“You sure, Dad?” Bret’s disappointment was obvious.
“I’m sure, buddy. Maybe later.”
Bret sighed. “Yeah, right.”
Liam headed toward the stairs.
“Dr. Liam, wait.” Rosa stood up in a single, fluid motion and followed him into the dining room.
There, in the dark, quiet room, she stared up at him. Her eyes were as black as pools of ink, and as readable. “The children … they are much quiet today. I think something is—”
“It’s our tenth wedding anniversary.” He blurted the whole sentence out at once, then he slowed down. “The kids … knew I’d bought Mike tickets to Paris.”
“Oh. Lo siento.” Something close to a smile breezed across her mouth and disappeared. “She is lucky to have you, Dr. Liam. I do not know if I have ever told you this.”
It touched him deeply, that simple sentiment from this woman who spoke so rarely. “Thanks, Rosa, I—” He started to say something else—what, he didn’t know—but all at once his voice dried up.
“Dr. Liam.” Her soft voice elongated the vowels in his name and turned it into music. “Come play a game of Yahtzee with us. It will help.”
“No. I need …” A bad start. There were so many things he needed. “I have something to do upstairs. Jacey needs to borrow one of Mike’s dresses for the winter dance.”
She leaned closer. He had an odd sense that she wanted to say something more, but she turned away and headed back to the game.
Liam went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. The Crown Royal burned down his throat and set his stomach on fire. Holding the drink tightly, he moved up the wide staircase to the second floor. He could hear music seeping from beneath Jacey’s closed door. At least it was considered music by Jacey, some jarring, pounding batter of drums and electric guitars.
With a glance down the hallway, he turned into his bedroom and flicked on the light. The room, even in its current state of disarray—unmade bed, shoes and clothes and bath towels scattered across the floor—welcomed him as it always did. The creamy walls, stenciled with stars and moons, the gauzy drapery of the canopy, the creamy Berber carpet. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine Mike standing there at the French doors, looking out at the falling snow. She would be wearing the peach silk nightgown that fell in graceful folds down her lithe body.
He refused to close his eyes, but it was tempting, so tempting. Instead he stared straight ahead.
The door to Mike’s walk-in closet seemed to magnify before his eyes. He hadn’t ventured into it since the day of the accident, when he’d naively packed her a suitcase full of things she might need at the hospital.
He crossed the room and paused at the closet, then he reached for the knob and twisted. The oak door creaked and swung inward easily, as if it had been waiting for this moment for weeks.
A floor-length mirror along the end wall caught his image and threw it back, a tall, lanky man with unkempt hair and baggy clothes parenthesized by colorful fabrics. On either side of him, clothes were hung on specially ordered plastic hangers, the colors organized as precisely as an artist’s wheel. The ivory plastic of Nordstrom’s designer departments hung clustered in one area. Her evening clothes.
It took him a minute to get his feet to move. He began unzipping the bags, one at a time, looking for the dress Mike had worn to the Policemen’s Ball. At about the sixth bag, he reached inside, and instead of finding a gown of silk or velvet as he’d expected, he found a pillowcase, carefully hung on a pants hanger.
Frowning, he eased it from the bag. It was an elegant white silk affair, not the kind of pillowcase they used at all. On one end was a monogram: MLT.
Mikaela Luna … Something.
His heart skipped a beat. This was from her life before.
He should turn away, zip up this bag, and forget its existence. He knew this because his hands had started to sweat and a tickling unease was working its way down his spine.
Over the years, he’d collected so many questions, stroked them in his mind every time she’d said, Let’s not go there, Liam. The past isn’t something that matters now. Every time he’d seen sadness darken her eyes or known that something had smoothed the edges of her laugh to a quiet mournful sound, he’d wondered why.
The past mattered, of course. Liam had been willing to pretend otherwise because he loved his wife, and because he was afraid of who or what had caused the deep well of her sorrow, but the moment he touched the pillowcase, made of a fabric so expensive he didn’t know anyone who would know where to buy such a thing—certainly Mike wouldn’t—and saw the tantalizing mystery of the MLT monogram, he was lost. The past they’d all ignored was here; it had lived with them all these years, hidden inside a Nordstrom bag in his wife’s closet. And like Pandora, he simply had to look.
Once he had the pillowcase in his hand, he could see plainly that it was stuffed full of something. He felt strangely detached as he walked back into his bedroom and sat down on his big, king-sized four-poster bed, dragging the pillowcase up beside him. He stared down at it for a long time, weighing the danger, knowing that sometimes there was no way to undo what had been done, and that some secrets were composed of acid that, once spilled, could burn through the fragile layers of a relationship.
Still, the lure of finally knowing was too powerful to resist. For years he had longed to tear the lid off her jar of secrets. He’d always thought that if he knew her pain, he would understand. He would be able to help.
These were the lies he told himself as he turned the pillowcase upside down and watched as photographs, newspaper clippings, and official-looking documents, all bent and yellowed, fluttered onto the comforter. The last thing to fall out was a wedding ring with a diamond as big as a dime. Liam stared at it so long his vision blurred, and then he was seeing another ring, a thin gold band. No diamonds, Liam, she’d said softly, and though he’d heard the catch in her voice, he’d paid it no mind. He’d thought how nice it was that she didn’t care about such things.
The truth was she’d already had diamonds.
Turning away from the diamond ring, he saw a photograph, an eight-by-ten full-color glossy print. It was half covered; all he could see was Mikaela in a wedding dress. The groom was hidden behind a carefully cut-out newspaper article. He wanted to pick it up, but his hands were shaking too badly. He thought, crazily, that if he didn’t touch it, didn’t brush away the newsprint, the man in the other half of the photo wouldn’t exist.
He hardly recognized Mikaela. Her wavy black hair was drawn up in a sleek, elaborate twist that glittered with diamonds, and makeup accentuated the catlike tilt of her brown eyes, turned her pale, puffy lips into the kind of mouth that fueled a thousand male fantasies. The sleeveless gown she wore was a soft, opalescent white—completely unlike the conservative cream-colored suit she’d worn for her second wedding. There were oceans of pearls and beads sewn into the silky sheath, so many that the dress appeared to be made of crushed diamonds and clouds. Not a thing of this earth at all.
She, his wife, was a woman he’d never seen before, and that hurt, but the pain of it was nothing compared to the way he felt when he looked at her smile. God help him; she’d never smiled at Liam like that, as if the world were a shining jewel that had just been placed in the palm of her hand.
Slowly he reached for the picture and picked it up. The newspaper clipping fell away and he saw at last the groom’s face.
Julian True.
For a dizzying moment, Liam couldn’t breathe. He could actually feel the breaking of his heart.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, not knowing if the words were a curse or a prayer.
She’d been married to Julian True, one of the most famous movie stars in the world.
Chapter Eight
“Daaaaad! Dinner’s ready!”
Liam rose unsteadily to his feet and walked away from the pictures on the bed. Closing the door behind him, he moved forward only when he heard the muffled click of the lock
. There was no point in staying up here. The things he’d seen wouldn’t change; he’d carry those burning images in his heart forever.
He clung to the slick oak banister and went down the stairs, drawing a heavy breath before he turned into the dining room.
Bret was already at the trestle table, looking dwarfed in the big oak chair that his grandfather had crafted by hand. Jacey sat beside him, just now putting the checkered red-and-blue napkin in her lap. “Hi, Dad,” she said with a smile.
She looked so much like Mike that he almost stumbled.
Rosa came around the corner, carrying a glass bowl of salad, with a bottle of dressing tucked under her arm. She paused when she saw him, then she smiled softly. “Good, good, you are here. Have a seat, Dr. Liam,” she said as she plunked the bowl onto the table and took her own place.
As usual, no one looked at the empty chair at the opposite end of the table.
Liam made it through dinner like one of those Disney robots. He forced his dry mouth to smile. He could feel the way Jacey and Rosa were staring at him. He tried to act as if this were a normal dinner—at least as normal as their meals had become in the past month—but he was weary and the veneer had worn thin.
“Dad?”
He looked up from the chicken enchiladas, realizing that he’d managed to push them around on his plate into an unappetizing pile of orange mush. “Yeah, Jace?”
“Did you find that dress for me?”
“Yeah, honey. I found it. I’ll give it to you after dinner. Maybe you and Grandma can practice fixing up your hair.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”
Dad.
The word had a hook that drew blood.
Jacey had called him that almost from the start. She’d been a little bit of a thing back then, a baby-toothed four-year-old with jet-black pigtails and ears that seemed so big she’d never grow into them.
He could still remember the day Mike had shown up in the clinic, carrying Jacey. It was only a few months after Liam’s father had died, and he’d been trying to find an excuse to talk to Mikaela again.
Jacey had had a dangerously high fever; convulsions racked her body. One minute she was stretched taut and shaking, and the next, she was as limp as a rag doll, her brown eyes drowsy and unfocused.
“Help us,” Mikaela had said softly.
Liam had canceled his nonemergency appointments for the day and rushed to the ER with them. He’d stood in the OR, watching as the surgeon gently sliced through Jacey’s abdomen and removed her burst appendix. His was the last face she saw before the anesthesia took her, and the first one she saw when she woke up in Recovery. He transferred his patients to Dr. Granato and spent the next three days in the hospital with Mikaela and Jacey; together they watched the Fourth of July fireworks through the rectangular window of Room 320.
He’d sat in the hospital cafeteria for endless hours with Mike, listening to her ramble from topic to topic. At some point she’d looked up at the wall clock and started to cry. He’d reached across the table, past the remains of her uneaten meal, and taken hold of her hand. She’ll be all right, he’d said. Trust me …
She’d looked up at him then, his Mike, with her brown eyes floating in tears and her mouth trembling. I do trust you.
That had been the beginning.
Jacey had called him Dad for so long, he’d forgotten that there was another father out there, another man who could lay claim to both his wife’s and daughter’s hearts.
“Dad. DAD.”
Bret stared at him. His little face looked unbalanced with the one black eye. “You’re gonna take me to basketball tryouts aren’t you?”
“Of course, Bretster.”
Bret nodded and started talking to Jacey about something. Liam tried to pay attention, but he couldn’t do it. A single sentence kept running through his mind. She was married to Julian True.
When he looked up again, he saw that Rosa was staring at him, her dark eyes narrowed and assessing.
“Do you have something you want to say to me, Rosa?”
She flinched, obviously surprised by his tone of voice. He knew he should have softened his tone, pretended that everything was okay, but he didn’t have the strength.
“Sí, Dr. Liam. I would like to speak to you … privately.”
He sighed. Perfect. “Sure. After the kids are in bed.”
Liam knew that Rosa was waiting for their “talk,” but he wasn’t ready yet. He’d spent almost an hour reading to Bret, then kissed Jacey good night and taken a long, hot shower.
Jacey was bunkered in her room now, probably talking on the telephone to one of her many friends and trying on her mother’s dress. Liam hadn’t gone to her, afraid that if he saw her wearing that beautiful gown, looking like her mother, he’d lose it.
Right now he wanted to hole up in his own quiet space. Christ, he’d give almost anything to be able to go downstairs, sit at the piano, and play the hell out of some sad bit of music.
He wanted to be angry, to scream and rail and feel honest-to-God outrage. But he wasn’t that kind of man. His love for Mikaela was more than just an emotion; it was the sum total of who he was.
This one thing he knew above everything else. He loved Mikaela too much. Which in its way was as bad as loving someone not enough.
Slowly he went downstairs.
The piano stood in the empty living room like a forgotten lover.
Liam closed his eyes and remembered a time when music swirled through this room every night … He could almost hear the squeaky joint of the bench as Mike sat down beside him.
Tips are welcome, he’d say, just as he’d said a thousand times on a thousand nights.
Here’s a tip for you, piano man: Get your wife to bed or miss your chance.
When he opened his eyes, the room was empty and silent.
He’d never thought much about silence, but now he knew its every shape and contour. It was a cheap glass jar that trapped old voices and kept them fresh.
He went to the piano and sat on the antique bench with its needlepoint seat. With one finger, he plunked at a single key. It made a dull, thudding sound.
Mrs. Julian True.
“Dr. Liam?”
He jumped, and his hand crashed on the keys in a blast of discordant sound.
Rosa stood in the archway that separated the great room from the dining room.
Liam didn’t want to talk to his mother-in-law right now. If she opened the door to intimacy, he might ask the question that was killing him: Did she ever love me, Rosa?
And God help him, he wasn’t ready for the answer.
“Lo siento, I do not mean to bother you.”
He studied her, saw the nervous trembling in her hands, the almost invisible tapping of her right foot, and he was seized by a sudden fear that she knew what he’d found, that she’d talk about Mikaela’s past now, tell him more than he wanted to know. He got slowly to his feet and moved toward her. In the pale, overhead light, she looked incredibly fragile, her wrinkled skin almost translucent. A tiny network of blue blood vessels crisscrossed her smooth cheeks. “Yes, Rosa?”
She gazed up at him, her dark eyes steeped in sorrow, and he knew that she understood the pain of a broken heart. “The anniversary … it must be very hard on you. I thought … maybe, if you do not think I am sticking my old woman’s nose where it does not belong, that we could watch a movie together. Bret has loaned me his favorite: Dumb and Dumber. He says it will make me laugh.”
The idea of Rosa watching Dumb and Dumber brought a smile. “Thank you, Rosa,” he answered, touched by her thoughtfulness. “But not tonight.”
“There is something else wrong,” she said slowly, eyeing him.
He tried to smile again. “What else could be wrong? Love will reach my wife, won’t it, Rosa? Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, that love will wake her up? But it’s been four weeks and still she’s asleep.”
“Do not give up, please.”
He looked at her
for a long, desperate minute, then he said softly, “I’m falling apart.”
It was true. His wife was hanging on to life by a strand as thin as a spider’s web, and now suddenly it felt as if his whole life was hanging alongside her.
“No, Dr. Liam. You are the strongest man I have ever known.”
He didn’t feel strong. In fact, he’d never felt so close to breaking. He knew that if he stood here a moment longer, feeling Rosa’s sympathy like a warm fire on a cold, cold night, he’d ask the question: Did she ever love me, Rosa?
“I can’t do this now.” He shoved past a chair, heard it squeaking and crashing across the floor. When he spun around, he found himself staring into the silvered plane of an antique mirror. The network of lines around his eyes had the ridged, shadowy look of felt-tipped etchings.
Laugh lines.
That’s what Mike had called them. Only Liam couldn’t now recall the last time he’d laughed.
The image blurred and twisted before his eyes, until for a flashing second, it wasn’t himself he saw. It was a younger man, blindingly handsome, with a smile that could sell a million movie tickets. “I need to go to the hospital.”
“But—”
He pushed past her. “Now,” he said again, grabbing his coat off the hook on the wall. “I need to see to my wife.”
The emergency room was bustling with people tonight; the bright hallways echoed with voices and footsteps. Liam hurried to Mike’s room.
She lay there like a broken princess in someone else’s bed, her chest steadily rising and falling.
“Ah, Mike,” he murmured, moving toward her. It was beyond him now, the simple routine he’d constructed so carefully—the potpourri, the pillows, the music.
He stared down at her.
She was still beautiful. Some days he could pretend that she was simply sleeping, that it was an ordinary morning, and any moment she’d wake up and reach for him. Not tonight, however.
“I fell in love with you the first second I saw you,” he said, curling his hand around hers, feeling the warmth of her flesh. Even then, he’d known she was running from something … or someone. It was obvious. But what did he care? He knew what he wanted: Mikaela and Jacey and a new life in Last Bend. A love that would last forever. He hadn’t known who she was—who she’d once been. How could he? He’d never been one to read celebrity magazines, and even if he had, he would have read about Kayla True, a woman who meant nothing to him.
Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour Page 8
