The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11)

by Julianne MacLean

  I was having a difficult time coming to grips with it—maybe because it had been caused by the same man who was negligent in the past and had gotten away with it, scot-free. People died in 1984, including Jack’s childhood friend. I didn’t want to let that monster get away with it again. Not this time. Not on my watch.

  Sitting up, I thought of Jack and his brother in the hospital. I felt an intense longing and wanted desperately to know how they were both doing. So I rose to my feet, withdrew my phone from my jacket pocket and checked my messages.

  There were none from Jack, so I decided to text him as I crossed to the minibar.

  Hey. How are you?

  I pressed send, set the phone down on the top of the fridge and went to change into my pajamas. A few minutes later, I returned to the fridge and opened it up. Inside, I found two small bottles of Pinot Grigio, among other things.

  Ah, yes. This was exactly what I needed.

  I unscrewed one cap and poured it into a glass. I was just taking the first sip when my phone buzzed. I reached to pick it up.

  I’ve been better, Jack replied. Aaron is still the same. I’m just leaving the hospital now. How are you?

  I could feel his despair almost physically, so I was quick to respond.

  I had a rough day, too. Just poured myself a glass of wine out of the minibar. Would you like one? If so, I’m in room 621.

  My phone vibrated almost instantly, and my heart skipped a beat.

  You sure? Because I could use a glass of wine. I could be there in about ten minutes.

  I quickly thumbed a response. Yes. Please come. I want to see you.

  There was so much to talk about, and not just what was going on with his brother and the latest developments in the investigation. I wanted to talk about other things too—the highs and lows of his life. I felt a yearning for him—to truly know everything about him—and the intensity of that desire baffled me.

  Another text came in. Ok. See you shortly.

  Excitement flooded my veins. I hurried to brush my teeth and pull on a light sweater.

  o0o

  Five minutes later, I opened my door to find Jack standing in the hall, looking impossibly gorgeous in blue jeans and a red plaid shirt. But there were dark circles under his eyes and his hair was tousled, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it all day. How weary he looked.

  I stepped aside and invited him in.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said as I quietly closed the door behind him. “It’s late, and I see you’re in your pajamas. Are you sure this is okay?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “I wanted to see you.”

  His shoulders rose and fell with a deep intake of breath, and when he gazed across at me with unadulterated sorrow, all I wanted to do was take away his pain.

  Stepping forward, I said, “Come here.” I pulled him into my arms where we stood for a long time without speaking, simply embracing each other.

  It felt good—more than good—to run my hand up and down his back and to lay my cheek on his shoulder. I felt the stroke of his fingers slide up under my hair to cup the back of my neck, and I wanted to stay like that forever.

  When we stepped apart, he said in a low, meaningful voice, “Thank you.”

  I nodded and took him by the hand to lead him away from the door. “Red or white?” I gestured toward the minibar. “I have both. There’s Merlot and Pinot Grigio, plus a few little bottles of vodka and gin.

  “I’ll take the Merlot,” he replied.

  I poured him a glass and he moved to sit down in the chair by the window. The drapes were closed. “What a day.”

  I sat down in the chair facing him. “Still no change?”

  Jack shook his head and sipped his wine. “No. It’s a head trauma, which they say is unpredictable. He could wake up in five minutes, or not at all. Ever. Katelyn’s taking it pretty hard. Those two are like…” He paused. “I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t think a word exists for what they have. ‘Love’ doesn’t even capture it.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “They were lucky to have found each other.” Looking down at the wine in my glass, I swirled it about. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone like that.”

  “Not even Malcolm?”

  I pursed my lips at him and shook my head. “No. And that’s over now. I’m embarrassed to say we ended it by text message this morning—which is actually not surprising when I think about it, considering how totally uncommitted we were to each other. It wasn’t anything like what your brother and his wife must have.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jack said. “But at the same time, I’m not sorry.”

  I gave him a flirty look because I could see where he was going with this, and it caused a wonderful thrill in me.

  Jack gazed toward the drapes, and became lost in thought.

  “You’re thinking about your brother,” I said.

  “Feeling guilty, mostly.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we never got along well in life,” he said, meeting my eyes. “I don’t know why I couldn’t just bury the hatchet when I had the chance.”

  I blinked a few times. “What happened between you?”

  Jack took another sip of his wine and shrugged. “I don’t know. It all seems stupid now. But all through our lives, we were in competition with each other and often ended up fighting over the same girl. Aaron seemed to win at everything, and I often felt like his successes were taking something away from me, because he eclipsed me in every way. I just couldn’t get out from under his shadow, and there were times when I felt like he actually enjoyed crushing me…as if to get back at me, to keep me in my place.”

  “Get back at you for what?”

  Jack shook his head and looked down at his wine. “It’s a long story…about things that go way back. Anyhow, when he married Katelyn, I went away to Afghanistan and…well, you know the rest of the story. I got hit in a roadside bombing and…” Jack sipped his wine as he recalled what happened. “Aaron was the first person to arrive at my bedside.”

  I said nothing. I simply waited for Jack to explain the rest because I suspected there was much more to the story that what he was telling me.

  “Aaron apologized for not letting go of the past and he wanted to start over. I think it shook him up, to see me like that. He saw it as a wake-up call because I almost died, but sadly, it wasn’t a wake-up call for me. I suppose, in my defense, I was in a lot of pain and it was hard to see past that. But I just couldn’t forgive or forget all the fights we’d had, for all those years. So that’s how it stayed. Even after I came home, neither of us talked to each other much.”

  “And now you find yourself at his bedside,” I said, “and the roles are reversed.”

  Jack looked up and frowned. “I feel like we’re all being tossed around in the vortex of a cyclone, and it’s just tragedy all around us, spinning out of control. It’s made me think about a lot of things this past week. Things from my past. And you know what? My brother’s not a bad guy. It’s like I’m just realizing this now, for the first time, when I refused to see it before. All I saw before was…” He paused. “Stuff from another life. I don’t want to do that anymore.” Jack met my gaze directly. “Meeting you has helped. I can’t say why, but you make me feel somehow… I don’t know… Grounded in the present.”

  I stared at him in the golden lamplight and marveled at the fact that I felt such a comfortable intimacy with him after only a few days of knowing him. I imagined that if we had known each other as children or in high school or university, we would have been lifelong friends.

  “Sometimes…” I said, swirling the wine around in my glass, “I think things are meant to happen when they are meant to happen. I think we’re supposed to go through life one day at a time, put one foot in front of the other, make a bunch of mistakes and figure things out as we go. Maybe there’s a reason it took you this long to learn to forgive your brother. I don’t know what that reason is, but maybe it
’ll be clear to you someday.”

  Jack regarded me thoughtfully, then he nodded. “I’m constantly amazed by the things in life that still surprise me. Things I learn about myself, and other people. Just when you think you’ve seen it all…”

  I chuckled. “Life never quits being thought provoking and mysterious. It’s curious, isn’t it? I think I might have to live a few more lives before I get it all figured out.” I sipped my wine.

  The corner of Jack’s mouth curled up in a small grin, and I was glad to have provided him with some amusement when he was so worried about his brother.

  “Can you tell me about the press conference tonight?” he asked, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “How was it for you?”

  I let out a breath and finished my wine. “It was rough. You know how passionate I am about my work, and to think that I’ve devoted the past decade of my life, working around the clock to ensure safety in the skies, and something like this can still happen.” I stood up to pour another glass of wine. “We recommend rules for a reason, and the FAA implements them to prevent this kind of thing. Yet still, somehow…”

  “I watched the briefing on my phone,” Jack said. “You were good, Meg. You were compassionate and clear about everything.”

  I returned to my chair. “Thank you. But people were still pointing fingers, at the FAA and the airport, for not doing a better job at policing Jaeger-Woodrow and ensuring that security was as tight as it should have been. Think about it—if someone could smuggle a huge shipment of batteries onto a major commercial airliner, why not a terrorist bomb?” I huffed with frustration. “God, it was awful. The anger and fear in the room was palpable, and rightly so. I felt it myself, because I’ve been an innocent passenger on airplanes numerous times. All you can do is trust that the airlines are doing their jobs and that the statistics will be in your favor during your flight. But at the end of the day, even as an investigator for the NTSB, I can’t control what happens every time. No matter how badly I want to.”

  We sat for a long while, pondering that fact. Then I yawned.

  “You’re tired. I should go.” Jack finished his wine and set the glass down on the small round table between us.

  “No, please don’t,” I replied, shaking my head. “I just want to close my eyes for a few seconds.” I stood up and crawled across the bed. I lay down on my side, curled up in a ball, and squeezed the fat feather pillow under my cheek. “You’re tired, too,” I said. “Come and lie down.” Feeling a little tipsy, I patted the empty space on the bed beside me.

  Jack crawled onto the bed and joined me.

  We lay on our sides, facing each other. I asked him about Aaron again and the women they had fought over. Jack told me that he once fancied himself in love with Aaron’s wife, Katelyn, before they were married. This surprised me. Evidently, Katelyn was the main reason they were estranged, and this was why Jack had held on to that feeling of competitiveness toward his brother.

  “Do you still love her?” I asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No. Not that way. These days, I care about her more like a sister.”

  “So she’s not the great love of your life?”

  He shook his head. “No. She’s the great love of Aaron’s life and I know that now. I have yet to meet the great love of mine.”

  “Me, too.”

  We lay for a moment in the lamplight while I studied all the beautiful contours of his face. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen, and I felt hopeful and optimistic.

  Happy.

  I then told him about my past relationships—or lack of them. I explained how I’d been a nerd in high school and didn’t have a boyfriend until my third year in university, when I met a guy who was completely wrong for me.

  “Why was he wrong for you?” Jack asked.

  “Because he was immature and irresponsible. He liked to party all the time and didn’t care about his grades, but for some strange reason I was attracted to him. His name was Kyle. Incidentally, he kind of looked like you,” I said with a grin. “Maybe that’s why I fell head over heels.”

  Jack smiled and took the compliment in stride.

  I fluffed the pillow under my cheek. “I think ‘Wild Kyle’ was the reason I swung like a pendulum in the opposite direction, toward the most responsible guy in the universe, who was not the least bit spontaneous or fun. Malcolm was an enabler, when you think about it. He enabled me to be obsessed with my job and have no life. Now here I am. A single workaholic.”

  Jack pushed a lock of hair behind my ear, and I felt a delightful shiver of awareness in every part of my body.

  “Now you just need to find the right balance,” he said, “because you can’t live out the rest of your days without having any fun.”

  “Damn straight,” I replied. “Life’s too precious and too short. You never know when you’re number’s going to come up.”

  I closed my eyes, just for a moment.

  When I opened them again, a ray of sunlight was beaming through the crack in the hotel drapes, and Jack’s cell phone was ringing on the bedside table.

  I realized we were entwined in each other’s arms. My cheek was resting on his shoulder, my open hand was on the front of his shirt, my leg draped across his muscular, jean-clad thigh.

  Groggily, I sat up and checked the clock. It was 6:09 a.m.

  “Your phone’s ringing,” I said, passing it to him as he lifted his head off the pillow.

  He checked the call display. All the color drained from his face as he sat up. “It’s Katelyn.” He glanced at me. “I’m afraid to answer this.”

  I also sat up and laid my hand on his shoulder.

  Jack swiped the screen and raised it to his cheek. “Hey, Katelyn. I’m here. Is everything okay?”

  I sucked in a breath and held it, and watched his profile.

  Jack’s gaze darted to meet mine. My heart nearly burst out of my chest as he reached for my hand.

  “He’s awake.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Meg

  As soon as Jack left for the hospital, I grabbed a quick shower and hustled downstairs to the hotel conference room for a 7:00 a.m. meeting. Gary had texted to let me know that we’d finally received the data from the black box.

  The flight data indicated that the plane had been in the air for twenty-one minutes after takeoff. It had reached a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, and was on the proper course when there was a sudden and complete loss of power and the plane disappeared from radar. All the communications radios and transponders went dead at precisely the same second, so there was very little to go on after that.

  Similarly, the cockpit voice recorder revealed nothing of help to us. There were no distress calls from the pilots, nor did any members of the cabin crew knock on the cockpit door to alert the pilots of a fire anywhere on board. No one smelled smoke or reported any equipment failures. Everything simply went dead, which could only mean that there was an explosion of massive proportions, to have caused such total, instantaneous loss of power.

  But still, we could not presume that the lithium batteries had caused the explosion until we examined all the evidence more closely. It was clear to me that I would have to reconstruct the cargo hold in order to see the effects of the blast, and we would continue looking for evidence of a bomb. Its effects could merely have been proliferated by the batteries in the hold. At this point, I wasn’t ruling out anything.

  When we finished our meeting, I checked my phone for messages as I headed out of the hotel to return to the hangar. A text had just come in from Jack.

  Thank you for last night. Things are good here. Aaron is awake and doing well. Call me when you can.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and dialed his number.

  o0o

  Jack and I saw each other again that night in my hotel room, after a long day of work in the hangar and another press briefing. We both knew it would be our last night together for a while, for he had to fly back to New York the following da
y and return to the studio.

  We stayed up until 3:00 in the morning, discussing the latest developments in the investigation, but mostly talking about the blessing of Aaron’s recovery. Jack told me how they had spoken at length about a number of issues from the past, including Jack’s heartbreak and anger over his first love, Jeannie Morrison, who wound up in a closet making out with Aaron at a middle school party. Jack and Aaron agreed to start over as brothers and put all past conflicts behind them.

  When Jack left my room in the wee hours of the morning, he kissed me passionately, then touched his forehead to mine and held my face in his hands as he made a promise—that he would return to Cape Elizabeth to be with me again as soon as possible. He also promised to call every day.

  When the time came for him to walk out my door, neither of us wanted to let go.

  Over the following week, he kept his promise and called every day—sometimes more than once. We talked for hours when I returned to my hotel room each night.

  Gary was both pleased and surprised when I quit for the day at the same time he did, rather than working overtime until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Gary was a family man, and he believed we should all have a life outside of work. I was beginning to see the importance of that, because life was indeed precious. How could I not have grasped that reality before now, considering what I did for a living?

  I reminded myself that everything happens in due time. We learn the lessons we are meant to learn when the moment is right.

  The following weekend, Jack surprised me by showing up at my hotel with flowers and a dinner invitation—from his brother, Aaron, and his sister-in-law, Katelyn. They both wanted to meet me.

  We all spent the evening at their penthouse condo, with their children as well, talking and laughing around the dinner table, eating great food and drinking wine.

  Sadly, Jack had to leave the next morning to return to New York. Again, he promised to call every day. He kept his promise, and we grew closer with every moment while I continued my work on the investigation.