Her father was already on the phone, speaking to someone in a low urgent voice, while Grace flipped open his suitcase and pulled out a long-sleeved T-shirt that looked exactly like the one that her father was wearing at the moment, only it was burgundy instead of navy.
Grace signaled for her to put the shirt on. “We’ll need to hurry.”
“I want to go!” Dominic said.
“No,” Ray told him. “You stay here.”
“But I want to go!” Dominic yelled.
“I need you to stay here,” Ray said. “We’ll be back as soon as possible.”
Traveling along the river path in her father’s car, they made it back to the spot. All the while, Grace was on the phone, giving directions to EMS. The sun was lowering in the sky as they all peered down at Lily, who lay with her eyes closed.
“Lily,” her father breathed.
Lily’s weak voice traveled up to them. “Hi Dad.”
Jordan got down on all fours and started lowering herself over the edge. “What are you doing?” her father barked at her, panicked.
“I’m climbing down to see if she’s all right.”
“Do you want to get yourself killed?”
“I did it before. It’s not that hard. And you all need to wait for whoever they’re sending.”
“You are
not
climbing down there,” her father said.
They were the last words he spoke to her as she lowered herself step by step down the cliff face. It wasn’t quite so terrifying this time, now that she knew the footholds better. When she was back on the ledge, she squatted next to her sister.
“Help’s coming,” she assured Lily. “They’re sending an ambulance.”
“How will I get up?” While alone, Lily had obviously had time to consider her predicament. “I can’t even sit up.”
“Let them worry about that. It’s their job.”
“What if I can’t move? What if they can’t get me out of here?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Jordan told her. “They get climbers off of Everest, don’t they?”
Did they?
Jordan wasn’t even sure, but it sounded good. “Getting you off this rinky-dink ledge will be a snap.”
A siren blared in the distance, and Lily closed her eyes in relief. “You saved my life,” she said as the sound neared.
“Yeah, right. I almost killed you. I told you to look over the ledge and got you in this mess.”
Lily smiled. “It wasn’t your fault. A chunk of rock where I was standing must have chipped off. I slipped.”
From above, their father called out, “The ambulance is almost here!”
As if they couldn’t hear that for themselves, Jordan thought, rolling her eyes.
“That’s another good thing about you,” Lily said. “I’m up to three now.”
Jordan had no idea what she was talking about. The pain was probably making her delirious. “A good thing is that I almost got you killed?”
“No—that you saved my life.” Lily smiled.
Above them, red lights flashed and a vehicle door slammed. Jordan was torn between trying to listen to what the paramedics were saying and paying attention to Lily.
“It’s for when we’re living on opposite sides of the country,” Lily explained. “Grace said I needed to have good things to focus on when I think about you.”
Jordan bit her lip. “I don’t think I could think of three myself.”
“One—Nina and Mom loved you. Two, you love Dominic.”
Jordan leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. After all the running around and worrying she’d done, it would be stupid to fall apart now that it was almost over. “Dominic’s not the only person in the world I love,” she said, her voice a rasp.
Lily looked at her. “There’s something I was going to show you. It’s in my suitcase in our room. In my diary.”
Jordan released a dry laugh. “Not going there.”
“I give you permission.”
A paramedic had rappelled down the cliff face and now was yanking Jordan out of the way. “You need to go back up,” the man instructed her brusquely. “Let me attach this harness . . .”
“I can climb,” Jordan said, instinctively flinching away.
“We’re not going to save one sister only to watch the other one topple into the river.” He started wrapping the harness around her and clipping it securely.
“You should be doing something for Lily,” she complained. “She’s the one in pain.”
“I’ll tend to her just as soon as you’re off this rock.”
Jordan sighed and the man signaled to the people above them that they could start hoisting her up. As she began her ascent, Lily called out to her. “Jordan, wait!”
Jordan looked over at her. “What?”
Lily couldn’t lift her head up, but she tilted it so that their gazes met. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. It could have happened at any time. It was just an accident.”
Their dad went with the ambulance, while Jordan and Grace returned to the hotel to pick up Dominic and clothes for Lily. The paramedics had had to cut the shirt she’d had off of her—but by that time Lily had been so zonked on morphine she hadn’t freaked out like she normally would have.
Jordan headed directly to her and Lily’s room. Dominic was on the lookout for her and emerged from his room as soon as she was at her door.
“What’s going on? Is Lily in the hospital?”
“She’s on her way.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He followed her into the room. “What happened?”
Jordan made a beeline for Lily’s suitcase. First she grabbed some clothes, and then she found the diary and started flipping through it.
“Is Grace going to drive us to the hospital now?” Dominic asked.
“In a sec. She’s waiting for us.”
“Then why . . . ?” He looked at what she was doing and groaned. “Oh, no! That’s Lily’s diary!”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him. She held the book by its spine and shook it. “She told me to look in it. It’s supposed to have . . .”
A photograph dropped out of the book. Jordan tossed the book back in the suitcase and scooped the photo off the floor before Dominic could grab it.
The picture was of Lily—little Lily, maybe seven or eight years old—riding piggyback, her mouth wide open and wielding some kind of toy sword.
Dominic crowded in to look. “Where’s that from?”
Jordan shook her head in wonder. She didn’t remember the photo being taken, but she did remember the silly games they used to play when they were younger. Lily was so cute. And she . . .
“Look at Nina laughing!” Dominic said. “She looks like she’s about to fall and take Lily down with her.”
Jordan lifted her free hand to her lips. She almost hadn’t recognized that other girl, either. Not because she confused herself with Nina—Jordan was always surprised that people couldn’t tell them apart—but because of where she was in that picture. The center of everything. The anchor. And how happy she seemed.
She
did
remember it. Not the day, exactly. But she could remember the laughter, and the certainty that if her legs gave out beneath her they would all catch their breaths and then get back up again.
“What’s the matter?” Dominic asked. Then he looked down again. “Sorry—dumb question. Does looking at her make you sad?”
“Yeah, it does, but not because it’s Nina,” Jordan said. “That’s me.”
Dominic’s forehead crinkled. Even her own brother couldn’t tell.
“That’s really me,” she repeated.
44
E
VERYTHING
M
UST
G
O
W
hile waiting for the doctors to tend to Lily, Grace and Ray decided that Grace would drive Dominic and Jordan back to Austin the next morning, Sunday, so he could stay with Lily until the hospital released her.
Initially, Dominic and Jordan protested that they couldn’t abandon their sister. But a night spent hanging out on the uncomfortable orange bench seats of the hospital waiting room convinced them that being cut out of the loop wasn’t such a bad thing. Sibling devotion couldn’t overcome boredom, or hunger.
“Can we stop for breakfast on the way back?” Dominic asked as they were leaving. “Someplace with pancakes?”
“Dominic wants to celebrate the fact that Lily’s okay,” Jordan said, shooting Grace a wry look.
“Yeah,” he said.
Declaring Lily okay was a bit of a stretch. She had fractured an arm, dislocated her shoulder, and suffered a concussion. Bad as it was, though, Grace couldn’t get the picture of that ledge out of her mind. If Lily had been standing a few feet to the right when she’d fallen, the outcome would have been another tragedy for the West family.
“Pancakes it is,” she agreed.
During the drive back, they stopped at a roadside diner full of Sunday brunchers. After they ordered, Grace’s cellphone started vibrating across the laminated tabletop.
“Is it Dad?” Dominic asked.
She checked. “It’s my brother Sam.”
“You can talk to him here,” Jordan said when Grace started to get up. “We’ll pretend not to listen.”
Sam shouted into her ear as soon as she picked up. “Happy birthday!”
She was stunned. “Oh my God—I completely forgot. So much has happened—but I can tell you about it when I get home. I’m on my way now.”
“You should tell me now, then. Rainbow and I are on the way to Houston. I ran into her at Whole Foods. We decided to make like the old days and road trip to see a show at the Alley.”
“Oh, great.”
“I figured you had better things to do on your big day than hang out with your brother.”
She tried hard to swallow her disappointment that he wouldn’t be there when she got home. That no one would. Instead, she gave an abbreviated recap of Lily’s accident.
“Sounds like the weekend was eventful.” He paused, then asked, “Anything else happen?”
His tone made his meaning perfectly clear. She turned slightly away from her breakfast companions. “Not what you’re obviously thinking.”
He sighed. “I wash my hands of you then. You’re hopeless.”
“What about Dad?” she asked. “How did it go? How is he?”
“He’s all settled, and he seemed fine. Although it took me forever to get his furniture positioned the right way.”
“I’ll go see him as soon as I get back,” she said.
“Actually . . .” He hesitated, then explained, “The director of the place requested that Dad not have visitors for a week. Or phone calls.”
“What?”
“I know, it sounded weird to me too. But she said Dad should have some time to adjust and get to know people around him—and not just shut himself up and wait for his family to visit.”
“But that’s crazy! Dad will wonder where I am. Who’s going to look after him?”
“They are. That’s why he’s there.”
Her heart was racing. “But without visiting or calling, how do we know that they’re treating him well, or that he has what he needs?”
“Grace—”
“What if he’s lonely, and miserable, and at loose ends?”
The silence that crackled over the line was filled with pity. For her. “I think you need the week to adjust, too,” he said.
She bristled. “That’s ridiculous. I’m fine. I just don’t trust them.”
“You’re going to have to. Just give it a week.”
A week! A week seemed like an eternity to her all of a sudden.
“Oh, and Grace?”
“Hm . . .” she said, distracted.
“Have a happy birthday. We’ll do it up big when I get to Austin!”
When she hung up, she took a gulp of coffee. Her hand was shaking over what Sam had told her about her dad. She didn’t care what Sam said—the one-week policy stank. What if her dad thought she had abandoned him? Sure, he would have been informed of the policy, but sometimes he forgot things right after he heard them.
“When we get home, should I come over and get Iago?” Dominic asked.
She nodded. She had forgotten about Iago. Now he would be gone, too. A tear slipped down her cheek.
Dominic and Jordan focused their eyes on their plates but darted wary surreptitious glances in her direction. “Is everything okay?” Dominic asked.
“Today’s my birthday,” she explained.
Their heads lifted. “Happy birthday!” they said in unison.
For some reason, their rote exclamations made her feel even more depressed.
“How old are you?” Dominic asked.
“Thirty-one.”
“God,” Jordan said. “No wonder you’re crying.”
After she parked the car in the drive in Austin, Grace expected the kids to unload their stuff and troop back over to their house, but Dominic followed her to her door.
“Is it okay if I go ahead and take Iago home with me now?” he asked.
“Sure,” Grace said, trying to be cheerful about giving up her father’s dog.
When she opened the door to her father’s house, Iago was right there. He certainly looked ready to go. He was doing the front-paw hop he performed whenever he saw Dominic. She petted him, trying not to mind the hole in the living room where Lou’s television had been. Or the absence of his favorite armchair. Now there was only the martyr’s chair, but with no chess set on the table next to it. For some reason, the absence of that game got to her more than anything. The quiet house felt drained of life, as if its heart had been torn from it.
Or maybe that was just how she felt herself.
As Dominic hurried to the kitchen to collect Iago’s bowls, food, leash, and flea meds, she couldn’t help remembering the other dogs that had lived in the house. Her father had never been without a canine friend for long. When she was growing up, there had been Desdemona, and at the end of Des’s life, a Chihuahua mix named Cassio had come on board. And then Iago.
She had asked her father once why there had never been an Othello. “I would never give a dog the lead,” he’d explained. “There would be no living with him.”
Dominic looked reluctant to leave. “You’re not going to start crying after I take him, are you?”
She smiled. “No.”
“ ’Cause I could leave him here a few days, I guess . . .”
She shook her head. “Look at him—he’s raring to go.” She smiled. “Besides, I still have Heathcliff.”
His expression was doubtful, but he led Iago out anyway.
Speaking of Heathcliff . . . She went upstairs to check on him. She didn’t worry that he had been traumatized by the move, because he generally confined himself to her bedroom and the Rigoletto’s office, and those rooms hadn’t been touched by relocation madness yet. In the next few weeks, though, they would have to be boxed up and emptied out, too.
Everything must go.
This was her job now: to make sure that nothing was left.
In her bedroom, Heathcliff was lounging on the bed in a patch of sun. He winked one eye open, saw her, and then shut it again. Then he arched, stretched, and flipped over to face a large box that was lying in the center of the bed.
It was just a big white clothes box, with an envelope taped to the top. She opened the envelope and took out a card with a picture of George Eliot on it. She remembered it from a set of famous author note cards she’d sent her father once on
his
birthday.
Gracie,
It’s your birthday, and I can think of nothing more precious to leave as a gift to mark your thirty-one years. I know I am right in thinking that it is best left in your safekeeping.
Love,
Dad
She pulled the lid off the box. Inside, surrounded by tissue paper, was the old chess set. She picked up one of the pieces and fell back on the mattress, laughing. His treasure, her torment. But he was right—she would keep it with her until the last breath left her body.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t loan it out on occasion.
She hopped up and picked up the box. Rules be damned. She didn’t care what anyone said, it was her birthday and she wanted to see her father, just to spend a little time with him and make sure he had everything he needed.
On the way out to Live Oak Villa, she stopped at a barbecue stand that had never been on her father’s A-list, but which was still probably better than the institutional food he was getting. Having the to-go bag sitting on the passenger side seat lifted her spirits; barbecue was the most effective aromatherapy in the world. She imagined her father’s face lighting up when he saw it.
When she appeared at his door bearing all her goodies, though, she discovered that he wasn’t in his rooms. It was the right apartment, she was sure of it. The number was the one they had written down as his address, and his furniture was there. But no Lou.
As she prowled the carpeted corridors in search of him, she half expected to be collared by the assisted living police. The last place she looked was where she should have started, given that it was going on six o’clock. The dining room.
He was seated at a round table with two ladies, both with perfectly set gray hair. A walker stood sentry next to one of the ladies’ chairs. The other woman seemed to be telling a story, and Lou was watching her intently, a smile on his face. When Grace approached the table, he turned the same smile on her. For a moment, there was no flash of recognition, no connection. The gaze was impersonal, as if she were a nurse, or someone coming to take his plate.
As if he didn’t really know her.
She froze, pierced by a pain so sharp she wanted to double over. Did he really not know her? Her own father?
She took a deep breath, remembering a time before, when he’d been in the hospital. It was just the unexpected that caused the delayed recognition. She took the empty chair next to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Hi, Dad.”
He took her hand. “It’s so good to see you!” He turned to his two companions. “This is my daughter, Grace.” He introduced her to the two women, Frances and Brenda, who made a fuss over her. Brenda encouraged Grace to take her tapioca cup. Grace declined politely.
It was as if she had issued a challenge.
“Go ahead and take it,” Brenda said. “I can always get another one.”
“Me, too.” Frances was already twisting toward her walker, ready to hit the dessert buffet on Grace’s behalf.
“No, really,” Grace said, trying to stop her. “I’m not hungry.” She was holding out for barbecue, hoping that she and her father could go back to his room and talk. Maybe play a game of chess.
“Would you like a roll?” Frances asked her.
“The asparagus casserole was good. I have a little of that left.” Brenda pushed her plate toward Grace, who laughed in frustration.
“No, thank you.”
“I know what she really wants,” Lou said. “Birthday cake. It’s her birthday!”
The two ladies beamed in delight. “They didn’t have cake tonight.”
“But we could sing,” Brenda said, brightening even more.
“Oh, no,” Grace said, cringing. “That’s not necess—”
But stopping those two ladies from launching into “Happy Birthday” at that moment would have been like trying to hold back the dawn. And once they started, the surrounding tables got in on the act, and by the end, the whole cafeteria was singing. Grace hunkered stiffly in her chair, grinning, praying for it to be over. Unfortunately, when the song ended and the room burst into applause, someone in the back started the song all over again.
She should have just accepted the tapioca. When round two was over, Grace was introduced to thirty people whose names she knew she would never be able to remember after tonight. Finally, they began to filter away and she turned to her dad. “Do you want to go up to your apartment?”
“Why?” he asked.
“I’d like to get the tour.”
“It’s nothing special,” he said.
Brenda turned to her. “It’s Sunday night! We’re having a movie tonight. You should stay for it.”
“Oh—I don’t think I can.” She was still half expecting the powers that be to come collar her for premature visitation.
“Why not?” her father asked.
“It’s
Top Hat,
with Fred Astaire,” Frances said.