Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  Stuffed turkey. Sweet potato casserole. Baked apples. He breathed it all in, gave a slow, leonine stretch, then sank back into the sheets and smiled.

  This was home with a capital H. This was what he’d missed all those years. This was what he wanted in life, this sense of, yes, belonging. He wanted Sabrina. He wanted a family. And he wanted them right here in Vermont, where the grass was green, the trees lush, the air crisp and clean on cool fall days.

  Feeling a sudden urge to be with Sabrina—whether she needed his help or not—he swung up from the bed and reached for the corduroy jeans he’d left lying over the arm of the chair the night before. He’d barely pulled them on when he was paddling barefoot from the room.

  The fire in the living room hearth was little more than a glow. He paused to add a look before continuing into the kitchen.

  On the threshold, he stopped. Sabrina wasn’t there. He turned back for an instant, wondering if he’d passed her in the bathroom, but he hadn’t heard either footsteps or the close of a door while he’d lain in bed; the only sounds in the farmhouse were the crackle of the growing fire and the sizzle of the turkey in the oven.

  She’d left the coffeepot on, though, and propped against a nearby mug was a note. “Have gone out to deliver some pies,” she’d written in the gentle script he knew so well. “Will be back by one. There’s a bowl of cut-up fruit in the refrigerator. Help yourself to that and to coffee, but don’t cut into the apricot bread, it’s for later. I love you. Sabrina.” Tacked on at the bottom was a more hastily written “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Smiling, he raised the note to his lips, kissed it lightly, then set it on the counter and filled the mug with coffee. Sipping it slowly, he pondered Sabrina’s note. Have gone out to deliver some pies. Where, he wondered? She hadn’t mentioned anything about it the night before, though he supposed he should have realized that she was baking far more than the two of them could possibly eat. How many pies had she baked? Three? Four? He wasn’t sure. Once she’d evicted him from the kitchen, he’d been engrossed in a book.

  Wandering into the living room, he stood before the window. It was a gray day, gray in a way that spoke of winter’s approach. In past years that would have depressed him. Winter in prison had meant fluctuations between rooms that were overheated and those that were drafty, and less yard time all around. Before that, winter had meant the kind of temperamental weather that could screw up a production schedule in no time flat.

  Winter here would be different, he knew. It would be snowbound days and snow-silent nights, wood smoke and hot chocolate and the warmth of a hand-sewn quilt. And Sabrina. Sabrina brought thoughts that were gentle and exciting. He basked in them while he finished his coffee, then headed for the shower.

  A short time later he was back before the fire wearing a clean pair of cords, a shirt, sweater and loafers. He was freshly shaved and his still-damp hair was combed. He looked pretty good, he had to admit. So where was Sabrina?

  Several minutes before one, he heard her car. Jumping from the chair, he started for the window, wavered, turned back toward the chair, stopped. Then, taking a deep breath to steady his pulse, he carefully paced his approach to the kitchen. He entered it just as Sabrina was coming in from outside.

  She looked up in surprise, then smiled. “Derek! Sleep well?” Head tucked low again, she turned her back to close the door.

  “I missed you,” he said. Crossing the floor, he took the coat from her shoulders. It was her cashmere coat, the same one she’d worn that first day at Parkersville the February before. Beneath it she wore a long wool skirt, a sweater and boots. The bulk of the sweater made her look more fragile than ever and heightened his urge to protect her. “How was the driving?”

  “Not bad.” She opened the oven to check the turkey. “The roads were deserted.”

  He watched her tug at the drumstick. “That smells fantastic.”

  “Did you have some fruit?”

  “Nah. Thought I’d wait for you.”

  Closing the oven door, she darted him a fast glance on her way to the refrigerator. “You must be starved.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The turkey shouldn’t be much longer. I didn’t have a thermometer—stupid of me, it’s the only thing I forgot—but the book says that the bird’s done when the leg moves freely, and it just about does.”

  She was piling the counter with plastic baggies filled with the various fresh vegetables that she’d earlier washed and cut. Her voice was higher than usual, the words coming more quickly, and she wouldn’t look at him beyond a fleeting glance here and there.

  During one of those glances, Derek had seen that her eyes were unnaturally bright.

  Draping her coat over the arm of the meetinghouse bench, he asked softly, “What can I do?”

  “Uh”—she was already reaching for a plate and quickly handed it over—“you can put the vegetables here. I’ll take care of the dip.”

  He did as instructed—though, he feared, with far less of an artistic eye that she’d have had herself. In truth, his concern wasn’t with the vegetables. It was with Sabrina. She was looking somber. “Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked.

  She broke into a sudden smile when she looked at him and said, “That’d be nice,” but the smile faded in the next instant when she went back to preparing the dip.

  Derek draped an arm around her shoulders. “Sabrina.”

  She stopped what she was doing.

  “There’s no rush on the food.”

  She bowed her head.

  “How was he?”

  She ducked her head lower.

  By now, Derek knew the telltale signs—the slight hunching of her shoulders, their faint tremor, her refusal to look at him. Wrapping her completely in his arms, he hugged her while she cried softly.

  At length, stroking her hair, he said, “I wish you’d let me come.”

  “It’s so painful to see,” she whispered on a fragmented breath.

  “You shouldn’t have to go alone.”

  “He’s my son. My responsibility.”

  “But I love you. I want it to be my responsibility, too.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I do.” He held her back and bent his head until it was level with hers. His eyes were filled with the urgency that gave his voice a desperate edge. “Marry me, Sabrina. I know it’s unfair of me to ask when you’re feeling down, but I can’t help it. I was sitting here before, waiting for you to come home, and I realized that if I didn’t have that to look forward to, I’d be lost. You mean more to me than any other person has ever meant. It’s a little humbling to think that I’m not as self-contained as I prided myself on being, but where you’re concerned, I’m not. I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve never loved a woman before. I’ve never asked one to marry me, and if you think it doesn’t scare me shitless, you’re wrong.”

  Her eyes were moist pools the color of limes. He held them firmly with his own. “I have no right to ask you. I’m unemployed and my prospects of work are lousy right now, and there’s the thing with Greer that doesn’t thrill you at all, but I’ll make it work, Sabrina. I came from nothing once before, and I reached the top. I can do it again. I’ll make it all work, so help me God, I will.”

  He went quiet, and for several minutes their eyes were locked in a volley of silent questions.

  “It’s a crazy idea,” Sabrina whispered.

  “Let me do it. Let me fill the void. I want to take care of you.”

  “That’ll be a challenge. I’m a wreck.”

  “Any worse than me?”

  She grinned through her tears. “We are a pair.” The grin faded. “I’ve failed at one marriage already.”

  “That one fell apart when the going got tough. This one would be starting with tough and doing just fine. We’ve already seen each other at our worst and the relationship has grown in spite of it. There’s nothing to fear.” He paused. “What do you say?”

  She tho
ught about it for a minute. “My parents will be furious.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough to say no?”

  “No.”

  He took her face in his hands. “I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Think we can make it?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you’ll marry me?”

  Again she nodded, this time more vigorously. She didn’t know if she was right. She was acting on instinct. She did know that she adored Derek, that she wanted to be with him always, and that maybe, just maybe, her being his wife would make the difference in his plans for revenge.

  Chapter 14

  SABRINA AND Derek were married on the third of December in the office of a justice of the peace. That night they celebrated over dinner at the Hanover Inn, but they ate alone. They had made no mention of their marriage to family or friends, preferring to keep it private and personal. It wasn’t that they weren’t in love; anyone looking at them could see that they were. But each had doubts about the wisdom of their marrying at that particular time, and neither felt he wanted his doubts confirmed by a third party, or a fourth or a fifth.

  Needing to do something for the sheer frivolity of it, they flew to St. Croix. It was there that Sabrina learned to what extent her husband was an adventurer. He loved sailing, waterskiing and windsurfing, but scuba diving was what truly caught his fancy. He’d never done it before. Neither had Sabrina, for that matter, but in no time she was in all the appropriate gear following Derek and their trained guide through spectacular coral canyons in the sun-warmed Caribbean waters.

  In hindsight, Sabrina realized that scuba diving, while requiring a fair amount of guts, was still relatively conventional. Less conventional, and more impulsive, were some of the other things Derek did—like joining in with the native dancers during a beach party, spending an afternoon in a broad hat and bright shirt subbing for a vendor at a thong shop, and awakening Sabrina in the middle of the night, carrying her in his arms to the beach and making love to her in the moonlight.

  “We can’t do this, Derek!” she whispered loudly as he pressed her down to the sand.

  The only answer he gave was to bunch her nightgown to her waist.

  “Derek, it’s a public beach!”

  He lifted his hips to free himself from his shorts. His grin gleamed in the moonlight. “It’s three in the morning. We’re alone.”

  “This is indecent—ahhhh, Derek—mmmm.”

  He withdrew, then filled her again. “Feel good?” he asked, his voice thick with sensual satisfaction.

  She raised her knees to his hips and met his thrust. “Mmmm.”

  “Look at it this way.” He took a quick breath, then another when the first didn’t last long enough to produce a single word. “Anyone chancing upon us will see something beautiful.”

  Later, when she could think clearly again, Sabrina saw the truth to that. Of course, no one had chanced upon them, so it was fine to be philosophical. But when she was with Derek she felt bold. In fact, what surprised her most was not so much Derek’s unorthodoxy but the fact that she loved it. Six months before, she’d have said that the ideal vacation consisted of lying in the sun, reading book after book beneath the shade of the palms and returning to the lushness of a luxury hotel to eat and sleep. That all sounded rather tame to her now. Derek had awakened far more than her sensuality.

  Defiance was one word to describe what she felt. Derek and she deserved to have fun. They’d both paid more than their share of dues in the past few years, and she knew that the dues-paying wasn’t quite done. They’d gone against the grain, she as a mother, he as an investigative reporter, and their marriage was sure to raise a few eyebrows. But whatever they’d done, they’d done out of conviction.

  Or so she told herself during those halcyon days in the sun. And so she told herself when, after ten days, they returned to Vermont.

  To say that their life then fell into a pattern was to misrepresent the truth. The pattern was a non-pattern. Sabrina and Derek followed no schedule, simply enjoyed each other from day to day, enjoyed the peace of the farmhouse, enjoyed late nights before the fire, late mornings in bed, long walks over the newly fallen snow. They were lovers playing hooky from the realities of life, and as long as those realities kept their distance, it worked.

  Unfortunately, the distance began to diminish as the days passed and the telephone rang with increasing regularity. Sabrina’s parents were less than ecstatic about her marriage. Derek’s agent wasn’t as concerned about the marriage as about Derek’s settling in Vermont. Several of Derek’s old friends and coworkers, having been recruited by his agent to change his mind, called trying to do just that—to no avail. Maura called wanting to know when she would have a book proposal to deliver to Sabrina’s editor. And the Greenhouse called, saying that Nicky really did need to be taken back to his doctors in New York for tests.

  Derek wouldn’t hear of Sabrina’s going alone, and Sabrina was more relieved than she could say. Traveling with Nicky was difficult at best. Having Derek with her, lending physical and emotional support, made a trying two days a bit more bearable.

  Derek was humbled by the experience. He’d heard Sabrina’s descriptions of life with Nicky, but he hadn’t been able to fully comprehend the nature of the demands until he’d had to meet them himself. No amount of special feelings—and he had plenty of those for the child—could blunt the fact that when one took care of Nicky, one had time for precious little else in life.

  “I am in awe of you,” he told Sabrina during their drive back north. “The incredible patience you must have had all those months, the physical strength alone to continue.”

  “I did my share of crumbling,” she said softly. Nicky was lying against her, asleep. Her own eyes were closed, her cheek resting on his baby-soft hair. “Ask my ex-husband. He’ll tell you how wonderful I was.”

  “He never calls, does be?”

  “No.”

  “You’d think he’d want to know about his son. Will you tell him about this visit?”

  She shook her head. “A few more seizures, a few more pills. He won’t be interested. No, that’s wrong. It’s not a matter of interest. He just can’t cope with the idea of his son being flawed like this.”

  Derek took his eyes from the road to dart intermittent glances her way. While her words might have easily been bitter, they weren’t. Indeed, there was a serenity to her—the same serenity he remembered from the first time he’d seen her. She’d been holding Nicky then, too. She was a natural mother.

  In spite of the fatigue she felt, Sabrina had a difficult time saying good-bye to Nicky at the Greenhouse door. Derek could understand that. He’d had a glimpse of Nicky’s smile the night before. He’d felt the tear in his heart, and Nicky wasn’t even his.

  During the drive back to the farmhouse, Derek held Sabrina close to his side. She was quiet through most of the ride, but she didn’t seem strung as tightly as she’d been when she’d returned after seeing Nicky on Thanksgiving day. He wanted to think that his presence made the difference.

  When he turned off on the road to the farmhouse, though, he had a moment’s sharp fear that his presence was going to make another kind of difference. “We have guests.”

  Sabrina, too, was peering through the windshield. The light snow that had been falling for the past several hours didn’t come close to covering the sleek gray Jaguar that stood by the house.

  “Recognize it?” Derek asked. He’d stopped a distance away and was approaching cautiously.

  “No.” She wouldn’t have been concerned, had it not been for the tension in his voice. “How about you?”

  He gave a short shake of his head. “A car like that would be hard to forget.”

  “No burglar would be driving a Jaguar.”

  But a big shot from New York would, Derek thought. Then he got close enough to decipher Vermont plates through the snow. “One of the transplants you’ve met?”<
br />
  She shook her head.

  He eased the car slower. “It’s a rental.”

  “I didn’t know you could rent Jaguars.”

  “You can rent just about anything if you have the dough.”

  She shot an alarmed glance at the house. “Hell, I hope it’s not my parents.”

  “Are they good at picking locks?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past my dad.” She sat back in her seat and remained there even when Derek brought the car to a complete halt.

  “Someone’s made himself at home. I can smell a fire going.”

  Sabrina didn’t budge.

  Grasping the handle of the door, he looked at her. “Coming?”

  “Derek, this could be very unpleasant.”

  “If it’s your parents, you mean?”

  She gave an apologetic nod.

  “Better still,” he said, pushing himself from the seat “stay put.” It occurred to him that he’d like to see for himself who was in the farmhouse before Sabrina approached it. Though he suspected that his car had already been heard, he closed the door very quietly. Then, keeping low, he loped toward the house, flattened himself against the clapboard, peered around the window frame.

  A minute later he was back leaning into the car. “Tall guy. Long and lean. Blond hair. Wire-rimmed specs.”

  Sabrina closed her eyes.

  “He’s wearing a pair of baggy overalls,” Derek went on.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s sprawled in front of the fire, staring at the flames.”

  She opened her eyes, muttered, “That’s J. B., all right,” and climbed out of the car. No sooner had Derek unlocked the front door when she burst through, prepared to do battle. “What are you doing here, J. B.?”

  J. B. looked up and stared at her for a long minute before turning his stare on Derek. His expression was blank.

  Derek, who’d already heard enough from Sabrina to be more than prepared for her brother, went forward and offered his hand. “Derek McGill,” he said.