Losing Gabriel (36 page)

D
awson missed the familiar cadence of life with his son. Gabe's voice, the weight of the child's arms around his neck, his sleepy-eyed look at bedtime, the plea for one more drink of water before lights-out, the piles of abandoned clothes and toys, even his tantrums. Dawson missed every wiggle, every glimpse of the dark hair and blue eyes. How did he move forward from the void Gabe left behind?

And he missed Lani. He missed the way she swept into the kitchen, smiling and laughing, missed seeing Gabe run into her arms, fingers sticky with syrup or with milk running down his chin. She never cared how messy or sticky he came to her, just always kissed and hugged him until he squirmed to be let go. But Lani was MIA. His messages and phone calls to her went unanswered. Where was she? Why hadn't she gotten hold of him? Surely she was hurting too.

He thought he'd seen her at the cemetery, yet now he had doubts. Wishful thinking. Perhaps he'd imagined seeing her because he'd wanted her with him on that terrible day. He was puzzling about Lani's disappearance on the morning he came downstairs to the sight of Sloan's roller suitcase and guitar case standing in the foyer. He found her in the kitchen, making a sandwich. “Road food,” she said, wiping the mayo knife across a piece of bread.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Nashville. I have some money saved now, thanks to you. Nashville's a bigger city. A better job market.” Her voice was crisp, her intentions settled.

“You don't have to go if you don't want to.” Although he left early and worked all day, and she left before he was home and worked late into the night, just knowing someone else was in the house made coming home easier for him.

Sloan shook her head. “I have to go. Quit my second job last night. Pissed off another boss, but who cares?”

“And you're better than waiting tables and slinging drink orders.”

She slipped the sandwich into a bag, zipped it closed. “I don't have many skill sets, Dawson. I do what I'm good at.”

“You can sing. Find a band who needs a vocalist.”

“Tried that before. A band is complicated, the personalities, the opinions, the in-fighting. It's different when you start on the ground floor, like…like we did in middle school.” He hadn't been in her life then, so she decided to go no further with her explanation. That life was another hurt she couldn't fix. She jammed the sandwich and an apple into her oversize purse, headed to the foyer, not wanting to linger over goodbye. She'd experienced enough pain over the past months to last a lifetime.

“Wait,” he said suddenly. “I want you to have something.” He turned and took the stairs two at a time in his work boots, and a minute later, clumped back down. She watched as he opened his hand, calloused from work and chapped from cold weather. In his palm lay a tiny blue and white beaded bracelet. “Take it.”

Her heart thumped as she picked up the circlet of beads. The white beads bore black block letters: BERKE BOY. Her gaze flew to Dawson's dark eyes. “This was Gabe's?”

“Yes.”

“I…I remember a plastic band…?” Emotion filled her voice.

“Hospital issue. This kind of bracelet is special. Dad told me a woman's group in some church makes them for the preemie babies. Sometimes…if things don't go right…well, it's all the parents have to bring home.”

She cupped the thing, so small, in her palm. “And you want me to have it?”

He closed her hand with his. “Yes.”

Her chin trembled. She stood still as a statue, looking at his knuckles, scraped and raw around her closed hand holding the almost weightless beads. In a faltering voice, she said, “I…I should tell you something. I broke my promise to you. When Gabe was on the machines, when you went down to meet your father in the hospital lobby, when I was alone in the room…” She paused. “I told him, Dawson. I told Gabe I was his mother.”

A thick cloak of silence.
Then Dawson lifted her chin, ran his thumb across her bottom lip, and said, “So did I.”

She had no words, no way to thank him for his gift of forgiveness. She fisted the bracelet as she grabbed the handle of the suitcase. Dawson picked up her guitar case and opened the front door to a blast of cold air. He walked her to the car and loaded her things while she got in and started the engine. He retreated to the porch, watched her put the car in reverse, and drive out of his life.

Dawson dreamed. Gabe was riding his trike down the driveway, which appeared endless, murky in a swirling soupy fog. A thick metal chain was looped around the back of the trike, and Gabe was racing headlong into the fog, the chain rattling, bouncing, and scraping on the concrete surface, making a loud clinking noise. Dawson yelled,
Wait, Gabe!
The boy hurtled forward. In desperation, Dawson grabbed the chain in both hands, threw all his weight into stopping the trike and Gabe, but instead skidded stiff legged down the drive, the chain looped in his grasp, ripping the skin on his hands, setting them on fire like a burning rope. He couldn't hold on, and Gabe was being swallowed by the fog.
Gabe! Don't go!

Dawson woke with a gasp, bolted upright in bed, his hands in tight fists and numb. He righted himself, returned to reality, took slow measured breaths to calm his racing heart. But the sound of rattling chains hadn't evaporated with the nightmare. He got out of bed and crossed to the window, raised the shade. Moonlight splashed across the backyard where he saw Gabe's swing set, the chains jangling in a perverse night wind. He remembered Gabe's birthday, the joy on his son's face when he first saw his very own swing set. Now the thing was an affront, an announcement that no small child would come to them again.

He dressed quickly, warmly, then went down, grabbed his tool chest, and marched through the yard, crunching the frosty grass under his boots. It took a long time to completely take it apart, to dismantle the thing and pile it into stacks of metal and lumber on the cold hard ground. He sweated with the exertion, even as the cold bit into his skin. He couldn't feel his fingers.
Where were his damn work gloves?
He kicked the pile viciously. The beast was gone. No rattling chains in his yard again.

He stretched his back, looking up and through the branches of bare trees to the east, where he saw a pale pastel dawn struggling to scatter the night. To the side, the old house loomed dark, empty. Without Gabe, it was a prison, and Dawson was under lock and key. He couldn't remain in this house filled with memories one minute longer. He picked up his tool chest, went inside, and packed a suitcase.

T
he drive to Chicago took Dawson ten hours, through weather systems of pelting sleet, spitting snow, and an occasional burst of sunshine. He went because he had no place else to run to. He called Franklin to say he was on the way, and when he arrived, his dad greeted him with a bear hug and led him into the loft he shared with Connie, the woman he loved.

“Nice place,” Dawson said after Franklin had stashed the suitcase in the spare bedroom that was also a home office. The loft was in an industrial building from America's manufacturing era and had been refurbished into condos with high ceilings, tubular runs of overhead metal duct work, an inside brick wall, and a spacious interior that included two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Dawson said he liked the place a second time, so different from the house in Windemere.

“Connie's out making a food run. Weatherman says a storm's coming and she didn't want us to go hungry.” He grinned, adding, “She's eager to meet you.”

The loft was decorated for the holidays with fresh-cut greenery and fat pillar candles perched on the fireplace mantel and tabletops. A tree wrapped with white twinkle lights and shiny red and gold balls took up a corner. The ornaments looked new, uniform, and generic. A small pile of wrapped and tagged presents were gathered under the tree, a reminder that he'd come without any gifts. Dawson fingered the tree's needles, tried not to think about what was missing—gifts for Gabe. “Looks pretty…just different.” Their family ornaments were still packed away in the attic of the Windemere house.

“Connie and I decided to make our own statement. She split her old decorations between her girls.” Franklin sounded apologetic. “Anything of our old stuff you want to keep…or throw out…is all right with me.”

At the moment Dawson couldn't think of a thing he wanted to keep, and starting over felt like a foreign concept. He walked to one of the sofas. “I know I came up earlier than we planned, so I hope it's all right. I couldn't stay in the house any longer.”

“You've been through one of the hardest things life can throw at you, Daw, and I'm glad you wanted to come here. There's no expiration on your visit either. Stay as long as you want.”

Dawson saw a film of moisture coat Franklin's eyes and had to turn his head before he too fell apart. In truth, he didn't know what he wanted to do. For now it was day by day, one foot in front of the other.

Minutes later, Franklin offered mugs of freshly brewed coffee and joined his son on the sofa. “Did Sloan leave?”

“No reason for her to stay.”

“Things, um, okay between you and her?”

“We made our peace before she left.”

“That's good, son.” Franklin cleared his throat. “Do you ever talk to Lani? I wouldn't blame you if you never spoke to her again.”

Dawson still heard the edge in his dad's voice and realized he wanted Franklin to stop blaming Lani. “I haven't been able to connect with her. I've sent texts and called, but the calls went straight to voice mail, and she hasn't called or texted back, so, no, I haven't heard from her.”

“Probably just as well.”

“No, Dad, it isn't. I won't blame her for what happened, and neither should you.” Dawson screwed up his courage, plunged ahead. “Let me ask you something…in your whole career as a doctor, did you ever make a mistake?” Dawson quickly saw he'd hit a nerve.

For a few minutes, Franklin kept silent, his fingers locked together in his lap. He stared through the floor-to-ceiling windows, finally edged Dawson a look, leaned back into the sofa, shut his eyes, and heaved a sigh. “Point taken. Yes, I've messed up. And to be honest, I don't blame Lani, and I'm sorry I said things to you I should never have said.”

“She and I talked it out when Gabe was hospitalized and I thought she understood I didn't blame her either….She
told
me she did. She came out of her funk when Gabe rallied, but when the infection set in and he was reintubated…well, she backed away, and now she's nowhere that I can reach her.”

Franklin scrubbed his face with his hands, heaving a heartfelt sigh. “From the beginning, I saw she had a special aptitude for nursing and that it would never be just a job to her. It was a
calling….
The work started in her heart, not her head.”

Dawson nodded, figuring she had most likely moved into the lives of other kids who needed her care and love. Still, he wished he could talk to her again and make sure she was all right.

Franklin stood. “More coffee?”

Dawson handed Franklin his cup and sat brooding and watching banks of snow-laden clouds gathering in the sky through the loft's massive windows while Franklin headed toward the kitchen.

Just then, the loft's entry door opened from the inside hallway, and a woman balancing bags of groceries came in. Franklin hurried to help her. “Connie! Hey, hon.” He relieved her of several sacks, then walked them across the room. “Dawson made it.”

She kicked the door shut with her heel, came over, and beamed Dawson a smile. “So happy to meet you, and so glad you came.”

Dawson returned her smile, said it was nice to meet her too. She was an attractive woman, small and slim, with stylishly cut brown hair, amber-colored eyes, and a dimple in her chin.

“Hungry?” she asked. “I've brought us a Chicago-style pizza for tonight and salad fixings. You like pizza? My girls love it.” He nodded, and she hurried to the kitchen to busy herself with food prep.

Franklin returned with fresh cups of coffee. “You won't starve around here.” He grinned, his fondness for Connie shining in his eyes. “And I know she isn't as big as a bug, but she eats like a trucker.”

“I heard that!” she called.

Dawson raised his cup in tribute, while his dad went to help Connie, and soon the loft filled with the smell of hot cheesy pizza. He watched them huddle together, hip bumping and whispering to one another, which only magnified his sense of aloneness in the new world without his son.

Dawson bought gift cards for Connie and his dad from packed stores on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. They opened gifts on Christmas Eve, ate a simple dinner by candlelight, and walked through pristine new-fallen snow to a midnight church service. The wind had ceased and the night had grown quite still, holding a silent beauty that pushed Dawson's memory backward through time, before Gabe, before his mother's death, to when he was a boy and sorrow had not yet found him.

He made it through Christmas Day with beer, chicken wings, and football. Connie's girls called too. Justine was in Germany, where her husband was stationed, and Lily was a junior in college and spending the holiday with her father in Pennsylvania. “She was here for Thanksgiving,” Connie explained, but he could see by the look on her face how much she missed both her daughters.

Dawson understood what it felt like to miss someone even in the midst of good company, and between games, he went out onto the condo's small balcony, into the bracing cold. Lani's number was on speed dial, just one button to push, yet when he did, he again was told her mailbox was full, so he knew she hadn't checked it. He said “Merry Christmas” anyway, even with no one to hear him but a crystal-white blanket of snow and a city gone silent.

Sloan moved into a multiunit apartment complex on the outskirts of Nashville, located just off the interstate and within walking distance from a strip mall with a grocery store, a bank, and a string of small businesses. She had a view of the sprawling blacktop parking lot from her small fourth-floor balcony and of the pool and tennis courts from her bedroom window.

She furnished the one-bedroom space with a bare minimum of functional furniture, bought from Goodwill and Salvation Army, all well used in previous lives. She kept to herself, a simple thing to do in the huge complex where moving trucks came and went frequently. She drove the interstate six nights a week to her job forty-five minutes away in a small bar called Slade's Saloon near Music Row. Foot traffic picked up on weekends to the Old West–themed bar, but mostly the place was frequented by die-hard music buffs who remembered the owners, Tom and Noreen, a country duo from the '80s. Sloan had to look them up on the Internet to hear their music, a country sound tinged with bluegrass. She downloaded two of their top singles to her phone.