“Wait. You take it!” Maddy shoved the phone away.
“No, Madeline. You do it.” Kate pushed the phone against Maddy’s ear until she held it herself.
Maddy heard the phone ringing and ringing, and then a voice answered.
A woman said hello.
Chapter 19
Jolted
Peter parked in front of Tara’s apartment, the light of the television flickering inside. Her car was in the usual spot. She must be home early from the caterers’ dinner. He turned the engine off, took a deep breath, and walked up the stairs, hesitating at the top, remembering the trepidation he’d felt when he had reached the Marsdens’ front door.
It was the right thing to do.
He used his key and stepped through the doorway quietly. Tara sat on the couch staring out the window.
She had been crying, tissues scattered around on the floor, and when he walked toward her she looked straight at him with tears running down her face. “My father died.”
“What? When?”
Tara burst into tears.
Peter sat next to her on the couch and put his arm around her back as she struggled to sit up.
“I was supposed to pick up my mother after I left your office, but I stopped by your house, and Amanda had left a message on your machine. They’d taken my dad to the hospital. I rushed over to the hospital, and they were in the waiting room with my aunt. The doctor had to give my mother a sedative.”
“What happened to him?”
“Mom says he was sitting in his chair when he let out a loud sound like a yell, and by the time she reached him he’d passed out, his hands clutching his chest. She called an ambulance, but it was already too late. The paramedics said it was a massive heart attack.” Peter held Tara in his arms as she began crying wildly. “I was waiting for you so we could go back to my mother’s.”
“How’s Amanda?”
“She’s a mess, almost as bad as I am. But I was the closest to Dad. Amanda was always closer to Mom.”
Peter glanced at the answering machine on the table at the end of the couch. “There are messages on your machine.”
Tara took Peter’s hand in hers. “They’re all Jake, calling to tell you about my father. I sat here and listened to him leave them while I cried. Peter, I need you to be with me. I can’t go through this alone. I need your help.”
His eyes filled as he rocked her against his chest. He held her tightly and brushed her hair away from her face. “I’m sorry,” he murmured soothingly. “I’m here. I won’t leave you.” He said the words he knew he had to.
Tara had packed a suitcase and a bag, and he carried them for her out of the apartment to his car. She cried all the way to her parents’ house. “I’m sorry, Peter,” she said in between bursts of tears.
“Please. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve put you through a lot these past few days. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I don’t care about that. I’m just thankful you’re here with me.” There were cars parked already outside Tara’s parents’ home when they arrived. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She turned her face up to him, and for the first time Peter saw her scared and shivering. He kissed her gently on the forehead.
As they walked up the front stairs Jake greeted them by the door. Tara offered her cheek for a kiss and went into the house, sniffling into her tissue.
“Hey.” Jake patted Peter’s back.
“How’s Amanda?” Peter hugged him.
“She’s taking it bad. I don’t know what to do, man. It’s so sudden.”
“Where are Hope and Janie?”
“With the neighbors. This is no place for them right now. They wouldn’t understand the sight of Grandma crying uncontrollably.”
Peter ran his hands through his hair and leaned against the side of the house. “Jake, I was going to do it tonight,” he murmured after a moment. “I had the words ready, all set in my mind. It was all going to be said and done, and then this happened.”
“I’m sorry, buddy. I don’t know what to tell you. She’s going need some time to grieve.”
“I must sound like the most insensitive jerk right now.” Peter banged his fist on his leg. “God knows I have no desire to be. I can see Tara’s hurting, and I do care what happens to her. But I can’t be the man she wants in her life.”
“No one’s telling you to be, Peter. All I’m saying is give her some time. Her world just caved in.”
“You’re right, Jake. I know. Thank you for listening and for being there for me. I appreciate it.”
“Dude, you would do the same for me. We’re brothers.” Jake rubbed Peter’s arms, looking into his eyes. He opened the front door, and a burst of voices and light came from within. “Shall we?”
Peter nodded and followed Jake inside.
The house was full of family, moving and talking in low voices. Tara and Amanda sat on either side of their mother on the living room couch crying. Tara blew her nose into her tissue and threw her arm around their mother’s neck with a loud sob. Amanda leaned over them, speaking quietly and looked up past Tara’s shoulder as Jake and Peter came in. Her wet eyes lit up. She straightened, and Jake crossed the room quickly to kiss her.
“How are you?” Jake said softly.
Amanda tried to smile, and Peter wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” Peter whispered as she began to cry into his shoulder. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
Jake stroked her back while she cried. She turned to Jake and leaned into him. “Let me get you something to eat.” Jake put his arms around her and led her toward the kitchen door. “My poor babe.”
Peter knelt by the couch and laid one hand on Tara’s knee and one on her mother’s. Tara burst into fresh sobs, but her mother nodded slightly.
“Anything you need, you know I’m here.” He pitched his voice low.
Tara’s mother patted his hand. “We appreciate it, Peter. Thank you for coming.” Her voice was uneven, and her gaze wandered to an ashtray on her Queen Anne table. Tara sobbed loudly into her mother’s neck and shifted so that Peter’s hand slipped off her knee.
Peter shook his head sadly. He stood and moved toward the kitchen, feeling like an intruder.
In the kitchen, Jake leaned against the counter holding Amanda protectively as she picked at a paper plate of carrots slices. “Just a bite,” Jake was saying, “for me and Mr. Bunny.”
Amanda looked up at him, and they smiled faintly.
Peter made his way across the kitchen to them as Jake kissed Amanda’s head and she turned to speak to an elderly woman with blue-tinted hair.
“This is surreal.” Peter glanced around when Jake put his hand on his arm. “I don’t know what to say to Tara. She’s looking at me like I can save her, and all I can think of is—”
“Maddy?”
“I can’t tell her, and I can’t comfort her. Amanda’s your wife, Jake. This family is part of your life. But these people are strangers to me. Even Tara. I don’t belong here. I don’t know where I belong right now.”
“Go home.” Jake was keeping an eye on Amanda, who had stopped to speak to a balding man with trembling hands. “Get some rest. I’ll cover for you.”
Peter looked at Jake. “You’re always the man, aren’t you? You know I can never thank you enough.”
Jake touched Peter’s shoulder. “You’ll get your chance.”
When Peter returned to the living room where Tara sat on the couch wedged between her mother and an aunt, he moved close and whispered in her ear. “I’m going to go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know, but you and Amanda have a lot to do, and I’m just in the way. You’re going to stay here the next few nights?”
“My mother needs me.” Tara wrapped her arms tightly around his neck to kiss him.
“I’l
l call you later. But you call me if you need anything. Anything at all—okay?”
“I will.” Tara smiled through her tears, holding Peter’s hand. “You go back to your place and wait for me. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
As he started his car in the darkness Tara’s words resonated in his head. He didn’t want to be alone in his empty apartment. He felt a longing to a drive through the dark, to sort through things in his mind. He wanted the familiarity of his own family. He didn’t have that with Tara’s family. He didn’t even want that with them.
He needed the comforts of home.
Chapter 20
Lost
It was two in the morning when Peter arrived in Chatham, and as he opened the Michaels’ front door the burglar alarm went off. Richard came pounding down the stairs with a wooden baseball bat raised high, Sheila behind him in her rollers and flannel nightgown.
Peter reached for the light switch and waved his hands. “Dad, it’s me! It’s me! I’m sorry.”
“Peter? What are you doing here?”
“What’s wrong?” Sheila held up a golf club. “Who is it?”
Richard put down the bat and keyed a combination of numbers into the alarm panel, and after two more annoying beeps the alarm turned off. “You scared us half to death, son.”
“I didn’t mean to. I completely forgot the alarm. I just needed to come home.”
“Honey, are you okay?” Sheila laid the golf club on the hall table.
“Tara’s dad died today.”
“What?” Richard turned.
“I’m so sorry.” Sheila hugged him.
“Come in and sit down.” Richard took Peter’s arm, pulling him to his own leather recliner in the dim living room, and sat on the couch across from him. Richard patted Peter’s knee, and Peter smiled faintly as he grasped Richard’s hand.
Sheila pulled over an ottoman and rubbed Peter’s back. “Can I make you something, anything?”
“No, Mom. I’m fine. I’m just having a really bad night. I’m embarrassed to say it’s not for the reasons you think.”
Sheila moved closer.
“What’s going on?” Richard’s voice was serious.
Peter leaned forward. “Tara’s dad had a massive heart attack. He died on his way to the hospital.”
“Oh, honey. Tara must be a mess.” Sheila stroked his head.
“It was pretty bad. I took her to her mother’s.”
“But why do I get the feeling that’s not why you’re here?” Richard reached to turn on a lamp on an end table that cast a small circle of light.
“Because you’re right.” Peter looked up. “It’s not. I wasn’t even close to him. I feel terrible about it, but the real reason I’m here is that I needed to get away. Before I found Tara crying, I was practicing how to break it off with her.” He paused. “I just returned from my trip to Colorado.”
“Colorado?” Sheila turned to Richard.
Peter took a deep breath. “I had to come and tell you in person.”
Richard and Sheila sat quietly and listened in the lamplight as Peter told them about Maddy and Boxer, the school and the children, Ann and Tom Marsden. He told them about Tara and how it broke his heart that he couldn’t reciprocate her feelings. Most of all he told them about the kiss he had shared with Maddy.
Finally Sheila leaned in and pressed her lips to his forehead. “You have been through so much. I had no idea.”
“Mom, just being with her made me feel as if we’d never been apart.” Peter stood to pace the length of the living room and back in the low light of the lamp. “She’s the same person I was in love with all those years ago. Losing her sight hasn’t diminished her character or personality or charisma. It magnifies her best qualities—I can see myself loving her more than ever, if that’s possible.” He sat down next to Richard on the couch and leaned back, and Sheila quietly unfolded a crocheted afghan over his knees. Peter closed his eyes. “I’m going to figure this out. I have to. I’m just so tired.”
Sheila looked at Richard, who shook his head. She nodded and signaled back.
“Peter.” Richard spoke in a low voice. “When Madeline left, do you remember what you said? What you told us?”
“Vaguely. All I really remember is losing my mind trying to find her.” Behind his closed eyes, he could still see the photo of himself his parents had mounted on the wall across from the couch, twenty-two years old on the sailboat, with his dark hair in his eyes, his gaze on the horizon.
And after a long moment he remembered.
1966
Peter stood at the pay phone at the dock, his shoulders hunched in his down jacket, the wind blowing his hair over his shoulders and into his face. “I tried that! They don’t know anything. None of the neighbors know. I just saw Mr. Marsden’s car in the driveway in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, and now there’s a For Sale sign on the lawn. Also today, I found an envelope in our mailbox, no return address, with the silver chain inside. She broke up with me, Jake! I don’t understand what I did wrong. No, I can’t calm down! I know, I know. I’ll call you. I’m going home and see if my parents have gotten any news. Thanks.”
Peter hung up and walked anxiously along the dock past his sailboat, tied up and covered. Seagulls flew overhead as he quickened his pace, started a light jog, and accelerated to a full run. His breathing was loud as his feet hit the wet ground. He ran to the end of the dock and across the street and continued the eight blocks home.
Amy, on the couch, turned quickly as he came in out of breath. “Anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
Sheila came in from the kitchen and looked at Amy. “Peter, we need to talk. You’re driving yourself mad. Your father and I are worried about you.”
“I have to find her, Mom. There’s a reason Maddy left the way she did—”
“We understand that, son.” Richard came down the stairs behind Sheila. “We do. However, you’ve put your whole life on hold, and this can’t continue. What happened was awful, but it’s been months now. You’re falling behind in school. Your grades are rock bottom. At this rate, you could even lose your scholarship to grad school. Maybe this is—”
“What, Dad? For the best?” Peter clenched his fists. “I don’t want to hear that!”
“Peter!” Sheila said sternly.
‘Mom, it’s not true.” He turned to her. “It’s not for the best, and this isn’t a sign from God that there’s someone else for me. Maddy and I are in love. What we have is unique, and she knows it as well as I know. There has to be a reason she disappeared. I’m not going to go back to my life as if nothing had happened. Something did happen, something terrible and not you, nor Dad, nor Amy, nor anyone is going to tell me otherwise.”
“He didn’t mean that.” Amy reached toward him.
“Son, what if things have changed?”
Sheila glanced at Richard.
“What things?” Peter whirled toward him, his eyes harsh.
“What if Madeline’s changed? What if something she can’t possibly—” Sheila stopped and looked up at Richard.
“What are you getting at, Mom? That she fell in love with someone else? No! Not possible. I know her inside and out, and behind those beautiful eyes is the most honest person in the world.”
“But something out of her control—an illness—”
“Is Maddy ill? Did you find out something? Because I will go wherever I have to go, do whatever I have to do for her. I want you to know that nothing else matters. Not my future, not school, not my career, nothing.”
“Not even meeting Rob Rowland, that architect you admire so much?” Richard raised his voice. “Not even everything you’ve studied and worked for? Grad school starts in September. You only have this summer to prepare. You know how long that waiting list was—”
“Richard.” Sheila spoke with
fear. “Tell him if he drops out of school now he’ll be drafted. He’ll be sent to Vietnam.” Her voice shook.
“I don’t care!” Peter shouted. “I’ll drop everything the minute I find her!”
“Oh, sweetheart,” cried Sheila, as Richard took a step toward him.
“Don’t touch me—” Peter’s face contorted, almost unrecognizable.
Sheila put her hand behind her back and looked up at Richard, who stood motionless, glaring helplessly. Richard glanced down at Sheila. Finally, Sheila turned away from Peter, a piece of paper in her hand.
1985
Peter woke up under the afghan on the couch as the morning sunlight began to stream into the room and across him. Sheila was in the kitchen, where he could hear her plugging in the coffee pot and opening the refrigerator. Richard’s footsteps sounded quietly across the kitchen floor. Sheila began beating batter in a bowl, and Richard poured himself a cup of coffee.
Just as Peter was opening his eyes, Richard cleared his throat. “You know we’re going to have to tell him.”
Chapter 21
Regrets
Maddy sat on her white Adirondack chair on her deck in the faint light of dawn. A hot cup of coffee was in her hands, and Boxer lay by her feet.
She hadn’t slept all night.
She thought of the woman on Peter’s phone. Why had she answered? Did she live there? Did she know about Maddy? Maybe he’d only come to Colorado out of pity after all. Maybe he’d told the woman all about her blindness, and they’d felt sorry for her. Maddy sighed. She wondered if she would ever be able to trust her instincts again. She remembered what Kate had said—her karma recognizing Peter’s.
The sleepy voices of birds came to her as she took another sip of coffee. She thought about what life with Peter would be like? How comfortable she’d felt by his side. He had that masculine way about him, his voice, his touch, and his mannerism; strong and powerful yet gentle enough to show kindness. That something inside him had stayed the same, the part that made her feel so secure. The man she had spent the day with was still charming and sweet, just as she had remembered. His smell—not the obvious smell of cologne, but a mixture of his soap and shampoo, his skin after a run, his hair after a swim, all so vivid in her mind. She remembered what his hands felt like in hers, how her body fit his perfectly. The kisses—
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