Evercrossed (7 page)

"The white car!" she yelled. "Brake! Brake!" He did—and nearly dumped her onto the trunk of the VW. Breathless, leaping from the chair. Ivy unlocked the car with two clicks. Slipping into the driver's seat, she tossed her release papers and purse in the back. Guy left the wheelchair on a patch of grass and hopped into the car.

They drove away, laughing, the windows down and the wind in their hair.

Nine

"ISABEL?" IVY SAID WHEN THEY HAD STOPPED FOR A traffic light. "Is that what I look like to you?"

Guy peeked sideways at her. "It seemed like a good name for a sister."

Ivy drove on. Common sense would dictate that she take Route 28, a road with lots of beach traffic and people around, in case he wasn't trustworthy. Instead, succumbing to instinct—or insanity—she chose Route 6, a highway that ran the spine of Cape Cod and would quickly put distance between them and the hospital.

"So, what's your name?" he asked.

"Ivy."

"Ivy. Izzy—I wasn't too far off. But Ivy is better for a girlfriend."

She didn't reply, telling herself that he wasn't flirting, and more important, that she didn't want him to. "Where are we going, Ivy?"

"I haven't decided. It looks as if Andy cleaned you up pretty well."

"Are you saying I looked raunchy?" he replied, then his demeanor softened.

"I don't know what I would have done without Andy." Ivy sighed. "I feel so guilty!"

"I hope we don't get him in trouble."

There was a long silence. "Well, nothing we can do
about it
now," she said, glancing toward Guy. "Those Nikes have seen better days."

He lifted one foot and pulled back the shoe's rubber sole, grinning at her.

"I'm taking the Dennis exit. We're getting you new shoes and a shirt."

"We are? Are you any good at shoplifting?" he asked.

"I'm buying," she replied.

"No," he said quickly.

"Yes," she insisted.

"Ivy, no. I don't want you to do anything more for me."
Was this some kind of pride thing?
she wondered.

"What are you going
to do
about it?" she
asked
aloud. "Open the car door and get out? I'm going sixty."

"Seventy," he corrected. She glanced at the speedometer and slowed down.

Another long silence followed. She knew what he needed—his family, friends, and memories—but all she had to offer were things that money could buy.

"Do you remember anything?" she asked. "Like whether you live on Cape Cod or were just visiting?"

"I live here." His initial moment of hesitation tipped her off. "I see. That's why you thought Providence was the next town over, rather than the capital of Rhode Island."

Guy took a deep breath and let it out, as if she were trying his patience. "It's like this. Some things—names, a person, an object, even a smell— seem familiar, but I don't know how or why. As soon as I try to focus on what seems familiar, it slips away."

"That's hard." She heard Guy turn in his seat and was aware of him studying her; she kept her eyes on the road.

"Was it like that for you?" he asked.

"Yes—and no. I couldn't recall the crash, but I knew who I was when I woke up. And I knew what I had lost."

"Which was?" he asked.

She didn't answer. "Here's our exit." Ivy drove a half mile along a two lane road bordered by a mix of deciduous trees and scrub pine, then turned into a lot serving a small strip of stores, where she and her mother had stopped a few days before. Between the shops of Wicker & Wood and Everything Cranberry was a store that sold sportswear. Ivy parked at the sandy edge of the lot, where the trees provided shade. Pulling the keys out of the ignition, she turned to Guy. "What do you think you'll need to get by for a while?"

"I don't need anything from anyone."

"A shirt, sweatshirt, and shorts," she went on, "socks, shoes, underwear ... a towel. What else?" He stared straight ahead, his fists in his lap. Ivy reached for her purse in the back of the car. "Listen, I know this doesn't solve any of the larger challenges you're facing, but it's a start."

Guy exploded. "My larger challenges? You talk like a freaking psychiatrist!"

"Would you prefer that I call them
unsolvable problems
?"

"Wouldn't that be more honest?''

"Only if you think they're unsolvable," she said.

"Next you'll be lecturing me on the twelve step program. Step one: admit you have a problem."

"That's a good beginning," she replied. He grimaced. "Not just the admitting part. It tells us that somehow you know about substance abuse programs. It's a clue."

"A clue telling me what?" he asked incredulously. "That my father was an alcoholic? That my brother—or was it my friends, or was it my mother—did drugs? Maybe I did! Or maybe this clue tells me simply that AA made a presentation at my school and I happened to be listening that day. It tells me nothing!"

Ivy struggled to remain patient. "Obviously, one puzzle piece has no significance in itself. But once you start putting it together with other pieces, it will make a picture. Pay attention when you suddenly come up with a puzzle piece—don't push it off the table in a rage." She dropped her keys in her purse. "Are you coming?"

"No:"

"Don't make such a big deal out of it—you can pay me back later. In the meantime, you can't go without a shirt and decent shoes." She
waited
thirty seconds longer, then got out of the car.

He poked his head out the window. "Nice outfit," he called to her. Ivy glanced down—the bathrobe! She started to laugh.

"Hey, it's my beach wrap."

Using Will's sizes as a guide, Ivy flipped through the brightly colored T-shirts and cotton shorts. Guy was scared, she thought; anyone who'd leave the hospital—a roof, a bed, and food —when he had no other place to go was very afraid of something.

His bouts of anger came from his fear and his hurt pride. If Will were in this situation, would he act this way? She wasn't sure, but Tristan had had that kind of pride.

Ivy added to her list of purchases a large backpack, a pair of cargo pants, sunglasses, and a second towel. At the checkout counter she used her debit card, asking for cash back. Then she stuffed the money, the receipt, and other items in the pack.

Emerging from the store, she walked slowly toward the car, mulling over the situation. When she looked up, she couldn't believe it—Guy was gone. She looked around quickly, as if he might have gotten out of the car to stretch his legs, but he had disappeared. She gazed into the green shade of the woods that bordered the parking lot. His escape route—to where? Guy himself probably had no idea.

He had left her T-shirt on the car seat. Ridiculous, stupid pride! Taking a pen from her purse, she wrote the name "Guy" on the backpack, then picked up the pack, and with all her strength, flung it toward the trees. Afterward, she drove to Nauset Light Beach, where she ran through the pounding surf until she was exhausted, wishing her jumbled emotions could drain into the sea.

"
YOU COULD HAVE CALLED," WILL SAID TWO HOURS later. "You should've had your phone on. You had us worried."

He was working next to the large garden between the cottage and inn, sanding an old bookcase he'd found among Aunt Cindy's stash of furniture. Beth sat nearby in an Adirondack chair, a book opened facedown on the chair's flat arm.

"I told you I was fine," Ivy replied.

"Your appointment was hours ago. I thought something was wrong?"

Ivy removed her shoes and shook the sand out of them. "I went to the beach."

Will's mouth held a straight line and the muscles in his forearms shone with sweat as he sanded furiously. Beth looked from him to Ivy, then back to him.

"Why would you assume that something was wrong?" Ivy asked.

"Given your track record. Ivy, why would I assume things were okay?"

She didn't reply. "If Beth, who wasn't even hospitalized, had gone for a follow-up appointment and arrived home three hours after you expected, wouldn't you have worried?"

"Okay, fine, you win," Ivy said, hoping to end the discussion. Will looked up from his work, his anger gone, but his deep brown eyes troubled. "I'm not trying to win. I'm just trying to understand what's going on."

"Me too," Ivy replied honestly, and headed into the cottage.

Ten

"BUT YOU LIKED TO KAYAK ON THE RIVER AT HOME," Ivy said to Beth at noon on Sunday. With only a few guests staying past the weekend, they had finished work and were returning to the cottage, following the stone path through the garden. "Billingsgate Island sounds so mysterious, rising out of the water at low tide—and that sunken ship!" For the past week, Beth had been complaining of writer's block. "They'll inspire you," Ivy added encouragingly.

"I guess," Beth replied without enthusiasm.

"Maybe it's not the kayaking," Ivy said, after a moment of thought, "but the person you're doing it with. Has something happened since the ice cream date with Chase? You seemed to really like him then."

Beth shrugged. "He texts me a lot."

"Meaning too much," Ivy concluded. "And you're too nice to tell him to back off." Beth turned to Ivy.

"You know you're too kindhearted," Ivy said, smiling at her friend. "You don't even swat at flies."

"I might swat this one," Beth said as she entered the cottage. Ivy retrieved a paperback mystery, one of the many left behind by visitors to the Seabright, and carried it around to the inn's porch.

Oceanside, running the length of the inn and wrapping one comer, the porch had its own special light. In the early morning it was an airy room adrift in the marmalade and yellow of the sunrise, but gradually it became as cool and blue as the distant streak of sea. When no guests were around, Ivy liked sitting there.

Tilting back in a wooden rocker, her feet up on the porch railing, she gazed past the green edge of Aunt Cindy's yard to the ocean and cloudless sky, her mind drifting.

It's such a great feeling, Ivy. Do you know what it's like to float on a lake, a circle of trees around you, a big blue bowl of sky above you? You're lying on top of the water, sun sparkling at the tips of your fingers and toes.

She had pictured it so many times, floating with Tristan at the center of a sun-spangled lake, that the dream had become as tangible as the real memories she carried of Tristan.

Why had she thought that escaping to Cape Cod would put distance between her and her memories? There was water everywhere, and everywhere that there was water, she thought of Tristan.

Ivy sighed, opened her book, and stared at the words without reading them. A week ago she had awakened in the hospital certain that she had been kissed by Tristan.

That had been no
comforting
dream as Beth had suggested; rather, it had made her long all the more for Tristan! And it made painfully clear the difference between what she'd had with Tristan and what she felt for Will. The weekend visitors and full work schedule had helped her and Will get through the last few days, but now that they had time to be together, she had been relieved when he said he was headed into Chatham to shop for art supplies.

"Hey, girl, get off your sweet bum and come running with me," Kelsey called to Ivy, shaking her out of her thoughts.

Kelsey had trotted around the side of the inn and jogged in place for a moment.

Her auburn hair was pulled high on her head in a bouncy ponytail.

Ivy smiled at the invitation, which she suspected wasn't real, and shook her head no. "How far do you run?"

"Today I'm doing five miles on the beach, which is like ten on the road, then twenty minutes of hard swimming and an hour of biking. I'm thinking of doing a triathlon in September."

"You're amazing," Ivy replied.

"You don't have to tell her that," Dhanya said, stepping onto the porch, carrying a bowl of frosty looking blueberries leftover from the inn's breakfast. "Kelsey already thinks it way too often."

"Knows it," Kelsey corrected, then adjusted her iPod and took off for the stairway to the beach.

Dhanya sat down. "Berries?" she asked Ivy, holding out the bowl. "Thanks." Setting the bowl on a small table between them, Dhanya rocked back and forth for a moment, then put her feet up on the railing, studying them.

"Lavender polish looks good on you," Ivy said.

Dhanya wrinkled her nose. "I'll never have pretty feet. Dancers don't—we abuse our toes."

"Do you do ballet?"

"And modern, and jazz, even tap. I used to do Indian, but my teacher was old and strict—she had this thing about attitude.
Discipline, Dhanya, discipline."

Dhanya imitated a British sounding accent, and grimaced. "Want to come with Kelsey and me to Chatham today? Max is having a group of friends over from college."

"Thanks, but I'm headed out to Provincetown with Beth and Will this afternoon."

Dhanya sighed. "You're so lucky—Will's great"

"Mmm," Ivy replied, and changed the subject. "Tell me about Max." Dhanya rolled her eyes. "Kelsey said you liked him," Ivy
added.
"Kelsey would like me to like him. Somehow she thinks he's perfect for me, which is kind of insulting. She keeps telling me I'm a snob. Do you think so?"

Ivy was surprised by the blunt question. "I think most of us are snobs in one way or another. We just don't see our own prejudices."

"Yes, but some people really are nose in the air types," Dhanya asserted. "I hate that. Especially when they do it to me."

"So, what's Max like?" Ivy asked.

"Rich." Dhanya pointed her toes, then relaxed her ankles. "I need to stop digging my feet in the sand. They're paler than my legs. . . . Max is rich and tacky, into stuff like cigarette boats and gaudy sports cars. He may have lots of money, but he acts so ... blue collar."

Ivy bit her lip to keep from laughing. Before her mother married Andrew, they had lived in blue collar Norwalk.

"His father owns a chain of discount clothing stores," Dhanya added.

Ivy cocked her head. "So?"

"Max looks like he buys his clothes from his father. I want someone as rich as Max and as classy as Will."

"Maybe that guy will show up at Max's beach party," Ivy replied, trying to hide her irritation— she didn't need anyone to remind her that Will was a great guy.

"Did you date someone you really liked in high school?"

"No, but I have a Facebook boyfriend," Dhanya said. "Of course, it's hard to take a guy from Australia to the senior prom."

After a long silence, Dhanya added, "Thanks for not saying, 'Get real, Dhanya'! Kelsey says I live in la la land. She says I'm afraid of real guys."

For a moment, Ivy felt bad for Dhanya. "Kelsey has a lot to say about you. Maybe she should focus on herself, and leave you alone for a while."

Dhanya smiled a little, "Yeah. Maybe she should. More berries?"

"No thanks."

Dhanya scooped up the last handful, then picked up the bowl and headed back to the cottage.

Opening her mystery. Ivy read the first chapter —read it twice before she had absorbed enough to go on. But eventually the sea, salty air, and sunny porch faded, and Ivy was creeping with the hero down a dark backstreet of London.

About a half hour later, she felt a hand resting on her shoulder.

"Hey, Will," she said. "Get everything you wanted?"

"Who's Will?" At the sound of Guy's voice, Ivy spun around, not sure if she felt annoyed or glad about his reappearance. "How did you know where to find me?"

"Your hospital papers. How did you know I'd come back to the parking lot?"

He was wearing the sweatshirt and cargos she had bought him—and his old shoes; the new ones were tied to the backpack.

"I didn't. I was just too mad to go back in the store and return the stuff."

One side of Guy's mouth lifted in a smile. He dropped his backpack on the porch. Seeing a new bedroll attached to it. Ivy hoped he had used her cash rather than shoplifting it.

"Have a seat," she invited.

He shook his head and leaned against the railing facing her. "I'm kind of muddy."

"Where have you been staying?"

He shrugged. "Around."

Ivy closed her book. "Around here?"

"Here and there," he replied elusively.

"Have you eaten anything in the last four days?"

"Yeah," said Guy, "but you don't want to know what."

"Sure I do."

He laughed. Was it the unshaven cheeks, the tousled hair, or the mischief in his eyes? What made his laughter sexy? "Leftovers," he said. "An assortment of leftovers."

"Yum. Why didn't you come here right away?"

"Because you had already done enough."

"Then why are you here now?" Guy's face grew serious. There was something mesmerizing about his eyes and the way they seemed to peer into her soul. She had no power to look away.

"Because I'm hungry enough." He turned away from her and gazed out at the water. "Nice view."

"So what will it be," she asked, "breakfast, lunch, or dinner?"

"Whatever you have."

She stood up and held open the door for him. "Come on."

"I'll stay outside."

"No one's here," she said. "Come on in."

"What if Will comes home?"

Ivy thought she caught a gleam in Guy's eye. "Then I'll introduce you," she said.

"I feel better out here."

Ivy shook her head. "All right, but if I make you a meal, and come back and find you're gone, I'll be really teed off."

"It's almost worth hiding in the bushes, just to see you lose it," he replied, grinning. Sitting on the floor of the porch, he rested his back against the wood railing.

Ivy retreated to the kitchen, and after a moment's thought made him a cheese omelet, figuring it would have plenty of protein, then cut a huge slab of Aunt Cindy's homemade bread. She added to the tray an assortment of fruit and a cup of tea, and carried the tray through the parlor, pausing to look at Guy through the screen door. His eyes were closed and his shoulders sagged against the porch balusters. Ivy's heart went out to him—he was exhausted.

"I smell food," he said, opening his eyes. She pushed open the screen door, debated for a moment where to set the tray, then put it on the floor next to him.

"Thank you," he mumbled, and started eating. Pushing aside her chair, Ivy sat on the porch floor a few feet away, studying him. He had removed his shoes and pushed up one sleeve to eat. She saw that his feet and ankles were bruised badly, as was his forearm. The fight he'd been in must have been brutal.

"So where are you staying?" Ivy asked.

"We already went over that," he replied.

She nodded. "I thought maybe this time you'd answer."

"Around."

Ivy drummed her fingers against the porch floor and asked herself where she would go if she wanted to sleep outside inconspicuously yet be around enough people to acquire "leftovers." Since he didn't have a car, some place not too far away. "Nickerson State Park," she said aloud.

His face remained a cipher. Having set down his fork, he picked up the mug of tea, holding it with both hands, as if he were warming them. It wasn't warmth Guy needed. Ivy thought, but comfort, kindness. She didn't know how to help him; last time, her comfort and kindness had set him running.

"Have you remembered anything about who you are?" He took a sip of tea.

"No."

"Are there still things that seem vaguely familiar?" Guy frowned and gazed down at his tea. She wondered if he was choosing his words,
deciding
what to tell her and what to hold back.

"If anything, it's gotten worse. Now too many things seem familiar to make a pattern that I can understand. And sometimes things are contradictory. One day a smell, like a wood fire, gives me a good feeling; and the next day, that same smell makes me want to run."

"When you went to the park, did you see a sign and follow it, or do you think you may have already known it was there?"

He hesitated.
You can trust me,
Ivy wanted to say. Sometimes the hardest thing to do was wait until
another
person decided to trust you.

"I saw it on a map. I remember general things— such as motels having free maps in their lobbies. When I saw the size of the park on the map, I knew I could survive there and could hide if they came after me."

Ivy leaned forward. "Who's they?"

"I don't know."

"But it's more than one person?"

"I don't know!" His eyes became a stormy blue. "How am I supposed to know?"

Ivy bit her lip, realizing she had pressed too hard. His eyes, looking more gray than blue now, told her that he had withdrawn into his own thoughts and fears.

He ran his finger over the long cut under his jaw. Ivy felt afraid for him, but she knew that telling him that would make him even more skittish of her.

"Here's what I can offer you," she said. "A razor and a shower."

"I don't need either," Guy answered quickly.

"You'll probably feel better. If you let me wash and dry your clothes, you'll be good for a few more days."

He grimaced. "Trying to make me respectable?"

"Yeah, if that's possible." Guy raised an eyebrow and she laughed.

"You have a lot of research to do," she said. "You want people to feel comfortable talking to you."

''You got a point," he said, smiling.

"I'll be quick." A few minutes later, in exchange for the clothes Guy had been wearing and the dirty clothes in his backpack, Ivy handed a washcloth and towel through the cottage's bathroom door. She had considered raiding Will's room for shaving supplies and deodorant, but something held her back, and she offered Guy her own instead.

"Oh, I'm going to smell good!" he remarked.

"The laundry room is in the inn, back by the kitchen," she told him, then headed off with her bundle. While the washer was filling, Ivy searched Guy's pockets to make sure they were empty. She found a sheet taken from her release papers, listing the inn's address and her family's contact information, folded into a tiny square. Ivy wrote her cell phone number on it, then refolded the paper and set it in a bowl on top of the dryer. The other pocket had money in it, which she dug out and placed in the same bowl. When a glint of gold caught her eye, she poured the money back in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat.

A shiny coin stamped with an angel lay in her palm, like a sign from heaven.