Chapter 15
CHAPTER
T he temperature in this hospital room seems to have dropped a couple more degrees.
My fingers are cold, my toes frozen inside my shoes.
Or maybe I’m in shock, staring across the room at my mother.
I want to call her lifeless , but as that may literally be the truth soon, I can’t bring myself to think it.
Rather, she’s motionless—eyes closed tight, head at a slightly awkward angle, a tube protruding from between her lips.
Next to the bed, a machine breathes for her, loud mechanical inhales and exhales mixed with beeps.
The screen is lit up, white, blue, green, red—numbers I can’t make sense of.
I couldn’t find any paperwork detailing what kind of medical care she wanted, no DNR or advance directive, not even a will. By the time I arrived, they’d already put the breathing tube in.
The nurse who’s been here all day comes by. She stops in the doorway. “Hi, Ms. Davis. I just wanted to let you know, I’ll be leaving soon. The night nurse will be Michael, and he’ll be by to check in with you shortly.” She smiles. “You’re in good hands with him.”
“Okay, thank you.”
Is it really late enough to be night already?
I guess so. Outside the small window, it’s grown dark.
It feels like an hour ago I was pouring coffee and packing a bag, planning on saying goodbye to Mom and disappearing back to New York, knowing that in a month or two or three, I’d get a call telling me she was gone.
I hadn’t let myself think about that part.
About how I’d feel—would I cry then? I swallow bitter hospital-cafeteria coffee and gaze at her, skin and bones beneath the white sheet and teal-green blanket printed with the hospital logo.
She wasn’t a good mom. In fact, she was pretty shitty.
Mostly because of the alcohol—at least that’s what I want to think.
It’s easier if I have something to blame it on.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care to come home or make sure I had dinner—it was the vodka.
Addiction brings out the ugly in people.
It hits me that I should probably make sure the nurse knows she’s a drinker.
Will she have withdrawals, even here in the hospital, sedated with a breathing tube down her throat?
I don’t know.
I stare down at her. I have some good memories, even if I have to search way back to find them. Before the alcohol became her priority, before men became more important than me, back when . . .
A memory flits by. Mom in a yellow dress.
We were in bayou country, thick with cypress trees, sluggish marshes, and the smell of seafood.
I don’t remember too much, just us walking down a wooden dock, the planks hot beneath my feet.
She picked me up, carried me on her hip, twirled us around while we laughed.
It’s one of my last memories of feeling safe, loved.
The memory fades, and I’m left wondering if maybe I dreamed it up.
Maybe my imagination filled in gaps where I had no positive memories.
If she wakes up, I think I’ll ask her if we took that trip.
There’s nothing to do now but wait, see if the antibiotics work, if the breathing machine can take some of the load so she can rest and grow stronger.
My gaze skims the bags hanging from the IV pole yet again.
There are six now—they added something called norepinephrine to keep her pressure up.
She’s getting blood, too, pumped into another line they put in her.
I sigh, resigning myself to one fact: I can’t leave Louisiana.
I was fooling myself to think I could. Like it or not, this is where I’m supposed to be.
Maybe for more than one reason. This and .
. . The IV bags blur as my mind wanders to the other reason.
There are too many unanswered questions.
About Noah and his father. I reach for my phone and send my department chair a quick email telling her I have a family emergency, that my mom is sick.
I’m going to need a few more days off, maybe a week.
Hours pass, and I close my eyes, take a deep breath in, and exhale, trying to silence my swirling thoughts. And despite it all, Noah cuts through again. I invited him in. Kissed him again. Might have even—
“Ms. Davis?”
My whole body jolts.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you . . .” I look up to find a new doctor in a white coat. She’s short, with blunt-cut hair framed around her tiny face, looking at me with concern. “Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Sorry, yes, I’m fine.”
“Would you like me to ask the nurse to bring in bedding? That chair converts.” She gestures to a stiff blue chair sitting under the tiny window.
“No. But thank you.” My gaze shifts to my mother, then back to the doctor. “How is she?”
“She’s stabilized for the time being. Her stats have come up since we started the antibiotics and put in the breathing tube. We’ll keep her sedated overnight. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll see more improvement. I know it looks scary right now, but she’s getting everything she needs.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Thank you.”
I stay another hour, but when I yawn for the third time, I decide to call it a day. I can’t remember the last time I slept. Before I go, I check in with the nurses’ station and let them know I’ll be back tomorrow, make sure they have my number handy.
Outside, the air is damp, heavy. But at least the claustrophobia of the small ICU room fades. The sky glows with a smattering of stars, and I focus on breathing as I walk out to my rental car. My phone buzzes as soon as I start it up, and I look down and find a text.
Sam: Hey. Are you back from your trip to Louisiana? Get together this weekend?
I swipe it away, put my phone down, and start the car. Life is complicated enough at the moment.
When I reach the house, I take a shower and grab my laptop before climbing into bed.
I need to check my email to see if my department chair has responded.
Maryellen often takes a few days, so if she hasn’t, I’ll call her in the morning to make sure she has enough time to find a professor to fill in while I’m out.
But the email at the top of my inbox is the old one from Hannah Greer, and I can’t help myself. I hit reply.
Hannah,
Your story has definitely caught my attention. I’d like to schedule a Zoom to discuss what might come next. Please let me know a date and time that is good for you.
Thank you, Professor Davis
After I hit send, my finger hovers over the last chapter she submitted.
I consider rereading it and looking for something— anything —I might have missed that could give me a clue who the hell is doing this to me.
But today has been rough enough, and I wind up slamming the laptop shut.
I’m not letting myself reread anything right now.
Though maybe tomorrow it’s time I speak to the only other person on this planet who should know what happened twenty years ago.
The next day, I don’t wait for hours in the parking lot.
I pull up, park, sip my third coffee of the day, and within minutes, Ivy’s walking toward my rental car.
She strides purposefully, like she spotted me through the window and knows why I’m here.
The sun beats down overhead, and I can see beads of sweat forming on her brow.
“What are you doing here?” she snaps after she climbs into the passenger seat. I hand her a coffee, which she rolls her eyes at. “You call me out of the blue after twenty years, then show up at my office and offer me a coffee, like we sit around and chitchat every day over a cup of Folgers?”
“Hello to you, too. Does that mean you don’t want it?”
She sighs. “I can’t drink coffee after two p.m. or I won’t sleep. Plus, it’s like a hundred degrees out.”
“Fine. I’ll drink it.” I drop it into the cup holder.
“Why are you here, Elizabeth?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and it’s just a coincidence , and you’re paranoid. Now I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
I turn and glare at her. Last time we spoke, she seemed pretty convinced, what with the Saint Agnes pendant.
But now I see the resolve in her eyes as she looks forward, refusing to meet my gaze.
She doesn’t want it to be real, and so she’s decided it isn’t.
As long as she sticks her head in the sand and continues her merry little life in the middle of nowhere Louisiana, she’ll be fine. Or so she’s convinced herself.
“Okay . . .” I reach into the back seat for my bag, yank out my laptop, click a few buttons, and pull up the chapters. “Read these.”
“I don’t want to read this stupid—”
“If you’re so sure it’s just a coincidence, you have nothing to lose. Read them, Ivy.”
With an even more exaggerated sigh than the last, she takes the computer, adjusts the angle of the screen, and squints, like she needs glasses. God, we’re getting old. I pluck the readers off the top of my head and shove them at her.
“Thanks,” she mutters and slips them on, peering at the screen.
I sip my coffee, waiting and watching. I know what comes next. I know what she’ll say.
“Oh my God.” Her voice comes out tiny, strained. “You were serious.”
“Of course I was serious!”
“This is . . .” Her hand goes to her chest. After another moment, she closes the laptop quickly, like she can’t read any more. “Lucas? The kneeling? The pendant? But who could know, Lizzie, who ?”
My old name. A nickname no one uses anymore. It unsettles me more than I care to admit. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Why now? It’s been twenty years .”
Again, I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Silence. Then Ivy turns my way, her hand clasping my arm. “You’ve been seeing that guy, right? His son? Noah.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Small towns.
“No, we just met at Liars Pub, the place on Main Street.”
“Is it him?”
Of course I’ve been kicking that very question around since we walked out of the bar. As crazy of a coincidence as it is that we would meet, my gut thinks that’s all it was. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Well, we need to know.”
“What would you like me to do, ask him? Hey. Are you pretending to be my student and sending me a twisted story because I killed your father? ”
Ivy’s eyes dart around the parking lot. “ Shhh. Keep your voice down.”
No one’s near the car, but she’s right. Lord knows, Chief Unger seemed to have materialized out of thin air. I lower to a whisper. “I don’t think it’s him.”
“Well, can you go back to the bar? Maybe get him drunk and start him talking?” Her voice fades off.
She gnaws on her lip, deep in thought. “Even if it’s not him, maybe he knows something we don’t.
He had to know his father better than anyone still alive.
” Her eyes roam my face. “You’re still as pretty as you were back then.
He’s a man, a single one from what I understand.
” Her eyes meet mine. “Get close to him. Do whatever it takes. We have to figure out who this is. We have to.”
I study her, surprised by her cunning. I wouldn’t have thought Ivy, of all people—small-town Ivy, who got married soon after high school and never left Louisiana—would suggest such a thing.
But I do know one thing.
She’s right.
I nod. “I’ll work on it. I will.”
Ivy’s shoulders relax. “I need to get back. I have a foster parent coming for a checkpoint meeting.”
“All right. I’ll call you.”
Ivy pushes open the car door, swings her feet, and is about to get out. I touch her shoulder. “Ivy, wait.”
She turns.
“It’s good to see you,” I say. “And I’m sorry I accused you.”
She smiles sadly. “It’s good to see you, too, Lizzie. You really do look amazing.”
“So do you.”
She snort-laughs. “You’re full of shit. But thank you for lying.”
I smile. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”
Twenty minutes later, I slow my car and turn into the parking lot of Liars Pub. I park the car, shut it off, and scan until my eyes find what I’m looking for.
A red pickup. Noah’s red pickup.