The Truth About Air & Water (Truth in Lies #2) (11 page)

“More please,” I say again to my dad now. “And thanks for earlier,” I whisper.

He nods. “That’s all I’ve got. You should go home. Change clothes. Get some rest. Cara’s spending the day with Mom. You can check in with her, with both of them actually.”

“What should I say? To Cara? About Linc?” I don’t know what to say. I haven’t known what to say for sixteen hours it seems. “What if he doesn’t remember me, Dad,” I say in a low voice so that Davis doesn’t overhear. I give voice to what I now know to be true about those last moments with Linc. The panic rises inside. “At the last. Before he went for the second CAT Scan and emergency surgery. He didn’t seem to know who I was.” My breathing gets erratic, and I fight the onset of a panic attack. I can’t afford to do this in front of my dad or Linc’s.
Get it together.

“It’s probably temporary.” My dad grips my hands and holds them painfully tight, bringing me back, and forcing me to breathe. “Hang in there.” His stern voice centers me. I calm down in a matter of seconds as my dad holds my gaze and prevents me from falling apart. “His brain was swelling,” he says in a low voice. “It affects different parts like that. Memory. Just know that the surgery went well. He’s still critical, but he’s stable. That’s very good news. Got it?”

I slowly nod and attempt to take in what he’s just told me, irrationally comparing it to what my dad didn’t say.

Then, I glance over at Davis and attempt a watery smile for the man. He holds my gaze for a moment and rewards me with indifference and then resumes his post, looking out the blind-covered window toward at what must be a perfect view of the parking lot and says nothing, like always. The same attitude he’s held since he arrived.

I look back at my dad. He gives me reassurance with a simple nod of his head. He and I share the same feelings about Davis Presley.

“He’s intense,” my dad said to me in late August once, after they had all returned from golfing together one sunny afternoon on one of Linc’s rare days off.

“Understatement,” I’d said back to him. “I’m a walk in the park compared to that guy,” I’d whispered to my dad with a offbeat laugh. “No wonder Linc loves me.”

“No wonder,” my dad had said.

Now, Dad holds my hand and slides into the waiting room chair beside mine with a deep sigh. I appreciate his presence. His unwavering support. Linc’s dad makes me feel unsure and uncertain. Two separate
un-feelings
. He makes me question myself, my feelings, my reactions to the situation. My obviously unwelcome status as Linc’s future wife. Luckily, my dad makes me feel wanted and loved. I have to hold onto that.

“What do I tell Cara? She just got him back. We both did.”

“Just tell her that her Daddy hurt his head, and he’s resting. That’s the truth. That’s all we know.”

“What are we afraid of though? What’s the worst that can happen?” I give voice to more of the unspoken questions and allow fear to gain some additional harbor in the less than hopeful light spectrum of my psyche. I look into the warm eyes of my father that mirror mine and give life to the pure terror that has begun a slow crawl inside of me for the past sixteen hours in a bold attempt to take a firm and permanent hold of me.

It looks like it’s been doing the same thing to my dad. It’s hard to miss the empathy reflected in his eyes and the veiled softness in his tone when he finally speaks. “The brain is an amazing entity, but trauma to it is tricky and unpredictable. The good thing is they got him to surgery…so amazingly fast. I think they mitigated the damage from the swelling.” He stops. It’s fairly easy to discern the complete transformation from father to doctor within his single moment of hesitation. “They don’t know his prognosis, and they won’t know anything more until he wakes up, and they won’t be allowing that to happen for a while. They’ll keep him in a drug-induced coma to give him the necessary rest. And you need some too. They want to give his body and mind time to heal. So, you need to prepare for the long haul, Tally. Get some rest. Check in at work. See Mom. Talk to Cara.
Eat something.
He’s in the best place he can be and there’s nothing you can do right now except take care of yourself until he’s awake. And then, we’ll see where we’re at.”

They don’t know. They won’t know.

“Daddy?”

“They don’t know.” My dad is in clinical mode, divorcing himself from me as his daughter and beholden to the medical powers that be.
It scares me.

He looks up and over at Davis, who watches the two of us from the far side of the room in absolute silence.

I don’t know my future father-in-law well. He is a hard man to read. He is an older version of his son with a hint of grey at his dark hair line and the same startling grey-blue eyes as Linc. Davis is just as tall and tan and powerful, and he is most certainly all about baseball, just like Linc.

Linc’s dad has been kind and receptive to me, for the most part, since we announced our engagement this past summer, although he tends to stare at me, at these odd moments when we meet up with him as if I am an enigma that he can’t quite figure out. I get that he is less than thrilled to find out we were planning to elope and join his family even sooner than expected, but if the past hours have taught me anything I also sense he is actually more than a little puzzled as to why his son—his one and only prodigal son—has chosen me. It’s the one thing we have in common I suppose. We both wonder why Linc loves me.

“Davis, you should go home and get some rest,” my dad in doctor mode says. “I’ve told Tally this too. Visiting hours will be set for this afternoon. You both need to catch the doctors on their rounds and get an update. I’ll be here in case anything changes, and you have my cell number.”

“I’m staying. Tally should go. For a while.” His gruff answer provides absolutely no leeway for any kind of argument, not even with my father.

I find myself standing still for a few seconds dissecting what he’s just said and how he’s said it and then I mindlessly start to follow my dad out into the hallway. I’m intent on exiting the room as quickly as possible because, in that singular moment, I realize that Davis Presley really doesn’t like me. At all.

“I’ll be back soon. A few hours at the most. With food and coffee,” I say turning back and pasting on a ready smile for Linc’s dad. Davis nods, but he barely glances our way and then turns his full attention back to the sports magazine in front of him just as the door swings closed between us.

He hates me.

My dad doesn’t say anything about Davis’ dismissive attitude. I just get a sympathetic look from him. “He’s under a lot of pressure. We all are,” my dad eventually says with a little sigh.

“That’s not it,” I say with sudden understanding. “He’s not exactly thrilled with the idea of me as his daughter-in-law.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s just something I know.”

“Something he said?” My dad asks looking as if he’s ready to defend my honor right this second with Linc’s dad.

“More like what he doesn’t say,” I whisper back.

Our intense conversation is abruptly interrupted by the sudden activity taking place in the critical care unit. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on while the speakers overhead announce
Code Blue
.

My mind somehow knows it’s Linc. I stand motionless in the middle of the hallway as doctors and nurses rally for the sudden onslaught of trauma.

Line drives.

There are all kinds.

There are so many.

Crisis averted. Code blue with Linc remedied. The famous baseball player is pronounced stable once again forty-eight hours later.

On the third day, my dad drives me home to their new house in Saint Francis Wood which I’ve spent less than five hours in. I hang back, telling my dad, I need a minute alone. I lean back into the confines of the passenger seat and vaguely listen as the tick of the hot engine invariably begins to cool down. Then, I sullenly stare up at this newest Landon purchase and attempt to equate the idea of home with this house they’ve bought in San Francisco, which is so far away from our suburbia hometown of Atherton. Tommy will attend Lowell next year and create all new memories of high school that will be so different from the ones that transpired for Holly and me at Palo Alto High School. I haven’t quite reconciled my family’s move here, not in my mind or my heart. We don’t belong here. This isn’t home. Home was Atherton. Home was my own room across the hall from Holly’s. Home is now packed up in storage boxes in the basement of this small wonder of a house, half the size of the palatial homestead they had in Atherton.

“It’s close to the hospital. It has a two-car garage. Grass. Some space.” My dad points out these amenities in a quiet subdued tone each time I visit them here. “We’re close to you, Tally. She likes that. She wants to be near you. You and Cara. And Linc. Your mom needs that.”

Alamo Square. Tremblay’s house, which I inadvertently inherited via the estate she left to Cara, is twenty minutes away from this one by car and less than a half an hour by transit if all goes according to plan. I adhere to a schedule. Public transit remains my preference and mode of transportation when I can make it work. Yes, I am still terrified of cars, the 101 on rainy days, sunny ones too I suppose, and black SUVs that are driven too fast.

I stare at the house some more searching for home. Home—the one I remember—is long gone. That’s unfortunate because today I need home.

There’s a small tap tap on the side of the car window. I sigh deep and alight from the car. Cara stands back from me right there on the perfectly cut green lawn in an introspective stance with her little arms behind her back. She’s not quite trusting. She’s not quite sure. She is my daughter in every way. She reaches out one of her chubby little hands toward my face as I kneel down in front of her and lightly strokes my cheek. She fingers my hair and face. Her touch is the best remedy I’ve had so far in the past several days and exactly what I need the most. Welcome home.

“Hi, sweetie.”

I gather up her little form in my arms and breathe in her baby shampoo scent and revel in her sweetness, wrapping myself all around her. For a few precious moments, I convince myself that everything will be okay. Tears threaten and begin to sting my eyes and effectively slam me back into reality. I close them to avoid the fresh onslaught of pain and bury my face into Cara’s little shoulder, take a deep breath, and hold it for seconds.

I need Cara today. I needed her three days ago when a line drive from a baseball just about shattered our lives. The weight of it all—the close calls and the unknowns and the ever-present fear—practically suffocate me, even as I take comfort in holding my precious three-year-old.

I truly need her today and always. Eventually, I choke the words out. “Daddy hurt his head. He’s sleeping at the hospital right now because all these great doctors are taking care of him. He’s going to fine.” I breathe these consoling words out to our little girl.

And I almost believe them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hold Your Head Up -TALLY

Lying.
I lied with the best of them.
The worst of them. I could lie better than most anyone. My analyst—psychotherapist? Counselor? Whichever sounds cooler, said, “I use lying as a coping mechanism to better control the outcome.”

“So it’s destiny,” I’d said back to her.