by Ros Baxter
Her sister’s grave was awash with color and perfect, just as Steffy remembered it. As she crouched to lay the yellow roses by the gravestone, she caught sight of an enormous bunch of tropical flowers she knew could only have come from one person. She glanced at the card quickly.
My darling girl. Forever. Your loving mother.
As Steffy pressed her eyes shut, she felt the tears that she had been battling all day begin to slide under her lids. She gently touched another bouquet. White gardenias, wrapped in a beautiful crimson ribbon. She rubbed one of the gardenias gently, feeling the softness of the petals. The gilt-edged card just read: Dad. Steffy had never discussed Phoebe with her father—it was an unspoken agreement between them. Some things were too painful to discuss, and Steffy knew that her father had experienced the worst of that day—holding Phoebe as she had passed away.
Everything about the day screamed of life. The trees and shrubs burst with color. A riot of birds squawked from the pine trees around her. The sun beat down on them, warm and vibrant. She could smell the heady, nostalgic aroma of fresh cut grass. Puffy clouds skittered overhead like they were chasing each other in a game of tag.
But Phoebe was dead.
Steffy thought about the sketches her sister had guided her to the night before. Sure, they had been partly inspired by Steffy’s time at the shows in Paris, but there was something else about them—something so colorful and otherworldly—that seemed also to be a celebration of life. Steffy wondered if this was what Phoebe was trying to tell her.
Life was here, all around her, despite the loss of her baby.
Despite the loss of Liam, the love of her life.
Despite the loss of her sister, the other part of her soul.
As she considered the thought, she knew it was true. The last six years had been like a hiatus, holding her breath, waiting to feel whole again. But as Steffy stood in front of her sister’s grave, her beautiful sister who would never feel the sun on her shoulders again, she realized it was an indulgence. She had to live, because life had been given to her, a perfect gift. She realized she had to make every moment count, for all the moments Phoebe would never have.
Steffy kneeled on the grass. “I promise,” she said. “I promise that from now on, things will be different. I’m not that person any more. The one who hurt you. The one who was so selfish, and so reckless. I had a baby, Phoebe. A little baby. But I lost it, because of my own selfishness and stupidity. And I’ve lost Liam as well.”
She leaned forward and kissed her sister’s headstone. It felt rough and warm against her lips, and even this seemed like a message. She was alive.
“But no more. I am going to live well, and fully. I am going to live a beautiful life, for both of us.” Steffy reached across and adjusted the roses where she had laid them, making sure they were beside the bouquets from her mother and father. As she did, she thought about the flowers Liam had brought her when she had lost her baby: perfect pink camellias. And she remembered his face when she had told him. The devastation there.
Perhaps she had been too harsh to judge him for what he was feeling. It was natural that he would look for someone to blame—wasn’t blame one of the stages of grief? And she knew he didn’t need to look too far. She was rocked by a sudden and overwhelming need to connect with Liam, to tell him that she understood his sadness.
She had been so angry at him for not being there for her.
But had she really been there for him?
Perhaps making things right with Liam was all part of growing up, learning to embrace life. Not so they would be together again. Perhaps that would happen, perhaps it would not. But because it was the right thing to do. He had lost something too.
She stood up again, and adjusted her clothes. “Goodbye, darling Phoebe. Until next year.”
As she began the slow walk up to the car, she saw Rick notice her and step out of the car to walk toward her. They met halfway.
“Are you okay?” His eyes were a very dark blue, and she noticed he had put his jacket back on for his visit with Phoebe. He was standing close to her with the bunch of daisies and a strange, desiccated daisy chain in his hands. He was so close she could hear his breaths. He reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder, rubbing it a little with his hand.
She considered the question, her head on the side. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “I think so. I’m—I’m still feeling a bit fragile, but I feel a lot better.” She motioned to the daisy chain. “What’s that?”
He smiled sadly at her. “Closure.” Then he squeezed her shoulder again and motioned toward Phoebe’s headstone. “I’ll just take a few minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you wait in the car?” He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Rick.” She held out a hand to touch his upper arm as he went past her.
He looked back at her, his eyes creasing in concern. “Do you need me to stay with you?”
“No, it’s not that.” She lowered her eyes, worrying that it would sound trite. But she meant it more than she had meant anything she’d said to a man in a very long time. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for being here today.”
Rick wrapped his hand around her fingers where they rested on his arm. “No, Steffy,” he said. “Thank you. Thanks for everything. For letting me come with you today. For the sketches. For sharing how you felt with me. And for not telling me to go to hell, and never come back, as you had every right to.”
She nodded at him. “We’ve both done things we regret,” she said. Then she swept her eyes down the hill to the headstone. “Go be with Phoebe.”
*
Steffy paced back and forth out the front of the little French bistro, waiting for her call to connect. The bistro was the perfect place to regroup after the emotional turmoil of the cemetery. Rick had suggested they stop for a drink and some food, and Steffy knew food was a good idea after feeling faint earlier in the day.
But first, she had to speak to Liam. She had to make it right with him, like she had decided at Phoebe’s graveside.
She’d told Rick she needed to make a couple of calls.
He’d grinned at her. “Okay, but if you’re not there to order, I’m making yours a cheeseburger with everything.”
She’d laughed, pointing at the rustic little sign near the entry: Le Chat Noir. “I don’t think this is that kind of place,” she said. But she didn’t doubt that he would do it. He had been looking at her with protective concern ever since her spell in his office. She would not put it past him to order her an enormous meal, and hand feed it to her.
As Rick had retreated, she’d tapped Liam’s image on her smartphone and held it to her ear, her fingers shaking.
The signal bleated in her ear and she felt her heart rage in her chest. Why was she so nervous? Her mind replayed the scene the night before.
Finally, the familiar message greeted her. “Hi. You’ve reached Liam. You know the drill.” His voice was so soft and authoritative, so sweetly familiar, that she felt tears spring to her eyes as she listened to the message. She blinked them back as she almost lost the ability to leave a message of her own. She took a deep breath. A new day. A fresh start.
“Liam, it’s Steffy. I wanted to talk to you. To say sorry, for last night. Maybe you can call me when you have time? I’m near the cemetery, at a little French place—” Her voice broke on the word, but she ploughed on, swallowing hard. “I’m taking some time, having a rest, but I’ll be back at the apartment later tonight. Perhaps you can call me then?”
As she hit the end call button, Steffy felt a lightness fill her. Yes, it was right that she connect with Liam, so that things did not end badly between them. Life was short, and you never knew what might be around the corner. She and Rick knew that only too well. Neither of them would ever have imagined the last time they had seen Phoebe that they would never see her again.
She stuffed the cell back in her tote and walked back into the bar, seeing Rick sitting at a corner booth, sipping a red wine and
looking out the window.
This felt right too.
*
Rick was enjoying watching Steffy eat; it was as though she was making up for lost time. They had started with wine and appetizers—some escargot and bread. But they’d now been sitting and talking for over an hour, and she was now attacking a bowl of aromatic vichyssoise with gusto. It wasn’t a cheeseburger, but it sure looked like it was hitting all the right spots.
“What are you grinning at?” Steffy raised an eyebrow at him as she wiped the corner of her mouth delicately with a starched white napkin.
By tacit agreement, they hadn’t discussed Phoebe. Not yet. Rick wanted Steffy to have a moment to relax, after all she had been through. He knew better than most that there were few relaxed hours when you were a Forrester, let alone on day like today. So he asked her about her time in Paris—what she had seen, her impressions of the shows, the food, the people. He had forgotten what a good storyteller she was.
Relaxing on her second glass of wine, Steffy seemed to come alive talking about the country. “Monsieur Duchamps and his wife were the caretakers of the little hotel Dad set up base in. They’re so sweet, treated me like their granddaughter.” She paused, her soup spoon en route to her mouth. “Maybe a little too much, you know?”
He shook his head, wanting her to continue. He just liked listening to her. “No. How do you mean?”
“Well …” She wiped her mouth delicately with the napkin. “They couldn’t cope that I wasn’t there with some man. They made it their life mission to find me a good French boy. Apparently I was—” Steffy pursed her lips and affected a very decent French accent, “‘—a beautiful girl badly in need of a French lover.’” She rolled the last R authentically. “They proceeded to trail a procession of eligible young men through the bar, hoping to catch my interest. It was sweet.” She took another sip of her soup. “Until the day they introduced me to one particularly charming comte who tried to lure me back to his castle in the French countryside. When he realized I wasn’t so keen, he was outraged. He said: ‘Mon Dieu, don’t you know who I am?’” She threw her head back and laughed and Rick found himself greedily drinking in the sight of her long white neck. She looked good when she was relaxed like this.
She looked good any old way.
“Did you tell him who you were?” Rick didn’t want this to stop. Not her laughter, not the story, not the day.
“You know,” Steffy said, finally sighing and pushing her soup bowl away. “I really don’t think it would have mattered. The French just aren’t that impressed by Americans, whatever they’ve done. I’m pretty sure his castle would have trumped Forrester Creations any day. At least in his own mind.”
As they laughed over the anecdote, Rick leaned forward and grasped Steffy’s hands. “She would have loved to see you laughing like this.”
There was a moment of silence between them. They both knew what he was doing—it was time to discuss the elephant in the room. But he didn’t want to press her. “It’s okay, Steffy,” he said, reaching over to stroke one of her hands. “We don’t have to talk about Phoebe. Not if you don’t want to. We have all the time in the world. I’m not going anywhere.”
She nodded at him. “How was it?” She squeezed his hand as she said the words. “How was it for you today, at the cemetery?”
Rick hadn’t expected this. He had wanted to be there for her, to give her some support. Let her talk. He had carefully tucked away his own grief as he had walked back from Phoebe’s grave after giving her the perfect daisy chain.
He looked at her carefully. “It was … confronting,” he said. “I’m not like you, Steffy. Maybe not as strong as you. Usually, I avoid this day. I keep busy, or I get drunk.” He gave a small smile. “Often both.”
She nodded, and squeezed his hands again. “But this time I decided it was going to be different. I was going to be different. I was going to be better.”
“Tell me,” she said, widening her eyes to encourage him to continue.
He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. Would she understand? But everything about this day—seeing her at the florist, going to the grave with her—it was like it was all building to this. The bar was dark and intimate. He could see that she had relaxed from the place she had been earlier in the morning. Her cheeks were rosy and the dark shadows under eyes had faded a little.
“I always felt like I had no right to grieve.” He shrugged. “Because I was responsible. This year I decided I needed to. To move on, to get better. To grow up, I guess. I knew I’d never be able to give myself properly to anyone else, or live the life Phoebe would have wanted me to live, if I kept myself wrapped up in this armor of self-hatred and guilt.” He looked down at his hands in hers. “I guess it was just time.” He didn’t want to look up at her, lest he see recrimination in her eyes. Or worse, see that he pricked her own grief with his indulgent outpouring.
But when he looked at her, he saw only warmth and understanding in her eyes. And maybe something else.
Recognition?
Slowly, she stood from her seat and walked to where Rick was sitting. She slid wordlessly in next to him, then reached up her arms and wrapped him in them. He was enveloped in the candy-sweet warmth of her.
“I get it, Rick,” she whispered in his ear. “I can honestly tell you that I really do get it.”
She pulled away from him, and Rick felt himself sigh at the loss of her. But she stayed close, and began speaking into her drink. “I wanted to call her Phoebe,” she said.
At first, Rick was confused. Then he saw that gesture, her tell. Her hand went to her stomach, and she could not meet his eyes. Of course, the baby.
Steffy went on. “If she was a girl, I’d planned to call her Phoebe,” she said. “But I didn’t know that of course …” Rick felt his chest constrict at the raw grief in her voice. “I still don’t know. They couldn't tell me.”
Rick went to put his arm around her again, but she shook it off. He knew that she was not rejecting his offer of comfort. He could feel from her gaze, directed at her glass, and from the set lines of her shoulders, that this was something she had to get out. “I loved my baby, you know. From the moment I knew about it, I loved it. But I was too foolish, too—” Her voice broke.
“Steffy.” He couldn’t bear it. “You don’t need to do this.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I do. I was too selfish to protect my baby properly, like a mother should. I got on that motorbike and it died. And you know what?”
Finally, she looked up at Rick and he could see that her eyes were wet with tears. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “What?”
“I never let myself cry for my baby. Not really. Just like you never let yourself cry for Phoebe.” She shrugged, looking down at her glass again and swirling the fine merlot around and around. “I cried out of bitterness, and I cried out of self-recrimination and I cried out of self-pity, and self-hatred.” She looked up at him again, and now the tears were coursing down her pink cheeks. “But it was only today, at that grave, that I really felt sorry for me. And for my baby. For what we lost in each other. I lost my baby. And I also lost the chance to ever, ever be a mother.”
Rick felt his sharp intake of breath as she said it. He hadn’t realized. But he didn’t say anything, because he could tell she wasn’t finished.
“I know I’ve done bad things. I know I probably deserve only bad things. But I never, ever dreamed that I deserved that.” The words seemed dragged from the deepest, darkest place in her. Her voice was low and ragged, and her face was creased with pain.
He took her hands from around the wineglass, very gently, feeling like she might break. He turned her toward him in the wide booth seat. She was still looking down at their hands, so he put one finger under her chin and lifted it up so she would meet his eyes.
“No,” he said. “No you did not, Steffy. You did not deserve any of it. And if I could take it away for you, I would.”
As he said the words, he
enfolded her in his arms again, bringing her very close to him, almost pulling her into his lap. He wanted to shield and comfort her. There was something primal and terrifying about the force of his need to make it all okay for her.
He felt her melt against him.
Chapter Five
Steffy inhaled deeply as she leaned against Rick’s shirt. He’d changed out of the one ruined by her mascara and unshed tears and he smelled like the outdoors, as he always had—the sea, salt and a faint trace of earthiness. A very light cologne overlaid the other scents and Steffy found herself breathing deeply, enjoying the comforting but sensual fragrances.
Rick’s arms were tight and warm around her. For the first time in a long time, her muscles completely relaxed. It had been an exhausting day and one she was almost sure she could not have survived without Rick. His quiet, solid presence had held and comforted her. Without it, she was not sure she could have even made it to the cemetery.
And now this.
The little bistro was the perfect choice—quaint and dark, intimate without being romantic. The dark wood paneling and low ceilings reminded her of a place she had stopped with her father when he had insisted they take a drive to the Loire Valley one weekend.
As she felt herself melt against Rick, something shifted between them. Again. His arms, which had been firm but relaxed, tensed a little, and he shifted in his seat. She felt his nose press down lightly into her hair. He picked up one long, loose curl and wrapped it around his finger, seeming to enjoy the silky length of it. The soft tug on her scalp galvanized her senses, awakening her skin and lighting a trail down her neck to her spine.
This sweet, comforting hug seemed to be turning into something else entirely, and while Steffy was pretty sure she should stop it in its tracks, her body didn’t seem to agree. Ten more seconds, she promised herself.
But it was ten seconds too long. Because as she leaned against the hard length of the man who had been caring for her all day, a familiar voice broke into her reverie.
“Steffy!”