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“Buenos noches, Rosa,” he said.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward him. “Buenos noches, Dr. Liam. ”
“What’s with all the candles, Rosa?”
“It does not bother you, I hope? I know it is not my place …”
“Mi casa es su casa,” he answered. “I just wondered why … all of a sudden …”
She ducked into the great room, moving hurriedly toward the grand piano. The ebony surface captured her reflection, dotted it with candlelight.
He followed, came to a stand behind her. “Is this all for Mike?”
She shook her head. The tip of her white braid brushed against her hip. Slowly she turned around and looked up at him.
He could see the worry carved into her face. “It is for you also that I light these candles, Dr. Liam. For you and the children. I spoke to Carol today. She told me that Julian True called you. It is quite the fiery gossip in town. ”
“Hot,” he said distractedly. “Hot gossip. And Julian will be here tomorrow. ”
Her mouth puckered with disapproval, but she didn’t say anything.
“You think I shouldn’t have called him. ”
“It does not matter what one old woman thinks. ”
He said, “Follow me,” and led her to the sofa.
She sat stiffly, her knees and ankles clamped together, her gaze riveted on her lap.
He sat beside her, leaning forward in the hopes that it would make her look at him. “I’m afraid of him, too, Rosa. More afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. But I love her. I can’t let her go without trying everything possible. ”
Rosa sighed heavily. “You cannot understand bad love. My poor Mikita, she grew up watching this kind of love … and I think I—what is the word?—infected her with my sorrow. ”
“Julian True married her, Rosa. He must have loved her. ”
“There is love … and love. The good love, like what you have for my Mikaela, it does not let a young girl run off alone with a tiny baby. It does not stay hidden for years and years. It does not leave you cold in the winter in bed all by yourself. ”
Liam looked away. Candlelight reflected all around the room, a thousand tiny golden drops hovering against the night-tarnished windowpanes. “When I asked Mike to marry me,” he said quietly without looking at Rosa, “she told me she’d been married before … and that she was afraid she could never love anyone that way again. ”
“Of course she was afraid. Love for a woman like her is a terrifying thing. She knew only one kind of love then—the fiery kind that burns everything around it. And she had seen me, alone for so long, waiting for a man who would never come. How could my Mikita be anything but afraid when you said you loved her? But I remember when she first told me about you. ‘A doctor, Mama,’ she said. ‘And he loves me something awful. ’ I tell her, ‘You be smart, you love him back. ’ And she said to me that a broken heart doesn’t love so good. I will always remember this, because it made me want to cry. ” She touched his face gently with her work-calloused hand. “I talked to her many, many times as the years went by. When Bret was born … I have never seen my Mikita so full of joy. I think she stopped thinking about the things that were gone. She loves you, Dr. Liam. I know this in my mother’s heart. ”
“Enough?” he asked.
Rosa’s gaze slid away from his. She made a soft, sighing sound, something like air leaking from an old, worn tire. “You have heard many of the words of Mikaela’s story, but maybe they do not create the right picture. She was a young girl when she met Julian—only a few years older than Jacey. But she was nothing like Jacey. She had a mother who was weak and poor, and a father who would never speak to her in public. She lived in a bad part of town, in a house no one was supposed to see. One day she saw a god. She fell in love with him, in the way that only young girls can fall in love. They married … but he was not a god. He was just a young, selfish man who wanted nothing from life but to have fun. He wanted everything to be given to him, but love, it is not an easy road, sí? And the very heart that he once filled with love, he broke. ” She leaned over and touched Liam’s hands. “When he comes here, you cannot tell Jacey who he is. This is muy importante. We cannot let him hurt our precious girl. ”
Liam knew it was the easy road, not telling Jacey the truth, but he told himself that Mikaela should be the one to reveal her secrets to Jacey. “You’re right, Rosa. We won’t say anything yet. ”
Yet even as he said the words, he knew it was the wrong thing to do.
Liam walked slowly up the stairs. He knew he shouldn’t talk to Jacey right now. He figured his chance of saying the right thing to her was about equal to his chances of climbing Mt. Everest in a Speedo. But he had to sit with her, hold her hand, and look into her eyes. It was guilt, of course, but there was so much more. For the first time in his life, he was afraid of losing his daughter’s love.
He paused at her bedroom door, then quietly knocked.
“Come in. ”
He opened the door and found her exactly as he’d expected: on the telephone. She said good-bye and hung up. “Hi, Dad. ”
Dad.
“Hey, kiddo. ”
“How is she?”
“The same. ” He sat down beside her and gently took hold of her hand. “How are you doing?”
She bravely hoisted a smile onto her pale face. “Okay. ”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. All he could think about was what would happen to all of them when Julian True came into their lives. Jacey, like Liam, had been told only that Mike had been married too young, to a man who wasn’t ready to settle down. Two kids … a marriage that didn’t work out. It was an ordinary story Mike had devised. There was no room in it for the possibility of Julian True.
Liam knew that in all the days and weeks and years that lay ahead, he would divide his life into two neat pieces. Before the coma, and after.
Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon’s blade. Even if Mikaela recovered, their lives would be changed. He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would—for one heartbeat—flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.
Now, as he looked into Jacey’s sad brown eyes, he knew he should tell her the truth about Julian. He knew, too, that he wouldn’t do it. He would lay down his life before causing her such pain.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
A smile was beyond him. “Right as Seattle rain. ” He leaned toward her and pulled her into his arms. She clung to him, and for a brief and shining moment, everything was forgotten except that he loved her … and she loved him back.
When he pulled back, he could see it in her eyes, this mixture of grief and fear that had changed them all. “Dad?”
He felt fragile suddenly; one touch and he could shatter into a dozen pieces. “I love you, Jacey. That’s all I came up here to say. ”
She smiled easily, relieved. “I love you, too, Dad. Remember when I had appendicitis?”
He stroked her hair. “Of course. ”
“You gave me a sucker and told me you’d take the pain away … and you did. ”
“I wish it were that simple now. ”
She lost her smile. “I wish I were little again. ”
He pulled her into his arms again.
If she wondered why he held her a bit too tightly, she never said a word.
Chapter Fourteen
The town looked like a damned movie set. Pleasantville at night.
Julian stared through the limousine’s smoked-glass windows. He couldn’
t remember ever seeing a place this … cute. Any minute he expected to see Disney characters skipping along the sidewalks.
He lowered the privacy screen so he could talk to the driver. “We’re looking for the Country Haus Bed and Breakfast. It’s probably right next door to the Drift On Inn. ”
“I’ve got the address, sir. ”
“Thank God. In a town this size, we could miss it by what, a block? Two?”
The driver turned off Main Street onto Glacier. Halfway down the road, they came to a barricade. Several cars were parked in the center of the road, behind the orange dividers. The driver stopped and started to turn the car around.
“Wait. ” Julian hit the window control. The glass descended silently. He poked his head out to see what the hell the barricade was for. The cold stung his eyes and nose.
Off to the right, there was a huge field, coated in white. In the middle of it was a large frozen pond. Cars ringed the perimeter of a makeshift skating rink; their golden headlights turned the place into an outdoor Madison Square Garden. There were people everywhere, kids and adults, all skating in the same direction.
He noticed a small concession stand set up just a few feet from the car. Some men were roasting hot dogs over an open pit fire.
“Jesus, the only thing missing is Jimmy Stewart. ” He drew his head back in and raised the window. “Go on, take me to the hotel. ”
The limousine turned around and reentered Main Street. “You don’t see towns like this much anymore,” the driver said, casting a nervous glance into the rearview mirror.
They pulled up alongside a huge Victorian house that sat on a corner lot, its roof covered in drifts of snow. A white picket fence cut the large lot into a pretty, bite-sized piece. Next to the open gate was an etched wooden sign that read WELCOME TO OUR COUNTRY HAUS.
Julian stepped out of the car. His breath clouded in front of his face. Christ, it was cold. He sure hoped Teresa had packed him a coat. He pulled his Ray-Bans out of his shirt pocket and put them on. “Bring the bags in,” he said, already moving, his tennis shoes crunching through the hard crust of snow.
The door swung open before he even reached the porch. A gray-haired, heavyset woman in a floral dress and plaid apron stood in the doorway. “It is you! The girls and I didn’t dare hope. In a town like this …” She dissolved into giggles.
At mention of “the girls,” he pictured a herd of wildebeests, all dressed in flowered cotton. Even though he was tired, he flashed her The Smile. It never hurt to schmooze the fans. “Hello, darlin’. ”
She clapped her hands together; a little cloud of flour wafted upward. “Darling—ooh eee. Wait till I tell Gertrude. I made you shortbread, just in case. I read in the Enquirer that it’s your favorite. ”
“You’re an angel straight from heaven,” he said, though in truth, he couldn’t remember what in the hell shortbread was. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’ve had a long trip and I’m tired as hell. I’d sure appreciate it if you’d show me to my room. ”