CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
KELSEY
ARCHER BROKE EVERY SPEED LIMIT AND traffic law driving me back to Highland Park. I kept calling Maria, asking for updates even though I couldn’t do anything until we got there. And maybe not even then.
Liv and Dean both called only once, telling me they didn’t want to tie up my phone, but that they’d told Archer to call them as soon as we got to the hospital.
It took forever, seconds stretching like hours. By the time Archer finally pulled up to the hospital entrance, my nerves were scraped raw with terror.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll park and be there in a sec.”
I bolted out of the car and ran inside. I managed to ask at the front desk what floor to go to. Archer arrived as I was pacing in front of the elevators.
He put his hand on my lower back as we entered the car. When we exited on the fourth floor, I let him search for my mother’s room. The hospital smell of disinfectant and stale air filled my nose. Nausea swirled in my gut.
“Here.” Archer touched my arm and gestured to a half-open door.
I forced myself to move forward, knocking on the door once before pushing it open. I almost didn’t recognize her.
My mother.
My mother was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, attached to tubes and machines, her head covered with a white bandage. Her skin looked paper-thin, cast with a gray pallor.
A nurse was adjusting one of the machines. “Are you family?” she asked.
I nodded. I was my mother’s only family. Just as she was mine.
“I’m… I’m her daughter,” I stammered. “Kelsey March.”
“There’s been little change in the past hour, Miss March. I’ll see if the doctor is available to talk with you.”
She fiddled with the tubes and left the room. Archer’s hand touched my shoulder. He guided me to a chair beside the bed.
“I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes,” he said. “I’m just outside the door, okay?”
I didn’t want him to leave, but couldn’t find the words to ask him to stay. I pulled up closer to my mother and rested my head against her arm. The faint scent of tea-rose clung to her skin.
I couldn’t find any words for her, either. And if I could, I didn’t even know if she’d hear them.
I was frozen. Tears formed in my chest, but couldn’t push past the knot in my throat.
“Miss March?”
I started at the sound of the doctor’s voice. He looked at me with grave sympathy, which I tried to deflect.
If the doctor is already sympathetic…
“I’m Dr. Mills. I’ve been treating your mother. I wanted to let you know that she suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, which means there was bleeding in the brain. We were able to stop the bleeding, but can’t assess the level of damage until she’s stable. And with no changes in the past twelve hours, I’m afraid the prognosis doesn’t look positive.”
He didn’t have to say any more. I sank back into the chair and realized I was about to start a vigil waiting for my mother to die. I looked at her face, her closed eyes, her pale, lovely skin.
A thousand memories assaulted me. My mother the peacekeeper, the artist, the lunch lady, the homemaker, the cook, the business owner. The woman whose strength and courage ran like a vein of gold deep inside her being.
“Kseniya.”
I jolted awake from a doze, my heart hammering. For a hazy instant, I thought my mother had spoken my name. Then I blinked and saw Maria standing at the foot of the bed. Her eyes were red from crying.
I pushed to my feet and embraced her. She held me tightly.
“She was on the floor when I went into the shop this morning,” she said, her voice choked. “I don’t know how long she was there. I’m so sorry. I called 911 right away, but if I’d been there earlier—”
“No. Don’t blame yourself. She wouldn’t want that.”
Though the ground itself was trembling beneath my feet, I was certain of that fact.
Hours passed. Maybe days. Doctors and nurses came in and out of the room. My mother didn’t show any signs of recovery. I sat beside her bed, reading, sleeping, trying to work. I showered in the hospital bathroom. Archer brought in coffee and sandwiches. He tried to convince me to leave for a short time, to go for a walk or back to my mother’s house, but I always refused.
What if… what if… what if… ?
I stayed. So did he. He answered calls from Liv and Dean, emails from my grad students, voicemails from Stan. I had the vague thought that someone else had to be teaching my classes.
My mother died at night, slipping from this world to the next with one breath. I held her hand and didn’t cry. I heard her voice, the dochenka, “my daughter,” a word that had been woven into the entire fabric of my life.
I’d never hear it again.
I didn’t remember what we’d had to do after my father’s death. I knew there was a lot of planning, arrangements to be made, papers to fill out and file.
This time, I welcomed the work because it kept the grief at a distance. If I could focus on one task after another, I could avoid thinking about the fact that my mother was gone.
Liv and Dean drove down as soon as Archer called them. My mother’s friends stopped by with food, to share in the sorrow, and tell stories. While it was comforting to have them all around, I had the same feeling I’d had when Archer and I were chasing the storm. Despite my appreciation for friends, I really just wanted to be alone. With him.
From the beginning, I’d thought of Archer as a storm. Wild, reckless, dangerous. He’d overpower me and then he’d move on, away from me. I’d be alone, but under clear skies again and back on the stable path I’d constructed for myself.
But in the confusing aftermath of my mother’s death, I discovered that I’d been wrong. Archer was a storm, no doubt, one who electrified and consumed me, but he was also every part of the storm.
He was the calm right in the center of it. He was the blue sky behind the clouds. He was the sheltering place where I could crawl into safety.
In the days that followed, he was just there. I didn’t ever have to look for him. I barely even had to need him. The instant a hollow feeling broke inside me, the longing for someone, something, he was there. His hand on my shoulder, his voice in my ear, his warm, gentle gaze.
He was the only solid element in my world. He helped me organize the funeral arrangements, the doctor bills, and the insurance papers. I should have felt alone after having lost my mother. But with Archer there, I didn’t. Even though I had no other family, somehow, I’d become part of we again.
The day after the funeral, I got ready to return to Mirror Lake. My mother had left her share of the gift shop and inventory to Maria, and I’d have to come back to meet with a lawyer and finalize the transfer. I’d also have to pack all my mother’s belongings and find a real-estate agent to list her house for sale.
Suppressing a wave of sorrow, I zipped my travel bag and went into the living room. Liv and Dean had returned to Mirror Lake a few hours ago. A morning news program blared from the television.
I set my bag down and stared at the screen. A reporter and an actress were laughing over a comedy clip.
In a surreal way, I was shocked by the realization that the rest of the world was acting as if nothing had happened. It shouldn’t have been that way, of course. Every person and every particle of the universe should have changed the instant Vera March died.
I rubbed a hand over my eyes. The house felt empty, bereft of my mother’s warm presence.
Archer came in the front door from loading the trunk of my car. Now that we were alone, I wanted to throw myself into his arms, to press my face against his chest and absorb his strength.
He stopped and looked at me, his dark gaze searching my face. My throat constricted.
“You can cry,” he said. His voice was unbearably gentle.
“What?”
“You’ve been holding yourself tight,” he said. “It’s okay to let it out.”
Irritation rose up my spine. “Thanks for the advice, Dr. Feel-Good.”
I folded my arms, slanting my gaze to the television so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“You’ve been like this for a long time,” Archer continued. “So determined not to break. But sometimes you have to.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I muttered. “I’m not keeping you around for your psychotherapy.”
I stared unseeingly at a detergent commercial. I hated the regret filling my chest. Unwaveringly, Archer had stayed by my side this whole time, and now I was snapping insults at him.
I silently begged him to go away. I couldn’t withstand his gentle persistence, his desire to weather the storm with me. I couldn’t let myself fall sobbing into his arms. I couldn’t become more attached to him than I already was.
He would steady the ground under my feet, help me navigate this new, changed world, but then I’d have to do the same thing all over again when he left. And I’d have to do it alone.
He moved closer and pressed his hand against the back of my neck, then up to cradle my head. Tears stung my eyes.
I swallowed hard and forced them back down. The weather forecast came on the news, a storm front moving north toward Chicago.
This was a storm too, but an intensely personal and private one. One that churned inside my heart and soul, destructive and painful.
I blinked. The weather forecast shifted to a special interest story about tornados.
Shock bolted through me suddenly. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. What the…
My own face appeared on the television screen above the words Dr. Kelsey March, King’s University. Behind me, clouds boiled over the sky and threw shadows on the old gas station where I was standing. I was eating a piece of beef jerky while Archer’s voice off-camera said, “Tell me about the supercell.”
On-screen, the wind whipped my hair around my face. I looked into the camera and talked about the instability, wind shear, the growth of the storm. Then the shot cut to the massive roaring tornado and Archer’s and my yells, peppered with beeps over our swearing.
“That was—” Archer began.
“Shitty.” I hit the off button and threw the remote onto the sofa. “Sonuvabitch.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I grabbed my travel bag. “I never gave Peter permission to use that video of me.”
“It’s a great spot, Kelsey. You—”
“I don’t want to be on TV,” I interrupted. “I’m a scientist, not a weather girl.”
“Plenty of scientists contribute to news and weather reports.”
His rational tone irritated me further.
“I don’t,” I said curtly. “I get enough flack being a woman in the hard sciences without needing to add glamour reporter to my title. And my colleagues don’t need another reason to snark at me about the Spiral Project.”
“Kelsey, you’re overreacting.”
I stopped and turned to face him. My chest roiled with anger, fear, and a deep grief that felt like an endless pit, threatening to engulf me.
“I’m overreacting?” I repeated. “Really? Tell me, Archer, just what do you know about university politics and Meteorology departments? How much do you know about working your ass off for a PhD and post-docs? About writing textbooks and research papers and struggling to get your proposals funded? How much do you know about the process of tenure and the fucking fear that if you don’t get it, you’ll be fired from your job and have to start all over again?”
A hush fell in the air, broken only by the sound of my harsh breathing. Archer just looked at me.
“I don’t know about any of that,” he said. “But I do know about fighting to prove yourself. I know you’ve proven yourself countless times over. In fact, you’re the only person who’s ever made me believe I can prove myself one day too.”
Shame scorched me.
“You don’t need to prove yourself, Archer,” I said, my voice ragged. “You just are.”
Before I broke down completely, I turned and strode out the door.
I had to accept the stark knowledge that the day would come when he wouldn’t be here anymore. I’d known that from the beginning, but now it was the one thing in the world I wanted to forget.