Everything started coming into focus. He’d said he loved her too early in the relationship. He was needy, yet she clearly felt his emotional distance. He had trouble making love to her. That was how they’d gotten pregnant: one night she’d sacrificed protection to help along his fragile response.
“Weren’t you at all attracted to Irene?” she asked.
“Irene was . . . Jesus, Ellis, how can I tell you these things?”
“Tell me. It’s better than keeping it inside.”
“There was a man, another lawyer. I suspected he was gay. But I couldn’t go there. You know I couldn’t. You, the kids, my mother, Senator Bauhammer . . . the whole country, for god’s sake.”
“So you went for your tennis instructor to try to kill your attraction to a man.”
He nodded.
“I guess I wasn’t looking at all like a beautiful man anymore—milk dripping out of my big boobs and all that.”
Again, he nodded. “I thought having another baby would fix my problems, but it made it worse. You were such a beautiful mother. So gorgeous . . .”
“But pretty much the opposite of what you’d first found attractive about me.”
He picked up his coffee, but his hand shook too hard to take a sip. He had to put it down. “Shit,” he said and started crying again.
“I mean it when I say I forgive you,” she said. “Believe it or not, I feel better now that I know. Irene really hurt when I found out, but now I get it.”
“Do you get it?” he said with sudden vehemence. “You left Viola in the forest because you’d seen me with Irene. I’m the reason she was abducted. I’m the reason you resorted to drugs and booze. I’m the reason you left your sons. I’m the reason River is so screwed up.” He pointed toward the elevator. “He’s in that bed because of me. You took all the blame, but all along it was me!”
“Jonah, come on—”
“You know it’s true! I’ve wrecked all these lives! Sometimes I don’t think I can live with it! If I hadn’t found Ryan when I did—” He stood abruptly and walked to the other side of the lounge.
Ellis went to him. “I’m glad you found someone to love. Loving Keith and being loved by him have been good for me. I hope you’ll have that with Ryan.”
“I hide it from the boys,” he said bitterly. “I can’t tell my mother. I sneak off with him. How much good is that doing me?”
“Then tell them.”
“My mother? You know how she is. She lives in my house now, Ellis.”
“So what? If she doesn’t like it, she has plenty of money to move out. You’ve been living a lie all these years for what? For your parents’ vile version of morality? Now that I know the truth, they’re the ones I blame for Viola’s abduction. It all goes back to them crushing the soul of a child.”
“You can’t blame them,” he said. “Both of their parents indoctrinated them into those beliefs.”
“And who raised their parents? And on and on all the way back? It’s time to stop this cycle of hatred. Tell our boys you’re in love. Bring Ryan over to the house. Let River and Jasper see who you are and who you love. I know it will be healing for them. And if Mary Carol tries to ruin it, kick her ass out of your house!”
He grinned. He looked ten years younger. “I’m glad you’ve still got your kick-ass side. I always loved that about you.”
“Jonah . . . I’m so sorry I left you to raise our boys alone. I thought Irene would be helping you, and I had no idea how to—”
“Neither of us knew how to fix it. I think it was unfixable at that time. But now we can try again, can’t we?”
“I would like that,” she said.
He held out his hand. “Friends?”
“Absolutely.” When she took his hand, he pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Let’s get back,” he said. “We should be there when he wakes up.”
When the elevator opened on the ICU floor, Keith was right in front of it.
“I was looking for you,” he said.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Did River wake up?”
“He’s the same,” Keith said. “It’s Raven.”
“What about her?”
“She’s doing something strange. The nurses are upset. You need to get in there.”
Ellis and Jonah hurried down the ICU corridor. They stopped in the doorway, taking in the bizarre scene of River’s body covered in grass, flowers, and tree branches. A palm frond rose out of the pillows behind River’s head like a green-rayed halo.
Raven appeared to have snapped, her guilt and exhaustion too much. She was carefully arranging the grass and flowers on River’s blanket, occasionally holding a crushed leaf or flower near his nose filled with oxygen tubes. Jasper was looking at her as if she’d gone mad, as were two nurses.
“She left right after you did,” Keith said quietly. “She came back with all this stuff hidden inside a plastic trash bag.”
She had picked it from the landscape in front of the hospital. Ellis had brought her out there to give her a break from the tiny ER room earlier.
“Please tell her to stop,” the younger of the two nurses said. “Those plants are from outside. He shouldn’t be breathing that. This needs to be a sterile environment.”
“Wrong,” Raven said. “It’s too sterile. People evolved with fresh air and dirt and plants. They can’t feel good in a place like this. They can only feel sick. He needs to touch the earth to have a good reason to wake up.”
The beauty of it nearly made Ellis cry.
“This is a great idea, Raven,” she said, walking to the bed. “But usually people bring flowers to the hospital.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“The flowers are supposed to come from a clean place. From a florist. And you put them in a vase, not on the sick person.”
“He needs to have it close. To smell it and feel it.”
A tiny spider crawled
