standing at the dining room table, she
deleted the voicemails from her phone without listening to them. And then she
showered, turning the water so hot it made her light-headed. Dizzily, she
walked to the closet where she chose something lacy and satiny but floor-length.
She tied her hair in a towel and then she sat down at Paul’s desk, varnished
and polished to a shine. She opened the top middle drawer where she knew he
always kept fifty sheets of extra-white paper, and she pulled out three crisp
pages.

She felt so deliberate, suddenly.
So reverent. She heard her breath echo in her head. She chose a pen, a heavy
Montblanc, from the first drawer on the right. She held it, poised above the
paper for a time, and then she began to write.

The pen was just right: the ink flowed
quickly and the tip never snagged as she slid her hand across the page. She
never lifted her pen or stopped to read what she had written; she simply kept
her hand gliding over the paper as quickly as she could, and, before long, her
letters and words became loopy and loose, and her words became honest and free.

She wrote about her father and the
look on his face when he saw her enter his hospital room. The heart monitors
and tubes. The grayness around his mouth and near his temples. His lips the
color of dust and ash.

She did not write about Paul. She
did not write about Henry. But she wrote about love. Her love for her father,
for her mother, for her sister, for her grandmother and for her grandfather.
She wrote about her sister’s love for Jon and for their children. She wrote
about her love for the mountains and the lakes and the streams and the cabin.

And when she had been writing
awhile, she felt her chest lift and expand. She felt the fuzziness in her head
begin to fade. And she sat for a minute, knowing just what she would do.

She gathered the pages she had
filled, tapped them once on the desk, and folded them in half. Where in her
home could she keep them? Did she have a place of her own here? A place where
Paul wouldn’t see them or read them? She thought for a moment, and then she
folded the papers in half again and slipped them into her handbag.

Then she slid between the sheets
of her bed, and she turned toward the wall and pretended to be asleep, just in
case Paul came home and wanted to talk. And this was how she finally drifted
off.

Sunlight flooded though the
skylight, and Olivine’s eyes blinked open. She lifted her head toward Paul’s
side of the bed. It was pulled tight. Pillows still arranged in neat stacks. He
had probably spent the night at the hospital. Was he on call? She couldn’t
remember.

She wanted to call Henry, but she
realized then that she didn’t have a way to reach him. She laughed to herself
that this man—who dominated her every thought, who made her body come alive, in
memory and, now, in life—hadn’t even given her his phone number.

She grabbed for her phone on the
nightstand and called Christine to check on Artie. He was feeling fine. He had
a restful night and was eating breakfast. Yes, his color looked good, she said.
Much better. Olivine promised she would come out right away. And she would, but
first, she would go out, and she would see Henry. She would drive out there to
see, in the light of day, if things were the same. If things felt the same. He would
want to know, too. He would want to know that her dad was okay. That everything
was okay.

She felt like a schoolgirl then,
giddy and elastic. She and Henry Cooper had nearly kissed. She giggled to
herself. She had nearly let it happen. Her face was just rising to meet his… she
played it over in her mind and the scene took on a dreamlike, cinematic
quality. And then Paul had come and sent her world crashing down on her. But it
would all be okay. Henry had found her again. He had cracked her world open
again. He had made her feel the juice and the glow. The way she always felt
with him. An ease, a safety. A sense that everything would be okay. 

*****

Bare branches clicked against the
side of the Jeep as she roared up the driveway. There was another car here, parked
nose-to-nose alongside Henry’s bus. A silver sedan. Small with a few dents on
the side.

And there, on the porch, with the
cut tables stood Henry. He held a hand up to her in greeting. Palm up. Olivine
leapt out of the Jeep and burst up the steps to the front porch.

“He’s going to be okay!” she
blurted, and she moved close to him, ready to throw her arms around his neck,
but here…here in the light of day, Henry stood stiff and cold. He gave her a
curt nod as he took a step backward. His lips pressed together into a tight
line.

Everything stopped inside her.
Her hands and face felt large and conspicuous, like they had taken a hit of
Novocain. She watched as Henry turned to a man—or was it a boy?—who was
standing off to the side of the cut table. The young man stared at her, and she
struggled to place him. “Who is going to be okay?” he asked, looking only at
Henry. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen, and tall, an inch or so taller than
Henry, but his posture was rounded. He had dishwater blond hair, the same shade
as his complexion, and he wore jeans and a green t-shirt emblazoned with a
Mountain Dew logo.

The quilt from last night was
folded neatly in a corner, covered with a fine layer of sawdust. The cut tables
and the sawhorses stood there just as they had the night before. A single
yellow cord now snaked along them, connected to a circular saw which rested on
its side near a series of chisels. The scent of cedar was suddenly cloying,
suspended in the air.

“Her dad. He had a heart attack last
night,” Henry answered, turning to face the boy.

Then he turned toward Olivine. “You
must be so relieved.” His voice was angular and automatic. He looked at her as
though she were a client, needlessly flitting about the jobsite.

Olivine’s eyes beaded up. Her
throat tightened. Damn him. He was going to do it to her
again
. Lure her
in. Leave her.

“This is Olivine,” Henry was
saying to the young man. “She owns this cabin.”

“Oh,” he said, and he buried his
hands in his pockets.

Henry continued to look at her
blankly, coolly, as though just waiting for her to leave, so he could forget
the interruption and return to his work, to his…whoever this was.

Olivine cocked her head sideways.
If she were going to be treated like a client, she would act like one. “And you
are?” she asked, her voice suddenly tight, commanding.

Henry shook his head at her.
“This is Max,” he said. His voice was cool.

Of course. Faced with his family,
everything was different. She should have known. “Max,” she repeated. “Glad to
meet you.” She thrust out her hand and looked him straight in the eye.

He pumped her hand once and then
dropped it. “I’m Henry’s son.” He punched each syllable. “Who are you?”

Henry answered in a steely tone: “I’ve
already told you, Max. This is Olivine. She owns this house. She is our
client.
She comes by on occasion to find out how progress is going.”

Henry then turned to Olivine and
said, “It’s going well. We can remove the clamps as soon as this afternoon. Then
we’ll apply the stain and she’ll be done.”

“So, we’ll be finished and out of
here in a day or two,” the boy added, his gaze unflinching.

“Perfect then,” Olivine said.  

She had been dismissed, and, not
having any more to say, she nodded and started back to the Jeep.

No. She wasn’t going to let it
end like this. She whipped back around to face him. Henry’s jaw was set, his
brow furrowed.

“I won’t be by again,” she said, looking
straight into Henry’s eyes, “So I’d like to give you my cell phone number. That
way you can reach me if you need to. If you have any questions…or if you want
to offer any explanations.”

Henry folded his arms across his
chest, and he stood still. She strode to the cut table where a carpenter’s
pencil lay in the sawdust, and she snatched it up, willing her hands not to
shake. And she wrote her cell phone number directly on the plywood cut table.
And then she turned to go. She couldn’t look at his expressionless, blank face.
Not again. She could not look at this man who, twelve hours before, she would
have given herself to.

Once again, he had shut her out,
pushed her out, folded her up and sent her away. He had dismissed her and he
had dismissed her memory, and she could do the same with him. She had done it
before, and she would do it again.

Thank goodness Paul had come
along when he did. Into her life, and into the driveway last night. Before she
had thrown it all away for…for him. Paul wasn’t perfect, but life with him was
predictable. It was controlled. It was secure. It was never hot and cold like
this. And it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t too late to find Paul and to get him
back.

As she popped open the door to
the Jeep, she heard the whirring of a saw. He was back to work. Just like that.
She slammed the door shut, whipped the car around in the driveway and roared
away—snow and ice and pebbles pinging upward in her wake. Inside, she felt
still. And alone.

*****

Once she reached the highway, she
let the tears fall, without bringing a hand to her face. How could she have
been so stupid? Again. Ten years later, and it was the same. Again. Wait for
Olivine to fall hard. Shut her down. Thank God she had gone out there this
morning. To see. Before Paul was lost to her forever.  

She wiped her face now with the
back of her hand and sat taller in the seat. Tall clouds had settled into the
valley, and spring snow had begun to fall. Each flake was the size of a
quarter, plunking downward on the road and on the landscape, obscuring it with
a wetness and white.

Where would Paul be right now?
Home? The hospital? She took a corner too fast, and slid on the slush that was now
collecting on the road. She steered into the skid and righted the car just as a
sedan came around the corner. Her heart pounded hard.  

She glanced down at her phone,
which she had tossed on the passenger seat. No calls, no texts. And still the
snow fell. It piled on her windshield, and she turned the wipers on full blast
.
Ka-skwunk, ka-skwunk
. Bits of ice and snow flew in all directions.

Paul was always at the hospital.
She would go there. She would check on Dad. She would go and be with her
family. She would go where she belonged.

The placid woman at reception
directed her down a new hallway, to a new room. Yarrow was just coming out of Artie’s
door with Jon and each of her children fanned around her. The older children held
one another’s hands; baby Claire clutched at Jon’s shoulder. As Olivine
approached, Yarrow waved them down the hallway and then she grabbed for
Olivine’s hand and she squeezed at it and she said, softly, “He’s going to be
okay, Olivine.” And Olivine’s mind flashed to Henry and to the young man who
was now standing beside him, working beside him, and she realized that, for
eight years, Henry had been this young man’s step-father. They had eight years of
history, of loving one another, in just the same way she loved her family. Henry
was simply not available to love her. It was too late. She would continue her
life with Paul. She would continue making her own history. Olivine’s anger
ebbed into a dull ache, straight in the center of her chest.

“What happened last night? Between
you and Paul?” Yarrow asked. “Did you guys have a fight?”

“No, no, it’s okay. Just a
misunderstanding.”

“Olivine, he seemed really
upset.”

“Was he here?”

“Mom said he was here most of the
night, in and out. Checking on Dad, making sure he was okay. And he talked to
the cardiologist this morning, too. Early. When he came by for rounds.”

Olivine shuddered. While she had
been out trying to chase after Henry, Paul had been looking after her father.

Yarrow continued, “They talked
about a number of different medication options, and we’re pretty sure he’ll be
able to go home today. Later this afternoon. Paul said he’d be leaving town for
a few days, but to call him if she needed to. If she needed anything at all. Where
are you guys going? I didn’t know you were leaving for a few days.”

“No, no. I don’t know.”

“Oh.” 

“Did Paul say anything? About
me?”

“Nothing. He just got this look
on his face when Mom asked where you were last night. Where he had finally
found you.” She looked up at her sister; stared right into her eyes. “Were you
guys…were you and Henry?”

“No. No. Nothing. I’m going to
fix it, Yarrow. Right now. I’m going to fix this thing with Paul.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t mess this up, Ollie. What
you’ve got is a good, good thing. He’s a good, good man.”  

“I know.” She looked at her
phone. Blank. No messages from Henry. No messages from Paul.

“Wish me luck,” Olivine said. “I
think I might need it.” And she raced back to her car, where she fished her
ring out of the glove box. And she set out to make things right. To fix what
she had done.