A Simple Thing (27 page)

“Okay,” Katie said. “Okay.” She found a roll of paper towels in the glove box and threw them on the floor to soak up the vomit. She helped Quinn curl up in the cushioned chair across from where Susannah sat, and then came over to stand behind Susannah.

“Is Quinn going to die?” she said in a low voice.

No, no, no
. “Of course not. I think he has appendicitis. It's serious, but once we get him to Friday Harbor they can tell for sure and get him to the hospital in a helicopter if that's what he needs. He'll be fine. I promise.”
He has to be.

The waves rose higher now out in the channel, but there was a rhythm to it, and Susannah was learning it. She could do this. With her confidence growing, she pushed the throttle forward. The boat picked up speed and shot up over the next wave, perched for a second on the crest, and then slammed into the trough after the wave with a heart-stopping impact. Quinn flew out of his seat, landing on the floor with a scream of pain and fright. Katie shot forward and landed on top of Quinn. As they began to climb the next wave, both kids rolled across the floor toward the thin canvas flap that covered the back of the pilothouse, toward the back of the boat and the open water.

“Slow down!” Katie yelled. Tangled together with Quinn, she rolled through the canvas flap and disappeared from sight.

Susannah pulled back on the throttle and the boat slowed to a crawl. “Katie! Katie! Katie!” She shouted her name over and over again. She couldn't let go of the wheel; she couldn't see her children.

“Slow down!” Katie's voice came through the canvas, and then her arm. She crawled back into the pilothouse, dragging Quinn, who was crying. “God, Mom! Are you trying to kill us?
Slow down
. You have to go slower in big waves or you climb the waves too fast.”

Susannah could feel the frantic pounding of her heart against her ribs.

“I thought you fell out of the boat,” she said.

“We didn't fall out of the boat,” Katie said. “We rolled into that big bench in the back, and I probably have a giant bruise now.”

Susannah couldn't breathe. She turned to Katie. “I can't do this,” she said.

Quinn sobbed. Katie looked at him and then at Susannah's panicked face, and her eyes filled with tears, too.

“What do you mean?” Katie said. “You have to get us there.”

Susannah shook her head. “No, no, no. I can't do this again.”

“
Mom
.” Katie was angry now. “
Don't
freak out now.
I
don't know how to drive the boat! You're the one who said you could get us there. Just cause you went too fast over
one
wave, you can't quit.”

The boat began to climb the next swell steadily, slowly. Susannah held her breath as they reached the top of the wave, but then the boat slid down steadily, slowly, and rode into the trough. She exhaled.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
This is not that day
.

“How do you know to go slower in big waves?” Susannah said. The fact that the boat had raced up a wave and then crashed into the trough didn't mean imminent death and destruction to Katie; it meant time to pull back on the throttle. Susannah saw for the first time the upside to Katie's fearlessness.

Katie rubbed the bottom of her wet jeans with her hand. “Ew, now I'm even more soaked. From being on the boat with Hood. I know you think Hood is wild, but he's really careful about driving the boat. Jim is kind of strict.”

“You're a smart kid.” She turned to look at Quinn. “I'm so sorry, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“I promise no more going fast over big waves.”

Susannah glanced at Katie. “Here,” she said. “I need your help. I can't see very well in the dark. Can you help me keep watch out the front windshield here? I want to be sure I turn at the right time to enter the harbor.”

“Sure.”

They were both silent, then, and didn't speak again until they turned into San Juan Channel and began to make their way slowly along the eastern shore of San Juan Island. Now that they were in the lee of the island the water was calmer, the wind weaker. Susannah took a deep breath and felt the tension leave her body. She took one hand off the wheel to flex her aching fingers. She'd been gripping the wheel so tightly that her fingers were stiff, bent into a claw.

Katie stood next to Susannah as they entered the harbor and approached the marina. By the time Susannah pulled up at the dock, an ambulance was waiting at the top of the ramp. Katie gave her quiet instructions, and she was able to pull the boat alongside the dock with only a slight bump. Relief rose in her chest, loosened her shoulders. Before Susannah had time to shut off the engine and make sure everything was in place, Katie had tied up the boat and was directing the EMTs down the ramp to where Quinn lay, curled in a ball in the boat.

Within minutes they were at the clinic, where the doctor examined Quinn and performed an ultrasound. Susannah called Matt as soon as the doctor looked at her and said, “Yes, it's his appendix and it's ruptured. A helicopter is coming to take him to the hospital in Bellingham for surgery.”

“I'm on the next plane,” Matt said.

In minutes Susannah was on the helicopter, strapped into a seat next to Quinn's stretcher, with Katie across from her and a medic on her other side.

At the hospital everything was brisk and efficient. Quinn was loaded onto a gurney, wheeled onto an elevator, taken down to the surgical floor. Susannah filled out forms and answered questions and talked to the anesthesiologist and surgeon. Before they wheeled him into the operating room, Susannah bent down over the small, sweaty form on the gurney, smoothed the damp blond hair back from Quinn's face, and kissed his freckled forehead.

“You're going to be fine, sweetheart,” she said. “When you wake up I'll be here.”

The big doors swung open, the nurse wheeled the stretcher forward, and Quinn was gone.

Chapter 28

Susannah 2011

Susannah sat down in the waiting room on a couch that was either beige or mauve. A volunteer brought sandwiches, which Katie devoured.

Susannah leaned back, weary to her bones. She could feel the salt crust on her skin from the ocean spray; feel the stiff tangles in her hair as she put her head back against the wall. Thank God there wasn't a mirror here. She probably looked like one of her own junk scarecrows. She closed her eyes but couldn't still her mind. She wondered if the surgeon had started yet, if right now tiny instruments were cutting into Quinn.

But it wasn't just Quinn. She couldn't stop thinking about Janie, about her mother, about the accident, about how it felt when she'd hit that wave, the force of the impact.

She looked over at Katie, who was curled up asleep on the couch across from her. Susannah knew she should try to sleep, too, but she couldn't. She stood up, rooted through the pockets of her jacket for her cell phone, and slipped into the hallway outside the waiting room. She punched her mother's number into the phone.

“Susie? How are you, darling?”

“Oh, God,” Susannah said. “Where do I start?”

“I'm listening,” Lila said.

“I'm at the hospital. Quinn is in surgery; his appendix ruptured.” Her mother started to say something, but Susannah interrupted her. “He's going to be
fine,
Mom. The surgeon says we got him here in time.” She paused. “I had to drive the boat to get him to the clinic. And now I can't stop thinking about that day.”

“You mean the day of the accident.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. There's a lot we've never talked about.”

“I know.” Her mom's voice was low. “What happened to Janie was not your fault.”

“Right.” Susannah heard the bitterness in her voice and tried to temper it. “You couldn't even
look
at me that night, when we finally got home. I needed you to forgive me, Mom. I needed to know you still loved me, thought I was worth loving. But you wouldn't even look at me. You
went to bed
. How do you think that made me feel?”

She heard her mother's long, slow intake of breath, followed by silence.

“Why
did you let us go with him, that day? Why did you let him take us out on the boat? You knew he drank.”

Another long silence.

“You know what happened?” Susannah said. “Janie was fussing, so Daddy unbuckled her life jacket to get her to shut up. He was drinking. He got mad and decided we had to go back. He was driving the boat really fast. I was holding Janie in my lap. I had both my arms around her, Mom, I was holding her as tight as I could. But he hit the wake and she flew out of my arms. I couldn't hold on.” She struggled to control her tears. She could hear her mother's jagged breath on the other end of the line, but went on.

“I couldn't hold on,” Susannah said. “But Daddy said, he said,
‘How could you let her go?
' It was
my
fault she died.
I let her go
.”

“It wasn't your fault, Susannah.” Lila's voice was thick with emotion but emphatic. “It was
never
your fault. I have never, for one second, blamed you. If anything, I blame myself—blamed myself.” Lila took a deep breath. “I let you down that day. And I am sorry.”

“I just want to understand
why
. Because lately I've felt like I'm losing my own kids, losing my husband, losing myself because I can't let this go. If I could just understand what you were thinking—”

“Susannah, I was pregnant. Your father didn't want the baby. He promised me he would give up drinking and be a good parent, a good husband, if I got rid of the baby.”

“Pregnant? You mean, after Janie?”

“I mean I found out I was pregnant about a month before the accident. I hadn't meant to get pregnant. It was a bad time. Your father was drinking even during the day, and he'd been threatened with losing his job if he didn't shape up. I got married at twenty-one; I never worked after college. I had three kids. I was
forty
. What was I going to do with another baby and an unemployed, alcoholic husband?”

Her mother's voice wavered. “I couldn't talk to you about it then; I couldn't. And once you were older . . . I knew you hated me for letting him take you out in the boat; I didn't want to tell you something that would make you hate me more. I was going to tell you; I just never knew how. Once you had your own kids—”

“Mom, I don't hate you.” Susannah said it automatically.

“I don't blame you for being mad at me. I shouldn't have let you go. But he
had
given up the drinking. He hadn't had a drink in three weeks when he took you out that day. I thought he'd licked it; I thought he was going to keep his word. So I kept mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn't come with you on the boat that day because my sister took me to get an abortion.” She cleared her throat. “We thought if you kids were out on the boat all day you wouldn't notice so much if I wasn't feeling well that night. There was a doctor in Traverse City—at least it was legal by then, thank God.”

“You mean,” Susannah said, her words halting, “you mean you had an abortion the day Janie died?”

“Yes.”

The word hit Susannah with such force that it knocked the wind out of her.

“Oh, God. I am so sorry. Why didn't you tell me before?”

“I didn't want to give you another reason to be angry at me, another reason to think I'd failed.” Lila paused. “For a long time I felt I didn't deserve you and Jon, that I shouldn't be your mother. I thought you'd be better off if I was dead. I couldn't bear it that first year after Janie died, when you gave me a Mother's Day card, as though I were some kind of deserving mother. And the pink crane—do you remember?”

Susannah thought of the crane, crumpled into a ball in the wastebasket.

“Of course I remember. You threw it away.”

Lila sighed. “I'm sorry.” She paused again. “It was beautiful. And you were so innocent and hopeful. I didn't think I deserved it— that innocence and hope and love.”

Me, either,
Susannah thought.
That's how I feel
.

“But my sister wouldn't let me go. Every day, she told me it wasn't my fault. Every day, she told me she loved me and admired me. She made me eat. She took care of you kids. And once your father left, I had to step up. But I had to lock the rest of it away.”

Her mother's voice wavered. “If I thought about it, I'd go crazy. I thought taking Janie was God's punishment for the abortion. I stopped going to church, because I figured even God wouldn't want me there.”

“Mom.”

“Susannah.” Her mother's voice was clear now, and calm. “I know I should have told you this years ago. It's taken me decades, and five or six therapists, and a lot of pain to come to terms with this. I thought that by sending you to that psychiatrist right after the accident and then by just moving on with our lives, you'd be able to put it behind you. But when you moved to that island this fall, I started to wonder what was wrong.

“I wanted to come at Thanksgiving because I wanted to talk to you, in person. I wanted to explain it to you. I wanted to make sure you didn't still blame yourself. But then you got so upset with me,” her voice trailed off. “You were so angry. I thought if I told you about the abortion you'd never speak to me again. But I knew I had to tell you. That's why I wanted to talk to you alone.”

Susannah remembered her mother's plea over Thanksgiving:
I need to talk to you.

“I carried the weight of that guilt for years,” Lila said. “Everywhere I went, everything I did. It's only been recently I've been able to see it for what it was: An accident. Pure bad luck.” She sighed. “I struggled for so long. Then Tessa gave me a book last year, by some Christian theologian. It annoyed me beyond end—Tessa always trying to help me get over it. But I opened the book and fell on one sentence that somehow clicked for me: ‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.' I was tired of being a prisoner.

“Once I forgave myself, the weight was gone. It was a simple thing. That's what I want for you, Susie.”

“It's hard,” Susannah said. “I'm the one who let her go.”

“You were
thirteen,
” her mother said. “Your father unbuckled her life jacket; he drank; he drove too fast. None of us meant for it to happen. Your father never got over the guilt; I don't think he looked me in the eye again after that day. It's
enough
. We have all paid for it over and over and over again. If
I
can let it go, you can. I hoped maybe you'd figure that out. I hoped maybe this move was about that, about being kind to yourself.

“That pink crane?” Lila said. “That tiny, precious thing? I realized I
am
worthy. We all are, honey.”

“I'm sorry,” Susannah said. “I'm sorry you went through all that. I can't even imagine. It's not fair. You didn't deserve that.”

“None of us did,” Lila said. “Not even your father. He was sick. He loved Janie; he loved you and Jon. He loved me. And I know,
I know,
it wasn't my fault. I hope with all my heart, Susannah, that someday you'll realize it wasn't your fault, either.”

Susannah thought about the wave they'd hit a few hours ago, about the force of the impact when they hit. “We hit a wave tonight, when I was driving the boat to get Quinn to the clinic,” she said. “It felt like hitting a brick wall.” She was thinking out loud now, no longer aware of her mother on the other end of the phone. “It really did. And ever since then I've been thinking about the day we hit the wake—” She stopped. It was too close. What if it had happened again tonight, with Katie or Quinn flying out of the boat into the black water?

“I didn't realize until I hit that wave tonight that it
could
feel like that,” Susannah continued. “Like a car crash or something, with so much
force
.”

“Let it go,” Lila said. “It was never your fault. Your father was drunk and going too fast. He unbuckled Janie's life vest. It was never you.”

Susannah's tears overcame her. “I was holding her so tight, Mom, because Dad was going so fast. I was holding her
so tight
.”

She heard her mother's sharp intake of breath, heard her struggle to hold back tears.

“It wasn't you! It wasn't your fault, Susannah,” her mother said again. “I'll tell you again and again every day of your life if I have to, until you believe it.
It wasn't your fault.
”

Susannah clung to the phone, pressing it hard against her ear. “I know,” she said, and the weight of thirty years slid from her heart, seeped out her pores, dissipated into vapor—leaving her light, breathless, translucent.

“I know,” she said. “It wasn't my fault.”

And this time, for the first time ever, she knew it was true.

 

Susannah snapped the phone shut. She leaned her back against the wall and slid slowly down until she was sitting on the pale tiled floor, the phone still clenched in her hand.

“Mom?”

Katie stood in the doorway to the waiting room, looking at Susannah. “Are you all right?”

Susannah wiped the tears from her cheeks with one hand. “Yes. I'm fine, honey.” She smiled. “I'm good, in fact. Tired, but good.”

Katie came over and sat down on the floor next to her. “Are you crying about Quinn? He's going to be okay, right?”

“Oh, honey. Quinn is going to be
fine
.” Susannah took a deep breath. Even with Quinn still in surgery; even with Matt in the air somewhere over some dark state, rushing to get to them; even with the complete physical exhaustion of all she'd been through in the last—could it be just twelve hours?—even with all that, Susannah felt a strange sense of peace.

“We have to talk, Kate,” she said. She put a hand up and pushed a strand of Katie's dark hair behind her ear, and for once Katie didn't pull away at the contact.

“I was not going to have sex with Hood. Seriously. It's totally embarrassing to be talking to you about this, but I want you to know that.”

“All right.” Susannah looked at her. “I believe you. I trust you.” And, to her surprise, she did.

“Listen,” Susannah said. “Sometimes grown-ups make mistakes, too. I may have made mistakes in trying to protect you too much. My dad made some terrible mistakes the day my sister died; so did my mom. We all make mistakes. We all have to learn to forgive each other, and ourselves.”

“Okay.”

Susannah studied Katie's brown eyes, reached out to run her hand through Katie's thick hair. “You remind me of my sister. I wonder all the time what Janie would have been like at your age, or as an adult. She had a lot of spirit, like you.”