CHAPTER 23

 

“Good morning,” Nate said brightly the following morning. “How did you sleep?”

Cate struggled to sit up, if anything her back felt even worse today.

“That good, huh?” Nate smiled sympathetically. He scooped up Mateo, “come on buddy, let’s get you washed and dressed.”

“Wait,” Cate rubbed her bleary eyes, “you don’t have to do that. It’s your birthday.”

“Lo,” Cate asked her daughter, “can you open that drawer for me?” She handed Nate a small box wrapped in purple paper. When Nate raised his eyebrows at the glittery paper, Cate smiled, “Lola chose it.”

“Do you like it?” Lola asked eagerly.

Nate ruffled Lola’s hair, “it’s beautiful, Lo. Thank you.”

“Open it,” Lola and Mateo clapped their hands excitedly.

Nate sat on the end of the bed and with Lola, Mateo and Cate watching on, he carefully unwrapped the small box. “You didn’t have to get me anything…?”

“We wanted to,” Cate assured him. She could never express how grateful she was that he’d been there for her at her lowest possible point.

Nate was really into kickboxing and one of his idols was Kevin Spyder. After a serious back injury had forced him to stop competing, Kevin had returned to his hometown of Seattle to open up his own academy.

“But how…?” Nate shook his head in disbelief. What he held in his hands was more valuable than a golden ticket. Kickboxers not just from America but all over the world came to Seattle for the chance to be trained by the great Kevin Spyder. Most of them returned home disappointed because he rarely took on new students. For an amateur like Nate to be admitted to the academy was almost unheard of.

Cate shrugged, “I e-mailed him some clips from that competition you won in Tampa. He thinks you’ve got real potential, Nate.”

When Cate mentioned Tampa, Nate frowned. “What’s the matter?”

Nate looked again at the shiny membership card in his hands. Kevin Spyder thought that he, Nate Rollins, had real potential. He couldn’t allow everything that had happened straight after that competition in Tampa to ruin this perfect moment.

“That was the last time I spoke to my dad,” Nate said gruffly. Kickboxing was the only thing he’d done that his dad had ever been proud of.

“I don’t get it? How do you even know Kevin Spyder?” Nate asked Cate.

Cate shrugged, “it turns out that he’s a big fan of Seattle F.C.”

“Good morning,” Abby trilled when they went downstairs.

“Geez, Mom,” Nate jumped, “how did you even get in here?”

Abby twirled a key ring around her finger, “I used your key. You can’t be angry with me though because I only had the best intentions. It’s your birthday and I’m making you breakfast.”

“Sit down,” Abby gestured to her son, “you too, Cate.”

Cate sat next to Nate at the kitchen counter. Abby slid a plate stacked with fluffy pancakes across the counter towards Nate. “I always make my Nathaniel banana pancakes on his birthday.”

“Mom!” Nate blushed so furiously, even the tip of his ears turned red. She’d cut the pancakes so they looked like smiley faces and even given them whipped cream hair.

“What’s wrong?” Abby asked. “Did I forget to do the eyes?”

Before Nate could protest, Abby took the plate back and quickly added the dark-chocolate chip eyes.

“I’m not eight anymore,” Nate grumbled.

Cate nudged him under the counter, “I think it’s sweet.” Abby had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make her son’s birthday extra-special.

Nate must have felt a little guilty, “I’m sorry, Mom. Thanks for making the pancakes.”

“You’re welcome, sweet boy,” Abby smiled again.

Abby handed Cate a plate and she’d cut the pancakes again into smiley faces with whipped cream hair and chocolate chip eyes. Although it was chilly outside, fog hovered eerily above the Sound; there was so much warmth and love in this kitchen. Cate had to swallow the big lump at the back of her throat. They might not have been related by blood like her mum, brother and sisters but Abby, Nate and Layla had become part of Cate’s family. She felt like she was finally starting to put roots down here in Seattle.

“I was so sure that baby was going to be born last night” Abby shook her head. She and Cate were in the kitchen washing up after breakfast. Lola had taken Mateo upstairs to get dressed. Nate had offered to stay and help but Cate had insisted that he shouldn’t spend his birthday working. He’d decided to go to the local gym; he wanted to be in the best shape possible when he met up with Kevin Spyder. Still mindful of the promise he’d made to Kian, he’d only agreed to go after Abby had said that she would stay with Cate.

“Mum,” Lola came thundering down the stairs, “can I go next door and play with Luke?”

“OK,” Cate kissed her daughter’s forehead.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Abby suggested to Cate. “You could do with some fresh air.”

Abby strapped Mateo into his pushchair and they walked along the promenade. As they passed the Taco Shack, Cate felt hot and had to stop for a second. She quickly removed the woollen scarf from around her neck and unzipped her jacket a little. “Are you OK, sweetheart?”

“I hope I’m not coming down with the same bug Lola and Mateo had yesterday.”

Abby suggested they sit on the steps of the Taco Shack for a minute. “Ugh, I feel…”

“Take some deep breaths, it’ll pass,” Abby said soothingly.

“Are you OK, Cate?” Heidi asked. She still looked annoyingly chipper.

“I’m OK,” Cate managed, although her voice sounded a little croaky.

“Here,” Heidi handed her a bottle of water, “sip some of this. I felt so sick when I was pregnant with my son, Diego.”

“You have a son?” Cate couldn’t hide her surprise.

“I do,” Heidi said proudly, “he’ll be two next month.”

The nausea seemed to pass almost as quickly as it had started so after she’d thanked Heidi for her concern, Cate, Abby and Mateo started the short walk home.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Abby said quietly, “Nathaniel told me that you’ve been feeling sad lately.” Cate nodded. “I just wanted to tell you that it will get better. It’s what I would have wanted somebody to tell me.”

Abby seemed far away all of a sudden, “I’m a California girl, it’s where I was born and raised but more than that, it’s who I am.”

Cate knew the feeling, she felt like England and Manchester in particular defined so much about who she was.

“My husband couldn’t be more different,” Cate couldn’t mistake the warmth in Abby’s pale-blue eyes. “I love the ocean; he loves hunting in the woods. I’m a pacifist, he’s retired military. I’m a vegetarian and he likes nothing more than a thick, bloody steak.”

“I was seventeen when we got married, just a baby myself really. Sarge, that’s my husband, he spent all his money on a beat-up old truck, driving through the night just so that he could make it to my high-school graduation.”

“My parents were older and very overprotective. I told them I was going to a graduation party at the beach with some friends from church but instead I snuck away to be with Sarge. Even though we were hidden high up in the dunes, we could still slow-dance to some of the songs which were being played down at the bonfire.”

“We stayed up all night talking and you know what made me realise that I’d fallen hopelessly in love with him? When we argued and we did a lot, I knew that even though he might not agree with me, he always respected my opinion.”

“Early the next morning, we watched the sun come up from the back of his truck and at that moment, my future felt like the Pacific Ocean spread out in front of us, it was so big that it should have been terrifying but it wasn’t, for the first time it was exciting. It was my future. Until that moment, I’d obediently followed the road map my parents had carefully planned out for me. In less than a week, I was supposed to be going to Africa to do missionary work before starting a teaching degree at our local college.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted. “Let’s get married,” I said to Sarge, fully expecting him to look at me as if I was crazy. He just grinned, the dimple in his chin even more pronounced and said “why the heck not?” We knew my parents would never approve of us getting married so young so we eloped, we had just enough gas to get to Mexico and back. Sarge was stationed at an army base in Texas and he only had two days leave left so after the wedding I went home just long enough to pack my things and ignore my parents’ warnings that I was throwing away my future.”

Abby looked fondly at Mateo who was sat quietly in his pushchair watching the ferry boat glide across the Sound. “Layla was born a year later. Two days before she was born, Sarge was told that he was being posted to Germany. As his wife, I was expected to follow him as soon as the doctors confirmed that it was OK for us both to fly. Until I married Sarge and we moved to Texas, I’d never even been out of California before. If I thought Texas was a culture shock, it was nothing compared to Germany. I think I cried every minute of the long flight over there, pretending it was just the post-baby blues.”

Abby’s blue eyes became even more translucent; the pain of remembering clearly evident. “We were still in Germany when I got pregnant with Nathaniel. Sarge was busier than ever. He was quickly climbing up through the ranks but with each of his successes, I felt a little smaller. I wasn’t the one protecting our great country, I was just his wife. They don’t give out medals for telling bedtime stories or potty-training. When we went to events on the base, Sarge would stand there in his uniform, his achievements proudly displayed across his chest.”

Cate placed her hand over Abby’s; she knew just how that felt.

“At first, I thought I was just tired,” Abby continued, giving Cate’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Then I thought maybe I was homesick. I’m a California girl, I’m used to the sun shining all year round and Germany was in the midst of one of the coldest, wettest summers on record. There were other wives on the base but they were older. I couldn’t tell them how desperately I was feeling; the base was such a small community, it was bound to get back to Sarge somehow and embarrass him.”

“Sarge was working all the time so most nights after I’d put Layla to bed, I would sit in the rocking chair by the window watching the droplets of rain slowly trickle down the windowpane. It felt so grey and bleak. I kept thinking about all the people I’d let down; my parents, my brother and sister, my church…I thought about the amazing couple who’d visited our church the previous year and talked about the missionary work they were doing in Africa. I’d let them down by backing out of the trip at the last-minute. I thought about the college I should have gone to. The missionaries had talked about how eager the children in their small community were to learn. How they had to overcome so much just to go to school every day. I felt overcome with guilt – God had blessed me with an education and yet I’d tossed it away as if it was nothing.”

“I thought about Sarge and how I wasn’t a good enough wife for him. I wasn’t a good enough mom to Layla. I thought about this new baby and… it was just another person I was going to disappoint. I decided that as soon as the baby was born, I was going to kill myself.”

Cate gasped, “oh Abby.” Her eyes brimmed with tears for the other woman’s suffering.

“Six weeks before the baby was due, I was driving back to the base. It was raining so hard and the wipers on the car had broken so I could barely see. I saw a shadow of something in the middle of the road and I swerved to avoid it. I remember the car juddering down the embankment, I was pulling frantically at the steering wheel and stamping my foot on the brake pedal but it just kept going. There was a sickening sound as the car hit the tree and I was thrown forward, my stomach crushed against the steering wheel. My head stopped just millimetres from the cracked windshield.”

Abby looked up at the skies, “I was rushed to the hospital. I didn’t speak German so I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. They all looked so sombre. If I thought I’d felt bleak before, the thought that I’d killed my baby… It was the only thing that had been keeping me alive and it was gone. I stopped fighting.”

“Because he was so tiny, Nathaniel had to stay at the hospital in an incubator. I can still remember the first time I ever saw him, he could have fitted into the palm of my hand and he had so many wires and tubes covering his body. Sarge had to go back to work. I said to myself that I’d stay just until Nathaniel was discharged from the hospital. I owed him that at least.”

Abby’s eyes sparkled with pride, “he was such a little fighter. When he was taken off the ventilator and could breathe on his own for the first time, I was so incredibly proud of him. One of the nurses who looked after him spoke a little English and she told me that her own son had been born prematurely and he was now all grown up and had recently got married. She showed me the photo of her handsome son and his bride and I thought for the first time about all the things I’d be missing if I killed myself. I went to the small chapel in the hospital and I broke down sobbing thinking about the milestones in my children’s lives; first days of school, high-school graduations, college, weddings, grandchildren. I wanted it, all of it.”

“I wish I could say that it was like flicking a light switch, that I got rid of all the darkness and lived happily ever after.”

“Thirty-three,” Cate said quietly. “That’s how many rocks I thought I needed to fill my pockets with to sink to the bottom of the Sound and never resurface.”

“Sweetheart,” Abby held Cate’s face in her hands. “Please know that the darkness doesn’t last. When you hold that precious baby in your arms… It’s why I make such a big fuss about Nathaniel’s birthday every year. I’m giving thanks for everything that happened that day. There was a reason that my head stopped just millimetres from hitting that windshield, that there was a doctor on that same quiet road coming back from his shift at the hospital… My tiny little boy with all those tubes and wires is now all grown up and winning kickboxing competitions. What happened on that day saved my life.”