Between Here and the Horizon (23 page)

Sully was balled up on his side, curled as small as he could go, and he was throwing up onto his plain cream rug.
 

“Ahh, Jesus. I have to go Rose. He’s puking. I’ll call you back in a sec.” I hung up, and dropped to my knees, narrowly avoiding the mess he’d made.
 

“Don’t worry, I’m coming,” Sully moaned. “Goddamn it, help them. We have to get them out of there!”

“What? Hey, you’re okay. Try and lean back a little. Don’t worry. I’ll clean this up. Just rest a moment. Come on, that’s it.” I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just did it. I slowly brushed my fingers through his hair,
shhh
ing him, trying to make him feel better. “It’s okay, just breathe, Sully, just breathe. I got you. I got you.”

“It’s too hot. The tanks are gonna blow. We have to get them out of there, Crowe. They’re all gonna die.”

“It’s okay, Sully. Shhh, it’s all over now. You got to them. You pulled them all out of the water, do you remember?”

“
Water
?”

“Yes. You jumped into the ocean to pull them out. It was stupid and dangerous, but you managed to save three people’s lives.”

 
“Three? Only three? Oh. Yeah. That’s right.”

“Those three men are alive because of you, Sully. I swear, if you hadn’t done what you did, they would have drowned like everyone else.”

He was shaking his head. Shaking it so violently that his teeth were rattling together inside his head. “No. No, you’re wrong. They’re trapped inside the truck. They’ll burn if we don’t get them out there, Crowe.”

“Sully! Calm down!” He was flailing, arms everywhere, trying to push me away from him. I lost my balance, fell back and landed on my ass, and Sully managed to sit himself upright.

“Fuck you, Crowe,” he spat.
 
“If you don’t want to go, then that’s on you. I won’t live the rest of my life knowing I could have helped and I didn’t. I’d rather burn to death along with those poor bastards.” He shot to his feet, about to take off, about to do something, to act, to help whoever he imagined was trapped inside a truck somewhere, but he didn’t make it more than three feet toward the front door before his knees buckled out from underneath him and that was it. He was out cold.
 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Taking Liberties

I stayed the night. I had no other option available to me, unless I was okay with leaving Sully passed out on his living room floor in a pool of his own vomit, which I wasn’t. So I stayed. Thankfully Rose was having a grand old time taking care of the children, so that wasn’t an issue.
 

It
was
an issue that Sully kept dipping in and out of consciousness every fifteen or twenty minutes, and he thought I was Magda more often than not. Strangely, he didn’t seem all that happy that I (she) was taking care of him.

“
You made your choice, Mags. I told you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I…just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit!”
 

His fever broke at four in the morning. He was running with sweat, his t-shirt soaked, so I ran upstairs to find him something clean to change into, and found myself having a surreal, how-can-this-be-happening? moment standing in his bedroom at the foot of his bed. He didn’t have much by way of furniture in his room: a simple twin bed, covers rumpled and turned back (he hadn’t been up here since he woke to see the disturbance down by the beach the night of the storm), a chest of drawers, a three tier bookshelf that was overflowing with books, and a huge black, plastic packing box with
Captn. S.
Fletcher
stenciled on the side of it in gray paint.
 

It smelled of him up here. Ronan had smelled of Armani Code, Old Spice deodorant, and laundry detergent. Sully smelled like wood shavings and whiskey, and something I could only hope to describe as specifically
Sully
. There was a pair of socks balled up on top of the chest of drawers, and a book, open and face down on the floorboards beside his bed. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” He was halfway through.
 

I found his clean t-shirts folded and stacked methodically by color in the second drawer of his chest of drawers. Grabbing one, I then went on the hunt for a clean pair of shorts for him as well.
 

Downstairs, Sully was shivering silently on the couch, blanket up around his chin. He glanced up at me standing at the foot of his spiral staircase, blinking with all the solemnity of a pissed off owl. “So you’re still here huh, Lang?” His voice was croaky, no doubt from shouting so angrily at Crowe (me) for hours.
 

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

Sully glanced around his living room, flinching. “Man. I take it I trashed the place and not you?”

“You were delirious. You refused to keep your ass sitting down, let alone lying down. I think you messed up your ribs pretty good.”
 

“Yeah.” Wincing. Pressing fingertips gingerly against his chest over the covers. “I think you’re right.”

“Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?”

He looked at me uncertainly. “Yeah. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be great.” His tone was soft and almost…almost
repentant
? Could it possibly be? I never thought I’d see the day when Sully Fletcher might show a little remorse. Or gratitude for that matter.
 

“No problem. I’ll be right back.”
 

I made him some toast, too. He’d thrown up another three times while he was feverish, and he could have probably used some food in his stomach right about now. When I took him the plate I wasn’t surprised that he refused it, however.

“Thanks, though. I mean it. I just can’t right now.”

“Do you want to take something for the pain yet?”

A shadow of anger flickered in his eyes. “I said
no
, Lang. I could be in pieces, bleeding out on the sidewalk, and I would still rather die than take any of that shit. Don’t ask me again.” Looked like he was feeling well enough to tell me off. That was an improvement. “What time is it, anyway?” he asked, trying to turn to look out of the window behind him. I put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“It’s five forty,” I said. “Dawn’s right around the corner. Been a long time since I pulled an all-nighter twice in one week.”

“Such a rebel.” He cracked a smile, and two deep, heartbreakingly perfect dimples formed in his cheeks.
 

“Yeah. If you say so.” I smiled, ducking my head. “I have to go, Sully. I can’t leave the children for much longer. I was wondering if you’d let me ask you something before I go, though?”

Wariness appeared in the lines of his face. “Sure. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer if I don’t like the question, though.”

“Naturally.” No lying with Sully. Just the point-blank refusal to hand over the information you’d requested. Sounded about right. “While you were burning up, you kept shouting at someone. Someone called Crowe. I just wanted to know who he was.”

Sully went very, very still. For a long moment he held his breath, eyes on me, eyes on the ceiling, and then he sighed, long and heavy. “Crowe was a guy I served with in the army. He was a jerk and a coward. He and I were not friends. That good enough for you, Lang?”

It wasn’t. I wanted to know why Sully had been so angry with him earlier, when he’d been screaming and shouting about the men in the truck being in danger, but I knew I was walking on thin ice. He wasn’t going to give me any more information. Not today, anyway.

“All right. Well. I’ll come back later on to check on you, okay? After Rose is done with work and she can take care of the children again.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll be fine now. I think the worst of it has passed.”

“Even so. I’ll be back around six.”

Sully’s lips drew into a flat, tight line. He wanted to argue with me, to stand his ground, I knew, but he was a smart guy. He knew he needed the help, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
 

I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.

“Hey, Lang?”

I turned around.

“Are they…you know. Are they okay? Ronan’s kids?”

I pondered on the question for a second, and then answered. “No. No, they’re not okay. Their dad just died.”
 

******

“If you could see your father again, Connor, what would you say to him?”

Connor looked down at his hands, and then out of the window, where a small crane had been erected on the beach to haul the twisted and battered remains of the Sea King up onto the back of a flatbed truck.
 

“Connor?” Dr. Fielding’s voice was crystal clear and perfectly loud through the speakers of the laptop, sitting on the table in front of the little boy, though Connor was diligently pretending not to have heard him.
 

“Connor, sweetheart. Why don’t you answer Dr. Fielding?” I was tired. Beyond tired. I’d already decided the children weren’t going to suffer because of the fact that I’d been out all night, tending to their sick, as of yet unknown uncle, however, so I was now on my fourth cup of coffee for the day.

Connor coughed, picking at his fingernails. “I wouldn’t say anything to him. He’s dead,” he said quietly.

“Connor—”

“That’s okay, Miss Lang. Perhaps Connor is right. Sometimes, in the early stages of grief, it can be helpful to imagine these dialogues, last words if you will, to bring closure and allow the children to say their goodbyes. In other cases, it can sometimes serve to confuse the situation. Connor, how do you feel about your life on the island? Do you like it there?” With Ophelia?”

Connor looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
 

“It’s okay,” I told him. “You can say whatever you like. I’m not going to be mad, I promise.”

“I hate it,” he blurted. “I hate the island. I hate not going to school. I hate Amie sometimes. She’s always too happy.”

“And Ophelia? Do you mind that your father left her in charge of looking after you?”

He was quiet for a very long time. I could tell he wanted to look at me again, but he wouldn’t let himself. And then, after a few more moments of indecision, he said, “I don’t hate Ophelia. I did at first, but now…she’s okay. I don’t mind that she’s in charge. Being here with her is better than being in an orphanage.”

“Why do you think Amie is too happy, Connor?”

“Because. She never seems sad. She’s always playing and laughing all the time. It’s like she doesn’t even care.”

“Doesn’t care that your father is gone?”

Connor looked away again, eyes narrowing out the window.
 

“You see, the difference between you and Amie, Connor, is that she’s much younger than you. While she’s very sad that your father is gone, her mind works differently to yours. She doesn’t feel the absence of your father quite as much as you do. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care, okay? It just means that she copes a little better with the sadness she feels inside. Does that make any sense?”

“I suppose so.”

“So when you see Amie laughing and playing next time, think about this. You’re her big brother and she looks up to you and loves you very much. She definitely feels a bit scared sometimes, so maybe it would be nice for you to sit and play with her. Let her know she can count on you to be there if she needs you. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

Connor lifted his head, looking directly at Dr. Fielding on the screen for the first time since the session began forty minutes ago. He looked like he had finally heard something that made sense to him. “I guess,” he said, his tone changed altogether. “I mean, maybe. If she’s not being too annoying.”

“That’s very kind of you, Connor. That’s exactly what a good big brother would do.” Fielding was sometimes a little too
softly softly
in his approach for my liking, but then again he was the trained and lauded child psychologist, and I was the out-of-work schoolteacher. He probably had twenty years of experience on me, and the way he’d just handled the situation with Amie actually sounded like it might make a difference around the house. If Connor started interacting with his sister more, instead of snapping at her whenever she was giddy, he might end up lifting himself out of his grief, too. If there was hope of that, then there was hope in general.

“Connor, thank you for spending some time with me today. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I think we’ve made great progress,” Fielding said.
 

Connor seemed less sure of what might or might not have been accomplished during the session. He arranged his mouth into the tiniest suggestion of a smile, though there was no hint of it anywhere else on his face. He picked up his book and his rainbow striped beanie, and carried both out of the room, closing the door silently behind him. I hated this part. Now was the time when Fielding and I completed our reviews and discussed how best I might handle things with the children over the next week, though most of the time it felt like Fielding was taking the opportunity to poke and prod at the insides of my head, too.
 

“Well, Ophelia. I have to say, I really do see some progress,” he said, as I sat down in the chair Connor just vacated.
 

“Yes, I agree. He’s been a lot more talkative the last couple of days. And he’s asked to spend more time outside. Though that was related to an accident that happened during a storm.”

“A storm?” He was using his
no-way!
fake-shocked voice he used with Connor, whenever the little boy told him something arbitrary. This wasn’t arbitrary, though, so it was kind of frustrating that he was using that tone with me.

“Yes, a storm. A ship was capsized out on the water close to shore. Not close enough for the ship’s crew to swim to shore, though. At last count, thirteen men died.”

That seemed to get his attention. “I see. And Connor has been showing increased levels of interest in the accident that seem…out of the ordinary?”

“No. I don’t think so. I think he’s just curious. He knows people died out there. It was awful.”