John Hart - Down River

“She’ll get over this, Adam. People get over worse.”

But I was already shaking my head. “I’m not talking about what happened today. I’m talking about when I left. When she was a child. It was like a light came off of her. That’s what Dolf used to say.”

“How so?”

“He said that most people walk in light and dark. That’s the way the world usually works. But some people carry the light with them. Grace was like that.”

“She’s not the child you remember, Adam. She hasn’t been for a long time.”

There was something in Robin’s voice. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“About six months ago, a state trooper caught her doing one-twenty down the interstate at two in the morning on a stolen motorcycle. She wasn’t even wearing a helmet.”

“Was she drunk?” I asked.

“No.”

“Was she prosecuted?”

“Not for stealing the bike.”

“Why not?”

“It was Danny Faith’s bike. I guess he didn’t know that she’s the one who took it. He reported it stolen but wouldn’t press charges. They locked her up, but the D.A. dropped the case. Dolf hired a lawyer to handle the speeding charge. She lost her license.”

I could picture the bike, a big Kawasaki that Danny had had forever. Grace would be very small on it, but I could see her, too: the speed, the torrent of noise, and her hair straight out behind her. Like she’d looked the first time she’d ridden my father’s horse.

Fearless.

“You don’t know her,” I said.

“A hundred and twenty miles an hour, Adam. Two in the morning. No helmet. It took the patrolman five miles to catch up with her.”

I thought of Grace now, damaged in one of those antiseptic rooms behind me. I rubbed at my eyes. “What am I supposed to feel, Robin? You’ve seen this before.”

“Anger. Emptiness. I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

She shrugged. “It’s never been someone I love.”

“And Grace?”

Her eyes were impregnable. “I’ve not known Grace for some time, Adam.”

I was silent, thinking of Grace’s words on the dock.

Who else cared about me?

“Are you okay?” Robin asked.

I was not, not even close. “If I could find the guy that did this, I’d kill him.” I showed her my eyes. “I would kill that motherfucker dead.”

Robin looked around; no one was close. “Don’t say that, Adam. Not here. Not ever.”

Grantham finished his phone call and met us at the hospital door. We walked in together. Dolf and my father were speaking to the attending physician. Grantham interrupted them.

“Can we see her yet?”

The doctor was a young, earnest-looking man with black-framed glasses and a thin nose. He seemed small and prematurely bent; he held a clipboard against his chest as if it could armor him from the injuries that surrounded him. His voice was surprisingly firm.

“Physically, she’s sound enough. But I don’t know that she’ll be responsive. She has not really said anything since she came in, except for once in the first hour. She asked for somebody named Adam.”

People turned as one: my father, Dolf, Robin, and Detective Grantham. Eventually, the doctor looked at me as well. “Are you Adam?” he asked. I nodded, and my father’s mouth opened in the silence. The doctor looked uncertain. “Maybe if you spoke to her…”

“We need to speak to her first,” Grantham said.

“Very well,” the doctor said. “I will need to be in the room as well.”

“No problem.”

The doctor led us down a narrow hall with empty gurneys along the wall. We rounded a corner and he stopped next to a pale wooden door with a small window in it. I caught a glimpse of Grace under a thin blanket.

“The rest of you wait out here,” he said, then held the door for the detectives.

Cool air moved against my face and then they were inside. Dolf and my father watched through the window while I paced small circles and thought of the last thing Grace had said to me. Five minutes later the door opened. The doctor looked at me.

“She’s asking for you,” he said.

I started for the door, but Grantham stopped me with a hand against my chest. “She wouldn’t speak to us. We’ve agreed to let you in because the doc here thinks it will help her snap out of it.” I met his gaze and held it. “Don’t do anything to make me regret this.”

I leaned against his hand until he was forced to move it. I stepped past him, into the room, still feeling his fingers there, and how he’d pushed hard at the last second. The door swung on silent hinges; the two old men crowded against the glass. Then she was before me, and I felt my resentment wither and die. None of that mattered.

Hospital light sucked the color out of her. Her chest rose and fell, with long pauses where I felt that none should be. Strands of blond hung across her cheek, and there was dried blood in the shell of her ear. I looked at Robin, whose face was closed.

I walked around the bed. Stitches pierced her lips. She had massive bruising, her eyes so swollen that they were barely open, just a glimmer of blue that looked too pale. Tape secured a tube to the back of her hand, which felt brittle when I took it. I tried to find some hint of her in those eyes, and when I said her name the slice of blue expanded minutely, and I knew that she was there. She stared at me for a long time.

“Adam?” she asked, and I heard all of the things I knew she felt, the subtle nuance of pain and loss.

“I’m here.”

She rolled her head away, not wanting me to see the tears that slipped, thick and silent, down her face. I straightened so that she could see me when she opened her eyes. It took her a while. Grantham shifted his feet. No one else moved.

She did not look at me again until the tears had ceased, but when our eyes met, I knew they would come again. The battle was there, in her face, and I watched helplessly as she lost it. She held up her arms and I leaned into them as the dam burst again; and she grasped me as she began to sob. Her body was hot and shaking; I put my arms around her as best as I could. I told her not to worry. I told her that everything would be okay. Then she leaned her mouth against my ear one more time and whispered something so quietly I could barely hear her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I pulled away so she could see my face. I nodded because I had no words; then she pulled me back down and held me as the tremors racked her.

I looked up, and found my father’s face in the window. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and turned away, but not before I saw the palsy in his fingers. Dolf watched him go, and then shook his head, as if in great sadness.

I returned my attention to Grace, and tried with my arms to swallow her up. Eventually, she drifted back to whatever shelter her mind had made for itself. She never said another word, just rolled onto her side, and closed her eyes.

The cops got nothing.

Back in the hall, Grantham crowded me again. “I think that we need to step outside,” he said.

“Why?”

“You know why.” His hand settled around my arm. I jerked it away and he grabbed for it again.

“Just a minute now,” Dolf said.

Grantham got control of himself. “I told you not to piss me off,” he said.

“Come on, Adam,” Robin said. “Let’s go outside.”

“No.” It was all settling upon me: Grace’s lost innocence, the suspicions that dogged me, and the darkness that hung above my return to this place. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I want to know what she said.” Grantham stopped short of actually touching me. “She said something to you. I want it.”

“Is that true?” Robin asked. “Did she speak to you?”

“Don’t ask me, Robin. It’s not important.”