Still Waters (23 page)

She
nods next to me, her eyes briefly meeting mine.

“I’m
so damn proud of you,” she whispers as we turn onto the highway that will take
me to the airport. “You knock em’ dead.”

I arrive in Jefferson late. The town is quiet
and misty, the shops and restaurants dark and the streets deserted. At the end
of the main road, I see the only city size building in town, its white walls
and tall glass panels completely wrong for a small town like this. I guess land
is cheaper outside of the city. And God knows, it’s all about money with the
Prestons.

I
use my key and push open the door to my lake house, but ask the taxi driver to
wait outside. David has a key, and there’s no way I’m sleeping here tonight. I
jog down the hall to my bedroom and grab some clothes from the wardrobe. I look
around before I flick the light off. David has hired someone to tidy up while I
was gone. By the time I make small talk with the owner of the only hotel in
town and make it to my room, I’m just about ready to collapse. But before I can
go to bed I pull out my Armani suit from its bag and iron it perfectly.
Tomorrow morning I’ll need my battle armor. We’re going to war.

Hartley

“Gloria
Peres?” I ask the woman waiting for me in the lobby the following morning. She
smiles and holds out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Hartley Preston. Did you
receive the report?”

“Yes,
I gave copies to everyone. We all read it last night.”

“But,
is it enough?”

She
nods and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“On
its own, maybe not, but with all of the work we’ve done with The Sullivan Group
we’re hoping we have more than enough evidence for the Judge to rule in our
favor.”

“How
long will the trial take?”

She
looks over her shoulder at the group of people in suits by the door.

“It’s
hard for me to say, but now that we have your samples and the files from
Preston Lab we think it’s going to be pretty quick. Two or three months. Of
course,” she adds briskly, “we still have a lot of work to do. Analyzing the
samples will take a month, at least.”

“I
understand,” I say quietly. She turns to go, but I put my hand on her arm,
stopping her. “But Ms. Peres - ”

“Please
call me Gloria.”

“Gloria.
Will Mr. Sullivan be at the trial?”

She
looks into my face, and something she sees there makes her eyes soften with
sympathy.

“He
will have to give evidence, but he’s chosen to do that via video link. I’m
sorry.”

“Oh,”
I stammer, trying to regain a sense of professionalism. “It’s not important. We
should go.”

She
nods once, and we cross the lobby together.

“I
hope you understand what we’re about to do,” she says quietly as we walk. “Your
father, he doesn’t play around. He’s a dangerous man.”

I
realize suddenly that she’s not quite sure of my motives. I am a Preston, after
all.

“Gloria,”
I say, turning to look at her. “I’m on your side, one hundred percent.”

She
lifts her chin and squares her shoulders, preparing herself for what’s coming.

“Now’s
the time to prove it.”

The next two months are a blur of meetings with
the legal team going through evidence, pages of scientific data and long, long
days in court. The Preston contingent sits on one side of the courtroom,
conspicuous in their designer clothes and perfectly coiffed hair. My family
refuses to look at me for the entire trial. When it’s my turn to testify, my
mother and sister stand up and walk out of the room. David glances in my
direction every now and then, trying to goad me into giving him a reaction.
He’s wasting his time. He’s been invisible to me ever since Venezuela.

When
I’m not at court, I’m at Preston Industries slowly sifting my way through
documents in my father’s office. When the story broke, the entire board was
forced to stand down while the investigation was pending. I’ve stepped in as
Chairperson until we have a verdict. More than anything, I want to keep the
company alive for the employees. Whenever I’m so tired I think I could cry, and
my fingers shake with exhaustion, I think about the cleaners and the admin
team; the catering crew in the cafeteria; the interns in the science lab
beneath my feet. Not the top floor self-satisfied assholes in their suits and
leather chairs. The work is good, it’s all consuming and challenging and allows
my mind to take over from my heart. It’s greedy for information, my brain, the
more I feed it, the hungrier and more demanding it becomes. But despite the
work, there is always some time of every day when I stop and think of nothing
but Crew. I haven’t heard from him since I left Venezuela, but Jake calls me
every few days to give me and update on how he is. The information he shares
with me is never enough. I drive him crazy asking questions he can’t answer. Is
he sleeping ok? How many nightmares did he have this week? Does he want to talk
to me?

When
the final week of the trial begins, I have to stop myself from crossing the
courtroom foyer at a run. It’s ridiculous, but I know that at some point this
week Crew will be giving evidence on a screen at the front of the room, and
even if he’s not really here with me, I can’t wait to see his face. Gloria is
talking to a group of lawyers as I hurry past. She lifts a hand to call me over
but I keep going. I want to get a good seat near the screen in case today is
the day. The room is buzzing with whispered conversation and people moving
around in their seats. The tension over the trial has reached fever pitch in
the last two weeks, and the gallery is packed with people from town. Dad is
sitting in the front with his back as straight as an arrow. My mother, sister
and David sit in the first row in the gallery. I see that Marta and Mom have
put their big handbags next to them on the seat so that no one from town can
sit too close. I take a seat over the other side of the room, as far away from
them as I can get. They know I’ve arrived, of course, I see them look at each
other as I pass.

We
have a few minutes before the Judge arrives, and everyone is getting
comfortable, preparing themselves for another long session. I look around the
crowd at people I’ve known all of my life. Some of them give me the thumbs up.
Others won’t even look at me. I take a breath and straighten my suit jacket and
push my glasses up my nose. I’m about to reach into my bag to turn off my phone
when I glance to the right. And then I see him. Just the sight of his face
knocks the air out of my lungs. His hair is shorter; it’s closer on the sides,
and the curly ends that I loved to run my fingers through are long gone. He’s
wearing a sharp blue suit and tie, and I realize that this is the very first
time I’ve seen him in anything other than an old t-shirt and jeans or a pair of
board shorts. He looks strikingly beautiful, as if he’s stepped out of the
pages of a fashion magazine. He looks as though he smells fantastic.

My
hands fumble in my lap, and I drop my handbag on the floor, the buckle hitting
the wood with a clang. He turns at the noise and looks in my direction, a small
smile dancing on his lips. He must have known I would be here of course.

Listening
to him give evidence is torture. The way his voice rises and falls, the slight
Spanish accent he’s picked up from spending so long in South America, the way
he commands respect from everyone in the room, by the way he talks about his
land and his plans for Still Waters. I watch him, barely breathing, remembering
the curve of his lips and the color of his eyes. Even though I can't take my
eyes off him, he doesn’t look in my direction once.

When
the Judge calls for recess everyone sighs and stands stiffly, filing out the
door. When I walk out into the lobby, I see him immediately. He’s waiting for
me on the far side of the room against the wall. My heart doubles its pace, and
my stomach is suddenly a swirl of butterflies. I feel like I’m a child again
about to walk on stage for my first piano recital. I’m both excited and utterly
terrified.

“Hey,
kid,” he says softly, as I make my way through the crowd to him. “How have you
been?”

I
look up into his eyes and my chest aches from all of the many things I’ve left
unsaid. I want to kiss him more than I want to breathe.

“Terrible.”

“Ah,”
he says, nodding as if he understands. “But I’ve been watching. You’ve taken
control of the company. You’re trying to do something good with it.”

“Yes,”
I say, but when I try to speak again, I’m interrupted.

“Mr.
Sullivan? We need you over here, please.”

He
looks at me apologetically.

“I’m
sorry, I’m booked up with interviews and meetings all day.”

He
holds up his hand to the woman waiting for him, and she reluctantly takes a few
steps backward, hovering by a water cooler.

“Crew,”
I say urgently, “what David said, none of that was true.”

God,
it feels unnatural standing here opposite him, keeping a respectful distance as
though we’re strangers, instead of completely, cosmically made for one another.

“I
know,” he says, smiling kindly. “And I understand about the samples. It took me
a while, but I can see now what David was trying to do. It’s ok. You were only
trying to do the right thing.”

I
breathe a sigh of relief.

“I
wish I’d just told you from the start. Everything would be different now.”

He
looks at me for a second too long and then turns his head away.

“I’m
sorry. I need to go.”

“Wait!”
I cry, and it comes out a little too loud. “Where can I get hold of you? There
are some things I need to say.”

 
“I appreciate that, Hartley. Really,” he sighs
sadly. “But there’s no need. I think we should just leave all of that in the
past and move on.”

I
look at him, my eyebrows knitted in confusion. In the thousands of moments that
I imagined seeing him again, none of them ever involved him brushing me off.

“Oh,”
I manage, and he looks at me with eyes full of sympathy and kindness. I take a
breath and touch the sleeve of his suit.

“Hartley,”
he says, “I’m just not in a place to… I’m…”

He
stops and looks at me helplessly.

I
swallow, plastering a phony smile on my face and pretend that this doesn’t hurt
at all, that my heart hasn’t just imploded, splintering into a million tiny
shards that cut like glass. “You look good, Crew.”

He
shrugs his shoulder in that way of his and smiles softly.

“Thanks.
I’ve started seeing someone.”

“What?”
I whisper, my stomach dropping to the floor. The corner of his mouth twitches.

“A
psychiatrist, Hartley. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist.”

“Oh,”
I stammer, as relief washes over me. “That’s really great, Crew.”

“It’s
all because of you. You started it. Hart, what you did for me - ”

The
woman waiting for him clears her throat rudely and holds up a clipboard.

He
looks down at me and sighs.

“It
was good seeing you, kid.”

I
nod, and step away from him, biting my lip to stop it from wobbling. I lift my
hand and mumble some semblance of a goodbye, and he hesitates for a moment
before bending down and kissing me lightly on the cheek. As soon as he steps
away from me he’s surrounded by cameras and people calling his name, fighting
for his attention. He strides confidently across the foyer towards the doors.
And he doesn’t look back.

Hartley

I barely
noticed the final week of the trial. I sat there daily, listening to both sides
sum up their evidence, but I couldn’t tell you a thing that anyone said. When
the Judge ruled in favor of The Sullivan Group and the EPA, I didn’t even
realize until Gloria grabbed my shoulders and shrieked into my ear. I pushed
her away and walked numbly past the shocked faces of my parents, out through
the doors and into the sunshine. I didn’t stop walking until the sun went down
behind the mountains.

 
The following morning, my father’s lawyer
delivered a letter to my hotel room explaining that my name had been removed
from my parent’s wills and that I would no longer be receiving payments into my
trust fund. My parents are petty, petty people. By then we all knew that wills
and trust funds and houses by the lake were completely irrelevant. You didn’t
have to be an accountant to know that once Preston Industries paid the
settlement to The Sullivan Group there would be almost nothing left. He was
just proving a point, twisting the knife one last time before I left town for
good.

And leave town I did. As soon as the
trial ended I put my house at the lake on the market and packed what little I
wanted to take with me into the trunk of my car. Then I turned my car out of
Jefferson and didn’t look back.

“Are you sure this is what you
want?” Eleanor asks me on my second week back in Twin Heads.

“I’m sure. But will it be ok with
you and Jake? I don’t want to be the third wheel. Especially when you’re in the
honeymoon phase of your relationship.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth,
I wish they hadn’t. I hate myself for being jealous of Jake and Nor. I wish I
were a big enough person to be happy for them, instead of just sad for me.

“Yes, of course,” she smiles. “It’s
going to be great. We’ll be college roomies again.”

“Except for the all night Lost
marathons.”

“And eating ramen noodles for
breakfast.”

She hands me the tape and I seal up
the last box. Thanks to my foresight, most of the cleaning and packing was
already done before I moved up to Jefferson for the trial.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she says
and heads out to the truck to talk to Jake.

I walk slowly from room to empty
room. I only lived here for such a short time, but this house is already full
of memories. My little green cottage was meant to be a refuge from the storm. I
arrived here frightened and panicked and in desperate need of shelter. It gave
me that. But I can’t be here without thinking of what could have been. And I
don’t want to make my home in a house that’s connected to Crew, even if my
landlord is thousands of miles away. I take one last look in the bedroom and
then walk down the hall. When I pass the bathroom and see the deep pink bath
against the wall, I close my eyes for a moment before shutting the door.

 
“You know,” Jake says meaningfully, a few days
later, “he never said anything about writing.”

When I look up, he’s sliding a piece
of paper and a pen across the kitchen table to me.

“You mean a letter? With paper?”

He smiles. “Why not? It might
surprise him into reading it.”

“Why doesn’t he just talk to me?”

Jake sighs. “He’s not talking to
anyone.”

“Not even you?”

He shakes his head. “Not for over a
week now. He’s seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress
disorder. He says he doesn’t want to talk to anyone while he does the work.”

“Jake,” I say, looking across the
table at him. “Just tell me the truth. Is there any point? Are you sure he
doesn’t hate me?”

He smiles sadly and reaches over to
touch my hand.

“Of course not. Hart, he knows that
your intentions were good. He’s not angry with you, and he definitely doesn’t
hate you. It’s the opposite. I think he’s trying to fix himself because he
loves you.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I mumble.
But it makes perfect sense. “I wanted to help him.”

“Crew doesn’t want to be half a man
for you, Hart. Don’t you get it?” he smiles and squeezes my hand. “It never
mattered with the others. It matters with you.”

“Jake,” I say, and my voice is
barely more than a whisper. “I can’t keep waiting forever not knowing where I
stand. This is killing me.”

He nods sympathetically and looks
into my eyes.

 
“He knows that. He understands that you might
not be here when he comes back. And he knows how hard this is for you. That’s
why he asked me to take care of you until he’s able to do it himself.”

He returns to the newspaper he was
reading as I move the paper closer and fiddle with the pen. The blank page
looms in front of me, looking bigger and emptier by the second. How can I
possibly explain how I feel about him by scratching some lines on a page? Crew
is the one who is good with words, not me. He's the one with a book for every
place he loves. Words mean so much to him that he has them written on his skin.
I read research papers and analyze data for fun. My notebooks are full of
diagrams and procedures, not feelings or thoughts. I look back down at the
blank page and slam the pen on the table. I can't write to him. We don't speak
the same language.

Jake looks up at the sound and
watches me carefully. I glance at him quickly and then look away. The sympathy
in his eyes reminds me of how very sad I am. And today, I'm sad enough.

"Hart," he says softly as
he walks around the table and kisses the top of my head. "Don't overthink
it. Think of him and write what you feel."

I take a deep breath and watch him
leave the kitchen, wiping an angry tear off my cheek with the heel of my hand.
I can feel. Feeling isn't the problem. I feel it all, loneliness and longing
and guilt at hurting him. I feel too much. How ironic that with all of the
languages I speak and all of the thousands of words I know, I don’t seem to be
able to put together a single sentence.
Think
of him
.

So I do. I think about the scar on
his arm that he got in a surfing accident when he was fifteen, the way it feels
when I run my finger over it. The look on his face when he talks about his
work, passionate and fiercely determined. The way he always held my hand, even
if we were only walking from the bed to the door. The books he told me about on
our walks along the sand. The way he has the perfect quote for every moment
waiting on his tongue. And then an idea pops into my head. Maybe there is a way
I can do this. I pick up the pen and quickly scribble across the page before I
have time to change my mind.

"
I
see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you are everything that
exists; the reality of everything."

V.W

I tear the page in half and then rip
around the words so that it's just a scrap of paper that can fit in the palm of
my hand. I slip it into an envelope and write his address in Costa Rica on the
front.

“I’m going out Jake,” I call as I
pull my coat off the hook and open the door. If I don’t post it right this
second, I know I never will.

Once I start writing to Crew in
quotes, I can’t stop. I send them almost daily, scribbling words in between
applying for jobs and helping at The Sea Shack and before I go to sleep at
night. I write them quickly, without thinking, and on anything I can find. On a
spectacularly bad day when I thought I’d die from loneliness, I wrote:
What
if I told you I’m incapable of tolerating my own heart?
on the back
of a takeout menu, before throwing it into the post box on my way home. Then, a
couple of days later, I wrote:
You can’t separate me from the person
you’ve imagined me to be
on a Post-It note in deep, sharp letters, and then
shoved it angrily into an envelope before pushing it into the post box with a
smack of my hand.

But I never allow myself to imagine
him reading them. As soon as the envelopes disappear I release the words from
my heart and try not to think of them again. Sometime around the twentieth
envelope I begin to wonder why I’m writing them; are they for Crew, or are they
really for me?

As the days since I saw him stretch
into weeks, I notice that I’m writing less often. First it’s every second day,
and then every three or four. By the time spring comes to an end I find myself
sitting at Eleanor’s kitchen table knowing that I’m about to write my two final
notes. I choose them carefully and unlike the others, I’m still in the moment
and take my time copying out the words. Taking a deep breath, I pick up the
Spanish newspaper I ordered - Crew’s Twin Heads ritual read. I rip a shape of a
sun from a page at the back and write the words neatly around the edges

He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by
memory, tinged by dreams.

For my last quote, I pick up the
luggage tag from my flight home from Venezuela months before. It feels like a
lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday. I still my shaking hand and write the
words slowly, looking at them without moving for a long, long time.

The moment was all; the moment was enough.