Coast Road

by Barbara Delinsky

  “No. You were right. I was running around. You’d have been stranded. Will I see you, Jack?”

  “Not enough time, Jill.”

  “Not even for a minute? Just a quick run in on the way to the office?”

  “I can’t.”

  “When will you be back again?”

  She had asked that question often during the past two years. Jack traveled constantly. Any woman he dated knew that. Jill was the first who had accepted it graciously. And why not? She had her own life, her own causes, her own friends, and was a mature, giving individual. He loved those things about her. He especially loved the fact that she made him feel wanted. He would always need that. But she didn’t nag—and she wasn’t nagging now, though the question sounded different this time. He could have sworn he sensed fear. It was the same fear that he had sensed a time or two before, when she alluded to a future together.

  Usually he skirted the issue by blaming his work. “You don’t want to be tied to a man married to work,” he would tease. Or he would say, “Let me get through this patch, and we’ll talk again,” or even, “My life isn’t my own, Jill, not with so many big projects going on.”

  This time he simply said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Pray for Rachel?”

  Knowing that, bless her, she would probably do just that, he drove to the office, but the minute he pulled into the space that he paid dearly for each month, he had the urge to back right out and leave. There were problems here, too many to label or count—none to do with economic survival, though that was what he had spent a lifetime fearing. More to do with him. He felt confused. The grogginess in his head became a buzz. He wanted to run, escape, flee.

  But this was his firm. As a name partner, he had a responsibility to the twenty-some-odd people that he and David employed.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, he crossed through the brick-walled foyer with only a passing nod at the receptionist. He strode down the hall, looking at none of the open cubicles lest his eye be caught, and didn’t stop until he reached Tina Cianni’s glass-enclosed office.

  She was on the phone. Eyes widening, she hung up within seconds. “What are you doing here, Jack? You’re supposed to be in Monterey.” More cautiously, she said, “How is she?”

  “Alive. But still comatose.”

  Tina released a breath. “Well, the alive part is good. How are the girls?”

  “Hanging in there. What’s doing?”

  She paused, gave him a warning look. “You don’t want to know.”

  Again? “Is it worse than a coma?”

  “David would say it is,” she said dryly. “Michael Flynn was supposed to have revised plans done for Buffalo last night. Calls are coming in fast and furious. Every day those windows don’t go in is costing John Perry a pretty penny.”

  Jack knew that all too well. The last time he had worked with this particular developer—on a series of housing clusters—heavy snows had brought work to a standstill at three crucial points. Each day of delay meant another day carrying the construction mortgage with interest. This time the project was an art gallery with adjoining studios, a project closer to Jack’s heart than most, and the windows had come in wrong. The contractor swore he had ordered the right ones. Whether he had or not was moot. Reordering and waiting for delivery could set them back two months.

  As designing partner, Jack had done the original work. He had revised the plan to incorporate the windows as delivered. Michael Flynn, as his project manager, was supposed to see that what Jack designed was built, which meant making blueprints of Jack’s revisions, getting them to Buffalo, and following them there posthaste.

  “Where is Michael?”

  “Home. He ran out of here at three yesterday to take his two-year-old to the doctor. She was having a massive poison ivy attack, and his wife panicked. He was rear-ended on the way home, then tripped and fell down a flight of stairs with the child in his arms. It’s a miracle neither of them was killed. The little girl is fine. Michael thinks he broke his ankle. It’s swollen. He’s going for X rays.”

  The buzz in Jack’s head grew louder. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “They’re working, but it’s slow. When Michael ran out, he implied that he was nearly done, but he wasn’t. Alex and Brynna are on it.”

  Jack took a tired breath. He should have been irate. His name would be the one tarnished if Buffalo was upset. His reputation was the one at stake.

  But he felt numb. “What else?”

  “Boca. Regulations and committees. Back to the drawing board.”

  The project in Boca was a combined office building and shopping mall. He had already revised the design not once, not twice, but three times to satisfy the quirks of one vocal member of one crucial committee. With preliminary approval of that revised design, he had put two draftsmen to the task of producing working drawings. He had already compromised to the limit, not to mention swallowed wasted hours for which he had to pay his draftsmen without reimbursement. Was the money worth it?

  Tina was right. He didn’t want to be there.

  “Shall I cancel you out for tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You look done in. Did you sleep?”

  “Some.” Dropping his head back, he eyed the ceiling. He couldn’t focus on Buffalo, couldn’t focus on Boca. But he was the leader of the firm, and morale was low.

  So he walked down the hall and stopped at one cubicle after another, making his presence felt in the barest way—a question here, a suggestion there—wading through the static in his head for relevance. He was singly responsible for three-quarters of the design work the firm did. It was good work, increasingly important work. Metropolitan Home had photographed his museum in Omaha; Architectural Digest was doing a piece on his library in Memphis. He was getting invitations to bid on some of the most exciting projects—that, and repeat clients. Every architect dreamed of tying himself to a conglomerate with ongoing projects, and the dream was coming true for Sung and McGill. Still, Jack felt detached, felt angry to be in the office.

  Mercifully, David was on-site in Seattle. Jack wasn’t up for explaining himself. How could he explain what he didn’t understand?

  His own office was in a far corner of the suite. Like his studio at home, it harbored more business than art. Oh, there were pictures on the wall, lots of black-and-white under glass, elegant renderings of his favorite projects, reprints of magazine pieces—and for a minute, looking at them, he felt that old glory and the glow. There had been nothing, absolutely nothing, like the high of seeing his first design turned into a home. And there were other highs—the high of designing something bigger, more complex, more expensive; the high of winning an award or being solicited for work by a client so powerful that Jack was stunned. He felt pride. Yes, he did. But it was distant.

  He needed a break. Maybe that was it. He had been working nonstop for too long. He and Rachel used to take vacations, trekking through remote areas of Canada or South America, always with pads and pencils, often with the girls. Since the divorce, he hadn’t taken more than an occasional long weekend to himself, and then always for something more lazy and posh. Jill wasn’t a trekker. She was a skier, so they did that together. But it didn’t clear his head the way vacations with Rachel had.

  Maybe he was burning out. There had to be an explanation for the revulsion he felt.

  Then again, the revulsion could be from fatigue. Or worry. Any normal person would feel shell-shocked given the recent turn of events. Any normal person would feel the need to decide what was most urgent and focus solely on that.

  Rachel called it prioritizing. This time, at least, she was right.

  Pocketing a pile of telephone messages, he returned to the front desk and told Tina to cancel Austin.

  Then he headed south to Monterey.

  FOR A PETITE woman, Rachel had incredibly elegant arms and legs. Jack had always attributed that elegance to a grace of movement, but he saw it now even as she lay inert. He rub
bed lotion over her hand—flexing it from fingertip to knuckle to wrist as he had seen the nurses do—then smoothed it along her forearm to her elbow. Her upper arms had no fat, just the gentle muscle of an active woman. He had always admired that in her. She wasn’t one to play the weaker sex, was as quick to lift what needed to be carried as to ask for help.

  Admirable. Humbling. Hard to be the stronger sex when she just took it upon herself to do things. He remembered being furious with her, way back in Tucson, when they had moved in together. They had been dating for three months, had decided that paying two rents was foolish, and had chosen his place over hers for its size and its sun. On the appointed day, he had raced to her apartment straight from school to start moving, only to find nine-tenths of the furniture already gone. And there she was in his place, sweaty, dirty, grinning from ear to ear as she pointed out where everything was and how well it fit. His fury didn’t last long. She was too excited, too proud, to eager to make life easier for him. Lord, he had loved her for that strength.

  Strength. Independence. Self-reliance. Stubbornness.

  “Hi.” Katherine’s voice brought him back. She was another strong one, here to see her friend even when her friend’s husband—ex-husband—kept taking his frustrations out on her.

  “Hi,” he said, determined to be kind. “How’s it going?”

  “It’d be better if Rachel woke up. Still sleeping?”

  “Still sleeping. I bore her.”

  Katherine actually smiled. “She said you weren’t always boring. She said you were fun at the beginning.” The smile faded. “She looks the same. Isn’t there any change medically?”

  “None. I was hoping she’d be awake by now.” That was one major source of worry. He sought Katherine’s thoughts on another. “Think I should call her mother?”

  The sudden caution on Katherine’s face said she knew something about Victoria Keats.

  “What do you say, Rachel?” Jack asked dryly. “Should I call your mom?”

  He half expected Rachel to jump up and cry, No! no! no! The fact that she didn’t do so much as blink said a lot about the depth of her sleep. She and her mother didn’t get along. As far as Rachel was concerned, Victoria combined the worst of new wealth and of corporate America. She was more materially than personally involved with life, even when it came to her only child. He doubted Rachel would want the woman near her—unless, perhaps, she was dying.

  “I’ll wait a little longer,” he told Katherine. “She’s bound to wake up soon. My man from San Francisco examined her and agreed with Bauer’s plan. So we all wait.” He grunted. “This isn’t how I like to operate.”

  Katherine took a hairbrush from the bed stand. “No, I don’t guess that it is. Men like action. This brush is hers. Did you bring it?”

  “Yes, and you’re only part right. Men like progress. They don’t care how it’s achieved, as long as it is. So maybe it’s happening.” He studied Rachel’s face, studied the pale lashes lying in a perfect crescent beneath her eyes, a whisper of freckles, scrapes and an ugly bruise, a slack mouth.

  Katherine began brushing Rachel’s hair. Her fingernails flashed as she worked. “Are the girls in school?”

  Jack could have sworn those fingernails had been brown the day before. Today they were red.

  “Yup. In school.” Moving the sheet aside, he warmed lotion in his hands and began rubbing it onto Rachel’s uncasted leg. “I didn’t think Rachel would want them missing another day. Besides, I had to drive to the city and didn’t want them here alone the whole time. I’ll pick them up in an hour. They’ll see her then.” He eyed the monitor. “This is hard for them.”

  Katherine slipped an arm under Rachel’s head, gently raised it, and began brushing the hair in back. “I have a hunch this is only part of it.”

  He paused. Carefully, he flexed Rachel’s knee. “What do you mean?”

  “I have a hunch that your being here raises other issues.”

  “The divorce? Uh, I don’t think so. They’re worried about their mother. They’re worried about a school picnic and a prom. They’re worried about who’s cooking dinner tonight. They’re not thinking about the divorce. The divorce is old news.”

  “They’re thinking about it,” Katherine insisted, all pretense of hunches gone. “I’d wager Samantha’s obsessed with it. She’s resenting authority anyway. Most teenagers do. It’s the age. She’s been pushing her limits with Rachel, and now suddenly you’re in the picture, taking over after being out of her daily life for so long. She’s probably thinking that you don’t have the right to tell her what to do.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No. But I’d guess she’s wondering why you’re here.” She raised her brows and said in a mild singsong, “I’ve wondered it myself.” She gently returned Rachel’s head to the pillow and began brushing the hair in front.

  Jack stared at her for an astounded minute, looked down at Rachel, then back. “My wife is in a coma. Where else would I be?”

  “She’s your ex-wife. You keep forgetting that. Is it an unconscious slip?”

  “Rachel and I share more than a decade together and two children. It’s only natural that I’m here. Don’t make more of it than it is.”

  “It is more, if you still love her.”

  He did not. “We’ve been divorced for six years. I barely know who she is now and what she’s done all that time. How can I love a woman I don’t know?”

  “Men cling to memories, sometimes. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “You’re amazing.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  She stopped her brushing and smiled. “Is this another fight? I love fighting my friends’ battles when they can’t do it for themselves, and Rachel can’t, that’s for sure.” The smile waned as she looked at Rachel. “At least if she’s listening, she’ll like knowing we discuss the girls. They’ve always been her first priority.”

  “Yup, and right now they’re mine.”

  “Do you know about the cat?”

  “How not to? We had to cart the damn thing up to Duncan’s this morning. Hope wouldn’t hear of leaving it alone all day long.”

  “She loves that cat,” Katherine said, sad now as she studied Rachel. “The thought of it dying before was bad enough. Now it’s even worse. She’s apt to be feeling abandoned by everyone and everything she loves.” Her eyes met his. “So there’s another way in which the divorce comes into play. She felt abandoned by you. She won’t abandon that cat. That’s one of the reasons she absolutely refused to let the vet put the poor thing to sleep.”

  “Because of the divorce?” He thought that was pushing it a little.

  “Know what I think?”

  He couldn’t wait to hear.

  “I think you’re here to make up for all you didn’t do back then.”

  “I’m here because the girls need me.”

  “And Rachel?”

  “Old times’ sake.”

  Katherine smiled. “It’s guilt.”

  “Guilt? Fear of abandonment? Christ, you have us all figured out. What are you? A shrink?”

  “Close.” She set the brush on the bed stand. “I’m a hairdresser.”

  Of all the things he thought she might have said, that wasn’t one. “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I kid you?”

  “You don’t look like a hairdresser.”

  She laughed. “Like I didn’t look like a friend of Rachel’s?”

  “A hairdresser.” He couldn’t believe it. “The last time my wife stepped foot in a hair salon was on the day of our wedding. She swore she’d never do it again.”

  Katherine gave him a tiny shrug. “Apparently, she saw the error of her ways.”

  chapter six

  JACK McGILL reminded Katherine of her ex-husband. Roy had the same arrogance, the same myopia. To this day he thought the divorce was about her being unable to fill his needs, which was a joke. The guy’s needs had been basic—food, clothes, sex. Any fool would have s
ufficed.

  Unable to fill his needs? Not quite. Unwilling was more like it. He had refused to acknowledge her needs, which had been just fine for years. She had a career. She had friends. She found loyalty, sensitivity, intellectual stimulation elsewhere. But the one time she had needed him, he hadn’t been there for her. After that, being his personal maid had grown old fast.

  She had been his first wife. He was currently divorcing his third in five years. She found a certain validation in that. He was a slick one, Roy was. Slick, shallow, self-centered.

  Don’t judge a book by its cover. She had learned that the hard way, with Roy. She had been snowed by the package, hadn’t seen the mettle—or lack thereof—beneath. Roy. Then Byron. Different men, same pain.

  Arms folded, eyes down, she tried to put it aside as she took the elevator to the coffee shop, but the setting didn’t help. She didn’t like hospitals in general and this one in particular. But she did know her way around. Heading straight for the tea bags, she grabbed an Earl Grey, filled a Styrofoam cup with hot water and paid, took a seat at one of the small tables, and wondered how long Jack McGill would hang around if Rachel’s coma went on.

  She was dunking the tea bag with more vehemence than was truly necessary when a voice said, “Excuse me? Haven’t we met before?”

  She looked up. The man regarding her with curiosity wore a blazer, shirt and tie, and jeans. His hair looked damp. It was more pepper than salt, thick, and well cut. Katherine noticed things like that. It went with her line of work. She also noticed that he was good looking. But then, so was she. And he’d just handed her the oldest line in the book.

  Her expression said as much.

  He was unfazed. “I think it was yesterday morning. Early, early morning.” He extended a hand. “Steve Bauer.”

  Ah. Now she saw it. Rachel’s neurologist. On her own, she never would have recognized him out of scrubs and cleaned up.