I nodded. “Thanks, Logan,” I called softly. He was hurt and I hated to see it. But what could I do?
So I drove out of Foxton on to the smooth highway, past the giant neon cross that lit up the mountain at night, past the stretch of burnt-out forest with its scorched, deformed pines, through the Centennial neighbourhood into town.
Somehow that night I managed to smooth Laura’s ruffled feathers.
“Oh my God, look at your car!” she cried. It was dusk and she was alone on the porch when I parked in the drive. “Darina, what happened? Are you OK?”
“Yeah—look!” I ran up the steps and turned around on the spot. “Da-dah!”
She sat me down. “So what happened?”
“I was hanging out with Logan and a few of the guys, fooling around. The clumsy klutz clipped my fender. Lucky we weren’t going more than ten miles per hour.” Go easy with the truth, Darina. No point in ringing any alarm belts.
“You don’t hurt anywhere?” she asked anxiously. “Your neck? Your back?”
“Not a scratch.” I hid my bruised arm beneath my sleeve. “Honestly, Mom, no big deal.”
When I was younger, before I grew into myself, everyone said I looked like Laura. The same long dark hair and wide smile, the little pointy chin and cute nose. “You must be sisters!” the guys said—the ones who flirted with her after Dad left. These days I cut my hair shorter and colour it even darker. That, plus my smoky mascara eyes make us look totally different.
“What about the car? Who’ll pay to fix it? Logan’s dad doesn’t have any spare cash—I know that for sure.”
Yeah Laura, always thinking money, money, money. Anyway, this was easier to deal with than her fussing about my health and safety.
“I’ll talk to Christian. He knows about cars. Maybe he can fix it for free.”
She nodded then took out a cigarette.
“You need to quit,” I muttered, making my way through the front door. “Where’s Jim?”
“Out,” she said, the small red point of light from her cigarette glowing in the growing dark.
There’s a gap as deep as a canyon between how you come across to people and the way you are on the inside. And you feel that gap especially when you’re lying in bed, not sleeping, staring up at the ceiling.
I mean, I came down from that ridge looking like the old Darina—cool, together, a girl with an edge.
Inside I was wrecked and scared as hell. I’d been with the undead, for Christ’s sake, and I was in love with one of them. Desperately, hopelessly in love.
The dark ceiling seemed to press down on me, the walls crowded in. I’d lost Phoenix and found him. I’d been falling into a deep pit and he’d caught me, raised me up and held me in his arms again.
But my new world was full of the weirdest stuff. Of all-powerful Hunter with his grey hair and steely eyes, of still-hard-to-like Arizona, gentle easy-to-love Summer, and sad, damaged Jonas. And these Beautiful Dead had been to limbo and back. They had no hearts.
I lay in the darkness, remembering Phoenix’s lovely face. “I wish you would come to me,” I whispered. I knew he could do that—appear and dissolve at will. “Be here when I need you.”
But I only heard the distant wings, like a sigh in the air. A reminder.
“Hi, Mr. Bishop, It’s Darina.” Early next morning I spoke into the intercom at the gate to Zoey’s house.
“Darina?”
“Yeah. I thought I’d drop by to see Zoey.” Who was I fooling? I’d tied myself in knots wondering whether to call in advance or arrive unannounced. Or should I text? I’d tried Zoey’s cell phone but her number had been changed. I’d driven round the block five times before I’d plucked up the courage to ring the bell.
“Wait there,” Mr. Bishop told me.
I stood at the end of the Bishops’ long, pink-paved drive, looking up at their impressive piece of real estate. The brick built house had white pillars and a colonial-style entrance. It had balconies with iron railings and a stable block to one side of the yard where Zoey kept her horses.
Her dad drove a golf buggy from the yard down to the gate. He stepped out looking like Tiger Woods.
“Darina,” he said, as if he’d only just linked the name to the face. Either he was having a senior moment or this was a deliberate move to distance me. “We haven’t seen you in quite a while.”
“I bumped into Zoey the other day. She said to call.”
Mr. Bishop frowned, plainly taking in my crappy car minus its fender then equally plainly disapproving of me—the hair, the make-up, everything. “Where would that have been? Your bumping into Zoey, I mean.”
“In the waiting room at Kim Reiss’ place.” I almost saw Mr. Bishop’s teeth set on edge. It was like Kim-Reiss was a dirty word with him.
“Right. Zoey doesn’t go out a whole lot. Only to see her surgeons.”
And her shrink, I thought, but didn’t say. “I promised I’d visit,” I insisted.
He stood firm behind the closed gate. “Another time, maybe.”
“As soon as I could.”
“She can’t take visitors right now.”
“I thought Saturday would be good.”
We talked fast and at cross-purposes until Zoey’s mom appeared in the main doorway. She walked quickly down the drive.
“Hey, Darina.” Her greeting was flat, but a half a degree warmer than her husband’s had been. “Zoey’s at the window. She heard your car.”
“So she knows I’m here. Cool.”
Mrs. Bishop smiled briefly. “I’m sorry about Phoenix,” she told me. “I understand you and he were dating.”
I nodded.
“I still can’t believe it. Four young lives wasted.”
“Five,” Mr. Bishop contradicted bitterly. “Five, including Zoey.”
His wife stepped in front of him and unlocked the gate. “You’d better come in,” she told me.
It wasn’t as if Zoey and I jumped right back in where we left off over a year ago. Too much had happened and been forgotten. Talking to her was the same as watching disjointed clips from an old video recording, in no particular order and with big, big gaps.
She was sitting in her wheelchair, looking small, in a sitting room the size of a tennis court. The decorator had been given free rein on the antiques, especially the Turkish rugs, chandeliers and the old grandfather clock.
“Wow,” I said. “I never came in this room before.” It wasn’t wow as in cool, but wow as in holy crap!
“We switched things around,” Zoey explained defensively, knowing the house I lived in with Laura and Jim was one up from a trailer, but only just. “I have a bedroom through there, with a bathroom—all on one level. And there’s a ramp outside the French windows, down into the yard.”
“You want to go outside?” Away from the ticking clock and the decorator’s taste in red and gold striped wallpaper.
Zoey nodded. She whizzed her chair over to the windows and lifted the latch.
“I kept the horses—Pepper and Merlin. Come and see.”
I’m OK with horses, so I went along to the stable block and said nice things about a couple of roan Arabians standing in their stalls.
Zoey dug out some pieces of mint candy and fed them to the horses. “I know—I spoil them. Dad wanted to sell them, but I said no way.”
“How’s the walking coming along?” I asked.
“Slowly. I worked with the physiotherapist yesterday and took two steps. Hallelujah!”
“That’s good.” We both pussyfooted around our main topic of Jonas and the crash.
“Two steps and it hurt like hell,” Zoey confessed.
“I guess.”
“I’m seeing Kim again—Thursday, three-thirty.”
“Me too. Four-thirty.”
“I really like her.”
“Yeah, she’s cool.”
“Why are you seeing her? Tell me again.”
“Laura thinks I went crazy over losing Phoenix,” I said then laughed inappro
priately. “So anyway, I guess you’re seeing Kim to help get your memory back?”
Zoey shrugged. “It’s Mom’s idea. I don’t really care. Nothing’s going to bring Jonas back.”
A shiver ran down my spine as I thought of him out at Foxton and remembered I had his Harley buckle safe in the pocket of my jeans.
“You can never go back,” she went on in a tired voice. “Everyone says it doesn’t matter—look forward not back. Except Kim. She says it’s important for me to remember.”
“To fill in the blanks.” I nodded eagerly. “You said you needed my help.”
“Can you imagine what it’s like, this PTSD? It’s like knitting when you drop a stitch and everything unravels. You end up with a stupid hole that just keeps on getting bigger.”
“Scary.”
“Unbelievable. The hole’s grown big enough for me to fall down and disappear, I swear!”
Oh, the falling thing. You fall and fall and the sides of the dark hole are smooth and there’s nothing to hang on to, and there’s no bottom either. It’s how I felt when Phoenix died. “Go back to before the crash,” I told Zoey without sharing. “You remember how you and Jonas were together?”
“I loved him,” she answered quietly, while the two horses stretched their necks over the stable door and demanded more candy. “How could anybody not?”
“A sweet, sweet guy,” I agreed, avoiding the he was or he is dilemma.
Zoey paused and seemed to slip down one of those holes in her memory.
I waited for her to climb back up.
“I guess I have to thank you,” she sighed after a long while.
“How come?”
“For snatching Matt away from me and leaving Jonas to pick up the pieces.”
“Hold it.” This was the Matt Fortune thing raising its ugly head. “I didn’t ‘snatch’ him. The way I remember it, Matt made a sprint in my direction and broke the Olympic record to get to me.” Goodbye Zoey, Hello Darina.
“Yeah, I believe you.” Zoey never had and still didn’t. She was convinced her break up with Matt was all my idea. “How long is it now?”
“Almost a year and a half. I didn’t handle it well, but I didn’t steal Matt, I swear. He’s not my type.”
“Whatever.” She obviously hated to talk about it. “Let’s go in.”
But I took hold of the back of her chair and turned it in my direction. “Zoey, I would never do that. I don’t play around and steal guys from my girlfriends, whatever Matt Fortune told you. In fact, when he made a pass at me that time at Hannah’s party, I cut him dead.”
“That’s not what Hannah told me.” Zoey had met my gaze with tears in her eyes. “She said you grabbed Matt with both hands.”
“Yeah, with friends like Hannah…” I tailed off. “After that it took me more than a year to get round to dating another guy. That’s what a fast worker I am!”
“Phoenix?” Zoey whispered.
“Yeah. You remember him?”
She nodded. “Jonas liked him from the get-go. Personally, I was a little scared of him. He was too distant.”
I shook my head. “Phoenix wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“But it wasn’t exactly love at first sight for you two,” Zoey reminded me. “When he first came to Ellerton, I heard you tell Logan you thought Phoenix was oh-so-vain. You were pretty outspoken about that.”
“Shy was what he was, actually. It came across as arrogance and personally I can relate to that. But, Zoey, this is important. You do remember the Rohrs coming to town?”
“Yes. Brandon Rohr couldn’t get a job. He hung out at the Harley saleroom with Charlie Fortune. I met Brandon when Jonas went in to get his bike fixed.”
“That would only be a couple of weeks before your crash,” I told her, growing more excited. “Can you remember anything else that happened around that time, or a little later?”
“Charlie fixed the brakes on the bike. Jonas took me out to the lake the next day.”
“Not the day of the crash?” I checked.
“No. Before that.”
“And there was nothing wrong with the bike?” I’d begun to wonder if Charlie Fortune had messed up—had maybe done a bad job and caused Jonas’ brakes to fail.
Zoey shook her head. “We cruised out to Hartmann, no problem. It was a perfect day.”
I stood in silence, giving Zoey time to recall what must now seem like her version of paradise.
“Jonas told me he loved me,” she confided. “The one and only time. We were sitting on the jetty with our feet in the cool water. The sun was real hot.”
Piece by piece her jigsaw was slotting back together. “I never told anyone,” Zoey whispered. “Just in case it wasn’t true.”
“It was,” I said. “He did love you.”
She dragged herself back to the present, looking up at me for more, but I’d already overstepped the mark. I’d hear the wings and Hunter would be on my back if I didn’t take more care.
“I could tell by the way he looked at you,” I stammered. This and a couple of other pulp fiction clichés.
“Whatever,” she sighed again, giving up on me and turning her chair towards the house. She saw her mom waiting by the French doors. “I’m tired, Darina. I’ve got to go.”
“Cool. I’ll call again.” Don’t go! I thought. We didn’t get to the main topic yet!
Zoey didn’t look over her shoulder as she crossed the yard. “Thanks for coming. Take care.”
Shoot! What do I do? Run after her and say I really needed her to remember about the crash, that I wanted to help her clear Jonas’ name? It sounded OK in theory, but one look at Zoey’s pale, defeated face told me no. Anyway, Mrs. Bishop was coming out to meet her, giving me a wave, polite but firm.
So I scooted round the side of the house, crossed the smooth lawn and made for the gate.
“Here, let me.” Mr. Bishop had hurried out of the front of the house to press buttons on the security panel. “I hope your visit didn’t exhaust Zoey,” he said.
“We talked,” I told him. “It was cool.”
“Did she tell you she took her first steps?”
I nodded.
“A miracle. If you’d seen her in the hospital even three months ago, you’d never believe that she could come so far.”
“That’s good news, Mr. Bishop.” The guy didn’t like me, which made me super-polite. I didn’t like him either, in his yellow golfing sweater and checked pants.
“We’re looking forward now,” he insisted, opening the gate and waiting for me to step through. “We’re focusing on the future, Darina, not the past.”
With a shock I saw Jonas standing beneath a maple tree a hundred metres down the road, waiting for me to come out.
The past won’t go away just because you want it to. It flies back at you, like it or not.
5
Anyone looking at Jonas under that tree would think one of two things. Either he was a kid with problems who needed help, or he was someone you should avoid. Either sick or dangerous, depending on where you were coming from. No one normal looked that pale and troubled.
“So?” he asked me as I drove my car alongside the tree.
“I saw Zoey,” I gasped. “We talked.”
“How is she?” His blue eyes, set deep in their sockets, pleaded for good news.
“She’s definitely doing OK. She has everything she needs.”
Jonas wasn’t through with questions. “Is she going to make it? I mean, will she get back to school, go to college and stuff?”
“As in, did she have brain damage after the crash?” Come to think about it, Zoey had been in a coma for six weeks with God knows what injuries.
“Yeah,” he nodded, turning his head away as he waited for my answer. For the first time I saw the small angel-wings tattoo on the left side of his neck, just below his ear and half hidden by his blonde hair. My heart missed its beat and I wanted to cry.
Instead I tried to comfort him. “I’m no expert, Jonas
, but she seemed the same old Zoey, except for this big hole in her memory.”
He kept on nodding. “The same in what way?”
I struggled to pin it down. “She still loves those two horses like they were her babies. She gives her folks way too much respect. So what’s new!”
“Yeah, Zoey usually conformed,” Jonas agreed with a wry smile. He ran his fingers through his hair, letting his hand rest over the death mark on his neck. “And did she say anything about me?”
I was more than happy to relay this part of my conversation with Zoey. “She said she loved you.”
Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, some of the weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. “She doesn’t hate me?”
“Far from it. She told me about the day you two rode out to the lake and you said you loved her. She said it was perfect.”
“She doesn’t hate me,” he repeated in a whisper.
At that moment a car drove by and broke the mood. I glanced over my shoulder and realized my own car was sticking way out in the road and that I had to move it. “How long can you stay?” I checked with Jonas. “Will you wait while I park my car?”
“I can’t stay long. Hunter wants us all at the ranch by midday. He thinks there’ll be more trouble.”
“OK, get in,” I told Jonas, deciding to move on to a quieter place.
We drove out of town to a parking spot where no one would see us; a viewpoint overlooking on to Hartmann where we saw the lake glittering in the distance. Jonas seemed happy to sit for a while, just looking, and while he gazed I stole the chance to study him from close quarters.
Until the crash I had Jonas Jonson down as one lucky person—even blessed. He had the movie-star looks for a start, with his big blue eyes and fair hair, a straight nose and high forehead that made him seem smart and not just cute, lips that any girl would want to kiss. Better still, he was one of life’s good guys.
“Hey, Darina, I heard about your dad.” He’d come up to me when things fell apart at my house—the fight over the other woman, Dad leaving, Laura heading for the big breakdown. Most of the other kids hadn’t found a way to sympathize, but Jonas’ reaction had been simple and kind. “It sucks. I’m sorry.”