He wanted to go to her apartment and grab her some pajamas and a robe and some slippers, her toothbrush, things she would want when she got to feeling a little better. But the hospital wouldn't give him her keys, or access to any of her personal belongings. He'd found out while he was arguing with the head nurse that he was the second name on her emergency call list, and he was dying to find out who was on it above him. It could be that she hadn't updated it and April was the first name, but in that case, they would have called the house asking for April.
Both situations were going to drive him crazy, but there was little he could do about being second in line—for now. Clay grimaced as he looked at Elodie as she slept, then made up his mind that he was going to go get her things. He slipped out of the room without waking her and flagged down the first CNA he found, asking her to tell Elodie that he'd just stepped out and would be back very shortly if she woke while he was gone and asked about him.
When he got to his pickup, he took a moment and sat behind the wheel, leaning forward to put his head against the cold leather steering wheel cover, and said a short, sharp prayer of thanks that she was, essentially, going to be fine.
Then he pulled out of the parking lot and made his way back to Harden, to the wrong side of the tracks, where Elodie's apartment was. The building was skuzzy and nondescript on the outside. He knew she lived in number twenty-one, and it was the middle of the day so there was no one around. Clay took a silver ring of keys out of his glove box and stuck it in his back pocket. It held every key to everything on his ranch from sheds to old tractors, and he was pretty certain that April had put a spare key of her sister's on that ring.
When he was facing her door, he took out the group of keys—some marked and some not—and luckily, he had her door open in less than five minutes. He took the key off the ring and put it in the front pocket of his jeans to add it to his main key ring for future use. Elodie may not like it, but he figured that, with her current condition, he would need to be visiting her place often.
Her apartment was dingy and depressing, but neat as a pin, just as he expected. There was very little furniture besides a big comfy looking chair that had seen better days, a mini stereo that he remembered he and April had given her for Christmas one year, and a tiny TV.
But what was there glued him—dumbstruck—in place for about ten minutes. Paintings. Tons of them. All around the perimeter of the room. Lighthouses, waves crashing spectacularly onto rocks—some spots he recognized from his own trips up and down the coast. The occasional, obligatory beach scene, then one set at sunset with a dad and his little one on his shoulders frolicking in ankle-deep surf. Oceanscapes and red flowers, almost all of them.
Except one.
Unlike the others, this one was framed, and hung on the wall above the television. It was April—his April. Clay could no more prevent himself from walking over to stand in front of it than he could stop the sun from setting at night. He had to. It called to him, and he called to her on a whispered breath. "April."
She had captured her sister perfectly; the light from within, the humor, the fey cast about her eyes that said you never knew what she was going to do or say next, but it was probably going to be a lot of fun... it was all April. Clay felt like he was standing in front of his wife again, for the first time in five years.
His eyes filled with tears that flowed down his cheeks as his heart nearly burst in his chest. His hand reached out, automatically, wanting to touch her, then it fell, lonely and unused to his side.
He didn't know how long he stood there, lost in intimate, soul shaking memories, but when he finally came out of it, his heart ached worse than it had since about two months after the accident had happened. When you lose someone you love abruptly, the worst isn't when you're told about it, or the funeral, or even coming home after the funeral, like a lot of people say. The worst hits a month or two later, when you've stopped looking up avidly every time someone comes in the door, or jumping for the phone because you're hoping it's them, that it's all a very, very bad mistake.
That's when the realization really hits that they're gone, and you'll never, ever see them again. Never make love, never fight, never laugh, never cry with them. Ever. And all you have left to remind you of them are your pictures and your memories, and God help you if you didn't live every second you had with them as if you knew that Godawful day would come.
Clay stumbled into Elodie's bedroom, realizing with a sad smile that it looked just as he'd expected it to look—like a nun's cell in an old Irish convent: barren and stark, the comforter old and threadbare. There were three stuffed animals on the bed, and several family photos on top of a dresser that had seen much better days. Thankfully, there were no portraits here.