Petals on the Pillow (18 page)

Kelly flipped open the hamper and looked inside. The sight of the little sandwich with its raggedly cut off crusts nestled in the gingham napkin with a bright red apple brought a fresh surge of hot tears to her eyes.

“Thanks, honey. It’s just what I needed.” Kelly took a bite under Betsy’s watchful eye. The sandwich felt dry and tasteless in her mouth—despite the fact that peanut butter and jam literally oozed out from between the slices of bread—but she smiled through the crumbs. Betsy’s smile was more than enough reward for her efforts. Kelly patted the ground next to her and Betsy sank down on the grass.

“I’m really sorry, Kelly,” Betsy said in a small voice.

“I know, kiddo.”

“Me, too,” Harrison’s voice rumbled above them.

Kelly reached up and took his hand. The warmth of his grasp enveloped her.

“Ready to head back down the hill?” he asked.

Kelly nodded wordlessly, and wrapped the remains of the sandwich back up in the napkin. She and Betsy carefully repacked the basket with Kelly holding onto the apple. The trio started back toward the Manor, Betsy skipping ahead with the picnic basket.

“I didn’t know your mother was ill,” Harrison said quietly, his questions implied in the simple statement.

“It wasn’t exactly a news flash,” Kelly said with a sigh.

“She’d been sick a long time, then?”

“Nearly as long as I remember. I suppose that’s why I don’t talk about it much.”

Harrison snorted. “Something you don’t talk about? I guess it is a day for surprises.”

Kelly threw a playful punch at his shoulder. He turned and caught her fist. He brought her hand to his lips, brushing it with a warm kiss before they continued walking, hand in hand now.

They walked along in silence for a little while.

“May I ask what happened?” Harrison finally asked.

Kelly took a bite of the apple she still held. She chewed slowly, knowing it was crisp and sweet, but somehow not being able to register its flavor on her tongue. “When I was four, my mother went into the hospital to have a baby. She never came home.”

A soft grunt escaped from Harrison. “I’m sorry.”

Again, Kelly paused before she spoke again. “I guess her blood pressure spiked up during the delivery. Mom had a stroke that she never recovered from, and the baby died.” Her voice sounded flat to her own ears. It had been so long since she’d had to recite the bald facts to anyone. No one at school knew—or cared to know—except Lisa. Everyone in Chicago had known for as long as Kelly could remember. There hadn’t been any need to speak of it out loud for ages. After such a long time, the words felt like pebbles dropping from her lips, hard and cold. “Mom was essentially a vegetable. Her lungs still worked and her heart kept beating, but that’s about it for 22 years.”

“I don’t mean to pry, but isn’t that an extremely long time for someone to survive in a coma?”

Kelly could tell the question made Harrison uncomfortable, but she was sure he had no idea how much more uncomfort
able it made her. “The nurses always said it was because of my father.”

“Your father? How?”

“He was amazing.” Kelly stopped and turned to let the sun beat down on her face. She closed her eyes against its brightness and wished its warmth could penetrate the frozen feeling that seemed to have settled on her lips and cheeks. “Every day when he got off work he’d troop over to the nursing home. When I was little he’d stop off at home first and get me. We’d sit by her bed and talk to her, tell her everything that had happened that day. Then he’d turn her and rub her legs and her arms, brush her hair.” Kelly looked away from Harrison’s eyes and tried to concentrate on the sunshine on the leaves and the exact way the breeze moved the branches. Anything to erase the mental images of the shrunken form in the hospital bed with the tubes running in and out. She hated remembering her father’s relentless cheeriness as he’d talk about his day while he rubbed the cold hands and chilled feet and moved the atrophied limbs with the practice of an experienced physical therapist. Then it would be her turn. He’d say, “C’mon Kelly. Hold your mama’s hand and tell her about school today.”

It hadn’t taken Kelly long to realize that in spite of Patrick Donovan’s constant talk about Mama coming home, Nancy Donovan was never going to get better.

Focus on the sunshine,
she told herself now.

“Did she ever respond to him?”

“No. Never. Oh, once or twice in the early days he’d be certain she’d squeezed his hand or something, but even he stopped pretending that was happening after a while. Although he never completely gave up the hope that one day she would sit up in the hospital bed and speak. He was convinced that she could hear him, could feel him as he held her hand.” Kelly closed her eyes against the pain that twisted through her guts. “Oh, god, Harrison. Maybe he was right. She only lasted another six months after he died. Maybe she’s spent the past six months waiting for him—or someone—to come visit her and finally gave up.” Nothing could hold back the rush of tears now. They coursed down her cheeks unchecked. She brushed them away roughly with the back of her hand and started walking again.

Harrison winced and followed. “And you? Did you ever think she responded?”

Kelly shook her head. “No. And I have to confess that I was relieved when he stopped making me come with him.”

“When was that?”

“I guess I was about fifteen or sixteen.” Kelly shrugged. “I’d decided I was smarter than him and knew more than him about everything and wasn’t too shy about letting him know it either.”

“Nice to know some things haven’t changed,” Harrison snorted.

Kelly shot him a slightly dirty look, but couldn’t help tempering it with a shaky grin. “It wasn’t too much different, and Daddy didn’t take it too much differently than you do. He’d shake his head and say I was just like Mom, but he did stop making me go visit her every day.”

“That’s an awfully heavy burden to place on a child. Did he keep visiting every day?”

Kelly nodded. “Until this spring.”

“Why’d he stop?”

“He died in March,” Kelly replied, flatly.

“Oh, Kelly,” Harrison said, his voice almost a sigh, it had gotten so soft. “And now your mother’s gone as well?”

Kelly rubbed at the sudden tension that had streaked up her neck. “I can’t help but think that they’re linked. He dies, and then she goes a few months later. The nurses always said they didn’t know how Mom would have gotten along without him. I guess this is how.”

“What now?”

Kelly shrugged. “My Aunt Tina said she’d take care of all the arrangements. There’ll be a memorial service in a couple weeks. She’ll call when she’s got it set up.”

“Kelly, if you need to go to deal with the details, the mural will be here whenever you’re ready to finish it.”

Kelly dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “It’s really not necessary. Tina loves to do this stuff. Nothing gets her going like a good funeral. Anyway, I’ll be done with the mural before it’s time to go back for the memorial.”

Harrison nodded. “Whatever you decide. If money’s the issue—”

“It’s not anymore,” Kelly snorted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that without having to send a good portion of what I make to Resting Arms Nursing Home each month, I’m not nearly as short on cash as I was a few days ago.”

“I suppose that’s good news. I’m sorry it had to come about this way, though.”

“Me, too,” Kelly said simply, surprised that she really meant it—that now, with the months of gnashing her teeth over her financial situation finally at an end, the money didn’t seem so important anymore. “Me, too.”

***

The soft knock at Kelly’s door that night didn’t surprise her. She’d hoped he would come, had waited up for him in fact, worrying that his own reticence to express emotions would keep him away from her tonight. She didn’t care for the sense of relief that swept through her when Harrison peeked around her door, but pushed her reservations back for the sake of being comforted. She needed it so badly right now. She would have to deal with the cost to her heart later.

She patted the bed next to where she sat under the covers with her knees drawn up. Harrison sat down, joining her in the yellow circle of the lamp’s glow.

He took her hand in his and kissed it. “Feeling all right?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose.” Kelly managed a weak smile.

“Anything I can get you?”

She shook her head, swinging her hair loose to block the light and to hide the need in her eyes.

“I’ll let you get some sleep then.” Harrison rose off the bed, but Kelly didn’t release his hand.

“Please don’t, Harrison.” The wobble in her own voice made her cringe.

His dark brows twitched together. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t go. Stay with me tonight.”

He sat back down on her bed and twisted back a rope of her hair behind her ear, leaving her frightened that the naked desire in her eyes would send him running for the door. Instead all he said was, “I’ll stay if you want.”

She rose to her knees, flowing into his arms like a hot wave crashing against a cliff. “Hold me tonight. Please. I need to know I’m alive.” She pressed urgent kisses against his beard- roughened cheeks until he circled her with his arms, pulling her tight against his chest.

“You are alive, Kelly. You may be the most living thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmured against her lips. She felt her urgency infect him, inflame him. His breath roughened. His kiss deepened. His tongue taunted her and teased her and she arched to him. He rose on one knee and bent over to lay her down on the bed. Still raised above her, he stripped off the crumpled polo shirt he’d been wearing all day and threw it on the floor. Her fingers danced over the crisp, dark curls on his chest. He groaned and murmured her name low in his throat.

Then her nightshirt was following his polo shirt to the floor and nothing much else mattered for a few blessed hours.

***

The noise that woke Kelly was so soft and so furtive that at first she couldn’t figure out what had brought her out of the deep and dreamless sleep she’d been enjoying. Only seconds after she sat up, however, it came again. A little scratch. Followed by a soft thump. Rhythmic. Even. Repetitive.

She slid out from beneath the covers, pausing for a moment to smile down at Harrison, still asleep among the jumbled sheets and blankets. God, that profile could make her heart skip a beat even relaxed in sleep. Then the scratch and thump came from outside her door again.

Kelly hoped it wasn’t Betsy. She wasn’t quite ready yet to explain to her little friend why Daddy was sleeping in her bed. Or more importantly, what he was doing in her bed when they weren’t sleeping.

She grabbed her nightshirt up off the floor, threw it on and slipped silently into the hallway. No one was there. Her watch read 4:30 a.m.

The house was cold this early in the morning. Kelly imme
diately wished she’d grabbed a sweatshirt and some jeans. Their warmth would have been much more suitable than the thin cotton shirt she had on now. She hesitated a moment, wondering whether she should go back to her room and change, but decided against it.

Betsy’s door was slightly ajar. Kelly could tell by the deeper shadow along the door’s edge. She crept down the hall, careful of boards that she knew by instinct creaked and moaned. She peered into Betsy’s shadowy room, reassured by the sight of her curled up on her side with her freckled face nuzzled into the slightly ratty fur of a well-worn teddy bear.

She paused, listening for the strange scratch-thump noise. She couldn’t hear it anymore. Kelly shrugged. She didn’t know what had made the noise, but at least she could be sure Betsy hadn’t been sneaking around outside her own bedroom door. Not even Betsy—as good a little actress as she was when she wanted to be—could feign sleep that well.

Kelly shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. The damp cold seeped right down into her bones. The house smelled even mustier at this time of day. The usual dusty scent of the house had a salty edge to it carried in from the Sound.

She headed back to her room and the warmth of her own bed and Harrison.

Her hand was on the doorknob to her room when she heard the strange noise again. This time it seemed to come from out toward the central staircase. Kelly hesitated. It was probably just a loose shutter swinging in the wind or a shingle coming loose on the roof. A house this old and big could produce any variety of strange noises that all seemed even stranger in the murky gray light of a northwestern dawn.

She started to push the door open.

Scratch. Thump.

It was louder now. More rapid. She heard it again.

Scratch. Thump.

Kelly quietly pulled her door to again with a soft click she hoped wouldn’t wake Harrison. She inched down the hallway, pressed against the wall. The noise came again. And again. Louder still and more insistent.

Scratch. Thump. Scratch. Thump.

Kelly’s heart started to pound in her chest in rhythm with the strange noise, but still she pressed on. Something told her she had to know what was around that corner. She peered around in time to see a filmy scrap of yellow disappear through the yawning black doorway to the eastern wing of the house.