The Moon Pool (46 page)

“Don't you
dare
compare a mild speech impediment to what Paul had to deal with!”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Colleen, I'm not. I'm just saying that if you had just backed the hell off, he might have learned to deal with some things on his own. And it wouldn't even matter—and I should know that better than anyone, because no matter what happens my son will still be dead—but you're still doing it.”

She was digging in her shoulder bag for her wallet. Colleen pushed back her own chair and picked up her purse. “You don't say something like that to me and then just leave,” she said. She was so angry that she thought she might pick something up and throw it. She could imagine it—she longed to pick up a glass and hurl it, to grab the stainless coffeepot off the serving cart and throw it against the wall, to knock over the chairs.

“Say what? That you're still treating your son like a child? Even though he's got a baby on the way and a family he needs to provide for?” Shay pulled out two twenties and threw them on the table. “He might have grown from everything that happened. God knows he's trying to. You know what he told me in the hospital?”

Colleen had been reaching for her own wallet, to throw more money down. To make sure there was enough for the bill and then some; she couldn't afford to give up even this thin advantage, of always paying. But Shay's words stopped her. She had never asked Paul about Shay's visit. Like so many things, she'd been waiting for it to fade from her memory.

Shay leaned across the table. “He asked me if I thought it would make things even for him to kill himself.”

Colleen staggered, her heart lurching. She grabbed the back of the chair to support herself. “Stop it,” she whispered.

“He was ready to do it. Your son—your
son
—would have done anything to make it right. He worked that out on his own, without any of your help. Paul knows right and wrong. I bet he has for a long time. But every time he tries to work it out for himself, there you are, with your Mommy-knows-best shit. Your
lawyers.
” She practically spit the word. “Your money and your influence. You just made it all disappear. And now he and Elizabeth are stuck in your house, hating every minute, trying to figure out how to get out. He told me, Colleen. He emailed me when he told you they wanted to move to an apartment, that he asked you for a loan just until he could find a job. That you turned him down.”

“That wasn't his idea,” Colleen said. “That was
her.
Elizabeth.”

Shay was already shaking her head. “Oh, no, it wasn't. And I
know
he didn't ever blame her. You came up with that on your own.”

“She hates it there, she doesn't even try to hide it!”

“And Paul is the one who wants to give her a chance to have her baby in her own home! They don't hate
you
, all they want is their own life.”

“They have the entire upstairs,” Colleen said. “Over a thousand square feet.”

“Where she feels like she's in jail. Only she's too polite to ever tell you, especially after everything you've done for her. She knows not everyone would take her in after what she did. So you get credit for that, Col. But I promise you, if you keep playing that card much longer, you're going to be the mother-in-law from hell. You think I like everything Robert does? You think I was thrilled to have a twenty-seven-year-old man knock up my nineteen-year-old daughter? Hell no. But I found something to like about him because I knew that if I didn't, I'd never get to see their baby.”

Shay started toward the exit. Colleen had to race to catch up, after finally getting more money out and adding it to the bills on the table. Shay kept talking as though she didn't care if Colleen heard her or not.

“I'd lay odds they'll be out of your house in a year one way or another. Meanwhile, you want to know the baby's name?”

She glanced back at Colleen, then pushed through the heavy wooden door.

Colleen followed. The warm evening had cooled down, and Shay's words were lost to the roar of traffic passing on the road. She kept walking, and for a moment Colleen thought she meant to walk directly into traffic, but then she stopped and put her thumb out. Immediately a passing truck put on the brakes and started coasting over.

“What?” Colleen yelled. “What did you say?”

Shay turned. Her face was lit in the reddish glow from the brake lights. Her hair was wild around her face.

“Taylor!” she yelled. “They're naming him after
my
son.”

COLLEEN HAD BOOKED
them both on the same afternoon flight to Minneapolis, where they would part, she had imagined, with tearful hugs. That, or she would change her own flights and go with Shay back to California, where she thought she might be able to assist in planning the memorial. She could take a week off—the school volunteer job was over for the summer, and everything else—BodyPump, the cooking class her neighbor had signed them both up for, even Elizabeth's Lamaze classes—would go on without her. She'd gently steer Shay toward the right choices, discreetly paying for whatever was needed. It was to have been her final gift to Shay, because she suspected that once Taylor was buried, they would slowly lose touch.

By six o'clock in the morning, when she had been awake for a restless hour and a half, she knew that wasn't going to happen. She'd drunk both splits of wine, telling herself that Shay could change her mind and call at any moment.

(There had been an ill-advised call to Paul at around eleven, midnight back in Massachusetts. Colleen remembered asking Paul when he was planning to tell her about the baby's name. Paul had hung up on her, eventually, but she couldn't remember everything that she had said first.)

She showered and dried her hair before texting Shay. When she didn't get an answer, she tried calling Shay's room. Finally, she went down and knocked on the door.

But she already knew. And when Shay texted her, at one thirty, to say
Took earlier flight,
she didn't really expect an apology or an explanation.

All she wondered was how Shay had paid for the ticket.

ANDY PICKED HER
up at the airport. Colleen had been hoping maybe Paul would have come instead. They needed to talk. But it was probably for the better; she had been slightly hungover most of the day, and the six-hour trip hadn't improved her mood any.

“How did it go?” Andy asked, taking Colleen's roll-aboard from her and stowing it in the trunk. He leaned in for a kiss, and Colleen turned away, afraid he would notice the faint trace of her hangover on her breath, despite the fact that she had popped a piece of gum as soon as they landed.

In the car, putting her seat belt on, she gave him the answer she had prepared.

“She wasn't ready to talk yet. I understand that. But at least we were able to go out to dinner and spend some time together. Robert and Brittany are working through the rest of the details on their end, so the memorial should be able to happen by the weekend.” All of which was true, and all of which she had pieced together before the disastrous dinner.

“Ah, that's tough. So we'll need to head out there this weekend, then. Do you think we should let Paul come?”

If you had just backed the hell off, he might have learned to deal with some things on his own.
Colleen winced as Shay's words echoed in her mind. It had been painful to hear, but now as she listened to Andy, she couldn't help questioning. Should they
let
him... as if he wasn't old enough to make even that decision on his own.

“I don't know,” she hedged. “Honestly, I was thinking... maybe we should all stay home.”

“And miss Taylor's memorial?” Andy said, glancing at her. “You can't be serious. Or did something happen with you and Shay?”

“What do you mean?” Despite herself, the question irked Colleen—why would Andy immediately think she'd picked a fight?

“Just, you have had a volatile relationship from the beginning. And it was... hard, those last few days.”

Colleen hated it when he was careful with her. It was a signal that he thought whatever she was saying or doing indicated fragility in addition to being mistaken.

“Yes, it was hard,” she said, her voice tight. “Because
she
had just lost her son and
we
were trying to deal with our own son in the hospital, plus the inquiry and the media. And Elizabeth's pregnancy. Shay and I barely even saw each other.”

“That was my point,” Andy said tiredly. “You don't have to bite my head off, Col. I just meant that you had a pretty intense week together there and then it suddenly ended, before you had a chance to really resolve anything between you.”

“There isn't anything
between
us, there's just each of us trying to put together the pieces of our lives and move on.” Why was she lying to him? At first it was just to avoid having to go through the painful retelling now, when she was so exhausted. But the lie had been dug in, and now she was committed to it. “Look, she's got her family, and her own friends out there, and that's who she wants to do this with. I'm not going to question that. Maybe later in the summer, before Paul starts the fall semester, I can go out and visit for a few days.”

Andy said nothing for a few moments, his jaw clenched. He drove slowly through the parking pay lane and merged onto the highway. It would be an easy half-hour drive home at this time of the night.

“Even if we don't go, we should still let Paul go,” Andy finally said.

“What? A minute ago you were saying—”

“I know what I said. But I thought about it. Taylor was his friend. Of any of us, he has the most reason to be there for a memorial for him.”

Colleen actually agreed, but how was that going to happen now? She wasn't about to confess to Andy or Paul the way things ended with Shay. So she would have to tell Paul that Shay had requested it be family only.

But what if they were still emailing?

“It's really great that you have opinions all of a sudden about what's good for Paul,” she said sarcastically, playing for time. “Since you've been holed up in your office all summer, harassing Hunter-Cole.”

This time he looked at her incredulously for several seconds. “I've been talking about taking a sabbatical for years. I thought we agreed that this was the time, with Paul and Elizabeth getting settled in. And yes, I've found... comfort, and meaning, in what I have been doing.”

The other partners at Andy's firm, with a spirit of generosity that Colleen had to believe was firmly rooted in the fervent hope that Andy wasn't losing his shit altogether, had encouraged him to take the time to “tie up loose ends.” From what Colleen could see, Andy had been keeping his usual hours at the firm, and he often worked into the evenings. At least, that's what he said he was doing when he didn't come home until late.

“I don't understand you,” Colleen said, though actually, she did. If she'd had a way to distract herself from the things that had happened, she would have taken it. That's what those stupid BodyPump classes were supposed to be—otherwise, no one could have gotten Colleen in that ridiculous studio with all the other sweating, yoga-pants-wearing women. “Taylor's death had nothing to do with the safety violations. So how does running Hunter-Cole into the ground help you process what happened?”

Andy didn't answer, his mouth going tight, his hands gripping the wheel. He'd been featured on the news both locally and in Lawton; the Bismarck and Minneapolis affiliates had sent reporters to interview him. He had flown out to council meetings twice last month. Already it looked as though the Fort Mercer leases would all be renegotiated, but there was no sign that Andy intended to let up until he'd gotten all the eastern North Dakota Hunter-Cole rigs shut down.

“Are you still having an affair with Vicki?” Colleen asked, almost lazily.