“I thought I was over it.” His voice was no more than a rough husk of sound. “I thought I had made my peace with Elias’s death. For a year or so, I grieved. And then I told myself I needed to let it go—let him go—to get on with my life.”
“But you weren’t over it. Not really.”
He shook his head. “It all came back, after the accident, like some dangerous animal I had locked in a room and told myself I was safe, protected from. That animal got out. During those three days alone in that ice cave, that animal came after me. At first, I fought it. I told myself I could make it, I was going to be okay. But that, the fighting, the holding on, it didn’t last long. Then I was wondering if I was going to die, and then I was certain that I would. I was making a kind of peace with death, an agreement. Death and I came to an understanding. We both knew it was time for me to go.” He stared off into the far corner of the long room, past the shadowed open door down at the other end. And he was lost to her at that moment, lost to the world, gone from his own life.
She reached for him, touched his face. His skin felt cool, bloodless. “Donovan.” She urged him to turn to her. “Look at me. Please…”
He did turn his face her way. But his eyes were empty. He said, “I thought about Elias a lot during those three days. I thought of the life he would never have, of the complete wrongness of that. By the end, before they found me, I was talking to him, to Elias. It seemed I could see his face. I could hear his voice, calling me, asking questions, asking where I was, why I had left him alone. And I started thinking it was good, right, that I should die and be with him. I knew I was ready to die. I wanted it. To die.”
He seemed a million miles away from her then, back on that mountain, in unbearable pain, with only his lost son for company.
She feared for him, truly. And she hated herself a little. For pushing him so hard, for challenging him, constantly, to open up to her, to face his demons.
What did she know, really, about all he had suffered, about how he might have managed to deal with the worst kind of loss a parent can ever know?
What right did she have, to rip away his protections, to drag him back to the world again? She could see a deeper truth now, one her own youth and optimism had blinded her to. She could see at last, that in his isolation and silence, he had found a kind of peace.
But then she had come and stolen his peace away, all the while telling herself it was for his own good.
His own good.
What did she know about what was good for him?
Desperation seized her. She found herself pleading with him. “But Donovan—Donovan, please. You didn’t die. You made it back.”
He only went on staring at her through those blank eyes. “Not really. My body was rescued, I went on breathing. But for all intents and purposes, I was dead….”
It was too much. He seemed so far away now, gone somewhere inside his own mind, into a cold and lifeless place where she would never be able to reach him. She couldn’t bear it.
She clambered up out of her seat and reached for him, wrapping both arms around his broad shoulders, from the side, bending across his wheelchair. It was awkward, trying to hold him like that. And it wasn’t enough, either. She couldn’t hold him tight enough.
So she eased one foot up and over him, sliding it between his white-knuckled grip on the wheel and the crook of his elbow. He only sat there, still as a living statue, as she squirmed to get her other leg into the space between his arm and his torso.
Finally, she managed it. She straddled him as she had the night before—only then, it had been for their mutual pleasure.
Now, it was for comfort. Comfort for him.
And for herself, too.
It was the only way she had left to try and reach him, to make him come back to her from whatever dark place he had gone.
She wrapped her arms around him and she buried her head against his neck. She held on tight, so very tight….
At first, it was no good. She was holding on all by herself. And that was unbearable, that he just sat there, unmoving, like the dead man he’d claimed he already was.
She held on tighter, she pressed her lips to the cool flesh of his neck, she whispered his name, over and over again.
And slowly, so slowly, his arms relaxed their steely grip on the wheels. He lowered his head a little, enough that she felt the soft kiss of his breath, stirring her hair.
He said, so softly she almost didn’t hear the word, “Abilene…” And then those powerful arms came around her. He was holding her as tightly as she held on to him.
And she was whispering, frantically, “It’s not true—you know it’s not. You’re here, with me. You’re okay and you have to go on now. You have to learn to go on….”
He pressed his lips to her temple, a fervent caress. And then he was cradling her face between his two hands, urging her to lift her head, to look at him.
And she did look—and it was okay. He was all right. The color was back in his cheeks, and his eyes were focused, alive. He was there, in the studio, in the world, with her again.
She took his mouth—a hard, quick kiss. A claiming kiss. Once, and then a second time. “Oh, you scared me. You did. You really did….”
He eased her away from him enough that he could capture her gaze and hold it. “Okay,” he said, firmly. Decisively.
She didn’t get it, had no idea what he was telling her. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, you were right.”
“Um. I was?”
“Sometimes I hate it, you know? How right you are?”
“I have to tell you, Donovan. Sometimes I don’t feel very right. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t got a clue.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“Yeah. Well, I put on a pretty good act, I guess, huh?”
He searched her face. And then he gave a low chuckle. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Well…”
“Do you?”
She was busted. “I hate to admit it, but no. I don’t.”
“I’m saying you were right, tonight, at the dinner table. And after I wheeled out on you, after I went to my rooms to sulk, I stared at the portrait of Elias over the fireplace, and I thought about how I let him down the day he died, by not watching out for him closely enough, by being too damn proud of him to do what was good for him, to tell him it wasn’t safe, tell him no. And stick by it.”
It was futile to argue that point, she got that. But she couldn’t just keep letting it go, either. “Oh, Donovan…” She put up a hand between them, touched her fingers to his lips.
His gold brows drew together. “What?”
“Sometimes terrible things happen, no matter what you do to make sure that they don’t.”
He caught her fingers, eased them away. “I’m very well aware of that.” The bitterness was there, in his tone, again—and in his eyes. “And it doesn’t help to know that, doesn’t help when people say it. It doesn’t help in the least.”
She lowered her head in surrender. “No,” she said quietly. “I can see that it doesn’t.” She reminded herself—again—that nothing she could say was going to make him stop blaming himself. He had to come to forgiving himself in his own way, in his own time.
He touched her chin, so gently. When she looked up, the anger was gone from his face. He spoke tenderly. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I get it. I understand. I made a commitment when I offered the fellowship for the children’s center, and that commitment was not only to the children who need the center, not only to the Foundation, not only to you. It was also to Elias. For his sake most of all, I have to follow through. If I don’t, I’ll be letting him down all over again.”
Her breath got all tangled up in her throat and her heart beat faster, with pure joy. It was happening. He’d seen what he needed to do at last.
And he’d decided to go for it.
He said, “You were right, Abilene, as you are way too much of the time. I’l
l be going to San Antonio with you, after all.”
Chapter Twelve
He took her to his rooms. She saw the pictures of Elias, at last.
“Oh, I wish I could have known him,” she said.
“He would have liked you.” Donovan’s voice was rough with feeling. He held out his hand to her.
She went to him. She kissed him. They undressed each other slowly and went to bed.
They didn’t get to sleep until very late. But they were up at dawn, nonetheless.
Now that he’d made the decision to go, Donovan was wasting no time about it. He wanted to be in San Antonio, ready to work, within the week.
Sunday morning, he started surfing the internet, looking for a place he might stay for an indefinite period, somewhere with good wheelchair access. A few hotels offered what he needed. But he was hoping he could find a house to rent. After a couple of hours of looking, he’d come up with zip.
Abilene suggested, “You should call Dax. He and Zoe have plenty of room.”
Donovan hesitated. He didn’t want to put them out. It seemed presumptuous. They’d invited him to visit, not to move in on them while he worked.
Abilene marched down the length of the studio to his desk, grabbed the phone and shoved it at him. “They would love to have you. They have plenty of room. Their house is so big, you could move in there permanently. Unless they wanted to see you, they would never even realize you were there.”
He slanted her a put-upon look. “Have I told you that you are one extremely annoying and pushy woman?”
“You have. Frequently. Make the call.”
He took the phone she held under his nose and dialed Dax’s number.
Dax said Donovan was welcome to live at his place, for as long as he wanted to stay. He and Zoe would be gone next week, when Donovan arrived. They traveled a lot, gathering material for his magazine. But he had live-in staff who would have Donovan’s rooms ready and waiting for him.
Donovan thanked him, and explained what he needed in terms of access for his wheelchair. And Dax promised it was all workable. There was a suite on the main floor that should be ideal. Meals would be available at Donovan’s convenience, since the cook lived in.
So it was settled. Donovan would stay with the Girards. Abilene had her condo waiting for her—though she wouldn’t mind at all if she ended up spending her nights at her sister’s, in Donovan’s rooms.
Monday, when Helen came to work, Donovan asked her to accompany them to San Antonio. But she didn’t want to leave her husband alone in Chula Mesa. So he had her call a San Antonio temp agency. They would send someone to Dax’s as soon as Donovan got settled in. Also, Helen found trainers and a massage therapist in San Antonio who would work with Donovan while he was there.
Anton and Olga would remain in West Texas to take care of the house. And Helen would come in three times a week to deal with correspondence and anything else that might need her attention while Donovan was away.
As the week went by, Donovan spent a lot of time on the phone with the Foundation people. They were thrilled to learn that he and his protégé would be showing up very soon now. There were conference calls with Ruth Gilman and Doug Lito at the Johnson Wallace Group and with the builder, Sam Duncan of SA Custom Contracting. The site, chosen over a year before, was ready and waiting. The formal groundbreaking ceremony would be going forward on March first, as planned.
Abilene spent her days working feverishly to be ready to go—and her nights in Donovan’s bed. She loved the picture of Elias in his sailor suit and talked Donovan into moving it back out to the main living area.
Wednesday night, at dinner, he told Olga to take the portrait out of his sitting room and put it back where it belonged, over the front room fireplace.
Tears welled in Olga’s eyes. “Yes. Of course. An excellent decision. He was the sweetest boy. And we miss him, so much.”
Thursday night, Luisa came to dinner. She told Donovan how happy it made her, to see that he’d put Elias’s picture back in the front room.
“Blame Abilene,” he said. “She made me do it.” And he sent Abilene a look that melted her midsection and made her toes curl inside her high-heeled shoes.
Luisa wanted them to come to the cantina one more time before they left for San Antonio.
So Friday night, they drove out to the roadhouse. They had margaritas and played pool—and Donovan got his butt kicked again by that tall, tattooed blonde. They were back at the house before midnight and went together to Donovan’s rooms, where they made slow, tender love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Abilene woke Saturday morning in Donovan’s bed. She watched him sleeping and found herself wishing she could wake up beside him every morning, for the rest of her life.
She loved him—was in love with him. And for the past few busy days, she’d been trying to figure out how to tell him. It seemed such a simple thing. She ought to just say it. I love you, Donovan.
But she didn’t. Somehow, the moment never quite seemed right.
Strange, really. She’d always been the kind who said exactly what was on her mind.
But on this whole I-love-you thing, well, she kept hesitating, kept putting it off. She didn’t want to push him. Not about something so important as love.
Not about something as far-reaching as the possibility of forever.
On the pillow beside her, he opened his eyes.
She thought, I love you. But all she said was, “Good morning.”
Donovan met her shining eyes and knew what he had to do. But somehow, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
What he had with her, he’d never had with any woman—that sense that she knew him, knew who he really was. That she accepted him, completely, and yet still expected him to be the best he could possibly be.
He felt the same way about her. He knew her in the deepest way. He accepted her as the brilliant, pushy, tenderhearted woman she was. And he wanted the best for her. He wanted her to have the chance to make all her dreams come true.
She couldn’t do that with him. He didn’t share her dreams. He couldn’t. Not anymore. He kept thinking about that fantasy house of hers—her dream house—about the husband and children she wanted to build it for. He was never going to be the husband in that house, or the father of those children.
He reached out and brushed the back of his hand along the velvety curve of her cheek, thinking that he somehow had to find a way to make her understand why he had to leave her.
Not now, though.
Not yet…
So he thought, I have to leave you. But all he said was, “Good morning.”
Later that day, Abilene packed up her car. She would leave, on her own, early Sunday morning.
Donovan would fly to San Antonio on Monday. He’d offered to ride with Abilene, to keep her company. But they both knew an eight-hour car ride would be uncomfortable for him. In the end, he’d admitted it was probably wiser for him to fly. Helen had made arrangements for a van with a wheelchair lift to be available at the San Antonio airport, so he would have the use of a car when he got there.
That night, late, it rained. A real gulley-washer. Abilene heard the soft, insistent roar of it outside and woke. Beside her, Donovan slept on.
Slowly, with care, so as not to wake him, she rose from the bed, grabbed her robe from a nearby chair and slipped it on. Barefoot, she padded into his sitting room, where she gazed out at the torrent. It was coming down so hard it made the water in the pool churn and ran in little rivers along the courtyard pathways. Lightning brightened the sky and thunder boomed somewhere in the distance.
She stood there at the glass door for several minutes, watching the rain come down and the lightning flash, listening to the rumbles of thunder.
“Looks pretty wild out there,” Donovan said from behind her.
She turned to him. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. The thunder did.” His white teeth flashed with his smile. In the d
arkness, his eyes were almost black. He’d pulled on sweats before he wheeled in to join her.
She went to him, bent to kiss him. He reached for her and pulled her down across his lap. She curved against him, her legs over one wheel, an arm around his neck, her head tucked beneath his chin.
He kissed the top of her head. “Ready for the big drive tomorrow?”
“All packed.” She nuzzled his throat, breathed in the clean scent of his skin, thought how she hated to be apart from him, even just for a day.
Lightning flashed again. The room brightened.
She lifted her head and met his eyes as the room darkened once more and the thunder rolled off across the desert floor. “It almost feels unreal, that we’re leaving. Five weeks out here, and it’s as if I’ve been here, with you, forever.”
“Five weeks,” he echoed. “And I spent most of it making your life as miserable as possible.”
“The past week is the one that counts.”
He held her gaze. “They all count. You know that.” And then he guided her head down to his shoulder again. “It will be good, though, won’t it? To see your family, to go home…?”
“Um-hm.” I love you. She thought the words. But she didn’t say them.
Five weeks, she had known him. Five weeks was nothing. Even if it did kind of feel like forever.
And as he’d just said, only in the past week had they truly found each other.
They both needed more time.
At least a little more.
And a chance to be together out in the real world. His house was beautiful and so comfortable and lately, it had started to feel like her home, somehow. But it was a place apart, where the world outside could not intrude.
San Antonio would be the proof of what they had together. He would meet her family. And the work on the children’s center would proceed beyond just the two of them.
Yes. It was good, that they were going.
And this strange feeling she had, the one she kept denying. The feeling that his going with her to San Antonio was an end instead of the beginning…
Donovan's Child Page 14