She loved him; he knew that, had always known it.
Love is a gift from God….
Francis’s breath released in a quiet sigh of wonder. It was as if the words had somehow formed themselves just for him. The same words he’d said a million times in his life, but this time he understood them.
Love is a gift from God.
He knew the doctrine of his faith would call his love for Madelaine a sin, but Francis had never been able to believe that. Breaking vows, yes, that was a sin; but the simple, singular act of loving? He’d never believed that his precious God would deem it such. It was His gift to us, His ultimate blessing.
Madelaine wasn’t his lover; he’d never truly thought of her that way. She was his love. As was Lina—his precious, precious Lina—and Angel.
Angel. He thought of his brother, and as he did, a thousand remembered images sprang to his mind. At first they were the usual memories—the ones that had hurt at the time and kept on hurting, the ones that Francis could never quite get rid of. Their mother, getting nine-year-old Angel drunk and beating him up, locking him up in that dark closet until he promised to be as good as his brother. And the words, always the words, spoken to Angel in that gravelly, slurred voice, I shoulda had an abortion.
Francis had always tried to change what couldn’t be changed. So many nights he’d held his bruised baby brother in his arms and cried to his God, his own trembling voice begging for help. Then, one day, Angel stopped reaching for his big brother, and that had been the most painful time of all. Francis had seen the dawning suspicion in Angel’s eyes, the question that lurked there—why? those green eyes had asked. Why am I so different?
But Angel had never asked the question aloud, and Francis had never found an answer. So they went on, living side by side in that crappy little trailer, pretending to be brothers, when, with every passing day, they were becoming only strangers. And Angel—Angel had become what his mother had predicted he would become—a hell-raising, shit-kicking kid who didn’t care about anything, especially himself.
There had only ever been two people who believed in Angel—Francis and Madelaine—and Francis had let him down. All those years he’d let their mother terrorize Angel, and he’d stood by, unable to do anything. He’d watched as the goodness was slowly, systematically ripped from his brother’s soul.
And he’d done it again, just last week. He’d gone to the hospital, seen his baby brother lying in that narrow bed, and done nothing; he’d let the past swirl around them, just opened that damned door and let their mother’s ugly spirit in. Francis wasn’t a kid anymore and he wasn’t impotent. This time he could be the protector he should have been before. Maybe he could even give his little brother a reason to stay.
Believe in the road.
Angel coming back, now after all these years … Lina asking the question that had been unasked for so long … It had to mean something.
Francis could make it mean something. He could redeem himself in the eyes of God, and in his own eyes. He could rectify the mistakes he and Madelaine had made, and those that were his alone.
He rose to his feet and went to the window. He imagined himself standing in the midst of that rainy darkness, wanting to believe in the road beneath him. His heart was beating so quickly, he could hear it thudding in his ears. Please God, show me the way.
Suddenly he found it, the courage he’d been searching for his whole life. It was there in his heart, heating him like that last burning coal in the midst of a black, dead fire.
He knew where he belonged and what he had to do. For once in his life, he knew. How had he missed it? How had he not seen that for the first time in years, everything that mattered to him was at home—Madelaine, Lina, Angel? He could bring them together, and now, all these years later, they could be the family they should have been all along.
Believe in the road….
With the thought, it came again, the sense of having been touched at last by the hand of the God he’d prayed to and believed in for all his life. The faith he’d thought he’d lost filled him to overflowing, warming the dark, cold corners of his soul with searing bright light.
Grinning, he glanced again at the clock. It was seven-thirty. He could be in Seattle by eleven-thirty and back here in time for the Monday morning breakfast.
Perfect.
He looked dead.
Madelaine’s gaze shot to the cardiac monitor. The intermittent green line peaked and dipped in sharp, erratic beats across the blank screen, clicking along on its uneven rhythm. The pink line slid along beneath it.
She released a heavy sigh and shoved a hand through her hair again, leaning closer to the bed. Her chair screeched across the linoleum floor. Beside her, a tray of cold mashed potatoes and gravy sat congealing into the rolled white flaps of pressed turkey.
She knew it had been brought in by mistake, that sickening high-fat meal, but no one had come by to reclaim it yet. She guessed it was because no one thought there was any rush. Angel DeMarco, it was well known, hadn’t noticed anything like a bad smell in almost a week.
He’d been in and out of consciousness briefly, here and there, bits of time when his eyes were open and his fingers trembled and she knew he wanted to speak. But by the time she got the tube from his throat, he was usually gone again, drifting, babbling, laughing and crying.
As always, she stopped by and sat with him for an hour after her shift was over. She kept coming back, urging him to fight harder, to believe in a surgery she found she couldn’t believe in much herself anymore.
She brushed the damp hair away from his warm forehead. “Lina and I watched one of your movies together last night. It was … interesting. Well, since you’re unconscious, I guess I can be honest. It was dreadful, actually—too much blood and violence and sex. But Lina liked it, and your acting was incredible. She thought you were totally cool—not, of course, that she said this to me. She hasn’t spoken to me in days.”
Madelaine stroked his cheek absentmindedly, staring out the room’s small window. The wind was driving against the glass in shuddering little spurts. Rain blurred the view into a wavering sheet of gray and black. It was the beginning of a powerhouse rainstorm, she could tell.
Madelaine went on talking to him, hoping against hope that somewhere inside all that feverish sleep, he could hear her. Maybe even that her voice could be a lifeline he could follow back to consciousness. “I don’t know what to do about her, Angel. She’s quiet one minute and furious the next. Nothing I do is right. She’s in trouble. I… I need your help.”
She realized suddenly that she was telling him the truth, not just some words made up to appease or communicate with him, but the truth. Her truth.
She jerked her hand back and stared down at it, seeing the tiny trembling in her fingers. Oh, God…
When had she done it, started to believe in him again?
She tried to think about it, to rationalize it all away, but sometime in the last week—she didn’t know exactly when or how—she’d begun to think of Angel as Lina’s father. Not in some abstract biological/genetic way that was clearly factual, but in a more insidious way. A dad. Someone to help out, be there, share the load. Someone who meant that Madelaine wouldn’t always be alone in parenting.
It was ridiculous to expect that of him. Ridiculous and terrifying.
She couldn’t count on Angel DeMarco—hadn’t she learned that lesson well enough the first time?
“Maybe I’m the one in the coma,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.
Before she could say anything else, she heard her name paged over the hospital’s intercom. She picked up the bedside phone and punched in the operator, who transferred a call to the room.
Madelaine answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Maddy?” The voice was broken by static, but she would have recognized it anywhere.
“Francis! Where are you?”
“I’m leaving Portland now. Can I meet you at your house?”
&n
bsp; She glanced at the darkness outside, then at the wall clock. “It’s seven forty-five. Why don’t you wait—”
“Tonight.”
“All right, Francis. I’ll stay up. See you about what, eleven-thirty?”
“Maybe a little before. Okay?”
She laughed. “Francis, you’ve never been early in your life.”
“You’ll see.”
She laughed again, and felt her anxiety slip away. Tonight she’d make up to Francis for hurting his feelings the other day, and for a brief time—maybe just a night—things could be the way they’d always been. Francis, her Francis, would help her through this rough time and show her the right way. “Okay, Francis. ’Bye.”
Then she hung up.
Thunder grumbled across the black night sky. Lightning snaked from the bloated clouds. Jet-black evergreen trees climbed up a steep granite slope to the right of the road. A ravine fell away from the left side, its edge marked by a silvery guardrail. The blacktop traversed the hillside, unfurled down, down, twisting and turning.
Francis leaned forward and wiped a hand across the foggy interior of the windshield, staring beyond the blurry streaks to the road in front of him. He had the driver’s window partway down, and though it was freezing in the little car, it was the only way he could keep the windshield from getting completely fogged over by his breathing. The defroster was on the blink. Again.
Paul McCartney’s voice crackled through the worn speakers in a mix of static and rhythm, breaking in and out as the serrated tree line grew and receded along the road.
Rain slashed at the car, ran in rivulets across the edge of the windshield, and splattered the side of his face from the half-open window. He couldn’t risk taking a hand from the wheel to wipe the moisture away, so he let it slide down his neck and burrow beneath his sweater, collecting in a cold, itchy noose along his collar.
He hunched forward, peering through the cloudy glass, clutching the leather-wrapped steering wheel. The wiper blades stuttered across the wet glass in a metronomic whick whick whick
He turned a corner and saw with relief that the road straightened. His headlights skipped along the intermittent yellow lane divider. A hint of gray light pushed through the thinning trees, a reminder that he was almost at the base of the hill. Soon he’d be on the interstate, and the storm wouldn’t slow him down but a few miles an hour.
He glanced at the speedometer, saw that he was doing a leisurely thirty-five miles per hour, and tapped the accelerator. The red needle jerked a notch, then climbed up to forty, forty-five. The radio latched on to a solid signal and Patsy Cline’s liquid voice oozed from the speakers. Craaaazy … crazy for feelin’ so blue …
The road swept into a graceful arc to the right. The silvery guardrail glimmered in the headlights’ glow, protecting the road from the steep bank beyond it.
He maneuvered around the turn, singing along with the radio.
He sensed the danger before he saw it. Instinctively Francis cut back on his speed, but it was too late.
In the dim glow of his headlights, he saw a flashing bud of red, heard the shrill whining of a siren. Flares throbbed through the darkness in scraps of color. He yanked his hand from the wheel and smeared his palm across the murky windshield.
It was a police car parked on the side of the road. Beside it, a yellow station wagon was angled across the two lanes. Shadows—people, he realized with a dawning sense of horror—stood alongside the patrol car.
He tried to scream oh, God, no, but the cry lodged in his throat. His hands clamped around the wheel, gripping tight. His foot jumped from the accelerator and slammed onto the brake pedal.
He knew instantly that it was a mistake. The wheels locked hard, rubber screeched on the slick pavement. New tires, he thought irrationally, he needed new tires. These were old and bald and…
The back end of the car skidded around. Francis watched, horrified, as his headlights stabbed into the thicket of trees.
He took his foot off the brake and eased down on the accelerator, trying to regain control. But the car was on its own, pirouetting down the rain-wet asphalt in a horrifying dance that made him dizzy and sick to his stomach. The smell of burning rubber was everywhere.
The guardrail came flying at him. Behind it, a huge tree loomed in the darkness. He thought instantly of the seat belt he wasn’t wearing.
Oh, God, he thought, help me, help m—
The car hit the guardrail and exploded in a shifting, grinding crunch of metal. Francis felt himself pitching forward, forward. I believe in God, the Father— Head smashing through something and the taste of blood. Shattering glass, glass everywhere …
And then quiet.
He heard the dull, whining drone of his car’s horn, blaring through the darkness, and the pattering of rain on the curved metal roof of the Volkswagen. There were voices, coming at him from far, far away. Jesus Christ, Sammy, call an ambulance.
He crawled out of the wreckage, through the trail of broken glass. Strangely, he felt no pain, no pain at all, and the metallic taste of blood had vanished.
Slowly he straightened.
Rain slashed all around him, thumping on the road, running in rivulets in the concrete gully beside him. But he wasn’t wet anymore.
It took him a minute to realize that. When he did, he felt a pinprick of fear.
He looked at the wreck, at the Volkswagen that was twisted and broken, one headlight shining into the sky like a single unseeing eye. The horn was still blaring; he could barely hear it above the shrieking of the wind and the hammering of the rain.
Then he saw his body, draped over the hood of the car, one arm bent at an awkward angle, the other flung to the right. Even from here he could see the blood that pooled beneath his stark, white profile and dripped down the hood. A fine dusting of glass sprinkled across his ripped, bloodied cardigan. His eyes were open.
People surged across the road, clustered around the remains of the car. One of the policemen picked up his limp wrist. There’s a pulse.
Back in the patrol car, the other officer spoke urgently into a hand-held radio, spitting out words that Francis couldn’t quite make out.
Francis wanted to call, I’m here, over here, but he couldn’t seem to speak. Or move. He just stood there, feeling warm and dry in the middle of the rainstorm, watching the strangers whirl around his body, poking, prodding.
An eerie pulling sensation started in the pit of his stomach and radiated outward. The world tilted slowly, slowly, and he felt himself being drawn away from the road. Or the road disappeared out from underneath him, he wasn’t sure. He felt the darkness falling, closer, closer, the sky curling around him, soothing him.
His last thought was Madelaine.
And then there was nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
At midnight Madelaine stretched her legs and rose from the couch. Credits rolled across a black screen on her television set, accompanied by sweeping, romantic music. She dabbed at her eyes, embarrassed even in the privacy of her own living room to be crying at such a bad movie. Not that she’d ever been able to help herself. It was the strangest thing—she hadn’t cried when her mother died, nor at her father’s funeral, but let her see a good Hallmark commercial and she wept like a baby.
She glanced at the clock on the mantel: 12:15.
Francis was late.
Nothing new in that, of course; he was always late. She reached down for her cup of decaf tea and downed the last lukewarm sugary sip. Crossing the room, she went to the front door and opened it, stepping onto the porch. She flicked the overhead fixture on and stood in the puddle of light.
The storm was still raging. Rain hammered the dead grass, forming itself into murky brown puddles in her flower bed, splashing on the walkway. Beside her, the porch swing creaked and rocked off kilter. A distant rumble of thunder echoed, followed by a flash of white lightning.
She frowned, staring through the gloom at the windswept street. Overhead, a heavy branch groaned,
pinecones fell in swirls of blackened needles and bounced on the pavement below.
The streetlights flickered and went out.
Madelaine sighed. It was the third power outage this fall. Turning, she went back into the house and closed the door tightly. Feeling her way through the darkness, she went to the kitchen and eased the utility drawer open, searching through the mess until her fingers closed around a flashlight. She turned it on and pointed the powerful white beam of light toward the living room. Grabbing a box of matches, she set about lighting emergency candles and placing them on the coffee and end tables.
By the time she was finished, it was twelve forty-five.
She felt the first prickling of anxiety when she looked at her watch. Taking hold of a candle, she walked over to the window and stared out, searching through the jet-black night for a pair of twin headlights.
Come on, Francis.
By one-thirty the fear had grown big enough to take a bite. She thought of calling the lodge in Oregon, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. All they’d tell her was that Francis had left around eight o’clock—the same thing he’d told her himself.
He should be here by now.
Calm down. She took a deep breath and went to the bookcase, pulling out her road atlas and flipping the heavy volume open to the side-by-side maps of Oregon and Washington. She found the tiny town at the base of Mount Hood and figured the lodge was around there. Then very methodically, she counted the red mile markers to Portland.
It was probably an hour and fifteen minutes. Maybe even an hour and a half.
And from Portland to Seattle, in this weather, it could take three and a half hours. Five hours, then.
She almost smiled. By her calculation, Francis should be pulling into the driveway any minute—assuming he’d left on time. Which, she knew well enough, he hadn’t. As usual, he’d haphazardly figured how long the drive would take and thrown a number at her.