Catching the Wind(87)

“Hold on,” Lucas shouted.

He spun the wheel right, toward the river, and she heard the grating of metal as they plunged over the bank. Then there was an awful ripping sound, the car shuddering.

Her air bag exploded, flinging her back against the seat.

Lucas shouted her name, and then she heard someone else. A woman.

She tried to open her eyes, but they were glued shut. And her toes, they were soaking wet.

Swim, that’s what she needed to do, out of this murky water. Rush away.

Lucas said something else, but the last voice she heard wasn’t his. It was Brigitte’s, whispering her name.





Chapter 52




London, 1961

Theater called to Hannah like a mockingbird, mimicking the cry of her heart. She craved an audience enraptured by her talent, and adoration—the theater’s song of promise—lured her into a nest that turned prison cell in her later years.

It’s impossible to really love someone hidden behind the armor of costumes and makeup and lights, but Hannah didn’t care about love back then. Lily and Bridget had spoiled her with it when she was a child, cushioning her from the pains of hunger, loneliness, and fear. Perhaps they’d spoiled her too much.

For her eighteenth birthday, Hannah had begged to attend a musical in the West End, and they went together to London to see Brigadoon in Her Majesty’s Theatre. Hannah soaked in the grandeur of velvety reds and brilliant golds, the aroma of expensive perfumes, the buzz of a well-dressed audience waiting eagerly for the curtain to rise. And when it rose, Eliza Cain took the stage.

Bridget recognized her immediately, though eighteen years had passed, though she wore a powder-blue Celtic dress and a wig with a hundred blonde curls.

She was magnificent as Fiona. Headstrong and beautiful. Larger than life as she sang about being in love. She captured the hearts of her loyal subjects until she disappeared into the darkness. For a moment even Bridget forgot that Fiona was really Rosalind.

Tears streamed down Bridget’s face as she thought about Rosalind so long ago, vanishing by the cliffs. But unlike Fiona, Rosalind never returned. Her path took her away from the one person who needed her most.

When the curtain dropped, Hannah was holding Bridget’s hand, tears smearing her mascara, streaking her flawless cheeks. And Bridget knew right then that she’d never be able to contain her. Hannah was too much like Rosalind. Bold and rash and afraid of nothing, except perhaps being tied down.

She didn’t love her any less knowing this, but she worried for her.

And she feared that Hannah, too, would one day walk away.





CHAPTER 53





_____

Listen to the wind, Quenby.

And so she had. She’d lain down on the lawn by her mother, the sticky grass poking her arms, tickling her ear. And Quenby had listened.

It’s breathing through the grass, her mother had said. Across the dales.

There were no dales in their apartment complex, at least none that she’d ever seen, but she’d imagined the dales in Yorkshire, where you could hear the soft wind instead of sirens, feel its coolness instead of the summer heat.

But then Henry, the bully from the apartment next door, began throwing rocks at them, and it broke the magic.

Her mother had only been to Yorkshire a few times, to visit her auntie, but she’d told Quenby about a grand house there, the color of buttercream. It was like Wuthering Heights except the stories in that house were only allowed to have happy endings.

The grass, Quenby remembered, had smelled sweet that morning with her mother, but all she could smell now was disinfectant. Instead of wind, there was a beeping noise that wasn’t close to soft, sheets chafing her skin. Still she wanted to believe that her mother was alive. That there was a place they could find healing.

When she opened her eyes, a doctor was standing by her bed, asking her questions. Her head, she told the woman, hurt the most.

“Where’s Lucas?” she asked.

But the doctor had already stepped away. When she tried to sit up on the pillows, the room whirled.

“There now,” a nurse said, patting her hand before attaching something to the fluid bag above. “This will help you rest.”

In minutes, Quenby was gliding across the dales again.

The next time she woke, soft light filtered through the glass in her hospital room, though she wasn’t sure if the sun was rising or setting.

Memories flooded back to her—Lucas driving his car, the gray lorry, the river. That terrible sound of metal against metal.

“Lucas?” she whispered, praying he was okay.

“I’m right here.” She felt him take her hand.

His left eye was black, his cheek bruised. “Your eye—”

“The air bag left its mark.” He kissed her forehead. “And it saved your life.”

“How long have I been in the hospital?”

“Two days. You had a concussion, so they did a CT scan in Lewes and ran some other tests, but they concluded that rest is what you need most to recover.”

“Who was driving the lorry?”

“I don’t know yet, but the police are trying to find him. He rammed into the back of us after we went off the road.”

She leaned against the pillows, her head aching. “Your Range Rover?”