The Lucky Ones(98)

“Promise me, kids,” he said, and each word cost him a breath. The more he spoke, the quicker he would die, and yet he seemed to need to speak, anyway. “Promise me you’ll always love each other. Promise me you’ll always take care of each other.”

“I promise, Dad,” Deacon said. “Of course we’ll take care of each other. You taught us how.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Thora said. “I promise.”

“Roland? Allison?”

Roland said softly, “I promise, Dad.”

And Allison, too, made the promise. “I promise,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she could keep it.

Dr. Capello nodded a little and closed his eyes again. They all stared at his face, waiting for that moment it went utterly still and slack when the spark of life would finally go out.

“So quiet,” he said, and they all looked up in surprise. They’d thought he’d already spoken his last words. “Who died?”

He tried to laugh at his own joke, but the laugh quickly turned into a spasm of coughs. Thora soothed Dr. Capello with her hands on his chest.

“We’re all here,” Thora said. “I’m here and Deacon’s here and Roland’s here and Allison’s here.”

“My children,” he said. “Don’t grieve.”

“Your children can’t help it,” Roland said. His every word sounded strained, like it was being dragged out of him against its will.

“Rotten kids,” he breathed, then smiled again. “Dragons guard treasure.”

It was an odd thing to say, odd enough they all looked at each other in confusion until Dr. Capello spoke again.

“That’s you, kids,” he said. “My treasure.”

“Love you, Daddy,” Thora said. It seemed to take everything she had in her to push those three words past the blockage in her throat. Tears streamed from her eyes.

“Too quiet,” he said, and it was clear he was suffering in the silence. He was scared. He needed to hear his children’s voices, but his children were mute. Their throats were tight as a miser’s fists and their tongues heavy as sandbags. They loved him with their grown-up hearts and child’s hearts combined.

Why Allison did it, she would never know for certain, but in the silence she began to speak, tenderly, like a mother speaking an old rhyme to her child.

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding spots of sunny greenery.”

“Ah,” Dr. Capello said, a sound of bliss. His pupils were fixed and dilated. “I see it all. The trees. The garden. The river. I see—” he took one more labored breath “—my Rachel.”

Roland’s head snapped up, his eyes wide open.

“Dad?” Roland leaned forward and put his hand on Dr. Capello’s face. “Dad?”

Allison placed her hand on Dr. Capello’s chest. She felt nothing.

“He’s gone,” she said in a whisper, but in the silence of the room it sounded like she’d shouted it.

Allison looked at Roland. He shook his head, not in disbelief but in protest against the unfairness of it all. His tongue was loosened then, and at last he said all the things he’d been meaning to say.

“Dad, it’s your son. It’s Roland. Listen to me. I love you, Dad. I’ll always love you. You loved me when no one else could. You loved me when no one else would. You took me in when no one wanted me. You didn’t just forgive me, you called me your son. When no one else would have me, you gave me a home. You made me who I am. You made me a good man. I owe you everything. I owe you my whole life and everything I am and everything I have and everyone I love. Dad? Do you hear me? Dad?”

Thora and Deacon sobbed in each other’s arms. They were lost in grief, drowning in it, choking on it. Roland had started his litany all over again.

“I love you, Dad. I’ll always love you. You loved me when no one else could. You loved me when no one else would. You didn’t just forgive me...”

Those words filled the room, filled it to the rafters and filled Allison to the ribs so that she thought they’d crack and splinter for how her heart swelled to bursting with love for Roland. Whatever sin Dr. Capello had committed against her, Allison vowed then never to hold it against Roland.

She reached for him, pulling him away from Dr. Capello’s corpse, guiding him to the chair. Outside the window the moon was high and round, and in the bed, Dr. Capello’s face went slack and his lips slightly parted in his death mask. And Allison knew she had to be the one to do it. Slowly Allison eased the covers down to free them from Dr. Capello’s arms and pulled them up, up and over his face.

Allison knew she should say something then. Something profound and poetic and merciful, something about this man who’d done beautiful things and ugly things and was now standing at the gates of heaven waiting to find out if the beauty outweighed the ugly in the eyes of God. But for the first time in Allison’s life, poetry failed her. She was left with only two words.