The One That Got Away

by Jamie Sobrato

  She’d last e-mailed him a year ago, a brief congratulations on his new book, to which he’d sent her a friendly but cursory reply. It hurt to be reminded how far apart they’d grown, so she hadn’t made any effort to keep up the correspondence. It was easier not to.

  Her hands shaking, she pulled a chair out from the table and sagged into it.

  “You just take a few deep breaths,” Ruby suggested in a voice meant to comfort. “I’ll get you some water.”

  Marcus.

  What if he wasn’t okay? What if he—

  She couldn’t finish the thought, and the rush of emotion she felt at the possibility that he might die surprised her a little. She’d experienced enough death in her life to know all too well how it felt to lose someone she loved, but she didn’t love Marcus in any active way now. And yet here she was, reeling as if she’d said goodbye to him yesterday.

  This was ridiculous. Had she been kidding herself to think she’d moved on? No. Definitely not.

  But still, she had to believe he was going to be okay. He was going to live. There wasn’t any way life would deliver such a blow.

  Except…she’d received the worst of blows already—the deaths of her parents and grandmother. Ginger knew firsthand how disinterested Fate was in the impact its twists and turns had made on her individual life. If Fate had ever cared for her personally she’d still have the family members she loved. And the words shooter and Marcus would never have been uttered in the same sentence.

  Numbly, she took the glass of water Ruby handed her. Drinking down the cool liquid, she recalled the last time she’d seen Marcus, on the night of their graduation from UC Berkeley.

  She’d insisted that night couldn’t be a final goodbye, that they would see each other again.

  The teakettle began to whistle, and the older woman turned off the stove and started making tea.

  God, she’d been so foolish, thinking Marcus had wanted anything but her friendship, Ginger recalled. It still embarrassed her to remember how badly she’d misread him.

  “I know!” Ruby exclaimed out of the blue. “He’s that fellow, isn’t he? The one you said you were in love with?”

  There was nothing wrong with Ruby’s memory.

  “Yes,” Ginger said, cringing inwardly.

  “The one you said you left your fiancé for, because he could never measure up?”

  God, her actions sounded so pathetic when put like that. She’d left Leo for a ghost, for a fantasy, for a love that had never been real, because it had never been reciprocated. But she’d known it was the right thing to do, because she hadn’t loved Leo the way she should have—the way she wanted to love a man. And even though she knew Marcus wasn’t the right guy for her, she had to believe there really was someone out there with whom she could share equally passionate feelings, not the lopsided kind she’d experienced thus far.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby, I’m going to have to take a rain check on the tea.” Ginger stood up, still shaky, and placed her now-empty glass by the sink.

  “You’re not going to go so soon?”

  “I need to make some phone calls and find out about my friend,” she said, her voice nearly breaking.

  “Why don’t you wait until you’ve calmed down a bit?”

  “I…I can’t. I’ll come back in a little while, okay? I’ll get all those wet towels out of the tub and hang them outside for you.”

  “Now don’t you worry about that.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll come do it. Just give me an hour.” And with that she headed out the back door.

  She hurried across Ruby’s lawn and her own, trying to think what to do. What made the most sense? Who could she call? How could she get in touch with the hospital in London?

  How many other people would be thinking the same thing she was?

  It wasn’t as if Marcus belonged to her.

  He didn’t. And her feelings were a lost cause, but…

  Ginger had long ago accepted her calling as a warrior for lost causes. Her house was a prime example. Any sensible person would have taken one look at the sagging roofline and moved on to buy a nice new house in the suburbs. But Ginger, either too brave or too foolish for her own good, had seen the house’s history, its quirky handmade shingles and its beamed ceilings, and she’d been unable to resist the project of reviving it to its former glory.

  She had no common sense, her granny Townsend had always said. But Ginger’s grandmother, a bit of a romantic like her, had told her she had something better—uncommon sense. She’d said she could see things other people couldn’t, which made her daring enough to try things other people wouldn’t try. Ginger supposed that was how she’d managed to make her living as a writer and adjunct college instructor. But it was also how she’d ended up with a house that needed more repairs than she could afford.

  In all these years, she’d never let herself hope that Marcus might love her back, and she’d forced her heart to let go of the idea. Yet man after man hadn’t been able to measure up to him, and now, years later, here she was alone and reeling at the news that he’d been injured.

  She wanted to talk to Marcus, to see him, to get some assurance that he was okay. And maybe then she could make sense of this tumult of emotions she was experiencing.

  But was she kidding herself? Were her motives really so pure, or did she actually want to see if there was any hope of her love being requited?

  She went inside the house and down the hallway, straight to her office. Sitting at her desk, she brought her computer out of sleep mode.

  Dear Marcus…

  She began composing an e-mail to him in her head. I could hardly believe the news….

  She made a face. No. She should call instead. This kind of event required a phone call. Even an in-person visit. Maybe she’d fly to London. No, no, she was getting way ahead of herself. That was a crazy idea.

  She didn’t even have his phone number anymore. But she had his e-mail address.

  So it would have to be an e-mail, for now.

  Dear Marcus, she began again. I was so worried when I saw the news….

  CHAPTER THREE

  MARCUS LOOKED OUT THE small window as his plane dropped from its cruising altitude and a brown landscape came into view down below. Dry hills, a scattering of tiny houses, the piercing blue California sky all around him for the first time in years.

  He should be happy to be returning to the United States. He was alive after the worst ordeal of his life.

  One bullet cleanly through. Thirty-two stitches. Two weeks in recovery.

  More concerned phone calls than Marcus would have expected, and an in-box full of mostly unread e-mail messages bearing headers such as I’m so glad you’re okay! and I heard the news….

  He hadn’t had the stomach to read his e-mail for a week after getting back home to Amsterdam, because one phone call in particular had left him reeling, and he’d known an e-mail with an attached photo would be waiting for him in his in-box.

  And when he’d finally opened it and seen the picture, he’d known it was all true. The face, the spitting image of his own mother as a little girl, was painfully beautiful to him.

  It had been surreal hearing Lisette’s voice after all these years. But it hadn’t been her voice at all. Only one that sounded like hers.

  Like hers, but different.

  Younger.

  The girl had seen the news about him and felt she had to call. She wanted to meet him.

  Her name was Isabel.

  Isabel Dawn Grayson.

  Izzy for short.

  She was thirteen years old.

  The facts all lined up in his head, neat and orderly, but that didn’t mean they made sense. His brain hadn’t assimilated the idea that he was a father, that there was a kid in the world with his blood coursing through her veins.

  But that hadn’t been the only shocking news. Her mother, Lisette, was dead. Died three months ago of ovarian cancer.

  Marcus hadn’t talked to Lisette in the fou
rteen years since their breakup after college. Hadn’t known he’d left her pregnant with a child. Hadn’t even been able to make sense of the hows and whys of it all until a woman named Nina, Izzy’s legal guardian and godmother, had gotten on the phone after Izzy and cleared up some of the details.

  So now he not only had a daughter he’d never met before, but was also a single father. All in one fell swoop.

  The impact of the revelations had left him reeling ever since the phone call, and he’d already been in a state of shock at finding himself flat on his back in the hospital thanks to a lone nut job with a gun.

  If Marcus had been the mystical, spiritual thinker his parents had raised him to be, he’d have believed the universe was trying to tell him something big. But one element of his parents’ philosophy had gotten through to him: he did believe in Fate. And Fate had handed him not only a second chance at life, but a chance to know the daughter he might never have otherwise met. Fate had made him a father, and he was going to make the best of these new circumstances in his life, no matter how radical a change from his previous reality it all was.

  Izzy had said she wanted to spend the summer with him.

  Maybe longer.

  And he was on his way to meet her and start being her dad.

  She’d been living in San Francisco with Nina for the past few months, but she hated the city. She’d spent most of her life on the rural California coast near Santa Cruz with her mom, and she was intimidated by the noise and the hustle and bustle of people everywhere.

  The plane touched down on the tarmac of San Francisco International Airport right on schedule, and Marcus’s stomach pitched. He was terrified.

  No, he couldn’t focus on his fear. It was only going to freak him out. He needed to concentrate on the pleasant, comforting parts of returning to the country he’d left.

  There was Ginger, whom he’d always regretted losing touch with. She reminded him of his days at Berkeley. Those four years were probably the happiest in his life, and if he hadn’t been such a lousy correspondent, he might still have been able to call her his best friend. She’d been the most sincere, solid person he’d ever let himself get close to. She was far more solid than him. He had always felt a little like a dry leaf to her oak tree…as if he might drift away with a strong wind, whereas she was rooted and strong, and would still be standing tall a hundred years from now. He realized that he’d always taken her for granted. She wasn’t an oak tree—she was a special person who deserved better than a friend who never called or wrote.

  It would be great to see her and catch up on all that had happened in the last fourteen years. And they were going to have a whole summer to do it, since she was opening her home to him and Izzy. He’d felt a little uncomfortable asking if she’d mind letting them stay for a week or so while he looked for a place, but when she’d suggested they stay the whole summer, he was reminded yet again of what a good friend she was. He had ulterior motives: Ginger was the one person he knew who might be able to help Izzy make sense of her mother’s death, since she knew what it was like to lose a parent.

  Warmth filled his chest when he thought of Ginger’s kindness, of how insistent she’d been that having two houseguests for the summer would be no trouble at all.

  There. That’s what he needed to focus on. Happy thoughts.

  Hers had been the most welcome of all the e-mails he’d found waiting for him upon his return to Amsterdam after the hospital stay. He’d called her right away and, without thinking twice, asked her for that huge favor, never really doubting that she’d be willing to help. Now that he’d stared death in the face, he understood the priceless value of such a good friend, and he promised himself he would never take her for granted again.

  So she was meeting him at the airport, driving him to pick up Izzy and taking them to her house for the summer.

  Ten minutes later he was hauling his carry-on bag through the concourse, following the signs pointing to the baggage claim area.

  Taking in the sights and sounds of America again for the first time in so many years overwhelmed Marcus with a rare bout of nostalgia. The orderly bustle of American travelers, the sounds of English being spoken… He’d been in San Francisco International Airport countless times, but this time felt different. It was as if he were running away from his old life and the dangers it held. No, not really running away so much as leaving behind an old life for a new one that Fate had insisted upon.

  And perhaps more importantly, there was the feeling of anticipation of what was to come. His life as he knew it was about to be dramatically altered, not by a gunshot wound but a thirteen-year-old girl.

  His stomach roiled at the thought. For the first time, the decisions he made about his life, his career, would affect someone else as much as they affected him. His daughter’s life was in his hands, and it was a responsibility he wasn’t sure he knew how to handle.

  Marcus tried to find solace in the wide-open faces of the Americans he passed. Faces of every color, they held a quality not found in the more cautious, businesslike expressions of the Dutch or other Europeans.

  He passed a couple of airport shops and was bombarded by the shiny commercialism that also managed to top that of the Dutch by miles somehow. The products were more numerous, the food more varied, the magazines glossier, the women on the covers more unreal.

  And then he was descending an escalator, and his nervous energy doubled. Ginger had said she’d meet him near the escalator outside the baggage area. He scanned the crowd, looking for her signature curly auburn hair. When his gaze landed on a woman with exactly that hair color, for a moment he glanced away, sure it wasn’t his old college pal.

  But the recognition he’d seen in her own gaze caused him to glance back. Impossibly, it was her. She looked nothing like she had in college. This woman, this grown-up Ginger….

  No, it couldn’t be.

  But she smiled and waved and called his name. “Marcus!”

  It was her.

  He flashed a confused smile and stepped off the escalator to find himself enfolded in the embrace of a woman he barely recognized. Hugging her back, he fought to overcome his shock at the change in her appearance.

  All of a sudden she pulled away. “Oh! I forgot your wound. Is it okay to hug?”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. My shoulder is mostly healed. There’s still a bit of pain but nothing to mention most of the time.”

  “Wow,” she said, taking a full step back to scan him up and down. “It’s so good to see you! You look exactly the same.”

  “Liar. But look at you. I didn’t even recognize you.”

  Ginger blushed. “Oh, well, I guess I finally lost the oversize sweatshirts and perpetual ponytail.”

  “And the glasses, and—” He stopped short, not sure what else to say except that she simply seemed…different.

  She’d always been on the curvy side, and he suspected her generous breasts used to cause her a great deal of embarrassment—hence the bulky sweatshirts that hid her figure. But now she stood proud and tall, her chest lushly displayed in a stretchy green top and her rounded hips accented nicely by a fitted denim skirt.

  Her hair, which she wore down, cascaded over her shoulders in luxurious waves, and something about her expression and her posture made it clear that she’d grown up a lot in the years since they’d last seen each other. Gone was the awkward coltishness of her early twenties. She now had the air of a woman who knew who she was and what she wanted.

  She shrugged, growing a little self-conscious under his scrutiny. “It’s been too long.” She turned her attention to the baggage claim area, glancing at the nearest display screen of arriving flights. “Do you have any luggage checked?”

  “Nope. I’ve got everything right here,” he said, indicating his laptop bag and carry-on suitcase.

  “Still traveling light,” she said, laughing.

  “Backpacking taught me that.”

  “And what time do you need to pick up your—” She fa
ltered, probably as shocked as he was at the situation. “Your daughter? What’s her name again?”

  “Isabel. I told her I’d be there around noon.”

  “In the Marina District?”

  “That’s right. The house is off Divisidero. I’ve got the address in my pocket.”

  She glanced at the small silver watch on her wrist. “It’s almost eleven. Plenty of time.”

  As they headed for the nearest exit, Marcus resisted the urge to pepper Ginger with questions about her life. He felt bad for not having stayed in touch with her over the years, but he also knew Ginger well enough to realize she probably didn’t hold it against him. She knew he was laid-back—maybe even lazy, he admitted—when it came to relationships, but in college she’d easily accepted his shortcomings.

  When they reached her car, a white Toyota Prius, she opened the trunk for him to stow his bags.

  Once they were in motion, she posed the obvious question as she navigated through the parking garage. “So, how are you feeling about meeting Isabel?”

  Marcus’s mouth went dry. “I’m terrified, of course. What if she doesn’t like me or…”

  “Or you don’t like her.” Ginger filled in the blank.

  That was what he’d always loved about her. She could see straight to his heart.

  “I wasn’t going to say that, but yeah.”

  She shot him a sympathetic glance. “It’s a valid worry, I think.”

  “You don’t have any kids yet, right?”

  Ginger barked out a surprised laugh. “No, none for me. I’m pretty sure I’d have already mentioned them if I had any.”

  “I guess so,” Marcus said, wondering if he should pursue the subject. But he’d never felt the need to hold back with Ginger. “I’m surprised. I always thought you’d make a good mom.”

  “I’m only thirty-five—I’ve got a few eggs left in me,” she joked.

  “So you haven’t even gotten married, huh?”

  “I came close a few years ago, but…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.