The Comeback(93)
“I’m Grace,” I say, holding up my hand.
“We’ve met,” Lana says, smiling slightly. “At your house in Venice?”
“Of course we have,” I say, pushing any thoughts of that house or my husband somewhere far away. Dylan seems as if he belongs to yet another version of me, a long time ago.
Laurel pulls up a seat at the table and gestures for me to sit down.
“Thanks for letting me stay, are you sure its okay?” I ask, directing my question at Lana. She nods.
“Of course.”
“That was close, Grace,” Laurel says, and she’s testing the waters, trying to assess my psyche at the time of the accident and also now, since I’m going to be staying with her for a while. She keeps her eyes on me as she speaks, tracking my reaction to every word.
“TMZ said that if you’d lost control before the tunnel instead of after, a tree would have impaled the car and you’d have both been killed instantly. Some expert did all these diagrams to show all the ways you could have died, and they’ve been circulated everywhere. They’re even on the news. If you’d been going slower, something about the trajectory being altered, I don’t know, you’d also have been killed. It’s kind of insane, actually, there was really only one way you couldn’t die, and you happened to—”
“Laurel!” Lana interrupts, frowning at her. “Don’t be so macabre. I don’t think Grace needs to hear about all the ways she could have died. The important thing is, she didn’t, and—”
“You know, I am so tired. Do you mind if I rest?” I interrupt her, even though I know I’m being rude. I just couldn’t bear it if either of them told me how lucky I was.
* * *
? ? ?
Laurel shows me to the spare bedroom, a pale yellow room with a monkey mural on one wall and a gray elephant mobile hanging over the bed. I stare at her and she shrugs, trying not to smile.
“What? Maybe one day. Kids are Lana’s thing. Stop looking at me like that. One day at a time. And as you know, I really am back at day one.”
Once I’m alone, I pull my phone out of my bag and scroll through the messages I received when I was in the hospital. Frantic texts from Dylan and Laurel checking that I’m okay, a couple from Nathan and Kit wishing me well, the last of which saying that they want to schedule a John Hamilton dinner for as soon as I’ve recovered, as if that will be some sort of incentive for me to speed the process up. Another one from Nathan, unable to resist an addendum about my name being the most searched for on Google on Christmas Day. A text from Esme saying only: What did you do!?! Two voicemails from my parents, both asking when they can come to the hospital to see me. I text my mom to tell her that I’m out and staying at Laurel’s, and that I’ll call her soon. No message from Emilia. I turn my phone off before shutting it in the bedside table. I’m embarrassed I ever believed I could be anyone else.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Time moves differently at Laurel’s. It creeps and cowers in the morning, slithering along until it’s time for dinner and I realize that I’ve forgotten to do anything all day. Now that I have no purpose other than to heal my bruised body, I spend most of my time in bed, aside from the occasional shower or slow shuffle to sit by the mossy pool in the backyard if I’m feeling adventurous, or trying to make Laurel feel better about my productivity levels. I take six painkillers a day, and I make sure not to mistake the warm glow they elicit for anything more than it is. I know it isn’t real.
I think of Emilia sometimes, of what she wanted when she sent Able out with me that night. I wonder if she had any idea what I was going to do, if perhaps she wanted him to be punished for what he did to us both too. I try to imagine how she felt when she got the phone call about the accident, if a tiny part of her thought that some justice had been served, or if she just grieved for the father of her children, unconscious in a hospital bed at Christmas. Most of all, I wonder if any of our friendship was real.
Laurel and Lana try to give me space, but they also spend a lot of time watching me closely, as if they are trying to work out what I’m thinking at any given moment. I want to tell them not to bother, that most of the time I feel like I’m still trapped at the bottom of the ravine, but I can’t quite make myself do it.
I change my own dressing every morning like the doctor taught me, avoiding touching the raw skin unnaturally strung together with stitches. Every night I stroke the tender, yellowing flesh around the wound with arnica cream. My nose was cracked in the accident and it is now slightly off center, bulbous in the middle. I stare at this new, distorted face in the mirror and understand the irony of it all, that I’m no longer either Grace Turner or Grace Hyde.
On New Year’s Eve, Laurel holds a Native American smudging ceremony in the living room, which I can’t help but feel is solely for my benefit. She waves a burning white sage bundle around the room and talks about cleansing our auras for the year to come, dispelling the negative energy that surrounds us, while Lana and I alternate trying to act as if we’re taking it seriously so as not to hurt her feelings, Lana working harder at it than me.
My knee is throbbing, so I go to bed before the clock strikes midnight, but Laurel and Lana are still shuffling around the living room when it does. I can hear the warm murmur of their voices and the quiet jazz music playing from the speakers, and I think that they might be dancing with each other, even though I have no way of knowing for sure.