15. Beau
I slept for three hours.
I sat on the side of the bed in the dark. There was an old-fashioned clock on the nightstand, a wedding gift to my parents. I didn’t look at the clock. I wasn’t trying to figure out what time it was.
Sabrina was in the hospital.
I drove her there in the evening and stayed in the waiting room until Mrs. Park came to stay with her overnight.
Then Sabrina sent me home because she didn't want me sleeping on a hospital chair.
So I went home and laid down, but couldn't sleep because the bed felt empty without her, and my mind wouldn't stop.
The letter was still on the bedside table.
I'd been saving it.
I had told myself, three days after the will, that I was saving it for the day I needed it. I had told myself, six days after, the same thing. I'd been telling myself this for fifteen days.
I knew now.
I had known since I had stood in a doorway last night and watched a child eat green Jell-O. I had known since I had found the lounge and seen Sabrina on the floor.
I picked up the envelope.
It was warm from the lamp.
The handwriting on the front was my father's. Beau. He had used a fountain pen since 1989 because his father had used one since 1957.
I opened it.
The paper was cream. The ink matched the envelope's. The handwriting moved across the page in the same loops, the same slope. His.
Dear son.
If you're reading this, then I'm no longer with you, physically at least, but I'll always be with you, no matter what.
I remember the first time I held you in my arms. I shed a good tear or two. I loved you from that moment and have loved you since.
I've been so proud and so happy to see you grow into the man you are today. Although death came suddenly, I'm happy I got to watch you grow. It was me on that hospital bed, and not you. That was all I needed.
I hope you take comfort in knowing that I'm at peace now. Be happy. My pain isn't yours.
I'll leave you with one piece of advice: love freely, Beau.
Don't let life pass you by without living it.
If you have the chance to change someone's life, do it.
If you have the chance to help someone, do it.
And if you ever have the chance to love, do it with all your heart, the way I had the chance to love two great loves in my lifetime.
I love you, son.
Love, Dad.
I read it again and again.
The third time I read it, a sentence struck me.
If you have the chance to help someone, do it.
That was what he had set aside in this letter for me to find when I needed it.
I folded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and placed the envelope back on the pad of paper. The room was lighter than when I had picked up the letter. The dark had taken on edges.
I was going to find a way to help.
I needed a way that didn’t break the deal Sabrina had asked me to keep — no check presented to her in a hospital lounge, just a quiet yes to a plan she wouldn’t know was mine. I didn't know what the way was yet.
But I'd been the chairman of Cross Real Estate Holdings for fifteen days, and I was, by virtue of one signature in a will my father had updated some weeks before he had died, a man whose phone calls people took.
I had ways.
I showered, dressed, and drove to the hospital.
Bonnie was in a pediatric room on the fourth floor. The room had a mural on the wall — frogs in pajamas, painted by someone who had loved their job — and a window that looked out at the same courtyard the family lounge faced, only from a higher angle.
Sabrina was in a chair beside the bed. She was wearing the same shirt and jeans she had on last night. Her hair was up in the clip, but it was holding less hair than it had when I left her.
Bonnie was awake.
She was sitting up, with a tray of green Jell-O in front of her and an opinion about it. The opinion appeared to be unfavorable from where I was standing.
She saw me and set the spoon down. "Beau."
"Hi, Bonnie."
"You forgot the book."
The book. I had stopped at her apartment on my way home from the hospital because Mrs. Park
asked me to grab Bonnie's overnight things. I had grabbed pajamas, Walter, and her toothbrush. I hadn't grabbed the cephalopod book, which Mrs. Park had told me — twice in a call — was on the dresser by the window.
I winced. "I know, baby. I'm sorry. I went home for an hour to sleep."
"Did you sleep well?"
"Not really."
She thought about it. "Okay. You can be forgiven, but you have to bring it tomorrow."
"I'll bring it tomorrow."
Sabrina was listening, sitting in a chair in the corner.She hadn't intervened in the colored-pencil negotiation, which was its own kind of cosigning.
I kissed Bonnie on the forehead, then crouched by Sabrina’s chair and took her hand. I pressed my mouth to the back of it, and she squeezed my fingers.
Then I stood up, went to the doorway, leaned against the doorframe, and watched them.
They were talking about Schubert because Bonnie had a piece by Schubert she was going to be ready for at her recital, and she was concerned that the recital was now in the hospital window and not the home window. Sabrina was listening to Bonnie intently.
A thought arrived without my permission. I could move her up the list.
I was the chairman, and I had the controlling vote. The medical review committee answered to the board, and the board answered to me. One phone call. Two hours of paperwork. By tomorrow, she could be on the schedule.
I shut it down.
I shut it down because Sabrina had said no twice, because the no hadn't been about the money. But I would make the call anyway, without telling her. I would be the man who had decided for her.
Not yet, I thought. Not without thinking. Not without doing the right thing.
The harder question was what my father had handed me on cream paper before dawn.
If I don't fix it, what am I for?
I pushed off the doorframe and went to find coffee before my head did something dangerous.
The coffee was from a machine in a third-floor alcove. It brewed the way coffee machines do — nearly the right color and temperature, but faintly metallic on the tongue.
I drank it standing.
Simon Kessler walked past the end of the corridor.
He was with a woman I hadn't seen before.
The small, dark-haired woman walked slowly, each step deliberate, as though it required thought.
Her sleep had been gone for some long stretch of months, and the lack of it was on her shoulders.
Simon was a step behind her. He had his hand at the back of her elbow.
I crossed to them.
Simon turned. "Mr. Cross."
"Simon."
He gestured at the woman beside him. "My wife. Marta."
I held out my hand.
She took it and shook my hand. She seemed to conserve herself for the parts of the day that required consciousness. I had seen this in the families on our list. I had seen it on Sabrina last night.
"Is your son here?"
Simon shook his head. "Outpatient appointment. He is fine. We are heading home."
The elevator at the end of the corridor dinged.
Marta moved toward it. She didn't say goodbye.
Simon hesitated at the doors. "Mr. Cross."
"Simon."
"I don't want to push. I know this isn't the time, but it has been two weeks. Have you — have you had a chance?"
I hadn't even gotten the folder out of the car. "I haven't opened it. I will. This week. I promise you."
He nodded and held the elevator with his hand on the door. Marta was in the back of the elevator. She was looking at the floor.
"Mr. Cross. There is a girl at Memorial."
"Yeah?"
"Her family stopped returning calls two weeks ago. Her case is connected to Dylan's. She — she could be a donor. If you read the folder, it has the connection laid out. It is in the back of the file."
"Yeah."
"If you have a chance."
"I'll look at it."
He nodded and stepped into the elevator. The doors closed.
I stood in the corridor with the coffee.
I had now made the same promise twice in under a week. I had promised Sabrina, in the back of an alley, that I wouldn't fall in love with her, and I'd been lying. I had promised Simon, in a hospital corridor, that I would read the folder, and I had been delaying.
The folder was in my car in the garage. I could get it and open it now, but I decided to wait.
I threw the coffee away and went back to the room.
Mrs. Park was there.
She was older than I had pictured her. Gray hair pulled back, a soft cardigan over a turtleneck, a quilted bag over her shoulder. She hadn't been there when I had left the room. She had come up while I'd been at the coffee machine.
She was speaking to Bonnie, telling her, slow and patient, that Pickles was fine. He had eaten breakfast and had walked across her keyboard.
Mrs. Park stopped when she saw me.
She looked at me, then at Sabrina and Bonnie. "Is that him?"
Bonnie nodded.
Mrs. Park turned back to me. She was, I suspected, evaluating me. "I'm Mrs. Park. I live downstairs from her."
"Beau Cross. Nice to meet you."
She nodded once and pulled a plastic container out of her quilted bag. She set it on the rolling table beside Bonnie's bed and opened it. The smell came up — rice and stewed beef, and a sauce I couldn't identify and could only have been made by Mrs. Park.
"Bonnie, you eat this. You’ve had enough green Jell-O."
"I know, Mrs. Park."
"Good." She turned to Sabrina. "Sabrina, you are going home."
"I'm not going home."
"You are. Bonnie is fine. The doctors are coming back. You have until they come back to go home, take a shower, and come back. I'm here. I'm watching her."
"Mrs. Park, I — "
"Sabrina, you stink."
"I don't."
"Sabrina." Mrs. Park gestured at me. "Why don't you ask that handsome man over there?"
Sabrina turned and looked at me. "Beau, tell her I don't stink."
"You don't stink." I said what she asked me to.
Mrs. Park made a sound.
"But I do think she is right that you should go home. Just for an hour. Mrs. Park has it," I added.
Sabrina muttered something I didn't catch and got up.
She kissed Bonnie on the cheek. "Be good. Eat the rice. Listen to Mrs. Park."
"Don’t worry, Mommy," Bonnie said.
Sabrina turned to me. "Take me home."
I took her home.
She didn't speak.
I drove.
I was thinking about her and Bonnie. I couldn't let this happen to her.
I had watched my father die. My father had been invincible to me my whole life. He had been to every game, play, and emergency-room visit. He was always supportive of me and whatever I wanted to be. And now he was gone.
I wasn't going to let that happen to Bonnie.
I couldn't imagine what losing her would do to Sabrina. I didn't want to imagine. I was refusing to let it.
We pulled up at her building.
I parked and turned off the engine. She sat there still. Then she opened the door and got out. She walked to the front of the building. She didn't turn around to see if I was coming.
I came.
Her apartment hadn't changed. The throw pillow on the couch I had passed out on the night I had met her was still there.
The coffee mug on the side table had a quarter inch of cold coffee in it.
The wall above the TV held Bonnie's artwork — three years of marker drawings taped over each other, forming, in this household, a curation system.
Sabrina didn't look at me. "I'm going to shower."
"Take your time."
She went down the hall, and I sat on the couch in the dark.
I put my hands on my knees and looked at the wall of artwork.
There was a self-portrait of Bonnie, drawn in green and pink markers, with eyes the size of saucers and a smile that took up half the page.
There was a drawing of Pickles, scaled to his actual self-image.
I noticed the family portrai I saw last time— her, Sabrina, Mrs. Park, and Pickles.
There was no man in any of the drawings.
The shower stopped, and footsteps came down the hall.
Sabrina came into the living room.
She was naked.
Her hair was wet. She had a towel over her shoulder that she hadn't used. Her skin was flushed from the heat of the water. She was barefoot, and she stopped in the doorway between the hall and the living room.
She looked at me, and I stood up.
"Sabrina."
"Beau."
"Are you — are you sure?"
"Please. I need you."
I went to her and put my hands on her face.
I kissed her.
She was reaching for the buttons of my shirt before my mouth had fully reached hers. Her hands were shaking.
I understood.
I lifted her — both hands under her thighs — and she locked her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. I walked her down the hall, shouldered her bedroom door open, and set her down on the bed.
Her hands finished with the shirt, and it came off.
She didn't wait for the rest. She had her mouth at the side of my neck and her hands at my belt. It came undone in two seconds because I had already had a hand on the buckle.
I brought her down to the mattress, and she came up to meet me.
She pulled me on top of her — both hands at my back, the heels of her palms against my shoulder blades, her legs locking around mine.
I gave her what she needed.
I kissed her hard. One hand was at the back of her head, the other at her hip. My mouth found hers, then her neck, then her shoulder. She was making sounds against my collarbone that I hadn't heard her make before — short, sharp, and raw.
I moved inside her.
She made a sound under me each time I hit her core.
I held her hand against the pillow above her head. Her fingers laced through mine.
I moved, and she moved with me.
It wasn't romantic.
Romantic would have been slow, making a meal, or the version of this we had had two weeks ago in my apartment, when she had said, “Promise me you won't fall in love with me,” and I had lied to her face. This wasn't that. This was fast, honest, and the only thing I had to give her, and I gave it.
She gripped my hand harder.
Her body went tight against mine. She made the sound she made when the world narrowed for her — short, breath, gone — and I followed her, and we stopped.
I rolled off her and onto my back.
She didn't let me go far. She came with me and ended up on top, her chest against mine, her face in the side of my neck.
She was crying.
The crying had snuck up under both of us. She was crying without sound — her shoulders going against my chest, her tears wet on the side of my neck. I had my arms around her. I had one hand at the back of her head and the other at the small of her back.
After a long minute, she lifted her head, kissed the corner of my mouth, and put her face back against my neck.
"Thank you for coming tonight."
"I would have come if you hadn't called."
She didn't move.
I leaned close to her ear. “I would have figured out where you were, even if you hadn’t told me.”