Undo Part 55

"Oh Greta," Matthew said with disgust, "you're so pathetic."

He released his grip on the bowl...and the misfortune that directly followed his letting go lasted only seconds.

With great force the bowl crashed into Greta's chest and propelled her backward.

Instantly seeing what his letting go would cause, Matthew dove forward with outstretched hands. His fingers grazed the bowl's surface.

Flying backward, Greta let go of the bowl and thrust her hands behind her to try and break her fall. However, it was her not her bottom that crashed first, but her head, into the wall behind her.

Her body dropped to the floor in a lifeless heap, legs splayed at an awkward angle.

Matthew, in midair, felt the bowl's cool underside brush his fingertips and he squeezed his hands together. But it was too late.

The base of the object struck the hardwood floor. It shattered with a resonant ring, and shards of gla.s.s blasted in every direction.

He closed his eyes as he sailed to the ground and landed in a pile of gla.s.s between his wife's unmoving legs.

Then, perfect silence.

He lay there for a moment before opening his eyes, grateful at once that his vision had escaped the shrapnel. The first thing he saw was blood. He panicked, and gla.s.s crunched beneath his arms as he raised himself up on his elbows. He was aware of many stabs along the undersides of his arms and blood started gus.h.i.+ng from his palms.

Then he saw her. He quickly brushed the largest broken pieces away with a folded box. He leaned close to her face, squeezed her cheeks between his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers. "Greta," he shouted. "Wake up!" He looked from her face to her chest for evidence of life, pressed her stomach, tried to make her breathe. He squeezed her lips between her fingers and put his lips on hers and blew, felt nothing in return. Had he killed her? He let out an agonized groan, how could this be happening when everything was back to the way they had planned?

He crawled up between her legs. He pulled her head to his chest, and with his other hand he searched for her pulse.

"Oh Greta," he moaned, gazing with disbelief at the fragments.

Where was her pulse?

"I'll fix it," he whispered, probing for her heartbeat with his b.l.o.o.d.y fingertips, all the while staring with bedazzled eyes at the brilliant shards twinkling in the light, searching in vain for one that might contain the etchings of the salmon fish.

But he found none, for their arduous journey had come to its fated end, lost forever in the frozen crystal bits.

Once the plane reached cruising alt.i.tude, William reclined his seat and closed his eyes, musing over an idea that had flashed in his mind the instant Matthew had asked for his promise.

Now, after dozing on and off through half the flight, half-consciously dreaming up the specifics of his new plan, he was ready to put down the particulars. He opened his notebook on the tray table and went to work. He drew various boxes and connected them together. He penciled his name in the uppermost box, and filled in the others.

A flight attendant appeared at his seat. "Sir, you slept through the meal. Can I bring you a snack or a beverage?"

He looked up from the chart. This was cause for celebration.

"How about a Sa.s.sy Screw?" he said, a little embarra.s.sed saying the c.o.c.ktail's name, but in want of one just the same. He continued drawing, completely filling the page with little squares and lines.

The flight attendant returned and placed the drink on a napkin beside his notebook. As he put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on his work, a few bubbles fizzed from his drink and settled on the page, staining it with tiny dots.

As he stared at the little dots speckling his work, an awfully funny thought entered his mind. A short laugh burst from his lips, and a few pa.s.sengers in nearby seats glanced curiously his way.

There, on the page, was the cause for William's amus.e.m.e.nt. The little orange dots, speckling the paper. Matthew's one-time soda pop success, now a mere stain on William's organization chart.

Pop, pop, fizzle, he mused, and sipped his c.o.c.ktail.

Peter stood beneath Hoover Tower on the Stanford Campus, not far from the very place where he had first met Ivy. He had agreed to meet her here, to discuss the terms of her cases against him.

In the time he had to wait for her, he considered his life as it was at this moment. He had long ago gotten over the hurt and anger he had felt from being ousted from Wallaby. He missed Kate, but the work he was doing with Byron went a long way to keeping his mind off his loss of her. Not all the way, but enough to help. Isle was healthy, and Ivy's lawyers had said that she was deemed stable enough to mother her baby. But it was his baby, too. And had he not felt something for her, that night they were together? To be honest, he was not sure. That night was long past now, lost in mixed up events and complicated circ.u.mstances. All that remained of it was the unusual feeling he still carried in his heart, about everything that had been affected by his actions that evening. He knew he was not in love with Ivy. But he loved his baby, their baby, and the three of them formed a kind of family, didn't they? He had never been part of a real family, and the thought of his daughter going through life without two parents deeply disturbed him. Would Ivy consider marriage?

"No lawyers?"

He spun around...and was stunned by her transformation.

She looked as youthful and vibrant as when they had first met.

Her bright white-blond hair was pulled up into a smart bun, and her delicate face was tanned. Her blue eyes sparkled with the iridescence of tropical water.

He wanted to touch her, her belly, the place where Isle had come from. She smiled, and he experienced a stirring for her that was unlike any he had felt before, a connection of some kind, between her and himself and their child. It was all light and strangely uplifting, and he let out a breath and wet his lips and formed in his head the words he would say to her, for at this instant he knew, yes, that he could love her and that they belonged together. That they were a family.

But her smile was changing, right before his eyes. It became a smile that betrayed not her happiness to see him, but her happiness to see him looking at her this way. Looking at her with real attraction. Desire. Her smile was the smile of pure self-satisfaction.

"Amazing, isn't it," she said. "What a little time can do?"

"Oh, Ivy," he said, turning his hands helplessly. "I'm sorry.

About all of it."

"Ha," she said. "Please. I've been in the desert learning how to stop apologizing. Take my advice, save it."

"But we don't have to be like this. Can't we try to be, I don't know, nice?"

"Um, no. Not now, anyway. This is business, Peter. Maybe in a while, after we close our agreement."

"But I don't want you to be angry forever."

"Sit down," she said, and he did. She remained standing however, looking down at him. "Poor Peter. Just a lost little boy. Look, I'm not p.i.s.sed off anymore. Well, not too angry. I'm not sorry, either. What's done is done. I am definitely not having an easy time of it, coming off the drugs and all. But I will get there.

All I want is to see my Isle, and my Isle, and how they've grown in your care." She seated herself on the concrete beside him. "I thought for sure you'd have ten lawyers here with you," she said.

"Nope," he said. "Where are yours?"

"Don't need them for this. They told you what I want." She withdrew a single folded sheet doc.u.ment from inside her light jacket. "It's all here. Plain and simple."

He accepted her pen and the contract, spread the page down on the concrete.

But he didn't sign it.