by Jill Barnett
He grabbed a fourth doughnut. “Remember. Moderation.”
“Like four doughnuts in three minutes?”
He grinned. “Five. How’s the IV shunt?”
“It’s difficult to sleep with. I roll on it.”
“Let me see.” He touched it. “Does that hurt? Sometimes they can go bad. Watch for swelling or discoloration.”
She pulled a doughnut from the box and dipped it in her coffee. “Okay.”
“I’ve scheduled your surgery for Thursday.”
“Oh.” She dropped the doughnut on the counter. The bite she took was already halfway back up her throat.
“I know you’re worried. We need to do this, Laurel.”
“You said second surgeries carry a higher risk. That would worry anyone.” She braced her hands on the countertop. “Exactly what percentages are we talking about here?”
“It’s not a good idea for you to go into this thinking the worst.”
“God, I hate it when you avoid the answer. I’m already a worst-case-scenario kind of gal, especially because I went into surgery so blindly the last time.”
He stood and took her hands in his. Again she looked down at those hands, the ones that would hold her and fix her heart. She wondered if Greg had Cale’s hands. “You have to trust me.” There it was again, that calm voice, combined with a long-ago familiar look that could get her to do anything, from actually considering decaffeinated coffee to giving up her virginity.
“I’m so damned scared.”
He put his arms around her. “Don’t be. Trust me.”
She closed her eyes and just let him hold her. When she opened her eyes, Jud was looking at them through the front window, roses in his hand.
“Oh, God.” She stepped out of Cale’s arms. “It’s Jud.” She ran to the front door.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jud walked right past her toward Cale. “What the hell are you doing here?” He turned to her. “What is he doing here?”
“I’ve only been here a few minutes,” Cale said evenly.
“Long enough to move in on her, from what I saw in the window.”
“Is that what you think?” Cale sounded genuinely surprised. “You think I would do that?”
“We did it to each other thirty years ago.”
“You’re being an ass.”
Jud dropped the flowers and moved dangerously toward his brother. Laurel stepped in between them. “What are you doing, Jud? This isn’t a competition. You’re acting like this is that stupid basketball game.” And then she had the awful thought What if I am?
“She’s right, Jud. You’re trying to make this into something it isn’t.”
“It looks like something to me.”
“Everything looks like something to you. That’s your problem,” Cale said pointedly. “Yes, I have feelings for Laurel, but it’s not what you think.”
“Then why are you here?”
Cale didn’t speak. He just looked at her.
“I asked you a question,” Jud said. “Why are you here?”
“He doesn’t deserve the truth,” Laurel said stubbornly.
“No, I don’t suppose he does.”
“I want to punch your lights out.” Jud’s voice was tight.
“Why?” Cale asked.
Jud said nothing.
“What’s wrong, Jud? Say it. Come on. Say it.”
Jud stood stonily silent.
“Okay, I’ll say it. It’s an old habit that started a long time ago, Laurel, long before you ever came into our lives, wedged between us by Victor. You see, Jud has to win.” Cale squared off with him. “Even when everything about Victor and you, Victor and me, Victor and us was eating me alive, Jud, even when I took myself out of the competition, you always had to create something where there was nothing. Just so you could win. Why? It’s so fucking nuts. When are you going to learn you don’t have anything to prove?”
Jud faced her. “You told me you were going to Chicago. You told Annalisa there was some problem with the job. There was nothing wrong at the job. No one called you. You lied. It looks to me like you lied to be with Cale.”
“I didn’t stay here to be with Cale.”
“A nice little postcoital breakfast like we had Monday?”
She saw red. She was shaking.
“Easy, Laurel.” Cale stepped toward her.
Jud punched him so hard Cale stumbled back and hit the wall.
“Cale!” She ran over to him.
“I’m okay.” He rubbed his jaw.
She faced Jud. “He just came here a few minutes before you did. And yes, I lied. To my daughter. Which has nothing to do with you. Sometimes a lie is safer and less painful than the truth. I’ve lied a lot in my life, Jud. I used to feel guilty about it. But someone told me once that everyone lies. It’s true. Can you possibly imagine having to tell the absolute truth for your whole entire life? Who could do that? We lie to protect the people we care about. We lie to bring joy to those we love. We lie to our children about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I’d be willing to bet you’ve lied on your taxes.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Only the pompous and self-righteous rage about lying. Because the truth is, everyone does it. Do you want to know why I lied to Annalisa?”
“No. It doesn’t matter anymore. You said it, Laurel. This has nothing to do with me.” Jud walked out.
Tears ran down her cheeks and she was panting, her hands tight-fisted.
“Go after him, Laurel.”
“No.”
“Tell him what’s going on. You know I can’t.”
“No.”
“You’re being as stubborn as he is.”
“I don’t want to talk to him right now He doesn’t trust me. He needs to cool off.” She saw Cale’s mouth was bleeding. “Let me get you some ice.”
Sunday night, Laurel called Pat after the 60 Minutes exposé on the Wardwell case to tell her she wouldn’t be in the office until Tuesday. The next morning she took a seven o’clock flight to Seattle. On the flight, the shunt began to swell and discolor. Laurel left the plane and went straight to Swedish Hospital emergency. Twenty minutes later a woman named Donna sat down on a rolling stool and took Laurel’s arm in her hand. She removed the IV shunt and replaced it with another. “Whatever it is that brings you up here must be pretty important.”
Laurel watched her tap for a vein. “It is.”
Donna looked at her expectantly.
“I’m here to see my son, before I have surgery.” Laurel admitted.
“What? He can’t come to you?”
“No. He’s an attorney and has an important trial. He can’t leave.”
“Your patient history says you had valve surgery seven years ago.”
“I did.” Laurel said. “But there’s a tear. They have to see if they can repair it.”
“When?”
“Thursday. I need to see him before—” Laurel couldn’t say it. She didn’t want to voice it. “Before I go under the knife.” She laughed nervously.
“You’ll do fine, honey.” But the look the nurse gave her said she understood. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“It feels like a lifetime.”
“Kids.” Donna shook her head, disgusted. “My son at college never calls. Unless he needs something. The older one is in the marines, stationed at Camp Pendleton. He calls me every week.” She stood. “There you go. All fixed up. You tell that son of yours when you see him that he needs to call you. You’re his mother.”
What would she say to him—Hello, I’m your mother? Morally, was she really his mother?
It was eleven o’clock when Laurel left the hospital for the courthouse downtown. The cab pulled up behind a white news van with the station call letters KOMO TV painted on its side. She paid the cab and walked past the camera and news media milling around the front steps. A line of people at the metal detector inside the front door held her up, and it
was eleven fifteen when she sat down on a hard bench in the hallway outside the courtrooms. Opposite her were long glass windows and a lushly planted garden on the other side.
Some people stood in the garden, smoking cigarettes and talking casually, and she was swept with a feeling of sadness and resentment. She had never smoked. She had never done anything she knew would damage her heart. But the reason she was even standing in that courthouse came screaming into her mind and forced her to question how she’d lived her life. Maybe her choices—so many of them wrong—had damaged her heart from the inside out.
She checked her watch too often, every few minutes. It was eleven twenty-three. She studied the people who walked by. Two men and a woman, talking as they walked briskly, briefcases in their hands. They wore trim-fitted dark suits and expensive shoes. Attorneys. A woman in a dark red dress with a gold name badge and flat shoes rushed down the hallway, slipping into a white sweater. A clerk late for lunch? A young couple with a baby that looked just under a year walked with a woman dressed like an attorney. As she passed by, she said, “I’ll send you the adoption papers as soon as they are recorded.” The couple was laughing. The way the mother held the child, the looks of joy and wonder on their faces and in their voices. She had heard that laughter, had seen that look thirty years ago.
Eleven thirty-six.
She opened her purse and took out a photograph, then asked herself why she had brought it. Did she really think she wouldn’t recognize him? Greg O’Hanlon. Even if his image hadn’t been there on her TV, even without her own investigator’s photos over the years, even if they had even been in the same room, she believed she would have sensed it on some innate, cellular plane of recognition.
Down the hall, the door to Courtroom No. 3 swung open and people flooded out. Laurel stood, holding her purse tightly in both hands. The noise level grew and sound echoed up off the marble floors. He was taller in person, cleanly groomed, and dressed in a gray suit and pale blue tie. He looked Banning through and through. She walked toward him, her head buzzing, not knowing what she would do or say, just walking, walking. Someone shouted his name and he turned so suddenly he ran right into her, knocked the breath from her. She started to fall. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “I’m sorry!”
She looked up into his face and for just an instant saw her mother there in his expression.
“Are you okay?” He was honestly concerned.
Was she okay? Could she say it? I’m your mother . . . birth mother . . .some kind of mother?
The son she gave up had his hands on her shoulders and was waiting for an answer.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure? I’m so sorry, ma’am. I didn’t see you.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
Someone called his name again. Closer this time.
He released her and turned, grinning. “Hey, Pop!”
A tall, elegant man with a face she’d seen years ago through the nursery glass clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s hit Smarty’s for a sandwich. When do you have to be back, son?”
“I’ve got until one,” Greg said.
“Good. Let’s get out of this zoo.”
She watched them walk away, talking in the too-perfect image of a father and son. But Greg stopped and turned around, looking at her to see if she was still okay. She, who was a stranger to him. What swept through her at that moment was something intimately profound—love, warm and golden, different from the kind of love that melts you from the inside out, different from passion and desire, but pure, instinctive, something only a woman had the power to feel. One of the biggest secrets of life—this natural maternal emotion lost to men—came over her sweetly. She felt it in every pore of her body, and understood it was eternal.
Laurel raised her hand to her son and smiled. He smiled back at a stranger, turned, and walked on with his father. She stood there long after the hallway was quiet and empty. A sense of peace like none she had felt before completed her—one of those rare times in life when everything was right with the world. She walked outside under a clear Seattle sky, stepped into a cab, and headed for the airport.
Annalisa opened the front door to the beach house at seven thirty Monday evening and called out, “Mom?” She found her in the living room, poking at the fire, where a large yellow envelope curled and disappear in the flames. “What are you doing?”
“Burning some old papers I’ve been meaning to get rid of for a long time. Get yourself a Coke. Have you eaten?”
“I had pizza,” Annalisa called out from the kitchen, and a few minutes later she walked back to the living room with a mug of tea. Her mother had settled on the sofa, her knees drawn up, and was huddled in the corner hugging a silk pillow. “Here.” Annalisa tossed her a throw. “You look like you’re freezing. Should I poke that fire?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Please. Just sit.”
Annalisa kicked off her shoes and spread the throw over both of them the way they always did when she was young and they sat together on foggy nights drinking hot mint chocolate with homemade marshmallows, and even a few months ago, when they spent the night curled together eating microwave popcorn and watching long hours of Pride and Prejudice.
“It didn’t take you long to get here.”
“I flew back this afternoon. I was at a friend’s place in Huntington Harbor when you called.” She was with Matt when her mother called. What was between them was all so new and consuming and wonderful.
“How was Chicago?”
Blissful was her first thought, but she said, “Chaotic.”
“It always is. But I knew you could do this. Did you have any problems?”
“Not with the show or the suppliers. I’ll go over the lists with you at the office. The plans are there.”
They lapsed into silence. I’ll tell her now, Annalisa thought, but looked at her mother and her words disappeared. The fire snapped and crackled. She sipped her tea. Outside, the view of the water had disappeared into thick white fog that condensed on the windows.
“I have to talk to you about something,” they said at the same time, then both laughed nervously.
Her mother adjusted the throw and sank farther into the couch. “You first.”
“Daddy showed up in Chicago. He said he was there because he knew I needed his help.”
“I hope you told him off.”
“I’d already done most of the work by the time he got there.” She set her tea down on a clay coaster. “I think he was really looking for you, but I’m not certain. And Matthew was there.”
“Sounds rather convenient.”
“Not really.”
Her mother was no fool. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m seeing Matthew. It just happened. There. I mean he came there and I remembered what you said about life and relationships and I stopped fighting it . . . him. Then Daddy came to the hotel and figured out what was going on. He gave Matthew a pretty hard time. Archaic ideas about marrying me. All he needed was a shotgun. Stop laughing.”
“I’m sorry. But that’s so like your father. How’d Matt hold up?”
“Pretty well, actually. Until Jud came.”
“Jud was in Chicago?”
“He flew in from Denver. He was definitely looking for you.”
“And instead he found you and Matthew and Beric.”
“It felt as if the hotel room had a revolving door.”
“No wonder he looked so burned out when I saw him.”
“He handled Daddy beautifully, especially after I told Daddy you were sleeping with him.”
Her mother groaned. “Oh, shoot. Annalisa.”
“He was going to find out, Mom.”
“I would have liked to have kept that information private. For a while.”
“Well, he knows now. Besides, you implied Jud was important to you.”
“I did?”
“Yes. On the beach that day. You wouldn’t say much. You wouldn’t be evasive if y
ou felt nothing for him.” Annalisa shifted her feet under her. “Don’t worry. I’m glad you’re finally seeing someone. Now what exactly did you want to talk to me about?”
“There wasn’t any problem with the job while you were in Chicago. I stayed here because I had a doctor’s appointment Tuesday.”
“What kind of doctor’s appointment?”
“With my cardiologist, Dr. Collins. You’ve met him. He called in a specialist. An old friend actually.” She gave a short laugh. “Matthew’s dad.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. I knew him when he was just going into med school.”
Now Annalisa understood her father’s comment about “the brothers.”
“I had a test on Wednesday, which revealed some problems.”
Annalisa’s stomach sank and she felt suddenly sick. Her mind filled with the vision of her mother looking gray and pale and the nightmares she had all those years ago when she would wake up afraid that her mother would die.
“They think I have a tear in the valve and they need to go in and see what’s wrong. And fix it.” Her mother’s voice was strong and even, for her sake. “Cale Banning is a heart surgeon, apparently quite a good one.”
“When is the surgery?”
“Thursday.”
“It’s going to be okay, Mom. It’s going to be okay.” She was trying to soothe her, but like a little girl fell into her arms instead.
“Are you crying?”
“Yes.”
Her mother let her cry, then said, “I didn’t want to tell you about this over the phone, when there were so many miles between us. You understand that, right?”
“I would have been hysterical.”
“You’re stronger than that.”
Annalisa pulled back. “Look at me now. So stupid. This is happening to you and I’m crying. I wish I were more like you, Mom. You’re the strongest woman I know.”
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re older because I can tell you the truth this time. I don’t feel very strong right now, honey.” The expression on her mom’s face said it all. Annalisa remembered the look from years back, when she was small and wandered away, lost in the meandering retail miles of South Coast Plaza. Hours later, reunited, her mother looked just like she did now.