Let It Be Me

by Becky Wade

  “Absolutely no cocaine, any other kind of drug, alcohol, or girls.”

  He pretended astonishment.

  “Movies are fine.” She’d set parental controls. “So are the video games we already own.”

  “What about board games?” Sebastian asked her wryly.

  “More like bored games,” Dylan answered, taking a clunky stab at humor.

  “Board games are allowed. As are puzzles. You can cook anything except meth. And, of course, arts and crafts are always a wholesome option.”

  “They could make jewelry,” Sebastian suggested, deadpan.

  “Or tie-dye shirts,” Leah said.

  “They could color.”

  “Or do macramé.”

  Dylan shook his head and took a few steps back. “Can I, uh . . .” He gestured to his room. “Go now?”

  Delightful child. Such an open, winning, sunny personality. “Yes.”

  Dylan stopped just in front of his room and looked back. “I told my sister to go out with you a while ago, Dr. Grant.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “She shot down the idea.” He rolled his eyes. “I wish I’d bet her money on it. I’d be richer.” Then he was gone.

  “I really like your brother,” Sebastian said.

  Did he know that the statement had just scored him a thousand points?

  “And I really like your place,” he continued. “What’s your favorite thing about it?”

  “I’m a fan of this architectural style, but my absolute favorite thing about it is the view.” They stopped side by side in front of the enormous plate glass living room window. The sun had recently set. Clouds of pink, peach, and moody lavender capped the dimming hills. “I’m endlessly fascinated with this view. It’s different every hour of the day and every season of the year.” She peeked at him and found that he was already looking down at her.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  Fireflies took flight within her. She needed to remember that she’d agreed to this date in order to bring a halt to the flood of gifts.

  They made their way to his Mercedes, and he drove them to a restaurant located inside a winery in neighboring White County. Smooth white stucco walls and a ceiling crisscrossed with timbers the size of tree trunks surrounded them as they took their time over appetizers at the bar.

  Eventually, a hostess escorted them to a linen-covered table near a cavernous fireplace. A creamy mix of firelight, can lights, and flickering candlelight covered everyone in the dining room with a warm glow. Beyond the windows, tidy rows of grapevines snaked into the darkness. Her napkin was so heavy she could wear it as a shawl. The tiny ceramic pot adjacent the salt and pepper shakers held mums, ivy, and red berries.

  Leah had enjoyed a few fancy dinners in her lifetime. But every one of those meals had been underlain with the wincing knowledge of the expense, which inevitably made her wonder whether the experience was worth the price.

  Sebastian didn’t seem to care about the costs involved. Since he’d lobbied for this date so relentlessly, it served him right to get stuck with the bill. Brazenly, she ordered salmon.

  It arrived glistening beneath a buttery sauce. Braised red cabbage dotted with goat cheese and smashed fingerling potatoes crusted with big granules of salt completed the dish.

  The deliciousness of the first bite liquefied her spine.

  “What’s the latest with your search into your birth family?” Sebastian asked, cutting into his steak.

  “I met them.”

  His motion paused. “What?”

  She brought him up to speed on how she’d found the Brooksides and the brief exchange they’d shared at church.

  “That must have been strange,” he said. “To introduce yourself to them as if you were a stranger.”

  “To them, I am a stranger.”

  “But to you, they’re much more than that.”

  “True. At present, I’m trying to understand how Sophie and I were switched. In fact . . .” She considered him speculatively. “You might be able to help me.”

  “I’ll do anything for you.”

  She drew her brows together. “Would you please refrain from making statements like that?”

  “Statements like what?”

  “Statements that can be construed as epically . . . romantic.” She said romantic the way one would say swamp.

  “I’ll try.”

  “You might be able to help me by explaining the differentiation of responsibilities of the nurses who cared for me right after I was born.”

  “As I recall, you were immediately taken to the postpartum nursery.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s very likely two distinct groups of nurses were involved. The nurses assigned to labor and delivery and the nurses assigned to the nursery.”

  “Would I have been taken to the nursery by the labor and delivery nures?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would have occurred then?”

  “The nurses assigned to the nursery and the staff pediatrician would have treated you.”

  “On my paperwork, I found the names of two labor and delivery nurses and two nursery nurses. I’m researching all four of them in hopes of gaining a more complete picture of the circumstances.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  Leah dabbed her lips evasively.

  “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he reiterated.

  “If I do, I’ll be more indebted to you.”

  “Good. That will benefit my evil master plan.” He gave her a slightly wicked smile.

  “Let’s talk about you now,” she said.

  “Let’s not.”

  “I might not be a dating expert—” she began.

  “I think you are,” he cut in. “This is the best date I’ve ever had.”

  “You are not allowed to make epically romantic statements!”

  Sebastian laughed, then took an unrepentant sip of his drink.

  “I might not be a dating expert,” she said, trying again, “but common courtesy demands that we spend half our time talking about me and half talking about you, does it not?”

  “I find you to be a million times more interesting than I find myself.”

  “If so, that would make you an extremely rare person. Everyone prefers to talk about themself.”

  “Not me.”

  “I’d like to hear, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, about the miracle part of the Miracle Five.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, it seems as if the first eight days in the collapsed basement were a bit of a status quo.”

  “They were. It was dark and hot and dusty. The only thing that changed during that time was our access to water. We didn’t have any. And then we did.”

  “Thanks to your ingenuity.”

  “Thanks to my stubbornness,” he corrected. “The quake exposed a pipe. I was determined to break the pipe open even though it was just as likely to carry sewage as water.”

  “But it carried water, which allowed you to survive.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to hear about your last few hours in the basement.”

  He pressed his shoulders into his chair’s back. The open collar of his shirt formed a V around the indentation between his collarbones. She had an urge to trace that groove with a fingertip.

  “For hours,” he said, “we heard machines getting closer. They were dismantling the building from above to remove weight, and they were also trying to drill toward us from the side. Have you ever been inside an A-frame house?”

  She nodded.

  “It was like that down there because two concrete slabs had fallen against each other above us.” He set his elbows on the table and tipped his fingers together, demonstrating. “We were sitting on the bottom of a triangle.”

  “Understood.” She’d heard this story, but it was raising the hair on her arms to
hear him tell it. This wasn’t academic for Sebastian. He’d lived this.

  He rested his hands on his thighs. “I suggested that we sit against one of the walls.”

  “Were you the leader of the group?”

  “I guess. Luke’s a year older than I am, and he was the most popular kid on the trip . . . the most popular kid at Misty River Middle School. But his younger brother, Ethan, had come with us to return the sports equipment to the basement. He’d been annoying Luke with questions, so Luke told Ethan to go to the back of the line. Luke wanted a break from him for a few minutes, which shouldn’t have been any big deal. But then the earthquake hit. Luke pulled four of us out of the hallway. He was going back for Ethan when it caved in.”

  Leah regarded him solemnly.

  “I think Ethan died instantly because we never heard him calling for us. He was only twelve years old.”

  Her memory conjured a picture of twelve-year-old Dylan, dressed in a tie for his middle school midwinter dance. “Heartbreaking.”

  “While we were trapped down there, Luke was immobilized by shock and grief. Ben was optimistic. Genevieve was frightened and prayed a lot. Natasha reassured and took care of everyone.”

  “And you decided which wall to sit under as the rescuers approached.”

  “I had a few coins in my pocket. I took out a quarter and said, ‘Heads, that wall. Tails, that wall.’ I tossed it and it landed heads up. So the five of us went to sit against the winning wall. As the machines drew closer, the building began to shift. The wall across from us crashed down.”

  “And the other wall, the one above you, held in place.”

  “Right, but it shouldn’t have. It had been resting against the wall that fell. The mathematicians like you, the structural engineers, the architects . . . they all agreed. It should not have stayed in place. Science can’t explain why it remained there, protecting us from falling debris until we were loaded onto the chopper. Only then did it collapse. We all saw it and heard it.”

  “Christians concluded that God intervened. He held the wall there because of the prayers prayed for you around the world.”

  “Yes,” Sebastian said simply.

  “Do you believe He held the wall?”

  “I do.”

  “You encountered a miracle.” God had come through for Sebastian in ways his mother had been unable to. Leah chewed her potatoes. “How did that event change you?”

  “It made me realize my life was worth something. I’d received a second chance, so I decided to make the most of it.”

  “After you were rescued, how long did it take you to realize that the five of you were famous?”

  “Two minutes.”

  “It must have been bizarre to learn that everyone on earth was following your story.”

  “Yeah. I went into that building a forgotten, discarded kid. I came out a celebrity.”

  Throughout the remainder of their dinner, Sebastian watched her with the kind of concentration that seemed to miss nothing. He asked their server for more water even before her glass was empty. When she looked around, wondering where the restroom was, he told her where it was located before she could ask.

  In Leah’s regular daily life, there were always so many thoughts and theories circulating in her head that she often found it challenging to focus fully on a conversation. This was extraordinarily true when she found the subject being discussed less interesting than the things going on in her head.

  With Sebastian, conversation was more interesting than her thoughts or theories. He had a curious mind, and he liked to delve deeply into a topic. They discussed heart surgery. They discussed math.

  He wasn’t content with the vague information she usually dispensed when people asked about math. He wanted her to explain number theory and combinatorics and why she loved algebra.

  He’d topped out with calculus in college, but he remembered it well, and that base gave him an educated vantage point from which to view the landscapes where math had taken her.

  On their drive home, the dashboard lights glowed against his hard-cut profile. She caught whiffs of his aftershave. She noted the faint lines across the top of his wrists and the five o’clock shadow beginning to darken his cheeks and jaw.

  Tonight’s date had gratified the homely, unpopular nine-year-old inside her to a surprising degree. Until this evening, she hadn’t understood how much that nine-year-old wanted to experience at least one successful, fairy-tale-esque night out.

  Dylan’s friends’ cars lined the street outside her house, so Sebastian pulled onto her steep driveway and killed the engine. She stepped out of the car and waited for him on the wide steps that ran parallel to the driveway.

  Cool weather wrapped her in a strange stillness. She could see light and vague movement inside her house. But outside, no wind at all. No animal sounds. Even the stars were few tonight, and distant. It was as if God had turned a giant glass bowl upside down and placed it over Misty River.

  He stopped a few feet away from her, hands in his pockets, illuminated by the exterior lights mounted on the garage.

  She wanted to drown in a Jacuzzi of the feelings he produced in her. Why had she stipulated that they would not kiss tonight? That may have been rash.

  “Tell me what I need to do to convince you to see me again tomorrow,” he said.

  Tilting her head, she considered how to reply. She’d agreed to go out with him to stop the flood of gifts, but this evening hadn’t felt like a means to an end. It had felt like a luxurious little vacation dropped in the center of her day-to-day life.

  She’d do well to recall that her day-to-day life was her real life. Luxurious little vacations were, by nature, short-lived. “As you know, I’ve never been interested in acquiring a boyfriend. So, in order for you to convince me to see you tomorrow, I simply need you to assure me that you won’t be foisting any nonsensical romantic notions upon me.”

  “I will not foist.”

  “We are not”—she used air quotes—“dating.”

  “Agreed. You’re not commiting to anything except spending more time with me.”

  “Spending more time with you doesn’t sound completely repulsive,” she said primly, interlacing her hands in front of her waist.

  “Let’s negotiate terms for tomorrow. Where should I take you?”

  “Nowhere. Tonight was plenty extravagant enough, thank you.”

  “Dinner at my house, then?”

  “That’s acceptable.”

  “I’ll have food delivered.”

  “No, we’ll cook dinner together. It’ll be less expensive, and it’ll give us something to do.”

  He gave her a scorching look. “I can think of plenty of things for us to do.”

  “We’ll cook together,” she said firmly.

  He stepped closer. Her abdomen contracted with longing.

  “What kind of dinner should we make?” he asked.

  “The easy kind.”

  “Baked lobster tails?”

  “Goodness no. Stir-fry?”

  “Shrimp curry?” he suggested.

  “Hamburgers?”

  “Enchiladas.”

  Her shoulders relaxed a few degrees. “I love enchiladas.”

  “With ground beef and red sauce?”

  “With chicken and salsa verde, plus sour cream and white cheese.”

  “Additional terms?”

  “I request 1980s background music.”

  “I’ll agree to a playlist containing three-fourths eighties music and one-fourth Sinatra.”

  “Fine.” She was warming to her subject. “I also request a mowed lawn, clusters of red grapes for snacking, flattering lighting—”

  “A disco ball, perhaps?” he suggested dryly.

  “Why not? And an indoor temperature of seventy degrees—”

  “I’ll compromise at sixty-nine degrees.”

  “Very well. Additionally, I’ll require a cheesecake from Tart Bakery.”

  “Done.”

 
; “Oh, and no flowers or gifts.”

  “Spoilsport. Anything else?”

  “No. The items aforementioned will be sufficient.” She retreated backward toward her door. “Thank you for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Professor.”

  Sebastian watched Leah walk inside, then returned to his Misty River house. He prowled the rooms, too preoccupied to sit or to concentrate on anything except her.

  She’d told him she would not become his girlfriend, which, in light of his inability to commit, was amazingly convenient. A relief. So why was his brain taking him down wild tunnels of thought that all ended in things he wanted to do for her? Give her gifts. Take her places. Lift some of the weight of caring for her brother. Do whatever was necessary to ensure that she got her PhD.

  He stopped in his foyer and shoved both hands through his hair with a sound of irritation. Get ahold of yourself.

  As usual with her, his reaction was too much. He’d gone out with her one time.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At two o’clock the following day, Sebastian approached the Colemans’ house carrying a wrapped birthday present.

  All year long, he received a steady stream of reminder texts from CeCe and Ben’s sisters. Don’t forget to send flowers for Great-Aunt Clarice’s funeral, poor dear. Just don’t send roses. She hated roses, remember. Or Cousin Drew got a promotion at work so you might want to shoot him a congratulations text. We’re trying to give him lots of positive reinforcement because we all feared he’d never amount to anything.

  Almost every week the Colemans gathered to celebrate someone’s birthday, anniversary, or accomplishment. It was more than he could keep up with. He attended only when he was in town and when they were meeting for a reason he cared about even slightly.

  He cared more than slightly about today’s party, which was in honor of Hadley Jane’s fourth birthday.

  Ben’s dad greeted Sebastian with a hug. “Love you, man. Glad you’re here.”

  “Is that you, Sebastian?” CeCe yelled from the direction of the dining room.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Get in here right now. We’re about to sing.”