Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [114]
Bob clicked off the TV. “What’s with the double names?”
“It’s a Charleston thing.”
He continued, “I don’t think anybody in their right mind is going to believe the story of the three stooges, but they just pinpointed you. And put it on national television. Listen closely. The helicopters are probably outside now.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
43
We’d had hundreds of tests, each one confirming further improbabilities, but throughout that, there was always the hope of another test, another new medical development, another something possible that strung us along. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack, we fed on hope.
While Abbie slept off the residue of chemo and radiation, I walked laps around the house and realized that something had changed. Something was gone. We’d stopped feeding. The buffet of options had been slowly taken away—one by one—leaving only empty stainless-steel trays and spent Sterno cans. Dying is one thing. Knowing you’re dying and having to sit there and wait on it is another. And having to sit there and watch someone who’s having to sit there and wait on it is yet another.
A few days passed. I circled the inside of the house, waiting on two phone calls while Abbie slept some of the toxins out of her system. Late in the evening, I walked out of my studio, climbed up into the crow’s nest and stared out across the expanse. The moon cast shadows on the water and the lights of Fort Sumter glistened in the distance. Moments later, my phone rang. I checked the faceplate and saw the Texas area code. “Hello?”
“Doss Michaels?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Anita Becker, assistant to Dr. Paul Virth.”
“Yes?”
44
JUNE 10
When I walked back into the cabin, Abbie was gone. I checked the bed but only the stain remained. The fly rod leaned in the corner and her clothes sat on the end of the bed. I scratched my head. A few seconds later, the steps creaked. Abbie walked up onto the back porch wearing only the top sheet as a sarong. She sat next to me. I said, “Bob says the outskirts of the storm should pass through tonight.”
“Yeah.” She held a spotted tissue. Her temple vein was throbbing, visually enlarged. She slid a trembling hand under mine. “I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
She led me down the stairs to the river’s bank. She walked carefully, stopping every few steps to catch her breath and not aggravate the pain between her eyes. She’d not napped long, because she had it all set up. She sat me in the chair, the easel at my fingertips. Pencils sharp and canvas white. She had aimed me downriver. A few feet beyond me, a cedar tree lie fallen—water-beaten, sun-bleached and smooth—stretched across the bank. The top side of the trunk rested about bench height. The stub of a single branch stuck two feet into the air, making a natural niche to stretch out and watch the river. Untouched and unbroken.
“Honey, I don’t feel like—”
She pressed her finger to my lips. “Shhhh…”
She kissed me, walked around in front of me, and sat on the cedar, crossing her legs. She let the sheet fall. It slipped down around her hips, exposing her scars, and lay across the tree trunk like a tablecloth. She untied the scarf and hung it on the tip of the branch stub where it flagged in the breeze. She dabbed her nose and stared into the tissue, turning it in her hands. Another whisper, “I’ve learned something in all this.” A single drop fell from her nose and landed on her thigh. “You don’t have to be beautiful…to be beautiful.” She raised her chin, inhaling, filling her chest cavity and flaring her pink nostrils and whispered, “Breathe on me.”
I STARED A LONG TIME. With my eyes and without. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, held it a long time, found the one thing that made me want