Then There Was You

by Miranda Liasson

  He opened one eye and looked at her. “Warn a guy, will ya?”

  She didn’t respond, all concentration and focus. Whatever she’d injected had numbed him, so he watched her loop the needle in and out, suture and cut. Repeat. In and out, suture and cut.

  “Is it bad?” he asked.

  She turned her gaze on him. Even behind the big glasses he could see the soft moss green of her eyes, just as pretty as he remembered. “I think you’ll live. And I’m no plastic surgeon, but the scar will be minimal.”

  She worked in silence for a few minutes. The ticking of the old wall clock was the loudest thing in the room. Outside in the hallway there sounded a scattered symphony of beeps and alarms, intercom noises, and even the crackling fuzz of an EMS radio announcing another ambulance on its way.

  When she bent her head he could smell her hair. Lemons. Nice. It made him recall a time, long ago, when things could’ve been different, when the animosity that gaped so large and wide between them might’ve turned into something else. But then Tagg had moved in and swept her off her feet.

  Sara’s life had been full of choices Colton had never had. After he’d busted up his knee in high school, he’d lost his football scholarship to Penn State. The policemen who’d worked with his dad—who’d started out as an Angel Falls cop before moving to Chicago, where he’d died in the line of duty—took him under their wing and helped him get to college. After college Colton had returned home to take care of his grandmother and sister, end of story. Whereas Sara had left town to conquer the world, attending Princeton on scholarship and medical school in New York City.

  The opportunity for anything more between them had long passed, and the intervening years had cemented their relationship as antagonistic. He also understood she was furious at him. That ass Tagg had gotten drunk the night of the bachelor party despite Colton’s best efforts to cut him off. Colton had arranged for the cake stunt but had no idea the woman the company would send to pop out of the cake was someone Tagg had had the hots for in high school. And apparently still did.

  Sara blamed Colton. After all, he’d been the best man. He was supposed to keep order and prevent things from getting out of control. What Sara didn’t know was that Tagg had been nervous as a teenage shoplifter the entire week before the wedding. Colton had tried to quell his doubts and calm him down the best he could, had even driven Tagg home himself to keep him out of trouble the night of the bachelor party, but Tagg had still figured out a way to break Sara’s heart.

  Finally Sara was done, and he sat up, looking over her handiwork.

  “Fifteen stitches,” she announced, walking over to the counter.

  “Thanks. Am I done?” He got ready to hop off the gurney.

  “Not just yet,” she said, coming to stand in front of him, blocking his exit. She pulled a syringe from her white coat pocket and uncapped it, displaying a needle that seemed to be the size of a quarter-inch drill bit. “Bend over and drop your drawers.”

  “No.” As in, there was no way in hell he was going to drop trou in front of her.

  She raised an elegant brow. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I don’t want it in my ass.”

  “Well, unless you want your arm to fall off, you probably want to do as the doctor orders.” She flicked the syringe with her finger. Put her finger on the plunger.

  “I’ve never seen a needle that big for a shot. I’ll just wait until Monday when my usual doctor can see me.” She didn’t have all the control here…did she?

  “As you like. Except by then lockjaw will have set in and you won’t be able to swallow or breathe.” She bit back a smile. “Oh, and did I mention the drool? There will be lots of it.”

  She was enjoying this way too much. But the picture her words conjured was enough to keep him planted. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Tapping the syringe with her finger, she said, “Dead serious. Drop ’em, Officer Walker.”

  “Chief Walker,” he mumbled as he stood up and dropped his pants, leaning over the gurney.

  He smelled the antiseptic scent of alcohol, felt the rub of a cotton ball on his ass cheek.

  That was when he decided not to let her get the best of him. At the last minute, he cranked his head back and gave her his most charming grin. Sara glanced up, maybe even looked a little startled.

  “You can turn around now,” she said, cool as a cucumber.

  “I’d rather watch,” he said, not backing down.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, drawing back and stabbing the needle into his flesh.

  Son of a bitch. Charm got him nowhere with her. It never had.

  The needle sliced through his muscle, burning and stinging. It felt like an ice pick boring into his flesh. He bit down on the insides of his cheeks to take the pain.

  Then she was talking again. “The most common side effect of a tetanus shot is pain at the injection site. You’ll be fine in a week or two.”

  He pulled up and belted his pants before she could inflict more damage. Blew out the breath he’d been holding. “A week or two?”

  “You just won’t be able to sit comfortably for a while. Stitches come out in a week to ten days. Come back if anything looks red or swollen.” She discarded the syringe in the red sharps container on the counter, pulled off her gloves with a snap, and tossed them in the trash. Then she wrote a few things down and handed him a clipboard. “Sign out here.”

  He took a step forward. His butt cheek hurt like he’d just been bitten by a yellow jacket. Still, he signed on the dotted line and managed a smile. “See you around, Doc.”

  She shot him a wide, innocent smile. “See you.”

  Chapter 2

  A light summer rain was pattering on Nonna’s old slate roof when Sara awakened the next morning in her mom’s old bedroom under the eaves of Nonna’s little craftsman bungalow. The sound of the rain on the shingles above the sharply slanted ceiling brought her back to her childhood, when she used to snuggle and giggle with her sisters under this same patchwork quilt her grandmother had made when she was a young bride.

  Desperate to know the mother they’d lost to cancer when Sara was just thirteen years old, her sisters and she used to carefully sift through her mother’s childhood possessions—classic books like Little Women and Gone With the Wind, award ribbons for track and basketball, literary awards for writing and English. Air Supply and Journey posters pinned up on the closet door, endless balls of yarn and colorful handmade scarves. Every empty perfume bottle, every old notebook filled with notes and doodles was an endlessly fascinating clue to who their mother had been, a tiny piece of her to hold on to just a little bit longer.

  But waking up in a shrine was lonely. She thought of Tagg, waking up under the eaves next to his girlfriend in the brand-new house he and Sara had meant to call home.

  His rejection still hurt, but now her grief was more for the life she would’ve had rather than for Tagg himself. Being married, decorating their new home, planning a family…that was the life she mourned. After all, she was almost thirty-one years old. She’d wanted that life, dammit. A happy life with a partner she loved, settling down. Being able to do all the things she’d put off for years because she was too busy studying, working, and being broke while all her other friends already had great jobs and had started their real lives. She was tired of delayed gratification. And she wanted a dog.

  For ten years she hadn’t thought of her life as being any other way but with Tagg. And then suddenly…everything had changed. She’d gotten over the shock, yes. But she felt adrift, unmoored. Bobbing around in the middle of the ocean with no compass.

  Her grandmother had always been her guide, and now Sara was losing her too. All the more reason to make every moment with Nonna count. To be there for Nonna the way her grandmother always had been for her.

  Sara dug under the bed for her fuzzy purple slippers and tiptoed down the hall. The wooden floors creaked a little, but Sara wouldn’t trade this old house for anything.
She’d always dreamed of someday having a quirky house with a lot of charm, but Tagg had preferred a brand-new house in a cookie-cutter subdivision that looked like all its neighbors, and she’d gone along with it. How much else had she gone along with, not really wanting to?

  It was definitely too early for soul-searching. Nonna wasn’t up yet, which meant Sara had time to start the Sunday routine, one Nonna had followed without deviation for fifty years. First up was starting the coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls, then getting ready for Mass at St. Alfonso’s, followed by coffee and doughnuts and socializing in the church hall, followed by a trip to the grocery store and an afternoon of cooking for Sunday dinner.

  Sunday dinner was a tradition that had been going on for generations. During her years of medical school and residency, Sara had missed everything about it—the food, the easy camaraderie, the squabbling—typical family stuff that made anything else the world had to throw at you bearable. Gathering at Nonna’s every week was nonnegotiable; unless you were overseas or serving a life sentence, you showed up, on pain of death.

  Sara loved cooking alongside Nonna, spending time with her and learning to make the special Italian dishes that had brought her family together for generations. Not for the first time since she’d been back, it hit home hard that time with anyone was not an endless gift. Today would be the first time she’d see her entire family since she’d been back, and though her crazy family came with its own set of challenges, they loved each other a lot, and she never would’ve made it through the last year without them.

  As Sara descended the stairs, she was greeted by the familiar clicking of Nonna’s dog Rocket’s toenails as he raced to her across the old pine floors. Rocket was a bull terrier with brown ears, a brown patch encompassing his left eye, and another on his right flank. A combination of pirate and Guernsey cow. His personality was definitely more on the pirate side; he was charming, sneaky, and a trickster.

  “You got up early this morning, didn’t you?” Rocket usually slept curled up against her back, since Nonna often shoved him out of her bed, claiming she couldn’t sleep well. But he’d left her room sometime before dawn. Maybe he had insomnia too. Sara could relate. The events of the past year had kept her awake many a night.

  “Oh, I bet you want some bacon, don’t you?” she crooned as she scratched behind his ears. “Because it’s Sunday, yes it is. Want to go get the paper?”

  At the word bacon, the dog’s ears perked up and he started jumping up and down, practically levitating with glee.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  She couldn’t find a robe, but when she got to the front hall, she found Nonna’s purple raincoat with a row of ducks along the bottom and slid it on over her pj boxers and T-shirt. Rocket, true to his name, darted out the front door into the wet morning to do his business.

  The mid-June rain was steady but not pouring. The dark clouds and the fact that it was still quite early—before seven—cast the day in gray. The smell of clean fresh air mingled with the scent of roses in crazy, brilliant bloom along the driveway. Sara located the paper in the grass near the road and, kicking off her slippers, ran barefoot to where it lay, encased in bright-blue plastic. Just as she bent over to pick it up, Rocket swooped in and grabbed it up in his mouth.

  The dog was quick, but Sara was quicker. She clamped on to one end of the paper and tugged. Unfortunately, Rocket seemed to think she was playing his favorite game. As she tugged, he tugged harder. Her hood fell off, sending a cascade of cold rainwater spilling down her back.

  With one wrenching pull, the dog sidestepped away, bolting for the yew hedge that separated her grandma’s property from the street. Sara ran through the wet grass after the dog. He teased her by showing her the paper, an arm’s length away, but as soon as she reached for it, he dashed into the hedge.

  He emerged a few seconds later, wet and leaf covered…without the paper.

  Oh, bollocks.

  There it was, lying in the mud under the hedge, surrounded by prickly branches that rivaled Sleeping Beauty’s briar patch. Sara walked around to the road side, having no choice but to get down on her hands and knees and dig out the paper. Ugh, and all this before coffee. She stuck her arm into the tangle of branches and was trying to capture the bag with her fingers when she heard a car idling behind her. And something that sounded suspiciously like a whistle.

  Sara immediately popped her head up and turned around. A spotlight with the wattage of the noontime sun beamed on her. Through the glare she could make out a police cruiser. There sat Colton behind the wheel, his arm sticking out the window. The arm that she’d stitched up just a few hours ago. Clearly healing well, due to her excellent care, thank you very much.

  “You can turn the floodlight off,” she said. “And did you just whistle? Because that would be completely unprofessional.”

  “Of course not.” But he was biting down on his cheeks to keep from laughing. “I just happened to be driving home, minding my own business, when suddenly there it was…plain as day.”

  “There what was?” Sara asked, lifting a brow. He’d better not mention anything about her behind. That would be…inappropriate. But, she couldn’t help thinking, completely par for the course as far as their relationship went.

  He swept his hand in her direction to demonstrate. “A roadside distraction.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Need some help?”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine. I was just fishing the paper out of the hedge.” Rocket sat next to the cruiser at full attention. Colton reached under his seat and tossed him a dog biscuit. Clearly something he’d done before, judging by Rocket’s expectant look and the fact that his tail was wagging faster than the speed limit.

  As if on cue, the front door of the house opened and her little gray-haired grandmother stepped out on the porch. She was wearing a bright flowered apron and waving excitedly. “Colton! Yoo-hoo, Colton!”

  Yoo-hoo, Colton?

  “Hey there, Rose,” he called back. “I’ll be right up.”

  Sara shot him a startled glance. Right up?

  “Hurry up, dear,” Nonna said. “I’m just going to put some cinnamon rolls in.”

  The thought of Nonna baking sent a stab of fear through her. Dad and her stepmom, Rachel, had already gently and painstakingly taken away Nonna’s car…Surely operating an oven was just as dangerous as driving.

  Colton gave Sara a satisfied grin and backed up the cruiser, pulling it into the driveway while she dug around in the hedge and rescued the soggy paper. They walked silently to the house, the dog trailing happily at Sara’s heels. She felt aware of Colton in an uncomfortable way—a way that prickled the hairs at the back of her neck. Extreme irritation could do that to you, she supposed. It had nothing to do with that white, just-short-of-perfect smile that lit up his face and made little crinkles appear around his striking blue eyes, which were filled with amusement. These traits might make him seem like a warm and caring person, yet she reminded herself he was not. “After you,” he said, holding open the door.

  It took the willpower of the ages not to roll her eyes again. Once they were inside, she took off her grandma’s rain jacket and shook it, then hung it on a hook in the foyer to dry. When she turned around, she saw Colton quickly avert his eyes.

  Realization dawned, sending heat blazing to her cheeks. She was wearing pj boxers and a black T-shirt with a rib cage on it that read “I Got an ‘A’ in Anatomy.” She grabbed Nonna’s long gray sweater off a hanger and tugged it on, along with the purple slippers she’d left on the foyer floor.

  Nonna appeared in the doorway. “Come in, you two. I just put coffee on.”

  Sometimes Nonna amazed her and seemed completely unaffected by the disease that had crept up so insidiously. It was a cruel thing, the dementia. Even though Sara was a doctor and knew the course, the moments Nonna acted exactly like herself made hope soar, as if this whole thing were a nightmare and she would wake up and Nonna would be…Nonna again. Then the next m
oment her grandmother would repeat a thought for the tenth time, and hope would come crashing down.

  “Here you go,” Colton said, handing her grandmother a nice dry newspaper. Sara looked at the soggy blue bag in her hand, pierced with multiple fang marks.

  Ass kiss, she mouthed behind Nonna’s back.

  “Oh, you are a dear,” Nonna said, patting Colton’s hand. “I bet you worked all night too.”

  “I did have the night shift, yes, ma’am,” Colton said, grinning widely. His charm knew no bounds, affecting women of all ages. And dogs, as Rocket had no reservations about accepting Colton’s friendly scratch behind the ears as an invitation to glue himself to his side.

  “You must be starving then.”

  Was this what had been going on while she’d been gone? Colton had insinuated himself into her grandmother’s good graces. For free meals and other grandmotherly services, no doubt. Like socks-darned, buttons-sewed, shirts-ironed kinds of things.

  In the kitchen Sara was surprised to see her younger brother Rafe sitting at the heavy oak table, still in his firefighter uniform. He rose, walked over, and kissed Nonna. “I let myself in,” he said, gesturing to the back door. “I see I’m just in time for breakfast. Hey, Colton. Hi, Sis.” Sara hugged her baby brother, who was around three years younger than she but was also a broad-shouldered, muscular six two, so baby probably wasn’t quite the right term. Colton and Rafe shared some kind of complicated handshake that made it clear they were on friendly—fist-bumping—terms.

  “Tough night?” Colton asked, sitting down with Rafe at the table. Rocket flopped down at his feet and promptly fell asleep.

  “Big three-alarm blaze in the next county. Took us most of the night to put it out. Fortunately it was an abandoned warehouse, so no one was hurt.” Rafe spoke animatedly with his hands, and his whole face lit up.