Making Faces (39 page)

Ambrose never saw his friends after the blast
that killed them. He never saw them laid out peacefully in death
like Bailey was. They wouldn't have been laid out. No open caskets
for soldiers returning from war, for soldiers who had died from an
improvised explosive device that blew a two-ton Humvee into the air
and sent another one careening. They wouldn't have looked like
Bailey either, as if they were sleeping. Judging from the damage to
his own face, they would have been ravaged, unrecognizable.

At Walter Reed, Ambrose saw soldiers who were
missing limbs. He saw burn patients and soldiers with facial
injuries much worse than his own. And his dreams were filled with
limbs and gore and soldiers who had no faces and no arms, stumbling
around in a storm of black smoke and carnage on the streets of
Baghdad. He'd been haunted by the faces of his friends, wondering
what had happened to them after the blast. Had they died
immediately? Or had they known what was happening? Had Paulie, with
his sensitivity to things of the spirit, felt death take him? Had
Bailey?

Such needless death, so unnecessary, so
tragic. Grief clogged Ambrose's throat as he stared at Bailey
Sheen, at the dirt that matted his hair and the dried mud that
Angie Sheen gently wiped from his round face. The toddler Rachel
Taylor had taken from Rita's mother was smeared in the same black
mud. Bailey was dead, Rita was unconscious, and the bottoms of
Becker Garth's pant legs were still damp and caked in dirt. He had
done something to his wife. And he had done something to Bailey,
Ambrose realized in dawning horror. There was evil everywhere,
Ambrose thought to himself. And he was seeing it right here in
Hannah Lake.

He strode from the room, fury pounding in his
temples, surging through his veins. He crossed the emergency lobby,
pushing the swinging doors wide that separated the waiting room
from the trauma center, causing the few people who huddled
miserably on the metal chairs, waiting for admittance or word on
the condition of loved ones, to look up in alarm at the angry,
scarred giant who flew through the doors.

But Becker wasn't there. Rachel Taylor still
waited by Sarah Marsden's side, but Ty had surrendered to
exhaustion across her chest. Rachel still hadn't seen Bailey, still
didn't know her nephew had been killed. She looked at him in
question, her eyes wide in a face that reminded him of her
daughter, reminded him that Fern sat devastated in the room where
Bailey lay and he needed to go to her. Ambrose turned around and
went back through the trauma doors. Landon Knudsen and another
police officer Ambrose didn't know stood just outside the emergency
room entrance.

“Knudsen!” Ambrose called out as he pushed
through the entrance doors.

Landon Knudsen took a step back and his
partner stepped forward and put a hand on his holster.

“Where's Becker Garth?” Ambrose demanded.

Knudsen's shoulders slumped as his partner's
back stiffened, their opposing reactions almost comical. Landon
Knudsen couldn't take his eyes off of Ambrose's face. It was the
first time in three years he had laid eyes on the wrestler he had
idolized in high school.

“We don't know,” Landon admitted, shaking his
head and trying to hide his reaction to the change in Ambrose's
appearance. “We're just trying to get a handle on what the hell is
going on. We had another cruiser here, but we didn't have every
entrance and exit covered. He's slipped out.”

Ambrose didn't miss the slide of Landon's
eyes, the discomfort and pity that colored his gaze, but he was too
upset to care. The fact that they had been watching Becker Garth
confirmed his suspicions. In very few words, he laid out the mud
he'd seen on the toddler and on Bailey's clothing, as well as the
“coincidence” that Bailey and Rita had been brought to the
emergency room within a half hour of each other. The officers
didn't seem surprised by his synopsis, though they were both
vibrating with adrenaline. This type of thing didn't happen in
Hannah Lake.

But it had happened, and Bailey Sheen was
dead.

Rita regained consciousness within hours of
her surgery. She was confused and teary with a headache for the
record books, but with the pressure on her brain relieved and the
swelling under control, she was able to communicate and wanted to
know what had happened to her. Her mother told her what she knew,
reliving Becker's 911 call and the trip to the ER with little Ty
almost inconsolable in his father's arms. She told Rita that Becker
had not been able to rouse her.

“I was sick,” Rita said weakly. “My head hurt
and I was so dizzy. I didn't want to go to Jerry's. I had bathed Ty
and put him in his pajamas, and I just wanted to go to bed. But
Becker wouldn't let me out of his sight. He found my stash, Mom. He
knows I was planning to leave. He's convinced I have something
going on with Ambrose Young.” Rita's voice became more measured as
the pain killers began to pull her under. “But Fern loves Ambrose .
. . and I think he loves her too.”

“Did you hit your head?” Sarah pulled Rita
back on track. “The doctors said you sustained an injury on the
back of your head that caused a slow bleed on the inside . . . a
subdural hematoma, the doctor called it. They drilled a little hole
in your skull to relieve the pressure.”

“I told Becker I wanted a divorce. I told
him, Mom. He just looked at me like he wanted to kill me. It scared
me, so I ran. He came after me swinging, and I hit the floor pretty
hard where the tile meets the carpet. It hurt so bad. I think I
passed out because Becker got off me real quick. I had a big bump
there . . . but it didn't bleed.”

“When was that?”

“Tuesday, I think.” It was Friday night when
Rita was brought into the ER, late Saturday morning now. Rita was
lucky to be alive.

“I dreamed about Bailey,” Rita's voice was
slurred and Sarah didn't interrupt, knowing she was fading fast. “I
dreamed Ty was crying and Bailey came and got him and took him for
a ride in his wheelchair. He said 'Let Mommy sleep.' I was so glad
because I was so tired. I couldn't even lift my head. Funny dream,
huh?”

Sarah just patted Rita's hand and tried not
to cry. She would have to tell Rita about Bailey. But not yet. Now
she had something more important to do. When she was sure her
daughter was fast asleep and wouldn't miss her, she called the
police.

The window was open. Just like it always was.
The wind made the curtains flutter slightly and the blinds banged
against the sill every now and again when an impudent gust would
make an attempt to come inside. It wasn't that late, just after
dark. But Fern had been up for thirty-six hours and she fell into
her bed, needing the sleep that would come in fits and starts,
interspersed with crying that hurt her head and made breathing
impossible.

After they left the hospital, left Bailey in
the hands of those who would carry out an autopsy and then transfer
him to the mortuary, Fern and her parents spent the day with Angie
and Mike at their home, acting as a buffer between the well-wishers
and the grieving parents, accepting food and condolences with
gratitude and making sure they offered comfort in return. Ambrose
went back to the store to help his father and she and Rachel kept
Ty with them so Sarah could stay with Rita. Becker had run off and
no one knew where he was.

Angie and Mike seemed shell-shocked but were
composed and ended up giving more comfort than they received.
Bailey's sisters had been there as well, along with their husbands
and children. The mood was one of both sorrow and celebration.
Celebration for a life well-lived and a son well-loved, and sorrow
for the end that had come without warning. There were tears shed,
but there was laughter too. More laughter than was probably
appropriate, which Bailey would have enjoyed. Fern had laughed,
too, surrounded by the people who had loved Bailey most, comforted
by the bond they shared.

When Sarah came to get Ty that evening,
reporting that Rita was going to be okay, Fern had stumbled
gratefully to her room seeking comfort in solitude. But when she
was finally alone, the truth of Bailey's absence started to push
through her defenses, riddling her heart with the pricking pain of
precious memories–words he would never say again, expressions that
would never again cross his face, places they wouldn't go, time
they wouldn't spend together. He was gone. And she hurt. More than
she’d thought was possible. She prepared for bed at nine o'clock,
brushing her teeth, pulling on a tank top and some pajama bottoms,
washing her swollen eyes with cold water only to feel the heat of
emotion swell in them once more as she burrowed her face in the
towel, as if she could snuff out the knowledge that throbbed at her
temples.

But sleep would not come and her grief was
amplified by her loneliness. She wished for reprieve, but found
none in the darkness of her small room. When the blinds clanked
loudly and a flicker of light from the street lamp outside danced
across her wall, she didn't turn toward the window, but sighed,
keeping her heavy eyes closed.

When she felt a hand smooth the hair that lay
against her shoulders, she flinched, but the flash of fear was
almost immediately replaced with a flood of welcome.

“Fern?”

Fern knew the hand that touched her. She lay
still, letting Ambrose stroke her hair. His hand was warm and
large, and the weight of it anchored her. She rolled toward him on
her narrow bed, and found his eyes in the darkness. Always in the
darkness. He was crouched by her bed, his upper body outlined
against the pale rectangle of her window, and his shoulders seemed
impossibly wide against the soft backdrop.

His hand faltered as he saw her swollen eyes
and her tear-stained face. Then he resumed his ministrations,
smoothing the fiery strands from her cheeks, catching her tears in
the palm of his hand.

“He's gone, Ambrose.”

“I know.”

“I can't stand it. It hurts so bad that I
want to die too.”

“I know,” he repeated softly, his voice
steady.

And Fern knew that he did. He understood,
maybe better than anyone else could.

“How did you know I needed you?” Fern
whispered in broken tones.

“Because I needed you,” Ambrose confessed
without artifice, his voice thick with heartache.

Fern sat up and his arms enveloped her,
pulling her into him as he sank to his knees. She was small and he
was wonderfully large and he enfolded her against his chest. She
nestled into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sinking
into his lap like a child who had been lost and then found,
reunited with the one she loved most.

It was a testament to Ambrose's love for her,
the length of time in which he knelt on the hard floor with Fern in
his arms, letting her sorrow wash over and through him. His knees
ached in steady concert with the heavy ache in his chest, but it
was a different pain than he'd felt when he'd lost Beans, Jesse,
Paulie and Grant in Iraq. That pain had been infused with guilt and
shock and there had been no understanding to temper the agony. This
pain, this loss, he could shoulder, and he would shoulder it for
Fern as best he could.