It was after the doctor had walked away that she also thanked Will, who didn’t want her gratitude. He wanted Lou, but her attitude toward him was distant. She seemed…cut off, taking care of business but not really present.
Shock, he figured. In the past weeks, she’d been through more emotional ups and downs than any seven human beings experienced their entire lives, culminating in the bloody violence of several hours ago. He was pretty shaken up, too, but his concern was all for Lou. He wanted to comfort her, but she didn’t seem to want his soothing words, didn’t want his arms around her.
Which hurt him, deep inside. Also scared the piss out of him.
“Lou,” he said, reaching for her hand. She picked up her coffee cup before he could touch her and took a sip.
“Hospital coffee is the pits,” she said.
“Agreed.”
She gazed at him, through him, really, and shook her head. “I wonder how she did it?”
“Who?”
“Mom. Janice. Rita. I wonder how on earth she managed to escape the senator’s notice all those years, how she stayed hidden from him. And how did she know how to get new names, birth certificates, Social Security numbers for both of us?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she read a book. Or had a friend in the CIA. I guess we’ll never know.”
She stared off into space, musing aloud. “She was something else, wasn’t she? A true hero.”
“That she was.”
Setting down her cup, Lou faced him. Still distant, none of that warmth in her eyes which he’d come to expect from her brown-eyed gaze. “So tell me again what Lincoln said? I mean, I know that’s why you busted your butt to get here, but my mind hasn’t been able to take in all the details.”
“He told me that he’s been bothered for years by what he’d done for his brother. Linc was the one who covered Jackson’s tracks after Emma Mae died. And by the way, he honestly doesn’t know if it was murder or an accident, so we have no way of knowing that one, either. But Linc was the one who went to the house after Emma Mae’s death, gathered up the body and tossed it in the ocean.”
Lou shuddered; again, Will wanted to reach out to comfort her, but he kept his hands to himself as he went on.
“Linc told me that over the years, Jackson had tried to find Rita, and it drove him crazy. But she’d been really good at covering her tracks. He never knew about the existence of Janice McAndrews. And she did keep her word. After that one time, twenty years ago, the senator never heard from her again. In fact, as time went by he managed to put the diary’s existence out of his mind…until a few weeks ago when Linc called him up and told him he’d seen Rita Conlon’s picture in the notice of Janice McAndrews’s death.”
“And after you heard all this from Lincoln, that’s when you got scared.”
“Yeah. I was worried they were going to come after you, and you weren’t answering your phones, any of them.”
“Because I was at Margaret’s house picking up the diary.”
“Which was what they were looking for when they broke into your place the first time.” He made a face of disgust. “And I’m the one who sent them back here tonight because I went to DeWitt’s office and told him what we’d found out. That was probably a dumb move on my part, but I wanted his statement.”
“It’s your job, Will,” she said with another shrug. “Don’t blame yourself.”
He was taken aback by her graciousness, however impersonally it had been dispensed. Lou, of all people, letting him off the hook because he was following his reporter’s code? “Thanks for saying that,” he told her.
“Did those men destroy all your notes?”
“Nah. I back up everything on the Net. Not to worry.”
“Well, good.”
“Yeah, at least I can feel okay about that part. But I’d like to help you, Lou. Anything I can do? Tell me, please.” He waited, his breath stopping in his throat.
A silent several moments went by before she shook her head slowly from side to side. “I have no idea what I need or want right now. I’m tired, I’m heartbroken, I’m confused.”
He took her hands in his, and this time she didn’t pull away. “I know what I want. You. I love you, Lou.” He had to swallow a lump gathering in the back of his throat before going on. “When I saw DeWitt pointing a gun at you, I knew, for certain, that you were more precious to me than anything else in my life.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
She locked gazes with him for another silent moment, then looked down. “Don’t ask me to make any kind of decision Will, not now, not tonight.”
He should have stopped there, let her be, but he was driven by some deep need for reassurance. “Are you still angry with me for keeping information from you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess what you’re saying is that it’s kind of like a psychiatrist who can’t discuss his patients, or a government security person who can’t reveal state secrets. You have certain things you need to keep close to the vest until it’s time to let them out.”
“Yes. That’s it. Exactly.” She was letting him know she really got it, and he grabbed at it like a starving man at a soup kitchen. “And this particular time—one in a million—what I had to keep close to the vest involved you and your background. It will never happen again, I’m sure of it.”
He was pushing, doing a selling job on her, he thought, disgusted with himself.
“Still,” she said with a sigh, “I don’t know. We want different things, Will. We value different qualities. Like you said, I am hearth and home and babies, and you very well might find me an albatross around your neck. I really do have an awful problem with trust. I may be too deeply scarred to ever really trust anyone again. At one time, I would have sacrificed an arm to hear everything you’re saying to me tonight. But at the moment—” she shrugged again, listlessly “—I’m not sure what I feel.”
He gazed at her, again filled with self-contempt. He’d been so consumed with making sure Lou was his that he hadn’t been paying attention to what she needed, which was time. She looked drained, pale as a ghost. Even her freckles seemed to have lost their color.
“All right,” Will said, “but please don’t shut the door on us. I’ll be leaving again. I have a story to write, a big one. But I’ll be back, that I promise, and when I am, we’ll talk about how different we are and what we both want out of life. Will that be okay?”
She didn’t answer, but this time when she met his gaze, he swore he saw a flicker of something hopeful in her eyes.
But then, that could have been because he wanted to see it there.
As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, Lou looked out the window onto the street below. For the first time in a month, there were no reporters gathered at the clinic’s door, waiting for it to open, hoping to catch Lou for a quick sound bite.
At last, she thought, reaching for her final cup of coffee before she went down to work. It had been the month from hell, but, it seemed, it was finally over. Senator Jackson DeWitt’s death and disgrace had filled headlines all over the world, but the story had run its course. There would be a new scandal today or tomorrow to take its place.
Both Lincoln and Schmidt had spoken for the record, resulting in further revelations about her biological father’s life—a series of underage mistresses throughout his marriage, his physically rough treatment of some of them. They had sickened her to the core. The constant phone calls to Lou’s home, offers for TV appearances, the entire media circus had turned her into a recluse, holed up in her house, afraid to leave it for fear of being accosted.
But now she was yesterday’s news, and it was with a huge sigh of relief that she headed for the stairs down to her clinic. When she stayed focused on the animals who needed her care, she was able to cope with everything else in her life…or lack of any life at all.
“No reporters today, Dr. Lou,” Teeny said, greeting her with a grin when she reached the bottom step.
She made a thumbs-up gesture and grinned back at him. “Small blessings, Teeny. We must always count them,” she said, pushing open the door to Examination Room One.
And stopped dead in her tracks.
Will was there, holding Oscar’s leash in one hand and a huge bouquet of flowers in the other. Mouth open, she stared at him, as her heart soared right out of her chest.
God, she’d missed him!
But she held back from saying anything. Just kept staring at him. And then he grinned, the right side of his mouth quirking up just a little more than the left, and she had to cover her own mouth to keep the love from pouring out.
“Hi, Lou,” Will said, looking somewhat tentative.
She swallowed, let her hand fall to her side. “Will.”
He shot a glance at the flowers in his hand, then held them straight out. “These are for you.” The earnest look on his face reminded her of an old painting, by Norman Rockwell or somebody, where a young boy is offering his teacher an apple, and the crush he has on her is apparent on his shiny face.
“Thank you.” She held out her hand and took them, setting the colorful blooms down on the examination table that separated them. “Is Oscar okay?”
At the sound of his name, the pug let out one of his little groans. Will glanced down at him, then back up at Lou. “He’s fine. They wouldn’t let me see you without being accompanied by an animal.”
Lou allowed herself a smile. “My people take care of me.”
“I’m glad.” That look came over his face then, the tender, vulnerable, totally open one. “I’m back, Lou. I’ve missed you like crazy.”
“How did you find the time to miss me? At the moment, you’re more famous than Bob Woodward.”
He shrugged. “And I don’t care. Isn’t that funny? I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame, got all the kudos I’ve ever wanted, and it was hollow, because you weren’t there to share it with me.”
It was strange what occurred to her then. Always, when Lou thought about her and Will, it was he who had the power, she who had none. Will called the shots, end of discussion. At least, that was how she’d always perceived it. Not now. Standing in this examination room, if anyone had any power over anyone, it was Lou who was on top.
And so what? she thought, and who cared? Here was the love of her life, sweetly courting her with flowers. Power struggles or the perception of them, that who’s-number-one? kind of thinking, had no place in the love between equals.
For that’s what they were, Will and her. Equals. Not Mr. Popular and Ms. Nobody. Each had strengths and weaknesses, neither was perfect, only human. If he’d hurt her by honoring some lofty journalist’s code, she’d made the mistake of putting Will on a pedestal as the man who could make all the pain of her past disappear, and that was too great a burden for any one person to shoulder.
These were interesting thoughts and one day soon, she would discuss them with him. For now, she was just too happy to say much of anything.
She picked up the flowers and buried her nose in them, then looked up at him. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly. “And I’ve missed you, too.”
Will blew out a relieved breath and came around the end of the table, dragging the snorting dog with him. He dropped the leash, spread his arms, and Lou went right into them, burying her nose in his old sweatshirt, sniffing in that laundry-soap-and-pine smell of his. As his strong arms enfolded her, a sense of inner peace and contentment that she’d never felt before crept over her.
“Oh, Lou,” Will sighed, kissing the top of her head. “Oh, sweetheart.”
And then he went on to tell her all his plans, how he was thinking of taking a leave of absence from reporting for a while because he had an offer to write a biography of the late Senator Jackson DeWitt, a “true American hero,” a deeply flawed human being: the perfect story for our times. Would she mind? Would it hurt her if he did that?
Still contentedly enfolded in his embrace, Lou thought about it briefly, then said, “No.”
Then, Will went on, he planned to be based in D.C. three or four days a week, for research, meetings, interviews, etc. The rest of the time he would spend here in Susanville, to take some quiet time, get to know the old town again, but most importantly, to be with Lou. How did that sound to her?
“Good.”
Finally, he’d been giving it some thought, he told her, and yeah, he wasn’t too crazy about weddings, but he wondered if she’d be interested in marrying him anyway. He wasn’t sure what kind of husband he would make, but he would give it a try, do his best, be aware of his tendencies to overwork, etc. And what did she think of that?
Lou raised her head, looked up at him and smiled, feeling so at peace and so filled with joy, she hardly knew how to respond. “I love you,” was what she came up with. It seemed to say it all.
“Yeah,” Will said with a nod. “And I love you. How many kids do you want?”
“Four.”
“Four?” he asked, his eyes widening.
“Four.”
He gazed into her eyes, grinned that lopsided grin of his, and said, “Works for me.”
Oscar snorted twice, wheezed once and curled up at their feet, prepared for a long snooze.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6737-8
WHISPERS AND LIES
Copyright © 2005 by Diane Pershing
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