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Excerpt

Excerpt

The Stories We Tell

Prologue

My eyes changed color and I didn’t even notice. The first clue came when a street vendor in Savannah drew a caricature and painted my eyes green. “This is great,” I said, “but my eyes are brown.” “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said with a fake French accent. “I thought they were green.”

A few weeks later, a customer in my letterpress studio commented on my earthy-green eyes. I thanked him without correcting him. A polite southern woman does not question a compliment.

It was a full month later, in a hotel with one of those magnifying mirrors—the kind that expose every pore—that I noticed something odd. My eyes were a lichen color, like soft moss between steppingstones.

The color came from underneath the pupil, as if the green of my eyes had been there all along, just waiting for its time. I’d never heard of this happening. Which just goes to show that when I don’t think something is possible, I just don’t notice. Even if it’s happening right before my very eyes. Or in this case, in my eyes.

 

Chapter 1

It was a good day, with all good things. It began with something my daughter and I used to say to each other, until about a year ago, when her eye-rolling adolescent angst took over and she refused our Saturday morning ritual. But today, when Gwen turned to me and said, “Let’s do something fun,” I jumped into her request as if it were a languid lake on a summer afternoon. My younger sister, Willa, wasn’t far behind.

“What about a pottery class?” I suggested.

“Gross,” said Gwen, all of seventeen years old and picking at her nail polish. “Paris. Let’s go to Paris.”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not today?”

When Gwen laughed, I joined in with relief.

“Sailing class,” Willa said, jumping into the conversation.

That was it. And the day was the kind of dreamy, laughing suspension of time that we live for. The kind of day when you can believe in anything. There we were: my daughter, my sister, and I, the gray-blue water of the Savannah River, salt water in our eyes and laughter in our throats.

Now it’s midnight and I almost regret skipping out on work. Maybe I should’ve done the responsible thing and forged ahead on the looming deadlines, the orders piling up, and the customers to be courted. Then I remember the look on Gwen’s face when she climbed out of the water, sputtering and splashing Willa, who’d tipped the boat, accidentally on purpose, and I know I did the right thing.

This was not a wasted day.

Still, the night feels restless underneath me as a storm rips into Savannah with careless disregard. The rain’s coming sideways, clamorous against the window and hard.  They usually don’t bother me, these storms. In fact, I like the rain in this water-soaked city; it’s part of the ocean, part of the rivers, tributaries, and bays that contain the waters that surround us. Storms here are normal, an unassailable part of the water-soaked landscape that I usually find comforting. Not tonight, though.

My husband, Cooper, is out of town on business again, so his side of the bed is empty.  Gwen is asleep in her room.  Willa is in her cottage a few hundred yards away.  No point in my tossing and turning when there’s work I can do, work I want to do.

I dress in jeans and a T-shirt to walk down the hallway to my daughter’s bedroom.  If a watered-down light travels under her door, I’ll know she’s on the computer. But it’s dark. Good, she’s asleep, the storm a white noise to her dreams. I think about going in and kissing her on the forehead, looking at her soft face, but she’ll bark at me if I wake her. I’m getting used to this new means of communication (sort of), but it still gives a quick stab to my chest.

I understand that girls turning into women are often unsettled and cruel, especially to those they love. As a psychiatrist once told me at a dinner party (aren’t there always psychiatrists at dinner parties?), adolescence, by its very definition, is “a disturbance.” So there’s that. My sweet girl, who once wanted to play American Girl dolls and have me paint her nails a sparkly pink, now rolls her eyes at the way I breathe or chew or walk. It’s difficult not to “take it personally,” as Cooper says. I’m sure I did the same with my mom; I know I did the same with my mom. But here, with my daughter, I’d hoped it would be different.  She’s an only child; a decision made when I was so sick from my pregnancy that the doctor put me to bed for three months and Cooper told me he couldn’t go through the fear of losing me again. Gwen is our blessing, he said. No need to take another chance. I’d agreed—then.

I tiptoe down the stairs and into the kitchen I redid two years ago to my exact specifications. Everything in this room works for the way I cook and move and reach for spices or pans.  White and chrome dominate; an island of Carrera marble squats in the middle of the kitchen, a counter that’s alternately cluttered with bowls and food and then homework and mail. The family desk is built into the cabinetry. Framed photos of the family sit on this desk, along with an ancient Remington portable number 3, which was the kind of typewriter Margaret Mitchell used to write Gone with the Wind. The typewriter once worked, but, like other things in my life, it’s in need of repair.

I make a cup of tea with Tazo Calm, then sit on the window seat, my legs curled underneath me. Growing up, I’d never imagined living in a house this lovely, with a kitchen full of light and chrome, with cabinets full of fine, breakable plates. Now here I am.

The night is a blackout canvas of morphed shapes and moving shadows, yet in my mind’s eye I can see everything. The side kitchen door will open and take me down two steps to the brick pathway, which leads to the detached garage and the stone path that leads to the guesthouse, where Willa lives. If I continue, I’ll reach the old stables and my letterpress studio, the Fine Line, Ink.

The storm whips louder, and if I believed in portents, I’d think it was nature’s morbid warning. That’s the problem with having grown up here in Savannah—otherworldly portents and ghosts are every- where. Or so we’re told. Tourists line up to hear about these ghosts, to see the scant evidence of them. There are root doctors and fortune- tellers, stories and legends.  There are messages in wind, rain, stars, and tides. And although I don’t really believe the storm has some special message for me, the idea that it might gives me a shiver just as a crack of far-off lightning smacks the earth.

I know this about imagination: It needs a place to go. If I don’t work at my cards and images and letterpress, if I don’t touch the cut metal and carved wood fonts and imagine different patterns as I place letters next to others in a new way, my ideas will turn inward. I’ll ruminate about the storm, Gwen’s broken curfew, her annoying boyfriend, and her grades, about Cooper’s travel schedule and Willa’s aim- less job search. I’ll think about how much I missed Willa while she was gone, and then I’ll be afraid that she’ll leave again—off to chase a man or a shapeless dream. I’ll worry about how she might start drinking again, drinking too, too much. But if I channel my imagination, if I move that energy to the letters and the paper—to this blessed thing called work—I’ll be okay.

I finish the tea and slip on my Hunter rain boots before grabbing an umbrella. An industrial flashlight leads the way to my studio with a V-shaped cone of light, and I slosh through the mud. I’ve done this before.

The Fine Line, Ink nestles itself in the middle of a fallow field that once produced south Georgia cotton and is now filled with grass, wildflowers, and oat stems. The twenty-acre swath was handed down to my husband, Cooper, the fourth generation of Morrison men to own this land.

When I flick on the light, the mismatched furniture and letter-press machines come into view, along with cases of cotton paper piled like children’s blocks against the walls. And type fonts—everywhere the cut metal and carved wooden font squares sit on tables, on machines, in drawers, and in boxes waiting to be sorted. The fonts that have been organized are held in California job cases, tall cabinets that flank the walls, like shy girls at a dance.

It’s here with my coworkers, Francie and Max, that we tell our stories. There’s a story behind everything—that’s our tagline. We watch tales unfold, unbend, and unwind to form card lines, logos, and images: a poster for a downtown event, a birth announcement, a wedding invitation, or a logo for an interior designer. Each stall, where horses once stamped and whinnied, is now a designated office space. Each of us has his or her own stall, as do the printing presses. In the middle of the barn, on a concrete floor, rests a long pine table, where we convene. When we sit at the project table in this refurbished barn, we create new and handmade worlds.

Some of my best work comes when I’m alone like this. We have ideas and sketches, notes and scraps of paper, scattered on the table. I push these things around to pull together our emerging card line, called Ten Good Ideas. Another collection based on Greek goddesses, which sounded like a good idea at the time, has been set aside. First things first—finish what we started with Ten Good Ideas.

This card line was inspired by Willa’s return to my life, and by one long-ago summer of childhood rebellion.

When she returned a year ago, Willa and I spent hours talking about childhood and our parents, who are both gone now. We pulled out memories of skipping Sunday school to run through the cotton fields and stuff small tufts of their seed-laden softness into our pockets. We remembered getting in trouble for singing too loudly in our bedroom, for laughing at Dad’s too-long prayer at supper, for putting our elbows on the table. It was there, in those long talks, that we first reconstructed the summer when my best friend, Caden, and I had decided that the Ten Commandments were way too, oh my God, full of things not to do, and wouldn’t it be great to make new commandments full of good things to do. Every day on the edge of a Savannah River tributary, we made our own list, our own rules for living.

We thought ourselves holy. Every night, I would go home and show Willa our new commandment.

With a flashlight under our bunk beds, she’d take out her calligraphy pen and write the commandment Caden and I had added to our list. It was only a piece of lined paper torn from a school composition book, but to us, it was parchment, ancient and glorious.

We were caught, Caden and I, before we finished the Ten Ideas. The list was tacked to the back wall of my closet, warped with South Carolina river moisture. We’d made it to number nine before Mom found it and turned it over to my dad, and to the church elders. Heresy, we were told. There was a Bible verse, one in Revelations, about this very thing we’d done, about adding or subtracting from the Bible: “And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life.” We were made to memorize this verse, and for months, maybe years, Willa and I believed we’d been cut off from the tree of life, even if we didn’t fully understand what that tree was and where it had been planted.

Then there was the weeklong discussion about sending me to live with another family, one who could make me understand the gravity of what I’d done. Dad believed they’d failed in Christian parenting, and I’d failed as the dutiful daughter. My defiance, they believed, put our eternity together at risk. They needed someone else, anyone else, to help me see that rebellion was not the way to happiness or a pass through the pearly gates. In the end, I stayed home, and with a stomachache I tolerated the grave silence of my dad’s disappointment and my mom’s worry.

Eventually, Willa and I exhausted the stories of that summer and turned to the list—our commandments. What had we thought then, as children, were the right ways to live? Could those matter today?

Whenever I think of the list now, I taste the brackish air. I feel like I’m twelve years old again and invincible. Childhood slams into my chest and unfolds its promise of a bigger life.

It was Max who saw the potential for the list to become a card line.

“Ten Good Ideas. Come on, it’s the best compilation idea we’ve ever had.” And he was right. So one by one, we’ve been releasing the cards with original artwork. The problem is that Willa and I can’t remember number nine, and we still haven’t come up with number ten. This creation, this card line, has been Willa’s work with us. In the beginning, I’d thought I was merely giving her something to do, something besides work on her songwriting and find singing gigs in town. But we all soon realized that Ten Good Ideas was the most successful line in our six years of business.  Orders tripled by the third idea and we’d added six new vendors in the South alone.

I feel a wave of intense love for all of it, for all of the ideas and the designs so far finished and for the ones yet to be created.

Number One: Be Kind. An oak tree extends its arms to the heavens, to the earth, and falling off the side of the pages.

Number Two: Tell Good Stories. Books are drawn to appear like leather-bound volumes piled one on top of the other, inviting story- telling, and story reading.

Number Three: Always Say Good-bye. Here Francie sketched human profiles, one facing the other, begging the question of who might be leaving.

Number Four:  Search for the True.  This design is my favorite so far: The world, blue and floating amid the dark night, stars set as sparkled dents in the Universe.

Number Five: Help Others. Here is the luminescent design, one Max drew, of two hands entwined, fingers knit together.

Number Six:  Create.  Paint cans of every color are splattered across the page, spilling and dripping into the number six at the bottom of the card.

Number Seven: Be Patient

Number Eight: Find Adventure

I’m scribbling a note about needing more ink for the Vandercook press when I hear the sirens. They sound far off, until they don’t. The sirens swell: loud, louder, loudest. Then silence. I stand, staring at the huge barn doors, waiting for them to slide across the track and open because I know they will. I imagine the three people I love the most in the world. I imagine the news to come.

No, no, no.

A policeman, short, with dark hair, stands in the doorway. The overhead light casts shadows across his face. Rain drips from the eaves onto the plastic-covered bib of his hat.

“Are you Eve Morrison?” he asks. “Yes.” My voice is tight with fear.

“I’m Officer Barker with the Savannah Police Department. Your husband and sister have been involved in a car accident. They’re at Savannah Memorial. I’m sorry to be here telling you this. Your husband sent me, as you haven’t been answering the phone.” He breaks off each sentence with a quick sound: a verbal Morse code.

“Cooper? My sister? My God, are they okay?”

“I’ve been sent to get you. They’re at the hospital and your husband is conscious. That’s the only information I have at the moment.” He sounds robotic, flatlined.

“Wait.”  I shake my head, relieved that this policeman has the wrong information. “My husband’s in Charleston. My sister’s at work. She’s a singer. I think you’ve made a mistake.”

Officer Barker coughs. “I’m afraid not, ma’am. They were driving in downtown Savannah. That’s all the information I have. I’ve been sent to take you to the hospital.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He steps into the barn and I see his face clearly. He’s young, so young that acne stands in pockmarked relief against his face. “Take me to them.” I back away and bump into a press, the Heidelberg. My hip grazes the sharp edge; it will leave a bruise. I switch off the single light over the table. “First my daughter,” I say, panic a rising tide in the back of my throat. “I need to get my daughter.” “Where is she?” he asks.

“Asleep.” I point toward the general direction of our house.

“I tried there first. No one answered.

“She’s asleep.” I stop and stare at him. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Your husband.”

I reach into my back pocket and yank out my cell phone. Eight missed calls. I hit the callback button while motioning to Officer Barker: Keep walking and I’ll follow. Cooper doesn’t answer, and I follow the policeman. Fear begins as a firestorm in my belly, moving along my arms and legs as electricity. No. Not my sister. Not my husband. I climb into Officer Barker’s backseat and he drives up the muddy path to the house. His car will bear the splash stains as the mark of our rain-drenched driveway.

Officer Barker has barely pulled to a stop, and I’m running up the steps onto the wide front porch.  In the moonlight, the white floor- boards glow almost blue, reflecting the painted ceiling. I open the door and holler, “Gwen, Gwen.”

No answer.

I run through the front hall and upstairs to her bedroom.  Damp air washes over me as pink linen curtains flutter around her open window.

“Shit,” I say to the empty room. “Not now.”

I plod down the back stairs and into the kitchen, just to be sure she isn’t there. The tea bag dangles over the empty cup. I sipped that tea, thinking Gwen was asleep in bed and Cooper was in Charleston. Such naïve peace. My head feels too full, overblown and crowded with fear. In what feels like a slow-motion bad dream, one where I can’t run or scream, I dial Gwen’s number and hear her voice say, “Leave a message.”  I tell her to meet me at the hospital.  I then dial Dylan—the boyfriend, the lacrosse player, the boy I can’t stand—and get his ridiculous voice mail. “Yo, I can’t answer, obviously. So leave a message, or don’t.”

“Dylan, this is Gwen’s mother. Her father and aunt have been in an accident and I need you to take Gwen to Savannah Memorial immediately. Thank you very much.”

God, I sound like my mom—so polite, so cold, when what I really want to do is scream. I grab car keys from the counter, then burst into the rain again.

Officer Barker stands outside his car with his hands behind his back.

The rain batters against my T-shirt and I’m soaked to the skin. “I forgot she spent the night at a friend’s house.” He knows I’m lying, but he nods.

“I’ll drive,” I say.

“I’d prefer you let me take you.”

“I’m fine. I can follow you.” I jog toward the garage and punch the keypad code to open it.

Thunder joins the grinding rise of the garage door, as if to say, “Told you so.”

 

Chapter 2

It makes no sense. Willa and Cooper barely get along. The tension between them is mostly unbearable, unless Cooper’s on his second bourbon. I’m not sure they’ve ever been in a car without me.

Willa—my beautiful, wounded sister, the tiny girl with the round green eyes. She moved to Colorado after high school and returned to Savannah just last year after a terrible breakup. She showed up, asking for a place to crash until she could “get her shit together.” “Of course,” we said, “we’d love to have you here.”

Cooper and I stopped talking about it, but I know he doesn’t like having Willa only a few hundred yards away. My work and my sister are the two things he believes take my attention away from him, and in his worst moments, he reminds me of this.

I follow the police car through the Savannah streets, gripping the steering wheel with tight hands. Streetlamps flicker dimly, as if sorry they don’t have enough power to penetrate the fog. The river is swollen as it pulses against the banks and shoves cargo ships against the docks. My heart rolls around inside my chest, a fast-paced somersaulting instead of a steady beat. Skidding on the wet pavement, I follow the police car under the awning over the entrance to the emergency room. The double glass doors open automatically and I run to the front desk, ask for Cooper, for Willa. The nurse stares at a computer screen for a moment before holding up a finger and turning to me. “Head down the hall. You’ll find them in the second and third cubicles on the right.” She points like a flight attendant.

The ER cubicle is all silver and glaring, bright enough to make me squint. I can’t feel my lips; my hands shake as I push aside the curtain. I look in the bed for Cooper, but what I see is a mash of blond curls against the pillow—Willa. Beeping machines surround her where she lies on the narrow bed with rails high on either side. An IV tube hangs from a metal pole and is taped to the top of her right hand. A small white bandage is next to her right eye, which is swollen shut. A drop of blood seeps through the gauze, leaving what looks like a drop of red ink.

Near the bed is a nurse with dark cropped hair and a nametag that says bill stanford, rn. A doctor, short and brunette, wearing a white lab coat with one large iodine stain on her right lapel, stands beside him. Crumpled bandage packaging and discarded needles sit on top of a stainless-steel tray.

I walk to Willa’s bedside and look down into her face. Her eyes are closed. “I’m her sister, Eve,” I say without looking at the doctor or nurse. “Tell me everything.” I take Willa’s free hand and wind my fingers through hers. “Where’s my husband? Is he here, too?” I turn to look at the doctor. Finally, the chaos inside me stills for a moment, my mind expectant.

“I’m Dr. Lewis,” the woman says. “Your husband is in the next cubicle, behind this curtain. And your sister here  . . .” She pauses before saying, “She’s stable. Her vital signs are good. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt and she flew sideways, crashing into the passenger-side window. She seems to have sustained a mild traumatic brain injury. We’re waiting on the last MRI, and we’re monitoring the pressure on her brain. There’s a slight bleed in the temporal area, which we will drain if need be, but right now it seems to be okay. We’re keeping her sedated while we monitor her situation.”

“This?” I touch the edge of the bandage.

“She has a small cut next to her right eye. It has a single stitch in it. Her brain injury is the most pressing matter.”

“Temporal area. Brain swelling. Traumatic injury,” I say. “None of that means anything real to me. Can you explain, please?” My voice holds steady, but my body shakes.

Dr. Lewis points to the side of her own head, above her ear. “This is the temporal lobe, and it’s where Willa slammed into the window. There’s swelling, what we can also call a concussion, but more severe. More like what we call a mild TBI—mild traumatic brain injury.”

“What’s the difference between a TBI and a concussion?” I ask. Dr. Lewis places her hand on my forearm and then withdraws it.

“We can have the neuro practitioner talk to you soon, but for now I can tell you that the difference has to do with how long she was unconscious, which we estimate to be about ten minutes. We should know more soon.”

I point to Willa. “But she’s still unconscious.” “No. She’s asleep and sedated.”

“Will she be . . . the same?” I whisper.

“That is the thing with TBIs—we don’t know. I understand it’s difficult to hear me be so vague, but only time will tell with these kinds of injuries. She’ll probably be confused at first, but slowly we’ll understand more about how severely her thought processes and memory are affected. It’s not like a broken bone that we can see on an X-ray. I wish it were.”

I touch Willa’s forehead lightly, so lightly. “She’ll be fine. She has to be fine.”

Willa’s curls are mashed against her head and black mascara rims her eyes in a melted mess. “What happened?” I lean closer, my voice in her ear, my hand squeezing hers.

“She grabbed the wheel.” My husband’s voice. I turn so quickly that I knock into Willa’s IV pole and need to grab it to keep it from falling. The curtain is open. “Cooper.” I rush to his bedside in two quick steps.

“You didn’t want to come check on me?” he asks in a garbled voice.

I stare at him, stunned into silence, knowing this is Cooper because of the eyes and voice, but everything is distorted in a globule-like mash of blood, bandages, and bloated flesh. I try to say his name but only a groan on an exhaled breath comes out. Then I find my voice. “I’m here. Right here.”

He closes his eyes. “God, it hurts like hell.” His voice is full of swollen pain. He raises his hand to touch his head but then drops it again, as if it weighs too much.

I bend over my husband, reaching for him, scanning his body for injury or missing parts. I kiss him once on the forehead. “What happened?”

Dr. Lewis appears at my side. “Broken glass cut your husband’s face and scalp,” she states, as if this is the most obvious thing in all the world.

“Are you okay?” A stupid question if ever there was one.

“Other than this?”  Cooper lifts his hand to his head  one more time,  a single finger pointing at the bandages.

“No other injuries?” I ask softly, hopefully. “No,” Dr. Lewis says. “All else is clear.”

“Clear?” Cooper tries to sit, but he falls back down. “I’m missing half my face.”

“You are not missing half your face,” I say. I don’t know if this fact is true, because a bandage soaked in blood covers the left side of his face, and the tape yanks the skin tight up and around his head. I don’t want to, but I look away, turning to Dr. Lewis. “Is he missing half his face?”

“No.” She readjusts the tape at his scalp. “But it is a severe gash.” She motions to his cheek. “This will require plastic surgery later. There’s also a shearing injury on his scalp."

“A bald spot,” Cooper says, and his voice is slow, slurred. “Pain medicine?” I ask Dr. Lewis, referring to his speech. She nods.

I kiss Cooper’s right cheek, which gives no indication of an accident or injury of any kind. “His eye?” I ask her.

“It’s fine.”

“What happened?” I ask again.

His right eye flashes open, murky and faded. “Is Willa okay?”

“It’s her brain,” I say. “It’s swollen . . . bleeding.” My hand rests at the base of my throat, where the grief and panic form a cotton-clogging lump.

“She wasn’t wearing her seat belt,” he says, as if this one fact explains everything.

“Cooper.” I lean close, uttering gentle words. “Who was driving?” “I was,” he says. And then, as if everything is normal, he asks,

“Where’s Gwen?”

“She should be on her way.” “Where is she, Eve?”

“She sneaked out again. I think she’s with Dylan.” “This has to stop,” he whispers, his eyes shut.

“I know.”

He brushes his hand through the air. “Were you at the studio?” This question an accusation.

“Yes.”

I think he’s slipping into painkiller oblivion, when he speaks again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help your sister. I wanted to help, Eve. All we’ve done is try to help her, and it only gets worse.” Angry furrows on his forehead smooth, and then he is asleep, snoring softly.

It isn’t true, what he’s just said. We have helped Willa; she’s been doing great—working at the studio with me, writing songs, securing singing gigs downtown. Like I’ve always wished, my sister and my daughter are close, and they spend every afternoon together. Willa hasn’t been getting worse at all. I thought she was getting better and better—until now.

I look to Dr. Lewis. “This is terrible,” I say, which is the truth. The doctor leaves, promising to check in shortly. That’s when the tears start. They well up quickly—fat, ugly tears that won’t stop. I touch Cooper’s cheek, and even in his medicine-induced sleep, he flinches. And just as I sit in the cracked vinyl reclining chair, Gwen bursts through the curtain.

“Gwen.” I jump up to hug her, hold her close, as if to make sure that she’s safe, that she wasn’t in the car with them.

“Where have you been?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says.

“Yes, it matters.” I look past my daughter to the boy standing behind her. “Dylan, you can leave now.”

Gwen reaches her hand behind her. “No, stay.” Holding Dylan’s hand, she walks toward her dad and pulls Dylan along like a towline. “Oh my God, is he okay?” She reaches toward the bloodied bandages but doesn’t touch them.

“Yes,” I say. “Except for a terrible gash on his face.”

Gwen stands next to her dad in too-short cutoff jeans, cowboy boots, and a white tank top.

I step forward and place my hand on Dylan’s arm. “You need to leave.”

He drops Gwen’s hand and nods. “Okay, Mrs. Morrison.” He holds his palms up in mock surrender. “Okay, whatever.”

Gwen glares at me. “God, Mom, relax.”

“Relax?” I ask as the curtain sways shut with Dylan’s exit.

“It’s no big deal, Mom. We were just at his house, watching movies.”  She takes a breath and then sees her chance.  

“Seriously . . . I mean, Dad and Aunt Willa are in the hospital and you’re worried about what I’ve been doing?” Her nose stud—a tiny sparkle—glints in the harsh overhead lights. “Can you at least tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know yet. All I know is that they were in a wreck.” “Can I see her?”

“Yes,” I say. “She’s asleep right there.” I motion to the half-open curtain at our left.

Together, we walk to Willa’s bedside and I repeat the information I was given from Dr. Lewis. Gwen drops into the chair next to Willa, taking her hand. “If something happens to her, I’ll die,” she says, all melodrama and raw emotion.

I touch the top of Gwen’s soft hair. “I’ll go sit with your dad until he wakes up.”

Gwen looks up at me. “Can I stay here?” she asks. “Yes.”

I return to Cooper and lean back in the chair, closing my eyes for a moment. Just one moment.

The raw light needles its way through my eyelids, penetrating my deep sleep. I open one eye—my left one—and for a thin sliver of a minute, I don’t know where I am. Somewhere far off, there’s a beeping noise, and it’s this sound, this monotonous rhythm, that awakens me fully, and I know. I don’t want to remember, but I do, one by one: Cooper, Willa, Gwen. I stand up to stretch, rub at my face, and drink from the lukewarm glass of water at Cooper’s bedside. A clock on the back wall reads 6:00 a.m.

“Eve.” Cooper’s voice cracks my name in half, and I look back to him, take his hand. “Where is Gwen?” he asks.

“With Willa, right here.” I open the curtain.

Gwen is awake, brushing Willa’s hair across the pillow with her fingers. She turns to us, and I motion for her to come to me. Cooper flinches when he looks up at us with his one eye, and he reaches his hand up to take his daughter’s hand.

Gwen repeats my plea from hours before. “What happened, Dad?”

Cooper looks directly at me. “Please tell the nurse I need another pain pill.”

I push the buzzer on the wall and speak into an intercom to inform the bodiless voice that Cooper Morrison needs a nurse and meds.

“I was coming home from Charleston,” he says as I finish my request. “But the clients wanted to stop for a drink at the Bohemian. They’d heard about the rooftop bar, and we stopped there for a late dinner.”

He pauses to touch the uninjured side of his face. “Willa was there, at the bar. Drunk as crazy. Bobbing around. She fell off the barstool. I was praying she wouldn’t see me, but she did, and then started to walk toward us. I was with the Berns, clients I’ve been courting for months. They run a charter business called the Anglers. Willa had that look, that weird look she gets when you know she will say or do something embarrassing. I got nervous, so I went to her before she could get to us.”

“No way,” Gwen interjects. “She doesn’t drink like that anymore.” “That’s what I thought at first, too, darling. I thought no way was she messing up now, when she’d just started to get it together. But it was obvious.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste salt at the corner of my lips. “So,” Cooper continues, “I talked her into going outside, and then getting into my car. But she was angry as hell. We were driving in that torrential rain behind Martin Luther King Boulevard and then up Twenty-fourth Street to Preston. She grabbed the wheel to make me turn around. The brakes seized up, we slid sideways, and the car slammed into a tree—a huge oak. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. On-Star called nine one one.” His voice breaks. “That’s it.” “I’m sorry,” I say.

“What for?” Gwen asks, shooting me a terrible look, her eyebrows drawn down, her mouth pouted into a scowl.

“For everyone.” I take Cooper’s hand and wind my fingers through his as if knitting us together.   “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to take her home. You aren’t responsible for her.”

“It seems I am,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I really am. I’m sorry I let her stay. I’m sorry she’s been such a . . .”

“God, Mom, whatever,” Gwen says, and plops onto a metal chair. “She’s the one who’s hurt so bad. I mean, is she in a coma? What is going on?” Panic pushes at Gwen’s voice, giving it a strangled sound. “Is she going to be okay or not?”

Gwen loves her aunt. She loves walking down to the cottage and sitting on the porch with her, loves hearing about Colorado and camping and mountain climbing. She clings to Willa as the only person who “understands what it’s like to be a grown-up without being a jerk”— Gwen’s words, of course.

“Someone answer me. Is she going to be okay?” Gwen holds out her hands for an answer.

“If you mean will she live, yes,” I say. “Her injuries aren’t on the outside. . . . It’s what’s inside her head they’re worried about.” I walk behind Gwen and touch her hair, which is pulled back into a messy ponytail  at the base of her neck, riding down her back in tangles. She leans back into my hand, a gesture of childhood. I rest my head on top of hers.

“This sucks,” Gwen says.

“Yes, it does.”

The Stories We Tell
by by Patti Callahan Henry

  • Genres: Fiction
  • paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
  • ISBN-10: 1250068126
  • ISBN-13: 9781250068125