Bleeding Heart (30 page)

“I hope everyone has as much fun as we do,” he told me later as we lay together, spent and happy, on top of the still-made-up bed. “Think what this is going to be like in Paris!”

“Good try,” I told him, sitting up on one elbow and taking him in. As far as I was concerned, he had just the right amount of chest hair. Not a dark heavy mat like some of the men I saw in the pool at our country club, but just enough for me to run my fingers through and enjoy its springy give under my touch. He was a little heavier now, smile lines creased his cheeks and forehead, but he still had the same open, boyish good looks that had first drawn me to him. “But not even your very considerable powers of persuasion can change my mind. You go to Hong Kong and wow senior management. I’ll stay here, hold Olivia’s hand, and take Franny on the tour. Paris can wait another month or two. It’s not going anywhere, is it?”

I heard a strangled sob. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was coming from me. Tears were running down my cheeks. I changed lanes, put on the brakes, and pulled off to the side of the road. Then I let go and really wept.

It was Tom, of course. The knowledge that Tom was waiting—that a possible new love was there for the taking—that brought Richard so vividly back to me. I had loved my husband: his mind,
his sense of humor and responsibility, his unabashed adoration of our daughters, his very physical presence. I’d loved everything about him—and yet, clearly, I hadn’t had the slightest idea who he really was. I realized that I would never be able to get over how wrong I’d been about him—about us. Just as I would never recover from the wrong he’d done me. And yet I knew that if I was ever going to have a chance at happiness again, I would have to try. I’d have to finally leave all the unanswered questions and ambiguity behind. Though Richard had walked out many years ago, the fact was, I’d continued to stay in our marriage. I’d never quite given up. Yes, I’d been embittered. Vengeful. But the very depth of those emotions had kept me mired in this one-sided, damaging, and endlessly bewildering relationship.

And Tom was waiting. But I knew his patience was starting to give way. His anger had startled me the other night. Richard had never really raised his voice to me or the girls. He’d cajoled and kidded—and, yes, sometimes even made love—to get what he wanted.
But what darkness that seemingly sunny nature had disguised!
I reminded myself. Better to be with someone who was honest about what he wanted.

I need you to think about how you feel. I need you to decide what you want.

I thought I knew now.
I started the engine. I adjusted the windshield visor against the noonday sun. It was time to move
on.

D
owntown Shalesburg didn’t have a traffic light. It consisted of a church, a gas station, and a row of late-nineteenth-century two-story clapboard buildings that had seen better days. There was the Second Time Around consignment shop. The Cut & Dry hair salon. A number of empty storefronts with For Rent signs in the windows. And the Shalesburg Market, which seemed to be the only place open on a Saturday afternoon. I parked in front of it and went inside. I spotted a woman with a small girl in one aisle, but they seemed to be the only people in the place besides the man behind the register. He was in his late fifties, balding, with a face the color and texture of beef jerky. He looked up as I walked over to the glassed-in deli case to the right of the register. A chalkboard on the wall behind the counter listed the day’s specials.

“All out of the meatball sub,” he told me. “But I can make you up anything else you might want.”

I ordered a ham and cheese on rye and watched as the man set swiftly to work. He looked up as he got ready to slice the sandwich in half.

“Pickle with that?” he asked.

“Sure, I’d appreciate it,” I told him. “And I’d also appreciate it if you could tell me how to get to the Delaney farm from here.”

He shook his head as he tore off a sheet of waxed paper from a roll on the counter.

“Should’ve known,” he said darkly to himself as he wrapped up the sandwich and tossed it and a packet of potato chips into a brown paper bag.

“I’m sorry?” I said, handing him a ten-dollar bill. “I’m just asking where the—”

“You’re press, right?” he said, shoving the bag across the counter at me. “Don’t you people have any decency? That poor family is going through enough grief right now without the likes of you nosing around again.”

“I’m a friend of Mara’s,” I said. “I’ve driven all the way over from Massachusetts to pay my respects.”

“Oh,” he said, hesitating for a moment, but then he seemed to regain his angry momentum. “Well, I’ve just had it with reporters. These last couple of years have been a total media circus around here.”

“Why?” I asked him. “What happened?”

“Thought you said you were a friend of Mara’s.”

The woman with the child had come up to stand beside me at the counter, waiting her turn.

“Oh, come off it, Verne,” she said now. “You have any idea how paranoid you sound?”

“Can’t be too careful,” he shot back, depositing my bill in the cash drawer and handing me the change. He closed the register and crossed his arms over his barrel chest.

“Mara’s been working for me in Massachusetts,” I said, turning from Verne to the young woman. “But she didn’t tell me why she left.”

“We all wondered where she’d gone,” the woman said, lifting her basket of groceries onto the counter. Though slim, pretty, and only in her mid-twenties, she already had a worn-down look. “If you can hold on a sec, I’ll show you how to get to the Delaneys’.”

“Thanks,” I said as I walked to the door. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Sorry about Verne,” the woman said a few minutes later when she joined me under the awning with her bag of groceries. Her little girl followed her out, intent on ripping the wrapper off a Tootsie Roll Pop. “But he was a buddy of Mara’s dad and has taken this whole thing pretty hard.”

“Do you mind telling me what happened?”

“No, but let’s sit down,” she said, moving toward a wooden bench to the right of the door. “I’ve been up half the night with this one’s younger brother.” She leaned over to pick up the paper wrapper her daughter had dropped. “Teething!”

“I remember the days,” I said.

“Oh, boy, am I looking forward to the time when I can look back, too,” she said with a sigh, collapsing onto the bench and closing her eyes. After a moment or two, she straightened up.

“You know what fracking is, right?” she asked me. When I nodded, she went on: “Okay, so Shalesburg was like ground zero for fracking in this area. We got sold a bill of goods from a drilling company called EnergyCorp. They made it sound like the whole thing was a walk in the park. One of those ‘make millions at home without lifting a finger!’ kind of pitches. Most of the farms around here have been struggling for years, so signing up with the gas company seemed like just the ticket out of trouble. Jimmy Delaney was one of the first to lease his land.”

“Is Jimmy Mara’s dad?”

“Was. He died a couple of years ago—some cancer that got
him in what seemed like a couple of weeks. That was before the accident, thank God, and all the craziness. At least he didn’t have to know about that. Probably would’ve killed him even faster.”

“The accident?”

“Yeah. It was really awful. I still hate to think about it. But it’s not like that was the only problem we were having. Things were going downhill for months before it happened. The water started turning brown and tasting funny. Trout were dying off. The big trucks they were using to haul the heavy machinery around were tearing up the roads. The countryside was starting to look like a war zone. Then there was some kind of explosion out at the Harney site, and a couple of workers got soaked with the chemical mix they pump into the wells. They rushed them to Community Medical over in Glendale, where Hannah Delaney had just started working as an ER nurse. She was the first one there when they came in, and she ended up getting exposed to a lot of bad stuff.”

The young woman shook her head, her eyes glistening.

“Hannah was a year ahead of me in school. She was just the sweetest person, you know? One of the really good ones. Always happens to them, for some reason, doesn’t it? She and Jack’d had Danny the year before, and she was already pregnant again. She had some kind of toxic reaction in the ER. Went into shock. They say the workers ended up okay, but Hannah lost the baby—and then a couple of days later she started convulsing. Lost consciousness. Some people say she was brain-dead even then, but Jack refused to give up. Moved right into the hospital room with her, leaving Mara to deal with the farm and Danny. The press poured into this town like locusts. Even that what’s-his-name from
60 Minutes
stopping people on the street to ask us how we were ‘feeling.’ Jesus! I don’t blame Mara for wanting to get the hell out of Shalesburg after that. Jack was a mess—and the farm was falling apart. I think she did
right to get Danny away from it all, too. So she was making a fresh start in Massachusetts?”

“Yes,” I told her. Which was true, of course, but not the whole truth by any means. “I really appreciate you telling me all this. So Hannah was in a coma for—how long?—over two years?”

“Something like that. It seemed pretty hopeless, but Jack never gave up. And he kept hounding EnergyCorp for information about the chemicals. Got a bunch of lawyers involved. He was convinced there was a way of bringing her back if the drilling company would just release details about the kinds and amounts of chemicals they used. At least then the doctors would know what they were up against. But apparently the gas companies are not legally bound to reveal that sort of information—like they’re guarding state secrets or something. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it? That they get to protect their precious formulas. And Hannah? Who thought about protecting her?”

When we got up, she gave me directions to the farm.

“Tell Mara that Julie Thorndike said hi,” she said, grabbing her daughter’s hand. “Tell her to call me if she needs anything.”

“I will,” I said as I headed to my car. “And thanks again.”

Though I’d left the store with the sandwich, I’d lost my appetite. I tossed the paper bag into the backseat, started the engine, and continued north, as Julie had instructed me, on the two-lane highway out of town.

A summery haze lay over the rolling hills and fields. I crossed a bridge that spanned a wide, shallow creek, and drove through a stretch of second-growth sugar maples, birches, and hemlocks. I passed a farm with a collapsing silo, a backyard busy with hens, and a handwritten wooden sign that said “F— FRACKING!” in front of the house. A pickup truck sat on its chassis in the middle of an adjoining field, surrounded by grazing cattle. It wasn’t until I reached the stop sign that Julie had told me to look for and turned
left down the dirt road to the Delaney farm that I noticed how badly the road had deteriorated. Deep ruts and potholes forced me to slow to a crawl, but even then my muffler scraped against the uneven rubble. The shoulders had been filled with gravel at some point, but most of the stones had been dislodged and re-formed into gullies that cut steeply into either side of the road.

After several minutes, the overgrown brambles and shrubs gave way to more-open views of old, lichen-covered stone walls and overgrown fields. Ahead of me through a line of maples, I saw the ranch-style house that I recognized from Mara’s screen saver. There were the willows flanking the one-story structure. But the cornfields behind the house that I remembered from the photos were gone. In their place was a sea of mud occupied by a brightly colored army of trucks and pipes and holding tanks. A derrick, tall as a lighthouse, rose above the site. A dozen or so cars were parked along the driveway in front of the house. I pulled up behind the last one in line.

As I made my way across the front lawn, the door suddenly slammed open and a passel of kids in bathing suits spilled down the steps, a red-cheeked Danny in their midst.

“Last one in—!” a young girl in a two-piece screamed as the group raced around the side of the house. The front door stood wide open. I knocked on the frame and waited. I could hear subdued voices inside, and when no one came to the door after a few minutes, I stepped into the small, dark front hall. From there I could see most of the cramped downstairs. The living room was filled with adults holding drinks and plates of food. The dining room table was covered with casseroles, a baked ham, platters of cookies and brownies, and a party-size aluminum coffee urn.

Mara must have spotted me from the kitchen and come down the back hall, because she was suddenly at my side.

“Not here,” she whispered urgently, taking my arm.

“I’m sorry, I—” I started to say as she led me back outside.

“Yeah, right, I know,” she said, guiding me across the lawn toward the faded red barn. “I called Eleanor this morning to tell her where we’d gone, and she told me you might be coming.”

“I’m sorry about everything, Mara,” I told her. “I know what happened to your sister. To Hannah. Danny’s mom. I’m so very sorry. For you—for your whole family.”

“Not many of us left now,” she said when we reached a split rail fence that formed a paddock in front of the barn. She turned and looked back at the house. In the backyard, about fifty feet from the fracking site, the children were horsing around in an aboveground pool, jumping off a ladder into the water, pushing each other in. “My momma died when I was fifteen. Then Daddy a couple of years back. Of course I knew it was better for Hannah to go—and I was half praying she would—but still, I wasn’t ready. The world just feels so empty without her. The Delaneys used to be a pretty big deal in this town. But that’s all over. There’s nothing left for us here.”

“What about the farm?” I asked.

“What farm? It’s a disaster area. You see that water the kids are swimming in? It’s trucked in, just liked our drinking water is. They’ve polluted the groundwater, though they’re paying millions of dollars in PR to deny it. Jack had to actually get a restraining order to stop them from pumping after what happened. They claimed they had a legal right! It’s all tied up in court now. Lawsuits and countersuits. I’ve lost track of the whole mess, though Jack can give you chapter and verse. It’s what’s keeping him sane, I think. Or almost sane. He barely even said hi to Danny—and he’s drinking again. He went cold turkey before Danny was born.
Nobody’s calling him on it, but it would break Hannah’s heart if she knew.”