Authors: Jodi Thomas
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lauren
April 5
F
OR
THREE
DAYS
,
Lauren had felt as if she was sleepwalking through the hospital. The people in the halls and cafeteria seemed more like ghosts than real people. She guessed they were doing the same thing she was. Drifting in a fog of waiting. Half alive. Half dead.
Tim made the drive from Crossroads every afternoon, usually bringing memos from the office that Pop never read and sweets someone had dropped off, knowing he'd be making the trip.
“There were three dozen cookies,” he'd say, “but I ate half on the way.”
He claimed he'd be fat if her dad didn't get out soon. They'd talk for a while with him asking questions and her telling him every detail of what had happened at the hospital. She had a feeling he'd be repeating the facts to everyone who dropped by the office.
Every night, when she'd walk him to the elevator, Tim would give her a hug. He gave the best hugs. They made her feel like maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right.
Lauren never ate the sweets, or much of anything else. She lived in the chair by her pop's bed. She rode the roller coaster of hope and fear with him. He ran a fever for a while. One medicine made him sick. The night nurse thought that his leg wasn't healing right, and that he might always limp. The shoulder wound was infected. Too many painkillers one day, too few the next. They didn't know if he'd have full use of his left hand. His condition moved from one crisis to another, with just enough hope mixed in to keep Lauren going.
Some days she swore the doctors told her the worst news first so the reality wouldn't look so bad later. The nurses were good, sometimes going out of their way to make sure she was surviving. Someone in law enforcement was always around. Making sure reporters didn't get in. Watching everyone who went into his room. Simply standing guard over a wounded comrade.
Once they moved him to a regular room, people flowed in and out like a constant drip. Friends from town. Other lawmen asking questions, making promises. Even Polly, her mostly invisible roommate, showed up. She cried and said she loved Lauren's dad like a father, then ate the basket of leftover cookies while she told Lauren every detail of her breakup with her latest boyfriend. He'd been unfair, cruel really, thoughtless.
Polly's life was like a long-running soap opera. It had been on the brink of crisis so long she was circling around to the same plot twists over and over. Even Tim, who'd been one of her conquests their first year, thought she needed to get a new story.
“I can put her love affairs in a very short story,” Tim whispered, making sure Polly was still in the restroom. “He's great. He's complicated. He's sooooo hot. He's mean. He's gone.”
Lauren couldn't argue. Polly was a magnet for the wrong kind of guy. If she accidentally dated a nice guy, she'd drop him in a week because he was boring. The bad boys she dated were just thatâbad boysâbut she usually didn't leave until they hit her, or borrowed her credit card, or both. Then every time she'd claim she should have seen the signs.
When Polly dropped by late one afternoon, Tim asked her if she wanted a ride home.
She surprised Lauren by saying “Sure.”
When Lauren gave her a look that said
Why are you doing this?
, Polly laced her arm around Tim and pressed her boob against his side.
Lauren frowned at Tim. Now she'd have to listen to both their break-up stories again.
When Polly ran over to kiss Pop goodbye, Tim whispered, “I know, I know, but I'll recover. I always do. At this point I'm looking at life simply as research.”
“Good luck.”
Polly led him away. Lauren tried not to think about them as she curled up in her blanket in the chair beside her Pop. “Tell me a story,” she said, as if he were awake.
Only the sounds of the machines answered.
She picked up her laptop and began to writeâfirst her feelings, then what might be the future, good or bad. Slowly, the notes became a story, not about her life, but about someone else. A tale of what-ifs about a fictional person who could come back from any tragedy by Lauren simply pressing Delete.
The people in her mind kept her company, made her laugh, made her think during the long silent hours beside her father's bed.
On the fourth night, Pop came out of his fog for a while. “Lauren,” he whispered, sometime after midnight.
“I'm here, Pop.”
“Write this down.”
She clicked on her laptop. She could type faster than she could write. “Ready,” she smiled, knowing his mind must be clearing of the drugs if he wanted her to take notes.
“The bullets came too fast to be one shooter.” Pop dictated. “They weren't from an automatic, but the two shooters must have been standing close to each other. They were low, too, not high, like they weren't more than halfway up on one of the hills. That must be why they didn't hit me when I was down.”
He was silent for a while. Lauren waited.
Finally, he started again. “They shot the left front tire out first. I thought I had a blowout. Just as I climbed out and made it to the trunk, the windshield exploded from another shot and I knew I was under attack.”
His voice was so weak she almost didn't recognize it. She gave him a sip of water and waited, knowing that he wasn't finished.
“I headed for the car to call it in when they shot me in the arm, then I took one bullet to the leg. I couldn't reach the radio with my left hand, and my right one wouldn't work. I made it to my feet once more when the third bullet went into my leg.”
He swore. “I don't even remember when they shot me in the shoulder. I just remember rolling off the road and into the dirt, knowing that if I stood again, they'd shoot again. At some point I heard an engine start up. Didn't sound like a car. More like an ATV. It sputtered before firing up.”
Lauren typed as fast as she could. Pop had closed his eyes, but he wasn't asleep. His voice was so weak it came in no more than a whisper.
“Get that to the Lubbock County Sheriff's Office. They'll know what to do with it. Maybe it will help. I was too out of my head to remember details until now.”
“Got it, Pop. I'll take it over first thing in the morning.”
“No, now. I want it on his desk when he comes in at dawn,” he whispered as he began drifting off. Half asleep, he asked what he'd asked every time he was awake enough to speak. “How is Thatcher? He's all right, isn't he?”
Her answer was the same as before. “He's fine, Pop. He's with Charley Collins.”
Pop shifted, fighting to stay awake. “Tell Charley... Tell Charley...”
Lauren waited for more, but Pop didn't finish his sentence.
She closed her laptop and stood, debating whether to go deliver the notes tonight. She was so tired and nothing would be done about his information until tomorrow. Even if her father's memories led to a search and that led to a clue, no one could go out to the scene until dawn.
After walking to the closet, she stood, trying to decide whether to reach for her blanket. A shadow just inside the door caught her eye. Someone was standing in the black triangle of the slightly open door.
Margaret. Lauren's mother didn't need a pointed hat and broom for her daughter to recognize her. It seemed since high school her mother, who'd always been distant, had hardened even more against her. She'd liked having a little girl now and then to spoil, but a grown daughter only showed everyone her age. She'd sent gifts occasionally but, once Lauren turned sixteen, she'd never invited her to visit her condo in Dallas. Every school holiday there was always somewhere Margaret had to be.
Her mother stepped far enough into the room to see her ex-husband. “He's dying and he still has to be the sheriff. Like anyone cares about those facts he made you write down.”
“He's not dying.” Lauren didn't look at her mother.
“Well, maybe not this time.” Margaret moved closer to the bed. “I told him to give up being sheriff, but he wouldn't listen.”
Lauren didn't want to be here with Margaret. “Will you stay with him until I get back? If he thinks delivering his notes is important, it probably is.” Driving to the Lubbock sheriff's office after midnight was better than talking to her mother.
“No,” Margaret answered. “What if he dies while you're gone? I came to check on you, not see him like this.”
A man maybe ten years older than her parents stepped inside the room. “Of course we'll stay, Lauren. If you need to go, go.”
She looked up and recognized her mother's partner. He was a kind man whose wife had died years ago. Lauren had been visiting her mother, and Margaret had taken her to the funeral. Lauren was only ten or eleven, but she remembered how Mr. Clifton stood by the grave, his back straight as tears streamed down his face. For no other reason than he seemed so alone, Lauren moved beside him and held his hand.
A few years later Margaret became his business partner. She'd told Lauren they probably would never have gotten to know each other well if he hadn't asked Margaret about Lauren now and then.
“Good evening, Mr. Clifton.” Lauren smiled at him, thinking that for a man who ran a huge advertising agency, he always seemed so shy. Maybe that's why the partnership with her mother worked. She was usually a storming general.
“We just heard today about your father. I'm very sorry for his trouble and hope for his speedy recovery.” He cleared his throat when Margaret didn't comment. “I flew us here in my little plane. Every time I test my wings I wonder why I don't go up every weekend.”
“Are you staying awhile?”
Margaret shook her head, but Mr. Clifton didn't even notice her. “We've got rooms at a bed-and-breakfast down the road starting tomorrow morning, but we've nowhere to go but here tonight. I'll stay right with your father until you get back. Take your time, child. I'm guessing you haven't left this room since he was shot.”
She hugged Mr. Clifton. “Thank you.” He'd lost his wife to a slow cancer. He knew how time stood still in the hospital.
“Yes,” Margaret echoed. “We'll stay with him until morning. It's only a few hours. Maybe after a nap we'll come back again to visit. We're happy to help you, dear, but I'm afraid we can't stay long. I have a big presentation Monday morning.”
Lauren reached for her jacket, then remembered she'd left it with Thatcher. “I'll be back soon,” she said, thinking there was nowhere she wanted to be but here.
Mr. Clifton sat in the chair by her father's bed. Her mother walked around, looking over the fruit and sweets.
Lauren realized she wouldn't have left just her mother alone with her father, but she trusted Mr. Clifton. She had no doubt Margaret would lecture Pop even if he was asleep.
When she'd been small and visiting Margaret in the summers, her mother often took her to the office and ignored her the moment they arrived. Mr. Clifton would take the time to play a card game with her, or fix the TV in the break room so she could watch a movie. That one time at the gravesite when she'd held his hand had somehow bonded them. They were friends and that fact hadn't changed even though it had been a few years since she'd seen him.
She was almost to the elevator when the doors opened and a man stepped out. The hood of his coat hid his features but something about him was familiar.
She froze as he walked slowly toward her, more and more of him moving into her line of vision.
When he was a foot away, she saw his face. “Lucas,” she whispered. This businessman was a long way away from the boy she knew in high school, but she would know him anywhere, dressed any way.
He stood almost close enough to touch her. “I just heard about your dad tonight. It was on the Arlington news. I finished up a case there and came as fast as I could drive. How is he?”
“Better, I think. Still drugged up a bit, but the doctor says he's healing.”
She stood, staring at Lucas's expensive suit beneath his raincoat. His tie had been pulled loose at his throat, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets.
She looked anywhere but his eyes. After how she'd attacked him in the bar that night she wasn't sure she could ever look him in the eye again.
“How are you, Lauren?” His hand brushed her arm.
She snapped like a sapling in winter. She wasn't sure if he reached for her or she fell into his arms but one moment they seemed a world apart and the next he was holding her close.
For a while he just held her as she cried on his shoulder. She'd been so strong. A rock, just like she knew her father would want her to be, but now she had someone to lean on.
This was Lucas. The kid who'd saved her life in an old rotting house when she was fifteen. The boy who showed her the stars one night on a ranch where no lights from town could be seen. This was Lucas, who'd given her a first kiss and hinted that someday they'd be more than friends. This was the man she'd kissed wildly in a bar a few weeks ago just because he'd been the boy she'd dreamed about since she'd been fifteen.
Finally, when the tears stopped, Lucas pressed his face against her wet cheek and whispered in her ear, “Are we destined to always meet in hallways,
mi cielo
?”
Lauren laughed, loving the nearness of him, the smell of him, the strength of him. She'd almost forgotten that he called her “my sky” in Spanish. He told her once that it meant “my all” but she knew it was just his way of saying she was special.
Special, she repeated in her mind. Not special enough to call for almost two years. They were like planets circling the sun. Now and then their orbits crossed and they felt the pull to be closer, but most of the time they didn't seem to even be in the same solar system. In college they'd talked a few times about how maybe there would be a someday for them, but both always seemed reluctant to hope.