Losing Gabriel (38 page)

W
hen Lani parked at the house, Dawson was leaning against the post at the top step of the porch, hands in his pockets. The sight of him caused her breath to catch and her heartbeat to quicken. He looked leaner, broader across his shoulders, and wore a dark well-trimmed beard. His eyes held shadows and sadness. Her heart went out to him.

She came up the steps wanting to throw her arms around him but couldn't because they'd never had that kind of relationship, and at the moment she couldn't recall why she'd ever insisted on keeping a professional distance between them.

He watched her come toward him while sunlight played on her long brown hair. He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had never granted him that privilege, and he thought it best not go there yet. But go there he would. After Gabe's room was behind them. He stepped back. “It's really good to see you again. How have you been?”

“Getting by,” she said, and followed him into the kitchen, where cupboard doors stood open, emptied of their contents. The once bright and cheerful room now looked forlorn. “How long have you been home?”

“A few days. It would have been sooner, but Dad remarried and wanted me as his best man.”

“Married! That's wonderful.”

The look on Lani's face lit up the kitchen. Dawson grinned. “Connie's pretty special. She has two daughters and one was in Germany, so it took a few weeks to pull it all together, but they did, so I'm just now getting back. I promised Dad I'd clear the house, so that's what I've been doing. The hardest part's upstairs.” He shifted his eyes upward.

“What will you do with everything?” She gestured at boxes and once again felt the unbearable weight of Dawson moving away.

“I'm giving most of it to charity, but if there's anything you want…” She shook her head and he shrugged. “It's just stuff. Dad doesn't want it, and what do I need with a house full of furniture?”

“Where…where will you go?”

“Probably back to Chicago.”

So far from Windemere.
She struggled to offer a glad-for-you smile and failed.

“What about you, Lani?” He leaned an elbow on the granite countertop. “How have you been here since—” He stopped, then said, “All along?” She knew he meant “since the funeral.”

“I went to Mom and Dad's in Alaska, didn't come home for three months.”

“I left you messages. You never returned them.” His tone was not accusatory, simply curious.

She told him about Melody confiscating her phone before leaving. “By the time I got home and read all my messages, well, so much time had passed. And…and I thought Sloan might still be here.” That was the bottom line truth for Lani, one of the things she'd think about as she rode Oro, imagining Dawson and Sloan back together. “Is…uh…” She glanced around. “Where is Sloan?”

“In the wind.” He offered no other explanation because he didn't want any part of Sloan standing between himself and Lani.

Her sense of relief was instantaneous.

“I went to the hospital looking for you. They told me you'd quit. Can I ask why?”

She felt her face flush, not wanting to talk about how she'd walked away the night Gabe died. “Let's just say I reconsidered my goal of becoming a nurse. I'm not sure I want that anymore.”

“Please tell me you no longer think what happened to Gabe was your fault. He had an infection, Lani. He wasn't strong enough to fight it off. Treatment failed him, not you.”

She stood mute, unable to voice the turmoil inside her, feeling that the distance between them was two feet wide and six feet deep. Knowing a truth in her head didn't make it bloom in her heart.

He saw her pain was still raw and unsettled and almost reached out to embrace her, but she had turned away. He quickly added, “For what it's worth, I think you'd make a great nurse, and so does my dad. He calls you a natural-born healer.”

The words twisted in her heart. She looked up to the ceiling, not wanting him to see her eyes leaking tears. “Maybe we should get started. You know…with the room.”

She'd clearly cut him off, so Dawson headed out of the kitchen and up the stairs, dreading what lay ahead. He'd stacked empty boxes in the hall already, so he scooped one up and said over his shoulder, “I'll use this box for special keepsakes. I've already set some of his toys aside for storage.” He reached for the doorknob. “Ready?” He opened the door, and they went inside together.

The room was a time portal into the past, as disheveled and unkempt as it had been on the morning Gabe left with Lani to run errands. The air was stale but imprinted with Gabe's indelible child scent of freshly laundered shirts, jeans, and pajamas. Lani crossed the floor and threw open the window, allowing the cool air to pour inside. She swallowed down her sorrow, falling back on her student volunteer training from the hospital. When patients left the hospital, rooms had to be cleared and cleaned. She swiftly pulled off the bedding, the cartoon-emblazoned comforter and sheets still rumpled and twisted from where Gabe had lain. “I'll toss this in the hall and get it in the wash before I leave.”

Dawson stood frozen near the doorway, but watching her sure and practiced moves pushed him deeper into the room. The room was merely a place where a little boy had once lived, one who had moved away without warning. This room, the whole house, was simply real estate that had to be sold. Time to move on. He dragged in boxes from the hall, plopped the biggest box on the floor under a shelf, and, reaching up, swept all the bagged and pristine stuffed animals into it. He folded the flaps. The stuffed animals were props in need of relocation.

“Where's Woof-Woof?” Lani asked.

“My room, on the dresser.” Where he saw it every morning and night. He would put it into his special keepsake box later.

Lani found a black marker and wrote
stuffed animals
on the box. “I'll make sure this gets delivered to the peds ward, where they'll be loved on.” Lani was moving on automatic now, diverting her ragged emotions into work energy.

They worked swiftly, Dawson going through the basket that held Gabe's art supplies, boxes of broken crayons, coloring books, papers, and glitter. He saved a short stack of Gabe's drawings in the box he'd set aside on the bedside table. Lani emptied dresser drawers and packed up the closet, holding out a few pieces for Dawson to consider keeping. Dawson stripped the walls of Spider-Man posters and a giant calendar where, before he was hospitalized, they'd begun to X out the days until Christmas. The room came apart, the boxes filled, the past butted into the present.

Once the room was stripped, Dawson got down on his knees, looked under the bed, and removed a rainbow-colored hardened lump of something. Standing, he asked, “What's this?”

Lani took the lump from his hand and turned the smeary colored mass over in her palm, held it up to the light, where it shimmered. Tears filled her eyes, but she also smiled. “Gummy bears, all melted together. He could have put them there and forgotten about them. Or maybe he thought they had turned into a jewel.”

She and Dawson were on the same memory page—the day they'd taken Franklin to the airport to catch his Chicago flight. A good day. An
almost
day between the two of them.

He should have kissed her when he'd had the chance.

She should have gone into his arms when she'd wanted to so very much.

His voice husky, Dawson said, “I guess it was a special treasure to a three-year-old.”

Lani handed the lump back to him and he laid it in the keepsake box because he didn't have the heart to throw it away.

Dawson lined the walls with the labeled boxes, tucking the one he planned to keep under his arm. The room had become an empty shell, a bird's egg cracked open, its fledgling flown. “It's done. Let's go.”

He shut the window and Lani followed him down the stairs.

H
elping him clear the room had helped soothe the rawness of the pain Lani had been living with for the last five months. Closure. She'd heard the term used many times while on the job and in her classes, but now she knew what it felt like. The pain, so sharp before they began dismantling Gabe's room, had been dulled by tender memories and by touching everything the boy had owned. She'd seen his sweet face in every item of clothing, in every little toy his hands had held. She had loved him. That feeling would never go away. “He was a special little boy.”

Dawson stood quietly staring out the kitchen window, his hands braced on the edge of the sink. Twilight was falling, and he heard every creak and groan of the old house. The afternoon had been painful but cathartic, cleansing him in ways that his running and gym work had not been able to do. Loving Gabe, losing Gabe. The highest highs and the lowest lows of the human heart. Dawson had known both in the few short years he'd had his son.

There was nothing left now except to move forward. To Lani, he said, “Thanks for helping me.”

“Thanks for asking me.”

He turned, saw her eyes shimmering in the dim light. She was draping a scarf around her neck, stepping to the door. He didn't want her to go. “How about some dinner? You have to be hungry. I am.”

Her heart kicked up its pace. She didn't want to leave, wanted to stretch out every second she could with him. “Starving!”

“Pizza okay?”

She'd have eaten garden weeds if he'd offered. “I
love
pizza.”

She flashed that smile that always lit up her face, and he smiled too. “I can have Pizza Shak deliver one.”

“The best in Windemere.” Another smile.

He grabbed his cell phone. “I know they're still in my contacts. Hold on.” Concentrating on the screen, he thumbed through the list. “It's here somewhere…ah! Yes, I've got it.” He poised his thumb over the number. “What do you want?”

The question stopped her cold, and she instantly saw two futures. A sharing of dinner, a few “wish-you-wells,” her walking out the door. And he would move to Chicago without ever knowing how she felt…when what she wanted most was standing directly in front of her now. But to tell him so was a huge risk. Perhaps, as he'd told her earlier, he
had
forgiven her. But that didn't mean he could ever love her. Keeping her distance was the safe thing to do. Her heart thudded and her mouth went cotton dry as she trembled for seconds on the edge of indecision. And then she took a deep breath and spoke the one word that was in her head, the words too long lodged in her heart. She said, “You. I want you.”

His gaze flew to hers, his dark eyes as piercing as arrows. She saw him drop his phone with a clatter onto the counter and cross the space between them in two long strides. And then she was in his arms, and his mouth was on hers, and she fell into him.

He broke the kiss, cupped her face between his hands, searched her warm brown eyes, and knew without reservation that he loved this girl. The kitchen had darkened with night shadows that softened all the edges. He scooped her up in his arms, cradling her against himself. She clung to him, and he walked with her into the den, a space not yet torn apart and put into boxes, and settled her on the sofa. He sat beside her, took her in his arms. “I've wanted to kiss you for a long, long time,” he said, nuzzling her neck.

“And me, you.” But for her, although he didn't know, the wait had been much longer. She drew back, rubbed his cheek, found his beard surprisingly soft, and flashed a mischievous smile. “It tickles.”

“I'll shave it.”

“Don't you dare.”

He traced his thumb over her lips, still warm from his mouth. “So can we keep on kissing?”

She answered with another kiss, one that rose from deep inside her heart. And for now it was enough.

Sloan stomped into her apartment and flung her keys across the room so hard that the fob gouged the dry wall. Her car was certifiably DOA in the parking lot. Without it, she had no way to get to Slade's for work, and because it was Saturday night the place would be packed. She'd be missing her singing gig too. Over the months of Sloan's time onstage at Slade's, she'd earned a small following, an audience who said they came just to hear her. The group had helped her feel better about herself, but lately the old hunger, the old dreams to
become
someone had begun to haunt her.

Sloan paced the floor like a caged cat. If she called Noreen, Tom would be sent to pick her up. But a ride for one night wasn't going to solve Sloan's car problem. The mechanic who'd last serviced the old Mustang had told her it would cost more to fix it than it was worth. She'd said she couldn't afford another car, and he'd shaken his head and said, “Then think about selling it for parts.”

So tonight, with a light November rain falling outside and her car ready for the junkyard, she was stranded. Sloan heaved herself onto the sofa, plucking at her bracelet, her talisman. Sure, she had a job, but in spite of a paycheck and good tips, what with rent, the car's upkeep, and monthly expenses, she had been unable to save much money. Her rent, due on Monday, had gone up by fifty dollars in July. She groaned, feeling as if fate were sucking her dry.

She remembered something that had happened just weeks before after the bar closed. She was cleaning tables while Noreen washed bar glasses and Tom swept floors, with the TV above the bar tuned to late-night news. Noreen said, “Hey, Sloan, listen to this.” Sloan looked to the bright screen and saw a line of people and a perky blond reporter beaming into the camera. The smiling woman was saying, “…here in Atlanta, for
American Voice
tryouts, all hoping to audition and be selected for the star-maker show. Some hopefuls travel city to city chasing the dream. Last chance to wow the judges will be in L.A. in January.”

Noreen had said, “I've seen some of those audition videos, and believe me, you'd be a shoo-in.”

Now sitting in the semidarkness of her apartment, the memory surfaced, along with words from an old song from the sixties:
“I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A. California dreaming on such a winter's day.”

Sloan sat upright.
L.A. Safe and warm. A shot at the brass ring.
In the year since Gabe's death, Sloan Quentin, the girl who'd once dreamed of being a star, had gone nowhere. She was restless, at loose ends, a runner with no finish line
. January.
Two months and a thousand miles to Los Angeles.

She stood, slowly looked around the room, at tired furniture and empty walls, and in that moment, Sloan Quentin knew exactly what she was going to do.

Sloan turned down three rides before she accepted one in the cab of a big rig with a woman driver. She climbed in and tossed her bag behind the seat, but kept her guitar case up front wedged between the passenger seat and the door.

“Mean night,” the driver said. “Car break down?”

“Something like that.”

The woman offered a toothy grin. “I don't usually pick up hitchers, but you looked pretty wet and it's late. Not good for a young woman on the side of the freeway on a night like this. Name's Rose Ann, but my friends call me Punky.”

“I'm Sloan.” She shook off her rain jacket and ran her fingers through her hair, thoroughly damp despite the jacket's hood and a head scarf.

“Where you headed?”

“Los Angeles.”

Punky gave a low whistle. “A far piece.”

“I have some time to get there.” Sloan had first walked to an ATM in the strip mall and cashed out her bank account, figuring that hitching was the cheapest way to get to L.A. She'd need every penny she had for living expenses once she was there. But if she won a spot on the show…

“I can get you to Oklahoma City; then I head north to Bismarck.”

“Farther west than Nashville, so I'll take it.” Sloan wasn't in the mood to talk and hoped the driver wasn't either. She leaned against the window glass, drying off in the heated air blowing from a vent, and watched the wipers slap rain from the windshield. The falling water sparkled like jewels with every pass of headlights from the eastbound traffic on the interstate. She was restless, scared, didn't want to dwell on the chance she was taking, leaving the settled world in the rearview mirror for the unknown. She plucked at her bracelet.