Chapter 45 Penny
Chapter 45
Penny
One eye pops open, and then the other. Despite the drama last night, she feels more rested than she has in weeks.
The news about Cassidy hadn’t been good. Upon arriving at the hospital, Rosalie and Penny learned that Cassidy regained consciousness in the ambulance, vomiting all over herself before losing consciousness again. Her heart had stopped and started multiple times. They had to revive her twice. The doctors working on her didn’t know if she’d pull through. It was a tense couple of hours until she stabilized. At some point, Penny rummaged through Cassidy’s purse like a thief, searching for evidence of life outside the inn, a family member, emergency contact. One of the administrators asked for her signature, even after Penny told her she’d only just met the mother and daughter a few days ago, tacking on that taking a few hikes and eating dinner together hardly made them friends. She quickly regretted the insensitivity.
It occurred to Penny that fifteen-year-old Rosalie was Cassidy’s only relative, and she later held the girl’s cold hand when they told her as delicately as they could that her mother needed brain surgery. The young girl cried. Then she began counting to herself.
Penny held Rosalie close. She tried to smooth away the worry, as did Dr. Benck, the doctor who worked on Cassidy. She explained how the surgery would relieve the pressure on her brain, and when she offered details about the procedure, she did it with her palm resting along the girl’s shoulder. The doctor’s brown eyes were hopeful.
Then Dr. Benck pulled Penny aside. She spoke candidly and without apology. “In addition to the blow to Ms. Banks’s head, we found a combination of diet pills, alcohol, and Xanax in her system.” Dr. Benck’s findings didn’t come as a surprise. “You said she fell coming down the stairs—”
“There was some commotion at the dinner table ... She had gone to the bathroom ... I wasn’t paying much attention. She couldn’t have been gone for more than a few minutes—”
Dr. Benck starts off slowly. “It’s my medical opinion that Cassidy may have been vomiting—”
“You think she ate something bad?” Penny asks. “No one else got sick.”
“I believe it was intentional. She was brought in severely dehydrated, and you may have noticed her cheeks are swollen.”
She had, but all this time Penny had thought the swelling was due to the Restylane that Cassidy had injected into her face.
“Her low electrolyte levels and potassium deficiency, coupled with mouth sores and her thin frame, are consistent with someone who has an eating disorder.”
Penny leaned back in the chair, catching Rosalie out of the corner of her eye. What it must be like to live with a woman this deeply troubled.
“I’m guessing her condition caught up with her. She might have been dizzy, unable to manage the stairs. We’ll know more later. We have our best team working on her.”
Dr. Benck walked Penny back to Rosalie, and Penny wasn’t sure if the anguish on her face was for her mother’s secret or for the possibility of losing her only living relative.
“I’ll check back as soon as we have more information. Right now, they’re prepping her for surgery. It’s going to be several hours before she’s cleared. I suggest you go home and get some rest.”
Home. Where was home?
Reluctantly, they left the hospital. Rosalie spent most of the thirty-minute drive back to the inn staring out into the darkness. “Is she going to die?”
Penny couldn’t lie. There had already been too many. She’d learned from experience that the truth was best in these situations. Besides, at fifteen, Rosalie wasn’t a child. “I don’t know. But I know the doctors are doing all they can.”
“I know about the pills. And I knew she was making herself sick ...” She stared straight ahead, focused blankly on the windshield. “I tried to get her to stop.” Penny waited for her to continue. “She made me the adult, and then she refused to respect me.” Her face turned sullen. “That’s why I did what I did.”
Penny squirmed in her seat. “Did what?”
Silence.
“Rosalie, what did you do?”
“You’ll see.”
When they returned to the inn, most of the lights were out. The earlier storm had cleared the sky for a dazzling display of stars. The house was still and quiet, and she’d walked Rosalie to her room, tripping over what looked like men’s pants in the hallway. Penny remembered the blowup leading to Cassidy’s fall, how Henry’s dad was involved with Bluebird, and how Renée and Jean-Paul lost everything. Renée screamed at Henry before blurting out some cryptic secret from last summer. The table had veered into a tense spiral, then a deafening quiet. Penny figured everyone must be locked in their rooms wading through the shrapnel.
“Get some rest,” she told Rosalie, pulling her into a deep hug.
Leo sat waiting for her on the back porch. The cicadas were buzzing, the lightning bugs, showing off their shine. “Hey.”
She fell into his arms, burying her face in his chest. Home.
He knew she was reacting to more than Cassidy’s collapse.
There was a reason Leo and Penny had handled CPR magically in tune with one another. How precise their tempo and beat had been, as though they’d had practice.
She tried to block the memories out when she pressed on Cassidy’s chest and Leo counted in measure, but it was impossible. She closed her eyes, and she saw little Ellie’s lifeless body on the patio. She forced her eyes open. This isn’t Ellie.
Penny shook, her body trembling. “I can’t go through this again.”
He brushed her hair from her face. “This isn’t the same thing, Pen.” Then he lowered his head and kissed her forehead. His lips were feathery soft. “I promise.”
She let herself fall into the feel of her hands in his, his lips grazing her cheeks. She didn’t fight him. She needed this. Needed him. It had been a long time since she felt safe. She wasn’t sure who pulled away first, but they parted, and Leo led her inside to the kitchen.
He opened the freezer and took out a carton of ice cream. Pistachio. Her favorite. Riffling through drawers, he found a spoon, and they sat at the pristine table, no evidence of what had transpired earlier. The moon cast a glow on their faces. He sank the spoon into the carton and slowly brought it to her mouth, the cold sweetness awakening her senses.
“I can’t stop thinking about her.”
His eyes shifted downward, and she ran her fingers through his hair. “Me too.”
The loss sat in her belly, creeping up toward her chest. She’d held it in so long. “We did everything we could, right?” she asked. It was a question she’d never asked aloud.
He set the spoon down, lifted her with both hands, and dropped her on the table in front of him. He stepped closer, and she spread her legs to let him in.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“They called it,” he whispered. “She was under the water too long.”
She relived the anguish of the young EMT who had to physically pull her off Ellie. Alara screamed beside her, a bloodcurdling wail that haunted every one of Penny’s dreams. Buckley, out golfing when his daughter took her last breath, had to be carried off the green. Like a horror show, the reel played, and she shook her head, tried to shake it away, but she couldn’t any longer.
Ellie died. And then came the shameful what-ifs and could’ve-beens that had left them in a puddle of regret.
It had all happened so fast. The snack bowls on the poolside table were empty. The cooler in need of more juice. She’d shot up from the lounger to restock, and Leo tagged along. He held her hand as they walked inside. The kitchen was cold compared to the desert heat, and as soon as the door closed behind them, he pressed her against the wall, nothing between them but his damp bathing suit and her string bikini. He kissed her hard on the mouth, and she ran her hands up and down his skin. The busyness of their lives meant opportunities like this were fleeting. She inhaled his sunscreen and grabbed at his hair. He kissed her neck, shoved the triangle top aside, and grazed his pink tongue along her nipple. She closed her eyes and disappeared in the throbbing between her legs. At one point she reminded him they had a job to do. He laughed, and covered her mouth with his lips.
They returned with the snacks and juices. Alara had her nose deep in her book, and the kids were horsing around on the giant blow-up raft when Penny did what she always did: took a head count.
“Ellie.” It came out as a whisper but then turned into a scream. “Where’s Ellie?”
Alara shot up out of her chair, the kids halted their activity, and Leo, Leo jumped into the pool, disappearing under the giant float. When he came to the surface, he had Ellie’s limp body in his arms. Alara was incoherent. Screaming. Crying. Dialing 911 and shouting at the operator.
“Get the girls in the house,” Leo shouted at Kayla, their oldest daughter, as he laid Ellie down and began CPR. Penny pressed and blew, and he frantically counted. They took turns when she became winded. She kept going over how long they’d been in the kitchen, trying to calculate the minutes between life and death, all while keeping in sync with Leo. If Ellie had gotten stuck under that raft when they left for the kitchen, it had to have been six or seven minutes. She couldn’t be sure. She would regret that decision to linger in the kitchen for the rest of her life.
“There wasn’t more we could’ve done,” he said, drawing her out of the memory.
But there was. They could have done what they were supposed to: gone inside for snacks and come right back. It didn’t matter to either one of them that Alara was out there. They were all responsible that day, and she finally had the chance to say what she had never been able to say before. “We shouldn’t have left Alara alone ... those minutes ... three sets of eyes might have prevented it ...” Her voice drifted, and his head fell.
After Ellie, their golden life turned bleak. His heart no longer beat in tune with hers. That day by the pool, they wanted each other so much—maybe too much—and maybe the force of that love was what ultimately broke them apart. That moment in the kitchen was the last time she remembered being happy together.
They did their best to manage the girls and their grief. And the questions. So many questions. How could they respond when there weren’t any answers? Closure was impossible when Alara and Buckley disappeared, slamming the door on their friendship. Leo returned to set. Actors are seasoned at compartmentalizing. She envied his ability to assume another role, to disappear from the ache that crawled inside. Tending to the girls was her escape.
What happened that summer buried itself deep beneath her skin. Beneath his skin. They were already miles apart when she and the girls moved to Miami.
They sat like that. In the dark. Sweet pistachio on their lips. Their mistakes closing in.
They had been so bruised. It was no wonder they couldn’t talk. Instead, they held their separate grief, and relationships don’t work if you don’t fight demons together. They couldn’t hide from it anymore. She knew that now. The very thing that had pulled them apart was luring them back together. Ellie’s being gone would forever be an ocean of sorrow. Penny hadn’t understood deep water until she was drowning in it. People don’t like to talk about death, especially the death of a child. But avoiding it is another death.
And just as he had always been able to read her, Leo knew what he had to do. He lifted her and carried her up the stairs and through the maze of the house. His footsteps sounded insistent against the wood floor, and even though it was dark, he knew where he was going.
He opened the door to her room and laid her on the bed. He didn’t try to touch her any more than he had already. He pulled up a chair and grabbed a blanket from the closet. She felt herself forgiving him because he knew what she needed and what she wasn’t yet ready for.
And that’s why, even after last night’s chaos, she feels more rested than she has in months.
Leo’s beside the bed, curled in an uncomfortable tangle, lightly snoring.