by Gayle Roper
But most important, Meg had given her love. She became the mother Dori no longer had, the anchor that held her stable in the hurricane-tossed sea her life had become. Meg invited Dori to dinner frequently, sometimes with just her and Ron, Meg’s big bear of a husband, sometimes with her three sons and two daughters-in-law, too. They weren’t Pop and Honey or Trev and Phil, but they were wonderfully accepting of the quiet, wounded young woman she’d become. Slowly Dori learned to relax, to smile again, then laugh freely.
It was Meg who found the small apartment that Dori lived in, and Meg who gave her a used bedroom suite that had belonged to one of her boys. Dori was so grateful she wouldn’t have to bunk on the floor that the Batman sheets, which came with Meg’s gift, seemed like the finest of bed linens.
“I’d give you more,” Meg said, “but the boys cleaned us out when they married or moved.” She grinned. “I still had the bed because it’s a single and these sheets because for some reason the wives don’t want to sleep on Batman.”
Perhaps Meg’s greatest kindness was that she never pressed, never probed. She waited patiently for the time Dori was willing to trust, willing to open her heart. When Dori finally talked and talked and talked about home, about Trev, Meg just listened, her eyes full of tears when Dori told of Trev’s betrayal.
“Ah, lamb, I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around Dori. “Unfortunately, not every man’s as wonderful as my Ron. I’d make it better for you if I could. Since I can’t, I’ll just love you.”
And Dori cried. The unequivocal acceptance helped heal her as nothing else could have.
When the tears abated, Dori smiled at Meg. “I bet you regret the day I walked into your shop.”
“Never. Not for an instant.”
“Why did you hire me if you weren’t looking for help?”
“It was the please that did it,” Meg said. “That and the desperation in your eyes.” Her warm smile took any sting from the words.
Dori never wanted to be that needy again. That was why she feared the trip east.
“What are you going to do with Trudy?” Meg asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Let us keep her for you. We think she’s the cutest thing there is.”
“Oh, Meg, would you?” One problem solved.
“You just get your stuff together and go to the airport. Ron and I will collect Trudy. We’ve got your key, remember?”
With a strange mix of anxiety and excitement turning her stomach upside down, Dori made it through security checks twenty minutes before her flight left. She walked right down the Jetway and sank gratefully into her seat, prepared to sleep until Chicago’s O’Hare and her plane change. She grabbed a pillow and a blanket and tucked herself in. All over the plane passengers were doing the same. The only difference between the others and her was that they slept.
Instead, she remembered.
Her mother and Phil’s had gone to college together and become fast friends. Even geography, marriage, and parenthood hadn’t diminished their friendship, and joint vacations were an annual event. Dori vaguely remembered Disney World, Yosemite National Park, and the Rocky Mountains, all shared with Phil and his younger brother, Trev. Every other year, they all trooped to Ocean City, Maryland—the MacAllisters from Chicago and the Trevelyans from Amhearst, Pennsylvania.
Then came the year she was seven. They were vacationing in Ocean City when the police came to their rented condo to tell the three children that their parents, out together for an evening, had been killed by a drunk driver. With no grandparents still living and with her parents both only children, Dori had had no family to come to her aid. In fact, in her little girl’s mind, she had nobody but Phil and Trev.
The authorities sent a woman officer to get her and take her to social services. Even today she could feel her child’s heart hammering against her rib cage, desperate and terrified. She remembered her valiant attempts to stop crying and be brave like the police lady said. Her nose had become so stopped up that she couldn’t breathe through it, and she felt sick to her stomach from all the phlegm she swallowed.
It was Trev who changed everything. She could picture him, a skinny nine-year-old with ribs you could play like a xylophone, staring at the officer.
“You aren’t taking her anywhere! She’s ours!” He’d pushed Dori behind him to protect her.
When he came for the boys, Pop asked, “What will happen to her?”
“Foster care, I imagine,” the officer said. “She’ll be just fine.”
“Not adoption?”
The officer shrugged. “She’s probably too old to be adopted.”
“We’ll adopt her,” Trev yelled, his voice shaking with emotion. “You can’t have her.”
“Don’t let them take me,” she whispered as she hid behind him again. “Don’t let them, Trev” She wrapped her skinny arms around his waist and buried her face in his back. They’d never pull her free. She would be like one of those barnacles that encrusted the big pilings that went down, down into the bay where they’d rented Jet Skis yesterday. Daddy scraped his leg against one, and the barnacle hadn’t been hurt at all. Daddy had bled.
Phil sidled up beside Dori and put an arm around her heaving shoulders.
Pop, Honey, and the policewoman stood facing the three orphans. The officer held out her hand. “Come on, sweetie. The Trevelyans have to go home.”
“No!” she screamed over and over. “No!”
Pop moved then. He reached over Trev’s head and pulled Dori up and into his arms. Try as she would to hold on to Trev, she couldn’t fight Pop’s strength. Her heart was already broken because Mommy and Daddy were never coming back. She was surprised when it broke a little more. She turned her weeping gaze to Trev.
Help me! Help me!
But he wasn’t even watching her. He was looking at Pop. So was Phil. They were both smiling.
She realized suddenly that Pop hadn’t handed her to the police lady. He was holding her close, patting her back, and Honey was stroking her arm. They crooned to her. “Shh, sweetheart. Everything will be fine. The boys are right. You’re ours. You can come with us.”
The police lady protested. “You are not a relative.”
Pop pulled her closer, an arm under her bottom, a hand splayed over her back. She wound her dangling legs around his waist. A barnacle, glomming on to Pop.
“Her mother was my daughter’s best friend,” Pop said.
“That does not count.”
Pop scowled at the woman. “This little girl belongs to Honey and me as much as our two grandsons.”
“Mr. Trevelyan, there are laws.”
“We’re taking her.” He began moving toward the door. “You cannot stop us.”
The policewoman hurried after them. “There may be a legal guardian named in the will.”
“She’s ours.” Pop said again and carried Dori out the door. Honey and the boys followed. Dori buried her face in the bend of Pop’s neck and shoulder and held on as tightly as she could. He put her in the middle of the backseat of his shiny black car and buckled her in.
“You’ve got to let go now, sweetheart.”
She tightened her grip on his neck.
“I’ve got to go drive the car, Dori. You’ve got to let go. It’s okay. You’re safe now”
Reluctantly she released her death grip, and Pop backed out of the car. Trev climbed in on one side of her, Phil on the other. Honey and Pop climbed in the front seat, and off they drove, the policewoman watching helplessly from the curb. Trev put his arm around Dori and patted her shoulder.
She didn’t stop shaking until they pulled up in front of the brick Colonial in Amhearst.
As always with this memory, the burning sensation of both gratitude and loss lodged over her breastbone. Absently she rubbed at the ache as she watched the landing strip lights flash by as the plane touched down at O’Hare. That had all happened eighteen years ago. Unbelievable.
Dori blinked her gritty eyes as she deplaned.
They didn’t call these flights red-eyes for nothing. She located the gate for the final leg of her flight and found herself in the middle seat of the next-to-the-last row with a big man on either side, each reading a full-sized daily. She pulled out a paperback, small, compact, and easy to handle. She studied the girl on the cover. Dressed in a blue robe, she looked back over her shoulder as she ran toward the safety of an old house. Her long blonde hair streamed behind her, every curl in place. Dori’s hand went to her own dark mane, and she sighed as she opened her book. Models never seemed to have bad hair days or crammed-in-an-airplane nights.
But she couldn’t concentrate enough to read. She dropped the book to her lap and put her head back. She closed her eyes as worries about what she’d find in Pennsylvania clawed at her.
What if Pop needed a heart transplant? Could a donor be found in time? What if he was permanently incapacitated, confined to bed or a wheelchair for the rest of his life? What if he died? She wrapped her arms around herself as she went cold all over.
Then there was Trev.
In California, she felt safe from thoughts of him. He had no part in her life there. She could forget him, go days at a time feeling, if not happy exactly, at least satisfied with the life she’d carved out for herself. It was only when she was overly tired or upset that he appeared in her dreams and daydreams, a ghost who haunted her with memories of his charming smile, his promises, his touch. Some days she feared he’d never be completely exorcised. He was like a virus swimming through her blood, just waiting for the right circumstances to reinfect her.
If her susceptibility to Trev-itis frightened her when she was bustling around Small Treasures or training Trudy or trying to get a good night’s sleep in her cozy blue and gold bedroom, it terrified her as she approached Philadelphia. For how could she see Pop without seeing Trev?
Even agonizing flights eventually end, and Dori eyed the luggage circling the baggage carousel in Terminal A at Philadelphia International Airport. Hers would undoubtedly be the last piece off. It was the traveler’s equivalent to the shopper being in the line that moved most slowly at checkout.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered at the unseen baggage handlers, then brightened. Here came her black bag. In the sea of black bags she knew it was hers even before it got to her because it had the red yarn tied around the handle. She settled her laptop against her small roll-on and shouldered her way to the slowly moving belt. As her suitcase slid past, she reached for it. She bumped into a young woman also reaching for the bag.
“Sorry.” Dori gave her a wan smile. “This one’s mine.”
She dragged her suitcase off the belt, pulled up the handle on the case, and wheeled it to her other luggage. The ads said that she could take this baby onto the plane too, but she’d stuffed it with not only her clothes, but gifts from Small Treasures for everyone in her Pennsylvania family.
She collected things whenever she saw something she thought one of them might like, mailing them for any and all occasions—birthdays, Christmas, Arbor Day, the Fourth of July. She’d recently been collecting Valentine’s Day presents, and there were several gifts inside, even one for Trev. As a result, every expansion zipper on the suitcase was open, making it too fat to fit either under or over a seat. Not that she would ever have been able to lift it into the overhead bin given its weight. It had been all she could do to pull it off the carousel.
She found the attachment thingamabob stored in the front zipper pouch and clicked it to the bag. She clipped the other end to her small roll-on. Gripping the laptop in one hand and tugging her luggage behind her with the other, she walked out the automatic doors and to the curb.
She shivered inside her chenille jacket as the frigid January air wrapped around her. She hunched her shoulders and thought with longing of the green down-filled parka she used to have back when cold Pennsylvania winters were an annual event in her life. And the warm gloves. And the knit ski cap. Six years in San Diego had thinned her blood.
She shuddered again, wishing she didn’t have to deal with what weather.com had told her would be a week of single-digit temperatures all through the Mid-Atlantic states. Maybe, she thought hopefully, Pop still had her red Lands’ End Squall, the one with the navy lining. Grandparents kept things like that, didn’t they? After all, it had meaning for him where the green parka didn’t. He’d bought the whole family the red jackets one year for Christmas, Trev’s senior year in high school if she remembered correctly. They’d all told Pop he was nuts, they weren’t some athletic team to be dressed alike, but they’d all worn the jackets with pride, even Honey.
Like he’d kept a coat for her for six long years.
Just when she was certain she was going to be struck down with pneumonia as she waited for Phil, she heard her name called.
“Yo, Dori!”
She looked in the direction of the voice and saw a man waving to her from the end of the line of cars pulled to the curb awaiting passengers.
Her heart sputtered. Trev!
Two
HE WON’T COME FOR YOU, she’d told herself again and again all through the long flight. He won’t meet you. And you don’t want him to. You don’t even want to see him.
But he had come! Delight washed warm through her.
When in the next heartbeat she realized it wasn’t Trev after all, but Phil, she had to turn away, blinking at tears. To buy time, she made a production of being certain her suitcases were secure. When she finally felt dry-eyed, she turned toward Phil and made her way slowly through the press of people all anxious to leave the airport.
She was appalled at herself. The height of her elation when she thought Trev had come both shamed and frightened her, as did the depth of her subsequent disappointment.
Don’t think about Trev. Don’t look for Trev. Don’t expect to see Trev. He means nothing to you. You’ve cut him out of your life—and with very good reason. Let it go. Let him go.
It was that black hair and the size of the man that made her think Trev, but the closer she got to Phil, the less he looked like his brother. Though both men were handsome by any measure, there was about Phil the softness and charm of a puppy gamboling at your feet, anxious to please, while about Trev was a toughness, a strength that made him a combination of Sir Lancelot, Prince Valiant, and Buzz Lightyear.
“Dori!” Phil cried, running to meet her, leaving his car in spite of the Do-Not-Leave-Your-Car signs and the watchful police presence. He grabbed her in a bear hug and swung her around, then planted a great smacking kiss on her cheek. “It is so good to see you!”
She had to smile as she kissed him back. Sweet Phil. He’d come to San Diego several times to visit her, making her laugh, taking her places, reminding her of his brother. Such bittersweet visits.
“Welcome home,” he said as he picked up her suitcases from where they had fallen when he grabbed her. He began walking toward the car, and Dori followed, thankful she had managed to keep hold of her laptop when he grabbed her.
Home. Visions of the brick Colonial flashed across her mind, Honey’s carefully pruned and tended azaleas mixing with rhododendrons across the front of the place, the giant oaks shading the deep backyard. She could practically feel Trev and Phil pelting her eight-year-old self with acorns from those trees, grinning with delight when she shrieked that they hurt, then kneeling beside her in distress when they reduced her to tears. At least Trev had knelt beside her, wiping her cheeks, soothing her. Trev, her white knight.
Swallowing the lump at the base of her throat, she turned from Phil, who was putting her bags in the trunk. No remembering! No reminiscing. It was the only way she could keep the regrets from overwhelming her.
“I’m freezing!” She shivered again and pulled the passenger door open. “You don’t happen to have another coat in the car, do you?”
“Wimp.” Phil grinned at her over the roof as he walked to the driver’s door. “Don’t worry. I’ll crank the heat up. You’ll be warm in no time.” He pulled off his leather aviat
or’s jacket and passed it across the car’s roof.
Dori shoved her arms in the sleeves and wrapped it close. Immediately the retained body heat eased her chill, and her shoulders dropped back toward their normal alignment. Not that all the tension left her. Not at all. But at least she wouldn’t freeze to death before she even saw Pop.
She climbed wearily into the car and rested her head against the back of her seat.
“Long night?” he asked.
“Very. I’m absolutely beat.”
“Couldn’t sleep on the flight?”
She shook her head. “Two big men reading newspapers on either side of me.” She held out her hands in demonstration.
“Poor baby,” Phil mocked gently.
“You know it.”
Once Phil had pulled clear of the airport congestion and they were driving south on 1-95, Dori turned to him. “So how bad is it?” she asked as they sped through Chester and past the Commodore Barry Bridge ramp.
“I don’t really know.” Phil swung onto 322. “You know how hard it can be to get answers out of doctors. But Honey won’t leave his side.”
Dori flinched. That didn’t sound good. Oh, God, please!
The prayer was out before she could catch it, and it wasn’t the first one since Phil’s call. She smiled in self-mockery. Old habits, no matter how long unused, surfaced in times of duress. Well, maybe God remembered her. Maybe He’d deign to answer. After all, she was asking for Pop, not herself.
She leaned her head back once again and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, Phil was shaking her.
“Dori. Dori, wake up. We’re here.”
Dori blinked and sat up, expecting to see their home on its acre lot in Amhearst. Instead, she realized they were in the hospital parking lot. Of course. She climbed out and followed Phil who seemed to know where he was going.
As the sleep cobwebs fled, she found she didn’t want to go in the austere-looking building. She had so many emotions whirling around—fear, regret, distress, love, longing, reticence, uncertainty—that she could barely think straight. She glanced at her watch. Eleven AM.
