To Have and to Hold (17 page)

While Nate, Griff, and Jake combed the neighborhood in a grid system they’d laid out, Hunter started in on a more systematic search of the house and yard. Jake had instructed him not to reject any possible hiding spot, no matter how implausible. “Kids can make themselves a lot smaller than you think.”

They were here, all of them, helping him. They’d shown up, really more like guardian angels than Hells Angels. No blame, no questions, just arms slung here and there across his shoulders, and Jake, a guy he barely knew, giving him that steady-eyed reassuring look, like
Dude, I know you’re freaking out and I would be, too, but it’s gonna be okay.

It just felt so far from okay.

He finished the house and started in on the woods again, combing as thoroughly as he could, trying to see the maze of it as a grid like the one they’d laid out over the neighborhood. He peeked into every corner of the tree house, under the daybed, in all the cabinets, even the ones he knew were too small to hide a preteen girl.

He came out of the woods into the sunlight of the backyard and stood there, letting the sun’s brilliance blaze into his eyes, as if it might illuminate his next move.

He was listening with half his self for a call from inside, or the sound of Jake or Nate or Griff hailing him from the neighborhood, or, best of all, the music of Clara’s voice sifting through the ordinary forest sounds. But all he heard was trees moving in the breeze and the tree house creaking just slightly on its perch. The distant highway and a lawn being mowed. Children playing, but not his child.

If something had happened to her, he would never forgive himself. Trina, who loved Clara with a mother’s love, would never forgive him.

Except he knew that wasn’t true. Trina had held him blameless for the woman in the darkness. For Dee’s death.

That blanched, shocked face, the accusation—

With a tremendous effort he pulled himself back from that black hole.

Those things weren’t in your control. That woman’s death. Dee’s death. How much you love some—

She’d been about to tell him, You can’t control how much you love someone, when he’d cut her off. Furious. He’d been furious.

He wanted—

He wanted to believe her.

His chest ached, something rising and looming just behind the veil of numbness.

He couldn’t.

He pushed it down again and the veil held.

Find Clara.

There was just the toolshed left.

He blinked against the power of the sun and strode toward the shack. Threw the door open. In that transition from absolute blinding sun to pure black, the world vanished and he could see less than nothing, so the first thing he knew was the sniffles, the small, helpless sounds in the dark, and then, like something rising to the surface of memory, a face in the dark, pale, frightened. Eyes. For a moment he grappled with it and crossed over between worlds, the impulse to tear at the concrete between them almost overwhelming, his fingernails burning, dust rasping his lungs, because she needed his help and he would have done anything, anything, to protect her.

“Daddy!” said the white face with the big eyes, and it was, suddenly, Clara.

Clara, crying, her arms thrown around him.

“God, Clara! You scared me so bad.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The words were all murky wet with tears, and she was sobbing against his chest.

And the numbness parted like a curtain and he felt the weight of the guilt he’d carried, the spiky outlines of fear that had lurked in all the dark corners of his mind, and he was—

He was crying, too. For the woman in the dream, in the wrecked building. For himself, lost in his own mind, and for Trina, for what she’d lost. For all of them. Because there were just so many damn ways it was possible to be in the dark, alone.

But most of all, for Dee, because he never had. Because he’d buried her deeper than lost memory, rather than feel what he was feeling now.

He clung to Clara and her sobs drowned out the quiet sounds of his grief and his tears got lost amids hers, and he comforted them both by stroking her hair and whispering “shhhh” into her ear, the way he had when she was a colicky infant.

It worked. On her, and on him. The grief, unleashed, dissipated. Felt manageable again. And she subsided to hiccups and sighs against him. Between the tortured little breaths, she informed him:

“Phoebe and I thought if I were missing you’d have to call Trina to help look for me and then they wouldn’t go, and if they didn’t go then Trina’s job would be gone and they would have come back for good.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath behind him, but he didn’t lift his head from his daughter’s hair, fragrant and soft.

“That was—foolish. And
brave
.”

“She’s the best,” Clara said on a sob. “She makes everything fun.”

Hunter squeezed his daughter tighter, and he thought of Lakeshore and the raft, the sparkle of sun on water and mischief in Trina’s eyes, the torment of her body slipping past his as they kidded and teased. Thought of the spit and how it felt to walk out on the most precarious, narrow bit of land with her hand in his, as close to the sea as you could get without a boat, and yet thoroughly anchored. Of building the tree house with her, and how she could make a box into a room, a hidey-hole into a hideaway, a space into a stage. A house into a home.

The darkness and grief and guilt began to lift, just a little. The way a morning mist starts to hint at the brightening sky above before it’s gone completely.

“She remembers for you. When you forget,” Clara said.

Startled, he drew back. “What do you mean?”

“When I forget my lunch. When I forget my homework. She helps me remember.”

You used literally those exact words.

Yeah, you were mad at her the first time, too. At least you’re consistent.

Do you want me to tell you what you did? Or what I think you wish you did?

She’d remembered for him, too. And even though it had been hard, she’d put the world back together for him.

“She knows the right things to say to make you feel better.”

Shh. Shh, Hunter. It’s okay.

That night, dreaming, he’d been in the dark, but he hadn’t been alone. He’d wandered through the maze of his own thoughts and followed her voice out again.

It wasn’t your fault, Hunter. You did the very best you could.

Trina had been incredibly brave, risking her heart for him twice over. Following him into the dark, holding his hand against the sheer, howling loneliness.

He felt a rush of emotion, gratitude, relief,
love
, sweeping through like sunlight streaming through the mist, like a sudden flood of light, a door opening into a black room, stones falling away from the dank closeness of something caved-in and ominous, washing away the darkness. And in the brief, brilliant illumination, he saw, in the strange familiar frame of memory, his fingers drawing back a strand of Trina’s hair, his thumb brushing over her lower lip. He heard his own voice, a slight echo like too much reverb, the sound in his own head.

He remembered. One moment. One sentence. But it was enough.

I know my feelings, and they’re not going to change.

“Oh,
God
,” Hunter said, his arms dropping to his sides.

“Daddy?” Clara’s voice chimed alarm, and she clutched for his hands. “Are you okay?” And then, when he didn’t—couldn’t—answer right away, “Daddy, are you okay?”

“He’s okay, hon’. Just a little freaked out.”

Nate was standing in the doorway, silhouetted there. Hunter had no idea how long he’d been there. Until he remembered the sharp intake of breath he’d heard when Clara had revealed the nature of her and Phoebe’s plot to lure Trina back. So he’d heard the whole conversation.

“Clara, honey,” Nate said. “Go on out to Jake and Griff. I want to talk to your dad for a minute.”

It took awhile before Clara would relinquish her grip on Hunter’s hands. He gave her one more kiss on the head and she ran out of the toolshed.

Nate came in and the two men stood there in the semidarkness. Hunter couldn’t even see Nate’s face, and that was fine.

“Trina’s gone,” Hunter said.

“I gathered,” Nate said dryly.

“It’s my fault. I let her go.”

“I know something about that.”

Hunter expected him to say more, but Nate stayed quiet, and Hunter was grateful, because it allowed him to gather the frayed scraps of his thoughts into something vaguely coherent.

“The day I lost my memory, there was a woman, trapped, and I flipped out—because that’s how Dee died. I’d been trying not to feel anything about her for so long, and then all of a sudden, it was all there. Everything. What I’d taken from her, how much I blamed myself. Not for not saving her, but for not loving her enough.”

Nate laughed then. A short laugh, full of sympathy and amusement. “That’s not a thing you get to choose, Hunter. I of all people should fucking know. You don’t get to choose who or how much. It chooses you. Actually, it runs you over like a fucking steamroller.”

Hunter thought of Trina, furious under the tree-house tree, raging at him.
Don’t fucking tell me that, Hunter. Don’t tell me you can’t do it. Don’t tell me what you can and can’t give. I’ve seen you. I know you. And you fell in love with me. So if you’re not feeling it now, it’s not because you can’t. It’s because you
won’t
.

She’d been right, of course. About that. About everything.

Hunter. Those things weren’t in your control. That woman’s death. Dee’s death. How much you love someone.

“I couldn’t have saved Dee. Even if I’d loved her enough.”

Nate made a gruff, startled noise. “Of course you couldn’t.”

“And I couldn’t have saved that woman.”

Nate shook his head. “No.”

“My men knew I couldn’t. They all knew it was futile. They were telling me to stop. They were telling me to get out before—”

He touched the spot where his chest had been torn open. Where air had rushed out. Where his life had almost fled. But somehow he’d been given it back. Air. Life. The ability to breathe and live and
choose
.

The toolshed no longer seemed so dark. Light filtered through the partially open door and he could see Nate’s face clearly now, listening quietly, sympathetically. And he couldn’t stop gulping air, any more than he could stop feeling the press of guilt, the crush of grief, the overwhelming sense of anger at how goddamn unfair life could be, but underneath it all the swell of
relief
. Full breaths, his chest rising, air bright and clear and dust-free.

“It’s hard to be the one who survives.” Nate said it in an almost offhand manner. “You’re supposed to be grateful to be alive, but that doesn’t mean you are, and it sure as fuck doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

“You mean J.J.?” J.J. had been Nate’s best buddy, until he got blown up in the watchtower by an RPG. And that RPG had ended Nate’s fight, too, for different reasons.

“ ’Course I fucking mean J.J.,” Nate said. “And you can’t look the fact of it, your survival, the other person’s death, straight in the face, which makes it a thousand times worse, so it skulks around in your peripheral vision until something finally brings it into focus—”

“Like memory,” Hunter said.

And then he stopped for a moment, run over by memories. Not the lost ones, but the new ones. Trina in the airport, expectant and worried, the look on her face when he’d told her he didn’t remember, the feel of her mouth on his in the dark, something guiding him back toward the world of the living.

“Like love.” Hunter’s voice broke.

Eggs over hard, sand and scars, candlelight and chocolate, granola, kissing and kissing and kissing, and the feel of knowing her even though he didn’t.

“Like love,” Nate agreed, smiling.

Something was gathering in Hunter’s gut. Certainty. Resolve. “You said you don’t get to choose who you love. And I agree. I know that’s true. But you do—”

He took another of those deep breaths, and his ribs protested only the tiniest bit. “You do get to choose what you do about it.”

Nate cocked his head to the side. “And what, pray tell, are you going to do about it?”

In answer, Hunter reached into his pocket and pulled out the object he’d found on the closet shelf. A small, black velvet box. It could have contained earrings, but Hunter knew—deeper than memory—that it didn’t.

He opened the box. The ring, a single bright glitter of almost-but-not-quite forgotten faith, was unfamiliar, but the tightening of his chest with fear and excitement felt like an echo.

“I found it when I was looking for Clara. I must have bought it, before, and hidden it. I guess I knew even then what I wanted.”

“Yeah,” Nate said. If Hunter didn’t know him better, he would have said his friend’s eyes were shiny. “Don’t think there was ever much question along those lines, other than how long it would take you to figure it out. Nice ring, by the way.”

It was beautiful. A very wise man had obviously picked it out. Hunter was grateful to his previous self. He could get to be friends with that guy, given a little more time.

A chuckle from Nate recalled Hunter to himself and the jewelry balanced on his outstretched hand.

“You shouldn’t have. I like you a lot, but I just don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”

Hunter raised his head to find Nate grinning at him.

“But if you want a ride to the airport, I’m your man.”

Phoebe reached over and grabbed Trina’s wrist for perhaps the tenth time, consulted the clock on her neglected fitness watch, and sank back into her departure gate seat.

“It’s five minutes later than it was the last time you checked,” Trina said.

“I’m bored.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate it when you say that. Like it’s your fault.”

“I’m not saying it because I feel like it’s my fault. I’m saying it because I feel sorry. Sympathetic.”

“It
is
your fault, though,” Phoebe muttered.

Trina shifted uncomfortably in her hard vinyl chair. They’d been sitting at the gate for almost an hour, reading and taking turns playing solitaire and Sudoku and Angry Birds on Trina’s phone. And they still had time to kill.

Trina felt suddenly sick of it. The waiting. Not so much the interval until their flight took off, but all the time stretching beyond that into the future. Waiting for the grief and pain to subside. Waiting to be ready to care again. Waiting to feel like her real life wasn’t the thing she’d left behind.

She stood abruptly. “You know what?” she said. “I think it’s time for retail therapy.”

“What’s that?” Phoebe asked.

“That’s where you spend money you don’t have in the vain hope that you’ll feel better afterward,” Trina said.

A small smile crept over Phoebe’s tragic face. “Okay. That sounds kind of fun.”

They went out into the central concourse and Trina laid out the rules. “We have thirty-five dollars each. We have to spend almost all of it, but we can’t spend more. We can give money to each other, if someone wants to spend more and someone wants to spend less, but we can’t spend more than seventy dollars combined. And no one’s allowed to buy anything until we visit all the shops.”

“Why not?”

“Well, partly so we don’t have buyer’s remorse,” Trina said. “But mainly because window shopping is really the best part, and these rules drag out the window shopping as long as possible. Once you actually spend the money, the retail therapy doesn’t work as well.”

It was a surprisingly delightful game. They picked things up and put them down—jars of berry jam, packages of smoked salmon, Mariners gear, Seahawks gear, Sounders gear, Storm gear. Cellphone cases, umbrellas, lightweight jackets, laptop satchels, tote bags with the Space Needle emblazoned across their canvas. Books, magazines, packs of gum, Fran’s chocolates, snow globes, rain globes, earbuds, trail mix, magnets.

When they’d touched everything there was to touch and grown bored with the hunt, Phoebe spent all her money on books. “Dystopian YA,” she said, stroking a glossy paperback image of a dying city and a tough teenaged girl. She borrowed forty-one cents from Trina to make things come out even.

Trina bought a T-shirt with a silkscreen of the Experience Music Project’s strange, lumpy architecture, the monorail arcing overhead and through. “I never went to the EMP,” she said. “I’ve lived in or near Seattle for years, and I never went to the EMP.”

She felt a wave of dizzying grief at that. Misplaced, she knew, but it was as close as she could get to her knotted-up emotions. It was impossible, right now, to think of Hunter or Clara at all. She couldn’t even peek at them out of the corner of her mind.

“We need chocolate,” she declared.

They bought a giant assortment, sat at a table in the food court, and ate the whole thing.

“So,” Hunter said. “You and Phoebe had a plot, huh?”

Clara nodded.

“That was—clever.”

“Are you angry?”

He thought about it. “A little,” he said. “Because it was sneaky. And it’s wrong to trick your parents. And you scared me half to death.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry again.

“But I’m also proud of you,” he said. “And grateful to you. Because you made me think about some things that I didn’t want to face up to.”

Her tears stopped and her face shone, and he felt just what he’d said: pride and gratitude. And hope.

“The thing about really complicated plots,” Hunter said, “is that they don’t always work.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“Because you can set everything up just right, but people don’t always do what you think they’re going to do. Like I didn’t call Trina. I was supposed to call Trina, huh?”

More nodding. “And she would come. And then she’d stay.”

He didn’t stop to dwell too long on Clara’s words. On Clara’s complete certainty, despite everything that had happened, that the only obstacle between him and Trina and happiness was his own stubbornness.

He prayed it was the truth.

“It’s called the Law of Unintended Consequences, when things happen you didn’t predict at all,” Hunter said. “Unfortunately, it’s more the rule than the exception. The more complicated the plan, the more likely something won’t happen exactly the way you think it will.”

He looked fondly down at his only child, at her fluffy red hair, her smattering of freckles, her still pug nose. “Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“You can only control your own actions,” Hunter said. “That said, for whatever reason, people are absurdly hopeful and keep making plans, and I think that’s very brave. And I’d rather be someone who made a plan and tried his best and had it not quite work out than someone who never bothered to make a plan at all because it might not work out the way he hoped.”

“Me, too,” Clara said fiercely.

“So,” he said. “Are you up to try one more?”

“One more what?”

“One more plan.”

“Yes!”

He looked at her beautiful, shining face, gazed into the depths of her eyes—so much like Dee’s—and prayed he wouldn’t disappoint her again.