Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  Gideon didn’t turn around. “Guess I learned from a master.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Gideon? Do you have the answer? Because believe me, I want to hear it.”

  He faced me, his hands resting lightly on his hips. He was sweating; bits of chaff and straw were caught on his forearms. “I’m sick of being your fall guy. Return the orchids. Get hay for free. Turn fucking water into wine. What’s next, Alice?”

  “Should I not have paid the vet, then, when Syrah was sick?”

  “I don’t know,” he said brusquely. “I don’t care.”

  He pushed past me as I stood up. “Yes, you do,” I called, running after him, wiping my hand across my eyes. “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know. I didn’t want to run a sanctuary. I didn’t want to worry about sick animals and paying salaries and going bankrupt.”

  Gideon stopped in the doorway. His silhouette was framed by the light as he turned. “So what do you want, Alice?”

  When was the last time anyone asked me that?

  “I want to be a scientist,” I said. “I want to make people see how much elephants can think, and can feel.”

  He walked forward, filling my field of vision. “And?”

  “I want Jenna to be happy.”

  Gideon took one more step. He was so close now that his question drew across the bow of my neck, making my skin sing. “And?”

  I had stood my ground before a charging elephant. I had risked my scientific credibility to follow my gut instinct. I had packed up my life and started over. But looking into Gideon’s face and telling the truth was the most courageous thing I had ever done. “I want to be happy, too,” I whispered.

  Then we were tumbling, over the uneven steps of the hay bales, into a nest of straw on the floor of the barn. Gideon’s hands were in my hair and under my clothes; my gasp became his next breath. Our bodies were landscapes, maps burned into our palms where we touched. When he moved in me, I knew why: Now, we would always find our way back home.

  Afterward, with hay scratching my back and my clothes tangled around my limbs, I started to speak.

  “Don’t,” Gideon said, touching his fingers to my lips. “Just don’t.” He rolled onto his back. My head lay pillowed on his arm at a pulse point. I could feel every beat of his heart.

  “When I was little,” he told me, “my uncle got me a Star Wars figurine. It was signed by George Lucas, still in the box. I was, I don’t know, maybe six or seven. My uncle told me not to take it out of the packaging. That way, one day, it would be worth something.”

  I tilted my chin so I could look at him. “Did you take it out of the packaging?”

  “Shit, yeah.”

  I burst out laughing. “I thought you were going to tell me you had it on a shelf somewhere. And that you were willing to use it to pay for the hay.”

  “Sorry. I was a kid. What kid plays with a toy in a box?” His smile faded a little. “So I slipped it out of the box in a way that no one would notice, if they didn’t look too closely. I played with that Luke Skywalker figure every day. I mean, it went to school with me. Into the bathtub. It slept next to me. I loved that thing. And yeah, it might not have been as valuable that way, but it meant the world to me.”

  I knew what he was saying: that the untouched collector’s item might have been worth something, but all those stolen moments were priceless.

  Gideon grinned. “I’m really glad I took you off the shelf, Alice.”

  I punched him in the arm. “You make me sound like a wallflower.”

  “If the shoe fits …”

  I rolled on top of him. “Stop talking.”

  He kissed me. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, and his arms closed around me again.

  The stars squinted at us by the time we walked out of the barn. There was still straw in my hair and dirt on my legs. Gideon didn’t look much better. He climbed on the ATV, and I sat behind him, my cheek pressed against his back. I could smell myself on his skin.

  “What do we say?” I asked.

  He looked over his shoulder. “We don’t,” he replied, and he started the engine.

  Gideon stopped at his cottage first, getting off the ATV. The lights were out; Grace was still with Jenna. He did not risk touching me there, out in the open, but he stared at me. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  That could have meant anything. We could have been arranging a time to move the elephants, to clean the barn, to change the spark plugs on the truck. But what he was really asking was if I would go back to avoiding him, the way I did before. If this would happen again.

  “Tomorrow,” I repeated.

  A minute later, I reached my own cottage. I parked the ATV and climbed off, trying to straighten the nest of my hair and to brush off my clothes. Grace knew I had been up at the hay barn, but I didn’t just look like I’d been unloading bales. I looked like I’d been through a war. I rubbed my hand over my mouth, wiping away Gideon’s kiss, leaving only excuses.

  When I opened the door, Grace was in the living room. So was Jenna. And holding her, with a smile on his face that could light up a galaxy, was Thomas. Spying me, he passed our daughter to Grace and reached for a package on the coffee table. Then he came closer, his eyes wide and clear. He handed me an overturned plant with its gnarled roots serving as blooms, just as he had done two years ago when I first arrived at the Boston airport. “Surprise,” he said.

  JENNA

  The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee has a nice little downtown storefront with big pictures on the walls of all their animals, plus plaques that give the history of each elephant. It’s weird, seeing the names of the elephants that used to be at the New England Sanctuary. I pause the longest at the picture of Maura, the elephant my mother liked the most. I stare at it so hard that the image starts to blur.

  There is a table full of books you can buy, and Christmas ornaments, and bookmarks. There’s a basket full of stuffed elephants. There is a looping video of a bunch of Asian elephants making sounds like a New Orleans swing band, and another of two elephants playing in a fire hose, just like city kids when the hydrants get turned on in the summer. Another, smaller video player explains protected contact. Instead of using bull hooks or negative reinforcement, which is pretty much how the elephants had lived most of their lives, the sanctuary caregivers use positive reinforcement for training. There is always a barrier between the caregiver and the elephants—not just to give the caregiver safety but to relax the animal, who can always walk away if she doesn’t want to participate. It’s been that way since 2010, and it’s really helped, the video says, with elephants that have serious trust issues with humans as a result of free contact.

  Free contact. So that’s what it’s called when you can go right into an enclosure, like my mother and our caregivers used to do. I wonder if the death at our sanctuary, and the debacle that followed, led to the change.

  Only two other visitors are in the welcome center with me—both wearing fanny packs and Tevas with socks. “We don’t actually offer tours of the facility,” an employee explains. “Our whole philosophy is to let the elephants live out their lives being elephants, instead of being on display.” The tourists nod, because it’s the politically correct thing to do, but I can tell they’re disappointed.

  Me, I’m on the prowl for a map. Downtown Hohenwald is no more than a single block, and there is no hint of the twenty-seven hundred acres of sweeping elephant vista anywhere nearby. Unless the animals are all shopping at the dollar store, I don’t know where they’re hiding out.

  I slip out the front door before the tourists do and wander around back to the small employee parking lot. There are three cars and two pickup trucks. None have any logos on the doors for The Elephant Sanctuary; they could belong to just anyone. But I lean close to the passenger-side windows of each car and peek inside to see if there’s anything to identify the vehicles’ owners.

  One belongs to a mom; there are sippy cups and Cheerios all over the floor.

  Two are