A Time for Us

by Amy Knupp

  Rachel stopped her finger at the first contact. Even more telling was that she didn’t move any other muscle, didn’t so much as look at him. Tension came off her in waves.

  “I know that was hard,” Cale said, nodding his head vaguely to the building behind them. He noticed the roughness in his own voice. “Sitting through that...”

  “It wasn’t hard. It was...fine.”

  “The meeting was fine,” he repeated, stunned at the blatant untruth. “Then why did you leave early?”

  Several seconds ticked past before she replied. “I needed air.”

  “It gets easier, Rachel. Takes a couple of meetings, but eventually it gets better.”

  He waited for her to say something, but the frog was the only one to make a noise.

  He tried again, unsure why he was pushing the matter. “You will get to the point where you’re no longer sitting there, shell-shocked, thinking how fundamentally wrong it is to be planning a memorial anything for a woman who was so alive. So damn full of life.”

  “Right. Sure.” Rachel pulled her hand from under his and didn’t even bother to try to sound convinced.

  “The meetings turn into something to do,” he continued. “A list of somethings that need to be accomplished, so you won’t always be thinking so hard about the reality, the enormity of what that concert on the beach really signifies.”

  She bolted out of her chair—as much as bolting out of an Adirondack was possible—and took four steps to the edge of the shore. Arms crossed, her back to him, she searched across the bay for who knew what. Obviously, he’d pushed too far, rattled on to put her at ease too much, but when you got down to it, he’d barely said anything of substance, barely scratched the surface.

  It struck him as odd—concerning, even—that she was so resistant to any talk of her sister. Almost as if she wore a hard shell over her skin so that everything he said just bounced off. Almost.

  “It’s late,” Rachel said tightly. “I’m gonna go home.” With a self-conscious glance at him, she took off up the path toward the parking lot. “Thanks for bringing me my purse,” she added over her shoulder.

  Cale opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say to this woman who was so clearly in need of...something. She was messed up, and that was putting it mildly.

  It didn’t concern him. Wasn’t his problem. And yet...Noelle would have wanted him to do whatever he could to ease her twin’s transition to life back in San Amaro. He was fairly certain Rachel had no one to talk to, no real friends now that her sister was gone. She seemed to need someone. And maybe it was the part inside of him that made him a rescuer, but, Noelle’s wish or not, he wanted to somehow help Rachel cope.

  * * *

  RACHEL FOCUSED ALL HER energy on even, unhurried steps all the way to the car. Cale hadn’t gotten to her. The meeting hadn’t gotten to her. Nothing could get to her unless she allowed it to.

  Yeah, she couldn’t even convince herself of that this time.

  She got in the car and pulled the door shut, ensuring her touch was gentle in an effort not to slam it. Sucking in a slow, measured breath, she put the keys in the ignition and started the engine. She calmly pulled the gear stick into Reverse and got the hell out of the well-lit library parking lot and away from Cale.

  For the duration of the drive home, she worked to compose herself. The lump in her throat grew so big as she tried to block out everything Cale had said that it caused her pulse to pound in her temples. She could no longer breathe, couldn’t swallow. God...she couldn’t stand this.

  She lowered her window and the cool wind that rushed at her helped a little. When she finally was able to inhale again, it was a shaky, shallow breath. As she exhaled, she pounded her fist on the steering wheel.

  She was not going to succumb to tears. Not. Going. To. Cry.

  In the year and a half since that awful night, she’d not lost it yet. Had not had a single crying jag—and she wasn’t about to give in now. Because Rachel was pretty damn certain that if she weakened for an instant and let the first tear fall, she would never, ever be able to stop.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RACHEL’S HEAD WAS still spinning Saturday morning from her mother’s frantic departure—to play eighteen holes of golf, of all things—when her brother, Sawyer, sauntered through the back door.

  “Another day off?” she asked from her perch on the kitchen counter, where she was eating a gourmet ham and three-cheese omelet her mom had whipped up. “I wanna be a surgeon when I grow up.”

  “You wouldn’t be tall enough to reach the operating table, shorty.” Sawyer winked and tossed his keys on the table. He opened the refrigerator to hunt down some food. The way he ate, he should have weighed four hundred pounds.

  “I came to finish up the garage from hell. Only made it about halfway through the other day. What’s up with you? Just get off work?” he asked, eyeing her scrubs.

  “No. These have just permanently melded with my skin, so I don’t need to worry about changing clothes anymore.”

  He nodded knowingly. “How was the night in the E.R.? Busy?”

  “Extraordinarily slow until about five a.m. Now I’m so keyed up I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”

  “Good thing you can run on no sleep, just like Mom. Where’d she run off to, anyway? I saw her tearing around the corner in her car.”

  Rachel jabbed a bite of omelet with her fork and shook her head. “The woman I used to know as my mother was on her way to play golf.”

  Sawyer emerged from his refrigerator search with a fat carrot. As he noisily crunched a bite off, Rachel couldn’t help laughing to herself at the boyish image he presented. No one would ever guess he was a brilliant surgeon who could pretty much write his ticket to anywhere if he only wanted to. His ash-brown hair reached almost down to his collar in back and he was wearing a baseball cap backward on his head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him without a healthy goatee, shaggy enough it was clear he hadn’t just forgotten to shave for a couple of days, but not dense enough to call a beard.

  “Is Tatiana Goodwin playing with her?” he asked.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mom’s archenemy on the course. She pretty much always beats Mom, and Mom’s on the perpetual warpath.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about it,” Rachel said. “I kind of got stuck on the fact that Mom is getting all recreational. Golf? Really?”

  “It’s a good sport.”

  “The mom I remember doesn’t play sports. She doesn’t play at all. It’s like living with an alien.”

  He laughed as he finished the carrot and went back to the fridge.

  “You think I’m kidding,” Rachel said, twisting forty-five degrees so her legs dangled off the counter. “It’s like she’s a different person, Sawyer. Makes me wonder if she’s got a brain tumor or something. Has she had a checkup lately?”

  “A little med school and a lot of imagination are a bad combo.” He shook his head as if she was crazy. “Mom is healthy. How can you look at her and think otherwise?”

  “It’s not so much the way she looks. She’s leaving the office early. Playing golf on her days off. Golf, Sawyer. That’s not just a fifteen-minute pastime between patients. It’s a game where people actually age significantly between the first and last holes.”

  Sawyer laughed again. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of drama.”

  “I’m not the dramatic one—” She froze and the silence in the kitchen practically buzzed with the truth her statement pointed to.

  Rachel had never been the drama queen. That was Noelle.

  Before too many uncomfortable seconds ticked by, Rachel hopped down from the counter and rinsed her plate off in the sink. “It’s not just the golf and the leaving-the-office-early things. She’s cooking, too. Real food. Gourmet omelets. Three-course meals.”

  Sawyer narrowed his eyes at her for a second, just long enough to let her know he’d n
oticed her panicked change of subject. “What’s wrong with cooking? From what I’ve seen, she’s gotten pretty damn good. Almost good enough to make me want to move home again.”

  “You can’t. Your bed is taken.”

  “I figured. What’s the big deal about Mom, Rach? She’s doing okay.”

  “It’s just that she’s...not Mom anymore.” She put her plate in the dishwasher, closed it and busied herself running her finger over the ancient paint stain on the countertop. “It’s all been since Noelle...” Again, she broke off, shaking her head. “It messed her up.”

  “It messed all of us up. How could it not?” Sawyer said, his voice going gravelly with sadness. “But Mom’s doing okay, Rachel. Really. She’s...learning how to live, I think she called it. Finally. It’s a relief to see, believe me. She was bad enough before, working killer hours. After Noelle died, Mom was putting in so many hours at the hospital and her office she didn’t even sleep in her own bed half the time.”

  “That’s the mom I know, though. That’s who she is...or always was. She loved her career.”

  “She buried herself in her career to avoid thinking about things. Facing them.” Sawyer peeled back the top of a container of yogurt. “Kind of like someone else I know,” he said gently.

  “Hello, brand-new career here.” Rachel started her spiel practically on automatic pilot.

  “I don’t just mean now. But it is harder to avoid the big ugly truth of what happened when you’re here on the island. Damn hard to avoid it living in this house.”

  Amen to that. She wanted nothing more than to block out thoughts of losing her twin sister, her best friend, her other half. But every day when Rachel got out of bed from the relative safeness of the Yoda haven, she was accosted the second she exited her brother’s bedroom—by the door. The closed door of the bedroom she and Noelle had shared. The room where Noelle had been living on that night...

  “I’m not trying to avoid anything,” she fibbed, knowing he spoke of much more than a stupid six-panel wooden door. “I’m just...trying to cope the best way I know how.”

  Sawyer tugged affectionately at several strands of hair near her shoulder, something he’d done to both her and Noelle since they’d been toddlers. “You and Mom are alike in so many ways. Always have been.”

  “Yeah, well, she lost me with golf.”

  “Who knows. Maybe in six months, you’ll be teeing up, too.”

  “I’ll trust you to commit me to a nice, white padded room if so.”

  Sawyer didn’t bother to grin at her admittedly lame attempt at humor. Instead, he went all serious on her. “I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for you, being her twin. It was hard enough as the big brother who couldn’t protect her.” He paused, swallowed hard, and Rachel could see his pain, there in his eyes. “But I do know this. You’re a strong person, just like Mom. You’ll get through this okay. As soon as you let yourself stop avoiding and allow the healing to begin, you’re going to be fine, Rach.”

  His words made a wave of nausea swell inside of her, but she tried to ignore the nasty feeling. “Sawyer?” she said, tilting her head and attempting a grin. “You make a much better surgeon than shrink.”

  “Sucks when your big brother has mad wisdom powers, doesn’t it?”

  His irresistible grin was all that kept her from throwing a sharp object at him.

  Sawyer tossed the now-empty yogurt container in the trash and headed for the back door. “I’m off to fight the evils of the Culver garage.”

  Which meant Rachel was once again left alone in the house. It was a big house, but thanks to her brother’s little speech, she could barely get a full breath of air. Even though that closed door was up a flight of stairs and down a hallway, she could feel it from here, taunting her. Challenging her. Calling to her to face up to what lay behind it.

  Luckily for her, she’d found a new-to-her website filled with case studies on seizures that she was itching to read. Without going up the stairs, she threw some sandals on, grabbed her laptop and left to study...anywhere but here.

  * * *

  CALE SET DOWN THE four hot pizza boxes in the center of the crowded patio table and collapsed into the last empty striped-cushion chair on his parents’ new balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. His younger sister, mom and dad were flanked by Clay Marlow, Evan Drake and Dylan Long, Cale’s firefighter buddies who’d spent the past two days helping with his parents’ move.

  “It’s official,” Cale said to his mom and dad. “Your first meal in your new home. Welcome to San Amaro Island.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Evan held up his bottle of beer, and those who had drinks clinked their bottles and glasses to his. “Hope you love it here on the beach.”

  “What’s not to love?” Mariah, Cale’s sister and roommate, said, glancing out at the waves and the sand that stretched almost up to the condo building. From the sixth floor, they could see for miles out into the gulf on a clear day like today.

  “It’s a big change from the ranch,” Ted Jackson said in his brusque way as he pulled his wheelchair closer to the table, his eyes on the food.

  Ronnie, Cale’s mother, stood and leaned her short, round frame over the table to begin serving. She might be hundreds of miles from what she knew as home, but this table was technically hers, and she wasn’t one to allow anyone else to take charge of a meal under her roof. The role of ranch wife was ingrained in her as much as her love of the horse figurines that had filled six medium-size moving boxes and weighed as much as a submarine. “We’ll get used to it eventually, I’m sure. Who wants veggie deluxe?”

  “Is there any meat on that at all, ma’am?” Clay asked suspiciously.

  “Might as well just pass it my way.” Mariah reached for the box of vegetarian pizza with a smug grin.

  “That’s not real pizza,” her dad informed her. “Need some beef on there or you won’t get full.”

  Clay and Evan voiced their agreement.

  “I’m not picky,” Dylan said to Mariah with a hungry look Cale wasn’t sure was directed solely at the food. “Don’t go assuming that’s all yours.”

  “Could it be? A man with some self-control?” Mariah said. “We don’t have those in our family.” She took two slices of her sacred, meat-free pie and handed the box to Dylan as her dad grumbled at her.

  “I didn’t say a thing about self-control.” Dylan served himself. “Just thought I could get a slice of veggie faster, while those three dolts hem and haw over what flavor of cholesterol they want first.” He nodded toward his friends.

  Cale’s mom doled out two giant slices at a time to the guys—one of the many reasons Cale knew she was the best mom in the world. Her pineapple upside-down cake recipe was another.

  “Who needs more to drink?” Ronnie asked before sitting down to her own plate.

  “I’ve got it, Mom. Relax,” Cale said. He took requests and went inside and loaded up on bottles for those who needed them.

  “I don’t know how we would have done this move without you kids,” Ronnie was saying when Cale came back outside. “We’re so very thankful....” She raised her glass of ice water to her lips in an attempt to hide her emotions.

  Cale squeezed her shoulder supportively as he retook his seat next to her. His mom put up a brave front, but he knew how hard the past few months had been on her, what with his dad’s tractor accident and subsequent health deterioration, having to close down the farming-implement store that’d been in the Jackson family for three generations, and now relocating to the island, where Cale and Mariah could help them out more easily.

  When Cale had first suggested the move, his mom had protested as loudly as his dad had. Neither of them had ever lived outside of the twenty-mile radius from the farm store. They’d lived on the same ranch for the forty-some years they’d been married. But as the months had dragged on and she’d become responsible for more and more as her husband got worse instead of better, she’d had to face reality. Had to admit she couldn’t do i
t all anymore, couldn’t handle the ranch, pared down though it’d become, and couldn’t keep telling her husband and children she was okay when she wasn’t. She’d needed support, both physically and emotionally. It’d taken Cale almost a year, but he’d finally convinced them to purchase this condo.

  “It was nothing, Mrs. J.,” Evan said. “Moving you in was the easy part. Looks like Cale’s going to stay busy with all the handyman projects you mentioned.”

  The place was mostly handicap accessible, but there were a couple changes Ted insisted on, like a lower counter in the bathroom and a wider doorway to one of the spare bedrooms he planned to use as a den. Plus there was the list of updates Cale’s mom had made before she would agree to put an offer on the place. Cale had promised to do the work himself, even though his mom and dad were sufficiently flush after selling the implement business and the ranch and could have easily paid a professional to do the work. His mom refused to have a bunch of “strange workers” in her home, and Cale was determined to do whatever he could to make their transition easier.

  “Yeah, are you sure you can handle everything yourself?” Mariah asked him, pegging him with a meaningful look.

  “Looking forward to it. You know I like to do projects.” As soon as he said the words, he wished he could take them back and change the subject. He realized his sister was thinking about his own condo—the one he hadn’t managed to get back to remodeling since Noelle’s death.

  “I wasn’t aware of that, no,” his sister said, keeping her tone light. That didn’t prevent the heavy feeling of dread that settled over him.