59.
Jade
She shivered as she walked down the hall toward Riley’s room, and not only because the air-conditioning in the hospital was set too low. Jeannie had said she’d be welcome in the room … by Riley at least. Jeannie hadn’t been so sure about Danny, though, and he was the one who held her future in his hands. She felt like she was walking toward the executioner.
Jeannie had greeted her and Celia when they’d arrived at the hospital a short time earlier. If her life hadn’t been in the midst of chaos, Jade would have been thrilled to see her. As it was, she’d felt close to tears when Jeannie hugged her. That hug told her that, at least in Jeannie’s eyes, she was forgiven for everything she’d put her family through. For every lie she’d told.
Riley’s nurse, a petite, perpetually smiling blond woman, had asked Jade if she was one of Riley’s relatives.
“Jade’s a family friend,” Jeannie had answered for her. “Their families go way back.”
Back as far as you can go, Jade thought now as she knocked lightly on the door. Pushing it open, she was relieved to see Riley nearly sitting upright in the bed. Riley was pale and bruised, her smile uncertain, and Jade felt a rush of gratitude at seeing her alive and alert. At the other side of the room, Danny stood silhouetted in front of the windows. With the light behind him, Jade couldn’t make out his features at all and felt instantly at a disadvantage. It was impossible, though, to miss the edgy tension that crackled in the room.
“Hi.” She smiled at Riley as she walked toward the bed, trying to pretend this was a simple hospital visit rather than a reunion between three hurt, brittle, and wired-up people. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m all right,” Riley reassured her.
Jade bent over to kiss her daughter’s cheek. “I’m so relieved,” she said. “I was terrified when I heard.” She tore herself away from Riley and walked across the room, her body stiff with fear as she held out her hand to her brother. She’d never felt less sure of what to say in her life. There were no words to make up for the years apart.
“Danny,” she said. He’d stepped away from the backlight of the window and she could see him now. He was so handsome, but the look in his eyes was ice-cold. He kept his hands buried in his pockets and Jade lowered hers to her side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything.”
“Fine,” he said, but she knew that nothing was fine. Nothing would ever be fine between them. Her father had told her that Danny was troubled, but now she saw for herself that troubled was too mild a word. Danny was a damaged soul. Those cold eyes and tight lips. What had happened to the happy, effervescent child he’d been? How much of the damage was her fault? She reached toward him again, this time to touch his arm, but he pulled away from her quickly.
“You killed our family, do you know that?” he asked.
“Danny,” Riley said from the bed. Her voice was a plea.
Danny’s hostile tone made Jade take a step backward until she stood next to the footboard of the second bed. She didn’t know how to answer his question. She worried that he was right. “I never wanted that,” she said. “I couldn’t … foresee all the things that happened.” She clutched the rim of the footboard. “When I think back to that time, it’s just a gigantic mess in my memory.” That was the truth. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said, “and when Daddy suggested—”
“Right,” Danny said. “It was all his fault.”
“I’m not saying that,” she said. “I’m not trying to defend myself. I know I made terrible mistakes and I’ve had to live with what I did. The guilt. The separation from my fam—”
“And Riley and I had to live with two shitty parents in a house full of lies.”
“Danny,” Riley said, “I never felt that way.”
“Well, lucky you!” he barked at her, and Jade had a sudden urge to slap him. Don’t talk to my daughter that way! she wanted to shout, but she hardly had that right. She saw Riley shut her eyes and sink back into her pillow. This is too much for her, Jade thought, but she didn’t know how to end it. They shouldn’t be having this conversation here. Or now. Yet there was no time to have it later. Later, she could be locked up.
“Why the hell didn’t you just tell the truth?” Danny asked. “Accept the consequences? You really fucked all of us over.”
“I was afraid,” she said. “I was frantic. I’d killed someone…” The day it happened, tucked so deep inside her memory, rushed back to her, and her voice cracked. “I relived that moment over and over and over and—I’m sorry, Danny,” she said again. “Everything was such a mess, and I didn’t know how to make it right. I was so screwed up.”
“But did you ever, in the last twenty years when you were no longer ‘so screwed up,’ think of Riley and me and the disaster you left us? Did you ever, in the last twenty fucking years, think of coming back? Making things right?”
“Of course I thought about it,” she said, “but Daddy would have paid if I ever told the truth.”
“He paid anyway!” Danny pulled his hands from his pockets, raising them in the air to make his point. “We all paid. And it’s about time you paid, too.”
“Stop it!” Riley shouted. “I can’t handle this any longer! Please stop it!”
It was as though they’d forgotten Riley was in the room, and they both turned to look at her. Her pale cheeks were tear streaked, and she’d pressed her hands, one of them bandaged, over her ears. Jade moved quickly to her side.
“Sweetheart.” She sank onto the chair next to the bed, rubbing Riley’s shoulder through the thin hospital gown. “I’m so sorry. I know this is the last thing you need right now.”
“You two are tearing me apart.” Riley looked from Jade to Danny. “I love you both,” she said. “I need you both.”
Jade looked across the room at her brother. His expression was hard to read, and she thought he was avoiding her eyes. She turned back to her daughter. “I’m here for you, Riley.” Bracing herself, she waited for Danny to mock her words. How did she plan to be here for Riley when she was in prison? How had she been here for her over the last twenty-plus years? But Danny said nothing. Instead, he walked to the other side of Riley’s bed, and for the first time, Jade noticed his limp. She remembered the note from their father: Danny was seriously injured in a grenade attack. She remembered being unable to sleep for days, and losing her baby as she grieved and worried and blamed herself for everything that had ever gone wrong in her family. She wanted to reach across Riley’s bed to pull her wounded brother into an embrace, but that embrace would never be welcome. Her love for him would always be one-sided.
Danny bent low, pressing his lips to Riley’s temple, and he stayed that way for a moment, whispering something to her that Jade couldn’t hear.
He stood up, and without even a glance in her direction, headed for the door.
Jade panicked. She couldn’t leave things with him like this, or the next person through that door would be carrying handcuffs. “Please forgive me, Danny,” she begged, rising from her chair. “Please.”
He turned to look at her, and again she was struck by the pain in his face. “Someday this is all going to catch up to you, Lisa,” he said, making her catch her breath at the sound of her old name. “But it won’t be because of me.”