SULLIVAN'S MIRACLE

by Lindsey Longford

  “You know I’ll think about … whatever.” She was trying to make a joke, too, but her husky voice trembled on the last word. She still stood at her front door with her hand on the cheap wood, waiting for him to leave.

  “Well, Maggie, when you want … whatever, let me know.” He’d meant to make his comment a joke, to make her laugh by seeing how ridiculous the situation was. With everything in him, he tried to make her laugh so that she would lose that air of resignation. So that, even at the last second, she would laugh and change her mind. So that she wouldn’t turn her back on him and walk away.

  He wanted to throw her over his shoulders and take her home with him where they both belonged, not standing here on her balcony with her holding on to one side of her door and him the other, both of them fastened to it like it was a life raft.

  But he couldn’t summon a smile.

  And he hadn’t made her smile. Not even a little.

  So many memories of loss crowding him. Lizzie. Maggie.

  His mother walking away and never coming back, leaving him, her seven-year-old child, to pass on the news to her husband, his father, who’d taken his own leave by disappearing into his office and forgetting that he had a child.

  They’d taught him well, those goodbyes.

  He’d worked hard to make those lessons so much a part of him that he’d never again stand with his face pressed against a window and watch someone he loved walk away from him.

  His mother and father. Lizzie. They’d gone away from him. “Sullivan, I have to shut the door,” Maggie said, her fingers lingering near his at the edge of the doorjamb.

  She looked as stricken as he felt.

  So why was she forcing him to leave? And all over a matter of words.

  He closed his fist around the edge of the door. Only a remnant of civilization kept him from ripping it off its hinges and flinging it to the courtyard below.

  Demons growled inside him, rattling their cages and loosening their bars.

  “Maggie, I can’t understand why you’re doing this. I don’t know what you want from me.” His fingers dug into the wood. “Make me understand. Tell me what I have to do so that you will stay.”

  “I did tell you,” she whispered. “But you can’t give what you don’t have. The Tin Man didn’t need to go to Oz for the answers. They were inside himself. All he had to do was look inside and find them.” She pressed her face to the wood. “The answer is inside you, Sullivan. You have to find it. No one can give you the answer.” Silent tears ran down her face, and he’d never seen her cry before, not his tough-cookie Maggie. “Oh, Sullivan, if I thought we could survive together, I wouldn’t leave.”

  His fingers dug into the wood, so hard that splinters ran under his fingernails.

  “Maggie, give me one chance. Just one. I can change. I know I can. I can learn how to trust.”

  “Can you?” She covered his hand with hers. “I think you can, Sullivan. But I don’t know if you’ll try to figure it out. That’s what’s breaking my heart.” She took his hand and pressed it against her breast, where he believed he could feel her sturdy heart breaking. Or maybe it was his own.

  Her tears splashed onto his hand, and he remembered his tears falling on her, his breath going into her. Somewhere between that moment and this, he’d taken a wrong path.

  Maggie was leaving him.

  All because he’d learned those early lessons too well. He’d learned how to keep everyone at arm’s length. He’d worked hard to do that, thought himself happy, until Lizzie had opened her door and taught him what happiness really was. Taught him that he didn’t have to be lonely, that there was someone in the universe who was his.

  Taught him that poignant lesson and left him, taking all possibility of happiness with her.

  Into that black emptiness Maggie had walked, lifting him out into the light.

  “Sullivan, if you find the answer—” she was stumbling over her words “—and if you still want me, come and get me. I’ll wait for you, as you waited for me.”

  Sullivan knew he could turn her inside out with pleasure and was tempted to use that as a weapon, but he couldn’t. That, too, would have been a kind of force against her, and he wouldn’t use her sweet responses as a weapon against her.

  Maggie was shutting her door, closing it gently against the flat of his palm that kept it ajar. He heard her sob and he dropped his hand.

  The door shut in his face.

  He howled, a primitive, animal sound that ripped his throat.

  But when no one came running, when no windows were flung open, he realized it had been a silent howling in the arctic wastes of his heart.

  Three strikes and you were out.

  He knew what he had to do.

  She could walk away from him—that was her choice. But he couldn’t leave her vulnerable to Callahan and Ryder. He wouldn’t. That was his choice.

  He made arrangements with her apartment manager to rent a vacant one-room apartment in the same building.

  And he followed her. Sometimes she saw him, sometimes she didn’t, but he was always there, watching over her.

  And as he took care of her in the only way he could, he did as she had asked.

  He looked deep inside himself, trying to find an answer to a question he didn’t even understand.

  *

  Maggie was afraid she wouldn’t have the courage to stay away from Sullivan. Everything in her turned to him, and she was terrified that she’d give in to the need to go running after him, to settle for what he was offering.

  She couldn’t.

  If they were to have any chance of happiness, Sullivan had to have the same kind of trust in her that she had in him. Without it, they had nothing.

  As the days wore on and she caught glimpses of Sullivan from time to time following her, her agony at being separated from him only grew stronger.

  His protectiveness touched her because she knew how his mind worked. Taking care of her was his way of showing … what? That’s what he had to figure out.

  She knew what she was missing, knew what they could have together.

  But Sullivan would have to figure it out for himself. All or nothing, that’s what she’d said—heart and soul. She wouldn’t settle for anything less.

  She could have made it easy for him and told him that she’d called Royal. But the phone call had never been the real issue. The real issue, from the beginning, had been whether or not he could trust her with himself. Or would he always keep a little part of himself separate, afraid to take the risk of letting down the last of his barriers and welcoming her into his heart as she welcomed him into hers?

  She didn’t know what she would do if she were wrong in gambling on what she hoped he would discover inside himself.

  If he gave up on himself…

  She waited while the federal officers unraveled some of the threads of the conspiracy. She waited while Callahan, Ryder and Jackson were brought to trial.

  The charges against Royal were dropped for lack of evidence.

  She wondered if Sullivan would conclude that it was part of a cover-up.

  Waiting for Sullivan, waiting until she could return to work, she filled in her days at the Sunshine Center. Sometimes she would sit in the side courtyard area with Alicia and watch the sun go down, as she’d imagined doing before.

  And it all seemed so familiar, as if she’d found her place at last.

  She didn’t ask Alicia any questions about Sullivan. Alicia didn’t ask her any. By unspoken agreement, they skirted the issue of what was going on with him. Once, though, Sullivan had been going around the corner as she came into the center. She’d stopped and looked at him, drinking in the sight of his long legs and broad shoulders, but he hadn’t seen her.

  He still hadn’t cut his hair.

  The longer she worked with the kids, the less she wanted to leave them. She and Alicia talked, figuring out how they could work out the financial arrangements if Maggie worked full time at the center.


  Maggie loved the idea.

  Since the day at Taggart’s when she’d been unable to fire her pistol, she’d known that it was only a matter of time until she would have to leave active police work.

  She remembered dropping her gun under the bridge at the Riverfront Pier. She remembered the incident in bits and pieces and was never quite sure if she would have fired at Jackson or not.

  She no longer wanted to carry a gun. That part of her nature existed no longer. She hadn’t known, however, what direction to take until she began working with Alicia, and then, magically, it seemed, her life meshed.

  Alicia worked through the financial red tape, making a full-time job at the center available. Maggie wanted to work there, very much. She found it more and more difficult each day to leave the center and go back to her apartment. She wanted to give Katie and all the other kids who found their way there some hope, some sense that, if they looked hard enough, they might find small, everyday miracles in their lives. She wanted to make a difference and thought she could.

  And every day, she longed for Sullivan.

  And waited.

  *

  Sullivan sat hunkered under the poinciana tree with Katie late one afternoon toward the end of a hot and muggy September. Katie had a great deal to discuss with him these days and he listened attentively, because strung like pearls on the thread of her talking was information about Maggie. And Maggie was the reason he was waiting under the tree.

  It hadn’t been necessary for several weeks for him to follow her around protectively, but he’d grown used to the rhythm of her days and had begun to make a game out of letting her miss him by seconds. He’d thought in that way to weaken her resolve.

  He only intensified his hunger for her.

  Tearing poinciana blossoms into shreds to make snowflakes for Katie and her doll, he watched Maggie come out to the patio and sit down with her tea. She lifted her hair off the nape of her neck and leaned back against the chair, her hair trailing over the edge. She rested her feet on another table. She tilted her face to the sun, letting its afternoon rays fall upon her.

  Watching her air of contentment, her look of utter rightness in being where Lizzie had always been, he felt all the questions that had been churning inside him for weeks finally settle.

  He’d thought her insistence on trust a silly notion, but it hadn’t been at all. Why hadn’t he understood sooner?

  “Katie, go tell Maggie to come here, will you please? And thank you.” Sullivan waited, humming a tune as he watched Katie trudge toward Maggie, trailing pink-and-white blossoms behind her.

  Maggie poked her head through the low branches. “Sullivan?”

  He noted with a thrill the breathiness in her voice.

  “Yes, Maggie, it’s me. I have a question for you.”

  “Are we playing twenty questions, Sullivan?” Her lips were curved at the corners.

  “Sort of. And it’s not a game, Maggie. It’s my whole life we’re talking about here. Want to see if you can answer my question?”

  “All right,” she said, her eyes shining. “Go ahead.”

  “Why is it, Maggie, do you suppose—” he tossed blossoms her way “—that I identified myself as your husband when you were rushed into the emergency room at the hospital for surgery? Why do you think I stayed there day and night holding your hand, hmm, Maggie?” He pitched more blossoms toward her and they tangled in her hair.

  “That’s two questions.” She sat cross-legged, with petals showering her golden skin and dark hair. “Why do you think you did such foolish things, Sullivan? Out of guilt, maybe, because I was trying to turn myself into a human pincushion on your behalf?”

  “Could be. I’ve always been such a soft touch, you know. Might have been guilt.” He nudged one of her toes.

  Her grin was spreading across her face, her infinitely dear face.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking about these last weeks, sweetheart?”

  “Oh, tell me. Please,” she said demurely, pursing her mouth. “I’ve been wondering a little bit about what might be going through your mind.”

  Leaning toward her, he stripped a branchful of blossoms onto her. They drifted down the front of her blouse, onto her legs, over her arms. “I think, sweetheart, I always saw you for who you are, even from the first. I think I recognized you from the beginning, and wouldn’t let myself realize it. I think my heart did, though, and that’s what I fought against—that conflict between what was in my heart and what was in my brain. My mind is, you know, a skeptical organ. Some things will never change.”

  “I didn’t expect it to,” she whispered in delight, her pink-frosted toes peeking up at him from bright green sandals. “What has changed?”

  Standing up, he pulled her to her feet. Blossoms tumbled around her. “My eyesight.”

  “What?” She blinked at him.

  “Yep. My eyesight. I was blind and now I see—through a glass darkly, but I see.”

  “Oh, Sullivan,” she murmured, curling her fingers around his neck.

  “It’s not something I’m comfortable talking about, sweetheart, but I let myself think about that moment as you came running to me at the pier, and what I remember so vividly is that I would have died to save you. You beat me to the punch, that’s all.”

  “I wasn’t as confused. I knew what I was doing,” she said smugly, her hair tickling his ear.

  “Well, of course. You probably always have, being a member of the superior sex.” He grinned at her, feeling so light inside he thought he could float right up to the sky on joy alone. “I thought about that moment a lot, Maggie, turning it over and over in my skeptical brain, and what I finally realized is that from the moment I saw you pop up from behind the piling, I knew you would risk your life for mine just as I would for you. I trusted you to do the best you could for me, just as I would for you.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “And I figured out that was the kind of trust you’d put in Royal. Now, I don’t know if he betrayed your trust in him or not. I hope not, for your sake, but you trusted him to be a good cop, and you acted on that trust. You did the best you could, whatever it was, and I understand that now. I don’t have to know whether or not you told him about the rendezvous. Although I can’t imagine how, someone else may have revealed the information. But I know that you would have acted for the best, that you always will. You would never hurt me any more than I would hurt you.”

  “Do you remember the rest of that night, Sullivan?” she murmured against his neck.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been fighting it all the way, but I think I’ve been handed a miracle on a silver platter. I think I needed time to grow used to the idea. I don’t understand it anymore than I understand DNA, but I think we’ve been given a second chance. I know you, Maggie, my love. I think I always have. Your scent, your inner nature called to mine. It’s just taken me a long time to figure out who I am.”

  “And who are you, Sullivan Barnett?” she whispered in his ear, as he carried her to his motorcycle and settled her behind him.

  “Why, Maggie, I’m the man who loves you, heart and soul.” He smiled at her. “Come home with me, sweetheart, and let me prove it to you?” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the silver barrette she’d dropped long ago and he’d saved without knowing why. He handed it to her.

  She smiled at him, her eyes shining with excitement, shining all for him.

  When they arrived at the beach cottage, though, Royal was parked outside in his red Mustang, waiting for them. Sullivan squeezed Maggie’s hand and unlocked the cottage door.

  “Come on in, Gaines. I’ll get you a beer.” Sullivan figured he’d always be a shade bristly with the man, but if Royal were important to Maggie, then Sullivan would cope.

  “Thanks.” Royal looked at Sullivan’s arm around Maggie’s waist and frowned, but he only squared his shoulders. “I won’t stay long. I really came to talk with you, Maggie. I called Ms. Williams from the car and she told me you were
headed back here. I came straight over. I hadn’t wanted to contact you before everything was cleared up.” Royal shrugged. “Not that it’s completely clear yet, but my part is. I’m resigning from the department, Maggie.”

  “Why? I read that your lawyer had presented material before the grand jury showing that you weren’t involved with any of the protection setup.” Maggie’s chin was headed skyward, and Sullivan knew she was ready to go to war on Royal’s behalf.

  “He did. But being under suspicion did something to me, Mags. When you came back into Johnny’s office that day, I knew you were hiding something from me because for some reason you thought I’d gone dirty.”

  “I never believed that, Royal, not at all. Some people might have—” she cast a mischievous glance Sullivan’s way “—people who have trouble understanding how friendship works, but I didn’t. I know you better than that.”

  “Thanks, Mags. Under the circumstances that means a lot, I’ll tell you. You’re probably the only person in this whole damned town who feels that way. Even though I wasn’t brought to trial, I see people looking at me and deciding that I must be guilty as hell. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and all that stuff. Anyway, thanks. You’re a real friend, Mags. There aren’t many people like you.”

  “What made you suspicious of me, Royal?” Maggie asked. She didn’t have to be quite so sympathetic, Sullivan decided. He was tired of supporting the wall. And he was even more tired of how Royal looked at Maggie, as if she were the appetizer of the day.

  “I listened to how you were answering our questions, and I knew something was up. I know you real well, Mags, and so I knew there was a real problem if you’re weren’t leveling with me. So, from that point on, I started asking questions of my own.”

  Seeing the glitter of pain in Royal’s eye as he looked down at Maggie, Sullivan found room in his heart to feel a little sorry for the man. Royal’s life had been golden up until now. But he’d lost Maggie, lost his reputation, and was losing his job, even though it was by his own choice.

  Sullivan wouldn’t agree with the golden-haired cop about many things, but he was damned straight when it came to Maggie. She was special. She would go to war for anybody she believed in and trusted. If you were Maggie’s friend, she wouldn’t let you down. Why had he been so slow to catch on to this trust thing? Well, life had lessons to teach, and it seemed as if he was facing a lot of lessons, lifetimes of them.