Authors: Virginia Duke
She watched him for a moment, noticed a speck of gray
creeping into his short blond hair. His handsome face was beginning to show his
age, but only barely. He turned and looked her way, laughing, the joy only
one's children can bring written on his face, but then his laughter faded.
"Tickle me, Daddy, tickle me, Daddy," Lauren
begged, her brown curls bouncing as she jumped up and down in front of him. And
instead of risking a smile for the wife he'd long stopped trying to make happy,
he turned back to entertain his kids.
Rachel wouldn't complain though, she never did. Whatever
else Kenneth wasn't, he sure loved those babies, and God did they love him.
Everything their mommy lacked in fun and tickle time, their daddy made up for a
million times over. Besides, he was keeping them busy and she was preoccupied,
Jake's anecdote from yesterday morning was still fresh on her mind.
She'd stopped by Dr. Valentine's on the way home to beg for
a Valium refill, but he was out of the office until Monday, and she'd have to
suffer through until then. She looked around the stadium cautiously, her
anxiety rising, and wondered if she might run into him there.
Would she recognize him? Would she take the high road and
nod pleasantly, or ask him how he’s been? In another universe she’d kick him in
the balls as hard as she could and laugh while he lay on the ground crying.
She’d probably just freeze up and make a fool of herself though.
She reached into her purse for a distraction, digging
around for a mint or chocolate that found its way to the bottom, consciously
working to push the fear away, to focus on the here and now, not to let herself
get sucked into the obsessive pattern of her treacherous 'What If' game.
The band struck up and the bleachers erupted in applause,
cheerleaders pumping their pompoms, nodding their heads and yelling about
spirit. The band quieted and everyone sat, then rose again to attend the small
girl singing the national anthem, the microphone a little too close, her voice
distorted. Rachel searched the field for Caleb and waited for the girl to
finish singing.
"Where's Caleb?" she asked as they settled back
in for the game.
"There he is," Sarah pointed, "Number 22”
“He looks so big down there.”
“I know! I can't believe that's my baby," Sarah said,
“Just wait until Hunter gets that big, it’s going to break your heart.”
“He breaks my heart enough as it is.”
She didn’t want to think of Hunter at seventeen. She was
already screwing him up, he’d probably end up less like Caleb and more like one
of the kids smoking weed across the street.
Dammit, Rachel, stop.
The teams lined up in formation and Ellis' center snapped
the ball. Their quarterback shuffled left and right, searching for a hole, the
Bulldogs defense pushing hard towards him, eager to take him down. But he felt
the pressure and threw the ball away just before he was tackled.
Sarah laughed loudly in Rachel’s ear, “Are they serious?
That kid’s a midget, he’s half the size of these other players.”
“Yeah, he is pretty little.”
Another play, incomplete. The center snapped the ball a
third time, the amateur game going nowhere fast.
"Is that a new coach this year?" Rachel asked
disinterestedly, lazily scanning the teams on the sideline.
CRACK.
She heard the hit before she saw it. The quarterback had
been sacked. Already in motion and too close to pull back, a handful of players
piled on top of him.
"That's right, Bulldogs! Defense!" the man in
front of her yelled. The players slowly crawled off one another, Caleb jumping
up and down in celebration, the defense congratulating themselves on the
tackle.
Another man several rows away yelled, "That's okay,
Eagles, it's early! Shake it off, Michael, shake it off!"
But Michael wasn't shaking it off.
The quarterback was lying in the grass, not moving, his
helmet several feet away. His teammates crowded around him and the coaches
peeled them away to get to the injured player.
He must have broken a leg or something, Rachel's brain
scanned its memory for all the terrible injuries that could ruin this kid's
football career. She searched the field for the ambulance that sat parked
nearby during games, it wasn't there tonight. She turned to Kenneth who stood,
arms crossed, watching silently, Hunter and Lauren at his feet fighting over
the toy robot.
“Kenneth, he’s hurt, go help them.”
"Calm down, Rachel,” he said, his eyes still on the
field, “He’s probably fine.”
A coach frantically waved over an assistant, and the
players went down to single knees in the silent prayer they make when a
teammate is injured. The stadium hummed with people talking under their breath,
waiting for Michael to get up and walk off the field, or wave, do anything to
signal he was just shaken up. He still hadn't moved.
"Kenneth!" she yelled, "Go help them!
Something is wrong!"
But he'd already started jogging down the stairs and she
watched him jump swiftly over the short chain link fence separating the stadium
bleachers from the playing field. He pushed his way calmly through the crowd
until she lost sight of him in the large group circling around the injured
quarterback.
Sarah reached over and squeezed her hand, sharing the
motherly dread that grows when a child is hurt and nobody is sure just how
badly. Rachel wondered where Michael's mother was, a flickering pain in her
chest at the thought of Hunter being injured playing a stupid game of high
school football. Horror filled her as she pictured herself watching an event
like this unfold knowing it was her child on the ground, not moving.
An eternity passed before they heard the sirens of the
ambulance in the distance, confirming for the audience that the injury was
probably serious. They hadn't even tried to carry him off the field. This was
no broken arm.
"Rachel," Sarah pinched her arm, "Rachel, go
see what's happening, I'll watch the kids."
She walked down through the crowd and made her way to the
large circle of people murmuring, whispers passing back and forth as they stood
shoulder to shoulder, peering over one another to get a better look.
She touched a stranger's sleeve and asked quietly,
"Excuse me, sir, do they know what's wrong, is he okay?"
"He's not breathing. That firefighter is trying to fix
it so he can breathe."
She was hesitant to push through the crowd, she would just
be in the way, and piss Kenneth off. She turned back to the bleachers, but her
gaze was drawn by a commotion beyond the group of people hovering around
Michael.
That's when she first saw her, the woman who had to be the
mother. Michael's mother. Her blond hair was tacked to her wet face, her long
slim legs kicked at the man holding her back from the crowd. He was strangely
calm, unflinching as her pointed boots hit him over and over, dirtying his
khaki slacks.
She screamed, "Let me go!" and pushed against the
much taller, built man, but he wasn't deterred, and his muscles flexed with
ease as he held her tightly in his grip.
Rachel suddenly felt the woman's powerlessness as if it
were her own, thought how scared she must be. She'd always had an irrational
fear of strangers, and even people she’d known her entire life, but whenever
crisis struck and she saw someone experiencing that kind of desperation, she
was compelled to reach out and tell them she understood.
Without thinking, she started towards them, but something
made her stop. Even with his back to her, Rachel managed to overhear his deep
voice, soothing, but firm, "No. No, Chrissy, let them help him, he'll be
alright. You have to let them help him."
A shiver ran through her spine.
The ambulance screeched into the parking lot and a Sheriff's
deputy yelled, "Everybody move, get out of the way!"
The crowd thinned, making room for the medical team as they
raced onto the field with their bags of equipment. Kenneth's co-workers made
their way past the worried faces to where he sat kneeling over the young
player, one hand at the base of his skull and the other lying gently on his
chest. He'd never looked so pale. Kenneth never went pale. The paramedics dug
through their equipment for supplies, and Rachel lost sight of them as the
crowd tightened around them again.
The unmistakable drum of helicopter rotors grew
increasingly loud and the deputy yelled again for the crowd to exit the field.
She stood back and watched the emergency helicopter land, shielding her face as
the pressure from the rotors stirred up wind and dry grass all around her.
A nurse jumped out and rushed to the scene and Rachel found
Kenneth again, still kneeling with Michael. As the helicopter team began
preparations for transport, Kenneth stood back, his white shirt drenched in
sweat. His arms hung limply at his sides, his hands bloodied. Michael was
quickly loaded onto the helicopter, the engine revved and they rose abruptly,
taking the vicious winds with them. He looked blankly in her direction.
She started toward him and he found her in the crowd,
walking leisurely in her direction. With the noise of the helicopter gone, the
woman screamed again, drawing Rachel's attention back to them. He finally
relented, dropping his hands from her arms as she looked up and spit violently
in his face.
"I hate you!" she screamed, then raced into the
crowd toward the Sheriff's deputy.
The tall man with the broad shoulders was a statue,
unmoving, his back still to the crowd. She watched as he wiped the spit from
his face with the back of his arm and then slowly raked both hands through his
thick chestnut hair, pushing it back from his face. He took a long moment,
standing there, hands buried in his hair as he stared into the dark distance.
It was a small, meaningless thing to do, the pensive action of someone who
wasn't aware people might be watching. It felt familiar, made her uneasy.
"It was too late," Kenneth said flatly. She
wrapped her arms around his chest to hold him until he held her back, but only
briefly.
"It'll be okay, Kenneth, I'm sure it will be
okay."
"No, I don't think it will," he said, not
unkindly, and pulled away from her to make his way to their kids.
She looked back to the tall stranger, inhaling sharply as
he turned on his heel to leave.
“Dylan!” she yelled instantly, surprising herself.
Dylan looked straight at her and stalled, recognition
taking over. Neither of them moved. Her heart raced and her fingers tingled
with nervous excitement, she didn’t want this, why had she called out to him?
But she'd seen his face now and couldn't look away, she’d known it instantly.
It was distinct, not a face easily confused with another.
He had the same cutting cheekbones, the same strong chin. Dylan was mostly his
father's son, sharp and rugged, except for the velvet smooth skin, a delicate
shade of honey. That was a gift from his Native American mother, her almond
skin and her wide, infectious smile - the smile he wasn't wearing tonight. The
smile that had disarmed her. Charmed her, seduced her. And ruined her. She
couldn't make them out through the distance, but she remembered the pale blue
eyes, lilac against his dark skin. They were kind and - smart, always seeing
things others couldn't. Or wouldn't.
Leaner, older, it had seen more of the world, but it was
unmistakably the same sweet face she'd worked so hard to forget. His was a
savage, primal beauty, and Rachel's chest ached as she watched Dylan turn from
her and walk briskly towards the parking lot, disappearing from her life.
Again.
***
He opened the door and readjusted the seat until his long
legs would fit comfortably underneath the steering column. He'd let Michael
drive him to the game, excited they'd finally finished the restorations to the
1961 Porsche Roadster, Dylan's birthday gift to him months earlier. It needed
some work when he'd bought it, but it was the only one he’d been able to find
without having to drive clear outside of Texas.
"It's got to be the James Dean Roadster!" Michael
told him just before his sixteenth birthday, "The ladies love James
Dean!"
"Alright then, hotshot, I'll see what I can do,"
Dylan had laughed, "But if you can't pick up ladies without a Porsche,
then we need to work on your game."
He slammed the clutch to the floor, threw the car into gear
and made his way to St. Helen's. He was never in a hurry to get anywhere, but
tonight he flew down the interstate at ninety miles per hour, daring a cop to
pull him over. He wouldn't have stopped if they'd tried, and he briefly
considered calling to ask for an escort. They wouldn’t give him one, but at
least he’d have it on record that he’d asked.
Why now? Michael was hurt, he was on his way to the trauma
center for God’s sake. He hadn't expected to see her tonight. She’d yelled his
name to get his attention. Did she expect him to be excited to see her? And
then she just stood there like a - like the manipulative self-serving woman
she’d always been.
Fuck her, she probably thought he’d come running to talk to
her, like she still held him on her tiny puppet string all these years later.
There was a time when he’d have given anything, his life
even, if it meant he could talk to her just one more time, but the obsessed boy
she’d haunted day in and day out for years after deciding he wasn’t good enough
for her? He was dead now, buried deep inside the bitter man who’d sworn never
to let another woman get close to him.
He'd paid his dues, Dylan was done spending his life
wandering from one distraction to the next because he couldn’t get over Rachel
Beauchamp.
But he'd had to force himself to turn away, she looked now
just like she had then, soft brown curls pulled away from her fair skin, dark
eyes, the delicious mouth she’d first claimed him with. She was still the same
fascinating, stunningly beautiful girl he'd remembered, and probably the same tortured
and sadistic bitch he'd tried so hard to forget.