“The first time you and I made love upstairs in my room, which used to be your room, I remembered I tried to run my fingers through your hair. You pushed my arm down on the bed before I could. I thought you were being sexy...” Allison ran her hands through his hair and pulled the little black elastic band out of the short ponytail he always wore it in. Roland lowered his head. She dropped the elastic on the floor, and started stroking his hair. Under her fingers she felt a ridge of scar tissue under his hair. It was in the same place she felt the scar on Antonio’s scalp.
“How long were you going to keep it a secret from me?” she asked. “The surgery, I mean.”
“Which surgery?” He almost smiled, almost.
“Both.”
“It wasn’t a secret at first. Just private. Then I started falling in love with you. Then it was a secret because I knew you needed to know,” he said. “I was scared I’d lose you if you wanted to have kids of your own.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell me,” she said.
Roland lowered his head again, exhaled.
“Sometimes I remember things,” he said. “Awful things. Hurting Rachel. Doing terrible things to her.” He swallowed hard and she saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “I used to try to talk to Dad about them, and he told me to forget it all. He said I hurt her sometimes but it wasn’t my fault—I had a condition. But I think I did more than hurt her. Sometimes I think I...sometimes I think I killed her. And I don’t think it was an accident, like Dad said.”
He looked at her with pleading eyes and she saw him as the Roland he’d once been years and years ago. The little boy. He looked scared and young and innocent and sweet, just the way she must have looked her first time at the house when he’d changed her life for the better by asking her to help him turn the pages in the book they were reading.
“You were a kid,” she said. “Whatever happened, you were just a kid.”
Allison covered his hand with hers, and he grabbed it, gripping it so tightly it hurt. She sat up and pulled his head to her stomach and held him in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair over and over again, ignoring the scar because the scar was nothing, it was old news, it was part of him but it wasn’t him.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as she stroked his hair and his shoulders and his face. Her leg was damp with his tears. “I’m okay. Dad’s got crazy poison in his system and it made him lose it. That’s all. I’m fine and you’re fine and we’re fine.”
“I’m not fine,” Roland said with a shuddering breath.
“Why not?” she asked, smiling.
He looked up at her, his face open and honest and aching.
“Because my dad’s dying.”
Allison took his face in her hands.
“Mine, too,” she said. Then they held each other and wept together for a long time. They stopped when Deacon came to the door and knocked to get their attention. They wiped their faces and looked at him.
“You okay, sis?” Deacon asked. He looked pale and haggard and haunted.
“I’m all right. Just had a rough moment there,” Allison said. It was no time now to tell them the truth.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Deacon said. He looked at Roland. “It’s, uh, it’s time.”
“Is he awake?” Allison asked.
Deacon nodded. “For now. They gave him some meds for pain so he’s calm. The EMTs said to hurry if you’re coming. He’s...he’s going.”
She looked at Roland and Roland looked at her. He stood up and held out his hand to her. She took it and let him help her to her feet. Allison found a light scarf in her suitcase and wound it around the bruises on her neck. When she was ready, they left the room and went upstairs. Outside Dr. Capello’s bedroom, Deacon stopped them.
“The EMTs are just going to wait downstairs,” Deacon said. “It won’t be long now.”
Roland and Deacon went inside. Allison stayed in the doorway, watching.
Dr. Capello lay on his bed, a blanket over him and his arms on top of the cover. His face was red from the pepper spray but he didn’t seem to be in pain. Thora sat at his side on the bed, clutching his hand in hers. The hands that had nearly killed her barely an hour ago now lay limp and trembling on the bedcovers. The attack on her had taken the life out of him, she saw. She’d survived it. He would not.
Allison took a step into the room. She sensed Death close, hovering near the bed. Allison could feel him breathing down her neck. His breath smelled sour like old milk, and she had to crack open the window to let in the cleansing scent of the ocean. Sea air wafted into the room and over the bed. Slowly Dr. Capello’s eyes fluttered. He must have sensed movement, felt the breeze on his face. Allison waited and he met her eyes and smiled.
“There’s my doll...” He sighed. His voice was as thin as a Bible page.
“I’m here, Dad,” Allison said.
It wasn’t easy to put a smile on her face and call him “Dad” but she did it. She did it for Roland and she did it for Deacon and she did it for Thora. But most of all, she did it for the seven-year-old girl she’d once been, the girl who’d loved this man with all her little heart, and for the little piece of her heart that loved him still.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t...”
“Don’t say anything,” Allison said to him. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at him in the bed. He seemed too small now, so terribly small and fragile and harmless. “You’re sick and you had a spell. That’s all.”
His head moved like he was trying to nod.
“A good girl,” he said.
He took a long shuddering breath, the sort of breath taken after a good long cry. It was excruciating watching him breathe like that, seizing up in momentary agony before relaxing again and going so still that Allison was afraid they’d lost him already. Yet he somehow managed to find the strength to speak again.
“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,