The Lucky Ones(106)

It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her. How could she say anything back that was worthy of his confession?

“I...” she began.

“It’s okay,” Roland said. “I know you’re still going. I just wanted to get it off my chest.”

“I love you,” she said.

His eyes widened.

“You can’t say stuff like that to a monk,” he said.

“Let’s go have sex all night long.”

“You really can’t say stuff like that to a monk.”

“I guess I can’t,” she said. “Too bad.”

She started to drop his hand and found that she couldn’t because a monk with a ponytail was hanging on to it.

“Maybe you can,” he said.

“No, you were right. You’re a monk and you’re going back to the monastery.”

He pulled her a little closer to him, a little closer still. He took the flower from her hair, McQueen’s flower, and tossed it on the table.

“But not tonight.”





Chapter 30

For the first time in all her days at The Dragon, Allison woke up before Roland. She got up and left him lying in the bed. In the dark room she dressed and by dawn she could see him and the bruise on his shoulder, a bruise nearly as blue and ugly as the bruise around her neck. She stared at it and wondered why Roland never asked her what she did the day she was gone, what she remembered about the “fall” that had taken her from them. Maybe he’d guessed? Maybe he decided he didn’t want to know. Or maybe he did want to know but knew she would lie to him. And he loved her enough to spare her the lie. Allison wrenched her gaze from his sleeping form. She wanted to make Crescent City, California, by nightfall. That drive would take all day.

Since they were too valuable and too fragile to pack, Allison’s glass dragons she’d left sitting on the bookshelf where bookends belonged. Thora had promised to pack them up carefully and mail them whenever Allison figured out the next step in her life. She’d miss them until then. In the watery light of morning they glinted like they were covered in dew. Allison touched them one by one for luck. Four glass dragons all in a row, with claws that didn’t cut and teeth that didn’t bite and fire that wouldn’t burn.

And yet so lovely. So awfully lovely.

She picked up her purse and her suitcase. She decided to leave without kissing Roland goodbye because if she stopped for a kiss, even one, she’d never leave.

As she was walking out the bedroom door, Allison heard a sound, a sound she’d been missing, a sound she’d been waiting for since the day she arrived.

It was a dark and stormy morning.

She put her suitcase down on the floor by the door and walked to the window. Water was falling and falling and falling. It rained on the ocean and the ocean got wet. She put her hand on the glass and the glass steamed around it. The gold sand turned to brown and the sky glimmered a light black. It looked like Xanadu out there, like a magical kingdom. She thought of poor Coleridge, who wrote Kubla Khan after a vision he had while on opium. Some silly man knocked on his door and jarred the poet into waking. He never did finish his masterpiece. There was no going back to his dream. And for the rest of his life he was left to wander outside of Xanadu but never again pass through the gates.

But she had been allowed to come back to her Xanadu. Coleridge would chide her for thinking of leaving. It would be a shame to disappoint the great poet. Eat the honeydew, he would say, and drink the milk of Paradise. No matter the price, pay it.

Why was she leaving, then? Because of the lies, of course. Because of the secrets. Because she’d made this mistake before, traded her integrity for the promise of something like a family.

But they were a family, weren’t they? And she had gotten very good at lying. It didn’t even feel like lying anymore. It felt like forgiveness, leaving the past in the past. It felt like mercy. It felt like moving on. The God Roland believed in said suffer the little children to come unto Him. In his sleep, Roland looked like a little child. If God was as old as they said He was, then they were all little children in His eyes, weren’t they?

And what was one more secret in this house packed to the attic with secrets? Roland had secrets. So did she. It gave them something in common. Roland might be onto something. Maybe the secrets didn’t have to be a wall between them. Maybe they could be a bridge.

And...she did have McQueen’s money in her suitcase. She hadn’t given it all away. It would be more than enough to live on for a while...

“I thought you’d be long gone by now,” Roland said, his voice distant as if he were speaking from out of a dream.

“It started raining,” Allison said. “I’ll wait until it stops.”

Roland raised his head off the pillow, pushed his hair off his face and gave her a bemused and sleepy look.

“You know the coast. It won’t stop raining till June,” he said.

That was true. It would rain until June. That’s how it happened out here. And maybe she wasn’t ready to sign up for an entire lifetime of lying to someone she loved, but maybe, just maybe, she could do it a week or two, or a month or two. Or three. Or four...

Allison slipped off her shoes and Roland held back the covers for her.

“Storms scare me,” she said as she crawled back into bed. Roland pulled her to him as Brien hopped up on the pillow to supervise the new developments. “Maybe I better just stay here with you.”