Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

“We weren’t going to see each other again, Thom. Remember?”

  “Annie, you know that isn’t what you want. It isn’t what I want, either.”

  “I told you,” she says, her voice quavering, “I can’t get involved with you. My husband—”

  “I know.” Sensing that it’s time to pull back, to let go—if only for now—Thom nods. “It’s okay.”

  Everything has changed, Thom thinks, watching Annie slip back into her clothes. Everything has changed . . . and yet nothing has.

  “I’m sorry it has to be this way.” Annie presses a kiss on his cheek at the door.

  He holds her close. “This isn’t good-bye, Annie.”

  “It has to be, Thom.”

  “I know that’s what you think. I know that’s the only way you can do this. But trust me, Annie. This isn’t good-bye.”

  Her only response is one last kiss before she flees into the waiting elevator.

  Left alone in his apartment, Thom returns to the couch, sipping his creamy, sugared coffee. It might be lukewarm, but it isn’t half bad.

  Annie was right.

  Life is too short to ever drink black coffee again, he tells himself with a thoughtful smile. And too short to give up Annie Harlowe without a fight.

  Chapter 16

  Dr. Ronald Leaver’s practice happens to be located in the same Midtown suite of offices as Dr. Erika Bauer’s practice.

  Dr. Ronald Leaver happens to have an opening at eleven o’clock on Thursday morning, precisely the time when Dr. Erika Bauer has an hour to spare in between patients.

  Dr. Ronald Leaver also happens to be as willing to spend that hour with Annie as Dr. Erika Bauer is to spend it with Annie’s children.

  “I know that you said this is one big coincidence, but I so don’t believe you,” Annie tells Erika, reluctantly delivering Milo and Trixie into her care at five minutes to eleven. “You made the appointment in advance, didn’t you? That’s why you got me into the city overnight.”

  Erika shrugs, the plastic beads on the tips of her cornrows swinging jauntily against her shoulders. “Believe what you want, Annie. Tomorrow is a holiday, everything is slow. And anyway, all that counts is that you’ll have a chance to talk with Dr. Leaver and maybe find some peace of mind.”

  “I’ll have more peace of mind when I get these two wiggle worms on the train and back home where they belong,” Annie says, frazzled from a morning spent wrestling two energetic, question-filled children in and out of a packed diner, two crowded elevators, and four jammed subways.

  At least she had very little time during all of that bustling activity to ponder what happened last night with Thom.

  Not that she didn’t lie awake into the wee hours on Erika’s pull-out couch, doing just that.

  Try as she might to convince herself that it’s over, she can’t deny that she feels something for him. Something powerfully mutual, something she felt once before . . .

  For Andre.

  But back then, she was free to welcome the emotion, embrace it, follow it wherever it might lead.

  This time . . .

  She isn’t free.

  “Go talk to Dr. Leaver, Annie,” Erika urges, opening a desk drawer and removing paper, pens, scissors, and tape. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “But I’m pretty sure my insurance doesn’t cover—”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s taken care of.”

  “Did you—”

  “He owes me a favor, okay?”

  “Erika, I can’t let you do this. Just like I can’t let you give me that black dress from last night. I’m going to give it back to you the second it’s back from the dry cleaner.”

  “No, you aren’t. It looks better on you than it would ever look on me.”

  “When am I ever even going to have an occasion to wear it again?”

  “You don’t need an occasion to get dressed up a little.”

  Annie shakes her head. “It just isn’t me.”

  “The dress?”

  “The dress, the makeup, the perfume—”

  “That reminds me, you can have that, too.”

  “What?”

  “The perfume. I’ve never liked Chanel much. It smelled great on you, though.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but I wasn’t wearing the Chanel. I was wearing the honeysuckle.”

  “What honeysuckle?”

  “Your honeysuckle oil.”

  “What honeysuckle oil?”

  “The one in the little vial.”

  Erika looks perplexed. “I don’t have any honeysuckle oil.”

  “Yes, you do. It was on the shelf. I had it on last night.”

  “I don’t think so,” Erika says with a shrug, and glances down at her watch.

  Annie frowns. “But—”

  “You’d better go, Annie.”

  “Erika—”

  “Better hurry. You’re going to be late.”

  “All right, but . . . you two be good, okay?” Annie warns her children. “Don’t drive Auntie Erika crazy, and don’t destroy her office.”

  “They won’t destroy anything,” Erika says. “We’re going to do some artwork.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Annie eyes the materials spread across Erika’s desk. “Trixie’s only used to safety scissors. Those are so sharp. She might—”

  “Go. She’ll be fine.”

  “Why is Mommy going to the doctor?” Annie hears Milo ask worriedly as she steps out of the office. “Is she sick?”

  Annie closes the door behind her, then lingers, pressing her ear against it to hear Erika’s muffled response.

  “No, Mommy’s not sick. She’s just sad. This is the kind of doctor who helps sad people feel happy again.”

  Realizing that the receptionist down the hall is watching her eavesdrop, Annie reluctantly moves away from the door.

  She takes a deep breath and heads toward Dr. Leaver’s office, telling herself that there’s nothing he could say or do—nothing anybody can say or do—to make her feel truly happy again.

  No. That isn’t true.

  She’s felt happiness since Andre died. When she’s with her children, or her friends . . . and last night, with Thom . . .

  Happiness isn’t the issue.

  The issue is that a piece of her heart still belongs to Andre, and that isn’t going to change.

  She never promised “Till death do us part.”

  She promised to stay by his side forever.

  One love, one lifetime.

  Seated at his desk in his corner office with its dazzling view of the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge, Thom makes a third attempt to read the e-mail he just opened.

  It’s from a colleague, something about abruptly rising stock in a Midwestern financial institution that’s been on his radar for quite some time.

  Yesterday, this news would have been earth-shattering enough to provoke an immediate response.

  Today, the only thing that’s earth-shattering for Thom is that he seems to have fallen in love overnight.

  And instead of plotting his next business move, here he is, contemplating the odds that Annie Harlowe is still in Manhattan at this hour, or already on a train back to Long Island in the preholiday exodus.

  It doesn’t make a difference, really—not in the grand scheme of things. But the city without Annie in it suddenly has all the appeal of a week in the desert without water.

  First thing tomorrow, he’ll head back out to Southampton and win her back.

  Yes, and how, exactly, are you going to go about that? an inner voice asks cynically.

  I’ll just refuse to take “no” for an answer, he decides, with more uncertainty than a man like Thom Brannock is ever accustomed to experiencing.

  If he were wise, he’d probably give up the quest and acknowledge the fact that in her overwhelming grief, Annie isn’t ready to fall in love again . . . that she might never be ready to fall in love again. That even if she is someday, she might not be capable of loving him.
/>
  His best move is probably to forget about her and focus on his work.

  “Mr. Brannock?”

  He looks up to see his longtime secretary, Mavourneen, standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

  In the Irish brogue that followed her from Belfast half a century ago, she says, “Colin Lincoln is on the line about the e-mail he just sent you.”

  That would be the e-mail Thom has yet to peruse in detail. “Tell him to hold for a minute, please, Mavourneen.”

  “All right. Do you want me to bring you another cup of coffee?”

  “Sure, but this time . . . could you put cream and sugar in it, please?”

  If “I’ve been talking to my dead husband on the telephone” doesn’t knock Dr. Ronald Leaver off his leather swivel chair, nothing will.

  Now that she’s blurted her secret after hemming and hawing through most of the session, Annie rests a knuckle against her mouth and waits for his response, wondering if he’s going to refer her to an inpatient mental health facility or a storefront medium down in Murray Hill.

  “I see. Do you call him, or does he call you?” the doctor asks, looking about as flustered as a seasoned pediatrician diagnosing the common cold.

  “I call him, on his cell phone,” Annie confesses, taken aback—and encouraged—by the doctor’s apparent lack of skepticism. “I used to do it just to hear his voice on the outgoing message, but then one day, he answered.”

  Dr. Leaver writes something on his yellow legal pad. “And what did he say?”

  “It was hard to hear him.”

  “But it was his voice? You’re sure of that?”

  “I’m positive it was his voice,” Annie says decidedly, even as she reminds herself that she’s also positive she wore Erika’s honeysuckle oil last night.

  Erika must be mistaken. She probably forgot she owned the stuff.

  “So it was his voice, but you couldn’t hear him?”

  “I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying most of the time. There was a lot of static on the line.”

  The doctor nods, rubbing his white beard. “What, if anything, were you able to discern?” he asks, watching her patiently through his wire-framed glasses.

  “That I needed to take a catering job I had been offered that night. I was planning to turn it down because I didn’t want to leave the kids with a sitter. Money’s been an issue for us lately, and I’ve been torn between getting a more stable job and taking care of my kids after what they’ve been through.”

  “So you think your husband was reaching out to guide you.”

  “Do you think that?”

  The doctor ignores her question, responding with another of his own. “Under what circumstances do these phone calls tend to take place?”

  “Circumstances? You mean . . . ?”

  “Time of day, weather conditions, are you alone when they occur?”

  “Not always alone in the house,” Annie says, thinking back. “The kids are usually around someplace, but never in the room with me.”

  “Nobody else has heard the voice?”

  “No,” she says, feeling defensive, “but I know they really happened.”

  He flashes a reassuring smile. “When did they take place, Annie?”

  “The first time it was during the middle of the day, and then it happened at night, so . . .”

  “Mm-hm.” The doctor scribbles something on his pad. “What else? Has the weather been consistent when you made the calls?”

  Annie shakes her head. “It was raining a couple of times, but not the other night. Although . . .” She frowns, remembering something. “There was lightning. Heat lightning.”

  Dr. Leaver’s bushy white eyebrows abruptly chase his receding hairline. “So every time you’ve made this connection, there’s basically been some manner of electromagnetic atmospheric activity?”

  “Do you mean lightning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” Annie’s eyes widen. “Are you saying that’s why I’m able to get through to Andre? Because of some weird . . . energy thing?”

  “Possibly. My research into EVP has shown that—”

  “EVP?” Annie interrupts, needing to grasp every possible bit of information she might glean; anything to back up the possibility that Andre is still out there somewhere, looking out for her.

  “EVP is ‘electronic voice phenomena,’ which refers to the deceased communicating with the living via telephone, radio, and television, computers . . .”

  Relief courses through Annie. “You mean this is something that happens to other people? I’m not crazy?”

  He offers a faint smile. “EVP has been documented since the beginning of technology. I’ve personally heard a number of recordings of ghost voices actually picked up on audio tape.”

  “What about phone calls?”

  “I’ve never experienced one myself, but there is extensive research into the phenomenon. The circumstances you’ve described are fairly typical: the voice of the deceased is usually instantly recognizable, the quality of the connection tends to be poor, and the call usually has some specific purpose, as though the deceased needs to convey some information to the loved one they left behind.”

  Annie is speechless, nodding with fervent recognition as he touches upon each point.

  “The calls also tend to occur at particularly meaningful times,” Dr. Leaver goes on. “A birthday, a holiday . . .”

  “An anniversary?” Annie asks, her heart pounding.

  “A wedding anniversary? Yes, of course.”

  “No, I mean the anniversary of the person’s death?”

  “Absolutely. That’s very common.”

  “Andre died a little over a year ago. What about the weather? You said the weather might have had something to do with it?”

  “In my own research, I’ve found a substantial link between electromagnetic activity and EVP.”

  “So you’re a hundred percent positive that it really can happen?”

  “‘A hundred percent positive’?” he echoes, with an amused shake of his head. “There’s very little about which I’m a hundred percent positive, in the field of paranormal research or anything else. But there is substantial evidence to support the theory that the deceased are capable of communicating with the living through various means, yes.”

  “Various means?”

  “According to my research, the deceased can appeal to different senses to let us know they’re there. They can use sight, sound, touch . . . even scent is very common.”

  “So you believe me?”

  “There is also evidence to support the theory that such communication is the product of the bereaved person’s subconscious,” he goes on without acknowledging her comment.

  “You mean, you think I’m imagining the whole thing?”

  “I didn’t say that, Annie. I’m only telling you that there are no definitive answers. Not yet. I’d like to talk to you about this at length, but I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  “Already?” Annie is dismayed. Why didn’t she jump right into the phone calls at the beginning of the session? Why did she waste so much time worrying about what he was going to think of her?

  He flips open an appointment book. “I can see you here next Thursday morning, Annie, at the same time.”

  Next week?

  How can she wait a whole week to figure out what Andre is trying to tell her?

  However, she has no choice but to agree, promising that yes, she’ll make notes of any other communication she has with the deceased between now and then.

  The deceased.

  She hates the term as much as any other that has become a part of her life in the past year.

  Stepping back out into the corridor, Annie closes the door on Dr. Leaver and the discussion of EVP and immediately reopens the door—at least mentally—on the prospect of Thom Brannock.

  Trust me, Annie . . . this isn’t good-bye.

  Why can’t the man take “no” for an answer?


  And why, when she says “no,” doesn’t she mean it?

  One minute, she was telling him there wasn’t room for him in her life; the next, she was lying in his arms.

  What’s wrong with her?

  No wonder Andre is trying desperately to communicate with her from beyond the grave. He’s probably trying to warn her to stay away from Thom.

  Yes, that seems a bit preposterous . . . but no more preposterous than any of the scientific research Dr. Leaver just told her about.

  Her head spinning with possibilities—and impossibilities—Annie strides toward Erika’s office, needing to pick up her children and get on the train, back to familiar ground.

  Only one thing is certain, she tells herself as she reaches for the knob: She hasn’t seen the last of Thom Brannock.

  Sooner or later, he’s bound to barge back into her life. It’s going to take every ounce of strength she possesses to say “no” again . . . and this time, to really mean it . . .

  Or . . .

  Or what?

  Or forget about Andre, forget about what she should do, and follow her heart wherever it leads . . .

  Even if it’s right into Thom Brannock’s arms?

  Striding up Third Avenue toward his apartment at the end of an exhausting day, Thom tries to force his thoughts back to the latest report about the Midwestern firm’s stock, knowing that the only thing he truly cares about acquiring at the moment is a green-eyed brunette.

  If she were a corporation, he’d have a team of researchers delving into her past, he’d be working around the clock for days, weeks on end, to put together a takeover bid.

  But Annie Harlowe isn’t a corporation; she’s a human being.

  A female human being, at that.

  Still . . .

  A challenge is a challenge.

  Could it be that he’s gone about this . . . this relationship thing, with Annie . . . in entirely the wrong way?

  Thom might not understand women, but he just so happens to be an expert at mergers and acquisitions.

  You don’t blatantly go after a company that’s been in business for ten days, no matter how successful it promises to be. Nobody knows better than Thom that a potential acquisition must be carefully sized up, thoroughly researched, strategically approached.

  Yes, any successful merger is a painstaking process that requires the utmost patience.