by Abby Gaines
“You’re probably right,” Nancy said with false cheer. “Sadie, dear, you will call me right back, won’t you?”
THE FIRST PERSON SADIE called after she got home was in fact Trey.
“According to the roster, she’s been working late flights to and from Miami,” she told Trey. “But I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been home in between. We don’t even know for sure if she showed up for work.”
“If she hadn’t, the airline would have called her registered home address, which would be your place, or maybe Mom’s.”
“The roster on my fridge ends today, which is her day off.” Sadie straightened Meg’s collection of Las Vegas fridge magnets. “I called the airline, but they won’t tell me where she’s rostered from tomorrow.”
“I’ll phone Lexie, see if she’s heard from her,” Trey offered. Sadie tried to mean it when she thanked him.
“I guess I should try Daniel, too,” she said.
“Yeah.” He paused. “How are things going between you and the doctor?”
It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. “Trey, I’m not seeing Daniel.”
“Why not?” he demanded, so sharply that she knocked a couple of fridge magnets to the floor.
“It’s complicated.” She felt guilty about Meg, angry with Daniel for hurting her friend…and thoroughly befuddled, as well as turned on, when she thought about Trey.
That seemed to kill the conversation. A moment later Trey ended the call. Sadie tried Meg’s cell phone just in case. Voice mail. She left a message, then called Daniel. “Have you heard from Meg lately?”
“No,” he said, trying and failing to sound distant. “Should I have?”
“I guess not. She, uh, moved out of my place and I’m not sure where she’s gone.”
“She what?” A crash came down the line, as if Daniel had just upended his chair.
“She said she was going to stay with her mom, but Nancy said she never showed up.”
“You mean…she’s missing?” Daniel’s voice was a high-pitched croak, like a teenager whose voice was breaking.
“Not in the police sense, no. We just don’t know where she’s staying. Trey’s calling Lexie… Hello?”
He’d hung up on her.
She called Trey back on his cell phone. He reported that Lexie hadn’t seen or heard from Meg, but she’d phoned another stewardess, who confirmed that Meg had definitely been flying the Miami run. She wasn’t missing.
“She’s avoiding the people who care about her,” Sadie said. “Nancy said they got into an argument, and I know I was distracted when she wanted to confide in me about the breakup with Daniel.”
They both knew why Sadie had given less than her full sympathy to Meg’s troubles, but Trey had the decency not to mention it.
“I yelled at her last time we talked,” he admitted.
“It’s our fault she’s run off,” Sadie said. “We knew she was hurting.”
“It’s not our fault.” But he lacked his usual arrogant certainty.
Sadie slipped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Where are you?”
“Out on the lake.”
“Your sister’s missing and you’re fishing!”
“I was already out here the first time you called,” he said patiently. “Which was all of ten minutes ago.”
“Have you caught anything?” she asked.
“I’m doing more thinking than fishing,” he said.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing as important as what you think about.”
“Shut up,” she said companionably.
He did, and they shared silence for a minute.
Trey broke it. “Come home, Sadie. We’ll set up search-party central here in Cordova.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY HER FOURTH day at St. Ignatius, Meg had made progress with Angela. She’d been promoted from “waitress in the sky” to air stewardess.
“One day soon,” Meg told her as she plumped her pillows on Friday, “you’re going to call me a flight attendant.”
“Ridiculous, politically-correct term.” Angela leaned forward for Meg’s ministrations. “Couldn’t you have been a pilot?”
“Why would I want to do that? Pilots are shut away in the cockpit with only a copilot to talk to.” Satisfied with the pillow arrangement, Meg returned to her chair. “Wait, I know, to impress my future mother-in-law.”
“You have no ambition.” Angela eased her shoulders back into the pillows. “That’s what I don’t like.”
“You don’t like me because of my job?” She’d suspected as much, but the woman’s admission still startled her.
“I didn’t say I don’t like you,” Angela said testily. “But Daniel’s always dated women with brains.”
“Don’t start with the postgraduate degrees,” Meg muttered.
“Intelligence is important, and a postgraduate degree implies its presence.” Angela touched the dressing on her chest, as if she was in discomfort. “I liked that Sadie—you could see she’s smart. My husband liked her, too.”
Meg frowned. “Did Dr. Wilson go to the dress fitting?”
“He met Sadie when Daniel called in at home with her one weekend,” Angela said. “Before you were on the scene. I really thought something might come of that.”
“They’re just friends,” Meg said, still processing the news that Sadie had met Daniel’s parents before Meg and hadn’t said anything.
“Not back then. She was mad about him, and Daniel was definitely interested.”
No! Meg stood and walked swiftly to the window. Far below, cars moved in and out of parking spaces, like remote-controlled toys.
Angela eyed her with interest. “Didn’t you know?”
Meg licked her lips. “I was away. In Paris.”
“That’s the other problem with a job like yours,” Angela said. “You don’t see what’s going on under your nose.”
Meg wasn’t listening. Sadie and Daniel? Sadie had liked Daniel, in that way? It must have been a rebound thing, after she broke up with that vet. Because Sadie wasn’t interested in Daniel. Was she?
“Sadie is much more Daniel’s type than you are.” Angela didn’t sound vindictive. More…sympathetic.
The nausea Meg had managed to avoid during her hospital visits roiled in her stomach. Her vision grew hazy, narrowing to pinpoints.
“Sit!” Angela barked, and somehow Meg lurched to the chair.
“Head between your knees, breathe slowly,” Angela ordered. “Don’t you dare make me get out of this bed.”
Meg smiled through a shallow breath. Her vision cleared, and she could see the linoleum through the gap between her knees. After a few more seconds, she sat up.
“Well, that was silly,” Angela said, surprisingly kind.
Meg nodded, not trusting herself to talk yet. She pictured Logan, lingered on the image, then sent it away.
“Once he met you, Daniel didn’t have eyes or thoughts for anyone else,” Angela said matter-of-factly.
“But you’re right—Sadie is his type.” Oh, no, what if Sadie and Daniel got together, and Meg had to watch them—
“Is she as brave as you?”
“What do you mean?”
“These visits…” Angela waved a hand around the room. “It took guts for you to come here. I’ll bet your heart’s shaking like jelly on a train right now.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” Meg said.
Angela actually laughed. “When you’re good at something, it’s easy to be brave,” she said. “Your friend Sadie strikes me as someone who wouldn’t be troubled by phobias. Very rational.”
“She’s amazing,” Meg agreed. “She can cope with anything. I haven’t appreciated her enough.”
“I daresay amazing goes both ways,” Angela said briskly. “My point is, Sadie is living in her comfort zone, just as you have been in yours. Stepping out of that to come here, overcoming your fear…that’s something special.”
She wa
s right. Tranquillity seeped through Meg, laying to rest her memories of those awful days waiting for Logan to die.
“Thank you, Angela.” This would be the last visit she would make, she realized.
“What will you do now?” Angela asked, as if she sensed Meg’s decision. “Do you think you’ll see Daniel?”
Was Angela saying she wouldn’t mind?
“I love Daniel,” Meg told her. “I let him down, and I’m sorry for that. But he let me down, too.”
Angela bristled in defense of her son.
“I can’t be with someone who’s going to write me off at the first mistake,” Meg said. “I’m way too flawed for that. I need someone who’ll accept me as I am, and take it from there.”
“Very New Age.” Angela sniffed, but there was no condescension in it.
“I know I still need to make some changes,” Meg said. “Grow some independence. I won’t go back to Sadie’s.” They both needed some space, Meg thought. Especially if there was a chance Sadie and Daniel… “Anyway—” she perched on the edge of the bed “—I’ll figure it out. But this is goodbye.”
Then she did what might be the bravest thing she’d ever done—she opened her arms.
Angela hugged her.
“YOU REALIZE THIS is the Millennial Centennial all over again,” Sadie said on Saturday afternoon.
Trey kicked back in his mom’s dining chair, stretched his arms behind his head. “I wasn’t aware the aim of this exercise was to find you a date.”
The yearbook from Meg’s senior year at Andrew Johnson High School lay open on the table in front of them. In the kitchen, Nancy was working her way through the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) telephone list and selected highlights of the bridge-club member list. Next door, Mary-Beth Beecham was calling a bunch of garden-club members, and Sadie’s dad had reluctantly agreed to phone his golf buddies.
“But if you want me to ask if you can date their son right after I say, ‘Have you seen Meg?’ it could be arranged,” he continued.
“I’m just saying I don’t think Meg will thank us next time she’s back home, when she gets stopped in the street by every second person wanting to know if she solved her ‘little problem.’”
“She shouldn’t go disappearing, then,” Trey said. “And she shouldn’t know so many people—it’s unnatural.” Unlike Sadie’s teen fiasco, they were calling only people who qualified as friends of Meg’s—thousands of them, it seemed. If they didn’t have the friend’s current number they would go via the parents. Meg had a phenomenal capacity for keeping in touch with people.
Trey started dialing. “Next on the list is the Morgans—you remember Skip Morgan. Want me to find out if he’s available?”
“Sure,” Sadie said.
Trey shut down the call. “That better be a joke.”
“You’re the one who seems to think I’m still desperate.”
His eyes wandered over her olive-colored tank and short black shorts. Since she’d arrived in Cordova last night his manner had been casual and friendly. Nothing in his words or actions suggested he’d ever wanted her.
His eyes told another story. She’d caught him looking at her like this—hot, speculative glances—several times. But when she challenged his glance with one of her own, his face shuttered. It was driving her nuts.
She picked up a copy of American Landscape magazine and fanned her face. She thought she heard a snicker from Trey, but his expression was blandly innocent as he dialed the Morgans.
They hadn’t seen Meg, Sadie gathered from the one-sided conversation. Predictable. This was a waste of time. Meg had texted all of them—her mom, Sadie and Trey—simultaneously first thing this morning to say she was okay and would be in touch soon. But she’d switched the phone off right afterward, and Nancy didn’t consider one text message to be proof her daughter was stable and safe. The airline had confirmed Meg was working, but wouldn’t release more information than that. Sadie figured she was probably staying a few days in a motel near the airport for some private grieving over her breakup with Daniel.
Sadie flicked through the magazine and quickly became engrossed in the photos of stunning landscapes. Her dad had asked this morning when he and Mary-Beth could see her English country garden. She’d been tempted to give him a date twenty-five years out. Instead, she’d turned the conversation to her job.
So much for Trey’s commitment to creating a fabulous garden for her. He hadn’t done a thing since the day Meg left. Since Sadie had implied that she was going out to buy new lingerie to impress Daniel.
She froze. Was that why Trey wasn’t acting on the undeniable spark between them? Because he thought she was seeing Daniel? She’d told him yesterday she wasn’t, but one thing she knew about Trey, he had a suspicious mind where Daniel was concerned.
She needed to clear up any misunderstanding. She flicked unseeing through the magazine as her mind worked on the problem. There must be some subtle way to convey what he needed to hear, without exposing herself to humiliation if in fact he had no interest in her….
“Good magazine?” Trey asked. “Because, you know, we’re trying to find my sister here.”
“This is fascinating.” Sadie focused on the page in front of her. “A historic botanical garden near Boston runs a residential course that’s producing the country’s best landscape designers.”
“Fascinating,” he said. “Now start calling.”
“I didn’t buy lingerie,” she blurted out.
Oh, yeah, supersmooth segue. This was why she worked with a bunch of other nerds in a science lab—she wasn’t fit to be out in society.
“Excuse me?” Trey said with deceptive politeness.
“I told you I was—” she lowered her voice in the unlikely event Nancy could hear her from the kitchen “—going to buy lingerie.”
“You meant for Daniel,” he said, his voice expressionless.
She winced. “I was joking. Obviously I wouldn’t do something so insensitive when he and Meg had just broken up.”
“And since then?” he asked.
“Why do I have to answer all the embarrassing questions?” she demanded. “When was the last time you slept with Lexie?”
The phone rang in the kitchen.
“Three years ago,” Trey said. “It was a one-off.”
Sadie wished she hadn’t asked.
“Did you buy lingerie later?” he said.
And now she owed him an answer.
“No.”
Their gazes met, meshed.
“That was Lexie Peterson on the phone,” Nancy announced, walking into the dining room. “She said she wants to help find Meg—she’s coming tomorrow.”
Sadie blinked, breaking contact with Trey.
Nancy collected their empty cups. “Would you like another coffee, or is it time for something stronger?”
“Something stronger,” Sadie and Trey said simultaneously.
FOR THE FIRST TIME ever, Meg couldn’t get enthusiastic about putting on her uniform and heading to the airport. Usually the urge to fly was a compulsion, an itch she couldn’t ignore.
The destination wasn’t the problem—she loved Vegas.
She locked the door of the studio apartment she’d borrowed from another flight attendant, who was living with her boyfriend—a trial arrangement—and didn’t want to give up her apartment until she was sure it would work out. Either way, Meg had a month before she needed to find a place of her own.
One month.
In one month she would have been marrying Daniel if she hadn’t been such an idiot. And if he hadn’t been so unforgiving.
The airline-staff shuttle arrived at the curb at the same time she did. The airport was only fifteen minutes away, on a route that passed right by St. Ignatius Hospital. Angela had been transferred out of ICU this morning, according to the operator who answered Meg’s inquiry earlier. Daniel would be so relieved.
At the airport Meg attended the preflight briefing, then headed to the gat
e lounge area. The loudspeaker departure announcements, a shopping list of destinations, failed to work their usual magic of building her anticipation. By the time she’d trundled her overnight bag all the way to gate twenty-five she was wishing she’d picked up a coffee on the way. The feeling intensified when she saw the crowded gate area. The flight was overbooked—she didn’t envy the ground crew the inevitable shouting matches when some passengers were told they couldn’t fly.
Busy exchanging a sympathetic glance with the poor guy working the desk, she almost fell over the outstretched legs of a dozing passenger.
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t— Daniel?”
It was him. Her Daniel. He’d shot awake when she stumbled over him, and now he jumped to his feet. “You came,” he said. “I work here.” Her eyes ran over his stubbled jaw, his rumpled shirt, unlaced shoes. He looked as if he’d been caught up in a Calvin Klein store explosion. “Are you flying to Vegas?”
He shook his head. “I’m in here on a medical clearance.” He waved a temporary pass in her face.
“You only get those if the authorities call you in. To see a patient. In an emergency.” She examined the pass. “This is a three-hour pass, dated yesterday.”
“Which is why I haven’t been able to leave.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Do you know how hard it is to sleep in an airport? I spent half the night dozing in the men’s bathroom, trying to avoid security staff.”
She couldn’t think of anyone less likely to sleep in the bathroom than Daniel. His mom would be horrified. She almost giggled at the thought, but confusion won out.
“So who’s your patient?” she asked.
“You are. How do you feel?” He put a hand to her forehead and she went stupidly weak at the knees.
“I’m a little dizzy,” she said.
“Thought so.” He grinned. “Let’s get you away from this crowd.” One hand on her elbow, the other balancing a medical bag on her wheelie case, he steered her to the adjoining gate, serving the much smaller flight to Denver. They sat in an empty bank of seats.
