Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (14 page)

“School’s fine,”
Ava tried to think of how to phrase it.  “It’s… yeah.  It’s a guy.”

“Ah...” he said
quietly.

There was
another silence. Ava knew without seeing him that her father had picked up a
pack of cigarettes and was tapping one out.  (Oliver Brooks might be a
great father, but he was damned predictable when it came to his own coping
mechanisms.)

“You wanna talk
about it?” His words were muted by the cigarette now dangling from his lips.

“Uh… I dunno,
Dad,” Ava answered, then sighed heavily.  “Can I just ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“When you met
Mom, was she...?”  Ava stopped, her throat aching.    She
pressed her eyes closed, her fingers a claw around the receiver.

“Whoa there,
kiddo,” her father said gently.  “What’s going on?  Seriously
now.  What is this about, Ava?  This is
not
about your
mother.”

She let out a
laugh that was sharp with suppressed tears.

“No, that’s not
the
only thing
going on,”  Ava admitted, rubbing angrily at her
eyes, “it’s not just that… but I want to know.  What was she like? 
Before
…
I mean.”

Ava heard the
whoosh of her father blowing out a lungful of smoke.  It was a sound she
knew, the sound of him settling in for a long phone call.

“Well then,” he
said softly, “let’s start at the beginning...”

An hour later
and they were still talking.  They’d rehashed the ill-fated marriage of
Oliver and Shay Brooks, stirring the cold ashes of love for the hidden embers of
what had gone wrong. 
“It didn’t help that you were already on the
way,”
her father told Ava.
  “Getting married seemed like the right
thing to do… But I never regretted you in the least.” 
His words had
left her with a truth that consoled her more than she could explain.  

The man sleeping
in her bedroom was nothing like her mother.

Ava knew her
father was good at listening, and without really intending to, she shared her
concerns about Cole and the darkness he carried around with him.  The control
she’d seen him practise for so long.  (The tether she’d only just
discovered could be broken.)

“Can I give you
my read on things?” Oliver finally asked. 

Ava
smiled.  He didn’t like people calling him on his ability to do that, but
here he was admitting to it.

“Yeah, Dad,” she
said tiredly.  “You can.”

“Well, I’d like
to
meet him
before I say anything for sure,” he said lightly, (and Ava
wondered how long he’d been working around to dropping that offhand comment),
“but if Chim thinks he’s a good guy, and Cole’s kept it together for this long
around you… it could be that this artist really hit a hot button topic for
him.”

Ava shifted, her
eyebrows knitting together in worry.

“What do you
mean?”

She could hear
her father sucking the smoke into his lungs.  He blew it away, buzzing the
receiver, before he answered.

“Well, kiddo,
you were an angry kid for a long, long time after your mother left.”

He left rest of
that story standing, unchallenged.

“Yeah.”

“It took a long
time for you to figure a healthy way to deal with that…
Years
, in
fact...” Her father sighed sadly. If he’d been there with her, she would have
hugged him. 

She wished he
was.

“It’s okay,
Dad,” she whispered.

“But your friend
Cole here has got
more
than just a divorce to deal with,” he continued. 
“Who
knows
what those issues with his dad are.  But he never talks
about his mom either.   Throw in a stepmother and a dead sister –
expectations of a military family – and then this hotshot artist pushing the
anti-war rhetoric in his face, calling him out in front of a crowd of—”

“All right, all
right!” Ava said, wincing.  “I get it.  He’s messed up. 
I
get that
.”

“Ah, but I don’t
think you do,” her father argued gravely.  “I believe people
can
change.  I believe anyone
– absolutely anyone
– can get better… do
better… and it sounds to me like Cole is trying.”

Ava scowled.

“Okay...?”

“So from what I
can tell, he freaked out tonight… maybe with good reason.  Maybe
not.  After that, he went and blew off steam the only way he knew
how.  Not healthy, no, but… it’s not the worst thing I can think of. 
Sounds a lot like a sixteen-year-old girl I once knew.”  He laughed. 
“And she turned out alright in the end.  So maybe Cole just needs some
nudging in the right direction… needs someone to talk to who might know how
he’s feeling...”

Ava clucked her
tongue in irritation.

“God, Dad, you
and your
‘let’s talk this out’
approach is really getting old.”

He chuckled and
she smiled.  It was almost like he was here.

“Or don’t,” he
added with a sigh.  “But then you should probably end things with
him.  Because if it’s bothering you this much, Ava, it’s not just going to
go away on its own.”

The last
statement was a kick in her stomach because she
knew
it was true. 

“So we talk
about it,” she repeated.

“That’d be my suggestion,
because...” For a moment, the phone went so quiet, Ava thought the connection
to Australia had been lost.

“Dad?  You
still there?”

He sighed.

“Look, I
honestly don’t know the whole story,” he finally added.  “But it sounds to
me like you’re in love with him.”

: : : : : : : :
: :

Ava crawled back
into bed in the darkest hour of night.  Talking to her father helped her
to sift through her emotions, leaving her feeling more settled than she’d been
in hours.

“People can
change,”
her
father’s voice assured her.

As she slid
under the sheets beside Cole’s sleeping form, she smiled.  She’d known
Cole Thomas since the start of the semester and Chim had known him for a year
before that.  Even Suzanne vouched for him as a good guy.  As her
father had reminded her, this was the first time she really saw his emotions
pull him under.  Ava smiled sadly, pressing a kiss to his temple, noting
how – even in sleep – he reacted to the gesture.  He nuzzled closer and
Ava’s arms wrapped around him, the action genuine this time.

 There was
hope for the two of them.

Her breathing
slowed to match his; his body wrapped her in a blanket of heat.  The quiet
sounds of night time in the city continued, and Ava succumbed to the inexorable
pull of exhaustion.

: : : : : : : :
: :

He’d had this
dream before.

Cole knelt in a
field of swirling sea grasses, the trees with their yellow leaves and the river
beyond.  In the distance, waves crashed against the shore, the sound of
the water unnaturally calm after the storm.  He took another shaking
breath, sobs catching in his throat.  This was to have been their new
beginning.  The one they’d talked about for so long. 

It wasn’t to be.

She lay in front
of him, her body pale and white. Cole lifted her hand – the fingernails purpled
with cold – pressing it between his fingers, trying vainly to warm her. 
She was breathing, but just barely, lips pale and ringed with blue, as she
stared blindly to the sky above.

“Stay...” he
whispered.  “Stay with me, Ava...”

There was no
answer.

Around them, the
wind rose and fell.  He lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a hard kiss
against her icy knuckles.  She was almost gone -
 he knew that –
and
yet still he had hope.  The boats were long gone.  Her husband, along
with two hundred other souls, scattered and lost after they had gone
down.  Likely drowned.

‘As she is...’
his mind
whispered, but he pushed it fiercely aside.  She still breathed!

“I found you,”
Cole wheezed.  “I knew that I would find you, but you have to stay with
me, Ava.”  His voice broke.  “Stay!  Please… my darling, we can
start over.  We can begin again...”

He stared down
into her eyes as he spoke, catching the moment her pupils began to change, the
black blocking out the beloved blue.  He’d seen it before – in battle –
and knew what it meant.

“I love you,
Ava,” he sobbed, leaning forward, dropping a gentle kiss against cold
lips.  “I have always loved you… I always will.”

He pressed his
ear tight against the wet fabric of her chemise.  The faint beating from
seconds earlier was now gone, her chest still and cold.

Gone...

He closed his
eyes, the tug of the dream receding.

: : : : : : : :
: :

Ava dreamt of
her painting of the snake and the coins again, only this time the dream had
started a little earlier.  Instead of floating up above the scene, she was
now in it
.

She stared up in
surprise, getting her bearings.  The bright sky, the grass swirling around
her face, and Cole’s grief-stricken face suddenly looming before her.

‘Well that’s
new...’
 

He looked older,
his face creased with pain, his hair long.  Cole looked worn and weary,
the same way he’d been when he came to her apartment earlier tonight.  As
she watched – floating numbly – he lifted her hand. She caught sight of his
knuckles. 

Those
she recognized. 

They were bloody
and torn, the skin on both hands shredded.  Cole was speaking to
her,  but she couldn’t hear the words.  Everything was narrowing and
expanding at once, the sky brightening until almost white, while her focus
faded.  Her arms ached to hold him and assure him that everything would be
okay.  That this
–  this moment now –
was how it was meant to
be.
 

There was a
sudden tug – like a rope pulling free of its mooring – and her vision
altered.  She was now above him, looking down.  Sounds returned –
everything clear and new.  Even the leaves fluttering in the distant trees
were perfect, her mind articulating each flutter of wind dancing through
them.  Ava began to pull back and away.  She could see
herself
on the grass next to Cole.  (
‘Or not Cole, actually,’
her mind
whispered,
‘my Thomas...’
).  Her limbs were battered, the long
dress askew.

“I love you,
Ava,” he sobbed. “I have
always
loved you… I always will.”

Ava felt herself
shift, pulling up into the sky. 
‘Away… away… away...’ 
There
was peace as her body dissolved into the nothingness from which we all
come.  Vibrations returning to the universe.  Spreading out and
upward.  Her conscious mind focused on Cole even as she floated looking
down onto the scene below. 

Watching him.

She could see
the wind-blown grass and the trees, the yellow field and the river leading out
to the ocean beyond.

‘Oh, there’s the
snake and the coins, now,’
Ava thought in surprise.

: : : : : : : :
: :

Cole thrashed in
bed, his body sweat-slicked in fear. 

“No… please,
god, no…
”
he yelled in a broken voice.  “Don’t leave me!”

Next to him,
something brushed his hand and he spun in confusion.   He blinked,
the image of
that world
and this one suddenly meshing.  He glanced
down in shock to see her next to him.

“Ava, my god,”
he sobbed as he caught sight of her face, pale against the pillow.  “I… I
thought I lost you.”

He reached out
for her with shaking hands.

“ ‘S’okay,” she
mumbled, her  voice thick with sleep.  “I was just on the phone with my
dad… but I’m back now.  It’s okay, Cole...”

He pulled her
into his arms, body wrapping around her.  She was here, and she was
real
…
Cole took a shaky breath.  He’d just had the dream again… the one he
hadn’t had in almost a year.  The one that had haunted him for months
after Hanna’s death.

With a jolt,
Cole’s body was suddenly coursing with adrenaline.  Ava was the woman from
the dream. 

She always had
been.

For a moment,
there was too much for him to deal with.  He held onto Ava’s sleep-warmed
body the way a drowning man might cling to a life preserver, forcing himself
back through the last hours: the argument at the gallery, drinking at the bar,
then the fight in the alley
.  Coming here to Ava. 
For a
second he was horrified with himself.   ‘
She came back to me...’
his mind whispered
.
  Cole’s breathing slowed as the panic eased
from his chest.  He cradled her closer, and she turned into him in sleep,
her lips half open, body soft and pliant.