But, God. How to get Brenna to where she needed to be—and quickly? She sensed that the whole messy pot was coming to a boil.
“I need your guidance, but I can’t ask for it.”
“Can you talk to me about ‘Patient X’?”
Sometimes she and Alden conferred with each other, using the term ‘Patient X’ so as not to divulge identifying information. In this case, the particulars were so specific Margaret couldn’t risk it. She shook her head, miserable from the surface of her skin to her inmost marrow. “I just want you, Alden. I miss you. I want to be home with you. I want you to make love to me and tell me everything will work out fine.”
“I want you home, too, sweetheart.” He took her face in his steady hands and pressed his mouth to hers. “The dirty dishes are piling up.”
“Oh, Alden!” she said, a little breathless from the kiss. “You haven’t! That kitchen was gleaming.”
He gave her a grave look. “Long hours, my darling. With you gone, I just throw myself into my work. I get home so tired.”
She saw the mischief, now, in his blue eyes.
“Tell me,” he continued, “do you think you’ll be away much longer?”
“Why?” she chuckled, “you need time to hire a housekeeping service?”
“Can you?” he asked, becoming serious. “Estimate when?”
She took his hands between her own and brought them to her lips. “Soon, I think. To use your terms, I’ve opened the patient and cut into all the damage. Problem is, there’s so much, I’m not sure how well I can close.”
“I’ve had my share of those patients, my love. You suture them up, watch the heck out of them in Recovery, and see if they pull through.”
She sighed. “This is either going to work itself out or blow up in my face.”
“You can only do your best, honey. Ultimately, it’s up to the patient to pull through. We’re not sorcerers. Now—” he glanced at the wall clock “—I have the better part of an hour. You want me to take you home and revisit our youth?”
She smiled, wrapped her arms around him and lifted her mouth for a kiss.
He obliged. Unable to disguise her urgency for connection, the kiss turned passionate.
“Mm,” he said, when she pulled away. “Quick tryst in the linen closet?”
She rested her forehead on his chest. “I want a leisurely affair. In a clean house.” She needed order.
“Actually, the house is pretty safe. A few medical journals by my armchair, a dirty glass in the sink from this morning. I blitzed it last night.”
“You scoundrel!”
“Mm-hm. A scoundrel who misses you something fierce. We still have an anniversary to celebrate.”
Clarita, one of the OR nurses, brought them lunch from the cafeteria.
Margaret nibbled her sandwich at Alden’s desk, and caught up on his news. Much of it revolved around Daniel, and his near-euphoria that the children had been found and safely evacuated from Kavsak.
On her way out, Margaret detoured briefly to her office at the mental health clinic. After giving them an update and answering a few questions, she headed to the parking lot.
A nondescript white sedan with Massachusetts tags and two men in it trailed her down the usually-empty country road to the cottage but kept on going when she turned off. Tourists. In suits. Some people just didn’t know how to relax.
Special Agent Tait Starke was on the phone again. “We’ve found your daughter, Ambassador. She’s at a seaside cottage just south of Portland, near Higgins Beach. Beautiful spot. Very secluded.”
The Envoy’s heart jumped. “Has she been sighted? Is she all right?” He’d order a SWAT team if he had to.
“Greeted Dr. Ellsworth with an embrace when she got back from town, sir. No look of coercion. Nobody unexpected in the vicinity, just locals minding their own business.”
“Pick her up.” Right this instant.
Agent Starke cleared her throat. “Sir…I think that…your daughter’s in a place of healing.”
Taking her into protective custody, in other words, would further damage his relationship with her.
He took a calming breath. What would Anne have counseled? Or, Jelena? She was one for a softer approach.
Brenna was safe, that’s what mattered, not his own wishes all the time. He couldn’t command Brenna to be daughterly. With his duties at the peace talks in Vienna, he’d have scant time with her anyway. What was he going to do? Drag her to his house in Washington and leave her under guard with the housekeeper?
“Well, then. Surround the place,” he said. “Keep the perimeter safe. I’ll go for her myself. Meanwhile—keep your people out of view.” She’ll run if she realizes I’ve found her.
“I’ll tell the team,” Agent Starke said, approval in her voice. “A safety net. Nothing that crowds her.”
“Precisely,” he said. “And thank you Agent Starke, for good investigative skills and your…er…woman’s perspective.”
He hung up and called his aide. “Mr. Martindale?”
He appeared in the doorway, smiling, just because he’d been called ‘Mister’.
“Yes, Ambassador.”
“My daughter has been located. Arrange a flight to Washington for me, and a private jet to Portland, Maine about four hours after it sets down. Also, a limo in Portland. If you would. Please.”
Martindale smiled and returned to his office again.
When day broke, Squeak woke and Daniel got up with her. He had arranged with Dr. J that he would be on call for the baby overnight and first thing in the morning, and then later, when he had to go into work, she would take over the child care. Most nights, he’d been able to sleep through. The tradeoff was the early rise and the quick hustle to clean Squeak up and get some pablum and mushed fruit into her before she lost her usual sunny disposition.
On clear mornings, he took her out to the back deck and they enjoyed sunrise and breakfast together. She loved the outdoors as much as he did and happily settled into the crook of his arm, her dark eyes dancing over his garden, while he spooned warm cereal into her hungry mouth and then topped her up with her bottle.
He was scraping the last spoonful of cereal out of the bowl when his front doorbell rang.
“You expecting company, Pumpkin?” he asked her, wiping her chin with a dishcloth.
He pushed the small plastic bowl in from the edge and slid along the bench with the baby, wondering who it could be, so early in the morning. The doorbell rang again, insistently. He padded barefoot across his foyer, unlatched the deadlock, and swung the door open.
U.S. Special Envoy Brendan Rease. None too happy. Scowling, in fact.
A sleek black Caddy waited at the curb.
“Er…Ambassador.”
“Daniel.”
Oh, Christ. Brenna. Was she—? Squeak caught his fear and hid her face in his shoulder. He cupped her head reassuringly.
“We’ve located my daughter,” the Envoy announced, as if it were a personal triumph over Daniel.
“Safe?”
The Envoy gave him a black look. “Do you have reason to believe otherwise?”
Daniel found the reply odd. “Where?”
The Envoy tilted his head quizzically. His brows narrowed. “An undisclosed location.”
Ah. It was like that.
“I’m on a time constraint, Mr. Ellsworth. Jet booked for Dr. Subasic and myself to take Elizabeth Ann to her.”
Daniel unconsciously tightened his hold on Squeak. Squeak? Going?
“May I enter?”
No. In fact, go away. He stepped back and opened the door. “Dr. J didn’t say anything about leaving. I’m a bit—” Stunned.
“Didn’t tell her,” the Envoy said matter-of-factly. “Brenna’s safety is my first concern. The fewer people who know her whereabouts, the safer.”
Right. We all pose a threat. Daniel bit back his retort.
“Is she up?”
“Dr. J? No. I’ll, uh, go wake her. Have a sea
t. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen. Make yourself comfortable.”
“There’s no time for that. Wheels up in one hour.”
“An hour? She’s not ready.”
“Nonsense. How long can it take to throw a dress in a suitcase?”
Daniel shook his head. Dude, he felt like saying, you so don’t know women.
He trod upstairs, patting Squeak’s back, and tapped on Dr. J’s bedroom door. She’d preferred to sleep upstairs, near him, rather than be on the ground floor with the windows onto the porch. “Upstairs with you, it’s like having a son close, yes?”
Yes.
“Dr. J?”
The door opened a crack. Dr. J, tying her bathrobe, was sleep-wrinkled, her hair flat on one side of her head. “Yes. Good morning Daniel. It is time for me to take the baby?”
“No. Dr. J, Brenna’s father is here. Downstairs. He’s located her. He’s come to take you and—” his throat tightened “—and Squeak to her. He wants to leave immediately.”
“Oh!” she said, flustered. “So sudden. I am not ready. Not even shower. My clothes, the lovely clothes we shopped for together, I have no suitcase. This…it is like Kavsak. Men at my door. Hurry. Hurry. Oh, Daniel. Elizabeth Ann—nothing is prepared. Diapers. Bottles. Food.”
He frowned. Screw the Envoy’s schedule. This old woman couldn’t be pushed like this. After everything she’d lived through, she was holding her life together with a few frayed threads. She didn’t need artificial pressure. He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Dr. J, forget the rush. Just…take your time. Lay your things out, okay? I have a suitcase you can borrow. I’ll bring it out for you. And don’t worry about Squeak. I’ll put her stuff together. Okay? All right? It’ll be fine.”
“Yes,” she said, patting his arm. “Yes. I take my breath. Okay.”
He leaned forward, impulsively planted a kiss on her cheek. “Good. You’re doing fine.”
He turned, took Squeak down the hallway into the nursery, and closed the door. He stood there, numb, and surveyed the room. The rumpled sheet in the crib, the tiny stack of sleepers on the changing table, the diapers, the baby monitor connected to the speaker by his bedside.
“Shit,” he whispered, and he sat down in the rocking chair and buried his face in the baby’s neck, careful not to scratch her with his stubble.
Twenty minutes later, he was downstairs again with Squeak’s packed diaper bag. The Envoy jumped up from the armchair and started pacing restlessly. “What’s taking so long? There’s a jet waiting. Pilots. Clearance for take-off.”
Daniel went into the kitchen, one-handedly pulled out a cup and saucer and filled it from the coffee pot. Returning to the family room, he set it on the side table by the armchair Brenna’s father had impatiently sprung out of. “Coffee,” he said. “I insist.”
The Envoy frowned at it.
Daniel sat down on the sofa, holding Squeak under her arms, dandling her on his knee. “Did I ever tell you,” he asked, knowing full well he hadn’t, “the circumstances under which Dr. J was living when I first met her?”
The Envoy stopped in mid-stride and cast him a sharp glance.
Daniel continued, relating her dismal circumstances, the dark tomb she inhabited. A woman of education, of refinement, he said, living the life of a refugee, keeping her storage room barely above the freezing point by burning pieces of a wooden crate in a leaky woodstove. Graciously setting her precious coffee and the last of her biscuits before her guests while mortar shells shook the walls of the apartment building and snipers picked off anyone who dared step outside.
He sat back. Pulling Squeak against his chest, he casually rested an ankle across his knee. “A woman who’s lived so long under that kind of pressure could do with an extra half-hour to get herself ready for a trip, don’t you think Ambassador?”
The Envoy worked his mouth. Sat down. Picked up the cup and saucer.
Daniel let a moment pass. “Is Brenna well?”
“I have no idea,” the Envoy grumbled.
“You haven’t spoken to her?”
The Envoy shot him a look.
No. Of course not. Let her know you’re coming and she’ll bolt.
Turned out he and the Envoy had something in common after all.
Dr. J did well for a woman with such short notice. A little over an hour later, Daniel was standing on the front sidewalk with her, Squeak still in his arms. The limo driver closed the trunk on Dr. J and Squeak’s travel bags and came around to help Dr. J get into the back seat. The Envoy was already ensconced on the other side of Squeak’s car seat, which had been transferred from Daniel’s Benz.
Dr. J turned to Daniel to take the baby.
He stepped back without meaning to.
“Oh, Daniel,” she said, dropping her hands. “I am thinking of Brenna, of her joy. Not of your sadness. I am so sorry.”
He gave her a curt nod of acknowledgement. “Dr. J?” He glanced at the Envoy, sitting in the car. “I need a moment with just us.”
Dr. J stepped away from the car.
Inside, the Envoy tsked impatiently.
Dr. J, hearing him, blinked. She held a finger up to Daniel, then asked the driver for a moment. He stepped away. She turned back to the car and leaned in to speak to Brenna’s father. “Love,” Daniel heard her say, “needs time. Not clocks.”
The Envoy gave her a bemused look.
“There is a man standing on the sidewalk in his pajamas in the front of his soon-empty home, yes?” she patiently explained. “Look how he holds the child. So tender. And we are saying ‘Hurry. Put her in the car, the clock ticks.’” She put her hand to her bosom and shook her head slowly from one side to the other. “No.”
To his astonishment, the Envoy nodded.
Dr. J walked up the brick path toward the house alongside Daniel and Squeak. Nearly at the porch again, she stopped and turned to him. “Now,” she said.
“Dr. J,” he whispered urgently, “he hasn’t told Brenna that you all are coming. He’s just going to show up with you and Squeak. Brenna is going to be shocked like I was, but worse. After…what happened in Kavsak, her mental state is delicate. She doesn’t know about the adoption story you made up. She might deny it in front of the Envoy.”
“Oh.”
His hand on Squeak’s back, he glanced over her shoulder at the Caddy. “Something else.”
“Yes?”
“Ah, Dr. J. She said she doesn’t want children. She got scared. Of herself, I suppose. I don’t know if seeing Squeak is going to make her change her mind. She might not be able to handle being a mother.”
“Oh!” Dr. J tapped two fingertips to her lips.
He looked down, studied his bare toes. “Do you have guardianship papers? Any kind of documents that allow you to keep Squeak in your custody?”
“Yes. I am her temporary guardian. Jasha made sure all the papers were correct.”
“If…if Brenna can’t take the baby?” he said, feeling the sting of emotion in his eyes, “Would you bring her back to me? I want her. I’ll be her Dad. I’ll take good care of her.”
Dr. J set the palms of her hands on his rough cheeks. “I promise you. This child will not be unloved. She and I have come through shells and snipers, across Europe, the Atlantic Ocean. We will find our way these last steps.”
He nodded, let her pull his head down for a cheek-peck and an embrace. He hugged Elizabeth Ann, pressed a long kiss to her warm temple, and let Dr. J remove her from his arms.
Chapter 29
Sitting cross-legged on the straw mulch, hills of cucumbers at her back and heirloom tomatoes in front of her, Brenna leaned over the bed, plucking weeds, scratching at the dark topsoil with the garden claw. With her hands, she sculpted the soil at the base of a Cherokee Purple into a wide bowl, raising a lip around the edge to hold the water when she came back with the watering can.
Margaret, shaded by a straw hat she had found hooked to a peg by the cottage door, was wrestling with cucumber vines, weavin
g them through trellis netting to keep them from running across the aisles like school children released at recess. Brenna wasn’t certain that Margaret was winning the contest. These past warm days, the plants seemed to double in size from one sunrise to the next.
She and Margaret worked in companionable silence, methodical physical activity counterbalancing the emotional work they were absorbed in. Their days had fallen into a pattern. After breakfast and clean-up, they walked to the shore for an hour, then returned to the cottage to talk. After lunch and a short nap, they worked in the garden.
During those contemplative times, she thought about Daniel, what she had done to save him, how she had lost him regardless.
She sat up, alerted by an out-of-place sound. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she scanned the open meadow around the cottage. The quiet purr of an engine came from the direction of the laneway between the stand of pines.
Margaret, hearing it too, straightened, a cucumber vine still grasped in her gloved hand.
She exchanged a glance with her. Margaret shrugged. The only vehicle that normally turned in was Tina Berenson’s grocery delivery truck, with its throaty diesel engine and rattling side panels.
A gleaming black limousine eased into the clearing, its tinted windows rolled up. Brenna’s stomach flipped over. She knew who this had to be. The Magnificent. Fuck.
The car drew up alongside Margaret’s parked car and the engine cut off. The latch disengaged and the driver’s door swung open. Tall, fit, sporting a Boston haircut and a better black suit than an ordinary driver could afford, he got out and reconnoitered the clearing.
Margaret set down the cucumber vine, walked up the garden aisle, and stopped beside her.
Brenna was breathing hard. Seething. If I wanted you, Magnificent, I would have called.
Satisfied there were no snipers on the cottage roof, or terrorists lurking behind the trees, the driver pulled the passenger door open. A normal driver usually stood by the door. This one turned, facing Margaret and herself, and unbuttoned his jacket. Johnny, got your gun?
“Who could—?”
“My father.” The words came out like a profanity.
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