"I don't suppose you're in the mood for a cup of tea," Jay said, and at the comical expression on his face, she broke into laughter and so did he.
He caught her around the waist in a loose embrace. "Well," he said, "if you don't want a cup of tea, the only other thing I have to offer you is a marriage proposal."
She thought she hadn't heard him correctly. "What?" she said.
"Marry me, Lisa. I can't go on like this, sneaking moments away from Adele, keeping our feelings a secret from the nuns at the mission, living apart. Marry me."
She had heard him correctly. She covered her mouth with her hand, gazing up at him in disbelief. She saw only his kind, gentle face, his eyes alight with amusement.
"This isn't a simple fling, Lisa. We're crazy in love with each other, and there's no point in denying it," he said.
"You sound—you sound as though you're arguing your case before a jury," she whispered.
He laughed. "Do I win my case?" he said.
"You're not joking? You're serious?" she said, scarcely daring to believe it.
He kissed the tip of her nose. "Completely serious," he assured her.
She threw her arms around his neck. "Yes! Yes, yes, yes!" she cried.
He picked her up and whirled her around. "You mean it? You'll really marry me?" He'd asked her on impulse; he hadn't expected her to reply in kind. He'd thought that women needed time to think such things over.
But she nodded, her cheeks red, her eyes bright.
And he laughed with happiness and swung her around again until she was dizzy with love and excitement.
"When?" he asked. "When will we get married?" He wanted it to be soon, the sooner the better, before she could change her mind, before his past intruded.
She thought for a moment, her eyes dancing. "Well, we'll have to reserve the church," she said. "And we'll want to choose bridesmaids and groomsmen, and I'll have to order a cake. And there's the matter of picking a china pattern, and crystal, and I already have my mother's sterling silver, but I'll need a dress, and it has to be the most beautiful dress in the world, and—"
"What about my work? Is there any way a busy law practice can survive such a wedding?" he asked doubtfully.
"I don't know about the law practice, but school at the mission will be over the last week in May."
"You haven't mentioned a ring. I want to buy you one that you'll like. No—make that two, an engagement and a wedding ring. Shall we go together to pick them out?" he said, pleased that she looked so happy.
She rested her cheek against his chest. "I love surprises," she said. "I'd like you to choose it."
"Are you sure? A wedding ring is a pretty personal thing, you know. You'll have to wear it every day for the rest of your life."
"Every day for the rest of my life. That sounds wonderful, Jay. And that's exactly why I want you to choose it."
"When should I give you the engagement ring?" he asked.
"Just before you want me to broadcast the news. Until then, let's keep it a secret. It's so much more special that way," she said, smiling up at him.
* * *
It was very late before Jay finally drove her home.
"Somehow I'll have to tell Connie about Hildy. I wonder how she'll take it," Lisa said as they turned onto the river road.
"It'll be a blow," Jay answered. "She loved Hildy."
"If only Connie didn't have so many changes in her life to deal with right now! As it is, it's just another thing she's going to have to learn to accept."
"Connie is a survivor, Lisa."
"I forget that sometimes. She seems like a normal little girl who has never had to face any hardships."
"How does someone who has faced hardships look, Lisa?" Jay asked. His expression was blank.
"I think of Adele whenever I think of a person who has dealt with adversity," she said slowly.
"I don't think she handled it very successfully. She's had hard times, I'll grant you that, but so have a lot of other people. I don't think we can classify people into two groups, one that has seen hard times, the other that hasn't. All of us have had problems," he said.
Lisa thought about losing her best friend and about her parents' deaths occurring so close to each other. She'd felt her share of pain.
"And you?" she asked quietly as they were turning into her driveway. "What kind of misfortunes have affected you?"
He braked to a stop, turned his head and gave her a long measured look.
"Remind me to tell you about it sometime," he said before he got out of the car.
She didn't know what he meant, and anyway, such a random comment seemed to have no bearing on her present happiness. They were engaged to be married, and she was so caught up in the blissfulness of the idea that nothing else seemed important.
* * *
Connie took Hildy's death harder than Lisa expected.
Lisa provided only vague answers to Connie's anxious questions about Hildy until after dinner the next night, when she quietly sat down on the edge of Connie's bed and gently broke the news that Hildy had died.
"Why? Why?" Connie cried, slumping across the bed and beginning to sob as though her heart would break.
"She was old, Connie, and—"
"But she didn't seem so old," Connie sobbed.
"She had trouble walking, you know that, and she was hard-of-hearing and had heart problems. Jay is sad, too, and so am I, but it was Hildy's time to go."
Connie only buried her face in a pillow and wept.
Adele came out of the adjoining bathroom. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.
"I told Connie about Hildy," Lisa said. She stood up, and she and Adele watched helplessly as Connie's small body continued to be wracked with sobs.
Adele lifted a finger to her lips. "I'll take care of her," she whispered, waving Lisa away. When Lisa left, closing the door behind her, Adele was sitting on the bed, bending over Connie.
Lisa didn't like to be the bearer of bad news. She tried to read but couldn't concentrate because she kept watching the clock. Jay had said he would be working late at his office and would call her later, but now she wanted to ask his advice about Connie. She had known that Connie would be sad about Hildy's death, but she hadn't been prepared for such utter desolation.
She waited for a while, but when she didn't hear from Jay, she tried his cell phone. It immediately went to voice mail. She decided to phone him at his office
Jay's office phone rang five or six times, and finally his answering service picked up.
"Mr. Quillian left some time ago," the operator told her.
"Will he be back tonight?" Lisa asked, thinking that perhaps Jay had only gone out for a bite to eat.
"Sorry, he didn't say," was the breezy reply, so Lisa left her name and hung up.
She dialed his home, but he wasn't there, either. Thoughtfully she walked back into the living room, wondering what Adele was finding to say to Connie all this time, wondering where Jay was and feeling lonely and out of sorts.
Finally she gave up on the book and went to listen briefly at Connie's closed bedroom door. When she heard the soft rise and fall of Connie's and Adele's voices, she decided not to interrupt.
Outside, the darkness was scented with the damp green smell of the river. The night was warm and there was no wind. She zipped her hooded sweatshirt and wandered down to the small bench her father had built for her beneath the pines. There she sat for a long time, moodily watching the river run past and wondering where Jay could possibly be.
* * *
Meanwhile, Jay was barreling south on I-95 for no good reason at all.
He had been working in his office when he suddenly slammed the folder of briefs shut and decided on the spur of the moment to go for a ride. The office had seemed much too confining for his restless frame of mind.
Probably he should have headed for Lisa's house, but for some reason the prospect of jollying Adele, shoring up Connie, and trying to get Lisa to himself
for a few private moments was totally unappealing.
Lisa would be full of plans; she would want to know things like whether he preferred gladiolas to roses as decorations for their wedding and where they should hold the reception, which to him were tiresome questions.
Not that he didn't love Lisa as much as ever—it was just that he would feel uncomfortable speaking of the trivial. He had heavier, weightier matters on his mind, and he didn't know how to tell her what they were. In fact, he was beginning to feel like a first-class fraud, and tonight, only one night after deciding to forfeit his bachelorhood, he needed some space. This struck him as ironic, but what could he do about it? He couldn't lie to himself, not anymore.
Green interstate highway signs loomed up in front of him one by one: Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Park, West Palm Beach. At every one he speeded up almost imperceptibly until he was driving well over the speed limit. He had no idea where he was going. He didn't want to go home, that was for sure. Without Hildy the town house felt too empty.
It was hard to explain to other people what Hildy, the only constant in his life, meant to him and why. He had an idea that Lisa understood, but she couldn't know all that was on his mind and in his heart. He still hadn't had the guts to tell her about the accident, and the accident was the reason that he had come to depend on Hildy as his only friend.
Lisa loved him and was going to marry him. She thought she knew him. But what would she say when she found out that he was directly responsible for the death of another person?
Of course he would tell her eventually, and he didn't think it would make her stop loving him. How could it? Neither one of them had eyes for anyone else since the day they first met.
But.
In the back of his mind always lurked the accident.
Sure, when it happened he'd been a stupid seventeen-year-old kid, smug enough to think that a few beers wouldn't affect his response time behind the wheel of a car. That didn't make it any better. A girl had died because of him.
He had paid the price and would pay it for the rest of his life. He had served time in jail, which was bad enough, but it was the counseling and community-service work that made him a different person. He'd never forget all those kids his own age whom he'd lectured about drinking and driving or the way they had stared at him when the tears began rolling down his face as they inevitably did whenever he spoke about the accident in front of a group. And he still recalled the pain of their questions afterward, innocent questions that broke him up all over again, such as "Did you ever meet the family of the girl you killed?"
The answer to that one was no, he hadn't. On the advice of his lawyer he hadn't attended the girl's funeral, and her family hadn't come to the courtroom when he was sentenced.
He'd continued to atone for his mistake in many ways, but mostly through his work with disadvantaged kids after he'd fulfilled his community-service sentence, and he'd gained a lot from those needy kids. He'd put the bad part of his life behind him, and since he'd seen the inner workings of the court system, he'd decided that he'd like to devote his life to the practice of law.
Now he had a good practice, a nice place to live, and he had gained inner peace. He'd sublimated his natural desire for a home and family by working with the children at the mission, but in the past few weeks, he'd realized that they were no substitute for a passionate woman who would share his life. Hildy had been the last vestige of his regrettable past, and she was gone. As much as he'd miss that mutt, maybe it was for the best.
Tonight he should have at least called Lisa. He knew she'd expected him to call her tonight; she would be missing him.
His foot eased slightly off the accelerator. Is this what being engaged was all about? Was he going to feel as though he had to be with Lisa every free moment?
It was a sobering thought, but he'd better face it. That might be what he was in for. Last night, only minutes after his proposal, she'd told him what kind of wedding they were going to have, and next she'd be wanting to haul him around to look at china patterns.
Maybe he'd stop at a department store and take a look at a few china patterns himself. It couldn't hurt. Perhaps he'd even be able to muster enthusiasm for all the fuss that Lisa seemed to think should accompany a wedding.
The clerk in the china department barely looked up from what she was doing when Jay walked in. He studied the plates lined up against the wall, the names of their patterns written on tasteful little cards clipped to the fronts of the shelves. He liked the clean spare lines of the pattern called City Lights, hated the dismal one called Grey Vogue and wondered if anyone ever chose the overblown Floradorable Lavender. He certainly hoped that Lisa wouldn't.
And then there was silver, and crystal, and stainless-steel flatware. He passed a girl who looked barely old enough to have graduated from high school. She was disagreeing with her mother over whether to pick out a casual china pattern as well as a more formal one. The two of them seemed to be enjoying the argument, going at it for all it was worth.
Jay grimaced to himself. None of this seemed important enough to argue about, but apparently it all went along with getting married.
"May I help you?" asked the clerk, who had put aside her paperwork and found him as he wandered aimlessly through the aisles.
"No, just looking," he told her. On a large table nearby he saw carefully arranged place settings bearing calligraphed cards proclaiming that the choice was that of Ms. Vanessa Drake or Ms. Hinda Celine Levinson or Ms. Denise Michele Spurgeon.
"If you need a gift for someone, you could check our registry," the clerk said helpfully.
"I doubt it," he said, starting to walk away.
"Well, you never know. Brides sign up before the engagement announcement appears in the newspaper, you know, so that people who are sure they will be invited to the wedding can order a special piece of their china or silver in plenty of time for it to arrive before the big day.
An engagement announcement! Jay had never considered that Lisa might want to announce their engagement in the paper, but the way she'd talked about the wedding, he was sure she would. And why not? She'd lived in this area all her life, and it was only natural that she'd want to share her good news with friends both old and new.
"You might like to take a look at our lovely collection of candelabra," the clerk persisted. "It's right over here."
"I'm not interested," Jay said, heading for the escalator. He bounded down the steps to the first floor two at a time, eliciting alarmed looks from the other riders.
Downstairs he suddenly found himself in the fine jewelry department, where he stared blankly into a case of diamond engagement rings winking and blinking under the bright lights.
What was wrong with him? Was he feeling pressured? Did he want out only one day after proposing to the most wonderful woman in the world? Had he turned into one of those people who get married after they fall in love because action seemed necessary, and they couldn't think of anything else to do?
With a sickening sense of colliding with reality, he thought all of those things might be true.
"Would you like to look at a ring, sir?" inquired an unctuous voice somewhere behind him.
"No," he said, and bolted blindly for the door.
Chapter 12
Connie had long since sobbed herself to sleep, and Adele had departed for her room. Lisa was beginning to be concerned because Jay was not answering either the phone at his office or the one at home. A quick check of her email showed nothing new from him.
After yet another fruitless attempt to reach Jay, Lisa scooped her car keys off the top of her dresser. It was late, but she was too worried about Jay to let this slide by; it wasn't like him to disappear completely from view.
She sped along the winding river road, switching off the radio when the music became too distracting. She drove past Jay's office first. Her quick drive-by yielded nothing, so she headed toward the development where he lived.
She slowed her car at the guardhouse at t
he entrance, but the guard only looked up briefly from his crossword puzzle and, smiling in recognition, waved her quickly through. She braked under the palm tree beside Jay's town house, noting with relief that Jay's car was parked in its usual parking spot. When she knocked, however, no one answered the door. She stood in the small courtyard and looked up at the window of his studio, which was dark. Finally she decided that he wasn't going to answer her knock on the door, and she went and got in her car, feeling troubled.
She drove slowly past the guardhouse, then backed up. The guard glanced up from the puzzle.
She rolled down the car window. "Jay Quillian's car is at his town house, but he doesn't answer when I knock. Do you know if he left?"
"Sure, he went for a walk about a half hour ago. Headed toward the beach. I wondered about it when I saw you come through a few minutes ago—I thought you must have just missed each other."
"We did," Lisa said before pulling her car into one of the parking spaces reserved for visitors.
This late at night there were no skateboarders on the path beside the beach; in fact, aside from one lone dog walker ahead of her, no one was on the ocean path. Jay was on the beach, she decided, so she headed straight for the steps to the sand.
She looked for his solitary figure silhouetted against the sea, but she saw no one. She stood indecisively for a moment, then turned her resolute footsteps northward. It was the way they had walked on the night of their first kiss.
Tonight the surf was up, and great white-tipped breakers crashed upon the sand. Overhead a curved moon tilted out of the darkness. The scent of iodine, borne upon the steady wind, made Lisa's nostrils twitch.
She almost didn't see him sitting on the driftwood log and might have passed him by if he hadn't jerked his head up in sudden recognition.
He cleared his throat. "Lisa?" he said.
"Jay! I've been worried about you," she said. "I called your office and you weren't there, and I called your house, and—"
"You were worried about me?" he asked. He was still sitting, and she stood in front of him, feeling out of place and out of sorts. He might think she'd been spying on him, and she didn't want him to think that.
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