The Light Through the Leaves(123)

“I don’t. I told them I have a family emergency.”

She pulled out from under his arm and looked into his eyes.

“You’re my family,” he said quietly, “and that means so are your children.”

She returned to the nest of his arms, leaned her head against his heart, and fell asleep listening to its soft, steady rhythm.

According to the clock on the wall, she woke thirty-five minutes later. But the sleep renewed her as if she’d rested for hours. She craved coffee as she always did when she got up in the morning. She asked Keith if he wanted a cup, but he declined the offer.

Jonah had left the room. Jasper was asleep in the recliner. Raven stood over River.

“Any change?” Ellis asked her.

Raven shook her head. She looked about to drop from exhaustion. Just hours before, she’d pulled a large man out of a sinking car. Ellis couldn’t imagine how she was still standing.

“You need to sleep,” Ellis told her. “Would you like Keith to drive you home?”

“No.”

“There’s a couch out in the lounge. We could get you a pillow and blanket.”

“I can’t sleep until River wakes up,” she said.

“You’re making yourself sick,” Ellis said. “River wouldn’t want that.”

She looked at River’s face. “What River wants is to wake up. But this place makes him not want to.”

“He doesn’t know where he is,” Ellis said. “He’s unconscious.”

Raven pressed her lips together, as if to keep her paranoid thoughts inside.

Ellis went in search of coffee and found Jonah at the counter ordering a cup.

“Keith seems like a good guy,” Jonah said as they walked back to the ICU. “How long have you been together?”

“We’ve lived together for ten years.”

“Wow, long time.”

“What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

He stopped walking and faced her.

“What?” she asked.

He kept looking at her in a strange way. “I haven’t told the boys yet . . .”

“Are you getting married?”

He looked around the lounge to make sure no one was listening. At that early hour, they were the only ones there. “I met someone seven months ago. He’s the love of my life.”

Her exhaustion slowed her ability to process his words. She just stood there staring at him.

He smiled wanly. “You look like you need to sit down.”

She did. He sat across from her over a low table where they placed their coffee cups.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This wasn’t the right time or place to say that. I’m tired . . .”

“For god’s sake, don’t apologize. I’m glad you told me. I’m really happy for you.”

“You look surprised. I always thought you knew . . .”

A hundred reasons why she should have known sharpened her clarity. “Are you bisexual?”

“Gay.”

“Do the boys know?”

“You’re the first person I’ve told. Strange, isn’t it?” He looked away, worked hard to keep his tears back. But when he looked at her, his eyes were wet. “As I said, I’m tired. I’m not myself.”

“Don’t say that! This is the truest I’ve ever seen you. It’s beautiful, Jonah.”

“Ellis, my god . . . you were always the beautiful one . . . what I’ve done to you . . .” He put his face in his hands.

“Jonah . . .”

He looked up at her.

“I understand why you had to deny it for so long. Your father. Your mother. That must have been torture.”

“It was actual Hell. My father was one of the most vocal homophobes in the history of this country.”

“And you knew when you were young?”

“Like you said, I denied it. I thought my attraction to men in high school was some perverse teen rebellion against my parents’ beliefs. I told myself that into my twenties, but I never found a woman I could be with. Not until the night I met you at that party.”

The Halloween party. Ellis dressed as a cloud, Jonah in the Zeus costume.

“For the first time in my life, I was attracted to a woman. I can’t tell you what a relief it was. But it was so wrong. It was so goddamn wrong.”

“What was?”

More tears dripped. “When I first saw you at the party, I thought you were a man. You were the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.”

“I’d cut off all my hair.”

“Yes, and your body was hidden in the cloud.”

“Then you found out I was a woman. I was a woman you could be attracted to.”

“Forgive me. I know you can’t. I know it was wrong. But I did love you, Ellis. I really did. I’d never felt as much connection to anyone as I did with you.”

Everything started coming into focus. He’d said he loved her too early in the relationship. He was needy, yet she clearly felt his emotional distance. He had trouble making love to her. That was how they’d gotten pregnant: one night she’d sacrificed protection to help along his fragile response.

“Weren’t you at all attracted to Irene?” she asked.