by Davis Bunn
“Excuse me?”
“Positively despise them.” She was far too lovely to be spending time with the likes of him. Tall and willowy, she had a face that was filled with an electric fire that sparked through her wavy, auburn hair. Her eyes were alight with a mischievous emerald gleam as she went on. “Great humping metal beasts just looking for an excuse to bellow.”
“That bellow is why I’m here,” Lucius replied. “I consider it the finest music on earth.”
She pulled over a chair and seated herself so close, their knees almost touched. “How positively dreadful.”
Normally, he was so shy around women his own age that he could scarcely speak. Today, however, he heard himself reply with ease, “For years I’ve wanted to own a Jaguar, simply because I love the way their engine sounds.”
“Then why on earth don’t you buy one?”
Her matter-of-fact tone surprised him. “How do you know I can afford it?”
“Don’t be silly. Everybody knows you just bought this business and paid cash.”
“Who is everybody?”
“All of Miramar, of course.” The way she spoke made it sound like, All the known universe and beyond. “Why do you think I’m talking to you?”
“I have no idea.”
“Because you’re fabulously rich and ever so mysterious, of course. I’m Jessica Waverly, by the way.”
“Lucius Quarterfield.”
“Are you really? I’ve never met a Lucius before, much less a Quarterfield. You haven’t just stepped out of a Charlotte Brontë novel, by any chance.”
“I don’t know who she is.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I haven’t read a novel since my sixteenth birthday. I left school and went to work. Since then I’ve hardly had time to read everything I need for my business.”
She gave a cheery shrug. “In that case, I shall just have to educate you. Your name should obviously belong to some great strapping stable lad who goes around tossing cows for a living. You don’t, I suppose.”
“I can state with absolute certainty that I have never tossed a cow in my entire life.”
“What a pity. What with owning your own business, and being stinking rich and loving to make these awful motors bellow, if you also tossed cows, I fear my father would marry me off in a flash. That’s him over there, by the way, trying to convince my dear mother that he needs a new car more than his next breath.”
“Then I’ll just have to go out and toss my first cow this very afternoon,” Lucius replied. And just like that, his heart was lost to the woman whose fire was as merry as his own was morose.
* * *
Lucius relied constantly on his objectivity and his logic. Both of which he lost completely whenever in the company of Miss Jessica Waverly. She referred to their relationship as Pride and Prejudice, the title of her favorite novel. Jessica refused to say which aspect referred to him. She remained stubbornly blind to his many frailties. She insisted that her parents positively adored Lucius, when he could see they were growing ever more alarmed by his calls and visits.
Jessica’s father was Miramar’s only dentist. Jessica had served as his assistant ever since her mother had developed problems with her joints. Her father had pressured Jessica to attend dental school and take over his practice, but Jessica was incredibly stubborn in her capricious manner. She claimed to have no intention of ever working that hard, not in school and certainly not for the rest of her professional life.
Their disapproval of Jessica’s lack of ambition and their love of cars were the only two items that Lucius and Jessica’s father agreed on.
Jessica confessed in their next time alone that it was neither dentistry nor working alongside her beloved father that made her so passionate about her job. Jessica was, in her own words, born to touch hearts. She saw the fear and discomfort the patients carried as opportunities to share with them her special brand of happy comfort. When she had spoken the words, Lucius had the distinct impression that Jessica expected him to scorn her for aiming too low. She sat there with her chin angled up, defiant and already hurting from what she thought he might say. In truth, Lucius was so moved by her willingness to share the illogicality of her beautiful heart, he needed several minutes to speak at all. When he did, it was to confess the impossible words of love for the very first time.
When her father finally demanded that Jessica address what he called “the Quarterfield situation,” Jessica stubbornly insisted to Lucius that it didn’t matter, none of it did. Even when Lucius knew full well that Jessica’s father had issued an ultimatum to his only child. And in the process had broken her heart.
But when they next met, Jessica did not want to talk about that. She wanted to discuss what color his Jaguar should be. Lucius replied, “I will never buy such a car. But Jessica—”
“Then I just suppose you’ll have to sweep me away on your yacht.”
“I don’t own a rowboat and I can’t swim. About your father—”
“Oh, never mind him. I think fifty feet is a nice round number for a boat, don’t you?”
“I won’t buy a yacht for the same reason I will never own a Jag. I don’t like to draw attention to myself.”
For a brief instant she sobered. “I understand that.”
“Do you really?”
“Actually, I’ve spent much of my life perfecting the ability to hide in plain sight.”
“But why? You’re . . .” He started to say “healthy,” which sounded like he was sizing up a prize steer. So he said what he really thought, which was “beautiful.”
She tilted her head. “Do you really think so?”
“You are quite simply stunning,” he replied. “You take what little breath I have completely away.”
“See? Why should I let Daddy pester me when a fabulously wealthy man with a lifetime of secrets, and who thinks I’m lovely, is going to buy me a fifty-foot yacht?”
“I will not do any such thing.”
“Oh, well, never mind.” She waved it aside. “As if beauty ever mattered. All the beautiful ladies in Jane Austen’s novels die of the pestilence, alone and ravaged by cruel fate.”
Her sudden changes in direction left him dizzy. “Really?”
“Well, no. But they should have.”
“Jessica, why do you want to spend time with me?”
She cocked her head and showed him an expression of utter amazement. “Why, because you need me, silly.”
It was only later, as he drove back to his lonely house outside Santa Barbara, that he realized she had succeeded in doing precisely what she had intended all along. Which was to tell him about the situation with her father, then avoid talking about it an instant longer than necessary. She was, Lucius decided, the most adroit negotiator he had ever met.
* * *
Three days later, Lucius journeyed to Miramar once more. Jessica had made a picnic, her determined method to ignore the fact that he had come with a very definite purpose in mind. He allowed her to take off his socks and shoes and roll up the trouser legs over his pale shins. They set up the picnic by the southern cliffs. The sea was calm, the sunlight fierce for early May. A trio of beachfront eucalyptus offered a perfumed shade. They walked, hand in hand, down the beach, as far as Lucius felt comfortable. Half a mile north, they stopped and watched two young girls and a spaniel race joyfully along the shore, chasing gulls. Jessica released his hand so as to slip her arm around his waist. She settled her head upon his shoulder. Lucius felt the warmth and strength and life in her vibrant form, and was grateful when the breeze tossed her hair into his face and blocked his tears from view.
After the picnic all he wanted was to stretch out beside her and have her rest her face upon his chest. Her every smile almost broke his resolve. But he had to be strong. For her.
“Jessica. Sweetheart.”
“You’ve never called me that before.” She rose to a seated position and tucked her knees under her dress and wrapped her arms aroun
d her shins. “Is this to be a serious discussion?”
“I fear it must.” He shaped the words, very slowly, allowing it to linger on his tongue. And in his heart. “I love you so much.”
Her eyes grew huge. “You’re saying good-bye.” Her breath caught on the last word, like a hook’s barb had become lodged in her throat. “Aren’t you.”
“I love you . . .” He needed a hard breath to dislodge his own barb. “Too much—”
“There’s no such thing as ‘too much,’” she whispered.
“—to make you my widow.”
“Silly you.” She tried to laugh. But her tears refused to give her enough air. “We’re all dying. Every day is just one more step toward the final end.”
“Not this soon,” Lucius replied. “You have years left to live.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I have weeks. A few months. Perhaps only days.”
“You don’t know that, either,” she said, but the words were mangled now. She refused to stop talking, not even when her every word was forced around sobs that convulsed her entire frame. “Shall I tell you why I love you, Lucius? Because you are the loneliest man on God’s green earth.”
It was true. The truest thing he had ever heard. So true he was silenced. His reasons for doing as he did vanished in the flood of her sorrow. But not his resolve. All he could do was sit there, the distance between them impossibly wide. Even when she pleaded desperately for him to reach over and offer the comfort that only his arms could give.
When he did not speak, Jessica went on talking. “You need me to give you what you will never have without me. And that, my dearest beloved, is joy.”
That is true as well, he wanted to tell her. He could not even have named the flavor of ecstasy until their first conversation. Even now, when he was filled with bitter regret, he knew he was saying not just farewell to her, but to any shred of happiness. Any hope of bliss.
His silence defeated her. She started crying too hard to help him gather up their belongings. When the car was packed, he came back to where she sat, staring blindly at the Pacific, helped her to stand, and supported her weight back to the parking lot. One cripple helping another.
The first comforting sign that he had done the right thing came when he pulled up in front of her parents’ home. Jessica had recently taken an apartment in town. But Lucius did not want to take her back there, both because he did not want her to be alone just then, and because he did not want to test his broken resolve. As he rounded the final corner, he saw Jessica’s mother standing on the front walk, waiting for them. There was no way the older woman could have known what had just taken place, yet there she was, watching worriedly as Lucius pulled up. When he cut the motor, Jessica fumbled blindly for the latch. Finally her mother opened the door and enfolded Jessica in a comforting embrace.
Lucius watched the two women climb the steps and enter the house and seal him out. Only then did he rise from the car and open the trunk and lift the remnants of their last day together. He started up the drive, carrying the blanket and the hamper and her shoes. The garage door opened, and Jessica’s father emerged. Jessica’s father set the burdens on a shelf by the door leading into the house. Then he unbent enough to take Lucius in a strong embrace. Lucius was so shocked he did not know how to react. He stood there, frozen in place. He had only shaken the man’s hand twice, and one of those was the day he had sold the man his new Buick. Then Jessica’s father released him and stepped back and shut the garage door. All without saying a word.
That had taken place eleven months ago. Today was the first time since then that Lucius had returned to Miramar.
* * *
Anywhere else along the Pacific coast, a place as beautiful as Miramar would have been swept up in the boom that had dominated California throughout the sixties. But Miramar was too isolated and too small and too hemmed in by steep hills and too far from the new highway system. Many of the local residents would have it no other way.
For a brief period Lucius had imagined himself pulling up stakes and moving north. Settling here and establishing his office in this haven. But then the breakup had come, and logic had dominated, and he had remained in Santa Barbara, the town of his birth.
Yet even now, when heartache filled his car with a force strong as the daylight, he wished that it had somehow been possible to call this charming refuge his home.
He pulled into the broad parking area for the town’s seafront playground. It was named after some long-forgotten mayor, but all the locals knew it as Bent Pine Park. A stand of wind-twisted cypress and California pine anchored the southern edge and clambered up the cliffside beyond. His first visit, Jessica had brought him here, of course. From the moment of his arrival, Lucius knew he had found a new favorite place.
The Pacific mist was spiced by eucalyptus hidden among the hillside grove. The beach was half a mile wide and over two miles long. Cliffs anchored both ends, forming a natural refuge strong enough to keep out even the beast of time. A few fireflies wandered about, a rarity for the California coast. But obviously they found this place as wondrous as he did. And best of all, there had been a beautiful young woman who was thrilled to see how much he loved her hometown.
The car was empty now, but Jessica felt close as his rasping breath. Which was why it had been almost a year since his last visit.
Lucius took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers. He rose from the car, and in that instant he noticed the difference.
Most days Lucius operated with some level of discomfort. His pain boundaries had been pushed and stretched over the years. He knew he could tolerate far more aches than most people, and do so without medication. He disliked anything that had a dulling effect on his mental faculties.
But he had also developed an acute sensitivity to his body’s erratic rhythms.
He tried to tell himself that he was merely responding to being back here, in the place where he and Jessica had said their last farewells. No doubt he resonated at the level of heart and bone and sinew to Jessica’s absence. Not to mention possible aftereffects arising from the doctor’s worrisome comments.
But Lucius knew there was something more at work.
He walked down the path to the beach by sheer strength of will. His limbs felt disjointed, as though his body was severely irritated with him for insisting they carry his meager weight. When he finally reached the lapping waves, he turned and looked up the gentle rise that connected the shore to Miramar. There in the clutch of rooftops was Jessica’s home.
He ached with an uncommon force for what he could not have. Defeated by the futility of another lonely day, he started down the beach.
His stance was crooked, even by his own lopsided standards. He felt as though his body had adopted a new pose, intended to protect his aching heart.
A pair of fireflies floated around him. Some claimed there were no fireflies along all of California’s central coast. Yet here they were, two wandering flecks of light that danced and weaved about his face, as though seeking to illuminate this loneliest of hours.
There was a bitter majesty to his solitude. The beach was entirely his. No one remarked on his unbalanced walk. Nobody was there to notice his tears.
Why had he been pressed into this wretched body and this lonely life? Was it so much to ask, a healthy tomorrow shared with a woman he loved? Was he such a wretch that this forlorn day was all he deserved?
Why had he returned to Miramar? His physical pain was dwarfed by a regret so profound his frail body could scarcely hold it in. Why relive all the sorrow he had caused by forcing Jessica away? Repeatedly telling himself he had done the right thing changed nothing.
It was then he heard the sound above the crashing waves.
Lucius realized he had heard it for some time, but had dismissed it as the cry of a passing gull. Now his heart leapt with the joy of knowing he had been wrong.
He turned and saw Jessica running toward him. Her bare feet spurted sand up
behind her, like a galloping horse. Her hair was an auburn mane, a rainbow of glory in the daylight. Her impatient energy sang through her entire being, from the hands that clutched at the distance between them to the taut force that pulled back her features. Lucius saw the liquid sparkle on her cheeks, and realized she was crying, too.
She stopped an arm’s breadth away from him, and fought to shape words that came with wretched difficulty. “You came. You came. I knew you would. Why ever did you make me wait this long?”
Lucius reached for her. Or tried to.
It was then that he realized the doctor had been right all along.
Having so few moments left that he could actually count them gave him the strength to open his arms.
It was a terribly selfish act. Jessica flung herself at him with a heat as famished as his own. “Lucius, Lucius, my darling man!”
He released the words that had resonated through his mind, his heart, his lung, from the first instant of their first meeting. “I love you, Jessica.”
The attack struck like a Pacific wave, a great beast of agony that wrenched him from her arms and sent him crashing to the sand.
Jessica cried his name, over and over, as she knelt in the sand and clutched at him. The sweet bliss of her embrace was stronger than his heart’s final pain. The frigid waves lapped over them both, as though all the world’s tears had gathered to bid him farewell. He lay there, her beautiful face filling his vision, until he saw no more.
CHAPTER 2
TODAY
Wednesday started quite poorly for Asha Meisel and grew stranger with every passing hour. She was woken at nine minutes past five by a call from her supervisor. Dino Barbieri lectured at Cal Poly, where Asha was completing her graduate studies in marriage, family, and crisis therapy. He had also helped her obtain an internship with the hospital where he served as chief therapist in the mental-health wing. Asha had read his textbook on crisis management as an undergraduate and had chosen Cal Poly so that she could study under him. After her father, Dino Barbieri was quite possibly the most important man in her life.