The One That Got Away (12 page)

He sounds awful. “Jesus.”

“Yeah but it
worked
,” Danny reminds me, leaning close to the mirror to remove his contact lenses.

“That surprises me,” I muse. “Eamon doesn't exactly strike me as the most tractable human being.”

Danny snorts. “No, but he wanted to succeed more than anything, and he knew everything Howard demanded was for a reason. There were a couple guys on Howard's team who might have been as talented as Ame, but nobody else had the mental strength to get up from each challenge just looking for the next one. And nobody else could have come back from those injuries.”

I concentrate on squeezing toothpaste onto the brush in a perfect parallel line. “What was the list again?”

“Concussion, cracked ribs, collapsed lung, broken arm,” Danny recites as he rubs soap onto a washcloth and begins scrubbing his face. “Dislocated hip, compound fracture of his femur, torn ligament in his knee. Basically the entire right side of his body got crushed.” He lowers the washcloth. “Oh, and one of his broken ribs knocked a hole in one of his arteries and almost killed him.”

I'm frozen, toothbrush halfway to my mouth. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” says Danny. “It was really, really nasty.”

“I can't imagine,” I whisper.

“Nobody could. Anybody else would have taken that as a cue for an early retirement; meanwhile Eamon's like, ‘So anyway, about the Olympics?' ”

I'm still mulling over Danny's words as I climb into bed a few minutes later. I'd never realized exactly how hard Eamon had worked to achieve what he did; I can't imagine being incessantly
pushed to the point of exhaustion over a period of years and coming out of it triumphant. He must have a will like granite. And yet most of the time it's concealed beneath that quick humor and that radiant, easygoing charm. I grin in the dark, remembering the Plate Tectonics story. Athleticism and mental fortitude, indeed.

Relentlessly bright sunlight bores through my eyelids before seven the next morning, so that getting any more sleep looks as likely as spontaneously sprouting a new cup size.

“Hey, Danny, I'm going to get some breakfast and wander around a little,” I say softly. “Wanna come?”

He jerks upright in his bed, fixes me with a disgusted look, and peels off the T-shirt he'd slept in. With an operatic sigh, he collapses back onto the mattress, bunching the T-shirt over his face. Only his pointy white chin remains exposed to the sunlight.

I should have known it was a doomed effort; mornings and alcohol throw Danny's complex electrolyte balance firmly onto the queen setting. “All right, princess,” I say, and step onto the covered outdoor walkway that connects the hotel's rooms. From our second-floor location, I have an excellent view of the grounds: the low-slung beige stucco buildings punctuated with bright orange doors, the beautiful native plantings, glowing lime and chartreuse in the bright desert sunlight. Just beyond the buildings rears a cluster of mountains, their treeless, gravelly surfaces marbled with crisp blue shadows. The total absence of humidity in the air renders every edge and contour unusually sharp.

Noah would love it here. I text a few photos to him, and then before I even put my phone away, he calls me.

“Hi, honey!” I say, voice bright with pleasure. “I'm so glad you called.”

“Yeah, it's a slow morning, so I figured I'd grab you while I could. The hotel looks amazing. I'm so bummed to miss this.”

“Me too,” I say, even though the secret, and terrible, truth is that I'm not. Noah and Nicole have been a mutual admiration society since day one, but he never quite relaxes around Danny and Jay and Dom, especially when they dial themselves up to eleven at big parties like this. I think they make him feel stuffy. Which makes
me
feel like I have to throttle back on my usual rambunctiousness, out of solidarity. So, I am guiltily glad that this weekend I will be at liberty to party like a lunatic.

I skim my hand along the metal railing of the walkway. “Maybe we can come back sometime when it's just the two of us.”

“It's a plan,” he says. “Speaking of that, I've been thinking. I think it was a bad call for us to spend that whole weekend with my parents. Bad call by me, I mean. We should have spent more time by ourselves.”

“Ah, hon, you know I love your parents.”

“I do know. And they love you. I just feel bad about the way they ambushed you. About grandkids. Ever since his hip replacement, my dad's really been feeling his age, and…”

And he thought his sense of mortality made it appropriate to discuss the future of my reproductive system
, I think, but I don't want to start a fight. Not when Noah's trying to apologize. “No, I get it.”

“It's actually
because
they love you that they care,” he says wryly. “They would not be encouraging me to procreate with somebody they didn't want in their family, believe me.”

I laugh. “Thanks…I think?”

“But I talked to them and asked them to cool it on that particular
topic. And they will. Mom said to tell you, she thought maybe she'd drive down to visit sometime soon, and you guys could do a little wedding dress shopping. Make a girls' day out of it. Manicures, high tea, the whole nine. What do you think?”

“Wow,” I say, surprised at how much the idea appeals to me. “That sounds
lovely
. I think the last time I had a manicure, the Jonas Brothers were still together. I've got no idea what kind of dress I want, though.”

“Come on, I thought you girls lived for that stuff! Princess for a day and everything?”

I have an appalling vision of myself stuffed into a cotton candy explosion of white tulle, bangs crushed under a pageant queen tiara. “No…no princess fantasies here. But I'd love to spend some time with your mom.”

“Great, sweetie, I'll tell her. And listen, about the other stuff…we'll figure it out. I trust us.” There's another trick from his marriage counseling days—referring obliquely to our argument instead of using a specific phrase that might inflame a calm conversation.

“I trust us too,” I promise. And it's the truth. But somehow, I still feel a little unsettled. I've been thinking about it a lot in the two weeks since his visit, and I haven't yet uncovered any viable ways for us to compromise. The issue is intractably black and white: working just a few hours a week would be pointless with my career, so either I'll work—or I won't. And somebody's going to be unhappy about it.

Nicole's response, when I told her about the argument, was shock that Noah and I had never discussed the issue before. But having established early on that we both wanted a family, we'd never yet bothered to discuss the nitty-gritty of how it would work. I guess we'd both been guilty of assumptions. Mine being that anybody who knows me well would expect me to want to keep working while I raise my children.

And John, of course, took it from a more personal angle. “You tell Mr. Harlow that Leigh Mahler was the finest mother I have ever seen,” he bellowed into the phone. “And if he thinks he's going to marry her daughter, then he better be right damn grateful for that!”

I did not, in fact, relay John's message to Noah, but I still quite firmly agree with it. Maybe we didn't spend as much time together as I would have liked to when I was little, but I have plenty of memories like Noah was talking about. And none of my hours building Lego castles and pillow forts with my babysitters ever gave me the impression I was anything less than the center of my mother's world.

I just need Noah here, to talk through it with me. After eight months apart, I feel more disconnected from him than I ever expected to. More than anything, I want to have this separation behind us.

The day passes quickly, on a stream of greetings and last-minute tasks to help Jay and Dominic get ready for the welcome dinner for all the guests arriving from out of town. At the end of the night, those of us in the younger contingent find ourselves clustered around the outdoor fireplace on the hotel's terrace, making s'mores and gradually emptying bottles of wine. I look around affectionately at the circle of firelit faces and burrow back into my chaise lounge. A dreamy lassitude overtakes me, born of the delicious food, the wine, the firelight, and the company of my friends. I tip my head back to study the stars, brilliant against the darkness above the firelight. I've been living in a big, dusty city for so long that I'd almost forgotten what they look like.

After a while, Eamon's form, silhouetted against the orange glow of the fire, looms into my field of view. “Hey,” he says. “It's
chilly out here, you must be cold.” He shucks his soft leather jacket and tucks it around me. “How's that?”

I hadn't noticed until he asked, but I
have
been getting chilly in my light summer dress. The jacket is still warm from his body. “Better. Except I can't move my arms.” I wiggle my crossed arms underneath the jacket to demonstrate.

He plants his hands on his hips. “All right, if you're going to be difficult, get up.”

“What?” I squeak.

“Get up!”

“Why?”

He plucks off the jacket, grabs me by the wrists, and hoists me upward, ignoring my shriek of protest. Setting me gently out of the way, he lies down on the chaise himself and beckons to me to lie down on top of him.

I hesitate until I see the expression on his face, which is a bald I-dare-you, so I lift my chin and sit carefully down between his legs. He holds the jacket up backward for me to slide my arms into, then settles me back against his chest, arms around my waist.

“Better?” he rumbles into my ear.

“Much better.” He's as warm and solid as concrete in the sun. The only thing making me uncomfortable now is my awareness of him. I struggle to remind myself that he's just a friend, a client in fact, and that this shouldn't feel any different from the countless times I've snuggled companionably with Danny; but it isn't Danny's chest I'm resting against, or Danny's scent that's mingling deliciously with the scent of woodsmoke in my nostrils.

“I don't know when the last time was that I saw so many stars,” he says after a moment. “I'd practically forgotten they were there.”

“I was just thinking that,” I say. “I haven't seen stars like this since the last time I was home.”

“Remind me what part of Virginia?”

“A little town called Floyd, not too far from Blacksburg.”

“I admire your confidence that I actually know where Blacksburg is.”

I laugh. “Come on, didn't you know anyone who went to Virginia Tech? It's all the way down the Blue Ridge, in the mountains.”

“In the sticks,” he corrects me, ignoring the elbow I dig into his ribs.

“It's beautiful, though,” I say.

“You miss it?”

It's the kind of question that I can answer simply, and move the conversation back to shallower water. But for some reason, I don't. With Eamon, I always wanted to give the true answer instead of just the easy one. “Yeah. Home is…hard for me. Virginia reminds me a lot of my mom. Mostly I try to avoid spending time there.”

“I'm so sorry, Ree,” he says softly. “Does John still live there?”

“Yeah. In the same house. Which is part of why it's so hard to be there. Honestly I don't know how he could stand it, after she died. If it were me I would have sold the place, along with all her stuff, but I guess it made him feel closer to her. I just wish that he'd been able to move on.”

“It sounds like he didn't want to.”

“No. He didn't.” I roll the soft leather of one jacket sleeve between my thumb and forefinger. “I remember when I told Nicole that she had died, she said, ‘May her memory be a blessing.' And I know what it means, but I don't know if her memory ever has been a blessing to either one of us. For me, it just hurts. And for John, it's like…it's like he's trapped. Too
much
memory.”

“She must have been amazing,” Eamon says, and suddenly I feel like I have a cactus in my throat. “What was she like?”

I swallow hard. “She was a goofball. Loved to laugh. She was
always this happy free spirit, even when she was sick. She looked a bit like Stevie Nicks, and she was obsessed with her. Obsessed. Apparently she was all set to name me Rhiannon, but her friends talked her out of it.”

“Count your blessings,” he says. “Wish
my
parents hadn't been so hung up on wacky Gaelic names. The other two got normal ones, but damn, did I draw the short straw. That
E
just annihilates people.”

“How
are
your brothers?”

“Kieran is still the dutiful oldest son; he's married with two insanely cute little girls. They live half an hour from my parents. And Colin's in New York, teaching Islamic art at NYU and dating psychotic women.”

“That's an intense hobby.”

“You have no idea. If you put Colin into a room full of women he knew nothing about, I guarantee you he would walk right up to the nuttiest one of all. He can sniff them out…he's like a goddamn truffle pig. ‘Hello there,' ” he drawls over my laughter, “ ‘I sense that you have jealousy issues and severe problems with boundaries. I'm Colin Roy, and I'd like to take you to dinner.' ”

“Poor guy,” I giggle.

“He does it to himself! He doesn't know a warning sign when it hits him in the face. His last girlfriend was so paranoid that she accused him of cheating on her with one of his undergrads. And when he denied it—because he wasn't
doing
it—she stole the passwords to his Gmail and his university account so she could see for herself.”

Eamon's outrage on his brother's behalf is endearing. “It sounds like you're closest to Colin.”

“Yeah. Especially the last couple of years,” he adds. “He was driving the night of the crash, and I know he blames himself, even though it wasn't his fault. I think he thinks if he'd seen the other driver sooner, he could have gotten out of the way.”

“Wasn't it a drunk driver?”

He shifts position on the chaise seat. “Kid texting on his phone. Literally sailed right through a red light, into us. And happened to be driving a Suburban.”

“Jesus,” I breathe. I hesitate for a moment, then continue. “It really was unbelievable, what you did. I mean, that kind of rehabilitation would be grueling for anyone, but for an athlete, it must have been absolute hell.”

“It was,” he says quietly. “The pain I could deal with, but not being able to swim, it was like…not being able to breathe. I'd never had a problem with injuries before, so I had nothing to prepare me for it. I'd lie in bed, imagining I was racing the hundred fly, counting out the strokes, and when I got to the turn, I would
kick
—kick like I was pushing off, you know, and the pain would just stab—but I couldn't stop doing it. I would mentally run through all of my events, start, turn, and finish, over and over and over until I was exhausted. I was so scared that my body would forget what to do.”

Somehow I'm certain that very few other people know about that. I drop my hands to his forearms and squeeze gently.

As silence stretches out between us, I can feel the pace of his heartbeat accelerate against my back. “I dream about it occasionally. The crash. I'm in the car, talking to Col, and I look out the window and see it, and I put my foot down, like there's a gas pedal I can step on, but the car doesn't move, and I know I'm trapped. I watch it come toward me, and then, right before it hits, I wake up. Which isn't even how it happened,” he adds. “We were moving, not stopped. And I never saw it come toward us, I just looked up and saw this black grille with the Chevy logo and then—” He smacks his fist into his palm, makes a soft explosive noise.