Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [144]
“You stupid girl.” He sounded loud to himself in the hushed ward. “You stupid, stupid girl.” Hannah shrank back against the pillows as though each word was a physical blow. Her face contorted with fresh tears.
“Mark.” Lisa put her hand on Mark’s arm. “Take it easy.” Mark’s shoulders dropped, like the rage had blown, tornado-like, through him and left him deflated and broken.
“Doesn’t she realize? Don’t you understand? Don’t you get it, Hannah?”
Hannah was sobbing now.
“I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you, too. I can’t.”
Lisa’s heart broke for him. Her relief at seeing for herself that Hannah was okay was instantly displaced.
“I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m so so sorry.”
“What the hell were you thinking? You know better than that.”
“Not now, Mark.”
Lisa realized she needed to take charge. Mark was in no state, hysterical with relief. “This isn’t the place. Let’s just take Hannah home. Okay?”
Mark nodded and turned toward the curtain. Stopped. Turned back, and, moving back to the bed, pulled Hannah into his arms.
She put one arm around him, grateful for the embrace and the forgiveness it implied, but the pressure of his hug hurt the bruise.
“Ouch.”
Now his voice was gentle and soft. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Does it hurt?”
TEN DAYS LATER, THE CUTS HAD ALL SCABBED OVER, AND THE bruise had turned from aubergine to black to purple and was now a livid, almost acid yellow. The rest of Hannah was pale golden. Turns out they both knew how to apply SPF 30 after all.
At first, Mark had been afraid of the holiday—the one Amanda had bullied him into booking earlier in the year. He’d been dreading it for weeks before the accident, actually. Without the closeness he and Hannah seemed to have lost, and without the distraction of life’s minutiae and routine, he feared long silences and reproachful faces. In the aftermath of that Saturday night, he was even more anxious.
Thank God Lisa had been there that night. She’d taken over. It was Lisa who’d tucked Hannah into bed, held her while she cried, listened to the ridiculous desperate story of how a sixteen-year-old with more sense than she’d shown would make the decision to get into a car with a boy she knew was drunk, just because she thought she loved him, and just to avoid getting into trouble with her dad. Mark had glowered and paced downstairs, drinking neat whiskey.
He hadn’t cried until much later, when he’d gone up to bed. There was almost no point. It was after five in the morning, and he thought he was too wired to sleep. But eventually exhaustion broke over him like a wave, and he climbed the stairs. Hannah’s door was wide open, and since it was almost daylight outside, he could clearly see the cuts and scrapes on her beautiful, precious young face.
This had been too close, too lucky.
Hannah had more or less come straight out of the hospital into her exams. The mocks, thank God. She hadn’t said much about how they’d gone. They wouldn’t get the results until they got home.
It wasn’t until their third night in Antigua that they’d really talked. That first night they’d both been exhausted by the flight. At dinner on the second—with their noses turned red by the hot sun—they’d made small talk. On the third, after they’d eaten, they’d sunk into the white lounge furniture on the terrace, with tall glasses of coffee, and Hannah had talked to him, properly. She told him, with the grave, nervous tone of the confessional, about Nathan, and the lies and the events leading up to the accident. He knew most of it—Lisa had told him, that Sunday morning, while Hannah slept soundly—but he listened without interrupting, and without judging. There were a lot of tears. Hannah’s shame touched him. Poor kid.
And then he talked. He told her he was sorry. Sorry for how he’d been. That he could see now that he’d leaned on her too much. She shook her head, wanting to refute it, but he’d smiled gently and told her it was true.
“I thought you were okay. I let myself believe it was easier for you than for me. That you’d recovered more quickly.”
“Maybe