Harvesting The Heart Part 15

Nicholas pushed him out of the way. "Just when did you develop a sense of humor, Alistair?" he said. He turned to the head OR nurse. "Prep him."

He was tired and sweating and badly needed a shower, but the only thing in his mind when he finished surgery was Max. He knew he needed to round his patients; he hadn't a clue about his schedule for tomorrow. He rode up five flights in the cool green elevator. Maybe he'd go home today, and Paige would be there, and this would have been a lousy nightmare.

LaMyrna Ratchet was nowhere to be found. Nicholas stuck his head into the back room at the nurses' station, but no one seemed to know whether she was still on duty. Nicholas began to peer into different patient rooms. He poked through a bouquet of balloons because he thought he saw a short white skirt, but LaMyrna was not in the room. The patient, a woman of about fifty, clung to Nicholas's arm. "No more blood," she cried. "Don't let them take no more blood."

LaMyrna was not in any of the patient rooms. Nicholas even checked the women's staff bathroom, startling a couple of nurses and a female resident, but LaMyrna was not at the sink. He ducked down, peering at the shoes in the stalls. He called her name.

Finally, he went back to the nurses' station in the center of the orthopedic floor. "Look," he said, "this nurse has disappeared, and she's taken my baby."

An unfamiliar nurse handed him a pink telephone message note that had been folded like a Chinese football. "Why didn't you say so?" the woman said.

Dr. Prescott, the note read, the note read, I had to leave because my s.h.i.+ft was over and they told me you were still in OR so I left Mike with the people in the volunteer lounge. LaMyrna. I had to leave because my s.h.i.+ft was over and they told me you were still in OR so I left Mike with the people in the volunteer lounge. LaMyrna.

Mike?

Nicholas couldn't even remember where the volunteer lounge was. They had built it sometime during his residency; it was a general meeting area with lockers and a sign-in sheet for the candy stripers and older hospital volunteers. He asked for directions at the hospital's front desk. "I can take you," a girl said. "I'm on my way there."

She was no older than sixteen and wore a jeans jacket with an airbrushed rendering of Nirvana on the back. She carried a small Eddie Bauer refrigerated cold-pack, and her peppermint-stick uniform protruded from a plain white tote bag. She saw Nicholas staring at the bag. "I wouldn't be caught dead leaving school in it," she said, and she cracked a gum bubble, loud.

There was no one in the volunteer lounge. Nicholas ran his fingers over the page of signed-in volunteers, but found nothing to indicate that one of them was watching a baby. Then, propped in the corner, he saw his diaper bag.

Nicholas sagged against the wall, flooded with relief. "How do I find out what candy stripers are on what rotations?" The girl looked at him blankly. "Where do you all work?"

The girl shrugged. "Check the front of the book," she said, flipping to the sign-in page. He saw a list of volunteers, organized by the day they worked and their staff a.s.signments. There were at least thirty volunteers in the hospital at that moment. Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose. He could not do this. He just could not do this.

He left the volunteer lounge with the diaper bag on his shoulder and for the first time noticed a secretary sitting at the makes.h.i.+ft desk outside. "Dr. Prescott," she said, smiling up at him.

He did not question how she knew his name; many people at the hospital had heard about the wunderkind of cardiac surgery. "Have you seen a baby?" he said.

The woman pointed down the hall. "Dawn had him, last I saw. She took him to the cafeteria. They didn't need her so badly in ambulatory care today."

Nicholas heard Max's laughter before he saw him. Beyond the thick line of residents and nurses and sullen hospital visitors waiting to be served, he spotted his son's spiky black hair through hazy red cubes of jello. When he reached the table where a candy striper was bouncing Max on her knee, he dropped the diaper bag. The girl was feeding his three-month-old son an ice cream bar.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?" he yelled, grabbing his son away. Max reached his hand toward the ice cream, but then realized his father had returned and burrowed his sticky face into the neck of Nicholas's scrubs.

"You must be Dr. Prescott," the girl said, unruffled. "I'm Dawn. I've been with Max since noon." She opened the diaper bag and held up the one bottle Nicholas had brought to the hospital, now bone dry. "He finished this at ten this morning, you know," she chided. "I had to take him to the milk bank."

Nicholas had a fleeting image of Holsteins, wearing pearls and cat's-eye gla.s.ses, acting as tellers and counting out cash. "The milk bank," he repeated, and then he remembered. In the preemie pediatric ward, new mothers pumped their own milk for strangers' babies born too early.

He a.s.sessed the girl again. She was smart enough to find food for Max; h.e.l.l, she had even known he was hungry, which he couldn't tell for sure. He sat down across from her at the table, and she folded the remains of the ice cream sandwich into a napkin. "He liked it," she said defensively. "A little bit can't hurt him, not once he's. .h.i.t three months."

Nicholas stared at her. "How do you know these things?" he asked. Dawn looked at him as if he were crazy. Nicholas leaned forward conspiratorially. "How much do you make for candy striping?"

"Money? We don't make money. That's why we're called volunteers."

Nicholas grabbed her hand. "If you come back tomorrow, I'll pay you. Four bucks an hour, if you'll watch Max."

"I don't candy-stripe on Thursdays. Only on Mondays and Wednesdays. I have band on Thursdays."

"Surely," Nicholas said, "you have friends."

Dawn stood up and s.h.i.+ed away from the two of them. Nicholas held his hand out in the air as if that might stop her. He wondered what he looked like through her eyes: a weary, mussed surgeon, sweaty and wild-eyed, who probably wasn't even holding his baby the right way. He wondered what was was the right way. the right way.

For a second, Nicholas thought he was going to lose control. He saw himself breaking down, his face in his hands, sobbing. He saw Max rolling to the floor and striking his head on the beveled edge of the chair. He saw his career destroyed, all his colleagues turning their heads away in embarra.s.sment. His only salvation was the girl in front of him, an angel half his age. "Please," he murmured to Dawn. "You don't understand what it's like."

Dawn held her arms out for Max and tugged the diaper bag onto her thin shoulder. She put her hand on the back of Nicholas's neck. The hand was gloriously cool, like a waterfall, and gentle as a breath. "Five bucks," she said, "and I'll see what I can do."

chapter 23

Paige If Jake hadn't been with me, I would have run from Eddie Savoy's without ever going inside. His office was thirty miles outside Chicago, in the heartland of the country. The building was little more than a brown weathered shack attached to a chicken farm. The stench of droppings was overpowering, and there were feathers stuck to the wheels of my car when I got out. "Are you sure?" I asked Jake. "You know this guy?"

Eddie Savoy burst out of the door at that point, knocking it off its hinges. "Flan-man!" he yelled, wrapping Jake in a bear hug. They broke away and did some funny handshake that looked like two birds mating.

Jake introduced me to Eddie Savoy. "Paige," he said, "me and Eddie were in the war together."

"The war," I repeated.

"The Gulf War," Eddie said proudly. His voice was as rough as a grindstone.

I turned to Jake. The Gulf War? He had been in the army? The sun slanted off his cheekbones and lightened his eyes so that they appeared transparent. I wondered how much more about Jake Flanagan I had missed.

When I told Jake about leaving Nicholas and Max, and then about wanting to find my mother, I'd expected him to be surprised -maybe even angry, since I'd been telling him all those years that my mother had died. But Jake just smiled at me. "Well," he said, "it's about time." I could tell by the brush of his hands that he had known all along. He told me he had a friend who might be able to help, and then he asked one of his mechanics to watch the station.

Eddie Savoy was a private investigator. He'd been getting started in the business, working as a lackey for another detective, and then he'd joined the army when the war broke out in the Persian Gulf. When he came back he felt he'd had enough of taking orders; he started his own agency.

He led us into a small room that looked as if it had been a meat storage refrigerator in a different life. We sat on the floor on ta.s.seled Indian cus.h.i.+ons, and Eddie sat across from us, behind a low parsons bench. "Hate chairs," he explained. "They do things to my back."

He was not much older than Jake, but his hair was completely white. It had been shaved in a crew cut and stood away from his scalp as if each individual piece was very frightened. He had no mustache but the beginnings of a beard, which also seemed to stick straight out from his chin. He reminded me of a tennis ball. "So you haven't seen your ma for twenty years," he said, tugging the old wedding photo from my hand.

"No," I said, "and I've never tried to find her before." I leaned closer. "Do I have a chance?"

Eddie leaned back and pulled a cigarette out of his sleeve. He struck a match against his low desk and drew in deeply. When he spoke, his words came out in smoke. "Your mother," he said to me, "did not disappear off the face of the earth."

Eddie told me it was all in the numbers. You couldn't escape your numbers, not for that long a time. Social Security, Registry of Motor Vehicles, school records, work records. Even if people intentionally changed their ident.i.ty, eventually they'd collect a pension or welfare, or file taxes, and the numbers would lead you to them. Eddie told me how the previous week he'd found in half a day the kid a mother gave up for adoption.

"What if she's changed her Social Security number?" I said. "What if her name isn't May anymore?"

Eddie smirked. "If you change your Social Security number, it's recorded as being changed. And the address and age of the person changing the number is listed too. You can't just walk in and get someone else's, either. So if your mother is using someone else's number-say her own mom's-we'll still be able to find her."

Eddie took down the family history that I knew. He was particularly concerned about genetic illnesses, because he had just wrapped up a missing persons case that involved diabetes. "This woman's whole family has the sugar," he says, "so I chase her for three years and I know she's in Maine, but I can't get the exact location. And then I figure she's about the age all her relatives start dying. So I call up every hospital in Maine and see what patients have the sugar. Sure enough, there she is, getting her last rites."

I swallowed, and Eddie reached across the table and took my hand. His skin felt like a snake's. "It's very difficult to disappear," he said. "It's all a matter of public records. The hardest people to find are the ones who live in tenements, because they move around a lot. But then you get them through welfare."

I had an image of my mother on welfare, living on the streets, and I winced. "What if my mother isn't my mother anymore?" I asked. "It's been twenty years. What if she's found a new ident.i.ty?"

Eddie blew smoke rings that expanded and settled around my neck. "You know, Paige," he said, p.r.o.nouncing my name Pej, Pej, "people just ain't creative. If they get a new ident.i.ty, they do something stupid like flip their first and middle names. They use their maiden names or the last name of their favorite uncle. Or they spell their same name different or change one digit in their Social Security number. They aren't willing to completely give up what they're leaving behind." He leaned forward, almost whispering. "Of course, the really sharp ones get a whole new image. I found a guy once who'd taken a new ident.i.ty by striking up a conversation at a bar with a fellow who looked like him. He got the other guy to compare IDs, just for kicks, and he memorized the number on the driver's license and then got himself a copy by saying it had been stolen. It ain't so hard to become someone else. You look in the local papers and find the name of someone who died within the past week who was about your own age. That gives you a name and an address. Then you go to the place where the death occurred, and it's on public record, and bingo, you got a date of birth. Then you go to Social Security and make up a wacko story about your wallet being filched and you get a new card with this new name-the death records are usually slow in getting over to Social Security, so nothing seems out of the ordinary. And then you pull the same s.h.i.+t at the RMV and you get a new driver's license...." He shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette on the floor. "The thing is, Paige, I know all this stuff. I got connections. I'm one step ahead of your mother." "people just ain't creative. If they get a new ident.i.ty, they do something stupid like flip their first and middle names. They use their maiden names or the last name of their favorite uncle. Or they spell their same name different or change one digit in their Social Security number. They aren't willing to completely give up what they're leaving behind." He leaned forward, almost whispering. "Of course, the really sharp ones get a whole new image. I found a guy once who'd taken a new ident.i.ty by striking up a conversation at a bar with a fellow who looked like him. He got the other guy to compare IDs, just for kicks, and he memorized the number on the driver's license and then got himself a copy by saying it had been stolen. It ain't so hard to become someone else. You look in the local papers and find the name of someone who died within the past week who was about your own age. That gives you a name and an address. Then you go to the place where the death occurred, and it's on public record, and bingo, you got a date of birth. Then you go to Social Security and make up a wacko story about your wallet being filched and you get a new card with this new name-the death records are usually slow in getting over to Social Security, so nothing seems out of the ordinary. And then you pull the same s.h.i.+t at the RMV and you get a new driver's license...." He shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette on the floor. "The thing is, Paige, I know all this stuff. I got connections. I'm one step ahead of your mother."

I thought about my mother's obituaries; how easy it would have been for her to find someone close to her age who had died. I thought of how connected she got to those people, how she'd visit the graves as if they were old friends. "What are you going to do first?" I asked.

"I'm gonna start with the sc.r.a.ps of the truth. I'm gonna take all this information you gave me and the picture, and I'm gonna walk around your neighborhood in Chicago, seeing if anyone remembers her. Then I'm gonna run a driver's license check and a Social Security check. If that don't work, I'm gonna look up twenty-year-old obit pages of the Trib. Trib. And if And if that that don't work, I'm gonna dig in my brain and ask myself, 'Where the h.e.l.l can I turn now?' I'm gonna hunt her down and get an address for you. And then if you want I'll go to her house and I'll get her garbage before the town picks it up and I'll be able to tell you anything you want to know about her: what she eats for breakfast, what she gets in the mail, if she's married or livin' with someone, if she has kids." don't work, I'm gonna dig in my brain and ask myself, 'Where the h.e.l.l can I turn now?' I'm gonna hunt her down and get an address for you. And then if you want I'll go to her house and I'll get her garbage before the town picks it up and I'll be able to tell you anything you want to know about her: what she eats for breakfast, what she gets in the mail, if she's married or livin' with someone, if she has kids."

I thought of my mother holding another baby, a different daughter. "I don't think that will be necessary," I whispered.

Eddie stood up, letting us know the meeting was over. "Fifty bucks an hour is my fee," he said, and I paled. I couldn't possibly afford to pay him for more than three days.

Jake stepped up behind me. "That's fine," he said. He squeezed my shoulder, and his words fell softly behind my ear. "Don't worry about it."

I left Jake waiting in the car and called Nicholas from a pay phone on the way back to Chicago. It rang four times, and I was thinking about what kind of message I could leave, when Nicholas answered, hurried and breathless. "h.e.l.lo?"

"h.e.l.lo, Nicholas," I said. "How are you?"

There was a beat of silence. "Are you calling to apologize to me?"

I clenched my fists. "I'm in Chicago now," I said, trying to keep my voice from wavering. "I'm going to find my mother." I hesitated and then asked what was on my mind, what I couldn't get off my mind. "How's Max?" I said.

"Apparently," Nicholas said, "you don't give a d.a.m.n."

"Of course I do. I don't understand you, Nicholas. Why can't you just think of this as a vacation, or a visit to my father? I haven't been back here in eight years. I told told you I'd come home." I tapped my foot against the pavement. "It's just going to take a little longer than I thought." you I'd come home." I tapped my foot against the pavement. "It's just going to take a little longer than I thought."

"Let me tell you what I did today, dear," dear," Nicholas said, his voice icy and restrained. "After getting up with Max three times during the night, I took him to the hospital this morning. I had a quadruple bypa.s.s scheduled, which I almost didn't complete because I couldn't stay on my feet. Someone could have died because of your need for a-what did you call it?-a vacation. And I left Max with a stranger because I didn't have any idea who else could baby-sit for him. And you know what? I'm doing this all again tomorrow. Aren't you jealous, Paige? Don't you wish you were me?" The static on the line grew as Nicholas fell silent. I had never thought about all that; I had just left. Nicholas's voice was so bitter that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. "Paige," he said, "I don't want to see your face again." And then he hung up. Nicholas said, his voice icy and restrained. "After getting up with Max three times during the night, I took him to the hospital this morning. I had a quadruple bypa.s.s scheduled, which I almost didn't complete because I couldn't stay on my feet. Someone could have died because of your need for a-what did you call it?-a vacation. And I left Max with a stranger because I didn't have any idea who else could baby-sit for him. And you know what? I'm doing this all again tomorrow. Aren't you jealous, Paige? Don't you wish you were me?" The static on the line grew as Nicholas fell silent. I had never thought about all that; I had just left. Nicholas's voice was so bitter that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. "Paige," he said, "I don't want to see your face again." And then he hung up.

I leaned my forehead against the side of the telephone booth and took deep breaths. Out of nowhere, that list I had written of my accomplishments just days before came to mind. I can change a diaper. I can measure formula. I can sing Max to sleep. I can change a diaper. I can measure formula. I can sing Max to sleep. I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes. I I can can find my mother. find my mother.

I walked out of the phone booth, shading my eyes from the judgment of the sun. Jake grinned at me from the pa.s.senger seat of my car. "How's Nicholas?" he asked.

"He misses me," I said, forcing a smile. "He wants me to come home."

In honor of my return to Chicago, Jake took what he called a well-deserved vacation, and insisted I spend time with him while Eddie Savoy found my mother. So the next morning I drove to Jake and Ellen's apartment, which was across the street from where Jake's mother still lived. It was an una.s.suming little brick building, with a cast-iron fence around the tiny blotched yard. I rang the bell and was buzzed in.

Even before I reached Jake's apartment, on the first floor, I knew which one was his. The familiar smell of him-green spring leaves and honest sweat-seeped through the cracks of the old wooden door. Ellen opened it, startling me. She held a spatula in her hand and wore an ap.r.o.n that said across her chest, KISS MY GRITS. "Jake says Eddie's going to find your mother," she said, not even bothering with "h.e.l.lo." She drew me in with her excitement. "I bet you can't wait. I can't imagine not seeing my mother for twenty years. I wonder how long it-"

"Jeez, El," Jake said, coming down the hall. "It's not even nine o'clock." He had just showered. His hair was still dripping at the ends, leaving little pockmarks on the carpet. Ellen reached over and made a part with her spatula.

The apartment was nearly bare, dotted with mismatched sofas and armchairs and an occasional plastic cube table. There weren't many knickknacks, except for a few grade-school art cla.s.s ceramic candy bowls, probably made years before by Jake's siblings, and a statuette of Jesus on the Cross. But the room was warm and homey and smelled like popcorn and overripe strawberries. It looked happily wrapped and comfortably lived-in. I thought about my Barely White kitchen, my skin-colored leather couch, and I was ashamed.

Ellen had made French toast for breakfast, and fresh-squeezed orange juice and corned beef hash. I hovered at the edge of the speckled Formica table, looking at all the food. I hadn't made breakfast in years. Nicholas left at four-thirty in the morning; there wasn't time for a spread like this. "When do you have to get up to do all this?" I asked.

Jake curled his arm around Ellen's waist. "Tell her the truth," he said, and then he looked up at me. "Breakfast is all Ellen can do. My mother had to teach her how to turn on the oven when we got married."

"Jake!" Ellen slapped his hand away, but she was smiling. She slipped a piece of French toast onto a plate for me. "I told him he's more than welcome to move back home, but then he'd have to do his own laundry again."

I was mesmerized by them. They made it look so easy. I could not remember the last time there had been a gentle touch or a relaxed conversation between Nicholas and me. I couldn't remember if Nicholas and I had ever been like this. Things had happened so quickly for us, it was as though our whole relations.h.i.+p had been fast-forwarded. I wondered for a moment what might have happened if I I had married Jake. I pushed that thought away. I had given my life to Nicholas, and we could have been like this, I knew we could, if Nicholas had been around just a little more. Or if I had given him something to stick around for. had married Jake. I pushed that thought away. I had given my life to Nicholas, and we could have been like this, I knew we could, if Nicholas had been around just a little more. Or if I had given him something to stick around for.

I watched Jake pull Ellen onto his lap and kiss her senseless, as if I weren't even there. He caught my eye. "Flea," he said, grinning, "you aren't aren't going to watch, are you?" going to watch, are you?"

"For G.o.d's sake," I said, smiling back at Jake. "What's a girl got to do to get breakfast in this house?" I stood up and opened the refrigerator, looking for the maple syrup. I watched Jake and Ellen from behind the door. I saw their tongues meet. I promise you this, Nicholas, I promise you this, Nicholas, I thought. I thought. Once I get my act together, I'm going to make it up to you. I'm going to fall in love with you all over again. I'm going to make you fall in love with me. Once I get my act together, I'm going to make it up to you. I'm going to fall in love with you all over again. I'm going to make you fall in love with me.

Ellen left for work minutes later, without eating anything she'd prepared. She worked for an advertising agency downtown, in Relocation. "When people move to different branches in the country," she had said, "I get them started all over again." She draped a long multicolored scarf over her shoulders and kissed Jake on the neck and waved to me.

Over the next two days, Jake and I went food shopping together, ate lunch together, watched the evening news. I spent all day with him, waiting to hear from Eddie Savoy. At seven o'clock, when Ellen came home, I would get up off her sofa and turn Jake over to her. I'd drive home to my father's, sometimes pulling off into a dark, rustling alley to imagine what they were doing.

The third day I was in Chicago, the temperature soared to one hundred degrees. "Get yourself to the lake," the morning radio DJ said when I was on my way over to Jake's place. When I opened his door, he was standing in the middle of the living room in his boxer shorts, packing a wicker basket. "It's a picnic kind of day," he said, and he held up an orange Tupperware bowl. "Ellen made three-bean salad," he told me, "and she left you a bathing suit to borrow."

I tried on Ellen's bathing suit, feeling very uncomfortable in the bedroom where Jake slept with his wife. There was nothing on the white walls except the old sampler that had hung over Jake's childhood bed, with the Irish blessing that he had left in my knapsack when I walked away from my life. Most of the room was taken up by an enormous four-poster bed, carved out of golden oak. Each post depicted a different scene from the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve in a gentle embrace; Eve biting into the forbidden fruit; the Fall from Grace. The serpent wound itself over the fourth post, which I was using to balance myself as I stepped into Ellen's maillot. I looked into the mirror and smoothed my hands over the places where my bust did not fill up the cups and where the material strained at my waist, thicker because of Max. I wasn't the slightest bit like Ellen.

In the corner of the mirror I saw Jake come to stand in the doorway. His eyes lingered on my hands as I traced them over my body, lost and unnatural in his wife's clothing. Then he looked up and held my reflection, as if he was trying to say something but could not find the words. I turned away to break the spell, and put my hand on the serpent's carved neck. "This is some bed," I said.

Jake laughed. "Ellen's mom gave it to us as a wedding gift. She hates me. I think this was her way of telling me to go to h.e.l.l." He walked to a chipped armoire in the corner of the room and took out a T-s.h.i.+rt, tossing it to me. It hung to the middle of my thighs. "You all set?" he said, but he was already leaving.

Jake and I parked in the lot for a private golf club and walked beneath the highway overpa.s.s to the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan. He had pulled the wicker basket and a cooler of beer out of the trunk, and as I was about to lock it up, I pulled out my sketch pad and conte sticks on impulse.

In early July, the lake was still cold, but the humidity and the heat rolling off its surface softened the shock of wading in. My ankles throbbed and then little by little became numb. Jake splashed by me, diving in headfirst. He surfaced about six feet away and tossed his hair, spraying me with tiny iced drops that made my breath catch. "You're a wimp, Flea," he said. "You move out East and look what happens."

I thought about Memorial Day the year before, when it was unseasonably hot and I had begged Nicholas to take me to the beach in Newburyport. I'd waded into the water, ready to swim. The ocean was no more than fifty degrees, and Nicholas had laughed and said it never gets swimmable until the end of August. He'd practically carried me back up the beach, and then he held his warm hands over my ankles until my teeth stopped chattering.

Jake and I were the only ones on the beach, because it was barely nine in the morning. We had the whole lake to ourselves. Jake did the b.u.t.terfly and then the backstroke, and he purposely came close so that he'd splash me. "I think you should move back here permanently," he said. "What the h.e.l.l. Maybe I'll just never go back to work."

I sank into the water. "Isn't that the beauty of being the owner, though? You can delegate responsibility and walk away and still make a profit."

Jake dove under and stayed there for so long I began to get worried. "Jake," I whispered. I splashed around with my hands to clear the deep water. "Jake!"

He grabbed my foot and pulled hard, and I didn't even have a chance to take a breath before I went under.

I came to the surface, sputtering and s.h.i.+vering, and Jake smiled at me from several feet away. "I'm going to kill you," I said.

Jake dipped his lips to the water and then stood up and spurted a fountain. "You could," he said, "but then you'd have to get wet again." He turned and started to swim farther away from the sh.o.r.e. I took a deep breath and went after him. He had always been a better swimmer; I was out of breath by the time I reached him. Gasping, I grabbed at his bathing suit and then at the slippery skin of his back. Jake treaded water with one hand and held me under the armpit with the other. He was winded too. "Are you okay?" he said, running his eyes over my face and the cords of my neck.

I nodded; I couldn't really speak. Jake supported both of us until my breathing came slow and even. I looked down at his hand. His thumb was pressed so tightly against my skin that I knew it would leave a mark. The straps of Ellen's bathing suit, too long to begin with, had fallen off my shoulders, and the fabric sagged, leaving a clear line of vision down my chest. Jake pulled me closer, scissor-kicking between my own legs, and he kissed me.

It was no more than a touch of our lips, but I pushed away from Jake and began swimming as hard as I could back to the sh.o.r.e, terrified. It was not what he had done that scared me so; it was what was missing. There had been no fire, no brutal pa.s.sion, nothing like what I remembered. There had been only the quiet beat of our pulses and the steady lap of the lake.

I was not upset that Jake was no longer in love with me; I'd known that since the day I took a bus east and started my second life. But I had always wondered What if?, What if?, even after I was married. It wasn't that I didn't love Nicholas; I just a.s.sumed a little piece of me would always love Jake. And maybe that was what had me so shaken: I knew now that there was no holding on to the past. I was tied, and always would be, to Nicholas. even after I was married. It wasn't that I didn't love Nicholas; I just a.s.sumed a little piece of me would always love Jake. And maybe that was what had me so shaken: I knew now that there was no holding on to the past. I was tied, and always would be, to Nicholas.

I lay down on the towel Jake had brought and pretended to be asleep when he came out of the water and dripped over me. I did not move, although I wanted to sprint miles down the beach, tearing over the hot sand until I couldn't breathe. Running through my mind were the words of Eddie Savoy: I'm gonna start with the sc.r.a.ps of the truth. I'm gonna start with the sc.r.a.ps of the truth. I was starting to see that the past might color the future, but it didn't I was starting to see that the past might color the future, but it didn't determine determine it. And if I could believe that, it was much easier to let go of what I'd done wrong. it. And if I could believe that, it was much easier to let go of what I'd done wrong.

When Jake's steady breathing told me he had fallen asleep, I sat up and opened my sketch pad to a fresh page. I picked up my conte stick and drew his high cheekbones, the flush of summer across his brow, the gold stubble above his upper lip. There were so many differences between Jake and Nicholas. Jake's features held a quiet energy; Nicholas's had power. I had waited forever for Jake; I got Nicholas in a matter of days. When I pictured Jake I saw him standing beside me, at eye level, although he really had half a head on me. Nicholas, though-well, Nicholas had always seemed to me to be twenty feet tall.

Nicholas had come into my life on a white stallion, had handed me his heart, and had offered me the palace and the ball gown and the gold ring. He had given me what every little girl wanted, what I had long given up hope of having. He could not be blamed just because no one ever mentioned that once you closed the storybook, Cinderella still had to do laundry and clean the toilet and take care of the crown prince.

An image of Max flooded the s.p.a.ce in front of me. His eyes were wide open as he rolled from belly to back, and a smile split his face in two when he realized he was seeing the world from a whole different angle. I was beginning to understand the wonder in that, and it was better late than never. I stared at Jake, and I knew what was the greatest difference: with Jake I had taken a life; with Nicholas I had created one.

Jake opened his eyes one at a time just as I was finis.h.i.+ng his portrait. He turned onto his side. "Paige," he said, looking down, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."