A Woman's Heart

by Gael Morrison

  "I know," she said determinedly, laying the picture on top of the rest, "but I have to start somewhere."

  * * *

  Jann's bike missed the hood of a yellow station wagon by a hair's breadth as she cut into the lane in front of it. Her left turn signal a mere blur of hand and arm, she shot down a side street then into the park. Faster and faster she pedaled, glad the sidewalk was empty, glad also for the speed. Not ever wanting to stop. For when she did, she would have to face what she had done.

  Her feet slowed. She would have to face it sometime. It might as well be now.

  She stopped at Claire's bench, her fingers slick with sweat as she loosed her hold on the handlebars and dropped her bike to the grass. Her body was hot, too, though not only from exertion. The bench's smooth wood was soothing—Jann swallowed hard—but not soothing enough.

  With a sigh, she pulled the envelope of tickets from her bag and spread them across her knee.

  Boston, it said on the top one. Honolulu to Boston.

  Maui, she had told the travel agent, yet here she was on a park bench holding tickets that would carry her over an ocean and half a continent.

  All flights to Maui were booked until Monday, the agent had informed her. Something to do with high season, or was it overbooking?

  But she had needed to go now, before the memories locked in her heart drove her demented. Like a rat in a maze, unable to escape, she had turned away. Then with no direction from her brain, she had turned back again.

  "Boston," she had mumbled hoarsely, touching the bare spot on her neck, missing the counsel and strength of her mother's crystal. "Do you have any seats going there?"

  A clicking of the computer keys, a rapid printing of a page, and a ticket was in her hand.

  With a soft moan, Jann stood, the adrenaline disappearing that had carried her this far. A chill prickled her arms and she shivered a body-aching sort of shiver. Then, as suddenly and unexpectedly as the sun erases shadows, a warm glow erased the chill.

  A friendly glow. A friend's glow. A Claire kind of glow.

  She spun around, half expecting to see Claire sitting on the bench behind her.

  But there was no one. There was only an empty bench.

  Yet the warmth was still there, surrounding her, comforting her. The same warmth Claire had always exuded, an approving kind of warmth, as though her friend was there, approving Jann's decision to allow Peter to take Alex, urging her also to follow them to Boston.

  Peter didn't love her Jann longed to scream, even though she loved him with all her heart. How could she use this ticket if it was simply to cling to Alex? To be near Peter without his love would be unendurable.

  Without knowing for sure how Peter felt: the glow seemed to answer, her life was already unendurable.

  Grimacing toward the empty bench, Jann grabbed the handles of her abandoned bike and pulled it up and mounted it.

  If she was going to go, and she suddenly knew that she was, she had to get home. There was so much to do: photos to develop, bilges to pump, instructions for John and Ruby as to which plants needed watering and to keep an eye on the battery levels...

  She willed her whirling brain to a standstill. No sense fretting as though she'd be gone forever. It would take very little time to find out what she needed to know. Beyond that, she couldn't allow herself to think.

  * * *

  Even the cab drivers were different. No open-necked Hawaiian shirts or casual suggestions as to which beach had the best surfing. This Boston driver, despite the warm day, had his collar fully buttoned and wore a cotton jacket as well.

  "A long way out of town," he had pronounced at the airport after glancing at the address Jann had scrawled on a piece of paper. "Might run to sixty dollars or more," he had added, casting a worried glance at her seen-better-days handbag.

  Smiling with more firmness than she felt, Jann had handed him her knapsack and watched him put it in the trunk. And now she was here, the cab sputtering through the twin gates to Willow House like the last racer to the finish line.

  Peter's home was nothing like the orphanage. One more thing she'd been wrong about. The stone wall around the property was crumbling in places, and ivy climbed over the top, just as Alex would climb when he was older.

  And there were bushes flowering everywhere. Not the flamboyant, fragrant, Hawaiian flowers she loved so much, but others just as special. Azaleas and roses, clusters of impatiens, and forget-me-nots tucked in amongst the pansies lining the drive.

  Gradually slowing as they neared the house, the cab shuddered to a halt in front of the steps. Jann climbed out, suddenly fearful to let the driver go.

  "Wait for me," she said, stuffing her bag back into the cab's trunk then resolutely climbing the stone steps to the front door.

  One stab of the doorbell brought no answer, but that was hardly surprising with a house this size. Wishing for the hundredth time that she'd sent a telegram to say she was coming, Jann pressed the bell again.

  This time, the door opened.

  "Yes?" said the woman who answered, smoothing a voluminous blue smock over her wide hips while a cloud of graying curls fluttered back from her face in the breeze.

  "Is Peter Strickland at home?" Jann asked.

  "Yes," the woman replied, opening the door a little wider. The cluster of silver bracelets encircling her wrist tinkled against each other. "He's in the back garden. Whom shall I say is calling?"

  "A... a friend," Jann said, choking on the word. "I took care of his nephew in Hawaii." She had more than cared for him. She had loved him.

  "Jann Fletcher," the woman exclaimed, a smile sweeping the polite caution off her face. "I should have known you from your picture." She held out her hand. "I'm Callie Reynolds, Alex's nanny."

  Jann shaped her lips into a smile, her image of Alex's nanny as a cold, ordered woman dissolving. She'd been right to trust Peter. The sparkle in Callie's eyes and the smudge of flour on her cheek told Jann Alex's nanny was nothing like the dictatorial organizer of the orphanage in which she'd once lived.

  "I'll take you right through." Callie's laugh lines bracketed her eyes as her smile broadened. "Alex will be so happy to see you."

  "Has he been homesick?" Jann asked anxiously.

  "Not a bit of it," the woman denied with a tinkling laugh. "He has settled in beautifully."

  "That's great," Jann said, squelching a pang upon hearing he hadn't missed her.

  "Follow me," Callie instructed, leading Jann down a beautifully proportioned hall, its warm wood paneling casting a glow on the glass fronts of the family portraits lining it.

  Jann's face drained of heat. There on the wall, amongst past and present Stricklands, was the picture she had given Alex, the one of Claire holding her baby, her face filled with love.

  The picture had been enlarged so that it was the same size as the others, and it looked so right sitting there, as though it belonged.

  As she didn't belong.

  "Beautiful, isn't it?" Callie said, following the direction of Jann's stare. Her expression softened. "I was only twenty when I first came to Willow House to look after Miss Claire. It seems a long time ago now."

  Not so long, Jann thought. And Peter had been right. Callie had loved Claire. As she would, no doubt, love Alex.

  "That picture of you," Callie said, smiling at Jann, "is next to Alexander's bed. It's the first thing he sees when he wakes up in the morning."

  Hope erupted in Jann's heart. Maybe Alex wouldn't forget her.

  From somewhere in the house came the strident ringing of a phone.

  "I'd better get that," Callie said, moving forward a few feet and opening a door on the right. "Mr. Strickland is expecting a call from overseas. Just keep going," she encouraged, "down the hall, through the sun room, and out the glass doors. You'll find them."

  Finding her way was the easy part. Forcing her feet to actually move was much more difficult. With each step, Jann's worries multiplied as to what she would say when she finally fa
ced Peter.

  Stepping through the glass doors to the stone patio, Jann found an enormous rhododendron bush blocking her view of much of the garden. But in the far left corner, at the very edge of the lawn, was a willow tree, and beneath the tree was a bench.

  With a man sitting on it, a folder of papers in one hand and a cup of something hot in the other. At his feet, sitting on the porpoise quilt she'd made, surrounded by his toys, sat Alex.

  She took a blind step backward.

  She'd been a fool to come, a fool to think that either Peter or Alex was missing her. Loving her.

  They had everything they needed. They had each other.

  She fought back the images reeling through her mind, of the touches she and Peter had shared, the warm looks, the passion. It was false emotion, false dreams. The only real thing between them had been the heat, and that, she'd been told, could come and go as quickly as a flame to a match.

  She should be grateful for the heat and leave it at that. Peter may not have given her his love, but the heat had been something she hadn't managed before. Perhaps next time...

  Her throat closed over.

  There would be no next time. If she couldn't have Peter, she didn't want anyone else.

  Turning, she stumbled back through the sliding windows. She had to escape, had to get away from this place.

  "There you are, Miss Fletcher," Callie Reynolds said, entering the sun room and blocking Jann's way. "Couldn't you find them?" She peered over Jann's shoulder. "Peter," she called, taking hold of Jann's elbow with one hand and raising the other hand and waving. "You have a visitor."

  * * *

  Peter read again the last words of the paragraph he was on, not wanting an interruption now. There had been too many friends visiting in the two weeks he'd been home, all of them armed with questions, with which they had curiously probed into the life Alex had led before he arrived at Willow House.

  He didn't want to sit and talk politely to anyone of Jann, the woman who'd cared for Alex and stolen his own heart. Jann's image already overran his mind at each waking moment, and at night in his bed, she ruled his dreams. To speak of her and Alex and the life they had shared, only served to remind him of all he couldn't have.

  With a sigh, he looked up.

  "Jann," he said softly, his breath fleeing his lungs, the shock of seeing her standing there belting him in the gut.

  She took a step forward, her dress floating around her legs. Like a mirage, he thought dazedly, shaking his head to clear it. His legs, when he stood, felt weak and uncontrolled, and he cursed that she'd come when he wasn't prepared.

  With a great effort of will, he forced his body forward, gaining strength as he crossed the lawn to withstand her invasion of his heart.

  "Hello, Peter," she said, when he got near enough to hear, her voice engulfing him in memories of soft nights and island music.

  She looked at him uncertainly, seemed to withdraw into herself.

  "You've got a phone call," Callie said from where she stood next to Jann. "The one you've been waiting for."

  "Jann," he repeated gruffly, ignoring Callie's words.

  "I've come to see Alex," Jann explained, her gaze shifting past him, searching the area behind him to where Alex still sat.

  He should have guessed that it wasn't to see him that she had come. This woman wanted nothing to do with the love he had offered, had turned him down in Hawaii. Nothing had changed.

  "The telephone," Callie insisted.

  Taking the call would get him away from Jann.

  "I have to take that," he said. If only he wasn't plagued with the desire to hold her, if only he didn't care. "I'll just be a minute."

  He touched her arm, intending only to direct her across the lawn to Alex, but the shock when they touched was as overwhelming as it had been before. A desire engulfed him to tell her that he loved her, to take her into his arms and never let her go.

  She jerked away before he could act, and he felt the loss of the contact with a pain that staggered.

  * * *

  His eyes were just as Jann remembered, as changeable as the ocean, and just as powerful.

  "I've come to see Alex," she repeated, forcing her gaze from his. It was only half the reason, not the whole. But she couldn't tell him now that she'd come to see him, for the caution in his eyes had just told her he didn't care.

  Pain, sharp and piercing, shafted through her chest. If it was a miracle she had hoped for, those hopes were now dead.

  Peter didn't love her. He had never loved her. If she hadn't believed it before, she believed it now.

  And it hurt much more than she had imagined.

  "I don't have much time," she said, speaking the words swiftly, stiffening her body in an effort not to feel. "I'll just say hello to Alex and then I'll go."

  "It's long distance, Peter," Callie interrupted. "They're calling from Paris."

  "I have to answer that," he said to Jann. "But wait for me. We have to talk."

  "There's nothing more to say."

  "Promise me you'll wait."

  Another promise to this family, and one just as difficult as the one to Claire.

  "All right," she agreed numbly. "I'll wait."

  With that, he turned away.

  Jann blinked as he departed, as though she'd been caught in a trance and had just now been snapped free. She turned toward Alex, needing with every fiber of her being to hold her baby in her arms once more.

  She'd concentrate only on Alex, would try to eliminate the other Strickland from her heart and mind.

  With swift steps, she moved toward her baby. She would always think of Alex as her baby, no matter how far away he was or who he was with.

  She said his name as she approached, was warmed through her pain when he looked up at her and smiled. Then Alex reached for her and her heart melted completely.

  She picked him up slowly, his baby weight feeling wonderful in her arms once more. She longed to hold him forever, but knew that if she stayed more than a few minutes, it would be impossible to ever leave him again.

  Why had Peter been so insistent that she remain here and talk? Did he want to impress upon her how well he and Alex were doing? Or did he want to discuss their relationship, make sure she understood that when they'd made love back in Hawaii, it had meant nothing to him.

  Jann's body turned cold, except for the places where her skin touched Alex's. Her baby warmed her now as he had done after Claire's death. Losing Peter was like a death.

  "You're looking very serious."

  Peter had come from nowhere again, ambushing her heart just when she was trying to expunge him.

  "Alex has missed you," he said, his voice low and strained.

  "That's not what Callie said." Jann couldn't look at him yet, not daring.

  "She wouldn't want you to worry."

  "No," Jann agreed. "She's very thoughtful."

  "Why are you here, Jann?"

  "I... I just decided to come." She couldn't let him know of the love that had spurred her action, love that would die now and whither like flowers in winter. "I thought I'd do some traveling." Her words were a lie, but all she really wanted now was to get as far away as possible, to make a break from this man who had destroyed her life.

  "Traveling wouldn't have been easy with Alex in tow."

  "No," she agreed slowly, but with Alex in her life, there'd have been no need of trips.

  Coming to Boston had been a mistake. The only thing to do now was to return to Hawaii, to her friends and her boat, and the life she'd once known, to try with all her might to forget Peter and Alex.

  "I'll just say goodbye to Alex." She sucked in a breath, determined that Peter not see what she didn't want him to know, that without him and Alex she could barely go on.

  "You just got here," Peter said.

  His words seemed little more than the polite utterances of a stranger, not the friend she'd come to think him, and definitely not the lover.

  "Everything happene
d so quickly in Hawaii," she explained. "I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to Alex properly." She was babbling, but couldn't seem to stop. "I wanted to see for myself that he was doing all right."

  "I see."

  One glance at his face told her he saw nothing, or whatever he saw, he wasn't sharing it with her.

  "Alex's nanny seems nice," she went on rapidly, filling the growing silence with sound.

  "Yes," Peter agreed. "Alex adores her. But..." His expression warmed for an instant and he nodded towards the child held in Jann's arms. "...I haven't seen him this happy since Hawaii."

  Jann gently stroked Alex's hair back from his face and planted a kiss in the middle of his forehead. "It must be strange for him. A new bed, new people..." Her voice caught. She forced the words. "But he'll adjust. He's young. As long as he's fed, bathed, and held, he'll be fine."

  "That's not what you said before."

  "Isn't it?" She asked the question fiercely, tried to keep from her eyes the secret she carried, that she loved this man who had taken away her son.

  "I've got to go," she said again, but desperately this time, the whole situation becoming more than she could bear.

  "We haven't talked."

  "We've nothing more to say." Unless they discussed the magic they'd felt that day in Hana, or the pools and the light and the love they had shared. Or did he simply want to say he was sorry they'd made love? If he did that, she couldn't bear it, for she wasn't sorry at all.

  She thrust her baby back into Peter's arms, feeling the knowledge bite deep into her soul, that there would be no end of this for her, that she would love this man forever no matter what he felt for her. And nothing she could do or say would ever change that reality.

  With one last longing look at Alex, she pulled her finger free from his fist.

  "No," Peter growled, catching her by the arm.

  She stood motionless, trembling, engulfed in a fatigue of spirit that kept her feet rooted. Perhaps Peter was right. Perhaps she had to stop and listen. Maybe when she heard him say he didn't love her, had never loved her, the hard truth might release her heart. And after that was done, she'd be able to go home, back to her pictures and her boat and her life before Peter and Alex, back to a time when she didn't know all that love promised.