by Nancy Thayer
“Actually, no, because the bodice pulls slightly at the back. I will need to let it out an inch here by the waistline. You have been eating too much.”
Alison laughed out loud at Anya’s blunt declaration. She stared at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, while Anya bustled around with a tape measure. In the wedding boutique, Alison had been scattered, but here in her own home in her own bedroom, she took a deep breath and gave herself over to the pleasure of being cared for and even bossed around by someone else. She remembered her mother making clothes for her when she was a child, making Alison stand on a stool while her mother pinned up the hem.
“I brought this,” Anya said, lifting something small and ivory from another box. “You might like, you might not like. But I think is good.”
Alison bent her knees so Anya could place the short, round satin hat, like something Jacqueline Kennedy might have worn, on Alison’s hair. A chin-length veil of ivory net sprinkled with a few sparkling crystals surrounded Alison’s face, and the back of the hat was embellished with a small ivory satin rose and more crystals.
Alison burst into tears.
“You like, eh?” Anya crossed her arms over her chest and smiled triumphantly.
“Oh, Anya, I could kiss you!” Alison cried.
“Okay, not necessary.” Anya took a few steps back. “You have shoes?”
“Yes. Yes, I have the shoes. I had them dyed to match the fabric sample you gave me. They’re in a box in the closet. I’ll get them.”
“No, no. I can get them. You need to see yourself in the mirror.”
Anya pulled the box from the closet. She took off the lid and set the ivory satin high-heeled shoes in front of Alison. Alison put a hand, for balance, on Anya’s shoulder and stepped into the shoes.
“Oh, my,” Alison said. “Look at me. And I’m not even wearing jewelry or makeup.”
“Yes. Is nice dress.”
It’s more than nice! Alison wanted to protest, but she understood that by keeping aloof, Anya was giving Alison the great gift of freedom. Freedom for this brief moment to indulge, to be thrilled, to admire herself and fill with eagerness for her wedding day, when the man she loved would see her looking like this, as splendidly dressed as a queen. This was why people had ceremonies to renew their vows, Alison thought, so they could celebrate the triumph of their lasting love, yes, but also to celebrate the beauty of being alive.
“Anya, I’m going to call my friend Margo and have her come over now to see this dress. Then we’ll have coffee and cake.”
“Very good idea,” Anya said.
twenty-five
Welsh showed no relation to any language Jane had ever learned or even seen. Wales in Welsh was Cymru; Hospital was Ysbyty. Fortunately, all street signs were in both English and Welsh, and the taxi driver who parked in front of the airport spoke English.
When she arrived in Bangor, it was after two in the afternoon in Wales, but early morning in New York City. The time difference confused her poor brain, already tired from the rush to the airport and the plane ride and then the train journey. Even so, Jane was shot through with adrenaline. Finally, she was here! And Scott was alive! As the driver steered them through the unknown streets, Jane couldn’t keep from babbling, telling the driver about Scott’s fall, and her fear, and Derfel’s call, and her utter relief.
“You’ve come a long way,” the driver said.
“Yes,” Jane responded thoughtfully. “Yes. You’ve no idea.”
“Oh, I’ve been across the pond a few times myself.”
“I didn’t mean— Where did you go? New York City?”
“Ha! I might as well go to London. No, I like that place you have over there called Las Vegas. I enjoy playing cards and my wife takes in a few shows. One day we drive out into the desert and scare ourselves half to death looking at all that sand, then we come home happy.”
“I’ve never been to Las Vegas,” Jane admitted.
“No? You should go. Now here we are. I’ll be taking you to the emergency entrance of the hospital,” the driver told her.
“Of course.” Jane bit her lip. “I hope they’ll let me see him.”
“Oh, they’re very nice at the hospital,” the driver assured her.
Jane paid the driver with her colorful new pounds and stepped out of the taxi. In front of her was a long, low building, with ambulances parked in bays nearby and a brightly lit room showing through wide glass double doors. The sign overhead said, MYNEDFA BRYS. Helpfully, it also said, EMERGENCY ENTRANCE.
Inside, she found an enclosed cubicle with two women chatting away in what sounded like Martian. As soon as she approached them, they became professional.
“Hello. How may we help you?”
Jane almost asked them why they assumed she wasn’t Welsh, but then she realized she was dragging a rolling suitcase behind her.
“My husband is here, I think. He had a fall on Mount Snowdon earlier today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I mean, the time changes are making my brain fuzzy—” Now that she was here, actually in the Bangor, Wales, hospital, her body was acting crazy, shaking and trembling, and her mind wouldn’t work.
“What is his name, please, dear?” The nurse was young, with bright brown eyes and creamy skin.
“Scott Hudson.”
“Ah, yes. He has a broken arm.”
“Can I see him?”
“Surely. Come along.” The nurse stepped out of the small windowed office, gave Jane a smile—didn’t that mean he was all right?—and led Jane down a hallway, into an elevator, off at another floor, and down a hallway until she came to a room with an open door and a beeping machine and a figure lying very still on a hospital bed.
“Should I wake him?”
“Go on, dear. He’ll be a bit groggy, you know, he’s got a small morphine drip for the pain.”
“The pain!”
“It’s all right. He’ll be glad to see you.”
Jane leaned her suitcase against the wall and quietly approached the bed. There Scott was. Lying so still beneath the snow white sheet and blanket. His eyes were closed. Already he had a dark shadow of beard along his jaw. An IV stand stood next to him, and a liquid dripped slowly into a vein in his arm. Her strong, powerful, sturdy Scott, lying in a hospital bed, with his left arm encased in a plaster cast and a needle in his right arm!
“Look at his fingers, Mrs. Hudson.” The nurse read a chart from the end of the bed, then moved close to Jane, as if to share her strength. “His fingers are pink. That means his circulation is fine. He’ll probably be released tomorrow.”
Jane swallowed her tears and came close to the bed. She took his good hand in hers, bent close to him, and said softly, “Scott? Scott. It’s Jane. I’m here.”
Scott’s eyes opened. His utterly gorgeous hazel eyes. For a moment, he seemed to be orienting himself. After a minute, he said, “Jane.”
Jane burst into tears.
“Hey,” Scott said and tugged on her hand.
She leaned over and kissed him. She ran her hands over his face. “Oh, Scott, you’re alive, you’re here, you’re okay.”
“I know. I’m luckier than I deserve to be. I was an idiot…”
“No, anyone can fall. I read the comments on the Internet on the way over. No one can judge when the mist will come in. Tell me about your arm. Does it hurt?”
A weak smile. “Not now. I’m pumped full of drugs. It hurt like the devil when I fell.”
“How did it happen? Tell me. Wait, can I sit on the bed or should I get a chair?”
She looked around. The nurse had quietly disappeared.
“Sit on the bed. This side.”
Jane hitched herself up on the bed, and Scott kept hold of her hand.
“Tell me.”
“It’s not dramatic. It’s ridiculously simple.
I’d hiked up the Crib Goch path and I was beginning along the ridge. They call it a scramble there, because you need your hands. I was exhilarated, energized, I was so close, the air was sweet and pure—I thought I could run the rest of the way. It’s magic up there, Jane. I want to climb Mount Snowdon with you sometime, not now, and not the path I took.”
“How did you fall?”
Scott’s eyes were bright. “Suddenly this thick white mist rolled in from nowhere and the temperature dropped. I took my sweatshirt out of my backpack and pulled it on over my head and that movement unbalanced me. My foot slipped. Down I went.”
“Were you terrified?”
“I didn’t have time to be scared. It happened so fast. It happened like this”—Scott snapped his fingers—“unimaginably quickly. I was sliding, almost rolling, and I reached out my arm to stop myself, and I knocked into a sharp edge of slate—it’s slate everywhere up there. I hit the slate, and my body came down on top of my arm at the same time. I heard the bone crack. It hurt, but not as much as it did when I found myself lodged between two boulders.”
“Scott, how frightening!”
“The fall was frightening. I felt better, safer, when I was stopped by the boulders. I could have fallen to my death from up there. People have. I was thankful to be stopped. I caught my breath. I went for my cellphone, but it had fallen out of the backpack when I got out my sweatshirt. The mist was still all around. I took off my backpack—that’s when I knew for sure I’d broken my arm. The pain was red hot. I couldn’t use it. I cursed and somehow wrestled my backpack off with one hand. I got out my wool hat and put it on. I drank some water. I had trail mix if I got hungry, but I wasn’t hungry. I huddled tight, trying to keep warm, but my arm hurt like shit and was kind of dangling, flopping. I had a flannel shirt in my backpack, I was wearing my T-shirt and had been warm enough in that because I was moving. I made a kind of sling, tying the sleeves together in front—I had to use my left hand, the hand attached to the broken arm, and that was a pain, I can tell you. But I got my arm more or less immobilized against my chest.”
“Smart,” Jane said.
“It helped keep me from panicking, doing all that stuff. I drank some water. Every so often, I’d yell out for help. I didn’t hear anyone. I had no idea how far I’d fallen or if I was stuck near some kind of trail. I was there ten hours.”
“Ten hours! By yourself, and with a broken arm? Oh, Scott.” Careful not to jiggle his arm, Jane leaned forward to kiss his face. “Scott, you’re alive, you’re here, that’s all that matters.”
“No. Wait, Jane.” Awkwardly, he pushed Jane away.
Her heart stopped. He had pushed her away. He was trying to sit up, and he pushed up with his good right arm until he was slightly tilted toward her. She reached out to help him balance, and they both laughed at how awkward this was, and then he flinched, and she knew he was in pain even with the medication.
She asked, “Did you break anything else?”
“No, but I earned several Technicolor bruises. And my hands are scraped.” He held one hand up to show the reddened palm and fingers. “But that’s nothing. Jane, listen. I need to tell you something.”
“It’s all right, Scott,” Jane said. She wanted to put her hand over his lips to keep him from saying they should divorce. Because she knew that was what he was going to say, that while he’d been curled up in pain and cold alone and lost on a dangerous mountain, he had realized how short life is, and how wrong it was for him, for them, to live with each other when they both knew they wanted different things from life.
“Jane, listen to me.” Scott clasped her wrist with his good hand. “Look at me. Jane, it was terrifying up there, but it was also extraordinary. As if I’d been lifted away from everyday life and I could think about things with clarity, without interruption. I thought about our last conversation, and how angry I was when I left and how sorry I was that I’d gone off that way, so pompous and self-righteous and inflexible.”
“Scott. Please—”
“And I remembered how you still loved me, after what I told you about my parents. You still wanted to be with me, to have children with me. You were so brave. You are so brave. On the mountain, I knew that when I was rescued I’d tell you I want to have children with you.”
Jane blinked. She was fatigued from traveling, and fuzzy-headed, so had she misheard? “What?”
“Jane, I want to have children with you. I don’t know, call it an epiphany, that’s what people call it, a real come-to-Jesus moment, I thought how much I love you and how if I’d died—no, come on, don’t cry, I didn’t die—but if I had died, I would want to leave something real and unique behind on the earth and that would be a child. Children. Made from you and me. Jane—”
Tears rolled down her cheeks silently, for Jane couldn’t find breath to make a sound. She gulped, trying to stop the tears, trying to control herself. This was so much, this was too much. “Am I dreaming?” she asked. “Is this real? Did you just say you want to have children with me?”
“I did say that. And it’s not the pain medication speaking. All I wanted to do when they found me was call you and tell you, but I was in rough shape when they finally found me. At least I managed to ask the rescue team leader to let you know I’m okay. I can’t begin to pronounce his name. But they got me here and gave me some shots while they yanked my arm back together and put it in a cast. Thank God for them. Thank God for you.”
“Scott,” Jane said, and now she’d found her breath and she was sobbing. “Scott, I don’t have to have children. I want you. I need you. I didn’t realize it, but I did, even before you fell, I missed you so much and I love you so much, so let’s think about it. Let’s get you out of the hospital and home, and then we can talk about it, okay?”
“Jane. I want children with you. Our children. And talking is not what I want to do to get them.” Scott smiled.
A shiver of surprise laced with lust dazzled its way through Jane’s body. “Oh, my darling, my love, my sweet Scott,” she cried, and she knew she’d never said these sorts of romantic endearments to him before, because that had never been her way, their way. Yet now she could not stop calling him her darling, her dearest, her love. But her tears got her face all wet, so she had to control herself and dig tissue out of her purse and blow her nose. Then, embarrassed by her display of emotion, she smiled sheepishly. “I should let you get some sleep.”
“Yes. You should get some, too.” Scott’s eyelids drooped.
“I—I don’t know what time it is here. I need to find a hotel, an inn for tonight. I’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Scott told her with a wry smile.
Jane watched her husband sink back into a healing sleep.
* * *
—
In the late afternoon, Felicity was sorting her clothes, seeing what would be best for working with little kids, when her cell buzzed.
“Sweetie,” her mother said, sounding almost giddy, “the gowns are here! Anya brought them. I’m wearing mine and I’m totally fabulous!”
In the background, Anya muttered, “No, I need to let out the waist.”
Alison was euphoric. “What a day this is! Scott’s alive, and Jane’s over in Wales, and my gown is gorgeous!”
“I can’t wait to see it, Mom—”
Alison interrupted. “I’ll take the gowns down to the island. You and your family are coming this weekend, aren’t you?”
Felicity hesitated. It was the first week in September and Noah was still stonewalling her, adamant about not coming to the wedding. But her mother was so happy! Alison wanted so much for her daughters to have a wonderful summer, and they were having a wonderful summer! Well, everyone except Noah. Maybe she should simply ignore Noah and Ingrid. Maybe he’d get over her, or possibly, if he remained in the hateful mood he was in, he’d show Ingrid just a speck of his dark side a
nd Ingrid would run away like the clever girl she seemed to be. But Felicity wasn’t going to rain on her mother’s parade.
“Of course, Mom,” Felicity said brightly. “We’ll be down this weekend.”
Felicity sighed as she ended the call. She had to shake off this sadness before she went to Nantucket. Alison and David wanted to give their families and friends a sensational party. Felicity would not allow herself to mope and moan in front of Alison.
The front door slammed. Felicity startled. It was only a little after five. Could that be Noah? More likely, a serial rapist breaking into the house.
“Felicity!”
It was Noah, and weirdly, he sounded happy.
“In the kitchen,” she called.
Noah came into the room like a tornado. He put both hands on Felicity’s waist and picked her up and whirled her around as if they had suddenly been beamed onto Dancing with the Stars.
“It’s a miracle!” Noah shouted. He kissed Felicity hard on the mouth and set her on the kitchen counter so her face was at his level.
“Are you okay?” Felicity asked.
“Okay? I’m amazing! It’s going to happen, Felicity! It’s really going to happen!”
“Did you have a breakthrough?”
“David Gladstone is investing in Green Food!”
“He is?”
“He is! Felicity, he believes in the idea! He’s investing a million this year, with more money for the next five years.”
“Wait, how do you know? When—”
“He phoned me yesterday and made an appointment for today. Actually, I didn’t know about the appointment because Ingrid forgot to tell me, but I was in the office when he came in, and he asked to see my statistics and my business plan and we talked for two hours, and he told me he likes my idea. He thinks it will work. He believes in helping young people attain their goals. A million dollars, Felicity! A fantastic, amazing, enormous fat injection of cash into the company. We can fit out another lab, hire more personnel, move things along faster. This will make all the difference in the world!”