Little Gale Gumbo (43 page)

“He's back.” Jack pointed to Matthew, where he appeared across the lobby, headed for the waiting room.

Dahlia nodded, and they followed him in.

Josie and Wayne rose to meet him, eyes wide with anticipation.

“He's out again, but the doctor says that's normal,” Matthew explained. “What matters is that he's responsive. The doctor's confident he'll be awake for longer the next time he comes to.”

“Oh, Matty.” Josie moved toward him instinctively, then stilled, not yet sure he was ready to welcome her back, not even in the midst of their joy. She saw quickly that her decision was wise; he offered her only a tight nod, his arms firm at his sides.

“That's great news, Matt,” Jack said.

“Really great,” echoed Wayne.

Dahlia kept her distance, knowing better than to try for an embrace.

“Can we see him?” she asked.

Matthew directed his answer to the group. “The doctor asked that everyone wait until tomorrow. I'm going to stay with him awhile longer, in case he wakes up again.”

“Of course,” Josie said, nodding. She looked to Wayne. “We'll stay too.”

“You don't have to do that,” Matthew said.

“I know we don't. We want to.”

Matthew smiled thinly. “Thanks. Well . . .” He gestured to the door. “I'm going to head back in then.”

When he'd gone, Josie moved to the window. Dahlia watched her go, her lips set in an angry line.

Jack drew near. “Something wrong?” he asked.

Dahlia shrugged. “Nothing that hasn't been wrong for a while.” She turned to him, her eyes soft. Fragile, he thought. The way he remembered them in their youth, those precious moments when she'd let him see how vulnerable she could be, before drawing the curtain down.

He waited for it, the inevitable veil, but it didn't come.

“Take me home,” she whispered. “Please.”

Matthew carried the chair across the floor, setting it at the head of his father's bed. Evening light slipped through the blinds, soft ladders of pink that fell across the walls, the bedspread, the monitors.

He looked down at his own hands, clenched in his lap, wondering how it could be that only an hour before he'd been standing in the café, crazed with anger, sure he would hate the sisters forever for what they'd done, for what they'd kept from him, and now the rage had dissolved like a stain soaked in cold water. Watching his father's profile, Matthew could think of nothing but how right the universe was again, how much he couldn't wait to bring Ben back to the island, back home where he belonged.

Home.
He sighed
.
Alone in the stark, silent room, pieces of the afternoon returned to him, making him wince. Christ, he thought. What had he expected Dahlia to do? He had known making love that night was never her idea. He'd known it and still he'd convinced himself that there was some natural course to their sleeping together before he'd left, something unavoidable, something fated. He'd been selfish and careless, and Dahlia had done what she'd had to do. To blame her for that was beyond cruel.

And Josie. Matthew closed his eyes. Dear, dear Josie. He'd been so unfair to her. Pretending not to notice her affection all those years, letting her mistake his caring for love. Like Dahlia, she'd been forced to make an impossible choice too.

He rested his face in his hands. What a chain of mismatched hearts they'd been, he thought. And him, the weakest link of all.

“Mr. Haskell?”

He looked up to see a nurse in the doorway, a portable CD player in her hand. She walked to him, holding it out.

“Betty said you were looking for one of these yesterday. They keep a few on the children's floor.” She smiled. “If you're lucky there might even be a
Sesame Street
disk in there.”

Matthew grinned. “I'll take it over the stuff I hear my students blasting. God, I thought
my
music was bad as a teenager.”

“You're a teacher, then?”

“Guidance counselor,” he said, noticing her eyes for the first time. They were light brown and warm. The sort of eyes you'd want to see if you had to wake up in a hospital bed. His gaze moved to her name tag: Beth.

“I hear he came to,” she said. “That's great.”

“It is. It really is.”

She smiled again. “I'll leave you guys alone then.” She pointed to the music player. “Don't worry about getting that back anytime soon,” she said. “I'm here all night. I'll just come by and pick it up on my way out in the morning.”

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks again.”

When she'd gone, he reached over and sifted through the drawer of Ben's night table, pulling out the CD Josie had left for him. He set the disk in the player and lowered the player onto the table, wheeling it as close as he could to the bed. When the smooth, soulful notes began to sail out into the quiet room, faint but so familiar, Matthew took his seat and watched, sure he saw tiny shivers of recognition at the corners of Ben's mouth.

“The doctor said you might have forgotten a few things, Pop. Maybe a lot of things. He said we might even have to go back to the basics.” Matthew smiled. “So I thought we'd start with Billie.”

Wayne came up behind Josie where she stood at the waiting room window.

“Want me to get you another cup of coffee?” he asked.

She shook her head, still staring out at the view.

“How about something to eat? You must be starved.”

“I'm not hungry.”

He set his hands on her shoulders. “You and Dahlia still fighting?”

“Not about this morning,” Josie said.

“What then?”

Josie sighed. “I told Matty about the baby.”

Wayne took his hands off her shoulders. “When?”

“Just before Jack called the café. I thought I should. Holly's pregnant. I just figured it might make him feel better.” Josie frowned. “It didn't.”

Wayne came around beside her, his heart thundering. It took him a few seconds to realize that Dahlia hadn't revealed their secret. If she had, Josie wouldn't have been speaking to him.

A wave of relief passed over him. He let go a long breath.

Josie bit at the inside of her cheek. “What if he doesn't forgive us, Wayne?”

“He will. He has to.”

“You say it like it's some kind of law.”

Wayne took her into his arms. “Everybody has secrets, Jo,” he said. “Things they regret.”

“I just wanted us to have a family, Wayne,” she said against his chest. “I don't regret that.”

“And we will, sweetheart. The agency will come through for us.”

She closed her eyes, her own apology so late.

“I'm so sorry, baby,” she whispered.

He swept back her bangs. His eyes filled quickly.

“Me too, Jo,” he said. “Me too.”

 

Jack pulled the cruiser up to Dahlia's yellow cape, its screened-in porch dark except for a wreath of chili-pepper lights strung around the front door. A soft evening breeze blew through the car's open windows, tinged with salt and the sweetness of the rugosa roses that lined her driveway.

“I always liked this house,” Jack said, smiling wistfully at the shingled cottage.

“Me too,” Dahlia agreed with a heavy sigh. “It just needs so much work. I think my problem is that I love the outside of a house more than the inside. Kyle Champion stopped by the other day and told me I need a new roof, but he tells everyone that. What do you think?”

“Well . . .” Jack leaned toward her so she could see where he pointed. “See that far dormer?”

“I see it,” she said.

“That dormer's about ten minutes from becoming a lawn ornament.”

She frowned. “So does that mean I need a new roof?”

He bit back a grin. “You need a new roof.”

“Shit.” Dahlia laughed. After a second, Jack laughed too.

When the car grew quiet again, he said, “I could come over and give it a look for you. Maybe do some work on that seam, just enough to get by until you can get the whole roof done.”

“You could do that?”

“Sure. It wouldn't be more than a few hours' worth of work.”

Dahlia smiled. “I remember you being good on roofs. In the pouring rain, especially.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He looked back to the house. “There are other parts of that night I'd sooner repeat first.”

“Right,” she said, her eyes teasing. “Like Momma's shrimp pie.”

Jack grinned, flexing his hands over the steering wheel, blushing noticeably now. “Yeah, like shrimp pie.”

Dahlia leaned back in the seat, smiling sadly. “Josie told me I'd ruin it.”

“Ruin what?” Jack said.

“Us.” Dahlia turned her smile to him. “That night, after our first date, she was still awake when I came upstairs, and she was so sure I'd screw it up with you eventually. And she was right.”

Jack sighed. “You didn't screw it up, Dahlia. . . .”

“Of course I did.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Then who did?”

“Nobody did.” He shrugged, leaning back too. “We were who we were.”

“We were young,” she said.

“That didn't matter. You didn't want me to love you the way I wanted to love you. I had to accept that.”

“But I did want you, Jack. You know I did.”

“It doesn't matter now.”

“Yes, it does, damn it,” she said, twisting to face him, suddenly desperate for him to understand. “I pushed you away because I was scared. Not because I wasn't crazy in love with you. I was.” She paused, her skin flushing with her confession. “Jesus, I was.”

He smiled. “I know.”

“Do you?”

He flattened his hands on his thighs. “We would never have worked then. We wanted different things.”

“Which things?”

“All of them,” he said. “You never wanted to get married or have kids.”

“You didn't give me a chance to reconsider.”

“What would have been the point? You weren't going to change your mind.”

Dahlia looked at the dashboard. He was right, she thought. More than he even knew.

She turned back to the window. “You moved on so quickly, Jack.”

He could hear the hurt in her voice. “What choice did I have?” he said gently. “If I hadn't moved on, I would never have had a family, never had the daughter who means the world to me.”

Dahlia smiled. “I know she does.”

“And what about you?” he said. “You got a business off the ground, doing something you love. Something you're good at. On your own terms. You honestly think you would have been happy straining peas and ironing my shirts?”

“Ironing?” Dahlia grinned. “What's that?”

He laughed. “Exactly.”

They looked at each other a long while.

Jack sighed. “You want me to say I've missed you, Dahlia?” he asked, his voice deepening with feeling. “Christ, yes, I've missed you. But I don't regret my life. I don't regret losing you. We make our choices and we live with them.”

She nodded, looking down at her hands in her lap, feeling a strange mix of relief and regret. “Maybe I want another chance,” she said. “Maybe I think we deserve one.” She lifted her eyes to his. “What do you think?”

He looked out at the house. “I think I don't want to be someone's husband again. And I don't want to have to fix something I didn't break.”

Dahlia nodded. Tears rose, blurring her vision. “Then what
do
you want, Jack?”