by Edie Claire
“Why yes, we are,” he answered pleasantly.
“Hello,” the young woman greeted. She had a lovely smile. There was a warmth about her that was comforting, particularly to a person in Margot’s frantic state. “I’m Mei Lin Sullivan, and this is my sister. We’re friends of your sons. I’m sorry you missed them — they just stepped out for a quick breakfast. I’m not sure where they went exactly, but I’m sure they won’t be gone long.”
“That’s all right,” Margot heard herself say, even though it was hardly what she was thinking. “We can wait. Is… Stanley Buchanan still here?”
Mei Lin nodded. “He’s in room four.” Her dark eyes held an eerie sort of sympathy, and Margot’s heart began to palpitate. How much did this girl know?
“I’d like to see him,” Margot said. “Are there… any restrictions, or anything?”
“Only two people can be in his room at a time,” Mei Lin answered. “We’ve been taking turns all night, but a little while ago they wheeled him off for some tests. I was just about to check and see if he was back.”
“I’ll go, then,” Margot said quickly. She hadn’t thought much about seeing Stan, but now it seemed important. They needed to talk. Alone.
“Go on then, honey,” Doug suggested, giving her arm a squeeze. “I’ll just park myself right here.”
Margot nodded gratefully to him as he took a seat. “Thank you,” she said to Mei Lin, who showed no signs of trying to follow her, but seemed content to wait with Doug. Well, good. Perhaps Doug could strike up a conversation and find out exactly who the women were. God knew no explanation would be forthcoming from either of her sons!
She strode out the other door and found room number four. Looking through the glass panel, she could tell that its occupant had returned, and she opened the door and stepped in without hesitation.
Her gaze locked immediately with that of the ex-husband she’d neither seen nor heard from in twenty years. For a moment, time stood still. The sense of deja vu was crushing.
“Hello, Stanley,” she said, her voice sounding no different than if she’d run into a neighbor at the market.
“Hello, Margot,” he returned in kind. His lips tilted into a small smile, but the expression was guarded. “You’re looking good.”
She nodded. “Thank you. You look like hell.”
He laughed out loud, and Margot smiled back at him. She always could make Stanley laugh. When she wanted to.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He shrugged carelessly. “I could be worse. At the moment I’m just happy to be here.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“Tony Russo is dead,” Margot announced, breaking the silence. “The danger is over, Stan. For you and the boys. Finally.”
His eyes widened. “Are you sure? How do you know? Who told you?”
“The Chicago PD. I only just found out a few days ago. They would have notified you too, but they had no address.” She sighed a little. Then she moved closer. “I have no idea how you came to run into the boys or what you’ve told them, but believe it or not I was about to tell them everything. Ever since I got the call from the detective, I’ve felt so… unsettled. There’s no reason, anymore, to keep up the facade. Doug and I talked it through, and we decided that Thane and Jason should know that you were alive. The detective suspected you were up here somewhere, and we figured they might want to try and find you. We had no idea they’d succeed without trying. How did it happen, exactly?”
Stanley shook his head. His face was so very pale… she hadn’t been joking when she said he looked terrible. His once-smooth skin was wrinkled and pitted, and he was practically crisscrossed with scars, especially his right arm. She wondered what had happened to him. But she didn’t really want to know.
“They found me,” he answered. “But I don’t think they intended to. It just sort of happened. We were all out looking for the same glacier bear.”
Margot laughed. “Of course you were. How poetic.”
She hadn’t meant it unkindly, and Stanley didn’t take it that way. “Margot,” he said seriously, sitting up a little. “I told them that I refused to testify, that I didn’t want to go into the witness protection program. I explained that I thought you’d all be safer if the rest of the world believed I was dead, and so I decided to make that happen. I told them I made the decision myself. That I never gave you any choice about it.”
A dry lump swelled in her throat. “Funny. That’s not how I remember it.”
His blues eyes — those fantastic, beguiling eyes! — held hers with force. “Sure it is,” he said firmly.
Margot felt something inside herself crumple. Damn the man! This would all have been so much easier if he was a scoundrel through and through! But life was never that simple. Stanley wasn’t a bad man; he never had been. They had only been bad for each other.
“I understand you remarried,” he said with cheer. “How fortunate we were able to divorce before I died. Convenient, that.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, smiling back through a haze of moisture. “And thank you.” The legality of their divorce was questionable, given that someone somewhere had fudged the dates to make the dissolution precede the kidnapping. But it had stood up well enough. Stanley had insisted that her future not be hostage to a phony death certificate, and she had good reason to appreciate his foresight.
“So you found a better man,” Stanley said philosophically, smiling at her. “I’m glad about that, Margot. I really am.”
She knew that he meant what he said, and she appreciated that as well. “A better man for me,” she qualified gamely.
He threw her a mischievous look. “Our Thane’s got himself a good one. Did you meet her out there? Mei Lin?”
Margot cocked an eyebrow. Thane? Involved with the woman outside? Well, there was no reason he shouldn’t be. There had never been anything between him and Vanessa, a fact she had cause to celebrate, in retrospect. It seemed funny, now, to think how desperate she’d been to tell Thane her news: that Vanessa wasn’t mentally ill after all… just unexpectedly manipulative. The girl had gotten herself pregnant by a married man, then decided that Thane should be the baby’s father. The little witch seriously thought she could lure Margot’s tender-hearted son into bed and then guilt him into being a parent, even if he did discover the truth!
The mere thought of it still set Margot’s teeth on edge. She could understand Vanessa’s wanting a family, and any idiot could see that Thane would make a great dad. But still, how could she? Margot had practically considered her a daughter! The worst part was that Vanessa’s horrid scheme might even have succeeded, if Thane hadn’t had the sense to keep his hands off her.
Her kind, sensitive Thane… he was worth a hundred Vanessas. And he deserved a woman just as straightforward, down to earth, and loving as he was.
Margot returned her attention to Stanley. “You know this girl? Mei Lin?”
“I do,” he answered proudly. “Good as gold and smart as a whip, besides. She saved my life, actually. At least once! Possibly twice — I’m not entirely sure what happened this last time. But trust me, she’s a keeper.”
Margot nodded, remembering the woman’s sweet smile and the way she had practically radiated warmth. Yes. Someone like her could be just what Thane needed. What he deserved.
“Mei Lin knows what really happened, by the way,” Stanley continued. “I mean, about my death and all. We had some good long talks while she was nursing me back to health out in my cabin. But don’t worry — she won’t spill the beans. I’ve asked her to stick to our story. I don’t want the boys to blame you, Margot. For any of this.”
Margot’s chin lifted. She felt much better, suddenly. Stronger. So far, this little venture of redemption she’d set herself on wasn’t turning out at all as she’d planned. But perhaps it could turn out better.
“No, Stanley,” she proclaimed. “I’m not going to have you lying for me. And I’m not going to impose
the burden of our dirty secrets on that poor girl out in the waiting room, either. If you want her and Thane to have a chance together, they can’t start out with a lie between them. There have been enough lies, don’t you think? Too many, and for too long. I want it to stop, and I’m going to end it myself. Today.”
“But surely there’s no harm in—”
“Of course there is!” Margot said fiercely. “If it had been up to you, you would have testified, and Tony Russo would have gone to prison. The boys and I would have gone with you into witness protection, and you would never have been separated from them in the first place. I’m not saying that would have been better for them; I still don’t think it would have been. But we both know it was my choice. I didn’t give you any alternative.”
Stanley’s face drew tight with concern. “But it was my fault it happened in the first place. I don’t want them to be upset with—”
“It was not your fault!” she said emphatically. “And if I ever made you feel that it was, I’m sorry. It was just damned bad luck, for all of us. You did what you thought best, and so did I. Maybe I was wrong. And maybe when I tell the boys, they’ll think I made a terrible, horrible mistake, and they’ll be furious with me. But you know what?”
He blinked at her in surprise. “What?”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take. I love them. I’ve loved them every day of their entire lives, and I’ve let everything I do — everything — be guided by what I thought was best for them. I’m not perfect and I’m not ‘cool’ and I know that I irritate the hell out of them sometimes. But they know I love them. And I’m just going to have to count on that to be enough.”
She stopped and took a breath. She didn’t know where she’d found half those words, but she was glad she had said them.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Stanley,” she said more calmly. “Eventually.”
Pale and pathetic as he looked, he smiled back at her with the same slaphappy, devil-may-care grin that had started all this trouble in the first place.
“You go, girl,” he replied.
Epilogue
Two months later
Mei Lin shrieked with happiness as Thane’s strong arms lifted her off the ground and swung her around the driveway in a giant circle.
“I got the job!” he announced unnecessarily. His hearty, booming laughter carried out across the meadow, flushing a flock of sparrows from the nearby bushes and out into the open blue sky. “I got the job!”
She laughed with him, barely able to catch her breath until — after she’d delivered a few affectionate pounds on his shoulder — he finally agreed to put her down. “That’s wonderful!” she praised between pants.
“I’ll be based in Juneau, of course, but it’s a field job, so it’s flexible,” he crowed. “I can spend the weekends out here, at least, and maybe do some telecommuting as well, when the weather’s bad. Besides which,” he added, smoothing a lock of hair tenderly behind her ear, “You can always come out to Auke Lake and stay with me. That invitation stands permanently open.” He raised his voice again. “That is, if you ever lose that slacker of a house guest of yours!”
“I resent that!” Stanley’s voice called from the back deck, out of sight. “Who do you think does all the cooking around here, anyway?”
Mei Lin chuckled. “He’s doing really well lately. It won’t be long at all until he can go back to the cabin. He may be ready before they finish the road, even.”
“Just make sure he waits till it’s done,” Thane returned more quietly. “If he wants to live without power or water that’s his business, but you need to be able to drive up there easily.”
“And he needs to be able to drive out,” Mei Lin said cheerfully. She was delighted that Stanley had bought a truck of his own. He was indeed a social person by nature, and she suspected that his self-imposed isolation had taken more of a toll on his psyche than he realized. But that wasn’t going to happen again.
“Not that I’m against him moving on as soon as possible, you understand,” Thane said, pulling Mei Lin in closer. “Frankly, I can’t wait. I really do want you to come and stay at the lake house sometimes. It’s beautiful in the fall.”
Mei Lin didn’t need convincing. She had already enjoyed several visits to Thane’s grandparents’ old home. They had kayaked for hours on the smooth, inky lake, admiring the stunning view of the Juneau ice fields in the distance. It was a terribly romantic locale. Then again, with a man like Thane in a place like Alaska, what wasn’t?
They found themselves happily preoccupied again… and they stayed that way until the disembodied voice called out from the deck again.
“You coming up?” Stanley shouted impatiently. “I want to hear about this job!”
Mei Lin and Thane reluctantly drew apart from one another. “Couldn’t he walk around to the side deck by himself if he wanted?” Thane asked in a low voice.
“Of course he could,” Mei Lin replied. “His leg has healed nicely and he’s getting stronger. I suspect he’s just trying to be polite.”
“Hellloooo?” Stanley yelled facetiously.
“Yeah,” Thane chuckled. “That must be it.”
Mei Lin threaded her small arm through his giant one and swung him towards the door of the house. She thought of it as her house now, rather than Elsie’s, which she still felt a bit guilty about. But as Carol and Jeanine and everyone else in town reminded her, the house belonged to the town now, and she was a bona fide lessee. Her certification with the state had come through surprisingly quickly, and though no one in the immediate area needed hospice at the moment, she had found herself plenty busy. Sandra Gruber had wasted no time in transferring the majority of her elderly patients into Mei Lin’s care, insisting that the newcomer had more up-to-date training in geriatrics. Mei Lin had felt a little guilty for the sacrifice until she realized that the older woman had simultaneously acquired both a small fishing boat and a new puppy. Evidently, Mei Lin’s professional entry into the community was indeed a boon for everyone.
The second Mei Lin opened the door of the house, a flying ball of brown fur hurtled out and crash-landed against Thane’s shins.
“Kibbe boy!” he greeted gaily. “How’s city life been treating you?”
“He goes bonkers over everyone he meets,” Mei Lin answered for the dog. “Still basking in his hero status, you know.”
“Well, he deserves it!” Thane laughed, squatting down to deliver the obligatory belly rub.
“Did I tell you that Ed’s dog is pregnant again?” Mei Lin asked. “He swears he’s going to get her spayed after this ‘accident.’ But I’ve been thinking it might be nice to have one of Kibbe’s little brothers or sisters bouncing around. What do you think?”
Thane grinned broadly, as she knew he would. He loved dogs, but had lost his last one shortly before starting grad school. They both knew, with no words needing to be spoken, that any puppy of hers would be his, too… someday. Their relationship was in its early days yet, and neither was inclined to rush things. But they were very, very happy.
“Let’s do it,” Thane replied. “After all, Kibbe needs family, too, right?”
“Everybody needs family,” Mei Lin returned.
Thane’s answering smile was crooked, but obliging. He and Jason had had a tough time at first, dealing with the reality of their parents’ decisions. They were particularly hard on their mother. But Margot had persevered, and it was hard for the brothers to hold a grudge when the older generation set such a stunning example of forgiveness. Who would have expected that Stanley and Margot would get along better, twenty years after their divorce, than they ever had when they’d been married? And who would have thought that Stanley and Doug, two men as different in personality as night and day, would bond so quickly over a shared love of fly fishing?
Mei Lin couldn’t have asked for a better outcome for any of Thane’s family. Nor could she make any complaints about her own streak of luck. Silverson Elder Care had finally
deigned to settle with the Gonzalez family out of court — for a very generous sum. And as thrilled as she was to rid herself of the fear of being dragged back to Texas, she was even happier to close the book on her own internal angst. She truly believed, now, that she had made the right decision. What happened to Mariel would not happen again.
“What’s going on down there, eh?” Stanley called out — with shameless suggestiveness — as they lingered at the door.
Thane rolled his eyes. “He is so bad.”
Mei Lin chuckled. “You love it.”
“Time’s wasting, you know!” Stanley persisted in yelling, even as his voice got hoarse. “If we don’t get going soon, that glacier cub will be heading into hibernation!”
Thane’s answering grin swelled Mei Lin’s heart. He would never give up, she was certain. No one had seen hide nor hair of the legendary creature since the day of the German couple’s still-questionable report. Dave himself had searched high and low relentlessly, along with Thane and Jason and Doug. Ri and Wolf had even come out one weekend to join the party. And as of yesterday, Stanley had finally been given the all-clear to indulge in brief stakeouts himself. But the crafty cub continued to elude them.
“I’m afraid I have a confession to make,” Mei Lin whispered. “I’ve been halfway hoping you guys don’t catch up with that cub — at least not right away.”
Thane stared down at her with feigned horror. “What? Treason!”
“Well!” Mei Lin defended, chuckling as she snuggled into her happy place. “I can’t help it. The little guy worked one miracle already, bringing us all together, and his disappearing again now… well, it just seems right, somehow. If he makes his mark, then lopes off into legend, shrouded in mystery, the Buchanan family quest can continue indefinitely! On and on… generation after generation… am I making any sense, here?”
