Always Watching

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The police called later that evening. They’d arrested Aaron at the scene, and, still in custody, he’d been rushed to the hospital for a gunshot wound. He’d lost a lot of blood and was recovering on the same ward as Robbie, but with an armed guard. Daniel and Joseph had escaped. The police weren’t able to search the commune without a warrant, and at the moment they didn’t have enough evidence that either of them might be hiding there to get one.

They were now contacting authorities in other countries to keep an eye out for Daniel and Joseph, in case they fled to one of the foreign communes. They’d also arrested Mary, but she was refusing to talk, still protecting her son. She did admit it was her car he’d made his escape in, after Joseph had taken the truck.

The next morning, Robbie had his surgery. I wasn’t working, but I tried to busy myself at the hospital, so I’d be around in case anything went wrong. Finally, Dr. Anderson paged me that Robbie was in recovery and starting to wake up. The procedure was successful, but he’d had another minor heart attack during surgery, so they wanted to keep him a few days, just for observation. I could see him now.

I walked into Robbie’s room and slowed as I neared his bed. His eyes were closed, and my pulse spiked when I noticed how pale he looked.

He opened his eyes when I reached his side. “Some nurse took my damn hat.”

He smiled at himself. Hating his vulnerability but knowing that I’d get the joke. Robbie had never liked to be without his baseball cap—only time I remember him not wearing one was at funerals. We’d had far too many of those.

“I’ll get you another one.” I smiled back, relieved to see he was in good spirits. I’d been worried about depression—something men often experience after a heart attack, especially because he’d just lost Brew. I felt a wave of sadness, thinking of my brother going home to an empty house. Almost like he’d read my mind, Robbie’s smile also faded, and we held gazes.

I said, “I’m sorry about Brew. The police brought his body out of the tank and Steve Phillips took him to the vet. Do you want him cremated?”

Steve had seen all the police cars going to my brother’s place and followed behind. I’d only spoken to him for seconds before climbing into the back of the ambulance, but he’d promised to look after Brew.

Robbie nodded and looked away, fiddling with the bandage on his chest. His voice thick, he said, “Can I have some water?”

I handed him his cup, helping him with the straw. When he was done, I set the cup back on the side table and sat down in the chair. Trying to pull myself together from the upset of seeing my brother with tubes coming out of him, I took a moment to unwind the scarf from around my neck, then stuffed it in my pocket.

Speaking low, almost in a mumble, Robbie said, “You did that in the ambulance.”

Thinking he might be groggy from pain medication, I said, “Did what?”

“Took off your scarf and shoved it in your pocket.”

I narrowed my eyes, tried to remember what he was talking about—the trip in the ambulance still a blur. The only time I remembered taking off my scarf was after he’d flatlined and they were giving him chest compressions. The stress and heat in the ambulance had made me feel like I was strangling.

“You were unconscious….”

“It was more than that.” His voice was impatient. “You know I wouldn’t make this shit up. I saw you—like I was above you. You took the scarf off so fast you ripped your earring out. It’s under that stretcher I was on.”

Now I remembered the pinging sound, so focused on Robbie that I’d ignored it. I sat back in the chair, stunned into silence. How did he know that?

He said, “I don’t want to talk about this much—it scared the crap out of me, okay? And don’t go telling a bunch of people. They’ll think I’m nuts.”

Still trying to process what he’d just told me, I said, “Okay…”

“It was kind of like what Aaron described. I was outside, I could see you, and hear your thoughts. You were really scared—I tried to talk to you, but I couldn’t. I felt calm, though, and really peaceful.”

He had to have been hallucinating. I was about to explain that it was probably a neurological response to the lack of oxygen, then stopped when I realized that most hallucinations produced from an oxygen-starved brain would cause confusion or disorientation, not a calm, peaceful image. And I couldn’t explain how he knew my earring had fallen off. Even if he’d still had auditory response, there was no way he could’ve seen me remove my scarf.

Robbie stared back up at the ceiling, blinking hard. “Something happened to me in that ambulance. I don’t know what it was, or why it happened.” He met my eyes. “But I’m not afraid to die anymore.”

I thought of Paul, thought of my mother and father, about my own fears of death. Then I realized I’d climbed down into that septic tank without a moment’s hesitation. Being forced to conquer my fear in the barn had set me free.

I was overwhelmed by emotions and thoughts I wanted to take out and look at when I was alone. “Well, you’re not dying on my watch.”

He smiled, but then his face turned serious, the lines pulling deep around his mouth. “I should’ve protected you better when we were kids.”

“You did protect me—the best you could. You were only sixteen. Your job wasn’t to look after me. Our parents should’ve protected both of us.”

Anger washed across his face. “You’re always blaming them for everything that happened when we were kids. They tried their best.”

I wasn’t surprised at the disconnection between my memories and his. I’d seen it many times in therapy, two siblings having a completely different opinion of their childhood. It was classic in a dysfunctional family, where the abuse was never discussed and the abuser always defended. But it made me sad. That the silence, and all things we don’t talk about, still separated us.

I said, “I loved them too—but they had a lot of problems.”

“You don’t even know what it was like. You were never around.”

And there it was: the resentment. I’d moved away, and he’d stayed.

I tried to calm down, fighting my urge to defend myself for breaking the cardinal rule of our family—unhappy or not, never talk about what was really going on. My trying to seek personal happiness, to rise out of the tears and black eyes, the screaming and crying, was the worst betrayal of all. I’d developed ideas, spoke the language of feelings, and worst, I’d been impatient and angry with them for not wanting more, for not trying to join me in my world. And they’d felt it.

I wanted to explain that leaving was the only way I could survive, that our family was mired in pain and denial, and that I couldn’t pretend anymore, couldn’t keep the silence. But Robbie had just had surgery and shouldn’t be getting upset, so I kept it all in, again, and said, “You could’ve left.”

“How, Nadine? How the fuck was I supposed to do that? So Dad could beat Mom to death? So he could fall down the stairs one night?”

Robbie’s face was red. The old anger finally coming to a head. My attempt to skirt the surface of our issues had failed. And it wasn’t the first time. In this intimate moment, death’s shadow still lingering between us, I realized that I always felt this in our conversations, had always done this. Thinking that I was holding back, but still my urge to push, to heal and fix, so people could be what I needed, was always there. In my tone, in the subtle way my tongue pushed the words out of my mouth. And my brother, the only person who’d shared my blood and my story, knew what I was really saying, even when I wasn’t speaking at all.

So now I said it out loud, for the first time in our lives.

“They weren’t your responsibility. They were adults. They made their own choices—and so did you. I’m not going to let you blame me for that.”

The beeping of the monitor signaled the emotions warring in Robbie’s body. Then something changed in his face. He rested his head back on the pillow, his breathing still heavy but his heart rate starting to slow.

After a moment, looking up at the ceiling, he said, “You’re right. I could’ve left. But I didn’t want to drive over there one day and find Mom dead, hanging from a rafter or something, Dad passed out in his own puke. I always thought if I just watched over them, I could stop it, I could make everything be okay. But they both died anyway.” He paused for a beat. “Maybe I just used them as a reason for not having to deal with my own shit. I never could take a chance, not even for Willow.” He turned his face toward me. “I was glad you got away. I liked thinking of you in your nice house, with your family.”

Tears were leaking from my eyes. Robbie’s were also damp, his mouth a grimace as he fought back the tears. I’d been wrong. He did know, he did see.

I said, “When we love people, we want to help them—even when they don’t want it. But sometimes we just end up hurting ourselves.”

He said, “You’ve done well, though. I’m proud of you.” And he was. I could hear it in his voice. The anger I’d felt from him all these years wasn’t because I’d followed my life’s path: It was because I’d pushed him to do the same. I thought of Lisa, wondered if that was the root of all our problems.

I said, “My family wasn’t perfect either. I made a lot of mistakes with Lisa.”

“What happened between you two?”

“I don’t know…. Maybe too much happened.” I told him about Garret. Then about my own memories in the barn with Aaron, while watching Robbie’s monitor and pausing when his heart rate spiked, reminding him to breathe.

When he’d calmed down a little, he said, “That bastard—hope he gets the crap beat out of him in prison. You should tell Lisa what happened to you.”

“Maybe. If she ever speaks to me again.”

“You haven’t heard from her?”

“No. I’d hoped she’d leave the commune once Aaron was arrested.” I explained what I’d learned from the police. “But I have a feeling she’s still there.”

He grew paler, starting to look tired. He rested his head on the pillow, his eyelids drooping. “Keep me posted, okay?”

“I will. But I should let you get some rest. See you in the morning.”

After I left Robbie’s room, I called the sergeant. The police still hadn’t had any sightings of Joseph or Daniel. Joy, who apparently ran the commune alongside Aaron, wouldn’t let them search the premises, and they still didn’t have cause to get a warrant because neither of the men had been seen entering the building. The sergeant suspected they were probably off the island now anyway, but he said they’d still get Robbie protection—he was a key witness in Willow’s murder. Now that he was awake, they’d also take his statement, and they were assembling a forensics team to search for Willow at the old site. She was finally going home.

I didn’t understand why none of the members, especially Lisa, had left the commune now that Aaron was under arrest. The sergeant told me that it was possible most of them didn’t know what had happened. They didn’t have phones, TV, or Internet access. Their only information came from the staff, and they were obviously keeping everything quiet until they were able to speak with Aaron.

In the parking lot, I sat in my car for a moment, staring at the hospital through the thick wall of rain that had started thundering down, and thought about my conversation with my brother. It scared me, how close I had come to losing him—and his story about my earring. Everything on the other side of my window looked distorted now, flashes of colors and pale faces as bodies rushed by, but I couldn’t make out features, couldn’t bring their edges into focus. Aaron’s words came to mind. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The hospital was a gray blur, through my tears and the rain. I wondered which room was my brother’s, thinking how at peace he had seemed when he spoke about how he’d nearly died. Then I thought of Paul, of those last moments before he took his final breath and died in my arms, how serene his face had looked as he let go of me. Now I realized I was the one who had never really let go of him.

That evening I spent a lot of time thinking about my life—and how it had also nearly ended. Then I made some decisions. I arrived early to visit Robbie the next day, and after he fell back asleep, I made my way upstairs to Kevin’s office.

At my knock, his voice rang out, “Come in.”

I hesitated. Would he want anything to do with me after I’d been so aloof? I’d never know unless I tried. I took a breath and opened the door.

He looked up in surprise, started to stand. “Nadine…”

I motioned for him to stay seated and took the chair across from him.

I met his gaze, thinking how handsome he looked as he brushed his hair back with one hand, his forearm muscles flexing. I said, “I owe you an apology.”

He cocked his head, a small smile playing about his lips. “You’re just figuring this out?”

“I’m a bit slow sometimes.” I stepped out on the edge of my emotions, stood teetering for a moment, jumped. “You’re right. I have been running away. I guess I’m scared… of this, of what it could mean.”

“I’m scared too. That’s a good thing. I like the way you make me feel.”

We held gazes again, a slow thrum of nervous excitement hitting right below my heart. But there was something I had to make clear.

“My daughter, Lisa. She’s still in the commune, and she’s my number one priority right now—and forever.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“That being said, if you’d like to spend some time together, I could use a friend.”

He raised his brows. “A friend?”

“A friendly friend. I’d like to see where this could go.” I raised my own brow, pleased to see his answering smile. “We could start by having dinner again?”

“I’d like that.”

“Maybe I’ll even audition for your band. I play a mean tambourine.”

“Let’s not get carried away now.”

We both laughed, then he reached across the desk and held my hand.

This time there were no flashes of images, no guilt about Paul. But I remembered, when Paul was alive, how he’d try to steal moments like this at the clinic, catching my hand as I sped by, but I’d pull away, intent on my task.

Death makes you wish you’d done everything differently, had been in less of a hurry. This time I would enjoy the journey.

Life is for the living.