The easiest thing to do would be to withdraw, to leave now that he had visited her and assuaged his conscience.
But his conscience was far from satisfied. All the guilt he had felt before, all the guilt he had tried to deny and hide from himself, surfaced like demons escaping from Pandora’s box, mingling with the very real guilt he felt now.
He remained where he was, glued in place by the sight of Clancy’s mute distress, trapped by the pain he saw in her eyes. Mitch nodded toward the tall pitcher that stood on the side of the small sink. “I don’t think anyone would mind if I put the flowers in that.”
Clancy said nothing. She didn’t want flowers. Flowers were for people who had something to live for, she thought dully. Flowers were a symbol of gaiety, of happiness. Of hope.
There was nothing hopeful in her life anymore. Her expectations, all her dreams, had crumbled like a thin cracker smashed with a mallet. There were too many pieces to attempt to reconstruct them.
Clancy had always managed to keep a conversation going between them, even when Mitch hadn’t felt like talking. The silence between them now felt like a dark giant, stealing her away. He had to say something.
“I saved your dress,” he stated suddenly. After the ambulance had left, he’d recalled her plea about the wedding dress and had gone back to the site of the accident. There had been two teenagers there, laughing, eager to nimbly strip what they could from the vehicle. He’d gotten to it before they had had a chance to make off with the wedding gown.
Clancy’s green eyes were flat as she turned them in his direction. There was no recognition in them.
“Your wedding dress,” Mitch prompted. The words felt like day-old gum in his mouth, hard and unmalleable. He had walked away from her and convinced himself that there were no regrets. But the thought of her marrying someone else jabbed at him like a thousand nettles. “You asked me to get it for you.”
She didn’t remember asking him. Clancy remembered nothing except the terror of seeing the oncoming car and then waking up here, battered and taped together. Vaguely, she could just picture Mitch at the scene. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t do better than that. There were no words, no images beyond the sight of Mitch’s face above hers.
Her mind was a slate that had been wiped clean.
The sigh that rose within Clancy felt as huge as a boulder in her chest. “You could have saved yourself the trouble.”
Her voice had dropped to almost a whisper. Mitch leaned over her bed, trying to hear what she was saying. “What?”
She wanted to hit something, anything. But she couldn’t even raise her hand. “I said you could have saved yourself the trouble. I don’t need it.”
There was no place for hope in his life. He had banished it a long time ago. He wouldn’t have recognized it if it had appeared. Yet there didn’t seem to be any other name he could pin to the strange feeling that rose now like whispers of steam hovering over a manhole cover in the dead of winter.
“Wedding postponed?” He knew the feeling flitting through him was completely irrational. He didn’t care who she was with, who anyone was with, as long as he was left in peace to do what he had to do.
“Canceled.” The bitter statement clawed its way up her throat, scarring it like the bottom of a mountain climber’s boots scraping the side of the mountain he was scaling. “Stuart doesn’t want to be saddled with an invalid.”
As she said it, a single tear managed to escape, sliding down the side of her cheek, as solitary, as lonely as she.
Stuart. Was that his name? Was that the name of the man whom she had been willing to love for the rest of her life? Obviously he hadn’t been worth it.
“Is that what he said?”
Clancy didn’t hear the dangerous edge in Mitch’s voice. “Not in so many words. But that was what he meant.” Stuart had labeled her an invalid, an object of his disdain. She was too tired to be indignant, too defeated to be angry anymore.
Clancy turned her face toward the wall, wishing the room would swallow her up. Wishing Mitch hadn’t saved her.
In his line of work, Mitch came across all forms of human despair. He’d found that the way to deal with it was to remain detached, be on the outside. To never permit himself to become involved. He had no idea how he had managed to step within the boundaries this time.
But he had.
And the anguish that palpitated in Clancy’s voice, that was there in her eyes, made him more than uncomfortable.
It made him angry.
If this selfish bastard she called Stuart had been before him now, Mitch wasn’t completely certain he would have remembered that his sworn duty was to uphold the law.
But there was no indication in his voice of the emotions that were churning within him. Like a good policeman, he knew how to divorce his thoughts from his tone.
“Then I’d say you were better off without him than with him.”
As if she had a choice in the matter anymore. “Yeah.”
Her voice was jagged with pain. He wanted to comfort her, to touch her face just once more. But there wasn’t a spot on it that didn’t look tender. And even if that hadn’t been the case, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get caught up in his emotions. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of them.
“Anyone who walks out when you need him isn’t worth tears, Clancy.”
She bit the inside of her lip to banish the moist sheen she felt rising in her eyes again.
“I’m not crying.” And you would be the one to know about walking out, she added silently, turning her head toward him.
Her damp cheeks gave lie to her words, but Mitch left the subject alone. He knew what it felt like to have someone prying.
He lifted a shoulder casually and let it drop. “Just in case you were thinking of it,” he amended.
He didn’t feel comfortable enough to sit down, though he wanted to. Instead, he stood, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if there were answers there to questions he hadn’t formed. He looked down at her. She looked so lost in that bed that it made him feel helpless. Frustrated without being able to put the emotion into words. It traveled through him like smoke from a gutted camp fire.
“You didn’t answer my question. What did the doctor have to tell you?”
There was too much to assimilate, too much to juggle in her mind. She searched for a shred of hope to hang on to, just the tiniest ribbon. “He wouldn’t be pinned down. He said that I might bounce back soon enough.”
Mitch guessed by her expression that the prognosis wasn’t that positive.
“Or I might never walk again.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper once more. Mitch knew she was fighting back tears. “I guess he covered himself pretty well.”
Mitch had no particular love of doctors, although there were one or two he respected. “They usually do.” He didn’t like the look he saw on her face. It was devoid of all hope, as if the very spark of life, of what made her Clancy, had been brutally extinguished. He found himself in the uncustomary position of searching for something hopeful to say to her. “But that sounds like there’s a good chance that you’ll be walking again.”
“Fifty-fifty.” Less if she believed Stuart’s inferences.
Mitch nodded. “Even odds.” No one could ever ask for more than that. Life usually stacked decks unfavorably. His deck certainly had been. He looked at her and lightly touched her fingertips. They were cold. He closed his hand over them. “As I remember, you always thought even odds tipped the scale in your favor.”
A hundred years had passed since she’d been that happy woman. Life had held only good promises, not threats of dead ends. “I was a lot younger then.”
He had been born old. But it didn’t seem natural, seeing this look on her face.
“Two years,” Mitch reminded her. “That isn’t so long.”
For a fraction of a moment, she remembered what she had felt when he had left her: stunned devastation.
It was not unlike what
she was feeling now, she realized. Except then she’d been able to walk. Then she’d been able to vent her anger, instead of lying strapped to a bed like a limp puppet.
Clancy raised her eyes slowly to his face, the face of a man she had once thought herself in love with. “It is a long time when you measure it in seconds.” She drew a shaky breath. Everything ached in response. “And I’ve done a lot of growing since then. Or I thought I had.”
Clear blue eyes clouded with shimmering tears. She struggled to keep back a sob. Her fingers tightened ever so slightly on his hand. She’d thought she finally had happiness in her grasp. Although Mitch had been her tall, dark knight, she’d known somewhere in her heart that it wasn’t meant to be, though she had hoped otherwise. With Stuart, the love was not as passionate, but it was a sedate, comfortable thing. A thing she had believed she could rely on.
Obviously not.
“Oh, God, Mitch, this just isn’t fair.”
He knew exactly what she was feeling. And because he did, he was angry that it was happening to her. “Very little of life is.”
Her heart was cracking and he was giving her platitudes found in second-class fortune cookies. Something vaguely like a smile curved the corner of her mouth. “Still giving pep talks, I see.”
Mitch released her hand and scratched the back of his head, the way he always did when he felt out of his element. He wasn’t any good at this. But she needed to hear something encouraging.
“Want a pep talk? If anyone can beat this, you can.” His eyes held hers as he attempted to infuse her with his belief. “All you’ve got to do is dig deep inside yourself.”
Now that sounded like something she might have said, a hundred years ago when she’d believed such things. Before life had driven over her in a tan sedan. “Sorry. Left my shovel in my other outfit.” Clancy stared numbly past his head, feeling completely hollow.
He didn’t like this. It wasn’t like Clancy. The woman in the bed was a stranger to him. And though he knew it was no longer any of his business, if it ever had been, he couldn’t help being affected.
McAffee was better at this sort of thing. He was the one who always talked to victims’ families if there was bad news to be given. He always seemed to know how to phrase it.
But McAffee wasn’t here. “This is all new to you. You just need some time to adjust to—”
It wasn’t a bad hairdo they were discussing. It was her legs. Her life. She swallowed, afraid that her voice would crack, then interrupted him. “It’s not going to look any better tomorrow than it does today.”
No, this wasn’t the Clancy he’d known at all. And it scared him, scared him the way it would if he had woken up in a world with a green sky and a blue earth. “How do you know?”
She would have laughed if she could. Mitch was entirely out of his element here. “An optimist knows these things.”
He needed facts to back him up. He couldn’t convince her on pure conjecture. It wasn’t in his nature. “What’s your doctor’s name?”
Clancy paused and tried to think. She couldn’t remember. “Some long thing. Klein something-or-other.” She could picture him, tall, thin, kindly. Slashing her heart out with his words. “I wasn’t paying attention to his name. I guess I kind of numbed out after he told me the good news.”
Klein something-or-other. Mitch had gotten further on less. The man shouldn’t be difficult to locate. He wanted to talk to the doctor himself, if for no other reason than to get information for the report he had to file on the incident. The sergeant liked every i dotted, every t crossed.
And asking would serve his own sense of order. Mitch always liked knowing everything there was to know about a case. He didn’t like strings left loose.
There was one more string he wanted to tie up—the rest of the reason for her despondency. “When did you talk to your fiancé?”
“Ex-fiancé.” She gritted her teeth as she pushed out the word.
Anger was good. He’d seen anger accomplish things that optimism couldn’t begin to touch. Anger saw you through the dark and through times so bad you never thought you would survive.
“Ex-fiancé,” he repeated.
Why did he want to know? When he had left, he hadn’t been able to hurry away fast enough. Clancy moistened her lips. She was beginning to feel drowsy again.
“He came in just before you did. Apparently he couldn’t wait to sever the ties and make himself a free man.” Bitterness tightened her mouth. “I guess he was afraid I would expect him to take care of me.”
He studied the swollen face. “Did you think that?”
He was rewarded by a tiny flash in her eyes. “You know me better than that.” And then the anger was gone, to be replaced by apathy. She was accepting her fate without testing the boundaries. “Or at least I think you do. I just wanted a few encouraging words. Instead, he hit me over the head with a two-by-four. Serves me right for falling for a lawyer. They know when to cut their losses.” She looked at him, her eyes dull. “It’s almost as bad as loving a cop.”
She didn’t mean that the way it sounded, he told himself. She’d never loved him. He’d left before things had progressed to that stage. For both of them.
“Worst mistake in the world,” he agreed.
She was growing tired, Mitch realized. He should have left earlier. Still, he lingered, as if he were somehow inexplicably drawn to this place, to this room. Drawn even while he felt a restlessness permeating through him.
Mitch moved toward the window. It faced the ocean. The evening was clear, cloudless. Sailboats were out in full regalia, angling for space.
He’d never wanted a boat, never seen the lure in sitting in a small, bobbing vessel, with only so much wood between you and a bottomless oblivion. Navigating through life was difficult enough.
“Anyone you want me to call for you?” He knew her parents had been in the diplomatic corps. Maybe she hadn’t had a chance to notify them. He turned and looked at her when she didn’t reply right away.
“Mother Teresa if she’s into doing miracles,” she finally answered.
She was already writing herself off. Not his affair, he told himself. “Your parents?”
“No,” she barked, so strongly she surprised both of them. The room spun for a moment as she searched for strength. “No,” she repeated, this time in a whisper. The last thing in the world she wanted was to worry them. To have them come rushing to her side, smothering her in their concern. “I’ll tell them myself when the time comes.”
It was an odd choice of words. His eyes skimmed over the tubes, the IV bottle. “Don’t you think the time’s come?”
She was torn between giving up completely and fighting for a measure of control over her life. “I’ll decide that.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “And what are you doing back in my life, anyway? The last I remember, you couldn’t wait to get out of it.”
She had a right to blame him, he supposed. He pushed the past from his mind. “I already told you, I was the one who pulled you out...”
She might have known there was no other reason for his being here. No tiny shred of feeling that might still be lingering in the back of his heart.
“Just checking things out for your police report?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
Her eyes shifted to the pitcher on the sink. “And the daisies? Is that a new requirement when doing a follow-up?”
Mitch shrugged, uncomfortable with the emotions she was stirring. “I thought it was a nice touch. You were hurt.”
“Am hurt.” She blew out a breath and turned her head toward the wall. “Don’t bring me flowers, Mitch. Or pity,” she told the wall. “I don’t need them. I don’t need anything but a miracle. If you don’t have any of those in your pocket to spare, I suggest you leave.”
She just wanted to be alone with her pain. Alone with her grief.
“I—”
“I’m very tired now, Mitch.” Clancy refused to turn and look at him aga
in. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m about to fall asleep on you.”
Fall asleep on him. The phrase conjured up an image from the past. Making love with her. Wild, passionate love that took their breath away. And when it was over, her sleeping beside him, one arm draped over his chest.
Clancy had been someone who, within an incredibly short space of time, had mattered to him. And he hadn’t wanted anyone in his life who mattered. It placed too much of a burden on him. A burden to remain alive.
Right now, it didn’t matter to him one way or another. No one was waiting for him to come home, or visit, or be a part of her life. His was completely his own and there were no extraneous thoughts to weigh him down in tight situations. There was never that added moment of hesitation when confronting a maniac with a gun or a volatile situation. Nothing to make him unduly cautious. Only the basics were at play. No wife, no mother, no children to clutter up his mind.
Or make him feel guilty.
He would have felt guilty about leaving her a widow. And there were other things tipping the scales against them. Things that would have cropped up later, even if they hadn’t interfered yet. They had been just too different to make it work.
So he had left before she could become a permanent part of his life. He had done it for her as well as for himself.
As he should be doing now. He had no business being here.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t have any miracles, Clancy.”
“Too bad,” she murmured as she began to drift off to sleep. “Then I guess you’re no good to me.”
“No,” he agreed. He looked at her and then slipped out of the room. “None at all. But then, I always said that.”
Chapter Four
It was the kind of day that made fifteen-year veterans of the police force seriously consider putting in for early retirement. Hectic, confounding, the day was a continuous medley of crimes, one springing up on the heels of another.
The unseasonable summer heat always brought out the crazies, Mitch thought as the polished, manicured man at his elbow droned on, his voice a mixture of whining and belligerence. Mitch nodded in response to his last statement, making another notation. His mind was not entirely focused on the burglary that had taken place sometime between nine and two at John Benson’s residence.
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