Unexpected Reunion

by Carolyn Greene

  Her heart-adopted grandfather already had one woman to worry about, so she wasn’t about to add her comparatively small frets to his concerns. Besides, Sobo was the number-one priority right now. “Sure. I’m good.”

  He looked as though he didn’t believe it.

  Lowering his voice, he said, “Let’s not mention the doll yet. Naoko needs to concentrate on healing right now, and I don’t want any bad news to set her back.”

  “Of course.” She gave him a brief recap of her conversation with Gray and tried to sound more optimistic than she felt about the possibility of the doll’s reappearance.

  Ruthie entered the small private hospital room, Pop on her heels. The tiny woman looked even smaller than usual, with white sheets and blankets covering all but her red, swollen left leg and one shoulder that revealed part of a not-so-fashionable cotton gown that tied at the neck. She wore no makeup, and the lack of her trademark dark eyeliner made her look unusually pale. On seeing Ruthie enter the room, Sobo started to pull the blanket over her leg, then seemed to think better of it. She covered it with the sheet instead. Pop had mentioned that her leg was painful, so Ruthie assumed that even the light weight of the blanket must have been too much.

  Ruthie eased herself onto the bed, taking care not to jostle it, and sat just as Sobo had done when she, as a teen, had been in bed with the flu and again after wisdom-tooth extractions. She took the hand of her honorary grandmother and held it between her own. The usual pale pink nail polish had been scrubbed clean, and the fingers that had once seemed so strong and sure now felt thin and frail.

  Sobo pursed her lips. “If you eat this hospital food,” she said with a sweep of her free hand toward the barely touched dinner tray, “you have no appetite.”

  To take their minds off the frustrations of hospital confinement, Ruthie chatted about the happenings at Abundance: Savannah’s latest alterations to the wedding dress she’d been tinkering with since her teens, Paisley’s successful experiment with smoked-salmon-and-sour-cream finger sandwiches, and her own acquisition of an antique iron grate that she planned to repurpose into a decorative end table. She steered clear of any mention of the dark-haired man who had graced her shop with his presence nearly every day this week.

  Sobo lifted her head. “That’s good. Very good. You sell the barley table? And ranzatsu?”

  Well, she’d taken the other woman’s mind off of hospital troubles, but now her own thoughts had been steered back to the one who’d taken home the barley table and the memories they’d shared over it.

  “Yes, the table went to a good home where it will sit in the new owner’s kitchen.” She hurried on before Sobo could question her further. “Your hats have been a big hit. Several will be worn in the Monument Avenue Easter parade later this month, and a couple of ladies are planning to wear them to church.”

  “Gray’s sister played with them when she was little. Catie stood in front of mirror and put hand on her hip.” Sobo’s expression softened and she appeared to drift down memory lane. “Big brother Gray snatched it off her head and ran through the house. He say she squeal like a pig. But he give it back,” she added, quick to redeem her grandson’s reputation as the protector everyone knew him to be.

  Ruthie sighed. Just as he had taken the hat from his sister, he had snatched her heart right out of her chest. Then, in an apparent act of honor, he had tried to give it back. As far as she was concerned, he still owned it.

  From the vinyl chair in the corner of the room, Pop clicked the remote and switched the channel away from the celebrity-gossip program it had been on. She wished it were as easy to switch the subject with Sobo. The channel landed on a game show, which immediately switched to a commercial urging viewers to watch the eleven-o’clock evening news to find out more about the prowler that had been spotted in the Museum District the previous evening. He zapped the channel again, but not soon enough.

  Sobo pointed to the TV screen. “I already heard about that man,” she informed her husband. She squeezed Ruthie’s hand in a grip that was much stronger than expected for a woman who was so ill. “You and the girls lock your doors. Don’t come out at night, no matter what.”

  “I will,” she promised, not bothering to mention that she and her roommates already took plenty of precautions. After what Paisley had been through as a teen in an unsupervised situation with a boy she had unwisely trusted, her roommate was relentless about urging the rest of them never to take chances with their safety. “And Gray is going to teach the Abundance gals and me some personal safety and self-defense tips tomorrow.”

  Rather than calming Sobo as planned, the last statement seemed to trouble her.

  “Sunday is for going to church. You do safety tips another day.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, Sobo.”

  Pop leaned forward in his chair.

  Sobo pulled her hand from Ruthie’s and pushed it through her mussed hair. “No. Is Sunday.”

  Now Pop rose from the chair and moved to the bed, where he carefully placed his big palm on his wife’s forehead. “Not running a fever. Do you know what year this is?”

  “Of course I do.” Sobo squinted at him as if he was the one with the problem, not she. But to appease him, she named the year, month and calendar date but was off by one day.

  Worry filled Pop’s eyes. He was overreacting, but the pair had been together for many years, and Ruthie knew him to be as protective as—if not more protective than—Gray.

  “When you’re in the hospital, time blurs,” Ruthie assured him. “There are no laundry days, grocery days or gardening days to keep track of the passing time.”

  Sobo nodded. “It’s all the time poke me, give me pills and make me eat bad food. All same-same, every day.”

  Pop accepted what they said, but it didn’t seem to calm his nerves much to hear that her temporary memory lapse was normal. He paced a bit, then moved toward the door. “I’m going to get some coffee,” he said. “Do either of you want anything?”

  At their negative replies, he abruptly left the room.

  “He’s worried about you,” Ruthie said, stating the obvious.

  “I know. He’s a good man.” Sobo drew her gaze away from the door and fixed her brown eyes on Ruthie, who took the chair he had vacated. “He all the time looks out for me, looks out for his children and his grandchildren. Gray is just like him. He takes care of people. Even when he was a little boy.”

  Ruthie knew about his protective nature and how it had been shaped by his father’s military service. Sometimes he’d taken his assigned duty a little too seriously, according to Catie, who had complained the time he interrogated her date and intimidated the teen so that he never asked her out again. Although Gray’s little sister had been annoyed at the time, she later confessed to Ruthie that it had been for the best, since the guy had gone out with her best friend and turned out to be a jerk.

  “All the Bristows served in army,” Sobo continued. “Gray fight in Afghanistan. Father fight in Desert Storm. And grandfather fight in Korea.”

  Ruthie cleared her throat. “Is that how you met Pop? When he went to Korea?” He’d never talked much about his time over there, and other than a short study of the war in a history class, Ruthie knew little about what he must have experienced. The episodes of M.A.S.H. reruns she’d watched on television gave her the impression Pop must have gone to Tokyo for the occasional weekend leave, but since neither of them had ever answered her questions, she was left to imagine a delightfully romantic love-at-first-sight kind of meeting.

  Sobo looked away, leaving Ruthie to continue imagining how the pair came to be together. “War changed Gray.” She lightly touched two fingers to her swollen leg, letting Ruthie know the pain remained. “He’s not the same now. To you. To us.”

  Ruthie didn’t want to talk about this. Didn’t want to be reminded of all she’d lost. Of the e
ager, energetic man who’d left to do his duty and returned with the light in his eyes now hidden behind dark memories that he refused to share.

  Sobo must have noticed Ruthie’s concern. “He will be back. He will find peace again. He will look at you and smile.” The elderly woman leaned on her elbows and pushed herself up in bed, as if she would muscle her way through her grandson’s difficulty just as she was trying to muscle her way through her own physical recovery. “I know, because I pray. I pray you will someday be my granddaughter-by-law.”

  Ruthie’s heart tightened at the familiar misspeak of the term granddaughter-in-law. When she had come to live with the Bristows, they had immediately started referring to her as their honorary granddaughter. Soon after she and Gray had become engaged, Sobo delightfully claimed her as a “granddaughter by love,” an affectionate acknowledgment that even though she and Gray weren’t yet legally joined, her union in the family was officially sealed by love.

  “God listens to prayers,” Sobo said. “And He will answer.”

  Ruthie had no doubt about that. She just wished she knew when and what the answer might be.

  Chapter Five

  Gray was still pushing furniture out of the way in the reception area when Ruthie propped her bicycle in the common hallway and opened the door to his suite of offices. He took a deep breath and reminded himself to focus on the goal for the next couple of hours...to teach Ruthie and her friends self-protection, all the while trying to protect his heart from her. Or, more important, keep her at a safe arm’s length.

  He kept his eyes on the chairs that he pushed against the wall, but his peripheral vision traitorously afforded him a view of her removing her bicycle helmet, releasing her reddish-brown hair to tumble to her slim shoulders. She popped a pair of white earbuds out of her ears, tucked them into the helmet and set everything on a table near the door. Then she turned slowly in place, apparently taking in the size of the room, the decor, its sole other inhabitant...whatever it is women do when they size up a place.

  Why had he invited her here? Why had he opened the door to his inner sanctum? He turned his back to her and shoved the coffee table against the wall. Maybe if he pretended she wasn’t there, she’d disappear. Better yet, maybe the urge to take her in his arms and kiss away four lonely years would disappear. Sure, he’d broken up with her and dated other people, as he was certain she must have done, but he’d always subconsciously compared them to Ruthie. No matter how nice or pretty or nonreligious those women were, they never quite measured up to the standard set by his first real love.

  Human will was only so strong, and he turned toward the woman who’d been a source of pleasure and pain over the years.

  “Nice lair.” She bent and removed a rubber band from the ankle of her yoga pants.

  Okay, he was only human. He gave her his full attention, then wished he hadn’t. She hadn’t changed much since she had first come to live with his grandparents. Still slim, but now more womanly in her appearance, she moved in quick and easy—even cheerful—movements. To his immense regret, she still made him want to take her under his arm and protect her from the sources of all pain in the world, including himself.

  He cleared the knot of tension from his throat. “Where are the others?”

  Ruthie straightened and caught him watching her, but did not blush as she might have in the past. She just seemed both pleased and matter-of-fact, as if his attention was a foregone conclusion. It was the same confidence he’d seen in her whenever she prayed for something and then received the result she’d asked for.

  “They went to pick up Daisy. I had to finish some work at the shop, so I told them to go ahead and I would meet them here. They should arrive soon.” She smiled and swept her glance around the room once more. “You must be doing well to have such a nice office. I’m glad for you.”

  On the one hand, he was glad they had this time to themselves. On the other, he wished the others would hurry and get here so their presence could dilute the thick tension in the room.

  “It’s not all mine,” he said. “I share the receptionist, meeting rooms and storage area with a lawyer.” He didn’t bother to mention that he was already outgrowing the space and would need to look elsewhere when the lease expired. “Come on. I’ll give you a quick tour while we wait for the others to show up.”

  It shouldn’t have mattered, but he wanted to impress her. Wanted to know she approved of all he had achieved. Of all he had become.

  He stopped himself on that last one. She might approve of the signs of business success he showed her, but if he himself didn’t approve of the kind of man he had become, how could she? He shook off the uneasy feeling and steered the conversation to something he was only slightly more comfortable talking about.

  “I called the antique-car clubs in Richmond and even spread out to all the ones I could find in Virginia.”

  She’d been casing the perimeter of his office, trailing a finger over the books in the case, lingering especially over one title. Security Management: How to Identify Vulnerabilities. She looked back at him and smiled, a hint of knowing tugging at her lips.

  “Unfortunately, none of their members has a ’61 Mazda Coupe.”

  Ruthie frowned, but even that didn’t dim the prettiness of her features. Didn’t make him want to kiss her any less. She moved to the window and glanced down at the street. Then she dropped her hand to the framed photograph on the sill.

  “But one club was aware of the car.” Good! Look away from the photo. “Said they’d seen it on West Franklin Street, near the Maury monument.”

  She nodded and turned her attention back to the picture. “Maybe we can drive around and look to see if it’s parked on the street. Then knock on the neighboring doors until we find the owner and ask to buy the doll back.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, but a car like that is not likely to be parked on the street. It’s probably in a garage.” And right now he wished that picture were hidden away in that garage.

  He moved closer to take it from her hands but got distracted by the wispy waves of her hair.

  “I’ve always loved this picture,” she said, holding it up for him to see. “Sobo and Pop were so happy to have the entire family together.”

  They were happy because their whole brood had been gathered together at the same time, a near impossibility given his father’s and uncle’s crazy work schedules at that time. He and his sister, their parents and his aunt and uncle and their three kids all smiled at the camera. And, of course, Ruthie. Her smile was the biggest. And prettiest. The photo was taken about a year after she had come to live with his grandparents. Shortly before their first date. Sobo had arranged everyone on the broad front-porch steps, then enlisted a passerby to seal the image of all of them in a photograph. He and Ruthie had stood on opposite sides of the stairs, but the camera’s flash had caught the glimmer of awareness toward each other in their eyes.

  He reached for the photo and set it back in its place on the windowsill, hoping to end this conversation before she gave too much thought to why he’d chosen to display this particular picture. “The others should be getting here soo—”

  “Oh, look, they just drove up.” Ruthie spun away from the window to launch herself across the room but smacked into his chest instead.

  He grabbed her arms, righted her and summoned his military training to try to calm the rapid pounding of his heart. She looked as nervous as he felt, and he wondered if she was reacting to him or to the fact that her friends would be left standing on the front stoop if they didn’t get out there soon and unlock the front door. A twinge of pride made him wish for the former, but common sense dictated it would be better for both of them if she hadn’t been foolish enough to let her heart stay stuck in the past.

  Foolish like him.

  He set his jaw and stepped away from the window—away from the
woman at the window—and marched back to the reception area to let in the four laughing women, all but one dressed in exercise clothes. Daisy wore jeans.

  He could feel Ruthie’s presence behind him as he directed the latecomers inside.

  “What?” Savannah’s gaze shot past him to Ruthie. “Did we interrupt something?”

  It was anyone’s guess what she must have seen on Ruthie’s face, but he decided now would be a good time to direct their attention to the purpose of this gathering. “We were just waiting for everyone to arrive so we could get started.”

  Even to his own ears, his words sounded gruff and unwelcoming. Daisy widened her eyes and took two tentative steps back, letting the others serve as her buffer. Great. Now he’d gone and intimidated the kid.

  Paisley, on the other hand, was not the least bit put out by his tone. She waltzed over to the chairs lined up around the wall and flung her purse onto one of them. “We invited ourselves over to Nikki’s for a movie and sleepover tonight,” she announced. “Ruthie, there’s an extra sleeping bag for you. We’re going to watch Casablanca because Daisy has never seen it. Do you two want to join us for the movie?”

  He answered quickly. Maybe a little too quickly. “No!”

  Ruthie’s voice blended with his, but she was polite enough to add a thank-you after her no and explained that she had paperwork to finish.

  The last thing he needed was to watch a romantic movie with her in the same room and all her friends shooting speculative glances at them. All he wanted to do was find Sobo’s doll, give Ruthie some personal-safety skills and keep a polite distance from her at family gatherings.

  He needed to get rolling with this self-defense lesson. The sooner they got started, the sooner it would end. And then they could go back to living their mostly separate lives.

  He moved to the door, pushed it closed and turned the lock.