The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [166]
And then there was Robert. On the drive home, Phoebe chatted about work, about Max, and about Robert, Robert, Robert. He was coming over the next day to make a pie with Phoebe. Caroline listened, glad it was almost Saturday and Al would be back. One good thing about the stranger on the bus: he had given her an excuse to take Phoebe back and forth, thus limiting the time she spent with Robert.
When they walked in the door, the phone was ringing. Caroline sighed. It would be a salesman, or a neighbor collecting for the heart fund, or a wrong number. Rain mewed in welcome, weaving around her ankles. “Scat,” she said, and picked up the phone.
It was the police, the officer on the other end clearing his throat, asking for her. Caroline was surprised, then pleased. Perhaps they had found the man on the bus, after all.
“Yes,” she said, watching Phoebe pick up Rain and hug him. “This is Caroline Simpson.”
He cleared his throat again and began.
Later, Caroline would remember this moment as being very large, time expanding until it filled the whole room and pressed her down into a chair, though the news was simple enough and could not have taken very long to say. Al’s truck had left the road on a curve, breaking through a guardrail and flying into a low hill. He was in the hospital with a broken leg; the same trauma center where, so many years ago, Caroline had agreed to marry him.
Phoebe was humming to Rain, but she seemed to sense that something was wrong and looked up, questioning, the minute Caroline hung up the phone. Caroline explained what had happened as she drove. In the tiled hospital corridors, she found herself swimming in memories of that earlier day: Phoebe’s lips swelling, her breathing labored, Al stepping in when she was so angry with that nurse. Now Phoebe was a grown woman, walking beside her in her work vest; she and Al had been married for eighteen years.
Eighteen years.
He was awake, his dark and silver hair standing out against the whiteness of the pillow. He tried to sit up when they came in but then grimaced in pain and lay back down slowly.
“Oh, Al.” She crossed the room and took his hand.
“I’m okay,” he said, and he closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She felt herself going very still inside, for she had never seen Al like this, so shaken he was trembling slightly, a muscle twitching in his jaw up near his ear.
“Hey, you’re starting to scare me,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.
He opened his eyes then, and for an instant they were looking straight at each other, everything between them falling away. He reached up and touched one large hand lightly against her cheek. She pressed it with her own hand, felt tears in her eyes.
“What happened?” she whispered.
He sighed. “I don’t know. It was such a sunny afternoon. Bright, clear. I was moving right along, singing with the radio. Thinking about how great it would be if you were there, like we talked about. The next thing I knew, the truck was sailing through the guardrails. And after that I don’t remember. Not until I woke up in here. I totaled the truck. The cops said another dozen yards either way down the road, and I’d have been history.”
Caroline leaned forward and put her arms around him, smelling his familiar smells. His heart beat steadily in his chest. Just days ago, they had moved together on the dance floor, worried about the roof, the gutters. She fingered his hair, grown too long at the base of his neck.
“Oh, Al.