Suddenly Daddy and Suddenly Mommy

by Loree Lough

  That had struck him as strange, too, because the women in his past—including the one he’d made the mistake of marrying—had had blue eyes.

  “Brown.”

  “Is she tall?”

  “Actually, she’s rather short.”

  “Petite,” she’d corrected teasingly. “Short girls like ‘petite’ better.”

  “Is there no escaping political correctness?” he’d asked, chuckling.

  “Is she pretty, or sort of average-looking?”

  “She’s a livin’ doll, with the voice of a songbird and—”

  “She sounds just like Jaina.”

  Kirstie had been right, and the proud expression on her ashen face told Connor she’d known it.

  “When are you planning to tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That you love her, of course!” She’d given his hand a small squeeze. “Men. You can be so exasperating sometimes! You can’t put it off, you know. While you’re waiting to share your big news, what if she goes and falls in love with someone else? Wouldn’t that just devastate you?”

  “That would be awful,” he’d admitted, pretending he hadn’t seen the teasing glint in her eyes. She was playing the old reverse psychology game, and he’d known it. But the thought of Jaina, in love with another man—even in his imagination—had been agonizing.

  Suddenly, Kirstie awoke and gave his hand a hard squeeze, interrupting his reverie. “Uncle Connor…it’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “For me to go to Jesus.”

  He wanted to shout “Kirstie, no! Don’t leave, not yet. Not when I’ve finally found family.” But her sallow complexion, her faltering voice, the pain that lined her brow, told him he had to let her go.

  “Would you find Liam for me? So I can…”

  He patted her hand and kissed her cheek because he knew why she wanted to see Liam right now, and he didn’t want to hear her tell him why. “Sure. Course I will. You just lie still, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  He hesitated in the doorway.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll hang on till you get back.” And with a quavering smile, she added, “But…don’t be too long….”

  In the hallway, once her door hissed shut, Connor pressed his forehead to the wall. Tears filled his eyes. It was so unfair and unjust that she should be fading away like this. His fist pounded the cold tiles, once, twice. It was so cruel and—

  “Mr. Buchanan?”

  He scrubbed a palm over his face, turning toward the familiar voice. “Dr. Ginnan.”

  “Is everything all right with Kirstie?”

  “Yeah. No. Well, she, uh…” He swallowed, praying for the self-control to get through this—for Kirstie, for Liam. Standing taller, he ran both hands through his hair, held them there a moment, then cleared his throat. “Kirstie sent me to find her son so she could…”

  The doctor clamped a hand on Connor’s shoulder. “So she could say goodbye?” he finished.

  Connor nodded.

  “Don’t be ashamed of your feelings, Mr. Buchanan. Kirstie is a lovely, loving young woman. The disgrace would be if you didn’t feel this way about being so close to losing her.” He gave the shoulder a squeeze. “There’s a chapel down the hall if you’d like to visit it.”

  Connor stared at the highly polished linoleum beneath his feet, thumb and forefinger rasping over his day’s growth of whiskers as he tried to steady his quivering jaw. “Maybe later,” he said slowly, quietly, “after…” And pocketing his hand, he headed down the hall.

  Ginnan was with her when Connor returned, Liam in his arms. She reminded him of the beautiful little angel his mother took out only at Christmastime, made of fragile, translucent china. Kirstie smiled when she saw Liam, held out her arms. “Hello, sweet boy.” The words rasped from her like steel wool.

  Connor tucked Liam in beside her, and he laid his little head on her shoulder. “Mmumm-mmumm,” he whimpered, a thumb in his mouth.

  “You’re going to be just fine, baby, ’cause you’ll have a mommy and a daddy who will always love you very much.”

  A daddy and a mommy? Well, if the idea gave her comfort, who was he to burst her bubble? Connor perched lightly on the edge of her bed and rested a hand on her knee.

  Kirstie hugged Liam, kissed his baby lips. And eyes squeezed tight, she held him close for a long, long moment. Then, abruptly, she said, “Take him away. Take him now.” Turning from him, she choked out, “I don’t want him remembering…what’s about to happen…for the rest of his life….”

  Dr. Ginnan put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re quite a piece of work, Kirstie Buchanan,” he said past a trembling smile. “I’m proud to know you.” He picked Liam up and walked quickly, deliberately, from the room. To Connor, he added, “If you need me, I’ll be right around the corner.”

  He nodded, and when Kirstie crooked her finger to summon him closer, he stood, placed a palm on either side of her head and leaned closer to her small, pale face. “What is it, sweetie?” he asked. “What can I get you? Do you want anything? Name it, and it’s yours.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Her heavy-lidded eyes opened wider, gleaming with fierce intensity. “Marry Jaina,” she said in a sure, strong voice. “That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

  His heart thundered. Connor would have moved heaven and earth to grant her last wish. But this? He couldn’t do—

  She gripped his wrists with a strength that belied her condition. “Oh, Uncle Connor…it hurts…hurts so bad.”

  “I know, sweetie,” he said, although he didn’t know. How could he, when he’d never suffered like this? “Just let go, sweetie. I’ll be with you all the way.”

  She groaned. “I can’t…I won’t go. Not until you promise….”

  Connor could see that she was in excruciating agony. Pain shimmered in her eyes like diamonds and dotted her brow and upper lip with perspiration. He couldn’t stand to see her this way. Give me her pain, Lord, he prayed. Let me take on this confounded disease instead of—

  “I want to go, want to go so badly. But I can’t. Liam needs you. He needs you both.”

  He didn’t think he could stand to watch her torment a moment longer. Much as he detested dishonesty, he would have told her anything she wanted to hear right then to calm her, to comfort her, to ease her mind. And it wasn’t really a lie, he reflected, since he had already proposed to Jaina. The problem might be getting her to accept. “All right, Kirstie.”

  She squeezed his wrists tighter still, lifting her head from the pillow. “You mean it? You’ll marry Jaina? You’ll both be there for Liam?”

  His pounding heart thudded against his rib cage, reverberated in his ears. “Yes.”

  Her eyes never left his as she dropped back onto the pillow, spent. “Promise?”

  She was not teasing now, as she had been when she suggested Jaina might fall in love with someone else. She was racked with misery from the pain. He wished she hadn’t been so all-fired stubborn about taking the painkiller. It would have eased her suffering and—

  “Promise?” Kirstie’s burning gaze bore deeply into him, reading him, assessing him. If he lied now, she’d know it.

  Later, he could deal with the consequences, with the details. Right now, this child deserved to be set free from her anguish. “I promise, sweetie. I promise.”

  The moment the words were out of his mouth, she closed her eyes and exhaled a long, relieved sigh. The furrows disappeared from her youthful brow as though the gripping, deadly pain had been vanquished by the utterance of those two simple words. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Oh…thank you….”

  Her grip on his wrists loosened, her jaw slackened. It was happening right before his very eyes, and Connor was powerless to prevent it. What had he ever done in his miserable, self-absorbed life, he wondered, to earn him the privilege of being the one to spend these last moments with this dear, sweet girl?

&n
bsp; He was still leaning there, one hand on either side of her head, staring into her face. He hadn’t noticed before—the light hurt her eyes, and so the staff kept the lights low—but she had freckles, dozens of them, sprinkled across the bridge of her upturned nose. Freckles, he said to himself, like a little girl.

  And that’s exactly what she was.

  She was an eighteen-year-old girl, he fumed inwardly. This shouldn’t have been happening…not to a child! Jaw clenched, he held his breath, helpless frustration prompting him to grip her pillowcase tight in his fists. He wanted to warm her, protect her, save her. But he couldn’t, and he knew it.

  And so Connor did the next best thing.

  “Oh, Kirstie,” he groaned, lifting her into his arms. Holding her gently, tenderly, he kissed her temples, her cheeks and chin, and that adorable freckled nose. “I love you, sweet girl. I love you….”

  Her lashes fluttered, and she met his eyes. Laying a cool, dry palm against his cheek, she smiled sweetly. “I love you, too, Uncle Connor.” A weak little giggle popped from her dry, graying lips. “You’ll think I’m as silly as silly can be.”

  “Shhh,” he said, biting back a sob as he rocked her. He smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “I won’t think you’re silly. Honest.”

  She tilted her head back, looked long and deep into his eyes, then smiled serenely. “It was truly a pleasure, you know, meeting you.”

  And just as the world darkens gradually at sunset, the light in her bright eyes dimmed by slow degrees until there was nothing, not a spark or a glimmer of life left in them at all.

  He remembered bits and snatches of a verse from First Corinthians. “And lo, I will tell you a mystery: In the twinkling of an eye, the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”

  She was with her sweet Jesus now, free of all her pain and worry.

  With a trembling hand, Connor closed her long-lashed eyelids, then buried his face in the crook of her neck. He didn’t know how long he held her, rocked her, wept into her hair—ten minutes? thirty?—he only knew that he felt like bellowing at the top of his lungs. Someone should have held her this way while she was alive! But his embrace wasn’t warming or consoling or comforting her, wasn’t doing her any good now.

  And so Connor eased her back against the pillow, lovingly arranged her shimmering hair around her face, tucked the covers up under her chin. When he stood to kiss her forehead, one shining tear landed on her cheek. It slid down, disappeared, quickly absorbed by the crisp white pillowcase. The way it was swallowed up by the cotton reminded him how it felt to stand alone, barefoot on a beach at low tide, watching the soft sands drink up gently ebbing waves.

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he whispered. “All mine.”

  Kirstie hadn’t been gone an hour when he called Jaina. “Liam and I will be coming in on the one o’clock flight.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” she’d said.

  “I’m bringing Kirstie home. I want her buried in Baltimore, to be near her family.”

  “Of course you do. Don’t give it another thought. I’ll take care of whatever needs to be done.”

  And she had.

  The wake, the funeral service, the cemetery plot, even the marker…she’d thought of everything.

  The other mourners—Pearl, Ray, Rita, the Chili Pot staff—had taken Liam back to the diner, leaving Connor and Jaina alone in the graveyard.

  He slipped an arm around her waist. “I like what you had them put on her marker.” He read softly, “‘Kirstie Ann Buchanan. She was loved, and she will be missed.’”

  Jaina leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you were with her, and I’m glad you brought her home.”

  “I want to thank you, kiddo. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten through this without you.”

  “You’d have managed it like you manage everything else…with quiet efficiency.”

  He inclined his head and winced. “If this had been business as usual, maybe. But I would have cracked if I’d had to make all the arrangements after…after…”

  She turned to face him. “You’ve had a couple of pretty rough days, haven’t you?” she sympathized, absently smoothing the black lapels of his suit coat, straightening his tie, rearranging the silk hankie in his pocket.

  Someday, he’d tell her all about it.

  Someday…but not today. “There at the end, Kirstie asked me to make her a promise.”

  Jaina’s brows rose. “Oh? What kind of promise?”

  He rested his hands on her shoulders. Such delicate shoulders, he thought, yet so strong and capable. And it’s a good thing, because… “It seemed so important to her. I don’t know if I’ll be able to live with myself if I go back on my word.”

  “I can’t imagine why you’d have to.”

  Connor’s mustache tilted in a sad, half smile. “You might feel differently when I tell you what I promised.”

  She shrugged, cuffing the sleeves of her maroon blazer. “Why?”

  “Because it involves you.”

  “Me?” Jaina undid the top button of her white silk blouse.

  “Kirstie thought the world of you…”

  Jaina sighed. She glanced at Kirstie’s coffin. “I thought a lot of her, too.”

  “…thought so much of you, in fact, that she made me promise to marry you.”

  “Stop teasing, Connor,” Jaina said, shaking a maternal finger under his nose. “We’re in a cemetery, after all.”

  He tilted his head slightly, waiting for her to realize it wasn’t a joke. He watched her dark eyes widen, her mouth drop open, heard her quick intake of air.

  “But…but why?”

  “Because, as she put it, Liam needs us both.”

  She seemed to hesitate for a moment. “And you agreed?”

  He nodded. “Didn’t have any choice.” He hesitated. “I asked you once. You didn’t say ‘yes,’ but you didn’t say ‘no,’” he reminded her.

  Jaina sighed. “Well, we’ve been batting the idea around for a while…”

  “So…you promise to marry me, then?”

  When Jaina met his eyes and nodded, Connor’s heart thudded with relief. Smiling, he said, “You could do worse, you know.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “What are you going on about?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “I mean, you could be marrying somebody else…someone like Skip.”

  All eight fingertips covered her mouth. “Skip is a dear, but I don’t think there was ever a real chance of that happening, even for Liam.”

  Connor chuckled softly. “Glad to hear it,” he said. After a long, silent moment, Connor added, “I’ll understand if you don’t want to go through with it. It was my promise after all, not yours.”

  She clasped her hands at her waist, chewing her lower lip. “The thing is…I think she’s right,” she said quietly, staring at the coffin. “Liam does need us both.” She stiffened her back and, looking up at him through thick, dark lashes, said, “Maybe you were right when you said you should get the adoption papers finalized first. That way, my background won’t hurt your chances.”

  “Nonsense. Judge Thompson has already put his John Hancock on the petition. Liam is as good as mine…ours,” he quickly corrected.

  She bit a corner of her upper lip. “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “We can’t let Kirstie down, now can we?”

  He didn’t know how to define the expression that flitted across her face just then. Disappointment? Hurt? Regret?

  “No. I suppose we can’t.”

  He took her hand in his and led her toward his car. “The sooner the better, I say. What do you think?”

  “Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?” she answered, reciting the age-old adage.

  “How’s August 5 sound to you?”

  “Sounds fine.”

  He unlocked the passenger-side door of his car. “Good,” he said as she slid into the bucket seat. “Then it’s all settle
d.”

  There was a spring in his step as he walked around to his side of the sports car. As he unlocked his door, he gave one last glance at the graveyard. Sunlight, bouncing from one of the brass handles on Kirstie’s casket, flashed like a beacon—on, off, on, off…

  Was it a signal? he wondered. Some sort of sign? God’s blessing on the deal he and Jaina had just struck?

  A robin began to trill in a nearby tree, and a soft, warm breeze rustled the leaves. The sky seemed bluer, the clouds whiter as Connor remembered the way the pastor had concluded the burial service.

  “‘The righteous are taken from calamity,’” he’d quoted Isaiah, “‘and he enters into peace, he rests in his bed who walks in uprightness.’ Kirstie walked in uprightness on the earth,” the pastor had said, “and she will walk with God her Father all the days of eternity.”

  It seemed to Connor that it had all happened so fast. One minute, they were shopping for wedding bands. Then they were booking the church. And now, here he was, at the front of her church, waiting for her.

  Jaina seemed to float rather than walk toward him down the long, carpeted aisle, a vision in white. The satiny sheen of her gown reflected the sunlight, muted by the rainbow of stained glass. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, hoping she was real and not a figment of his imagination.

  Oh, she was real all right. More real than any woman he’d known. And soon, she would be his wife.

  The wedding procession finally ended, and Ray left her there alone beside him. Connor took a deep, shuddering breath as the pastor read from the Good Book and led the congregation in a prayer, then said a blessing on the couple who stood at the altar of God.

  But he barely heard any of it.

  He’d heard women described as dazzling, pretty, even handsome, on their wedding day. But the only word Connor could come up with to describe her had been worn thin by overuse. Still, it was the only word that would do: beautiful.

  He didn’t recall feeling this way when he’d married Miriam. Didn’t remember his heart beating this hard and fast, his palms sweating, or—

  “Connor Liam Buchanan…” The pastor’s voice penetrated his fog. “Do you take this woman, Jaina Clarisse Chandelle, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”