Pieces of Hope (47 page)

He lay
facing me. Even with his bruised eye, he was achingly beautiful. Kneeling down
so that we were at eye-level, and careful not to touch him, I watched him for a
long while. At first, expressions danced across his face in a sort of horror
extravaganza, but the longer I watched, the calmer he became.

“Ethan,
I know how difficult this must be for you . . . well, no . . . I suppose I can
only imagine.” At the sound of my voice, he became very still. “Do you remember
at the hospital when first you told me if I were awake you wouldn’t have the
courage to tell me your secret? Now that, I can relate to.” I let out a pitiful
chuckle.

“I kept
telling you I needed to see my mother, but I couldn’t tell you why. In truth I
couldn’t tell anyone why, and that’s because I almost can’t bear the burden of
it myself, let alone have anyone else know my secret.”

Tears
filled my eyes. I nearly reached for his hand, then stopped cold, frightening
myself at the thought of the consequences. I tucked my hands under my knees to
prevent any accidents. Then I blurted out, “I killed my mother . . .”

I broke
into sobs. It took several moments to compose myself. “That day, it was a
Saturday, and I was working like usual at Dad’s clinic, and like usual, it was
crazy busy. Mom called around nine to make lunch plans with me after work. That
was the first thing I thought was unusual. Unless it was my birthday, I didn’t
have solo lunches with Mom. They were always a long, drawn-out affair with Dad
and Claire. She asked that I keep it a secret, and I thought that was even
odder. I also thought Mom sounded sad so, of course, I told her I’d go.”
Correcting myself, I admitted, “Actually, I
promised
I’d go.

“At one
o’clock on the nose, Brody showed up before we’d locked the doors. And he was
pumped like only Brody can be about a new crag he’d heard about . . . and in
the midst of all that excitement, I forgot about my mom.” I buried my face in
my hands for a long while, then went on, berating myself, “Forgot her! Do you
believe it? And then later, there was this weird moment when we were climbing
that I got this horrible spasm in my neck. It hurt so much that I screamed from
the pain.”

I shook
my head at the memory of it, unable to believe it still.

“And, in
that moment, I remembered the promise I’d made to my mother. We left right
away, and I kept telling Brody that something was terribly wrong. I felt it, I
said. He kept trying to calm me down. He must have told me a hundred times that
everything was fine.
 
. . . ‘You’ll see,
Hope,’ he kept saying. But by the time we got back, the paramedics were in the
driveway, and Mom was gone. Before they even told me what had happened, I knew
that she’d broken her neck. That’s what I felt on that crag, my mother’s pain.
And it’s my fault, Ethan . . . My mother is dead because of me.”

I stared
into his heavenly face for a moment, hoping to find some peace there, but I
found nothing. I felt
hollower
than before. “Don’t
you see? If I’d kept my promise and met her as planned, then my mother wouldn’t
have been on those stairs, and she couldn’t have fallen or someone couldn’t
have pushed her, and my beautiful, beautiful mother would still be alive!”

I waited
for a reaction from him. Crazy as that sounded, I believed he was capable of
waking up, grabbing me in an embrace, and telling me that everything was going to
be all right. Ethan had a way about him that led me to believe this.

Instead,
he rolled onto his other side.

I walked
around the bed, touching it as I went, but feeling nothing. Watching him curled
into a fetal pose, his hands entwined as if in prayer, a wave of sadness hit me
hard. It was as if I had missed him for a thousand years, and only now had the
opportunity to right that wrong. Carefully, making sure I didn’t touch him, I
lay on the bed beside him. I became his mirror image—body half-curled, hands
clasped before me, terrified that he might accidentally move through me.

But he
didn’t, he became still once again, giving me the courage to continue.

“You may
not know it, Ethan, but you’re better off without me.” I closed one eye,
tracing an outline of his face in the air. It was my way of making a memory.
“What I’m trying to say is . . . when something truly devastating happens, and
you feel it to such a degree that it affects you, and you know that somehow it
will always affect you . . . well, you start to think you’re broken.” I felt it
then, that too-familiar tightening in my chest. “And I am, Ethan. I’m broken.
My mother’s death broke something inside me.”

My voice
cracked on broken. Ironic, I thought, as though my body could connect the word
and the wounds. But my bedside confession only made me all the more determined
to find my mother while there was still time, then return to Ethan as quickly
as I could.

But I
found leaving him difficult, and whether it was my imagination or not, it
seemed that each time I made up my mind to go, his body would begin to thrash
again, unconsciously begging me to stay. Ethan’s watch on the nightstand read
six. And though I had no idea where Daniel was at this moment, I knew it was
time to go. Ethan would be awake soon, and I didn’t relish upsetting him
further.

I
propped myself on one elbow as a watery ray of light shone on something below
his pillow. It was the first time I’d noticed the boldly-striped stationery,
the kind on which a man might send an old-fashioned letter. I moved down a
little, inching my way around so I could read the neat, squared-off print. My
heart sped up when I read what he’d written.
I’m not a poet on paper, Hope. Only in my heart. Only for you
.

There
was a space of several lines, and then it continued.

I’ll
love you anytime

In
the spring, in the fall, in the warm sunshine

In
the rain, in the snow, anywhere you go—

I’ll
love you there

I’ll
love you anywhere

In
the meadows, in the mountains, in the feathery pines

At
the descent or on the incline—

I’ll
love you all the time

I’ll
love you for all time

In
this second, in the seconds passed

In
this hour, in all the hours to come

Even
when my time on earth is done

I’ll
love you then—

Just
say when . . .
    

Tears
flowed freely now and I could no longer see the words. Ethan had signed his
name in a simple script at the bottom that tilted in a backwards slant, the
same way Claire’s did as a left-handed writer. Flooded with emotions, I
considered all the things he had told me about—my fragile state at the
hospital, his undying faith that I was going to wake up at any moment, his
seeming willingness to walk away from it all—

I guess
this is goodbye.

And then
I thought about the poem he had written, and the lengths he had gone to
to
prevent me from entering his dreams—and that damned,
impenetrable wall! And suddenly, I understood the depth of his pain. Or did I?

I was
sitting up now, hating the idea of leaving, yet sensing that I should go.
Another second passed and he unexpectedly moaned my name, apparently begging me
to stay. It was another unconscious plea on his part. On some deeper level, he
may have known that I was there, while on a conscious level, he was sound
asleep.

That’s
when it came to me.

I didn’t
think it through. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. In some odd
way, it reminded me of suicide. In the short while that I’d considered it as an
option, I’d often tried to picture it afterwards—that moment of sudden clarity
when I’d realize what an idiotic thing it was that I’d done—that instant of
perspective when I’d ask myself why I ever thought that killing myself was a good
idea . . .

Yes, it
was that moment—the moment after—that bothered me. Consequently, it was that
moment which I chose not to think about now. And without a second thought, I
precisely mirrored his posture, closed my eyes, and rolled sideways—straight
into Ethan.

It was
like falling into somebody else’s nightmare.

The pain
knocked the breath from me, and I doubled over from the shock of it. I couldn’t
quite place it. Deep and vague, like I was bleeding to death on the inside. But
when I looked down to find the wound I saw Ethan’s body instead. And there
wasn’t a mark on him.

Through
the murkiness, I saw a similar dream to the one I had just exited. I stood in
the same place I had before, about fifty feet from the Peak. Only this time,
dangling from the edge, I saw me—only it wasn’t really me, nor did it feel like
me. It was eerie, like watching a movie and seeing someone else play your part.
And this time, I was inside Ethan, watching it play-out through his eyes,
fighting to struggle through his fear. My powerful fists pounded on the
invisible wall with a physical strength I didn’t truly possess, and a hoarse
cry escaped my throat, deep and resonating, bellowing to the girl at the edge
of the Peak.

But the
Hope in Ethan’s nightmare seemed thrilled by his display.

From her
upside-down position, the other Hope sat up, a taunting smile frozen on her
face, her eyes disturbingly wild. Ethan shouted to her again and she laughed,
releasing one foot from the ridge that held it secure. She was teasing him in
the most horrid sort of way. A band of pain tightened around my chest. I heard
Ethan groan in agony.
 

“Next
time,” she mocked, smiling that hateful smile, holding her position on the edge
of the Peak. “Next time, there’ll be no falling . . .”
 

“Stop
screwing around, Hope!” I shouted in Ethan’s voice, my fists pounding on the
rock-hard wall with a frenzied intensity. “Don’t do this! Come away from the
edge!”

The girl
flashed into a different form. She no longer looked like me. Her pale blond
hair was tied back with a red ribbon. Her feet were bare. I knew her face. It
was the girl from Ethan’s memories, the girl he insisted was me from an earlier
lifetime. She looked in Ethan’s direction, but her gaze was vacant. I saw that
her eyes were swollen from crying.

“I’m
sorry,” she sobbed. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me . . .”
 

The girl
morphed back into evil Hope—wild-haired, wild-eyed.

“DON’T!”
Ethan shouted, terrified now. “Don’t do this!”
  

Ignoring
Ethan’s plea, the girl looked back at him once, her image shifting back and
forth between evil Hope and the girl from Ethan’s memories, then she stretched
out her arms and flew like a stone from the top of Heaven’s Peak.

The
blackness came over me almost immediately. But in the aftermath, I couldn’t
stop sobbing nor did I have the strength to drag myself out of Ethan. In the distance,
I heard a buzzing—a telephone, maybe? It sounded miles away. But some sense of
reason told me to get out of Ethan before he awoke . . . What would happen to
me if he realized I was still—?

Something
grabbed my wrist, wrenching me out of my nightmare. It took a couple of seconds
to gather that it was Daniel, holding me against his shoulder and stroking my
hair. I was a limp shoestring. Nothing would move. I couldn’t even hold up my
head. I felt my eyes rolling around in their sockets, unable to focus. Then I
became aware of that buzzing noise once again.

What I
had thought was a telephone was actually Ethan’s alarm. Daniel ignored it.
Speaking soothingly, but looking slightly terrified, he asked, “Are you all
right?”

My eyes
crept up to his. I blinked once. He laughed with relief, squeezing me against his
shoulder. When he released me, my head fell backwards. He rested it against his
knee.

“Hope,
did you”—even in my diminished state, I heard the pause—“go anywhere else?”

I
blinked twice, signaling no.

“Not to
the hospital or to see your family?” He sounded distraught, but as though he
were trying to hide it.

I
blinked twice again.

“So,
only here?” he repeated above the obnoxious buzzing of the alarm.

I gave
one more blink and managed a low growl.

“Okay,
okay . . . I’ll stop torturing you.” He glanced at Ethan, now moving on the
bed. “We should be going.” Delicately, as though he thought I might break, he
picked me up in his arms and peeled back a portion of the wall near the French
doors. The rainy day instantly disappeared, revealing an enormous and lavishly
decorated bedroom that looked like something out of a castle. If I could have,
I would have groaned.

Before
we slipped away, that infernal buzzing ceased, and a strangled and hoarse voice
called out from the bed, “Hope? Hope, is that you?” In my peripheral vision, I
saw Ethan throwing the blankets around, shuffling as he searched frantically
for something.

I felt
that burning pain again, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even turn my head.

“Hope,
your energy is low . . . I can barely feel you.” He held up a piece of paper of
paper, shifting it toward the end of the bed, and then the wall, unaware, it
seemed, of where I was exactly.

“Look!”
Ethan shouted, shaking the paper in the air. Was it the poem?

I tried
to focus. No, it wasn’t the poem. It was a newspaper article. I was only able
to glimpse the headline because he kept shifting it around.
Local Girl Dies In Fall
, it said.

Daniel
carried me out of the room and dropped the shortcut, allowing the wall to fall
back into place, and Ethan disappeared from sight. What did it mean? My mind
was fuzzy, miles away. Was that the reason for Ethan’s nightmare, the newspaper
article? And if so, why were there two of us? I worked at concentrating. But my
mind and body seemed to be in two different places, and I gave up. Instead, I
focused on the arched windows in my line of sight. They were painted in watery
blues and greens with thin threads of lead separating the pieces.