"I just knew, Lisa. I woke up this morning and I opened the curtains to let in the sunlight. Then I made myself a cup of coffee and took it into the garden; it was such a beautiful morning. That's when I saw it."
"Saw what?" Lisa asked as a wave of uneasiness swept through her body.
"The robin," Silvia replied, meeting her eye. "It came back, and so did you."
Lisa stared at her mother for a long moment as a tiny seed of wonder began to grow in her heart. Could the robin have special meaning? No. It was just a bird, and her mother was once again trying to make her believe in magic.
Lisa finally looked away. "I'm only spending the weekend. Tomorrow I go back to L.A." She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a glass, then took some iced tea out of the refrigerator. "Would you like some tea, Mother?"
Silvia simply stared at her reprovingly.
"I'll take that as a no." Lisa poured herself some tea, then put the pitcher back in the refrigerator. When she turned around, Silvia hadn't moved.
"I suppose you want to tell me about the robin." Lisa took a sip of tea. "How it's some sign of something magical, mystical. Well, go ahead."
Silvia looked saddened by her sarcasm, and for a moment, Lisa felt guilty. Her mother didn't deserve to be attacked. Lisa didn't understand how she could deal with irate clients with complete calm, but become a sulky, annoyed child when she was with her mother.
"I'm sorry," Lisa said. "It's been a long day."
"I can see that."
Lisa pushed her hair off her face in a gesture of weariness. "I don't know what you want from me. I don't know what Nick wants from me. You both seem to expect me to do something, but I don't know what it is. I can't come back here. I can't make things the way they were."
"All I want is for you to stop running away from everyone who loves you."
"I'm not running. Mom. I've been in L.A. for a long time. And I'm planning to be with the man who loves me on a daily basis in the very near future."
Silvia shook her head. "He's not for you. He's too old. He's too safe. I don't see love in your eyes. I don't hear it in your voice."
"Because you don't want to hear it. You can't accept the fact that I'm getting married again and that that man is not Nick," Lisa retorted. "You adored him. He could do no wrong -- even when he was doing plenty wrong." She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "How can you say Raymond isn't for me? You don't even know him."
"No, I don't, do I?"
She couldn't defend against that accusation. She had deliberately kept Raymond and her mother apart, just as she had kept her past away from her present. Now they were blurring together, and she was losing control just as she had known she would.
She forced a smile to her face. "If you want to come up one day next week, we can go out to lunch or dinner, whatever you like."
"Why can't he come here?"
"Because he's busy."
"And I'm not?"
Lisa sighed. "I know you think I'm looking for a father figure, but you're wrong. Raymond and I have a great deal in common. We talk business. We know the same people. We have a good time together, and, most importantly, Raymond will never hurt me."
"Love is the most important thing."
Lisa instinctively wrapped her arms around her waist. "Love hurts."
"So you don't love this man?"
"I care for him deeply. Yes, I love him," Lisa added, realizing she didn't sound all that confident.
"The way you loved Nick?" Silvia's eyes softened as she looked at Lisa. "The way you couldn't keep your hands off each other, the way you finished each other's sentences, the way you laughed at the same jokes?"
"I'm older now, I'm different. He's different. Our love was a lifetime ago."
"Are you going to have children with this older man?"
"No!" The word rang through the kitchen like a shotgun blast.
"No," Silvia agreed, surprising her. "I don't see a child with you and this man. Only with you and Nick."
"That child is – gone." As Lisa said the words, a lump grew in her throat, and a wave of self-pity filled her heart. She had lost so much. Her life hadn't just swerved in a new direction, it had been shattered into a zillion irretrievable pieces. "I need some air," she muttered.
Lisa opened the back door and stepped out on to the deck that overlooked the backyard. She stared up at the darkening twilight sky, letting the beauty of the night ease her tension.
After a moment, she sat down in one of the deck chairs and took several deep, cleansing breaths of fresh air.
There was a slight evening breeze, which carried with it the scent of the sea and memories of long summer days, warm evenings, love and laughter and dreaming.
Lisa remembered sitting out on the front porch of her house with Nick the night they'd brought Robin home from the hospital. Robin, who had been blessedly quiet when they were surrounded by doctors and nurses, had become a red, squealing tyrant the minute they'd stepped foot in the house. She could still see Robin's tightly scrunched eyes, and feel Robin's ridiculously long fingernails clawing into her arm.
They'd spent most of that first afternoon caught between tender love and utter bewilderment over how they could possibly take care of Robin. It wasn't until dusk had fallen, until Nick had brought out his guitar and they'd sat in the swing on the porch that the baby had finally quieted down, lulled to sleep by the music, surrounded by two people who loved her more than anything.
Lisa put a hand over her heart, swept back into the past, into a place where she could almost feel Robin's little head snuggled against her breast, her tiny curls tickling Lisa's chin. She could hear her quiet breathing, smell the baby powder. She remembered the way she'd held her baby, one hand protectively cradling the back of her neck, the other against her tiny bottom.
Oh, God!
It hurt so damn much. There was a hungry ache in her soul that wouldn't go away, that could never be filled. Over the years, she had forced herself to overlook it, but it had never gone away, and tonight it felt as bad as it had felt all those years ago.
A tear crept out of the corner of her eye. Lisa wiped it away, terrified of the pressure that was building behind her eyes, the emotion that threatened to spill out. She would not cry. She couldn't. If she let the tears come, she would simply drown in a sea of emotion.
* * *
Nick stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching Lisa's face. She was fighting something, breathing as hard as if she'd just finished running a marathon. He wanted to yell at her to let it out. He wanted to shake her until her perfect hair fell down around her shoulders the way he remembered, until the hardness left her eyes, the coldness vanished from her voice. He wanted her soft and trembling, the woman he'd fallen in love with, not the hard-hearted warrior she'd become.
"Lisa? Are you all right?" He knew she would say she was fine. There had been a time when she'd told him everything, all of her deepest and darkest fears, and he had told her his. That time was past.
Lisa put a hand over her mouth to stop any words from erupting between her lips. The shakiness of her hand told him how hard she was fighting to stay in control.
Nick walked around her chair and knelt in front of her. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes and saw a wash of unshed tears. "Cry, dammit. You know you want to."
"I won't," she said defiantly.
"Why? Are you afraid you won't be able to stop?" He read the answer in her eyes. "I couldn't cry for a long time either. The only time I could let go was when I was drunk out of my mind. I could pretend it was the booze that was crying, not me."
"Are you suggesting I get drunk?"
"God, no. I'd be the last one to suggest that."
She breathed in and out for several seconds as silence settled between them. He realized how much he'd missed her face, her mannerisms, the tiny freckle at the corner of her eyebrow, all the little things that were her and some that were Robin's as well. Robin had looked like Lisa, with her dark hair and her blu
e eyes.
"Stop staring at me,'' Lisa said.
"Do I make you nervous?"
"You know you do."
He smiled as he touched the side of her face, enjoying the feel of her silky skin beneath his roughened fingertips. "What's this? Truth?"
"Maybe." She paused. "It would probably be better if you didn't touch me."
"Better for who?"
"For both of us."
He dropped his hand away from her face and stood up. He walked to the edge of the deck and looked out at the yard. "You're right. It would be better if I didn't touch you, because it only makes me want you again. We both know that can't happen."
"No, it can't. Our life together was a foolish fantasy, Nick. I don't know what we were thinking, getting married when we did. You didn't have a job, I hadn't finished college. And we made love without any protection, never thinking about the future. We didn't make plans. We didn't act responsibly. We let our hormones run wild. Everything we did was stupid, and we paid for it."
His lips twisted in disbelief as he turned to look at her. "It's amazing how you can turn the love affair of the century into a series of reckless sexual encounters. I was in love with you, Lisa, and you were in love with me."
"I was in love with love," she cried as she stood up. "I adored you and Maggie and your all-American family. I wanted what you had. A mother who stayed home, who didn't work all the time, who wasn't a single parent, who didn't believe in crystal balls and magic. I wanted the house with the white picket fence and the baby carriage on the porch. I wanted a man in my life, one who would stand by me through thick and thin till death do we part."
"And we had that."
"Yeah, until God decided his little practical joke had gone far enough."
"We could have had it again if you hadn't walked out. I was willing to stand by you, Lisa."
"No, you weren't. You'd like to remember it that way, but that's not the way it was."
Nick turned away from her and took a deep breath. He wanted to argue but couldn't. There was a memory at the back of his mind, one that ran consistently through his nightmares. And it was starting again. He could see the morning fog, the grass, the tiny white casket, the flowers, the people -- and Lisa.
"Hey, Lisa. Babe." Nick waved as he stumbled out of his brother's car. He knew he was in trouble when he saw her face, so cold, so unforgiving, and her skin was so pale against the heavy, depressing black of her suit. A sudden burst of shame ran through him, but he quickly shoved it away. So what if she was angry because he was late? She'd blamed him for everything else. She'd even kicked him out of their bedroom the night before. What was the difference?
"Where have you been?" she asked, storming over to him. She grabbed him by the arm, her grip as tight as a vise.
"I've been getting some breakfast."
"My God you're drunk. It's eleven o'clock in the morning, Nick."
"No kidding. Gee, thanks for pointing that out."
"I don't know you anymore," she said with a shake of her head.
Nick looked into her eyes and saw nothing familiar. "I don't know you either."
She stiffened. "How could you do this today -- of all days?"
"Do what?" He burped, tasting the beer on his lips.
"Don't you have any respect for Robin's memory?"
His stomach turned over at her words, and he felt like throwing up. His beautiful baby was dead, and his wife -- his wife hated his guts.
Lisa turned her back on him and started to walk away.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I'm going to say good-bye to my daughter."
"Without me?"
"You do what you want. That's your specialty."
"And turning your back on me is your specialty."
She sent him a ferocious look. "Goddamn you, Nick. "
"He already has, Lisa. He already has."
Nick let out a breath as the memory finally receded. He still felt guilty about his behavior at the funeral. And even though he'd tried to apologize to Lisa the next day, she'd obviously never forgiven him.
"I'm going inside," Lisa said from behind him.
Nick turned around. "I'm sorry."
"What?" She looked taken aback, wary.
"I'm sorry for the way I acted at the funeral. I'm sorry that I got drunk, that I let you down."
"Okay. Thank you."
"That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Oh, hell, I don't know. I'd like to hear some honest emotion in your voice. Maybe I didn't stand by you, Lisa, but did it ever occur to you that maybe you could have been the one to stand by me?"
"How could I, Nick? It was a dream to start with -- a fantasy. It wasn't real." She turned toward the house, but he moved across the deck and grabbed her arm.
"How dare you pretend what we had wasn't real?"
"It wasn't," she insisted.
"You're a liar and a coward."
"And you're a drunk!"
"Used to be," he corrected. "I admit I had a problem, but I didn't turn to booze until you turned away from me."
"So, it was my fault."
"Oh, dammit. Do we always have to assign blame?"
"You just blamed me."
"Okay. I apologize again. Why can't you forgive me, Lisa? Everyone else has."
"I forgive you for being drunk at the funeral."
Nick's eyes narrowed as he saw the mix of emotions run through her eyes. "Then what can't you forgive me for? Robin's death?"
"No." She shook her head.
"Then what?"
The back door flew open, and the flash of light from the kitchen took them both by surprise. Nick dropped his hand from her arm.
Silvia sent them an inquiring look, her smile fading at the stress on Lisa's face. "You have a phone call, dear. Your fiancé. He said it was important."
"I'll be right there."
"Very well." Silvia returned to that house.
"I have to take that," Lisa said as she walked toward the door.
"Lisa?" Nick asked.
She paused before entering the house. "What?"
"One of these days I'm going to walk out on you, and you're going to know what it feels like to be left behind."
She already knew what it felt like, Lisa thought as she entered the house. She'd been left by two very important people -- her father and her daughter.
Chapter Eight
Lisa took a deep breath and picked up the telephone receiver, trying hard to change gears from her past love to her present love. "Raymond?"
"Elisabeth, how are you?"
His sharp, clear voice gave her an anchor to hold on to, and she grabbed it. "I'm fine. How are you?"
"Missing you."
His words took the rest of the tension from her body, reminding her that she had another life now, one that didn't include Nick, one that didn't include reckless, passionate emotions spilling out every other second.
"When are you coming home?" Raymond asked. "We have a million things to do in the next month. By the way, I went to Monty's party today," he continued without waiting for her to comment. "He really wanted to meet you. I had to do some quick talking to convince him you wouldn't have missed that party if your friend wasn't terribly sick."
"She's not sick, Raymond."
"For Monty, she's on her deathbed. Look, Beverly Wickham is gunning for this account. She was a woman possessed today. Determined, ambitious, ruthless. We'll have to pull out all the stops for this one. We'll have to fight down and dirty, whatever it takes."
Lisa looked up as Nick walked into the kitchen. She barely registered the rest of Raymond's comments. Something about Beverly trying to charm Monty out of a million dollars.
Instead she watched Nick kiss her mother on the cheek. Nick muttered something that put a smile on Silvia's face. Then he swiped a carrot off the vegetable tray she was preparing and settled back to listen to Lisa's telephone conversa
tion. In fact, his cocky smile told her that he knew she wanted him to leave and he had no intention of doing so.
"Elisabeth?"
She started at the sound of Raymond's voice. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"
Nick smiled at her obvious lack of attention. She turned her back on him.
"Weren't you listening?" Raymond demanded. "I was telling you about my ideas for the campaign."
"It's so chaotic around here," Lisa said defensively. "Can I call you back later?"
"Why don't you just come home?"
"I -- I can't. My friend went away for the weekend. She needed some time to herself, so I'm baby-sitting."
"You're baby-sitting? For that you rushed down to San Diego when we're in the middle of a huge campaign and our wedding?"
Lisa wondered why he never put their wedding first. But she wasn't about to say anything that damning in front of Nick and her mother. "Maggie needed me."
"Loyalty is an admirable quality. I respect that. I just wish your loyalty was to me."
"It is -- of course it is."
Silence fell between them, and Lisa realized it was the first time they'd clashed on a personal matter. Their arguments were usually about which font size to use in an advertisement. They rarely disagreed about anything personal -- probably because she'd never done anything that wasn't Raymond's idea -- until now.
She'd been happy to let him organize their life. He did it so well and so thoroughly, making her feel she was as well put together as he was. If he only knew. She'd have to tell him, at least some of it. She'd known that for awhile, she'd just never been able to find the words.
Lisa turned her head as Nick burst into raucous laughter, accompanied by her mother's guilty giggle. The two of them looked perfectly delighted with each other.
"Sorry," Silvia said, waving her hand in the air in an apologetic gesture. "Nick just told me a funny story."
"Elisabeth. Who else is with you?" Raymond asked. "It sounds like you're in the middle of a party."
"My mother's here with a friend of hers." Lisa frowned at Nick. "She's helping me with dinner."
"I'll let you go then. Elisabeth..."
"Yes?"
"Hurry back."
"I will." She hung up the phone, annoyed with both Raymond and Nick, not to mention her mother.
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