Black River

EIGHTY-NINE

On the seventh day, O’Brien began to see changes for the better in Kim. They walked on the beach, Kim laughing as she watched little Max romp in the sea foam, bark at gulls, the breeze across the Atlantic lifting Max’s ears like small bird wings. It had been seven days since O’Brien had brought Kim to a small pink cottage framed with red and blue bougainvillea tucked away in a semi-private cove of white sand and sea oats on Key Largo. They swam in the Atlantic. Baked in the sun. Ate fresh fruits and broiled fish. Took long walks, the sunshine and sea salt healing the cuts and bruises on her body.

O’Brien knew that the restoration of her mind, her spirit was going to take more time. In some latent form, the scars inflicted by Silas Jackson would be with Kim for the rest of her life. During their first vacation week, they didn’t talk about what had happened. It was too early. Too raw. And then after swimming in the gin clear water on the afternoon of the seventh day, a brief shower fell over the sea and lagoon.

She lifted her face to the sky, letting the soft warm drops splash off her face and into her open mouth. She closed her eyes, treading water and lifting her hands, letting the rain hit her palms. In less than a minute, the shower passed, moving further out into the ocean, the sun peeking behind a few clouds.

They swam to the shore, stepped out of the water and sat on a beach towel, Kim’s eyes fixed far away on the horizon.

She turned to look at O’Brien and said, “I’ve tried so hard to wrap my head around what happened. I keep seeing his face, the tattoo on his chest and arm, the sour smell of his bed and body. I kept thinking…why me? Why did a psychopath pick me? He wanted to breed me like selected farm stock. And then I stopped asking myself: why me?” She paused, took a deep breath and, for a full minute, watched Max peacefully sleeping between them on the towel.

O’Brien listened quietly.

Kim said, “Think about this, Sean. What if Gus Louden had never walked in the Tiki Bar with that old photo and the mystery surrounding it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if he’d never showed up? Never been there. I would have still tried out for the part in the movie. I would have still met Silas Jackson on the film set. And odds are that all of this would have happened with one big exception.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the fact that, without you looking for the woman in the painting, you wouldn’t have found me. You would have never known about Silas Jackson and his lewd habits. He simply could have put a gun to my head one day, drug me off to his hideout, and raped and killed me. But, because of Gus Louden’s appearance and because of the journey you went through — you eventually came to me — preventing a psychopath from raping and killing. In some fixed way, a prearranged safety net was placed under me. Sure, I took a fall. But I walked away. Somehow and some way all of this was inner-connected, and I survived. What if you were supposed to find me? I feel very lucky and even blessed.”

“I met a man, or at least I think I met him…”

“What do you mean…you think you met him?”

“Because I hadd been hit with a syringe filled with some drug designed to induce a coma and subsequent death. I’m fortunate that the needle hit a bone in my shoulder and broke before all the chemicals could get into my blood. But later that night, I had a dream or some kind of vision and an old Confederate officer started talking about the connectivity of what we see and what we often don’t see. Not because we can’t, we simple aren’t looking for it.”

“Sounds like a higher level of consciousness. When Jackson was about to rape me, I felt like time was standing still. There was really no concept of time…only of being. I noticed things I’d never notice before. Smells. Pieces of fabric. Rust spots on the ceiling. The putrid green color of the walls.” She touched his hand. “Sean, this trip to the Keys has been so much of what I needed. I’m very grateful. But when we get back, I’m quitting my job.”

“Why?”

“It’s time to, really. My mother needs me. She’s fighting cancer. I’m going back to Michigan to be her caregiver for as long as she has left.”

“Will you be returning to Ponce Inlet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Should I come back?”

“Yes. Will you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if you’re going to accept the knighthood?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, you’ll always be my knight. Maybe your armor is a little tarnished, but you’re still my knight.” She leaned in and kissed him softly. “Oh, look Sean, a rainbow. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen one that spectacular. Look at the arch. It’s going from one end of the horizon at sea to the other. It makes an absolute perfect half circle.”

“It really makes a full circle. We can only see half of it.”

“How could you see if a rainbow is full circle?”

“Probably from a plane. From a higher angle.”

“If it’s a complete circle, there’s no end.”

“Maybe it’s the beginning we should look for.”

Max sat next to Kim, and they all looked at the horizon where the Atlantic met the skyline. The wind stopped and the surface of the sea suddenly became calm, flat. The full reflection of the rainbow appeared over the surface, reflecting from the sky to the sea, the massive image forming a full circle.

O’Brien squeezed Kim’s hand, watching as a flock of seven white pelicans fly into the colors of the rainbow, the heart of a flawless ring.

And, for a brief moment in time, heaven connected with earth.