Vivian's Return

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  After a few steps, the urge to ask a question that had been puzzling her grew too strong. “What do you see in her?” Vivien asked abruptly.

  “Jenny?” Paul clarified, even though Vivien knew he was well aware of whom she was talking about.

  Vivien sighed. “Forget it, I’m sorry—again. It’s none of my business anymore.”

  But she got an answer anyway. After another few silent steps, Paul said offhandedly, “With Jenny, I know I’ll never have to contend with demands that she be allowed to fly some breakneck stunt or another.”

  His answer hurt, even though Vivien knew he had phrased it in the general rather than specifically aiming it at her to avoid hurting her.

  “I never went for stunts. Not like you,” Vivien retorted.

  “She doesn’t demand anything of me,” Paul replied.

  “You call that a relationship?” Vivien asked, appalled.

  He glanced at her before returning his gaze back to the line of cars they were walking toward. “I do. I know that you wouldn’t.”

  Vivien stopped walking and turned to look at him. “You can’t demand anything of anyone, Paul. It doesn’t work that way. Relationships are all about give and take, compromise and cooperation.”

  He halted and turned around to face her. “Like ours was, I suppose you mean?”

  “No. Not like ours. You were doing all the demanding and I had to do all the compromising.”

  “I never demanded anything of you!” Paul shot back and Vivien could see she had stung him. He had prided himself on this issue, then. “I only ever wanted you. That’s all. Just you. I didn’t want you to be anything that you weren’t. I never asked you to stop flying—”

  “But you wouldn’t let me do any rescue work,” Vivien interjected smoothly.

  “Damned right, I wouldn’t. Rescues and sea searches are dangerous, Vivvy. You know that.”

  “Danger didn’t stop you doing the work, even for me,” Vivien said bitterly.

  “Jesus, Vivvy. You were the best pilot in town, excluding me. Everyone knew how good you were, even though you’d only just got your license. If I didn’t agree to do all that rescue work they would have turned around and asked you to do it. Everyone knew you were busting a gut to get up there and help.”

  Vivien was stunned. “You did it all to stop me from doing it?”

  Paul sighed and his expression seemed to say that he regretted revealing this particular truth to her. “Anything to stop you flying the emergency work,” he muttered and turned away, striding off toward the cars again. “I went through hell every time you flew off solo, anyway,” he threw over his shoulder. “I would have died a thousand deaths sitting back waiting for you to come home after a sea search.”

  Vivien finally found the power to get her legs moving again and raced to catch up with him. She grabbed his arm, feeling the bulk of muscles beneath her fingers and forced him to a halt. She turned him back to face her and she knew from his expression that he was waiting for her explosion. He knew of old how to light the fuse of her temper—and anything even slightly chauvinistic was virtually guaranteed to fire her off.

  “You selfish son of a bitch!” she railed at him, trying to keep her voice low. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that that’s what I went through every time you went out?”

  He nodded. “I know what you went through. I could see it on your face every time I came home, even though you never said anything.”

  “Then why persist in going out on emergency work? Why did you go out in the first place? What on earth is it that makes you keep going out there? You won. I left. I didn’t do any emergency work here. So why keep pushing yourself beyond human expectations out there?”

  “You know why. We’ve talked it to death...so many times, over and over. If I didn’t do it, who else, apart from you, could? Someone has to do it. I was there.”

  “No, I’m not talking about warm bodies available to volunteer. I’m talking about what kept you going out there way past the point where anyone could accuse you of selfishness or inhumanity. Something drove you out there and not just the prospect that they’d give me the job if you didn’t do it. You were flying twelve-hour stints, driving yourself to exhaustion, well before I got my license. What was going through your mind when you were out in the middle of a job? What did you think about when you were working rescues?”

  For a long moment Vivien thought Paul wasn’t going to answer. But then he lifted his hand to run his fingertips down the line of her cheekbone, to the corner of her mouth, making her skin sizzle and her nerves snap. “You,” he said softly. “I used to think of you.” His hand dropped away. “I would remember the day your parents died.”

  * * * * *

  The day Vivien’s parents went out fishing in her father’s dinghy was a cold Tuesday in March, the year Vivien turned nineteen. Vivien couldn’t go with them as she usually did, to free-dive on the reefs for crayfish, which she would pick up by hand. She was working—it was her second month as the receptionist and radio operator for the Batavia Coast Air Charter Company. Paul had told her about the vacancy and got her an interview. The job would finance her flying lessons and pilot’s license and place her in the best position to move into a pilot’s job once she was qualified.

  Paul and she had been together for nearly six months. Vivien was quite certain that she was deeply in love with Paul and she knew that Paul loved her. He spent most of his spare time showing and telling her how much he loved her.

  The equinox gales had combined with the full moon to throw up spectacular tides and swells for the last week. Surfing had never been so good that day, nor the bruises Vivien suffered from being soundly dumped so plentiful. From her desk, Vivien could see the open sea hitting the breakwater with regular explosions of spray thrown up high into the air. No one was fishing from the breakwater that afternoon.

  The first hint Vivien got that there was an emergency happening was when she saw the harbor patrol launch chug its way past the edge of the breakwater and head out toward the open sea. Normally it stayed behind the breakwater, unless there was an overwhelming reason to edge out into the big waves. Yet the radio on the desk next to her had stayed mysteriously silent.

  Next, Con Godrick, the owner of the air charter company and her boss, came rushing across from the Port Authority building, four hundred yards away on the wharf. He came into the office, looking around.

  “Where is Morris?” he asked Vivien.

  “Lunch,” she said shortly, sensing he wanted fast answers. “Is something up?” She was already earning a reputation for being unflappable and dependable in a crisis.

  “The Port Authority needs Johnny Maxwell...there’s a boat overturned and snagged on the reefs out at Hell’s Gates.” That was why there had been no radio message, she realized. There wouldn’t be any air work needed.

  Johnny Maxwell had rudimentary experience with scuba diving and was called on for underwater work, when no one else was to hand. “He’s taking those school kids back to Carnarvon for the holidays, remember?” Vivien reminded him, without looking at the roster board. She didn’t need to—she had written it.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “I’ll have to find someone else.”

  “There is no one else,” Vivien said, frowning, mentally accounting for all the pilots. Even Paul was out—flying the small two-man helicopter out to the airport to pick up a VIP guest of the town council and delivering him to his hotel.

  Con turned back toward the front door. “I’ll go back to the authority and see what else I can do, then,” he muttered and left.

  Vivien watched him go, puzzled. He seemed more distracted than usual over this affair. It would have been easier to pick up the radio or even the telephone to keep abreast of the emergency. However, as she had already learned from experience, it was better to suspend all speculation and carry on as normal until further news arrived. People might depend on little things happening as usual and it helped to make time go more quickly.

 
It wasn’t until Paul arrived in the office, hair wet and slicked back and his clothes under the blanket wrapped around him sodden and limp, that Vivien learned that they had found themselves a diver of sorts. She stared at him, horrified. “They sent you down?” she said. “You’ve never done any scuba diving!”

  “I’ve rigged up Johnny’s gear enough times to know how to work it. They needed someone, Vivien.” He was shivering and Vivien jumped up from her desk to draw him around behind the counter and into the tiny room that served as a staff room. It had an efficient oil heater that heated the entire office and Vivien had kept it going all day. The wind off the sea was cold.

  “Get those clothes off,” she ordered him. “Now. You’ll end up with pneumonia, or worse. Couldn’t they have given you a wet suit?”

  “There wasn’t time. No, Vivien, wait a minute,” Paul protested as she begun unbuttoning his shirt. He tried to grab her hands. “I have to talk to you.”

  “It will wait a few minutes,” she said firmly. “You’re shaking. Come on, get the clothes off. I’ll find some spare clothes somewhere. I think there’s even one of your uniforms in the lockers.” Nimbly, she divested him of his clothes, managing to keep the blanket around his shoulders as she did so, to keep as much warmth trapped around him as possible. She turned away to go and find him some dry clothing but Paul’s blanket covered arms came down around her, halting her inside the intimate circle.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “Hold on to me.”

  Obediently, willingly, she turned back to face him and wrapped her arms around him, feeling his body hot against her despite his still damp skin. She laid her cheek against the soft yet firm pillow of his chest and closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel the relief that flooded her with the knowledge that he had returned safely back to her.

  “I love you,” he whispered and she could feel the echo of his words rumbling in his chest, against her cheek. His arms tightened around her, enclosing her in a warm gray wool world with him. “Vivvy, I’ve got bad news.”

  She looked up at him. “The people in the boat? They didn’t make it?”

  He shook his head. “No, they didn’t. I found them but...I was too late.” He seemed to hesitate, then ground out, “Vivvy, it was your parents.”

  For one awful minute his words didn’t register and Vivien could feel the sickening weightlessness she experienced whenever she hit an air pocket. It took the ground out from under her feet and her breath away from her. Then, with a deep, agonizing wrench, she slammed back down on the ground again and the pain hit. Vivien shut her eyes tightly against the hurt. “Oh, god...”

  Paul held her fiercely to him. “I know, Vivvy. I know,” he breathed. “It hurts. You just hold onto me.”

  She clenched her hands against his shoulders, finding the strength of his hold did indeed help her bear the wave of pain. All thought ceased as she was tossed in its sea. As the wave ebbed, she drew in her breath, a gasping unsteady breath that echoed the residual agony.

  “I’ve got you,” Paul murmured.

  Just before the tears hit, blinding her to all sensory input, she had felt the deep trembling still running through him, despite his now warm and dry body.

  * * * * *

  She was looking up at him, blinking in the strong spring sunshine. Paul knew she was remembering the day her parents had died and his miserable role in the affair. Behind him, he heard the sound of another glider making a rough, bumpy landing.

  “Why do you remind yourself of when my parents died?” she asked.

  “I didn’t save them,” he said and his voice emerged harsh and low. Just speaking the words aloud brought back the desperate, hurried search around the reef, under the water. The dinghy had been snagged on the reef, the anchor rope pulled too tight and the next surge had turned the boat over. It still might have resulted in nothing worse than a cold dunking for the passengers but something had gone wrong.

  The investigation afterward had never fully established what had turned the fishing venture into tragedy but Paul privately believed that someone had panicked. In the long days afterward, he’d spent a lot of time thinking about the reconstructed events and the failed rescue, trying to find out where he’d gone wrong. He suspected that perhaps one of the passengers had been hit by the boat as it turned over, or maybe got caught in the anchor rope, or fishing line and been unable to rise to the surface. The other had panicked and drowned trying to save the first.

  Paul had never found the bodies but he knew that if they had been found, they would have been together.

  He spoke the rest of the words that he had carried with him ever since. “I couldn’t find them in time for you. I failed you.”

  “You failed me?” Vivien was incredulous. “Are you crazy, Paul? You went diving after them and you’d never been scuba diving in your life. You did everything you could. Are you saying it’s all your fault because you weren’t Superman?”

  He shook his head. “I promised you once that I would never let anything hurt you. Up until that moment I told you about your parents, I thought I could do it.”

  He’d stood in the office doorway, dripping under the blanket, watching Vivien work alone at the front desk and wondered if he would have the strength to tell her. He would have given anything to be able to turn back the clock, save her parents and keep this from touching her, but he couldn’t.

  His greatest fear had been that she would look at him with blame in her eyes and accuse him of failing her. Instead she had drawn comfort from him, from the man who had just destroyed her life for her and that had made it far worse.

  “I learned that day that there were some things I couldn’t prevent from reaching you and I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I hated it, Vivien. I hated not being able to make a difference, to make it right for you.”

  “So you spent the next four years paying your penance for it,” she said softly, wonderingly. “Every time you went out on rescue it was to make up for that one time you failed.”

  “No.” He couldn’t hide behind that justification completely. “Later on it was to stop you going out instead of me.”

  She shook her head. He could see the shock was fading now but he had disturbed her with his confession. “What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

  “Paul!” The shout came from behind him, from the hangar. Paul turned to see who it was. Blue was standing at the open door, waving to them. “Telephone, Paul. It’s your brother!”

  Paul frowned. “Carlos? I wonder what the problem is.”

  “Why does it have to be a problem?” Vivien asked.

  “Because he’s phoning me here. Carlos doesn’t approve of gliding.” Paul almost smiled. “He thinks it’s dangerous.” He started forward. “I’d better find out what he wants,” he said. Then he remembered that she had been on her way home and he knew he did not want her to go. Not now. Not when they had reached this unique plateau of communication. “Will you wait?” he asked Vivien, pausing to look back at her.

  “If you want me to.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “I’ll wait.”

  * * * * *

  Vivien watched Paul walk across the grass and disappear inside the hangar, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. Why did he want her to wait?

  She really should go back to her motel. Had she mistaken that look in his eyes? No. She knew Paul—too well. She knew what he was thinking. All this talk about the past—it was making old feelings resurface, renewing old longings. Why had he thought he should apologize to her? He had obviously been thinking things over during the night, the same as she had.

  If she stayed, if she remained in Paul’s company, she had a feeling that the thin veneer of control over their feelings would crack and they would revert back to following their impulses. Vivien knew very well where her impulses would take her, and now she was fairly certain Paul’s would lead him in the same direction. He was not indifferent to her. She still had that same power over him that she had always
found so awesome.

  But it wouldn’t solve anything. It would only complicate matters. Paul was still flying—still going out on emergencies—still stepping in, as she had just learned, to prevent her doing the same. While that hopelessly complex, Catch-22 situation existed, any sort of relationship between them was doomed.

  How they felt about each other was entirely irrelevant.

  * * * * *

  Paul hung up the phone gently and turned around and leaned against the counter, peering out through the side door. He could see Vivien standing there waiting for him.

  Vivien could help.

  Could he do that? Pull her into family business? He had no claim on her—

  Yes, you do.

  Yes, he did, he admitted to himself. It wasn’t a formal claim, like marriage or engagement, or even long friendship. But they both knew that the old ties had not died when Vivien left town and they’d just discovered that they were still in place, undisturbed by absence, if not actually strengthened.

  He could ask her to help and she would help. It was that simple.

  Things were changing, moving. He had no idea where they would end up but a sudden hope flared deep inside him. To have Vivien back in his life....

  Just don’t screw it up this time.

  It wouldn’t be easy. Vivien was strong—stronger than him, if he was being totally truthful and he was being truthful, now.

  But there was hope and he was an old hand at playing against overwhelming odds. All he needed was a chance and hope and he had both, now.

  * * * * *

  Paul appeared at the door again and came striding across the grass, his sunglasses over his eyes and his leather jacket back on. He reached Vivien’s side as he was pulling out a set of keys.

  “Paul, I can’t stay—” Vivien begun but he didn’t appear to hear her. Instead, he grasped her arm and moved her quickly toward the cars—toward his ground-hugging vehicle.