Daughter of Ashes

TWENTY-THREE

‘There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again…’

T. S. Eliot, ‘East Coker,’ 1940

Dwight arrived at Our Song on Monday morning ready for work and positively beaming. ‘Have you seen Grace’s posting on Caring Bridge this morning?’ he called as he paused at my open kitchen window.

I leaned over the sink, tweaked the curtain aside and peered out. ‘No. From the look on your face, though, I gather it’s good news. I could use some good news about now.’

‘Rusty’s awake.’

‘Gosh, that’s great! Do you think I’ll be allowed to visit?’

‘I wish you would. They had him sitting up in bed last night. He’s groggy and a bit confused, but the doctor thinks visits from people he knows would be a good thing.’

‘Consider it done,’ I said.

On the drive up to the hospital in Salisbury, I stopped at a grocery store to buy a selection of tabloid newspapers. Reading about the improbable lives of the rich and famous never failed to amuse me, especially when they were giving birth to alien babies. As I rolled the tabloids up together and tied them with ribbon, I hoped Rusty would appreciate knowing about the bigfoot who kept a lumberjack as a love slave, or that JFK was still alive, spotted living in a love nest with Marilyn Monroe in Oklahoma.

When I walked into Rusty’s hospital room, I found him as his father had described: sitting up in bed, holding a tall cup and sipping from a bent straw. Except for a bandaged forehead, greenish-yellow bruising around both eyes and a badly swollen lip, he looked almost normal.

His stepmother looked up, tried to place me and failed.

‘I’m Hannah Ives,’ I said, crossing to the door and standing at the foot of Rusty’s bed. ‘Your husband is doing our renovations.’

Grace’s face brightened. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased to meet you at last. I usually make a point of visiting all of Dwight’s clients at some time or other, but…’ She shrugged.

‘Mom’s a one-woman Welcome Wagon, the Lemon Bar Queen of the Western World,’ Rusty said through bruised lips.

Grace blushed to the roots of her close-cropped, dark brown hair. I wondered if she’d told Rusty yet about the unfortunate death of his biological mother, and chastised myself for thinking that of all the possible suspects in his mother’s murder, Rusty had the solidest of alibis.

‘Rusty exaggerates,’ his stepmother said. ‘But I’m glad you came. It’s been a rough day.’

After two false starts, Rusty managed to set his drink down on the bedside table. ‘A lot can happen when you’re in a coma. Someone can murder your mother, for example.’

Grace reached out and squeezed her stepson’s hand, held it tight. ‘I considered not telling you, sweetheart, but I knew you’d never forgive me if you found out about it from someone else.’

‘I’m sorry about Kendall, of course,’ Rusty said, ‘but she was never much of a motherly mom, if you know what I mean.’

Grace bristled. ‘Kendall gave you that motorcycle, Rusty. She loved you in her own way.’

Rusty stared at Grace as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘You look like you could use a break, Mom. Why don’t you go down to the cafeteria and get some lunch? And when you come back, will you bring me a Diet Coke? In the meantime, I can catch up with Mrs Ives about the reno.’

‘It’s a little behind schedule,’ I told Rusty after Grace had left the room, ‘but honestly, I’m not concerned. Even though he’s short staffed, your dad has things under control. How are you feeling?’ I asked, genuinely concerned.

‘Sore. Stiff. And I’ve got a helluva headache when the meds wear off.’ Rusty shifted on his bed and grimaced.

‘Do you remember anything about the accident?’

Rusty tugged impatiently at his sheet. ‘I can’t wait to get out of here!’

‘The accident?’ I prodded. ‘Do you remember it?’

Rusty frowned. ‘I remember pouring milk on my corn flakes at breakfast, then next thing I know, I wake up here and it’s ten days later.’ He rubbed a hand over the reddish stubble on his chin. ‘Being in a coma can be a real out-of-body experience, you know? Part of me thinks I went to Aruba.’

That made me laugh.

‘Mom tells me you’re the one who found me by the side of the road and called nine-one-one,’ Rusty continued. ‘I want to thank you for that. If you hadn’t come along…’ He shuddered.

‘I saw the car that hit you, but I wasn’t able to get the license number or see the driver because of the tinted windows.’ I paused, wondering whether to go on, but decided to risk it. ‘I think it was a late-model black Mustang. Do you know anybody who drives a car like that?’

Rusty’s eyes flicked to the left then back again, but failed to meet mine. ‘’Fraid not.’

Oh, yes you do, I thought.

‘You were riding right behind a manure wagon? Do you remember that?’

‘Nuh, uh.’

‘The farmer driving the wagon saw the car, too. He’s actually the one who called nine-one-one while I was…’ I swallowed hard, remembering. ‘While I was checking on you.’

‘What the heck was I doing riding off in the middle of the work day anyway?’

I explained about the need for waterproof tape.

Rusty instinctively reached up to rub his forehead, touched the bandage instead and recoiled as if shocked. ‘I don’t remember that or anything, Mrs Ives.’

‘What is the last thing you do remember?’

Rusty closed his eyes and rested his head against one of the pillows that had been plumped up behind his back. ‘They say I wasn’t wearing a helmet. How can that be? I always wear a helmet. I’m not an idiot.’

‘When you set off on your motorcycle that afternoon, you couldn’t find it. That’s why I was driving behind you. Just after you left I went looking for it myself and found the helmet behind the woodpile.’

‘What the fu-’ he began, then flushed. ‘What the hell was it doing there?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t remember much of anything from that day,’ he said again. ‘I remember having breakfast, my usual corn flakes, then riding to work… after that, literally, nothing.’ He passed a hand in front of his face, as if erasing a chalk board.

I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way. ‘I think they call it retrograde amnesia. It should get better. Give it time.’

‘I can’t find my, my… what do you call it?’ He wrinkled his nose and pantomimed using a telephone.

‘Your cell phone?’

‘Yeah, that. Cell phone. Shit! I can’t even remember that!’

‘You had it in your pocket, Rusty. I dug it out to call nine-one-one, but the farmer showed up saying he’d already placed the call.’ I paused, trying to remember what I’d done with Rusty’s phone after that. I’d been holding it, and then…

‘Didn’t it come to the hospital with your things?’ I asked.

‘No. I asked a nurse to look for it, but she struck out. All my stuff’s in a plastic bag over there,’ he said, waving in the direction of a tall wooden locker in the corner of the room.

Thinking about the many features on my own iPhone, most of which I never used, I asked, ‘Do you have the Find My iPhone app?’

‘Check,’ Rusty said. ‘Got my buddy to try tracking the phone that way, but the battery must have died. He went back to look along the road, too, but he wasn’t sure of the exact spot, and I sure as hell couldn’t tell him where, so he came up empty.’

‘We’ve had some rain. If it’s still at the side of the road… Gosh, I hope it’s not ruined.’ I passed the scene of the accident every day, reran the tape in my head on instant replay. ‘Would you like me to look for it?’

‘That would be great. Thanks.’

‘What’s your cell number, Rusty? When I get near the spot, I’ll try to call it.’

‘That’s another thing I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Grace wrote it down for me. It’s on a piece of paper in the drawer of the end table.’

I located the number and tapped it into my contacts list. ‘I’ll give it a shot, but wouldn’t it be simpler to replace the phone?’

Rusty lowered his eyes and spoke to his folded hands. ‘There’s stuff on the phone I don’t want to lose.’

‘No backups?’

He flushed. ‘Actually, there’s things I don’t want Mom to see.’

I’d never had a teenaged son, but I could imagine. ‘Texts from your girlfriend?’ I teased. ‘Naughty selfies?’

‘Something like that.’ He managed a grin, but I could tell that it pained him.

We chatted for a bit about the general progress of the renovations, talking about the roof repair in particular, when Grace returned with a Diet Coke and I bid them both goodbye.

On the way home, I pulled over at the accident scene, parked and crossed to the opposite side of the road. I could tell why Rusty’s buddy hadn’t been able to locate the spot where Rusty had been struck. The rain had obliterated all traces of tire tracks from the emergency vehicles that had come to assist the injured man. If I hadn’t recognized the stand of poplars I would have had a tough time finding it again, too.

Stepping carefully down the embankment, slipping on the damp leaves, I made my way toward the base of the tree where Rusty had lain. I eased my phone out of my purse and dialed Rusty’s number, waited, listened. It rang four times, but I heard nothing before the phone clicked over to Rusty’s voicemail: Hey. At the beep. You know what to do.

Moving back and forth methodically, I kicked the leaves aside. After several minutes, the toe of my sandal struck something hard. An empty bottle of cheap rum called ‘Stagger Lee.’ I tossed the bottle deeper into the woods and kept looking.

Five minutes later, I hit pay dirt. ‘Tah dah!’ I announced in triumph to the trees. I leaned over and picked up the phone. After wiping the case dry on my slacks, I pressed the ‘on’ button. Again, nothing. The phone was definitely dead.

Back at home, I plugged it into my charger. While I waited for it to recharge, I put the Keurig to work making me a cup of decaf, but after two cups of coffee and an hour’s wait, the phone still showed no signs of life. I considered putting it into a slow oven to dry – I was sure I’d heard that tip somewhere – but decided on a more cautious approach. I ran a vacuum cleaner hose over all the sound and plug holes, then pulled a Ziploc bag out of a drawer, filled it with rice and sealed the iPhone inside the bag.

In two or three days Rusty would either be shopping for a new cell phone or I would be discovering exactly what he so desperately wanted to stop Grace finding out.