Dream Keeper

by Gail McFarland

  The stupid phone rang ten times, stopped, then rang again. When her cellphone rang, Rissa started to reach for her purse, but slipped instead from her chair. Landing on her knees, feeling the pop and run of her hose, she didn’t care about the phone. What the hell can I do about anything? Her leg shot out, kicking the purse away, silencing the evil phone.

  How many unwanted black babies are there in the world? All I wanted was one, only one! Wrapping her arms around herself, rocking, she pressed her back against the desk and wept.

  Her cellphone lay amid the debris spilled from her purse, and if her kick had not dislodged the battery, Rissa might have heard her cellphone ring again. As it was, the incessant but now silent phone rang four more times before Dench thumbed the disconnect on his phone when the call went straight to voicemail.

  “Where in the world is she?”

  “Who?” AJ looked up from his computer, then back down. He might have been an NFL Hall of Famer and an excellent physical therapist, but he still handled the keyboard with a distinctive two-fingered hunt-and-peck style.

  “Rissa.” Dench ignored the ticking of AJ’s typing. “She’s not answering her phone. I thought she might have already left the office, so I tried her cell and she’s not answering.”

  “Maybe she’s busy.”

  “Who’s busy?” Marlea’s windsuit whispered echoes of her energy when she walked into AJ’s office and across the room to drop a kiss on his forehead. Waiting for an answer, she parked a hip on AJ’s desk and looked at Dench.

  “This is not right.” Dench sat wide in the chair across from AJ’s desk and tried the call again. This time when the call went to voicemail, he cleared his throat and spoke into the phone. “Rissa, baby, this is Dench. I’m with AJ and Marlea and we’re waiting for you.”

  “And you should hurry up,” Marlea called across the room.

  “Because we’re hungry and my kids have to be in bed before nine,” AJ added, rising from his desk. Agile and long-limbed, he stretched before collecting the patient file from his desk.

  Cupping his hand around the phone, Dench glared at the couple and lowered his voice. “Anyway, sweetie, just call me back—let me know that you’re all right.”

  “You sound worried,” AJ said. He jammed the completed file into the cabinet and shoved the drawer closed. “Rissa’s a big girl and she’s fine, probably just got tied up with something and forgot about the time.”

  “Yeah, the time.” Dench turned the phone between his hands, then flipped it open and called again. He listened and frowned. “Damned voicemail.”

  Marlea shook a warning finger at him. “Easy on the swearing. You know my children adore you, and they’ll repeat almost anything you say.”

  “Especially Nia. She really likes words and phrases that revolve around the word ‘damn.’ ” AJ grinned.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Dench stood, with Rissa clearly on his mind. “Maybe I need to take a ride downtown, just to make sure she’s okay.”

  “It’ll probably be a waste of gas. You’ll pass her on the way home. You know that my sister not only cannot keep a secret, she’s chronically late. That girl has been slow all of her life—all a part of her enduring charm.”

  “Dude, she may be your sister, but she’s my wife. If she calls, tell her that I’m on my way.” Heading for his truck, Dench made a quick detour through the kitchen. Mrs. Baldwin worked at the stone sink while Jabari sat on the floor and worked at reading to an attentive and adoring Nia.

  Someday…

  Dench pushed through the side door and climbed into his truck. Rissa’s fine, he promised himself. AJ and Marlea are right, she just got all caught up in what she was doing and forgot about the time. That’s all. Turning the key, he set his eyes on the road ahead and stomped on the gas. Following the curves of Cascade and entering highway traffic, Dench held onto the single thought: She just forgot about the time, that’s all. She’s fine.

  Working his truck through the evening traffic, maneuvering around a pair of accidents, he tried calling her again—straight to voicemail each time. Pulling into the underground parking lot of the Hanover Building, Dench heard himself muttering under his breath, “She just forgot about the time, she’s fine.”

  Ignoring the RESERVED sign, Dench pulled into the slot next to Rissa’s small BMW and climbed out of the truck. The deck was mostly empty. Besides her car, only two others waited on the same deck level and Dench felt his heart bang in his chest. She just forgot about the time, she’s fine. He refused to consider anything else as he jogged toward the building’s lobby. Raising his hand to the security guard Rissa always snagged Falcon tickets for, still muttering, he jogged faster, determined to will her safe and well if he had to.

  In the lobby, he jabbed the elevator call button and paced while he waited. Watching the numbers above the elevators descend as the car neared the lobby seemed endless. By the time the car finally reached the lobby, Dench was ready to give in to the urge to run up the stairs, but he stepped on board and pressed the button for her floor instead.

  She just forgot about the time, she’s fine, he reminded himself again.

  He pulled at the neck of his Falcons shirt while the elevator climbed toward the seventeenth floor. Jerry Glanville might have put the Falcons ‘back in black’ for good luck back in ’93, but right now the shirt was the hottest and most uncomfortable piece of clothing Dench had ever worn—and Rissa was responsible for his wearing it. She’d brokered his coaching contract just four months earlier.

  A little sick to his stomach, he tried to imagine how he was going to feel when he reached her office. “She’s probably sitting there at her desk with a mountain of paper piled up around her,” he promised himself. “Got her shoes kicked off and the computer fired up, too.” He pulled at his shirt again. “Dude, she’s going to be madder than a wet hen when I pull her away from work.” The words didn’t really make him feel better when the elevator doors opened, but they made sense to his heart.

  From where he stood, the offices of MYT, Unlimited looked deserted and his stomach dropped. The office closed at three on Fridays and she was the one who insisted on the monthly dinner date with her brother’s family. She just forgot about the time, she’s fine. Dench held the thought on mental lockdown and pushed at the office door.

  Locked, the door didn’t budge, and he fought the urge to put his foot through it. Instead, he reached for his keys and sorted through the bunch to find the emergency key Rissa had given him the night he’d asked her to marry him. Turning it between his fingers, he realized how proud he was of the silver key. Somehow, it was one of the ties that bound him to her life. It was proof that she trusted him enough to share everything she cared about with him. And now he was going to use it to search for the woman who represented everything he cared about.

  She just forgot about the time, she’s fine.

  He pushed the key into the lock and turned it.

  She just forgot about the time, she’s fine. He would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he believed the words, but as he stepped into the dark and empty office suite, every instinct he could call his own told him that something was wrong. He hit the lights and called her name—no answer. She’s here, and she’s fine.

  She was definitely here; he could feel her in the silence. But something was wrong; he could feel that, too. Walking past Karee’s deserted desk, he made the turn toward Rissa’s office, trying to keep hope alive in his heart—but hope was a lie. He didn’t feel any better.

  “Rissa?” Feeling every nerve in his body reach for her, he walked carefully through the office. If she’s here, why isn’t she answering? Afraid to wait for an answer, Dench continued through the darkened suite until he came to Rissa’s office. Letting himself in, he saw her jacket and briefcase—she would never leave without those.

  “Rissa?” he called into the darkened space. “Rissa?” Approaching her desk, noticing the handwritten notes beside her computer, he was tempted to turn on the lights, but
it didn’t feel right, even as he caught the scent of chocolate on the air.

  Chocolate? He blinked against the dusky light coming through the broad windows behind her desk and searched the office until his eyes found the splattered remains of the ruined cake on the floor. Office food fight? It made no sense, especially when he saw her overturned purse. “Rissa?”

  This time he heard the small answering moan and his breath stopped. Moving her chair, he looked down to see his wife’s long, shapely legs beneath her desk. “Rissa?” Dropping to his knees, he found her crumpled into the knee space like a broken doll. “Rissa? Baby?” Her ravaged face, swollen and streaked with makeup turned to mud, turned to him.

  “Dench?” She whispered his name, almost as though she feared being overheard.

  “Yes, it’s me.” He reached for her and was hurt when her arm twitched away from his hand. Man up, he scolded himself, she needs you. “Come on out, baby.” When she looked at him, he opened his arms, inviting her to take refuge in him. She hesitated and he nodded, encouraging her. “I’m here and I’m not going to leave you.” She swiped a hand under her runny nose and inched closer to him. “Come on,” he urged, waiting.

  Her trembling hand reached for him and folded into his when he reached again. Slowly, she inched toward him, bending into his embrace. His hands moved over her body, searching for injury and praying against it. Finding her whole made him weak and Dench found himself sitting on the floor beside her desk. Almost afraid to speak, he wordlessly held her, feeling his shirt grow wet with her grief.

  He held her, letting her cry until she ran out of tears. Finally spent, breath hitching through her chest, Rissa sat up in his lap and scrubbed the heels of both hands against her eyes.

  “Guess I look bad, huh?”

  It would have been funny if he hadn’t found her crammed under her desk looking like this. He nodded and rubbed a hand along her arm.

  She sniffed twice and rubbed her eyes again. “I kind of made a mess in here, didn’t I?” Still rubbing her arm, he nodded again, and she buried her face in her hands. “It’s been that kind of a day.” His arms collected her and held her close to his heart while she kept her face covered. “Say something, Dench. Please don’t just sit here holding me like I’m fragile or valuable or something.”

  “You are valuable to me,” he murmured into the soft, inky darkness of her hair. Still holding her, he began to rock slowly, swaying with her, and the motion calmed them both.

  She dropped her hands from her face and used them to hold his. “Ask me what happened today.”

  “What happened today, Rissa?” He continued to sway.

  “I pissed Yvette off—royally.”

  “Yvette’s your partner and a friend. She’ll survive.”

  “Yes, but I owe her an apology.”

  “You’ll apologize and she’ll accept. Is that why you threw a cake across the room?”

  She drew a sharp breath and stopped rocking for a beat. When she started again, Dench followed her rhythm. “Brenda Clarence baked the cake—red velvet. She didn’t feel like making chicken soup.”

  “Chicken soup?”

  “For an invalid. That’s why I was so pissy with Yvette. They were all treating me like I’m not able to handle anything since I lost the baby.”

  Dench half smiled in the dusky office. “So you threw the cake across the room. Guess you showed them.”

  She sighed, and he thought she smiled a little. “No, I threw the cake later, after I found out that Sierra had her baby.” She felt his surprise in the tension that vibrated through his fingers and along her arm. “Today at four-fifteen, the Clarences became the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy, twenty inches long, seven pounds and eight ounces.” Turning to face him, she sighed. “We sent flowers and a beautiful hand-sewn layette. Do you think that makes up for the cake?”

  Dench kissed her forehead and nodded.

  “Am I crazy, Dench? You can tell me. She gets a beautiful, healthy baby, and I get a big-assed cake. How is that right? I’m jealous as hell, but now I’m all cried out and I think I may have damaged our new beginning.” Twisting in his arms, she looked into his face. “This would be a good time to tell me if you think I’ve lost my mind.”

  “No, baby, I don’t think you’re crazy, and you killed the big-assed cake.”

  “And our baby. You can say it. I know what I did.”

  “Rissa, no.”

  “I should have listened. I should have…”

  “Listen to me. The only thing you’ve done wrong is to keep blaming yourself.” His fingers were tender when they stroked her cheek and directed her face to his. His voice when he spoke was balm to her soul. “Baby, I understand that you did everything you knew to do, you did everything you could to be right.” Then he sat, simply holding her, breathing with her because there was nothing more for him than her.

  When he pulled her desk chair close enough, he leaned on it and stood slowly. Taking her hand, he drew his wife to her feet and stood in the semi-darkness, holding her. Smoothing a hand over her short hair, he smiled. It was longer now, beginning to curl at her ears and over her shirt collar—a symbol of their new beginning.

  She rested against him and sighed. “You could run now, and nobody would blame you.”

  “Yeah, but you would keep the house, and the house has you in it. I could never leave a house with you in it.”

  “Even if the house has no children in it?”

  “Rissa, you’re all I need, and I need you like the ocean needs a beach. Without you, there is no definition for me, no place to come back to. You’re not crazy, and I’m not leaving you.”

  She relaxed against him and Dench kissed the top of her head, then looked over her shoulder and out into the blue Buckhead night.

  Lord, now what do we do?

  Chapter 9

  AJ cleared his throat and hoped he didn’t sound as embarrassed as he felt. It was bad enough to find your best friend on your doorstep first thing in the morning talking to himself and trying to figure out how to work things out with his wife. But when your best friend lived right down the street and was married to your sister…well, it was enough to raise more than a little concern. And now he wanted to talk, man-to-man. About Rissa.

  “Have you two thought of counseling?”

  “Thought? That’s been about my only thought since she crawled out from under that desk.” Dench blew out hard, the blistering sound rude and loud in AJ’s office. He was glad the door was closed. “I sat down last night and told her that I thought it was our only alternative.”

  “And what did she say to that?”

  “Dude, you know her, she’s your sister. She told me that she’d lost a baby, not her mind—flat-out dismissed it.” Dench turned from the broad window to face his friend. “Dude, I love her more than a fat kid loves cake and damn it, I need her. But I don’t know what else to do for her.”

  “So you took your troubles on the road and walked them down to my house?”

  “She’s your sister. I figured that you care about her almost as much as I do. I’m looking for a new perspective here.” Dench’s brow furrowed when he frowned.

  “Not trying to make things any worse, but whatever you do, you need to go home and face her. I can’t see you fixing this from my house.”

  “You putting me out?”

  “No way, I’m just telling you what I know from experience. You can’t fix anything long distance—especially not with a woman.” AJ reached across the desk, picked up the gilt picture frame and smiled as he turned it to his friend. “See this? This is Marlea on the day we got married. The pretty white dress, carrying those white peonies she loves so much, and that look on her face. You look at this and all you see is my beautiful, hopeful bride. You don’t see her amputated toes, the career she thought she’d lost, Bianca’s mess, or any of the other stuff we went through. If I’d run, or let her run and put distance between us, we couldn’t have fixed anything—and damned if I would ever want to
give up what we have.”

  Dench swallowed and a half smile sketched across his face. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and remembered that Marlea Kellogg would forever be the one who almost got away from AJ Yarborough.

  Still looking at the photo, AJ sat back in his chair. “A world-class runner, and I went and ran into her at a local 10K.”

  “Knocked her flat,” Dench recalled. “Made her miss her time, knocked her out of the Olympic trials.”

  “And she tried to hand me my face.” AJ grinned, sitting forward, leaning on his desk. “Look, Dench, all I’m saying is that women feel things differently than we do.”

  “Dude, you think I don’t know that? I still remember how hurt Marlea was when you first brought her here—all depressed and betrayed.” Dench paused and frowned. “Whatever happened to that doctor, the one who ran into her car and then did the surgery on her?”

  “Reynolds?” It was AJ’s turn to frown as he ran his fingers over the photo, touching the image of his wife’s face. “Not as much as Marlea would have liked, I guess. Parker Reynolds did his time and got married almost the minute he got out of jail.”

  “Still practicing?”

  “Wound up having his license revoked.” AJ moved the photo back to its place of honor on his desk. “You know he was in the paper again last week.”

  Dench snapped his fingers and nodded. “Yeah, I thought that was him. The wife is Desireé, or something like that, right? She’s filing for divorce, asking for millions, claiming economic incompatibility. What is that supposed to mean?”

  AJ grinned. “Claims he’s devoted himself to volunteering and it causes her social duress.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would reduce her circumstances.” Dench’s chuckle rolled into full laughter. “Here she went and married a doctor who refuses to doctor and she’s socially embarrassed—what a comedown. And all it will take to make her anguish easier to bear is a few million dollars.”