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If you’re leaving soon, I want to see you. Meet me on the road in ten minutes?
I smile, text him yes, and throw my clothes back on. Then I tiptoe down the hall to check on Dad and Estella. They’re upstairs in their room now. Fortunately, Estella and Dad never seem to come down before seven. I sneak back to my room, throw on my shoes, and stuff a bunch of pillows under my blanket and sheet, partly to fool them on the off chance one of them does come in, but also partly because if I am found out, at least this way they’ll know I’ve left on purpose and haven’t been kidnapped. Then I climb out the back bedroom window. I wouldn’t leave a window purposely unlocked, but the one on the far left has a broken latch, which makes getting back in much easier. For the past month or so of summer I’ve occasionally taken advantage of it. If Dad ever found out about this, he’d filet Luke and lock me in a tower. It’d be seriously terrible. But so far, we’ve gotten away with it.
Our house has a good amount of lawn. It’s a nice piece of land with forest all around it, a big old house set up on a steep little hill. The garage is a separate building at the bottom of the hill and has spare rooms for storage and Dad’s gym equipment. Just off the garage, there’s a small step-down garden with a footbridge that goes over a tiny stream. Apparently, Dad charmed some old widow out of the place back when I was a baby. I don’t blame him for wanting it.
Finally, I reach the road. Our road is like a long sloping dirt path up a mountainside. It winds past a cemetery and branches off in two different directions. I live down one branch of the road. Luke lives down the other branch. It’s late, pitch-dark as only a small back road can get, and Luke is nowhere to be found.
Fortunately, about two minutes later, I see headlights I hope are his approaching and climb into the brush alongside the curb. The road is narrow, and like I said it’s pitch-black out. The truck stops and Luke flips the light on inside. I run around the front and get in next to him.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late.”
Luke’s extremely handsome—tanned skin, black hair and dark brown bedroom eyes. He works in the restaurant with me, on the hot line—one of the three industrial stoves blazing away, and I do mean blazing. I helped him get the job with Dad about six months ago, which was no easy feat given his limited experience. Today was Luke’s day off. “No problem.”
“How’d your soup go?” he asks.
“Fine. Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
I tell him about the mushroom incident on the way back to his place.
The house Luke lives in isn’t much bigger than a trailer. He parks and takes me inside through the front door. His parents are asleep, but they have three grown sons, are used to girlfriends who sleep over, and don’t mind if their fourth and youngest, at eighteen, now does the same. We go to his closet of a room, mostly just a dresser and a bed. The bed is one of those cheap ones that feels like it might collapse if you move too much on it.
“So what’s going on with you leaving?”
I fill him in on how Estella’s nephew’s been wounded in Afghanistan, and how Dad’s asked me to fly out with her to see him in a few days. I also tell Luke how weird this will be for me—to be alone with Estella for so long, sharing a hotel room with her and visiting a close relative of hers I’ve never met.
“Can’t she just go alone?” he asks.
“You’d think so. But Dad’s convinced she needs help.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know, maybe a week? We’re playing it by ear.”
Luke looks warmly at me and touches my actual ear.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. I’ll just miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too.”
He draws me in closer to him. “I wish I could’ve tried your first solo soup.”
“Oh, sorry—I was so busy, I didn’t think of bringing you any.”
“That’s all right.” He kisses me and pulls at my shirt.
“I was in morel hell making that soup.”
He smiles and kisses me again, sliding his arms around me. I love how it feels when he holds me like this; I just sink right into the comfort of being here. But then after awhile he surprises me by unbuttoning my jeans.
“Uhh...”
“Just a little,” he says.
“But if we start, we won’t want to stop.”
“We’ll stop.”
He comes over me, kissing and caressing me as his hand works its way around to the back of my jeans. Then he shifts me so he’ll have clearer access. I tense up slightly.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, and we start making out again. His fingers wind up moving closer and pressing against me.
“Ahhh,” I breathe, still highly uncertain—I mean, it feels great and I hate to disappoint him. But when it gets so hot and heavy, it makes it harder to put on the brakes. And sex is something I don’t think I’m ready for yet. “Stop, Luke. Please.”
He does. My eyes open. “See? I stopped.”
I smile. “Very good.”
“Very good as in you liked it?”
I cuddle against him, smiling still. “Maybe.”
“Maybe sounds promising.” He strokes my hair. “Beauty girl.”
He’s sweet. He holds me in his arms and explores his newly-claimed turf a few more times before morning. But at five-thirty his alarm goes off and we have to sneak me back home. The kiss goodbye takes longer than usual this time, because of the new development. He’s obviously extremely pleased about it. He can’t stop smiling.
“You’re a goofball,” I tell him.
“You’re fantastic.”
I kiss him one last time. He draws me in closer, and I climb over the console so I’m pressed into him. The steering wheel is pushing up against me, which actually works in his favor. “Mmm,” he says, hugging me tightly. Luke’s told me he likes having me around—in his bed, on his lap, next to him, near him, beside him. When we were in school together he’d meet me after almost every class and often cut class just to be with me at lunch. But he just graduated and I still have senior year to go.
He gives a small wave and watches me leave. Once I’m back in my room, I shuck my shoes, bra and jeans, thinking about him, how he touched me and how he wants me and what it might be like to let him go further. I don’t know why I’m hesitating with him, exactly. We’ve been dating long enough. Most couples probably would have by now. I just feel like once we do have sex everything will change, get so much more serious. The physical would be nice. But then Luke would want me over there all the time. He’d want me to move in with him as soon as I graduate.... I do love him, but a part of me is concerned it might also become kind of smothering. I don’t know. I guess I just like things the way they are.
I climb into the bed and decide to let myself sleep in. After all, I don’t have to be at work until two. Unfortunately, Shelby is used to waking up and being fed early. She sits next to me, staring at me with her stomach growling until I force myself up on my feet to go feed her.
Shelby’s a Cavalier King Charles spaniel—not the most athletic of dogs, but very sweet. She’s about twelve years old now. I’ve had her since I was a little kid. She was a birthday present to me and I love her. So, I wait for her to finish her food, give her new water and then let her out. She has a doggie door she can use on her own, but we’ve gotten into the habit of the full door-opening treatment in the morning. No doggie doors before coffee or something, I guess, I don’t know.
She goes through her freshly-opened door and then turns and waits for me to leave so she can do her business in privacy. It’s kind of cute, but I’m too tired to care. I leave her to do her thing and crawl back into bed to sleep for another hour. After I get up again later, I take a fast shower, change and make my way back into the kitchen, where I find Estella hovering over the stove.
“Morning,” she says. “Coffee?” She’s staring at the little espresso pot and clearly fighting back tears.
Poor Estella. She’s a wreck over this. “He’ll be fine,” I say, realizing this is probably zero comfort to her. “They have state-of-the-art care for our soldiers now.”
Suddenly I’m in a hug. I try to hug her back. But the truth is I was raised mostly by a man and I’m not used to being touched by anyone other than a boyfriend or maybe my aunts the few times I’ve met them. But Estella, I know, is very touchy-feely. Thankfully she pulls away from me pretty quickly. “Sorry, I’m a bit of a disaster.”
“I understand,” I tell her, and suddenly the coffee explodes, boiling over and leaking through the seal. Estella reaches for it with a bare hand.
“No, don’t!” I move her aside, shut off the stove and realize, looking at her, that Estella is barely hanging on. She’s a woman on the verge of a complete meltdown.
“I can’t do this,” she says mostly to herself.
My guess is she thinks her nephew is either dead or on the verge of death and they’re not telling her. Poor Estella. Poor Julian. I glance at the table and see an open photo album there, next to a water glass. She must have just been looking at it. “Are those pictures of him?”
“Yes.”
I go over and take a look. To be honest, I was expecting to see baby pictures, or pictures of him as a little kid, but these must have been taken only a few years ago. Julian looks about my age in the first picture. He’s lounging on the grass in a T-shirt and jeans, all straight nose, cheeks and angular jaw. His toast-brown hair is tinged with blond. There’s a devilish curve in his upper lip. His eyes seem amused—and annoyed. “Wow.”
Estella smiles, obviously pleased by this reaction. “My sister was a knockout. Julian looks just like her.” She turns the page. “See, here he is with his date for prom his senior year.”
The girl is blond, several shades lighter than my own light brown hair, and with eyes far bluer than my gray ones. Also, unlike me, she doesn’t have freckles. “She’s extremely pretty.”
“Yes, his girlfriends always are.”
I feel a stab of something, I’m not sure what. “Was she a cheerleader?”
“Actually, this one wasn’t,” says Estella.
We look through more pictures of Julian during his senior year, the year I’m about to begin. He was in varsity basketball. There are lots of shots with friends and with Estella’s son Brandon. Several are from Brandon and Claire’s wedding. Brandon has Estella’s dark features whereas his wife, Claire, is much lighter, with a round cherub face and short blond hair, so they’re like opposites and look very cute together. I want to ask Estella what happened to her sister, how she died, and how old Julian was when he came to live with her, but now’s not the time. I just keep complimenting how great everyone looks and then Estella puts the photo album away.
Chapter Three
The minute the album is out of sight, Estella’s stress level multiplies by a factor of about a hundred, particularly when Julian’s arrival date is moved up a day, and Estella’s non-changeable flight is therefore set for the morning after Julian will be there. Ultimately, we’re able to convince her that Julian will probably not be conscious or aware when he first arrives anyway—and no, she shouldn’t just pay for new flights or take the car and drive all the way down to Maryland to be there for him when he first arrives. The morning we have to leave, she’s still a mess about the delay, and about the trip in general. She can’t remember if she packed her socks or travel alarm. She can’t find her keys.
“Have a safe trip,” Dad says to her. “Call me when you get there.” He gives her an embarrassingly long hug and kiss goodbye and then turns to me and tells me—in French—to be as helpful as possible. Like this message is so important it requires his native language for added emphasis.
“I will.”
We finally make it into the shuttle van and to the airport and then there’s the stress over the tickets and whether to check or carry on the bags. This, of course, is really all about Julian and how worried she is for him, and nothing I do or say makes her feel any better. I only hope when she sees him, she’ll feel slightly more reassured.
Estella’s going to have a nervous breakdown before we even reach the hospital, I text Luke. But I have to power down my phone for takeoff before he can text me back.
Estella spends the whole flight memorizing maps of the area surrounding the hospital and then shredding her cocktail napkin into tiny little pieces and floating them in her ice water.
“We’ll be landing soon,” I say encouragingly to her. She blinks and nods but doesn’t really answer.
We carried on the bags, so without delay Estella hits the cab line and gets us from the airport to our hotel. There are a lot of hotels within a few miles of the hospital. Estella’s picked out one of the ones within walking distance.
“Let’s just check in, drop off the bags and head right over,” she says. She seems definitely on edge now, almost cranky.
The hospital is just under a mile away, so still a fair distance. The bags hit the room and I just have time to use the bathroom before she’s hurrying me back out again. When she wants to, Estella can really move. I’ve never been left in the dust so quickly outside of a running track before in my life. I have to pretty much jog to keep up with her, and the fact that I’m slowing her down seems to make her bad mood even worse.
“I wish you’d hurry!” she snaps.
Good grief. “Did you hear some news about Julian that has you more worried?” I ask.
Estella glares at me in response. All I meant was did a call come in I don’t know about that has her particularly in a rush. But I don’t bother to explain and she doesn’t care to stop to listen. Then all at once she turns to me when we reach an intersection and are forced to wait for the light.
“Look, Cami. I appreciate your father’s concern for me,” she says. “But this really isn’t the kind of thing you need to be exposed to.”
Oh, so that’s it. She’s still upset I’ve been sent on the trip with her, whereas I’ve pretty much made my peace with it. “I’m just here to help,” I tell her. “What if Julian could use a fresh blanket or a hot meal? I can run out and fetch those things for you. I can go back to the hotel and get something for you, whatever you might need. I can call people like my father or Brandon to let them know what’s going on, so you can focus all your attention on Julian.”
This seems reasonable enough to me and must to her as well, because she considers me before we head into the crosswalk. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she admits.
“Yeah, well.”
“That’s not how your father put it.”
“Dad’s a man. He’s not good with the whole communication thing sometimes.”
“I just hope Julian’s condition has stabilized,” she says.
No idea what this means, but it sounds really scary. “Me too. I’ll do whatever you need to help either one of you, okay?”
She gives me a faint smile and touches my arm. “Thanks.”
From the moment we walk in the front doors, I kind of have to force myself not to freak out—hospitals just aren’t my favorite places. I go out of my way not to look at anything too carefully, but of course it’s all still there in plain sight—the wheelchairs, the gurneys, the nurse’s stations, the doctors with stethoscopes draped around their necks, the curtained-off beds and blue IV machines. And then there’s the smell, that awful unmistakable antiseptic hospital smell. Estella’s shaking so hard, I want to squeeze her hand or something but even though she’d typically like it if I did, now I’m not sure. I think I’ll somehow be interrupting or bothering her.
Julian’s not in the critical care unit anymore, which is good. We find his room, and once we reach the door, I tell Estella I’ll wait outside. She doesn’t even register that I’ve spoken. She’s too locked on what’s inside that room. She’s so drawn to it, to her surrogate son, that I can’t stop watching her. Like a peeping Tom, I linger by the open doorway as she approaches Julian’s bed. There’s another patient in the room with him, but he’s the one who’s closest. “Hey handsome,” I hear her say, very softly. “How do you feel?” All I can see is her back. I don’t even know him and my heart is thundering away.
I can’t hear his response.
She leans over his face, probably to kiss him.
Then she turns away from him, obviously hiding the fact that she’s crying. I feel so bad for her, I go in and hand her the crumpled tissue in my pocket. She takes it and holds my arm. She holds it like she needs it to stay upright. I don’t even notice the patient in the bed, I’m so focused on Estella, and she’s blocking my view anyway. “I’ll get you a chair,” I say. She’s nodding. Trying to keep it together.
“No, don’t sit down,” a garbled voice from behind her says. “Just leave.”
“But Julian,” Estella begins, turning to face him.
“LEAVE!” he cries.
Some nerve. “You know, Estella has been worried half out of her mind,” I say. “She flew down here with her heart in her...”
Holy Mother of God. Estella moves away and I’m looking at her nephew. And I’m praying. Holy Mother of God, I pray. Well, a sort-of prayer. His eyes are so blackened and swollen he must hardly be able to see. His nose is broken and bandaged. His bottom lip is a busted mess. He’s wearing a neck brace. His right leg, covered by a hand-knitted quilt, is cut off just below the knee. His left leg is bare and outfitted with an extremely scary-looking apparatus made of metal rods and pins. The pins have been surgically inserted into his skin, presumably to hold the bones in place. I close my eyes. Holy Mother, ease his pain, I think to myself. Heal him.
“Julian, this is your new step-cousin, Camille,” Estella says.
“GET OUT!” Something is knocked across the room—a book I think.
Estella hesitates, still not wanting to go, but Julian’s so upset he’s throwing things, so I just kind of drag her from the room. Estella’s eyes are brimming with tears. A nurse comes over to us and Estella ushers her away from me. All I get from the conversation is that the nurse will find Julian’s main doctor. Meanwhile, I go about the business of fetching Estella some water. My hands are shaking so hard the paper cup is folding and the water is sloshing around, wetting my fingers. My cell rings. I know it’s Dad calling to see how things are going, but I can’t talk to him now. I can’t talk to anyone. I give the water to Estella, trying to calm myself down by remembering this guy is a complete stranger to me. That he’s probably on all kinds of drugs. This idea gives me some hope. I turn to Estella, who’s staring helplessly at the nurse’s station.
“Estella?” I say to her. “You know Julian must be in a lot of pain. He’s probably stoned out of his mind and has no idea what he’s saying.”
She takes a small sip of water and looks at me. “That’s true.”
