by Dianne Drake
“Apologize for what?”
“For getting in your way. I should have come here and told you what I was planning before jumping in with both feet. You know, soften the blow. So I wanted to mention that I’m going to be putting in a riding stable, but not on this side of the property. Thought you might have an opinion on where it should go since you live so close. So it won’t be another sand flea waiting to get you.”
“If I give you my opinion, will you actually take it?”
She smiled. “Maybe. And maybe I should have asked for your opinion on some of the other things I’m doing since they will have an impact on you, too, and I’m sorry I didn’t. But … when I saw the property advertised for sale, it was an answer to everything I’d hoped for, and from that moment on it was like I had to start pushing and push hard because I finally had my opportunity. This hospital is so important to me, Coulson. In one way or another, I’ve been planning it since I was a little girl. The Algernon Glover Hospital for Children. I learned a long time ago that if you want something, you shouldn’t wait to go after it because, if you do, you might lose it. Or lose something more important while you’re waiting. Anyway, I didn’t want to lose this chance and I think my inclination is always to leap first, then look. But I should have been more respectful of your feelings because I do know that the beginning of my dream is the ending of yours, and for that I truly am sorry.”
“Enough to paint the building white again?” he teased.
“You’re so traditional.”
“In most ways, I guess I am.” The funny thing was, he’d never considered himself traditional, but now that Erin was pointing it out to him, he could see it. He could also see how being so traditional made him inflexible. Or boring. At least, in comparison to Erin. “And I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. You stepped into this deal with the expectation that I would be somewhat pleasant about it, and I’ve been nothing but a jerk. But I’ve meant it when I’ve told you it’s not personal, because it’s not, Red. I think your idea is admirable, though I still think this is the wrong place to put your dream.”
“You don’t know my dream, Coulson. It’s so much more than … than a traditional hospital.”
“You mean a hospital with a riding stable? I’ll admit that’s a twist I wouldn’t have expected.”
She nodded. “That’s only a small part of it. I also want bicycle paths and a boat that’s worthy of an ocean adventure. I want a beach where the children can go wading in the ocean and have a picnic. Maybe even a little petting zoo of sorts where the children can be involved with animals.”
“It sounds more like you’re creating a park, than a hospital.”
“I am … we are, my father and me. This hospital isn’t about being sick. It’s a place where long-term, chronically ill children can come and be normal kids. They’ll receive the best medical care, but they won’t be confined to a typical institutional room and have only hospital corridors to wander through and starched white uniforms to look at. They’ll have all of this … a place to play, a place to find peace of mind. A place to be children. Most of all, a place where being sick doesn’t occupy every breath they take every last minute of the day. This hospital is a retreat as much as it is a hospital and I knew, the minute I saw the photos, this was the perfect place for it.”
Well, he hadn’t expected that. Not at all. And he did have to admit, at first impression, it sounded like a good idea. Made him feel quite sheepish for the way he’d been acting. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” he asked.
“When I was a little girl … let’s just say that I didn’t have a normal life for a while, and every time I made a wish or had plans, and talked about something I wanted, it didn’t happen. Didn’t come true. After a while I learned that if I wanted something badly enough to keep it to myself. It’s a silly eccentricity, I know. But I didn’t want anything to jinx this because.” She paused, bit her lip, shut her eyes. Drew in a ragged breath. “Because it’s important.”
There was something more to it. He could see it, feel it. “Why, Red? Why is it so important. And urgent?”
“Because I want my father to see the bronze name plaque on the hospital. I want him to see what his influence has done.”
All sorts of things were running through his mind, none with a good outcome. “Is he sick?” he asked, gently. “Your father, is he …?”
She shook her head. “Not sick. But going blind. Soon. When I was a little girl, my circumstances were difficult. My parents gave me up, and for a couple of years I was pretty much lost. When I met my father, he wasn’t looking to adopt a little girl but over time that became his focus. Only it wasn’t easy. In this modern age, there are still prejudices. Single man adopting a little girl. Black man adopting a white girl. He fought the system for two years, trying to make it happen, and our social worker, Mrs Meecham, kept telling him that she had faith it would. But my father, who’s a bit of a pragmatist, and somewhat traditional, the way you are, kept telling her he’d have to see it to believe it, that he’d learned never to believe anything until he set eyes on it and saw it for himself. He had to see the adoption papers. And I know he has to see this hospital, see his name on it, because if he doesn’t.” She cleared her throat. “He’s sad right now. Sits in a dark room, doesn’t get involved any more. He’s helping do some of the administrative work for the hospital, making phone calls and arrangements, whatever he can do from his study, and I’d hoped that would make it real for him, but so far it hasn’t. He’s not involved the way he should be, the way I’d hoped he would be. And I’m afraid he’s giving up, little by little.”
“Erin, I.I don’t know what to say.”
She shook her head. “There’s really nothing anybody can say. What’s going to happen is going to happen, and we can’t stop it. But I want, so badly, to make it better for him, the way he made it better for me. And your hospital. when I saw it, that was the first time I ever truly believed I could do this while he still has his sight.” Another tear slid down her cheek and this one she let fall. “He wouldn’t come to Jamaica with me, and it scares me, because this is his home. He loves it here.” She looked up at him, her eyes still glistening. “I’ve got to make it work, Coulson. For my father, but also for me. I want this as much as he does.”
“You know you’ve just made me feel like the biggest cad on the face of the earth, don’t you?”
“Because you wanted your hospital as much as I wanted mine? That doesn’t make you a cad. It makes you … dedicated. That’s a good thing, and I do understand the passion.”
Another tear slipped down her cheek and this time he couldn’t help himself. He pulled Erin into his arms and held her there. Stroked her hair as she laid her head against his chest. It was such an intimate moment. No kiss. No caress. Just Adam holding Erin through a tough moment, and disliking himself for being so rough on her, for hoping she’d fold and go home so he could capitalize on her failure. But now all of that was gone. And Davion was right. It was time he fixed this with Erin, once and for all. Time to move past it. “Know what, Red?”
“What?” she murmured, making no attempt to step away from him.
“Blue’s not such a bad color. Would you mind, though, if I paint the shutters white?”
Davion’s dulcet tones were on the verge of lulling her to sleep. Winding down the evening, sitting off in the corner listening to him sing and going over the budget for the planned renovations, was the perfect ending to a fairly good day. The architects had given her a promising report on how the hospital’s interior refurbishment could be accomplished, she’d actually put three carpenters to work on the cottages she would use for guests of the hospital, visiting medics, parents … She wanted nice accommodations for everyone. That was all part of her plan. Nice ambiance. Everybody comfortable. Her big concern was the beach. In her estimation, it was essential because it had healing properties for the psyche. She remembered all those times her father would rent a cottage on the beach and take
her. In her darkest, sickest hours, the beach had seemed so peaceful to her, and looking out over the vastness of the ocean so encouraging with the occasional ship off on the horizon, making its slow way someplace else. Erin had always wanted to be someplace else in those days—someplace where she wasn’t sick. So she’d imagined herself on those ships, traveling to destinations unknown. When she got there, she’d be better, maybe even be cured.
Which was why she needed this beach for her children, because it offered so much hope. Yet she worried about the fact that it was not able to be attended all the time, which made it a danger. Adam, though, had stepped outside his traditional rut and suggested a fence around the hospital itself. Nothing with wire or cement, nothing that looked like it was meant to keep the children in. Rather something fun, asymmetrical, all the colors of the rainbow, except white. And she could see Coulson’s fence in her mind. Amazing colors, maybe island scenes painted on the various pickets by the children. She could even imagine Coulson painting some of those pickets himself … blue.
“Good evening, ma’am Doc,” a tiny voice from outside the open-air bar called, interrupting her thoughts.
She recognized Tadeo’s voice. Was a little surprised to hear it as it was well after ten. But Coulson had said that Tadeo ran around all hours of the night.
“Ma’am Doc,” he called again.
She glanced over at the bar, where Coulson was deep in a medical consult with an older man who seemed to be showing him a pair of very arthritic hands. It was an odd mixture of worlds, but it was her world now. “Good evening, Tadeo,” she said, slipping out into the night. “Shouldn’t you be home, in bed?”
He shrugged. Didn’t say a word.
“Is something wrong?” Her thoughts went immediately to his heart murmur. “Are you sick?” Instinctively, she reached over, felt his forehead. Instincts of a mother, though, not a doctor.
“No,” he said, reluctantly. “Not sick.”
She pulled back her hand, and the doctor in her wanted to check his pulse. But she didn’t, because this was a little boy who felt very guilty about something. Even in the dark shadows she could see it in his face. Hear it in the quavering of his voice. He wasn’t sick. He was scared to death. “So, what’s wrong?” she asked, trying to stay neutral for fear of scaring him off. They’d worked together earlier today. He’d helped her carry a few things from Trinique’s cottage over to hers. And he was such a sweet boy. Very tentative, though. Afraid to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, take the wrong step. It broke her heart, because he was so eager to please and so afraid at the same time. Made her wonder even more about his treatment from Pabla. “You can tell me about it, Tadeo. I promise, we’ll find a way to make it better.”
“Can’t make it better,” he said, then pointed off in a vague direction, motioning for her to follow. No more explanation. He simply turned round and walked away, leaving Erin with no choice but to follow and wonder what was going on. All too soon, though, she knew. It was Adam’s boat. Or what was left of it. More accurately, it was a smoldering pile of ashes, with a few red sparks still glowing. “What happened?” she asked Tadeo. When he didn’t answer, she looked around, only to discover that he’d slipped away in the night.
Sighing, and suddenly dreading the task ahead of her, Erin turned and trudged back to Trinique’s, where Davion had finished his last set of songs and Adam was sitting at one of the tables, feet propped up, quizzing him on the physiology of the lung. “I, um … I need to talk to you, Coulson.” She glanced at Davion, who took the hint and immediately sprang to his feet.
“Looks serious,” Adam said, not bothering yet to sit up.
“I think it is.”
That caught his attention. He straightened, moved his feet to the floor, scooted to the edge of his chair, getting ready to go. “A patient?”
“Not any more.”
“Someone die?” he asked, standing.
“Not someone. Something. It was your boat.”
It took a minute for it to sink in. Then, “My boat?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. But by the time I got there it was too late. It was …”
“My boat?” he sputtered, still not comprehending. “Stella?”
“Burned up. Nothing to be salvaged, at least as far as I could tell. I didn’t get too close because it was still smoldering, but it looked like a total loss.”
“You’re sure it was my boat?”
“Tadeo took me there. So I’m assuming—”
He dashed past her before she could finish. Hung up the Closed sign and ran out the door, then headed to the beach. Loss was loss, and Erin knew the pain of it. She wasn’t sure what his attachment to the boat was, but it was substantial, and she knew she should go after him. But she waited for a moment to tell Davion, who was standing at the far end of the hut.
“His boat caught fire,” she said. “Total loss.”
“That’s not good. He loves that boat, probably more than he’s ever loved anybody in his life, but his grandpa.”
“It was a connection to his grandfather?”
Davion nodded. “That, and the property here he bought with the inheritance from his grandpa.”
Erin sucked in a sharp breath. “So now …”
“That’s it. Half the property is gone, along with the boat. As long as he had his boat, he was OK. But this.” He shrugged. “It’s going to be hard on him. Probably harder than selling his property.”
Erin swallowed back a hard lump. “I think I’d better go …”
“He’ll want to be alone,” Davion warned.
“Maybe so.” But she still had to go. Because right now Coulson was standing out there on that beach, feeling like he had nothing left in the world. The least she could do was let him know he had a friend.
“I’m really sorry about this, Coulson,” she said, keeping her distance. In the moonlight, she saw his slumped shoulders, saw the defeated stance. “Davion told me what it meant to you, and I’m truly sorry.”
“Me too,” he said, his voice thick.
“I think it might have been Tadeo. He was pretty upset when he came to get me, and—”
Coulson shook his head, extended his hand to wave her off. “He wasn’t hurt, was he?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. He ran away too fast, and I didn’t think to ask him.”
He turned to face her. “Then I’ll go and find him. He may have suffered some burns, and I doubt if he’d tell me after this.”
“Maybe, in the morning, when you can see the boat better—”
“Gone is gone, Red. You really mess up your head if you hang on to false hope, and Stella is a pile of false hope now. But thanks for trying to cheer me up.”
She stepped closer. Close enough that the moon accented the pain on his face. “Look, I’ll go find Tadeo. Right now I doubt if he’d let you get anywhere near him. He’s probably scared to death that …”
“That I’ll be angry?”
“That you’ll hate him, or you’ll never want to see him again. When you think you’re going to be rejected … it’s like all this craziness goes on around you, and everyone you know is in on it. Everything you do causes it. When you’re being rejected by someone you love, that’s all there is in your life and it’s the worst feeling, the worst kind of dread you can imagine. That’s what Tadeo is going through right now. Total loss. I mean, I never burned a boat, but I know how he’s feeling so, please, let me go and find him.”
“Bring him back to the clinic, if you can.”
“Will you talk to him?”
“I have to, don’t I? Don’t know what to say yet.”
She squeezed his arm. “You’ll know what to say when the time comes.”
“Just find him. I’m worried.”
“Are you going to be OK, Coulson?” He seemed so. sad. Sad, like her father was, and her heart ached for both her dad and for the man standing in front of her.
“Do you care, Red? After the way I’ve acted, do you
really care?”
“Yeah, I suppose I do. Don’t ask me why, but I do.” The truth was, she cared more than she wanted to let on, and she wasn’t even going to bother denying it. To Coulson she would, but to herself … what was the point? She did care and there was no getting around it. The only thing was, she couldn’t let those feelings get in the way. And that thought was what sent her off into the night, looking for Tadeo. She was there for reasons other than involvement and personal feelings. Her goal was clear, even if the edges were becoming a little fuzzy. As long as fuzzy didn’t turn into fully frayed, she’d be fine. But she had an idea that Coulson could cause a whole lot of fraying. Which was why she was glad to run off into the night … alone. There was no time in her life for fraying of any kind.
CHAPTER SIX
“YOU people leave him alone!” Pabla Reyes yelled at Erin.
“I just wanted to make sure he’s not hurt. Is he here?” Judging from the expression on the woman’s face, that was a question she couldn’t answer because she didn’t know. Erin stepped back from the door, expecting a slam in the face, and had moved just in the nick of time, as that’s exactly what the woman did. She slammed the door so hard it rattled the front window. So, the question was, if Tadeo wasn’t home … and Erin was pretty sure he was not … where else would he go at this time of night? It was going on to midnight now, much too late for an eight-year-old to be out alone, running around.
Stepping off the wooden stoop, she stood in the dirt for a moment, listening to the night sounds. Nothing but silence, and the night calls from a few lonely animals seeking companionship. “No sign,” she said to Coulson, who was on his way up the path to the Reyes house. “Pabla wasn’t cooperative, and I don’t think she knows where he is.” She paused, studying his strong physique in the moonlight. Just the sight of him took her breath away, and she was getting used to that. Too used to it, in fact. Enjoying it too much. Honestly, Adam Coulson was the first man she’d ever really noticed in that way. Part of the reason had been the fear of the cancer returning someday, and the other part of the reason … she didn’t trust relationships, except the one with her father. He’d adopted her when she’d been sick, but other than her father nobody else had ever stayed and, early into her disease, she’d learned not to expect them to. Cancer was ugly. It was a harbinger, a reminder, a glimpse nobody wanted to take.