Accidental Happiness (4 page)

“You didn’t look. You just fired the goddamn thing before you even saw us.” The edge in her voice stopped me. “And why the hell are you living there? Have you two split up?”

I thought I registered a note of hope in her voice. I didn’t answer, couldn’t have if I’d tried.

“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter right now.” She talked more to herself than to me. Her voice had changed again, fell to low and bitter tones, but was no longer angry. I could barely keep up with my own emotions, but hers were all over the place. I regrouped my thoughts, tried to sort out what I could tell her, how I could explain.

“What were you doing with that pistol?” she mumbled again before I could fashion an answer. “Were you waiting for us?”

In the thin light of the night, I searched her expression for sarcasm, for anger; but didn’t find any. She was asking the question, as if it could possibly be true. She looked worn-out, scared.

“How could I have been waiting for you? Why the hell would I have fired the gun if I’d known it was you?”

She shrugged, her paranoia apparently having run its course.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I went on. “I have trouble sometimes. I heard you and I thought . . . I don’t know. When you stepped on the boat, I just reacted. I don’t remember pulling the trigger. I wish I could take it back. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, especially not a child. God, you have to believe that much.”

She turned her head, looked out the car window, and I didn’t press. Everything felt too raw. I glanced at her again, couldn’t get over actually seeing her, having her in my car—after all the years of wondering what she was really like. In her gypsy getup—wild, curly hair falling around her face—she looked exotic, the precise opposite of my straight hair, ponytail look. My clothes ran toward the casual coastal, entirely ordinary variety. I owned a few skirts, but I wasn’t at all sure where they were. How could Ben have chosen such different women to love?

After a few miles and an eternity of silence, she spoke again.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt Angel,” she said, her voice softer. “I just don’t know what to do. I’m here and she’s there with God knows what happening all around her.”

“We’ll be there in five minutes,” I told her. “They’re probably arriving with her now. We aren’t that far behind them. Just hang on.”

She’d settled back, gave over at least some level of trust to my navigational skills. She stared out her window again, didn’t say anything more, and I realized how much I was dreading the conversation we would have about Benjamin. She would ask again and I would have to say it.
He’s dead.

I went for days, still, forcing those words out of my thoughts, denying them by omission. I had friends whose husbands were in the military. Those guys shipped out, stayed away longer than Benjamin had been gone, a lot longer sometimes. He could just be
away.
The fantasy seemed more plausible than the truth. That he had died. How could he have woken up beside me one morning and died that afternoon?

“It’s getting light over there,” Reese said absently. “See the way the sky changes color?”

She was making noise so she didn’t have to think. I knew the drill all too well. Making your mind busy, wanting to travel back to yesterday’s dawn, before anything happened. On some days, occasional mornings, it was still possible in the gauzy prewaking moments of the day to
not
know that Ben was gone, if only for seconds at a time. Even allowing for the crushing reality that followed, I craved the naive awakenings, took each one as a gift. A brief moment of life as I’d remembered it, handed back to me.

“I’m going to be sick.” She interrupted my thoughts.

We were near the hospital, on the back street that went around to the Emergency entrance.

“Let me pull over.” I was veering toward the curb as I spoke and before I’d even stopped the car she had the door open, was leaning out.

Blood and vomit. I’d have to burn the car when everything was said and done. I turned away from her, hoping to offer privacy, but the sounds of her retching were heartbreaking. I handed her a roll of paper towels from the backseat. She took them without saying anything.

“Can I do anything?” I asked, still looking away.

She didn’t answer, so I turned to face her. It seemed that she had missed soiling herself and the car after all. Small wonders. I saw in her face that she had moved already from sickness to sorrow; was hunched over, the comforter still around her. She sat half out of the door, crying. When she straightened, she lifted the edge of her skirt, still wet for reasons I had yet to sort out, and rubbed the drenched material down the length of her face, her throat.

Even unkempt from distress, and God knows what else, she was beautiful—and I hated seeing it. I’d always known—from pictures, from the way Benjamin talked about her—but seeing it was a blow. I don’t know why. It was irrelevant, what she looked like. Benjamin would never have the chance to want her back. A stupid collection of thoughts. With everything going on, could I really be feeling jealous?

“I’m scared to go in there,” she said. “What if it’s gone bad? What if she’s—”

“Let’s just park in the Emergency lot. I’ll go in with you,” I said. “I’ll even go in first, if you want. I can find out how she is and come right back.”

It felt good to be the strong one.

“I should go,” she said, looking miserable, not moving. “But Angel . . . God, if anything happened to her . . . Will you stay with me?”

“Sure. Nothing’s going to happen,” I said, working to sound confident. “Come on. Everything’s going to be fine.”

It was all a bluff. I knew all too well that things didn’t always turn out fine; but I kept up the ruse, as much for my sake as for hers.

She nodded, even managed a weak smile, as I drove to the lot around the corner and parked as close to the entrance as I could without risking a tow.

“Her name is Angel?” I asked, a belated recollection of what she’d said.

“Angelina,” she said. “I call her Angel.”

I nodded. Thought of telling her that the name was pretty, but realized the compliment would sound trivial under the circumstances.

We walked through the parking lot toward the bright lights of the Emergency Room. As we got to the entrance I took a breath, but didn’t reach for the door. My hand was shaking, my whole arm, really. Rogue muscles defied my efforts at control. Panic moved through me, but then calmed when I took a deep breath; went away as quickly as it had come.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I opened the door. Simple.

“If there’s a shrink on call, let’s get him on board,” she said without looking over at me. “I think we could both use a session or two—along with a pack of Marlboro Lights.” I sensed she wasn’t kidding about the cigarettes. She turned her head, offered a weak smile, and the effort seemed noble somehow.

The reception area was across the room. A Plexiglas window separated the office staff from the hoi polloi outside.

“I’ll go check at the desk,” I told her. “You grab anybody who looks official if they come this way.” Then I left her there to find out what I could. I hoped to God the news was good.

Beside the reception area, a hall led toward where the action occurred. There was a woman ahead of me telling them about her infected toe, and as I waited, I looked down the hall for any sign of Angel and her entourage. Fluorescent lights reflected off the pale green walls. Busy people moved around without stopping to regard one another.

After a minute or so of waiting, the toe injury woman looked as if she was just getting started. Down the hall I saw a nurse, an older woman, standing off by herself, looking at a chart. A couple of people had gotten in line behind me, so it would be taking a chance, but I decided to go talk to the nurse anyway.

“Excuse me,” I said as I got close enough to grab her attention. “I’m trying to find out about a little girl who’s just been brought in.”

“The gunshot?” the woman asked.

I didn’t answer. It sounded too horrible.
The gunshot.
Gunshot victims, especially kids, were always drive-by shootings or drug deal cross fire. The idea that I had shot a child branded me somehow. I wondered if the woman noticed, if she knew it was my fault.

“Ma’am?” she prompted me. “What child are you looking for?”

“Yes,” I answered. “The girl who was shot. How is she?”

“Are you the mother?”

“No. I’m . . .” What was I? “I’m a . . . I’m with her mother. I followed the ambulance and drove her here.”

“Where is she? The mother. Is she here?” the nurse asked.

She looked particularly capable, but I was losing her. In the background the intercom crackled as someone paged a doctor on the overhead.
Jesus, don’t they all have cell phones by now?

“She’s over there,” I told her. I looked across the room but didn’t see Reese anywhere. “She’s in here somewhere. I drove her here. She’s really upset.” It sounded odd, my choice of words.
Upset.
Upset is what you are when a kid sprains an ankle. What are you when your kid has been shot?

“She’s freaking out.” Eloquent. “She got sick a little bit ago, so I told her I’d find out what I could.”

Too much information always sounded like a lie, but I was beginning to get pissed off, so I didn’t care.

“How is the girl? Can her mother get in to see her? I need to let her mother know.” I spoke with force, conviction.

“I’m sorry,” she said, without sounding sorry at all. “We have new regulations regarding patient information. Unless you’re the guardian—”

“Please,” I said. “I don’t need a full report. Just tell me if she’s okay.” I glanced around again, wondering where Reese had gone. “It shouldn’t be this complicated.”

“Tell the mother,” she spoke very deliberately, but with an underlying kindness, “that the doctor will need to discuss all matters of inpatient admission with her. And we need to find out about insurance. The girl likely won’t be discharged until tomorrow, at least.”

“I’ll be covering any charges,” I told her.

Discharge. Nurse code. The kid was okay.

“I’ll make a note of that and you can talk with them at the desk,” she told me.

“Thank you,” I said. We exchanged conspiratorial nods.

“Oh,” she said as I turned to go back out. “What is the girl’s full name? I need to get her chart filled out.”

Angelica? Angelina?
I couldn’t remember. “She goes by Angel,” I said.

“Last name?” It was a reasonable question.

“I don’t know.” I felt uneasy. That was a whole other conversation I had to have with her mother. “I really don’t know.”

“And you’re a relative?” She looked skeptical.

I thought for a second.

“By marriage,” I said finally, realizing that it was almost the truth.

Then before she could ask anything more, I headed back across the room to find Reese and give her the news.

3

Reese

I
t was hot outside the E.R. waiting area, but Reese was shivering. Inside, she had begun to feel her legs go weak, the nausea rising again. Prickly trembling in her hands followed and she figured she better find a place to sit down before she risked passing out. It had happened before. Since the waiting room looked full, she stepped outside where she’d seen some benches.

Where the hell was Gina? Reese strained to see as someone opened the doors. She had been in line at the window, and then she was gone. She sat back down, willed herself to take a deep breath.

“I’ve got to get up,” she mumbled to herself. “Go back and find her. I can’t be this fucking weak with my daughter inside there.”

Where the hell was Benjamin? Why had his wife been on the boat—with a gun? He’d said once that she was high-strung, this new wife. But a gun? Still, the woman hadn’t been expecting her to show up. Lord knows why she was sleeping on the boat. She registered the old hope that something had happened with the two of them. Maybe the issue of having kids had escalated. She told herself to stop it. She couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. She had expected Gina to be smart, pretty. Ben had said as much. But Gina Melrose was more of these things than Reese had imagined. It got under her skin.

The bottom line was, she needed to find Benjamin. She had to explain everything to him. But that was all for later. First, she had to know that Angel would be all right. She hoped to God the paramedics had been right. That it wasn’t nearly as serious as it looked.

“Reese?” Gina stood at the door, holding it open. “Jesus, what are you doing out here? Somebody told me they saw you leave.”

“I felt weak, needed to sit down.” Reese’s heart raced. She felt vaguely nauseated again. “How is she?” Her pulse throbbed in her throat, in her arms.

“She’s fine. I’m sure she is,” Gina told her. “They won’t tell me anything else specific. But they need to go over her information with you now. Fill out her chart. Routine stuff.”

“Are you sure?” Reese stood up, fought to keep control of her limbs, her breathing.

Gina nodded. “I’m sure. The nurse said they’d need to go over follow-up with you for when she’s discharged. Do you need to take something? Your color’s not good.”

“I’m fine,” Reese insisted. She felt a sudden euphoria. The kind that floods in, filling large spaces that worry has abandoned. “Did you see her?”

“No,” Gina said. “The trauma Nazis wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. I barely got a nurse to talk to me.”

Reese felt strong all at once, and strangely calm. She should have gone to ask herself. She shouldn’t have involved Benjamin’s wife. The woman had shot her daughter, for God’s sake. But she was involved already, and she wasn’t crazy. Gina had held herself together when she was falling apart.

“Come on,” Gina said. “I’ll find the nurse and she’ll get you to Angel.”

Reese followed Gina into the hospital and down a hall that had been painted a ghoulish green. “Why do they think this color will help anyone feel better?”

“Gives you pretty good incentive to get the hell out, huh?”

Gina was blunt, just a hint of a dark side; and she had an elegance, even in her unkempt middle-of-the-night state. Everything about her made her Ben’s match. His equal. Gina
was
what she had wanted to be the whole time she’d lived with Ben. Reese wanted to punish her for it somehow. She wanted to lay blame for Angel’s shooting, but she couldn’t muster the anger for it.

“Thank you for running interference,” Reese told her. “I’m better now.”

Gina nodded, and the two of them walked together, looking for the elusive nurse. They must have seemed a mismatched set, the two of them. Reese glanced down at her own damp patchwork skirt, then over at Gina’s polo shirt and pajama shorts.

“They asked me her name,” Gina said. Her voice had a casual tone, but Reese felt the current underneath the words. “I told them her first name. I said I didn’t know her last.”

Reese didn’t want to explain any of that. Not yet. Not without Benjamin. But she wouldn’t lie either. Even at her worst, she’d never dealt in open lies, not about important things.

“Melrose,” Reese said, looking over at Gina as she said the last name. “The same as mine.”

Gina nodded, and Reese saw something in her eyes, something profoundly sad.

“I’ve just never changed my name,” Reese said, trying to soften the information. “I’m still Melrose. That’s Angel’s name too.”

Reese watched Gina’s face, didn’t see anything she could decipher.

“The police are sitting in the waiting area,” Gina said. “They want to talk to both of us. I told them before that you were a relative of my husband. We’re going to have to explain it all, but I’d like to keep as many of the details out of the paper as possible.”

Reese didn’t know how to respond, whether to be offended or relieved at the woman’s discretion.

“I write for a number of local publications,” Gina explained when Reese didn’t say anything. “I don’t want a lot of gossip to get around to the people I work with. I like to keep to myself as much as I can.”

“I understand,” Reese said. “We’ll spin it any way you want to.”

Gina just nodded. Reese thought she was dreaming if she really believed this could stay out of the local gossip. Charleston wasn’t that big a place. Besides, Ben would want to weigh in on it too. She needed to talk with him. But for the moment she’d do her part.

“And Reese?” Gina stopped walking. Reese turned to look at her, saw that she was almost in tears. “What about Angel’s father?”

Gina kept her eyes steady, and Reese tried to think of something to say, but some questions were too large to answer on the fly. She didn’t have time for studied explanations.

“Gina,” she said. “We’ll talk about it. About everything. But I’ve got to get to Angel now.”

As if on cue, the nurse appeared down the hall.

“That’s her,” Gina said, gesturing toward the woman. “We’ll talk later.” She almost seemed relieved. “I’ll finish with the police and then I’ll stay here. I want to know what they say.”

Reese started down the hall, then stopped, turned back around.

“While I’m doing this,” Reese said. “I know this is awkward, but I need to talk with Benjamin. Will you please try to reach him?”

“Reese—”

“Gina, I’ve got to get in there. Please, just understand. He’ll want to know I’m here.”

As she walked away, Reese glanced back at Gina, intending to convey a look of apology, of gratitude, something. But all intentions became irrelevant when she saw the tears streaming down the younger woman’s face. The sight almost stopped her, almost made her go back. But she had to get to Angel. Her daughter was waiting. That’s all that mattered.