Career Girl in the Country / the Doctor's Reason to Stay

by Fiona Lowe

  “And she can’t wait to see you, to talk to you, to play with you.”

  “The way she can’t wait to see you, to talk to you, to play with you.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “It’s about adopting Molly. That’s all.” About giving Rafe one last chance, about showing Rafe what he was going to be missing. About trying, one last time, to do what she’d promised Grace she’d do. She had to do it. Never giving up was also a big part of who she was.

  “But I get the impression you’re still trying to convince me I should be the one.”

  “You should, and.” She placed her hand on his chest, her palm pressed flat to his heart. For an instant she felt a little jolt. Felt it so much she nearly pulled back. But it had to be static shock, that was all. “And if you’ll let yourself, you’ll feel it in here, Rafe. You are Molly’s father, meant to be. I know it. Grace knew it. Molly knows it.”

  He pulled back. Stopped for a moment, and simply stared at her. Stared hard, stared deep, then spun and walked away.

  Suddenly, the whole idea of adopting Molly scared Edie. What was she thinking? That somehow the three of them could turn into some kind of real family? She loved Molly, she also knew Rafe did. Molly loved both of them back. But the rest of the dots didn’t connect, and Edie startlingly realized what she was afraid that Rafe was feeling—that this was a trap meant to either stall the inevitable adoption so she’d have more time to convince him, or to slowly pull Rafe into a place he clearly didn’t want to be.

  She should have thought it through more carefully. Truthfully, all she’d thought about was Molly. “It’s not what you think, Rafe,” she called as he headed to the front door. “I’m not trying to back you into a corner here. I only want what’s best for Molly.”

  He stopped for a moment, but didn’t turn back to face her. “And how many times do I have to tell you, that’s not me?”

  “Because you don’t want to?” Edie cried. “Because you really don’t want to? Tell me the truth, Rafe. I know we’ve argued this over and over but tell me the honest truth now, and I won’t say another word.” She watched him turn toward her, and saw agony written clearly on his face. It was excruciating, it broke her heart. And in that moment she knew for sure that she loved Rafe Corbett more than life itself, no matter how he felt about her. His pain was so acute to her that his suffering was taking root in her very being. But through the pain, she saw the heart of the man she wanted to be with for ever. A good heart. A kind heart. But a troubled heart. “Tell me, Rafe. Please …”

  “It’s about loving someone. I can’t. Can’t love them, don’t want to be loved back. Sure, I can do the right things for Molly. Outwardly, go through the motions. But she’ll know the difference. She’ll see that I don’t have that real capacity in me to be anything more than an authority figure, and she needs better than that. I needed better than that, and I know what it’s like to be raised by someone who can’t, or won’t, give you what you need. I was. And now I see so many of my father’s traits in me. I look in the mirror and see my father’s son. I’m just like him, Edie. I was abused. In turn, I abused Rick Navarro. I am my father’s son and there’s nothing I can do about it. His heredity beat me.” He spoke his words—words filled with the emotion of an anguished man. Then he was gone.

  Edie stood alone in the entry hall, not sure what to do next. Run after him? Leave him alone? Give him his space then go to him?

  She didn’t know, and as she brushed back the tears on her cheeks there was nothing inside her that could reason this through. Nothing at all. So she left. Went home, sank down in her favorite cozy chair, and wished desperately for her mother. Or for Grace. Or for Rafe.

  It was a beautiful evening. Clear black sky, millions of stars, the sound of the bullfrog in the distance croaking out some kind of mating call to his lady love. He’d always felt balanced here. Balanced, accepted, safe. Maybe it was the only place he’d every truly felt that balance, and being here again brought so many memories rushing back. Mostly the good ones, though. And there had been some good ones, especially with Jess. Coming here together, camping out, making plans for their future like nothing was wrong in their lives. Yes, some good times, and he missed those. Missed his brother. Missed that youthful optimism that tried so hard to come through even when everything else was going so wrong. “When I was little, I used to think that when I looked out over the bluff, I could see the edge of the world,” he said.

  “Is that where it is?” Molly asked innocently. “Over there, where you can’t see anything else?”

  “No, sweetie. The world is infinitely large. You can’t see the edge of it.” Even though right now it felt like he was about to fall over that edge. He’d done the right thing, though. He was sure of it. Molly would have everything she needed now. And he would have … nothing more, nothing less than he’d come with.

  “But what’s on the other side of where you can’t see?”

  “A world full of possibilities. Things that will make you happy, things that will help you in your life, things you don’t even know about that are waiting for you to find them.”

  “What kind of things, Rafey? Maybe toys and a kitten?”

  “Maybe toys and a kitten. Maybe more people to love you, and for you to love.” “And candy?”

  Chuckling, he tousled her hair. “And candy.” The innocence of a child … it was magical. Molly was magical, and he was already beginning to miss her. But he’d made the decision and there was no turning back. In his heart of hearts he knew Edie was Molly’s mother. That was the only consolation in this. Edie was Molly’s mother, and he’d seen that so many times over these past few days. Even seen himself in the father spot, too. Except that couldn’t work. “And anything else that makes you happy. It’s all out there for you, Molly.”

  “You, too,” she stated seriously. “Except the toys. You’re too old to play with toys.”

  This was tougher than he’d expected. When he’d been young, Hideaway Bluff was where he’d come to make things simple in what was, otherwise, a very complicated life. Yet there was nothing simple here tonight. Not for him, certainly not for Molly. “You’re right, I’m too old for toys. But I do have equipment.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  “Medical equipment. The things I use to help make people feel better.”

  “Then maybe there’s medical equipment out there for you, so you can make lots of people feel better.” Sitting on a craggy rock shelf, protected from the elements, Molly snuggled into Rafe’s side and laid her head against his chest. “Whatever kind you want, Rafey. Like whatever kind of toys I want.”

  “And candy,” he said wistfully, staring into the campfire he’d built. “Look, Molly, there’s something I need to tell you.” Instinctively, he put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s very, very good.”

  “Aunt Grace is coming home?” she cried. “When? When is she coming?”

  Dear God. He hadn’t expected this. Not at all. And he didn’t know what to do, what to say. Somehow he’d just figured Molly knew. Granted, everybody had pretty much tiptoed around the subject of Grace’s death when Molly was around, but he’d truly thought she understood, and that she was simply taking her time to process it in the way a child would.

  He needed Edie here. She was the one with all the right words for children. She was the one with the empathy, the one who instinctively knew what to do. And he was the one who didn’t have a clue. Not a single, solitary clue. So maybe it was time to douse the fire and head back. Put this off until he could get to Edie.

  But Molly wasn’t to be put off. “When, Rafey?” she persisted. “I want to tell her all about Ice Cream, and about my new pony, Lucky. She’s beautiful, Rafey. Black and white. And Aunt Grace is going to love her. She always says I can’t ride by myself until I’m eight, but with Lucky maybe she’ll let me ride by myself when I’m six. Do you think she will, Rafey?”

  To break a child’s heart … this wasn’t the rea
son he’d come here. In his mind, it should have been a very simple thing. Take Molly to the place he most loved in the world, let her share that feeling with him, then tell her about the wonderful new mother she was about to have. It should have been a good evening, but now this. And he couldn’t wait for someone else to take care of it. Molly needed honesty, and understanding. She needed it from him—the least likely person in the world to do this.

  Rafe drew in a shuddering breath, bracing himself. “Molly, we need to talk about Aunt Grace. And you have to listen to me very carefully, because what we have to talk about isn’t going to be easy for you.”

  “Can we have a party for her? She loves parties, and a nice, big party will make it all better for her. We can have cake and ice cream … the real ice cream, not the horse. And maybe party hats.”

  He remembered those parties his aunt used to have … parties for all occasions. Big ones, little ones, private ones just for Aunt Grace and him. In his aunt’s estimation, a party could cure almost anything, and she had been right. Her parties had cured so many ills, wiped out so much cruelty, eased so many pains, all because her parties had been about caring. About nurturing. “I remember the cakes she used to bake for her parties. My favorite was chocolate, with lots of chocolate icing.”

  “Mine, too,” Molly agreed. “And with sprinkles, too.”

  “Especially with sprinkles.” Glancing out over the vast night expanse in front of him, Rafe wished he could be somewhere out there, having a party with his aunt, listening to her tell the little boy in him that things were going to get better. But he couldn’t. And it was foolish of him to think things could be different because there’d never been a moment in his life when he hadn’t known who he was, and what he was about. Festive little parties hadn’t changed that. “Aunt Grace loved baking those cakes, Molly, and she loved having those parties. Do you know some of the other things she loved, too?”

  “Her horses. And you and Jess. She always told me how much she loves you and Jess, that you are her two favorite boys in the whole, wide world.”

  The lump in his throat hardened. “And you, sweetheart. Aunt Grace loved you more than anything in the world. From the day she brought you home to live with her, she loved you so much, and she wanted you to be her little girl, her daughter …”

  “But she’s too old,” Molly chimed in. “I don’t think she is, but the people in charge said she is.”

  “And they were wrong. In Aunt Grace’s heart, you were her daughter, and she loved you more than anything.”

  “Will she again, when she comes back?”

  Now the heartbreak. Molly’s and his. “Her love for you will never change, Molly. In fact, it’s bigger now. Bigger than anything you can imagine. For ever. But Aunt Grace can’t come back to tell you how much she loves you. Not any more.”

  This time, Molly was quiet.

  “She got very, very sick. Do you remember that?”

  Molly nodded, but still didn’t speak.

  “She wanted to get better so she could come back and take care of you, and the doctors tried very hard to help her, but it was something the doctors couldn’t fix, sweetheart. They tried so hard, and Aunt Grace tried so hard, because she missed you so much, but there wasn’t anything anybody could do. Do you remember when she had to go to the hospital?”

  Molly nodded. “Summer said it was to get her all better. That when Aunt Grace was better, she’d come home again. But she hasn’t. Not yet.”

  Summer Adair, Aunt Grace’s private duty nurse. Summer, herself, had a child, and Rafe knew that anything Summer might have said would have been with sensitivity. But it hadn’t been Summer’s place to explain the situation to Molly, and now he realized no one had ever taken up that responsibility. They’d simply assumed … too much.

  “That’s what everybody wanted, sweetheart. Everybody wanted Aunt Grace to get better and come home.”

  “But she couldn’t get better?”

  The beginning of the realization. The taking away of innocence. It hurt. “No, she couldn’t get better.” He paused, searching for the right words … words that wouldn’t destroy Molly, words she would understand. Words that came so easily to Edie. “The doctors tried everything they knew how to do. Dr. Rick … he’s a very good doctor. You know that, don’t you?”

  Molly nodded, but didn’t speak again.

  “Dr. Rick did everything a doctor could do to make Aunt Grace get better, but sometimes even doctors can’t fix everything. And he was very sad … we were all very sad because we loved Aunt Grace so much. But she couldn’t stay here any longer, Molly. It was time for her to …” He choked on the words, as the tears fell silently down his cheeks. “It was time for her to go to a place where she could be well again, and stay that way for ever. But well in a different way. Molly, sweetheart, Aunt Grace died. Do you know what that means?”

  Molly was quiet for a long time, trying to process it. He didn’t want to interrupt her, but he also didn’t want her to be lost in a dark lonely place. Not the way he’d been for most of his life.

  “It means you go to live in heaven,” Molly finally said.

  “It means Aunt Grace went to live in heaven.”

  “But I don’t want her to go, Rafey! I don’t want her to go!” Molly threw herself into Rafe’s arms and sobbed … the great, racking sobs of a broken heart, of a child who truly did understand but whose heart was breaking anyway.

  “It’s OK,” he said, holding on to her, rocking her, feeling her tears soaking through his shirt. Feeling his own tears spilling freely down his face. “It’s OK, Molly,” he soothed, over and over. For Molly, for himself. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

  He said the words, but he didn’t know how to make it OK for her. Dear God, he didn’t know how. And tonight he ached for Molly the way he’d never ached for anyone else.

  “Can I go to heaven, too?” she finally whispered in a tiny, broken voice.

  “No, sweetheart. Aunt Grace loved you so much she wanted you to stay here and have the best life you could possibly have.”

  “But I miss her, Rafey. I want to see her again.”

  “We all do, Molly.” He took a deep breath, sniffed, tried to brace himself … against what, he didn’t know. But none of it worked. Right now the world was made up of just the two of them … two broken hearts who could do nothing but sit and hold on to each other. Clinging for dear life. It didn’t seem enough, not for him but especially not for Molly. Yet maybe, in the grand scheme of things, this was all there was. “And we’ll never stop loving her. But it’s in a different way now. It’s in here.” He placed his hand on her heart, and took her tiny hand and placed it on his. “This is where Aunt Grace is now. She’s in our hearts, in a very special place.”

  Molly thought about that then pulled herself out of Rafe’s arms and pointed to the vast openness that extended farther than any eye could see. “She’s out there too, Rafey. Where you can’t see. You said that’s where things will make you happy, where things will help you. And that’s where Aunt Grace is.”

  “In a world full of possibilities,” he whispered, gathering Molly back into his arms. “You’re right, Molly. That’s where Aunt Grace is.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “No, IT’S already scheduled. I’ve got my plane ticket and I’m going home the day after tomorrow. Henry will have all the legalities worked out by then, you can move into Gracie House any time you want, and life will go on.”

  “So that’s it? I sign the papers, you hand Molly over to me, then you leave?” She had known this was what was going to happen, but she hadn’t let herself believe it, or even think about it. On one hand, adopting Molly was the best thing she’d ever done in her life but, on the other hand, it was also the most difficult, because it felt like she was shutting all those doors she’d truly believed would open. She’d hoped for a miracle and while she had gotten one, it hadn’t been the one she’d planned on, and Rafe wasn’t shifting on this whole Molly situation. He was going
ahead full steam with his plan, and she couldn’t stop him.

  “You’re not your father,” she said. She knew it with all her heart, but Rafe didn’t, and there really wasn’t a way to convince him. If his heart wouldn’t budge, there was nothing she could do.

  “Look what I did to Rick, and he’s still pretty scarred from it. That’s the way my father acted.”

  “But you were a boy, Rafe. A boy who was in horrible pain, lashing out. You were thinking with an adolescent’s mind, reacting the way an adolescent would. You’re a man now. A gentle, compassionate man who takes care of people. What, in there, makes you think you can’t love Molly the way she deserves to be loved? The capacity to love isn’t dictated by heredity, as you seem to think it is. It’s dictated by your heart, and you have a good heart, Rafe. Good, but very scarred.”

  “In an ideal world, I’d have moved home to Lilly Lake, married you, adopted Molly, practiced at the hospital. But I’ve never lived in an ideal world, Edie.”

  “Married me?” she asked. “How can you throw that out there now, when you’re two steps shy of stepping on the plane and leaving for ever?”

  “I can throw it out there because that would have been my ideal world. We would have dated for a while, the two of us. And the three of us would have spent time together, growing as a family. Then.” He shrugged. “Then you would have suffocated. One day you would have woken up and realized I wasn’t enough. That maybe I was too emotionally distanced. Or I simply wasn’t the kind of support you need. Then where would that leave us? And where would it leave Molly?”

  “So, you’ve got this little life scenario all planned out for us without even including me? How could you do that, Rafe? How could you assume us all the way from beginning to end?” They were sitting on the front porch, Edie in the wicker chair, Rafe on the swing. Almost at opposite sides, the way they’d been for days, during the adoption preparations. During those days she’d had the impression, more than once, that Rafe had been on the verge of regretting his decision. Now she knew it. This was what he wanted, but his scars were too tough, his walls too high.