It was no good.
At ten-forty-five, she called home again.
After three rings, her husband surprised her. He answered.
"Hello." The way he said that single word made her heart ache. He sounded so lonely, so very far away.
And something in that hollow, distant voice reminded her poignantly of his father. Lacey hadn't known Logan Sr. particularly well. She remembered that he had dark eyes, like Logan's, and that he rarely smiled. He'd been a very serious man, a man who set high standards and expected his only son to live up to them.
And live up to them Logan did. Perhaps too well in some ways.
"Hello," Logan said again, an impatient edge creeping in.
"Hello, Logan. It's me."
He hesitated, then said her name, "Lacey…"
Now, that's more like it, she thought. That sounded almost tender.
But then again, maybe she was just a victim of a bad case of wishful thinking. "Did you get my messages?"
He took a moment to answer, as if he suspected she meant to trick him with such a question. Then he said, "I got them. Last night and the night before."
"You didn't call back," she said, thinking: Brilliant. State the painfully obvious.
He cleared his throat. "You didn't say anything about wanting me to call you back."
Ohmigoodness, were they a pair or what? She sighed. "Next time I'll make my desires clearer—I also called about fifteen minutes ago."
"I just walked in the door."
"I see. Well, then. I guess you didn't get that one."
"Right. I didn't. How's Rosie?"
"She's doing great. She's asleep now, otherwise I'd let you talk to her."
A silence, then he chuckled. To Lacey's ears, the sound was like soothing balm spread gently on a throbbing wound.
He asked with reluctant humor, "Learned to talk in two days, has she?"
Tears misted her vision. She blinked them away. "Children can really surprise you. Especially the bright ones."
"Lacey…"
She clutched the phone tighter. "Yes? What?"
"Uh—how's it going there?"
"Um—good. Really good. I met Belinda. I have a positive feeling about her. She's exciting, but soothing at the same time. If that makes any sense."
"You'll have to explain it to me in more depth … when you get home."
Home. That sounded lovely. "Yes. Yes, I'll do that. She, Belinda, I mean, she liked the other things I showed her. Some older paintings I had at Barnaby's. And she seemed excited about my sketches. Of course, we both agreed you never can tell. You can have the most wonderful ideas, but then, in the execution, everything falls apart. Or it all changes, and it's not what you thought it would be when you started … which isn't necessarily bad. It might be better than what you conceived in the planning stages. It might—" She realized she was babbling and cut herself off. "Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see what else I come up with. And Belinda's open to that, which is another thing I like about her."
"So you're saying, it's all working out."
"Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying."
He was silent. And so was she. For a moment, they just listened to each other breathe.
Finally, he asked softly, "Lace?"
Hope. She could feel it growing inside her, effervescent as the bubbles in a glass of champagne, warm as sunlight streaming in an open window. "Yes?"
"I…"
"What, Logan?"
"I want you to know…" The sentence wandered off unfinished.
She clutched the phone and waited.
At last, he said, "Look. We'll talk. About a lot of things. When you get home."
She sighed. She had wanted more. A heartfelt apology for the way he'd behaved. An impassioned declaration of undying love. A vow never, ever again to doubt her devotion.
But we'll talk wasn't that bad. In fact, we'll talk sounded pretty darn good.
"All right," she said. "We'll talk. When I get home."
"And good luck at that big opening tomorrow night."
She laughed. "Thanks, but it's not anything terribly challenging. I'm just putting in an appearance, and then going right back to Adele's in time for Rosie's midnight snack."
"Whatever. Good luck."
"Thank you." She couldn't resist offering one more time. "You could come. You could fly down tomorrow. I'll pick you up at the airport. You can meet Adele. And I'll take you to Barnaby's loft, show you those incredible nude studies of you that everyone's talking about. And then tomorrow night—"
"No," he said, but in a tender tone. "Let's let it go this time."
This time. That sounded pretty good, too. As if there'd be a next time, when he would come with her.
"Logan. I love you."
"Good night, Lace."
"Good night."
* * *
"The sun has come out in your eyes," Adele said the next morning. "Something good happened, right? You're feeling better about things."
Lacey sipped her orange juice—the thick, pulpy kind. She'd just squeezed it herself. "Umm. I love orange juice. I love oranges. Doesn't the word seem to just go with the fruit? Remember those still lifes you did a few years ago? Oranges in a wooden bowl? I loved those. They were so … orange." She sipped again.
"So," Adele said, "I'm right. You're feeling better."
"Let's say I've discovered there's hope."
"All right. Let's say that."
"Also, I'm leaving tomorrow and I've hardly had a moment with Barnaby."
"So do lunch."
"I should go downtown, to his studio again. I want to see what he's been working on."
"More of that cogs in a machine stuff, from what I understand."
Barnaby painted occasionally, in oil and acrylic. But his real talent was in sculpture. He worked in metal with a blowtorch. His twisted, tortured metal forms had garnered him more than a little recognition on the national art scene.
Adele got up and poured herself more coffee. "Call him. I'll watch your little rosebud for you."
"Adele, I adore you."
"Good. I'll try to be worthy of such passionate affection."
* * *
Lacey found a parking space about ten feet down from the front door of Barnaby's building.
"My lucky day," she said to herself, as she anchored her purse securely onto her shoulder and fed a few coins into the meter.
The buildings around her were big, square industrial structures of chipped concrete and dirty glass. The sidewalk under her feet had cracked and buckled, with time, and from the effects of more than one earthquake, she had no doubt. Trash lined the gutters and piled up in the doorways. The few lost souls on the street looked dirty and desperate and in need of a good meal. There wasn't a tree in sight.
But it all looked beautiful to Lacey.
Because things were going to work out with Logan, she could feel it.
She had it all.
A man she loved heart and soul, a beautiful baby, several dear friends, a talent for doing work she loved—and the distinct possibility that someone would pay for that work in the near future.
And on top of all that, the sun was out, but then, this was L.A., where the sun was always out.
She felt like singing, so she did, a few bars from a great old Otis Redding song, "I've Been Loving You Too Long."
She sounded awful. Like a cornered cat, Mira always said.
She laughed, tipping her head back, feeling the sun's benign kiss on her upturned face. "Never was much of a singer…"
Someone had left the street door to Barnaby's building open a crack. She shook her head at it. The neighborhood was a dangerous one. It wasn't wise to leave the doors unlatched for any L.A. desperado to wander in. However, there was a bright side. It saved her the trouble of ringing the bell and waiting for Barnaby to buzz her up.
She pulled open the heavy door and stepped into the shadowy vestibule.
She never saw what hit her. One minute she
was turning to make sure the door was firmly shut behind her—and the next the world went black.
* * *
Chapter 17
« ^ »
At one-fifteen in the afternoon, Cathy the receptionist stuck her head into the examining room where Logan was going over a medical history.
"You've got a call," Cathy said. "Someone named Adele Levenson on line three. She said it's about—"
He didn't need to hear more. It had to be about Lacey or Rosie. "Thank you, Cathy. I'll be right there." He spoke quite calmly. But his heart had gone into overdrive. It felt damn near tachycardic, beating with a rhythm ragged and way too swift.
Slow down, he thought. It's probably nothing serious. Some minor problem. Nothing that bad…
His patient smiled at him when he excused himself. He slipped out the door and went to his private office, where he dropped into his desk chair, grabbed the phone and punched the button that blinked red.
"Hello. This is Logan Severance."
A woman with a gentle voice spoke to him. She said things that couldn't possibly be true.
Lacey had been mugged. Some street punk had attacked her. Her friend Barnaby had found her and called an ambulance.
He heard himself ask, "Head injury, you said?"
"Yes. She was hit on the back of the head. From what I understand, someone knocked her out, grabbed her purse and ran."
"Is she conscious now?"
"No—I don't know. I talked to Barnaby just before I called you. As of then, she hadn't come to."
His heart pounded. His mind swam. He thought, "My God. Rosie…" and realized he'd spoken aloud when Adele Levenson answered him.
"It's all right. Rosie's here with me. You don't have to worry about your little girl."
"What hospital? Where is my wife?"
Adele told him.
He grabbed a pen and wrote it down. "I have your phone number, but I don't know where you live."
She gave him the address.
He scribbled that down, too. "Will you be there, at this number?"
"For a while. I think that's best, with the baby. Lacey borrowed my car, anyway, so I'll have a little trouble trying to go anywhere. But in a few hours, if there's no news, I might try to get a ride to the hospital."
"Do you have a cell phone?"
She said she did. They exchanged numbers. Then he said, "I'll book the earliest flight I can get. And I'll call you back as soon as I know when I'm coming in."
* * *
It took six hours, from the moment Logan hung up the phone until he was striding into ICU at Twin Palms Hospital in Los Angeles.
A neurologist spoke with him. Logan listened, feeling damn near disembodied, one part of his mind screaming, This is Lacey—Lacey we're talking about, as the information came at him.
She was in a coma.
Lacey. In a coma…
The word kept repeating itself in his head. Coma, coma, coma, until it sounded like nonsense syllables, nothing real, nothing that could happen to Lacey, with her bright, inquisitive mind and her naughty sense of humor. Not to Lace, with her musical laughter and her sweet wildness in bed.
"Signs are good, Dr. Severance," the neurologist said.
"Good?" Logan repeated. It was another nonsense syllable.
Good, good, good, good…
"Yes. Very good. Your wife is breathing on her own. We intubated and had her on a respirator for a few hours, then tested and found the respirator unnecessary. EEG and CT scans have revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, we've set up arterial and CYP lines to measure blood pressure and oxygen levels.
"So far, we have minimal cerebral swelling, and we've seen no necessity for invasive procedures. We're going to be monitoring her closely for the slightest change. As I'm sure you're aware, she could wake any minute."
Logan knew the rest of it, the part they never said if they could help it.
Yes, she could wake any minute.
But she might never wake.
With head injuries resulting in coma, you waited.
"Can I see her?"
"Of course. Come this way."
* * *
He did what the husbands of very ill wives do.
He sat by her bed and he held her hand. He watched hungrily for each slightest movement—the twitching of an eyelid, the tiniest flutter of a muscle in her smooth, white neck.
He spoke with Barnaby Cole—and Adele, who had finally found a ride to the hospital and brought his daughter along. He held Rosie and he fed her milk pumped from the breasts of his unconscious wife.
And he hated himself.
* * *
At ten that night, Detective Carla Cruz from the LAPD called him out to the hall. She told him that they'd caught the man who'd attacked his wife. A junkie with a habit to feed. They'd also recovered Lacey's purse, which they were keeping, temporarily anyway, as evidence.
"Whatever cash she might have had is gone, along with any credit cards," Detective Cruz told him regretfully. "But the wallet is still there, as well as her driver's license, some pictures and various store membership cards. And then there are lipsticks and a compact, a small address book—"
"Jenna," Logan said, the name popping into his head and coming right out his mouth.
"Excuse me?"
"I … you said you found an address book in her purse. I was just thinking of someone I should call."
"I'm sorry. That book will be locked up in Evidence now. You can't get to it."
He thanked the detective. She advised him to call the credit card companies and cancel Lacey's cards. And she also said she'd be back in the next twenty-four hours to check on the witness.
Logan understood. They'd want to interview Lacey, if and when she emerged from her unconscious state.
Somehow, that thought soothed him. To imagine cool, efficient-looking Detective Cruz coming back, interviewing Lacey—who would be sitting up in bed by then, blue eyes alert, full lips softly smiling.
As soon as the detective left him, he pulled out his cell phone. He had Mrs. Hopper's number stored there. He dialed the Meadow Valley area code and then punched the proper autodial button.
When the housekeeper answered, he told her what had happened and listened to her expressions of shock and concern. Then he asked her to go to the house and get Jenna's phone number from the kitchen drawer address book.
She called him back twenty minutes later.
He thanked her, disconnected the call, and punched up the Key West number the housekeeper had given him.
* * *
Jenna and Mack and their ten-day-old baby, Ian, arrived at Twin Palms Hospital eleven hours later. They'd chartered a jet. Money—and Mack McGarrity had plenty of it—had its uses.
Jenna came into Lacey's room alone, leaving her husband and their baby in the lounge down the hall. Logan was sitting with Lacey, holding her hand, talking to her softly, telling her that she was doing well, that she would get better, that her baby was fine…
He glanced up and Jenna was standing there, her straight blond hair smooth as always around her oval face and her eyes—blue, but a softer, less vivid blue than Lacey's—filled with tears.
He felt relief, that she had come. And affection—the kind of warm feeling one bears a sister. Or a dear friend.
As for the hurt, the bitterness of her leaving him—he could hardly remember it.
The bitterness had been gone for a long time now. Months, really.
Maybe since that September night when Lacey knocked on his door, chocolate cake in hand, determined to console him—and ending up doing so much more.
Changing his life, opening his heart, turning his gray world to full color.
Jenna came to stand beside him. She looked down at her sister "Oh," she said. "Oh, Lace…"
Carefully, mindful of the lines taped to the back of it, Logan let go of Lacey's hand. He laid it with infinite gentleness on top of the blanket.
He stood.
Jenna turned
to him. She held out her arms.
He went into them, seeking solace, seeking reassurance—desperately needing the touch of someone who could understand.
Something inside of him broke wide open. He felt terror and relief, combined.
He couldn't hold back. In a ragged whisper, he breathed his confession against Jenna's shining hair.
"I … never told her. Never said, I love you, Lace. I … held it away from her. I feared the power it would give her, to know how I felt. I let her wonder … if I still loved you."
"Logan—"
"No. Please. That's not all. I tried to take her painting away from her. I … I tried to keep her just to myself. She wanted me here, with her, when she came to L.A. She asked me to come any number of times. I should have been with her, when that bastard attacked her. But I wouldn't come. And now, if I've lost her. If I've—"
"Shh," Jenna pulled him closer. "Listen. Listen to me…"
He took her by the arms, looked into her eyes. "Did you hear me? Did you hear what I said?"
She nodded. "I heard. And if you've tried to keep her from her painting, well, shame on you. But about the other. Logan, I think she knows that you love her."
"No. I wouldn't let her know. Wouldn't let her be certain. Even the last time we talked, when I knew how wrong I'd been about so many things, I still couldn't get the damn words out of my mouth. I held back. I said, 'we'll talk, when you get home.' The last thing she said to me was 'I love you.' And all I said in return was 'Good night, Lace.'"
"Logan, she did know."
"No, I—"
"Logan, I told her."
That made no sense. "You…?"
"Yes. I told her. When you were both still in Wyoming. She called and asked my advice about marrying you and I said, 'Do it. He loves you. He's always loved you. He just doesn't know it yet.'"
He gripped her arms harder, his fingers digging in. "Don't tell me good-hearted lies. I need the truth now."
Jenna neither flinched nor wavered. "I'm giving you the truth. My sister knows what love is. And she knows that you love her."
He let go of Jenna's arms and sucked in a breath through a chest that felt as if bands of steel constricted it. "That's something, at least." He turned to Lacey again, took her limp hand. "Do you know?" he asked in a broken voice. "God, let that at least be so. It won't make what I did any more acceptable. But it's better than nothing." He reached up, smoothed the translucent skin of her pale brow.
THE M.D. SHE HAD TO MARRY Page 17