Chapter 38

Simone and I were kept for observation for 4 more days. Gertie visited every day. Shit, she did more than visit. She spent more than 6 hours a day with us, talking with Simone mostly. With her workload at the NIH, I began to realize just how important this was to her, that Simone be OK. I left them to their talks. I used the time to sleep, as I was awake at night, still on alert. I think Gertie knew that. I didn't look but I knew there was an inconspicuous guard watching our door 24 hours a day.

I spent the nights by Simone's bed. We would talk until she fell asleep. She would insist on holding my finger as we talked. She quietly admitted it helped her dreams. Other than that she didn't like me, or any male to touch her much. She liked me to talk while she slept, too.

I remembered what I had done for Janey, so I did the same for her. I didn't have that much history with her to relive, so I told her things I remembered from my own youth. I told her all about Mac and how the first time we had met, we had defended each other back to back in a playground fistfight against a bunch of bigger bullies. The rich kid and the ruffian. We had been inseparable from then on. Our parents and teachers never understood the connection.

I told her about growing up poor and living in a small two bedroom apartment, sleeping in the same bed as my sister. I told her of the changes that happened when my father had become suddenly stupendously rich. I told her about my father and mother, how the sudden riches had torn them apart and how I missed them. I told her about Marion, my sister. I told the sleeping girl how proud I was that Marion was a judge, and a good one, too. I told her things I had forgotten and things I had tried to forget, but couldn't. I told her what I could about my time in the Agency and why I couldn't work for them anymore. I talked until I would drift off. Then we would dream together.

Each night the dream would be the same as before. The beach. The sandcastles. Each night I would show Simone a different set of faces in my collection. Some, like Gertie and Mac, she liked and she would try to touch them with her fingers. Pieces of the sand from them would cling to her delicate fingers and she would scurry back to her own castle and brush the tiny shiny grains into her own mixture of faces, mixing in the sands of my memories of them into her sandcastle. I would watch her as she would sit and watch the grains fit together. Her radiant smile was all the reward I need for sharing those memories.

Some of the faces in my castle frightened her and she would protectively move her own sandcastle a little farther away from mine again, leaving that part of the wall open and unprotected from any errant wave. I would leave the gap open for her and gently show how all the faces in the sand were mixed. The good with the bad. I showed her that the bad memories would fade away, while the good would continue to shine bright and pure. I showed her, too, how the bad memories sometimes made the whole castle stronger. Not all the time, but sometimes.

I showed her the remains of my father's castle, down the beach a ways. It was almost gone now, as he and my mother hadn't been there to tend it for a long time. The only faces left in the ruins were Thorny's, his partner in the law firm, Marion's and mine. Everyone else had faded away or forgotten him.

We found her Papa's sandcastle in another section of the beach and carried it closer to where ours stood. Simone seemed to like knowing his sandcastle was close by. She visited his crumbling castle often. Once I watched her try to fix a breached wall in his castle. Every time she dumped a bucket of sand on the wall, it would disappear. I didn't know how she would react to that, but slowly she came to terms with the futility of it. Only the living could build sandcastles. She didn't try to fix it again but focused on building her own.

From that time on, each morning when we woke, I would sense she had moved her sandcastle a little closer to mine. I would grin over at her as she opened her eyes. Neither one of us understood what it was we were experiencing but we accepted it. I knew it would be a huge step for her to commit to another relationship and that it would take a long time before she was ready to do it. That was fine with me. I would be there when she was ready.

Mac came every day, too. He had been 'released' as soon as Gertie had cleared him. He visited the children's ward on each visit to the hospital, too. I'm not sure who liked it more, Mac or the children. When he visited with us, he spent most of his time tripping over his tongue trying to talk with Simone. She continued to fluster him and took great delight in her ability to keep him floundering. He brought her little gifts, trinkets and flowers that she accepted as if he was presenting her with the crown jewels. I could tell he was having trouble justifying his feelings about Simone on several levels, not the least of which being her young age and kept trying to draw me into a conversation about Sally and Nicole. I ignored his unsubtle attempts and left him to work it out by himself. I slept when he was there, sounder than when Gertie was there. I felt safer with my friend.

Mac had retrieved my car while we were recovering in the hospital and had parked it in the lot next to the hospital. I drove home after they released us. I was a little nervous about our homecoming. I was going to insist on carrying Simone through the door, but she kissed me shyly on the cheek.

"I am not the invalid, Lawrence."

Flabbergasted, I let her walk.

The house was quiet when we entered. Janey had heard us drive in and was preparing the bed for Simone. Another bed was the last thing Simone wanted to see. The two teens saw each other and ran into each other's arms. There was more said in the fierceness of that hug and in the mingling of their mutual tears than could ever have been said with mere words. I think, at that moment, they started thinking of each other as family, as sisters.