Crossing Oceans (24 page)
This would come in handy, of course, if I were called upon to sniff out smuggled drugs or prison escapees, but the only thing it really accomplished was to render me in a constant state of nausea. Even aromas that used to make my mouth water now only sickened me. I’d get within a hundred feet of most foods and my stomach would begin to churn like a cement mixer.
Today my heightened sense of smell was welcome for a change as it enunciated the stream’s invigorating scents of earth and moss. I inhaled it, feeling an overwhelming appreciation for life—both mine and my daughter’s.
Isabella and I sat hip to hip on my favorite boulder, watching tiny silver fish dart downstream as we wiggled our toes under crystalline water. Beams of sunlight speared the green canopy above, indiscriminately spotlighting unremarkable stones and piles of decaying leaves. Though Isabella had just been released from the hospital the day before, with the exception of a scratchy voice, you’d never have known she had been through a life-threatening trauma.
As her mother, however, it was obvious to me something was unmistakably different about her. My independent child had become an oversize appliqué. When I napped, she napped. When I needed fresh air, coincidentally, so did she. I couldn’t even empty my bladder without her as an audience. I didn’t mind her company, of course. I loved having her near me. After all we’d been through, I guess we were both a little fearful of losing each other.
I knew, however, that this clingy behavior could not be allowed to continue unchecked for much longer. Despite the fact that Isabella had lived through her ordeal, I would not be so lucky, which meant that the task of transitioning her to a life without me had to remain my first and foremost goal. How would I accomplish this? I had no worldly idea. I thought maybe inspiration would befall me there at the stream and had intended to come here alone to think, but when Isabella heard the back door open, she was by my side faster than I could say, “I’ll be right back.”
I touched the plastic hospital bracelet still around her wrist. “You know, you’ll need to take that off sometime.”
She turned her hand this way and that, admiring the adornment. “I like it.”
“It is pretty cool,” I agreed.
She laid her head against my arm. “Sarah had a bracelet like this.”
“Supercool Sarah from preschool?”
I felt her head nod against me.
“Why was she in the hospital?”
She shrugged.
“Bella, I want you to promise me you’ll never try to cross the ocean by yourself again. Or the lake. Or a puddle. Or anything. God says I have to go alone.”
With her bare feet, she kicked at the stream and sent a spray of water over the ground. A salamander bounded from under a leaf and, before I could point him out to her, darted up a tree and out of sight.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said.
“Me too. But God has things for you to do here—important things. When you finally do come join me in heaven, I’m going to ask if you did all the things you were supposed to do.”
She grabbed her heel and forced her foot so close to her mouth that I thought she intended to bite her toenails. She examined her foot as if she’d never seen anything quite like it, then set it back in the water without explanation. “What things?”
I pulled her onto my lap and hugged her to me. “Well, I don’t know exactly, but I suspect you’ll need to go to college, help some hurting people, maybe hike across Europe, become a doctor who finds the cure for cancer, or possibly be the first woman president. I don’t know.” I turned her face toward me and grinned. “And of course, fall in love.”
She opened her mouth and stuck her finger in, pantomiming a gag.
“Where did you learn that?”
She raised her palms and shrugged.
As I laughed, I hoped against hope that she’d forever keep the memory of this conversation tucked away in the recesses of her mind. “The thought of boys won’t always make you gag. Someday they might not seem so yucky at all.”
She ran her cold, wet foot down the length of mine. “Craig’s not yucky.”
“No,” I agreed. He certainly wasn’t.
She blew a curl out of her face. “What else do I have to do?”
I leaned back and studied a pair of blue jays taking turns flying in and out of a small nest. “Only God knows, but I definitely want some grandchildren. I’ll need something interesting to watch from heaven in case there’s no TV.”
“From me?”
“You’re the only one who can give them to me.”
“How many?”
I laid my chin on the top of her head. “That’s up to you and your husband.”
“I want forty-two.”
She couldn’t see me smile. “My, but you’ll be busy. Why so many?”
“Then they can do all my work for me.”
I chuckled. “With forty-two mouths to feed, you might have a little work cut out for yourself, too. I suggest marrying a rich man with a big libido.”
“What’s a
lopeto
?”
I hugged her tighter. “Never mind. Do you promise you won’t ever try anything like that again?”
She pushed off my lap and slipped her feet into her sandals. “I was really scared.”
My heart sank as the phantom memories of her flailing and afraid rushed back to me. “I’ll bet you were.” I followed her lead and put my sandals back on. “Promise me, Bella.” I hooked her chin with my finger, forcing her to look at me.
“I promise.”
I knelt down and squeezed her tightly. It was so nice to feel her little heart beat against me. “That’s a good girl. So, where are we off to?”
“My daddy shouldn’t have done that.” She held her hand out to me and I slipped my fingers around hers.
“Done what?”
She led me down the dirt path that would take us past the tree carved with David’s and my initials, and eventually home. Pebbles and twigs crunched under my feet.
“He shouldn’t have thrown me in the lake.”
I stopped walking, causing her to follow suit. “Bells, your daddy didn’t throw you in the lake. That was the pool, remember?”
She shook her head. “No, he threw me in the lake. I almost drowned and then they put that straw in my mouth and now my throat hurts.”
I studied her a moment, trying to understand why her memory was so garbled. I didn’t know if it was childhood confusion, the trauma of her near drowning, oxygen deprivation, or something else entirely, but I couldn’t let her believe that David had tried to drown her. “Bells, you’re getting confused. He didn’t do that. You tried to cross the ocean to get to me, remember?”
She tucked her lips in, considering my words. “I still don’t want to live with him.”
“Isabella, when I go to heaven, you
are
going to live with your daddy and Lindsey.”
Her eyes grew large with a fear I didn’t understand. “He’ll throw me in again.”
“No, sweetness, your daddy would never hurt you. He loves you.”
Her expression darkened.
“I promise.”
She looked on the verge of tears. “He threw me in the pool.”
“That’s right, but it wasn’t deep. All you had to do was stand up.”
She opened her mouth and recognition seemed to wash over her face. “He didn’t throw me in the lake. I woke up early and . . .” She searched my eyes as if she could read the missing chapter from her book there. “I wanted to get across and wait for you.”
I picked her up and set her on my hip as I did when she was a baby. She was considerably heavier now and I was considerably weaker. Still it felt so good, so right, to feel her weight against my side. “That’s right. But now you’ve promised you won’t do that again. You promised me you would do all the things that growing-up girls do, and when you’re old and God calls you home,
then
we’ll have our very fine reunion.”
She laid her head against my shoulder. “That will be a good day.”
“A very good day,” I agreed.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetness?”
“Do you think Lindsey is pretty?”
Jealousy nipped at me. “Do you?”
“Very pretty.”
“Prettier than me?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have uttered them.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love Daddy?”
I took in a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Does he love you?”
A pain, far too familiar, stabbed my heart. “He loves Lindsey.”
She gave me a look of pity, then kissed my forehead. “
I
love you, Mommy.”
Me too,
a voice whispered behind us.
I turned, expecting to see Craig, but there was no one there.
“Did you hear that?” I asked her.
Head heavy against my shoulder, she peered at me through slits. “What?”
I took one more look behind me but saw only a squirrel scampering around the base of tree trunk.
“I’m losing it,” I told the squirrel.
Thankfully he didn’t answer.
If looks could kill, Isabella would soon be fatherless. Eyes ablaze, she slammed her Barbie onto the rug and torched David with a fiery glance. “Stop staring at me!”
David sat on our living room couch next to his wife, considering Isabella with a perplexed expression. I could see his wheels turning the problem around in his mind, searching for a logical solution to her irrational emotions.
Isabella was supposed to be visiting him and Lindsey at their home, but when they came to collect her, she refused to go. I wasn’t at all surprised. No matter how many times I reminded her that David had not tried to drown her in the lake, and no matter how many times she recounted what had actually happened, her heart refused to believe what her mind knew.
Distracted by the tension, I had read the same sentence of my novel a half-dozen times and still didn’t register its meaning. Giving up, I folded the corner of the page, set it on the coffee table, and addressed my daughter. “Bella, be nice.”
Mama Peg sat across from me in her recliner, flipping through the
TV Guide
. The sound of paper rubbing against paper was magnified by the silent pause. “Someone needs a nap,” she said.
Isabella twisted her face into something that reminded me of a gargoyle. “I do not!”
I tried to give her the same look my mother used on me to send shivers down my spine. “Don’t you raise your voice, young lady.”
It didn’t have the same effect on my daughter. She dismissed it with a shrug.
I gestured to David. “Can I speak with you a minute?”
He looked at Lindsey as if needing her permission. She gave him a benign glance, then went back to watching Isabella play. At last he stood and followed me.
The kitchen still smelled of the balsamic vinaigrette Mama Peg had served with lunch, although the scent of lemon dish soap now nearly eclipsed it. Still dressed in church clothes, Craig had his hands buried in a sink full of water. Suds clung to the blond fuzz on his arms. He glanced over his shoulder at me, then nodded at David. “Hey, man.”
David just looked at him, then back to me. “What?”
I rested my hand on the grooves of the doorjamb. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but she holds you responsible for almost drowning.”
He studied me a minute, then narrowed his eyes. “What exactly did you tell her?”
My eyes narrowed back. “What do you mean, what did I tell her?”
“Why would she think that? You must have said something.”
I didn’t care for his tone one bit. Just like my father, he always felt the need to find a scapegoat. If something was wrong, someone had to be to blame. I hated that about both of them. “I didn’t tell her you tried to murder her, if that’s what you’re implying.”
He crossed his arms. “Then how would she get that idea?”
Rather than look into his accusatory eyes, I focused on the tiny galloping horse embroidered on his shirt, trying to digest how quickly our hospital truce had come to an end . . . along with the mirage that he was a decent, rational human being. “She’s a child. How do they get any ideas they have? I told her you didn’t do it. She knows you didn’t do it, but she still
feels
like you did.”
“You’re not making sense. She was in your care. If anyone’s to blame, it’s you.”
My fingernails dug into my palms as I looked at him. Standing before me was the only person in the world, with the exception of my father, who could take me from zero to fury in under a minute.
I noticed Craig watching him—a lion ready to pounce. I didn’t want a scene to erupt with Isabella in the next room. I softened my voice. “It’s no one’s fault, David. Not yours. Not mine. I realize it’s irrational, but girls sometimes feel things that don’t make logical sense. You can’t go at this problem like a math equation. It’s more like—” I searched my mind for a worthy comparison—“abstract art.”
I could tell by his incredulous expression that he wasn’t anywhere close to getting it. I sighed. “Just apologize to her.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “For what?”
“For trying to drown her.”
“You’re even crazier than your old man.”
Craig threw his sponge into the sink, making water slosh over the counter. Before he could make a move for David, I put my hand up to stop him. A growl-like sound erupted from him as he stalked out the back door.
When it slammed shut, I felt the vibration run through me. “David, I’m trying to help you here.” It was exasperating trying to explain to a man something I knew most women would understand instinctively. “It’s like when you have a dream that someone you love hurts you. Even though you know they didn’t really do it, your heart still feels the betrayal. Saying you’re sorry isn’t admitting guilt, it’s . . .” I tried to find the words, but defining emotion was no easy task. “It’s just the way she feels, okay? Just say you’re sorry and she’ll get over it.”
David sneered at me. “I think the cancer’s spread to your brain.”
As I watched him tramp back to the living room, I contemplated how that man could be the one I’d spent nearly ten years pining over. I never thought I’d see the day I got over David Preston, but at that very moment, standing in the wake of his contempt, I was well on my way. Dreams long held are often the slowest to burn, and that was true in this case as well, but the fantasy had certainly begun to blacken and curl.