Living Out Loud (The Austen Series Book 3)

by Staci Hart

  My hands trembled as I pulled up her covers, my heart thumping and aching and sore. “But John could have helped. My medical bills, college for Elle, piano lessons, the mortgage. You and Daddy worked so hard just to make ends meet. It could have been easier.”

  “We were happy, and we did just fine on our own. But the truth is that it wasn’t just my pride that kept me from taking the money. If I’d taken a penny from John, our parents would have punished him for the betrayal. We were still young, John still new in the company. They would have taken it all away, stripped him down and turned him out. Our parents…they’re rigid and proud, and they never go back on their word. It’s not in their nature. Fanny is right; we really are very lucky to have John and Susan. I only wish we hadn’t needed them like we do.”

  I laid my hand on hers. “It’s gonna be okay, Mama.”

  “I want to believe that, baby. I do. I just don’t know how to convince myself it’s true.” She pulled in a long breath and let it out in a sigh. “So I try to remember that you girls have chances here you never would have had back home. Especially you.” She clutched my fingers and looked into my eyes. “Life is full of contradictions. I want you to be happy, but I want you to be safe, too. I want you to be self-sufficient, but thinking of you on your own scares me. You see? It’s not simple. Life never is, even if it looks simple from the top down.”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “But we have an opportunity here, now, and even though it’s scary and strange, it’s wonderful, too. Fanny aside.”

  I smiled a little at that. “She really is a miserable cow.”

  “She is. But I have a bad feeling she’s not going anywhere. We’ll just have to endure her, and we will, just like we’ve endured everything else.” She cupped my cheek. “I love you, Annie.”

  “I love you too, Mama.”

  She let me go, her face soft and pretty and sad. “I’m gonna read for a little bit before bed.”

  “Let me know if you need anything, all right?”

  “I will. Night, baby.”

  “Night,” I said as I left her room in search of Elle.

  I found her in her room, turning down her bed.

  “Hey,” she said with a smile. “Mama okay?”

  “Sorta. She’s trying to be at least.” I climbed into her bed, and she shook her head, smiling at me. “Are they gone?”

  “No, they’re still out there. Meg and I didn’t stay long.” She slipped in next to me so we lay facing each other. “Well, it was an eventful night.”

  I snorted a laugh. “If by eventful you mean unbearable, I completely agree.”

  “It wasn’t all bad. You played for us, which was the highlight of my night.”

  “Only because Fanny shut up for a whole thirty minutes.”

  She chuckled at that.

  “And anyway, you mean to tell me that Ward wasn’t the highlight of your night?”

  A flush crept into her pretty cheeks. “Annie, don’t be silly.”

  “You like him!” I crowed. “I knew it the second you said hello. I think he likes you too.”

  “I don’t even know him. We only exchanged a few sentences.”

  “Why should it take more than that? I think, when you find your someone, it happens the second you see them. Like getting struck by lightning or hit by a bus.”

  “So falling in love is a lot like dying, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. That moment when you meet him and time stops and the sun shines on you and the angels sing the hallelujah chorus.”

  “I think two people need time to feel affection for each other. You’ve got to get to know each other, learn what kind of fabric the other is made of, what they love and what they don’t, what they believe and what they want out of life.”

  “I think to love is to burn, and I want to set my heart on fire. Like Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet.”

  She snickered. “All of those people died.”

  “But it’s in how they died,” I insisted. “They couldn’t live without each other.”

  “And Romeo and Juliet were teenagers,” she noted.

  “Romeo and Juliet were fictional—and not the point.”

  “Right, the point is that you think Ward and I should jump into a volcano together.”

  I shrugged my free shoulder. “I mean, if the spirit moves you.”

  “He might be my boss come Monday morning.”

  “So use the opportunity to get to know him so you can maybe, possibly decide if you think he’s amiable or affable or perfectly fine or some other dull thing.”

  She laughed softly and let it go without even trying, whereas I would have liked to argue until the sun came up. “I might have a job, and you’ve already gotten one. Meg loves her school, and Mama seems to be doing better. Things are looking up. I mean, think about it, Annie. You’ve got a real job.”

  “I know! What is my life? I live in New York in a fancy penthouse with a cook and a maid, and I got a job at a bookstore. This has to be a dream.”

  “We have a lot to be thankful for,” she said quietly, her smile fading.

  Mine slipped away too. “We really do. It’s easier to see now that we’re here. If we were back home…”

  “I’m glad we’re not.”

  “Me too. There was nothing left for us there. And here, we’ve been afforded so much. You’ve got a job too, if you want it. I mean, not just any job—a job at Nouvelle. It’s got to be one of the most famous fashion magazines in history, next to Bazaar and Vogue.”

  “It’s madness,” she said with wonder. “We’ll see if I can actually do it.”

  “You can. I know you can.”

  “Look at us, a couple of independent women,” she joked.

  “Daddy would have been proud,” I said softly and took her hand.

  She smiled and said, “Yes, he would have.”

  And that almost made the pain a little easier to bear.

  6

  The List

  Annie

  I’d never been afraid of hospitals.

  I knew people had this thing about them because, unless they were having a baby, most people would only go there when something bad happened. It was associated with anxiety, even for happy occasions like having a child—What if something goes wrong? What if the baby is sick? What if there are complications?—but worse than that, it was associated with death.

  People went to hospitals when they were going to die. And even the people who weren’t dying were afraid the doctors would find something to change that.

  But I’d never been afraid. Because those hospitals would save me if something went wrong.

  Being born with a congenital heart defect was scary, but I wasn’t scared. I could have been afraid, could have made myself even sicker from worrying, but I had faith. I believed the doctors who had treated me over the course of my life were as magical as fairies or wizards, but instead of using spells or magic dust, they used science.

  I wasn’t even afraid of needles. I’d watch, wide-eyed, as the needle disappeared into my skin, watch my blood fill up the syringe, or feel the chill of fluids as they rushed up my arm, freezing me from the inside.

  It just never bothered me, not the machines or the sterile smell or the needles or the hospital itself.

  That was, until my new doctor walked through the door the next day.

  It was something in his face that set my heart skipping, something in the tightness at the corners of his mouth and the almost invisible crease between his brows.

  He took a seat on his rolling stool and began to type at the computer.

  Mama took my hand.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you here all day, but I’m glad you were able to stay for the MRI and results. After seeing your echocardiogram, I really wanted to get a better look and compare them to your scans done six months ago.” He turned the computer screen to face us, displaying two scans illuminated in blue-black and gray. “This is your heart six month
s ago, which matches the scans from six months before that almost identically. This,” he used his closed pen to draw a circle around my heart in the new scan, “is from today. Your tricuspid valve—the leaky one—is allowing too much blood into the right atrium, dilating it, and in turn shrinking the right ventricle. Notice the difference in size. It’s slight for now, but it’s very likely it will continue to expand. I think it’s time we talk about surgery.”

  My palms were damp, my breath short.

  “Has anything changed since your last scans, Annie? Are you still taking your medication regularly?”

  “Yes, of course, but…my father died last month, and we moved here.”

  He frowned, concerned. “That’s a lot of change at once. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  “Have you felt any different? Noticed any new symptoms?”

  I considered it, my brows drawing together when I realized the truth. “Not new, but more frequent.”

  Mama looked up at me from her chair. “Annie, you didn’t tell me.”

  I tried to smile, squeezing her hand. “I didn’t realize. Mostly, I’ve felt fine, just little bursts of dizziness or shortness of breath. And my arrhythmia has been a bit more…vocal than usual.”

  Dr. Mason’s frown deepened. “Annie, I want to see you immediately if you have any increase in symptoms or frequency. Without scanning you, your symptoms are the only way we know if something has changed, and your condition could escalate very quickly, too quickly for you to be able to act.”

  I nodded dutifully.

  “Truth be told, if I had been your physician all along, we would have done the surgery before now. My recommendation is to correct your valve using the cone procedure and repair the hole while we’re in there.” He grabbed a model of a heart off the counter and held it up in display, using his pen as a pointer again. “Your tricuspid valve is in the wrong spot. It’s here,” he pointed, “instead of here. In this procedure, we’ll separate this part of the valve from the wall of the heart, rotate, and reattach it.”

  “Is there any reason not to do the surgery, Doctor?” Mama asked.

  “Not one.” He set the model down and turned to me again, hands clasped in his lap. “And while I don’t see any reason to panic, I would like to schedule the surgery as soon as we can get the authorization from your insurance.”

  Mama’s fingers were clammy in mine. “And how long will that take?”

  “A couple of weeks, surgery scheduled a week or two after that. The mortality rate of the surgery is less than one percent, but it’s still open-heart surgery. The recovery will be long, so I’d like for you to plan for that. But, otherwise, it’s the gold-standard procedure for this condition, and our department at Columbia has a lot of experience with it. My colleague—the surgeon who will perform the procedure—has done more than just about any doctor in our field and was a pioneer in the research.” He said it all without saying anything truly comforting or scary, just with that distant, clinical tone that lends nothing but facts.

  It was time. I’d known it was coming for years, knew that surgery wasn’t just possible but probable, not if but when. I should have had it at sixteen, but my old cardiologist seemed to think everything was fine, that we had plenty of time.

  Regardless of knowing it was coming, I was shaken.

  Mama looked afraid. The doctor looked professionally expectant. And so, I squeezed Mama’s hand and smiled as my heart skipped against my ribs.

  “Let’s do it.”

  We spent the next hour filling out paperwork for the insurance company in near silence. It wasn’t until we were in the backseat of the black Mercedes, which Susan had insisted drive us, when Mama took my hand again.

  “I’m scared,” she said, the sound so small.

  “I know. But we knew this was coming, Mama. And, when it’s all said and done, I’ll be healthier than ever. No more taking a thousand pills every day or checking my hands for oxygen depletion. No more dizziness. My heart will beat as steady as a metronome. It’s gonna be good. Don’t worry.”

  She nodded. “I’m less worried about that than I am about your health in the meantime. I think…I think you should quit your job.”

  I backed away from her, meeting her shining eyes. “No, Mama. No. This is the first job I’ve had—ever. I’m making friends. I’m living, finally living. Dr. Mason told me what I could and couldn’t do, and he gave me permission to work. I promise, if anything changes, anything at all, if I get worse, I’ll quit. But please, please don’t make me leave when I’ve only just started. Please.” My voice broke as my throat closed around the words, tears springing too quickly to stop.

  “What if something happens? Do they even know? Would they know what to do?” She shook her head. “Annie, this is dangerous, and I can’t…I can’t lose you too.” Her face bent, yielding to her pain, a sob puffing out of her as she looked down at her hands.

  “Mama,” I said softly, my own tears sliding down my face, “you’re not going to lose me. I promise. We’ve already set everything in motion. We’ll talk to Aunt Susan about recovery and how we’ll get through it. I’ll talk to work about what’s happening and about taking a break.” I brushed away the thought that they might not even want to keep me on staff once they found out. “The doctor said if he was worried, he would have admitted me right away. Please, please don’t worry.”

  She shook her head, trying to gain composure.

  “Let me go talk to work and see, okay? Will you let me at least do that? And we can talk after that, when we’ve had some time to think through it all.”

  She nodded, and I wrapped her in my arms as she cried. And I watched out the front window of the car, my own thoughts and fears and wants tumbling through my head like a rockslide.

  Greg

  The day had gone by without much incident. The store was busy, which kept me busy, but I found myself worrying about Annie.

  I’d answered the phone when she called that morning to let us know that she was at the hospital, getting scans after her doctor’s appointment and that everything was fine, but she would miss her shift. She asked if she could come by to talk to me when she was finished. To which, of course, I answered yes.

  I should have been gone an hour ago, and I could have left. Annie could talk to Cam; it didn’t have to be me. But I’d found myself unable to go, not until I saw with my own eyes that she was all right. So I clocked out and sat at a booth, armed with a beer and my laptop to kill time, working on the schedule, which was ridiculous in and of itself. I was two weeks ahead.

  I also placed all my liquor orders and cataloged the rest of the inventory, and frankly, I was out of shit to do.

  None of that mattered when Annie walked in.

  Her skin was pale, but her cheeks were bitten from the cold, those pink mittens on her hands and a matching sweater hat with a pom-pom on her head. But her face didn’t quite look cheery, the dark smudges under her eyes ominous.

  “Hey,” she said as she approached, pulling her mittens off. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Of course not,” I answered, closing my laptop. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Sorta.” She sighed. “I don’t actually know.”

  Annie added her hat to the pile of knit accessories in her lap and folded her hands on the table, her eyes searching mine for a long moment, a moment I waited through in the hopes that she’d have the space to say what she needed.

  “I should have told you something before you hired me, but I didn’t think it would end up being a big deal. I mean, I’ve dealt with this my entire life, and it chooses now to make a statement.” She chuffed and shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” I said, not understanding. “You can tell me.”

  “I…” She took a deep breath. “I have a heart condition.”

  A cold tingle spread down to my fingertips. “Are you all right?”

  “I am, and it’s not as scary as it sounds. I was born with a h
eart defect; one of my valves is wonky, and there’s a hole in my heart.” She said it so simply, as if she were making a note of the weather, but the shock I felt made my own heart skip a beat.

  “How…how does that work? A hole in your heart? Does it…does it leak? Like…into you?” I stammered, trying to grasp how it was even possible.

  Annie smiled. “No, the hole is in my heart, between the chambers. I mean, I’ve always had it, but…well, I saw my doctor today, and he wants to do a surgery that will fix my valve and the hole.” Her smile slipped away, her eyes dropping to her fidgeting hands. “It’ll happen in a few weeks, and I’ll be gone for a month or so. So, I don’t know…I’m not sure if you guys will still even want me.”

  I sat for a moment in silence, trying to process what she’d said. “Is it safe for you to work?”

  “I asked the doctor, and he said it was fine. My mom…well, she’s worried. I think she’ll come around, but she’s scared.”

  “What about you? Are you scared?”

  She took a breath, and I thought she might say no, but something in her face shifted.

  “A little bit, yeah. My whole life, I’ve known this surgery would happen, but the timing sucks. This job is the best thing that’s happened to me in what feels like forever. I don’t want to lose it, but I don’t want to waste your time either.”

  I nodded. “If you want to stay, I have a feeling we can work something out. Why don’t you let me talk to Cam?”

  Her face brightened with hope. “Would you do that? I mean, it might put her on the spot less if it came from you.”

  “I think so too. Yeah, I’ll talk to her for you.”

  Relief washed over her, and she hopped out of the booth to launch herself into me, her arms around my neck, her lips at my ear.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, two little words so full of appreciation that they broke my heart.

  I laid a tentative hand on her back, wishing I could stand up and really hug her. But instead, I let her go and leaned away.