The Wishing Tide (30 page)

L
ane was dazed when she woke the next morning, aware of a vague sense that something was wrong, but unable to put her finger on what. Then she saw the hoodie tossed on the chair, smeared with a combination of mud and blood.

Mary—no, Hannah—was in the hospital.

And Michael was leaving.

She hadn’t expected him to be happy about the news, but she hadn’t expected rage, either. There had been a moment, as he opened the sketchbook, when his face had softened and some of the anger had drained away, a moment when she thought there might be reason to hope, but it hadn’t lasted. Instead, he had turned on her, lashing out like a wounded animal, accusing, blaming, and ultimately shutting her out. How could something she believed so right have turned out so wrong?

She showered and dressed for the hospital, frowning at the pale face and darkly smudged eyes staring back at her from the mirror. She scraped her damp hair into a ponytail, thought about dabbing on some concealer, a little lip gloss, anything to make her look less undead, then decided coffee would have to do.

With Hannah’s sketchbook in hand, she ventured down to the
kitchen, trying to ignore the hitch in the pit of her stomach when she found it empty, the coffee machine conspicuously untouched. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’d made his intentions clear last night, and she couldn’t help noticing as she came down that the door to his room had been left open, the drawers of the bureau not quite closed, all the signs of a guest preparing to check out.

She found him in the den, packing the last of his books. He didn’t look up when she entered, though the subtle tensing of his shoulders told her he knew she was there. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, then closed it again, wanting to find the words that would make him rethink his decision to shut Starry Point and his mother out of his life. In the end, she said nothing, just laid the sketchbook on the smooth mahogany table.

Michael glanced at it, then looked away. “I don’t want it.”

“You did—enough to come back and look for it. You should take it so you’ll at least have something of hers. I think she’d like to know you had it.”

His eyes, cold and steely, locked with hers as he leaned across the table and pushed the book back at her. “I need you to promise me—to swear to me—that you will never bring up my name to her. Never. Do you understand?”

Lane stiffened. “I have absolutely no intention of bringing up your name, not after everything she’s been through. Her doctor was adamant about not exposing her to any emotional upheaval. And if learning your last living son is within your reach but wants nothing to do with you doesn’t qualify as emotional upheaval, I don’t know what does.”

“Everything
she’s
been through?”

Lane fought to rein in her emotions. He needed clarity, not a lecture. “Michael, I know this is hard for you, that it brings up a lot of painful memories, but Hannah’s life hasn’t exactly been a picnic, either. She lost her husband, and then Peter, both in such awful ways.
Then to be locked up for years, put through God knows what. It’s a miracle she survived at all. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not asking you to forget everything, but a little compassion would be a good thing for her right now. And for you.”

Michael wasn’t having it. He thrust his chin out, eyes flashing. “Whatever she survived, she created. Do you know why my father left that day? Why he headed out on the
Windseeker
when he knew full well there was a storm coming? It was because he couldn’t take anymore. He wanted a little peace and it killed him. She killed him.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Maybe, but it’s true. It’s what she does. She hurts the people in her life—my father, my brother, me. And now she’s dragged you in. I’m telling you, you need to stay as far away from that woman as you can get, which is exactly what I plan to do.”

Lane fought the tightening of her throat. He was staring at her, waiting for her to say something—good-bye probably. She let her eyes slide to the box of notebooks and legal pads near the door, the only proof that, for a time at least, he’d been a part of her life. Soon even that would be gone. She squared her shoulders.

“You do what you have to, Michael. I wish you’d stay, but I understand why you think you can’t. I won’t turn my back on her, though. Maybe because I didn’t go through what you did. Anyway, I have to leave for the hospital now. They’re weaning her off the sedation today, and I want to be there when she comes to. You can leave your key under the mat when you finish packing up. I’ll settle your bill to your card and mail you a copy of your receipt.”

Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at his feet. “I’ll be happy to pay for the whole winter.”

So this was what it was now. Innkeeper and guest. Polite. Businesslike. “No,” she said with an evenness that surprised her. “Just for the time you were here.”

He cleared his throat, shuffled from foot to foot. “Lane, I know
you think I’m some kind of monster for running out, but I just can’t stay. I thought maybe I could, that I could learn to deal with the memories, maybe even put them behind me. But I can’t now, not with her here. This is what I have to do.”

“I get that you think it is. But you told me once that I only had one mother, that I’d be sorry if anything ever happened to her. Do you remember that?”

“This is different.”

“No, I don’t think it is,” she said evenly. Getting self-righteous wouldn’t solve anything, and it certainly wouldn’t change his mind. “Hannah’s your mother, the woman who brought you into this world, and loved you in the only way she knew how. And I’m afraid that one day you’re going to regret this, and that you’ll have to live with it for a very long time.”

He shocked her by smiling, a slow, hard, bitter curl of his lips. “You think that’s the worst thing I’ll have to live with?”

“That’s a question only you can answer, Michael.” She turned away then, before he could see the tears pooling in her eyes, realizing too late that they’d never gotten around to saying good-bye.

Mary

I
t seems at long last that I have finally come unmoored, detached from arms and legs, hovering in some underwater twilight, my only awareness the dark slippery walls of my own mind. Is this death, then? The wispy shift between the world and what comes after? I think not. Hell wouldn’t be so quiet—or so cold. And there’s a pain slowly coming to life behind my left eye, a knife slicing through my skull that tells me I’m alive.

The restraints again, then, pinning my limbs to the bed. Yes, that must be it. They’ve sent me back, found out who I am and what I did. The smells are familiar, too, Pine-Sol and misery. I try to open my eyes, to see where they’ve put me, but my lids are so heavy, so gritty, that I can only lie here and force my brain to take inventory of my body, of its throbs and aches, and wonder what they plan to do with me.

And then I see it all, playing out on the backs of my lids, like a movie running the wrong way. A crushing pain as my head smacks the pavement. The crunch and give of something in my shoulder. A kind of lurching, disembodied tumbling as I sail, sail, sail through the air. Running with the rain in my eyes. Running from the truth, from the shame—from the name Hannah Rourke.

The memory grabs hold, dragging me toward some shiny surface
I have no wish to break. I struggle against it, wanting only to sink back into the darkness, to linger in the blissful depths, where all is safe and unknown, where Hannah is still dead and no one knows the truth. But the pain is stronger now, nudging me toward awareness, until I have no choice but to open my eyes.

The room is dim: a window with curtains drawn, but not my window. Not my room. Not Hope House. There’s a railing on both sides of the bed, but no restraints, I realize now. My feet and legs are free, but one of my arms, the left one, will not move at all. It’s strapped against my body—and it hurts. I gaze about, bleary but comprehending, at the clear white tube snaking into my hand, the pole and bag hung beside the bed, at the steel panel of knobs and dials on the wall.

Yes, of course—the car.

But before the car there was Lane, standing with me at Peter’s grave, listening while I blathered about the night my poor boy died. We have no secrets now, she and I. She knows it all, my name and my sins. But then, it was foolish of me, wasn’t it, to ever think I could outrun them? I see now that when I buried Hannah Rourke I should have dug the hole much deeper.

Lane

L
ane hovered in the doorway of Hannah’s hospital room, clutching the vase of flowers she’d just purchased at the gift shop. She hated hospitals. She’d been too preoccupied last night to register it, too worried about her friend to connect the dots back to the day she’d opened her eyes in a room like this one, cold and dim and unnaturally quiet, but today the reminders were everywhere. Every smell seemed to hold a memory, every memory to hold a knife. Time might have blunted the loss of her unborn child, but it hadn’t erased the days and weeks that came after, when the loss and the emptiness had threatened to swallow her.

There was always an aftermath after an accident, a putting-back-together of lost and broken pieces, the physical ones, and the not so physical. Hannah would have her own aftermath soon, when the bruises faded and the stitches came out, the uncomfortable reckoning of past and present, the unwelcome reentry into the life she had tried so desperately to leave behind.

And she was to blame. Michael was right about that, at least.

None of this would be happening if she hadn’t poked her nose where it didn’t belong. Hannah wouldn’t be lying on a hospital bed with a black eye, a dislocated shoulder, and a three-inch gash across
her forehead. She’d still be Mary, Starry Point’s harmless old bag lady. Now, thanks to Lane, she could never go back. She had pushed so hard for a happy ending that she had endangered Hannah, and had driven Michael away in the process.

So much for fairy tales.

Forcing her feet to move, she stepped into the room’s gloomy interior, looking for somewhere to deposit her gift shop flowers, settling finally on the empty meal tray against the wall. She was rearranging a few bedraggled blooms when she heard a faint rustle behind her.

She was startled to find Hannah’s eyes on her when she turned, dazed and full of questions. She’d been hoping for more time to prepare, to school herself on what she should and shouldn’t say. Instead, she pasted on a smile and stepped to Hannah’s bedside.

It was all she could do to keep her face from betraying her as she surveyed the damage. She looked so vulnerable, so broken and pale, her lower lip split and swollen, the bruise on her cheek now the color of a ripe eggplant.

“You’re awake,” Lane said thickly. “Does it hurt very much?”

Hannah’s head moved back and forth on the pillow, but her wince gave her away. “Headache,” she mumbled. “And I can’t . . . move my arm.”

“You dislocated it in the accident,” Lane explained, realizing sheepishly that she was speaking rather loudly, which might prove helpful for a patient who’d lost her hearing, but was probably less so for one suffering from a concussion and a fractured skull. Lowering her voice, she tried again. “Do you need anything? Would you like me to buzz for a nurse?”

Hannah shook her head again, then lifted a hand to her forehead, prodding at the bandage there. Her eyes met Lane’s questioningly.

“They had to stitch you up. The doctor says you were very lucky. Do you . . . can you remember what happened?”

“The car,” Hannah said haltingly. “I didn’t see it.”

Lane’s throat tightened with a combination of guilt and relief. Not
on purpose, then. “It was my fault. I should never have . . . I only meant . . . I’m so sorry.”

Hannah patted the sheets in protest. “Here, now. Stop that. I was the one running away, wasn’t I?”

“But I was the one who made you run, the one who made you remember Hannah.”

“Come, my girl. Surely you know I’ve never forgotten her. No matter . . . how I pretended, she’s been here all along.” There were tears in her eyes now, spilling past her pale lashes and onto her cheeks. “I need you to know what happened that night. I need someone . . . to know.”

“We can talk about that later. Right now you need to rest, and heal.”

“No!” Hannah said with surprising heat. “Someone has to know that I never meant to harm my boy . . . that I loved him.”

Lane briefly contemplated slipping down to the nurses’ station, asking them to give her something, but the ache in Hannah’s eyes told her it wouldn’t matter how many times they sedated her. She would come to, still needing to tell her story.

“Hannah, please. The doctor says you need to stay calm. If I promise to listen, will you promise to stay calm?”

Hannah nodded with visible relief. “Pull the chair close.”

Lane did as she was told, dragging the blue vinyl armchair up beside the bed. She was barely seated when Hannah began to speak.

“The night of the fire . . . I had taken some pills.”

“Yes,” Lane said. “And washed them down with a lot of scotch.”

“I thought that would do it. Neat and quiet this time. No blood.”

Lane suppressed a shudder but let her go on.

“Something woke me. The pills—I couldn’t get my bearings. I smelled smoke, could even taste it. Then I remembered the candle. There was a storm that night. I never would have taken the pills if I’d known a storm was coming. Peter was afraid of storms. He begged me to stay with him, to read to him. I went down and made some
chocolate to help him sleep.” She paused, smiling sadly. “I used to float animal crackers on top instead of marshmallows. Evan liked the lions best, but Peter liked the elephants.”

Lane stared down at her hands, not sure whether to smile or cry. It all sounded so normal, so mother of the year. How could such a lovely scene have gone so terribly wrong?

Hannah’s eyes were clearer now, though strangely lit, and not focused on Lane at all. Her voice was chillingly detached. “I had only gone two pages when the lights went out. Poor Peter. He was so scared. I lit a candle and kept going, but it was hard. The pills were starting to work, and the words were sliding all over the page. I opened the window next to the bed to let in some air to keep me awake . . . until I could get Peter to sleep. I don’t remember leaving his room, but when I woke I was on the bathroom floor . . . covered with vomit. I could hardly see for the smoke.”

Instinctively, Lane reached for her hand. Hannah seemed not to notice.

“I had forgotten the candle.” The tears were coming faster now, her words sticking in her throat. “They say the drapes caught. By the time I realized Peter was crying for me, it was too late. I tried . . . I couldn’t . . . the smoke was everywhere, but I couldn’t stay on my feet.” Her eyes froze open then, glazed with the horror of what she had seen that night. “I was trying to get to him when Evan came . . . I don’t know where he came from. He was always running off, always hiding somewhere.”

The greenhouse. He was out in the greenhouse, wishing on a flower.

Lane closed her eyes, waiting. There was nothing to do now but let her finish.

“The stairs were already burning. He wouldn’t let me go to Peter. He grabbed me and . . . dragged me down the stairs. He was on his way back up again when the stairs gave way. It was days before anyone would tell me if he was alive or dead. I . . . never saw him again.”

Lane stood abruptly. Knowing what she did, she found it
impossible to endure another word while sitting down. A son lost, another burned, scarred because their mother had tried to take her own life. The surviving son racked with guilt, for the brother he couldn’t save, and the mother he couldn’t forgive. She’d seen the scars with her own eyes, even had a vague idea of how he’d earned them, but until now she hadn’t truly grasped just how deep those scars ran. Not just for the son, but for the mother as well.

“You must miss him terribly,” was all Lane could trust herself to say.

Hannah’s eyes fluttered closed, her breath coming in short, hiccupping bursts. “They took him . . . the gray birds and that judge. And they put him up in your tower, way up high where no one could get at him. And then they . . . gave him away.”

Lane looked away, but there was nothing else to focus on, no way to sidestep Hannah’s anguish. She thought about the brand of desperation required to wash down a handful of pills while your children slept in the next room. She was beginning to see why Hannah had chosen to become someone else.

“I didn’t know,” Hannah choked out. “If I had I never would have . . .” Her voice trailed away as she reached for Lane’s hand. “Can you forgive me?”

Startled, Lane sank back into her chair. “It isn’t my place to forgive you, Hannah. It’s yours. And it’s time.”

Hannah sighed, letting her head loll against the pillows. “You’re all I have, my girl. Please, just once, before I leave this world . . . I need to hear someone say it.”

Lane hesitated. She was neither eager nor qualified to grant this woman absolution, especially for something that had clearly been beyond her control. And yet her eyes were so desperate, so full of tears and grief.

“Yes, Hannah. I forgive you.”

Hannah’s face softened as she relaxed against her pillows, but the
moment was broken when a slender brunette in purple scrubs bustled in with a plastic rack lined with collection vials.

“She’s awake,” the woman said brightly, aiming the observation at Lane. “How is she?”

“I think she’s in some pain, but she’s been talking.”

“I’ll stop by the nurses’ station and let them know. It’s probably time for some more good stuff. But first I need to take a few vials of blood. Won’t take me a minute. Hannah, honey, can I borrow your arm?”

Lane stood, sidling discreetly toward the door. “I’m just going to slip out for some coffee while you do your thing.”

“Sure. No prob. I’ll be out of your hair in two shakes.”

In the cafeteria, Lane bought a cup of coffee and a bagel, then headed back to the gift shop, where she selected an armload of magazines and the only two paperbacks whose covers didn’t boast an expanse of rippling abs.

Leaving the shop, she paused to dig her cell out of her purse. Against her better judgment, she dialed the inn. She didn’t expect him to answer—he was probably already gone—but she had to at least try. After eight rings she gave up and tried his cell. It went straight to voice mail. She imagined him recognizing her and hitting
IGNORE CALL
, and felt her throat tighten.

She really was pathetic.

Hannah was dozing when she stepped back into the room. Lane stacked the books and magazines within arm’s reach on the bedside table, chose one for herself, then tiptoed back to her chair. After a few minutes she closed the Christmas issue of
Coastal Living,
opting for a catnap instead.

She had just begun to drift off when something made her open her eyes, not a sound exactly, as much as an awareness that she was no longer alone with Hannah. She was expecting to see a nurse when she opened her eyes, or even Dr. Ashton. Instead, Michael hovered in the doorway, shoulders squared, legs wide apart—a man prepared to do battle.