The Bridesmaid's Gifts

by Wilkins, Gina

  But she had gone too far. His face white, Ethan took another step away from her. “Goodbye, Aislinn. Have a safe trip home,” he said, his voice harsh.

  Conceding defeat, she nodded. “I will. And so will you.”

  He ignored the dry prediction as he turned. And then he paused and glanced back over his shoulder. “Like I said, I don’t believe it will ever become an option. But for the record, no, I wouldn’t turn my back on my brother.”

  “And yet that’s exactly what you’re doing,” she whispered.

  He spun without another word and walked away. Effectively turning his back on both of them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m glad to hear you’ve been sleeping better, Cassandra.”

  “Yes, it’s been much better. Thank you, Dr. Thomas.”

  He glanced at the sweater folded neatly on the end of her bed. “It looks like you’ve completed your project.”

  “Yes.” Her hands felt empty without the knitting needles, but she knew she would never hold them again. “I finished yesterday.”

  “It’s great. A beautiful color.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I suppose you’ll be starting a new one soon.”

  “Mmm.” Because she didn’t want to talk about that now, she changed the subject. “You’ve been very good to me, Dr. Thomas. I’m going to miss you.”

  He went still, then asked cautiously, “Are you going somewhere?”

  Smiling indulgently at him, she replied, “No. I’ll be staying here. You’re the one who’s leaving, aren’t you?”

  “I, um, what do you mean?”

  “Now, Dr. Thomas, don’t be evasive. I know you’re making a career change. And I don’t want to spend our last few days together pretending ignorance.”

  He shook his head. “How could you possibly know I’ve accepted a partnership in a new clinic? I haven’t told anyone here yet.”

  “I have my ways of knowing things,” she replied with a faint smile.

  He looked at her, sitting by the window in her wheelchair, and then at the closed door through which so few people ever entered. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a little scary, Cassandra?”

  “All the time,” she assured him. “So when will you be leaving?”

  Sighing in resignation, he replied, “At the end of the month. I had planned to make the announcement early next week.”

  “You can still do so. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else.”

  “I’ll miss everyone here, you know.”

  “I know. But you’re making the right move. Your life is going to change a great deal in the next year. It’s going to be stressful for you at first, as change always is, but everything will work out fine. You’re going to have a good life and you deserve it. You’re a fine young man.”

  “And you know all of this…how?”

  “Let’s just say I have certain talents and leave it at that, shall we?”

  He cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. But she was used to that. There was a great deal more she could tell him about the changes awaiting him, but she thought she’d better stop now. He would have to find his own way in his future, and she knew he would do so, though not without difficulty. But then, life wasn’t meant to be entirely easy, was it?

  “I think you have a lot of talents, Cassandra. I’m not sure predicting the future is one of them,” he added with a faint smile, “but I’m not ruling it out, either. I’ve never met anyone quite like you. Would you mind if I come visit you sometimes after I leave?”

  “I would be delighted to see you. Anytime,” she assured him, though she suspected there was a sad edge to her smile.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you before I go today?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. See that envelope on my nightstand?”

  He picked up the envelope and glanced automatically at the front. “This one?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I don’t have any stamps. Would you mind mailing that for me?”

  She knew he was a little curious about why she’d asked him rather than a member of the staff, but he merely nodded. “I’d be happy to. Don’t you want to put a return address on it first?”

  “No, it’s fine, thank you.” She didn’t add that the reason she had asked him to mail it was because she knew he would do so from a post office near his home, which was in a different city than the residential facility where she lived.

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. I’d better go now and check to see how Mrs. Campbell is settling in. She’s the new resident two rooms down. Have you met her yet? She seems nice.”

  “No, I haven’t met her.” Mrs. Kennedy had occupied that room until recently, when she had died rather unexpectedly. It had happened the day the staff had encountered so much trouble waking Cassandra and had called Dr. Thomas as a result.

  “Maybe you should join some of the activities this afternoon. You might just surprise yourself and make some friends.”

  He was still worried that she was lonely, she thought after he let himself out. He couldn’t know that she was most content when she was alone these days. Which didn’t mean the same applied to him. It would be good for him to have new people in his life. But she would miss him.

  The plastic line on the gasoline-powered weed trimmer sliced through the grass that had grown high around the concrete pad of the cedar-shake-topped gazebo in Ethan’s backyard. Cuttings flew through the air, sticking to his jeans and boots. Sweat dripped from his hair and from beneath his protective goggles. Trimming was his least favorite part of yard work, but it was the price he paid to keep his place looking good. Strictly for himself.

  Moving on to trim around the stone barbecue, he thought about the raspberry iced tea that waited in the refrigerator. The cold beverage was going to taste great after all this manual labor in the heat of the summer afternoon.

  He pictured himself sprawled in one of the rockers on the deck, sipping tea and watching the river roll by. There was nothing he’d rather be doing. No company he’d rather have than his own.

  At least that was what he had always believed.

  He’d never been lonely here before. Never regretted his choice to live a rather solitary existence in his rural refuge. Never entertained the thought that he had done so out of fear rather than simple preference. Until Aislinn had made him start to question himself.

  It wasn’t fear, he assured himself now, angrily attacking a new patch of weeds. He was no coward. So maybe he’d suffered some losses in his life. Maybe his heart had been bruised a time or two. Maybe he had loved unwisely once or twice. Didn’t mean those experiences had left him afraid. Just cautious. Maybe a little hardened.

  On the rare occasions when the thought of settling down with someone had crossed his mind during the past few years, he’d always assured himself that he was fine on his own. He was too obstinate to be married, too set in his ways. Too jaded to fall in love again now. He’d long since stopped believing in fantasy or magic. Until Aislinn had told him things no one else could have known and made him start questioning everything he had believed before.

  He had accused her once of hypnotizing him, he remembered, staring out at the river for a moment, the machine still chugging in his hands. He wondered now if she really had. How else could he explain the fact that she still haunted him two weeks after he had walked away from her? Two long, restless weeks since he’d told himself she came with too many complications and too many strings to make it worth pursuing anything with her?

  What else could account for the way he kept seeing her, even here in his home where she’d never stepped foot? In his bed, where she had visited only in fevered dreams?

  What else could make him still want to go to her now despite the acrimonious way they had parted? He had been furious with her when he’d stalked away from her, dismayed that she guessed things about him that he’d thought he’d hidden deeply away from everyone. Including himself.

  And yet he’d spent the past
week trying to talk himself out of contacting her again. He had even considered resuming the search for the brother he didn’t believe was out there, just because it would provide another excuse to see Aislinn again.

  He’d known he was in trouble when he had started trying to convince himself that being with Aislinn again would be a smart move. That spending more time with her would let him work her out of his system in a way. That his lingering fascination with her would surely fade away with familiarity.

  It had been lust, plain and simple, he told himself. And that was something that faded rather quickly, in his experience. So maybe it felt different this time with Aislinn. But then, Aislinn was very different from the women he had known before.

  Silencing the noisy trimmer, he pushed the goggles to the top of his head and turned, grimly trying to think about anything but Aislinn. When he saw her standing on the pathway behind him, he thought at first that he was being haunted by another memory of her.

  And then she spoke. “Hello, Ethan.”

  She looked as beautiful as ever, if a bit pale. Her dark, wavy hair was loose around her face and shoulders, her body very straight and rather tense in a cream-colored top and brown slacks. She gripped a crumpled envelope in her hands so tightly her knuckles were white around it.

  Very conscious of his sweat and dishevelment, the dirt and grass stains on his torn T-shirt, jeans and old boots, he asked more gruffly than he’d intended, “What are you doing here?”

  “I know I should have called,” she said apologetically. “But I had to talk to you and I didn’t want to do it over the phone.”

  He figured she must have thought it was important or she wouldn’t have come all this way. Which meant it probably wasn’t going to be a quick conversation.

  “Let me clean up first,” he said, not liking the feeling that he was at a disadvantage. “You can have a glass of tea or something while I shower. Then we’ll talk.”

  She didn’t attempt to argue with him.

  By the time he had showered and changed into a clean shirt and jeans, he felt a bit more in control of his emotions. Aislinn might have caught him off guard, showing up without warning as she had, but he was ready now to deal with her. At least he hoped so, he thought as she looked up at him with an uncharacteristic vulnerability that tugged at his hardened heart.

  She started to stand, but he waved her back onto the sofa where he’d left her with a glass of tea when he’d gone to shower. Like her, he had furnished his home for comfort, with deep, overstuffed furniture, functional tables and built-in shelving for books and entertainment equipment. A stone fireplace dominated the living room, and in the winter there was usually a warm fire crackling there. Glass doors at the back of the room provided a view of his deck, picnic pavilion, private boat dock and the river beyond.

  He had put a great deal of himself into this house and its furnishings. He doubted that Aislinn had missed a thing during the short time she’d been alone in here.

  “You want any more tea?” he asked, moving past her toward the sunny, eat-in kitchen with its industrial appliances.

  “No, thank you.”

  He poured himself a glass, then carried it back into the living room and sat in a chair across from her. He didn’t quite trust himself to sit on the couch beside her. “Okay,” he said after taking a long swallow of his tea. “I’m ready.”

  She laced her fingers in her lap. “First, I want to apologize for the way we parted at the airport,” she said. “I was out of line and I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, not wanting to discuss the details of what she had said. “We were both mad and frustrated by the dead ends we’d hit,” he said. “Forget it. That wasn’t the only reason you came, was it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have you come up with more details about Kyle?” he asked, wondering what he would do if she had. He should tell her he wasn’t interested in any more wild-goose chasing. If he was smart, he would keep his distance from her from now on, hoping his unwelcome fascination with her would fade in time. But he would still listen to what she had come to say.

  She smoothed the white envelope she had been holding since she’d arrived, but she didn’t open it just then. “Since I got home, I’ve been working very hard, trying to put your family issues out of my mind,” she admitted. “You didn’t want me to tell anyone else about what I believed happened to Kyle, and I had no way to prove any of it. Like you said, we had hit a dead end. And I was still upset over the way we separated, so it just seemed easier not to think about it.”

  He knew that feeling. He wondered if she had been any more successful than he at blocking the memories. Something told him she hadn’t. “So you haven’t learned anything new?”

  “Not—not on my own.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She held out the envelope then. “This was in my mail two days ago. I don’t know who sent it.”

  Looking into her troubled eyes, he took the envelope from her and opened it, taking out a single sheet of paper. Unfolding it, he frowned when he saw the drawing. He recognized the face. It was the same one Aislinn had supposedly drawn in her sleep. Though the pose was different, the style was almost identical. He would have sworn they had been drawn by the same hand.

  He still wasn’t sure they hadn’t, he thought, looking up at her slowly.

  “I didn’t draw this one,” she insisted, obviously reading his thoughts in his expression. “It came in the mail. No return address. Postmarked Atlanta, Georgia.”

  He looked at it again. The face that she had told him was his brother. He’d looked at the drawing she’d given him a dozen times since he’d returned home, and there were very few differences between the two.

  This wasn’t what he had expected at all. He’d thought maybe she would tell him some more details about the accident or more vague clues about where Carmen had supposedly taken Kyle. But this, if he were to believe her, made everything even more strange and unsettling than anything she had told him yet.

  “Look at the back,” she urged, her voice strangely flat, uninflected.

  He turned the sheet over. There was a name written in small block print. Dr. Mark Thomas. And an address below it, located in Georgia.

  “Mark,” he said, the significance of the name hitting him then.

  Aislinn nodded.

  “And you don’t know who sent you this.”

  “I—no.”

  He sighed impatiently.

  “I don’t,” she said defensively. “But when I held it, I thought I should know, for some reason. That’s the best I can do to explain it.”

  He set the drawing aside and stood, moving to look out the window. He felt strangely as if his entire future hinged on however he handled the next few minutes—and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for this at all.

  As she’d said, he didn’t give his trust easily. And what she was asking him to believe now required a leap of faith greater than any he had ever taken before.

  Still sitting on the couch, Aislinn studied Ethan’s back, giving him time to process what she had told him. She knew how difficult this must be for him. It had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done to come here at all.

  She remembered the impact of seeing that drawing that had arrived in her mail. It had hit her with such a physical force that she’d staggered, almost falling into a chair. She still couldn’t look at it without a chill running down her spine.

  It had been the truth when she’d told Ethan she didn’t know who sent it to her. But every time she touched it, she got a…feeling. A nagging whisper at the back of her mind that she should know. That she wasn’t letting herself know.

  After another moment, she stood and moved closer to Ethan, stopping a few steps away. “Ethan?”

  “You must realize how this sounds.”

  “Trust me, I know. I was aware of how hard it would be for you to believe me when I came. I tried to talk myself out of coming, since you’d made it clear you wanted to
stop searching. But I knew I had to tell you about this.”

  He turned then to look at her. “It would be easy for me to believe that you’re trying to put something over on me. That you’re playing with my mind. That you drew both those pictures and that you’ve made up this whole bizarre tale, for some reason.”

  “I can see why it would be reasonable for you to think that,” she agreed evenly. “All I can tell you is that you would be wrong. Everything I’ve said to you happened exactly the way I told you it did. I drew the first picture I showed you. Someone else drew this one. Someone who then mailed it to me, along with the name and address on the back.”

  “And you think that name is the one my brother is using now.”

  She nodded. “I know it is. Dr. Mark Thomas is your brother, Kyle.”

  He moved a step closer to her and cupped her face between his hands, looking deeply into her eyes. “Tell me one more time.”

  Though her pulse raced in response to his touch, her voice was steady when she said, “I’m telling you the truth, Ethan. And despite how improbable this all sounds, I’m asking you to trust me.”

  His gaze traveled from her eyes to her mouth and then back again. She held her breath while he made up his mind, taking so long that she was beginning to get a little light-headed by the time he finally dropped his hands and stepped away.

  “All right,” he said brusquely. “I’ll throw some things in a bag.”

  She breathed deeply, then let it out on a slow, unsteady exhale. “We’re going to Georgia?”

  “We’re going to Georgia.”

  For some reason, Aislinn had thought the address on the back of the drawing might be an office. Maybe because of the title before the name. Instead she and Ethan found themselves in a residential neighborhood of nice, tasteful brick homes. A young-professionals neighborhood, she thought, filled with couples on the rise in their careers.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that Kyle could be married now or have children. He would be thirty-two, certainly old enough—and yet she had the feeling that he was still single, despite the family-style house.