“Dan’s right here with you for Damon,” Little Miss Practical unexpectedly chided. “Think about that, smart-ass.”
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped, tired of the blasphemous thoughts she was planting in my brain.
“What do you think Bobby would have done in this situation?” she goaded. “He never even liked Damon.”
“Bobby would have been here for me,” I snapped back.
“Like he was there when Aunt Ellen died?”
I tried to push her away by concentrating on good thoughts of Bobby. It troubled me to discover that I could not instantly conjure up a clear picture of his face. And I could hear her laughing at me from some dark corner of my mind.
“Dammit! Now look what you’ve done,” I hissed. “Go away and leave me alone.”
Little Miss Practical fell silent again. Slipping deeper into the tub I closed my eyes and reminded myself to call the hospital to check on Damon as soon as I was through.
Chapter 20
Dinner was a quiet, low-key affair.
After I’d soaked the deep chill out of my bones I wandered out to the living room in my robe, attracted by the delicious smells wafting under the bedroom door. The plum-colored satin drapes covering the floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the suite had been opened, exposing a breathtaking nighttime panorama of the rain-swept city a few miles away across the bay.
“I hope you’re hungry.” Dan stepped out of the other bedroom and escorted me to a small table draped in snowy linen and set with sparkling crystal and silver.
“Mmmm,” I replied, allowing him to seat me and place a napkin in my lap.
“Excellent,” he said. “My name is Dan and I will be your waiter this evening.” He smoothly turned to open a small metal cabinet on wheels and produced a crisp salad garnished with tiny bay shrimp. “Freshly ground pepper?” he asked, holding up a big wooden grinder.
“Thank you.” I laughed as he dusted my salad with a showy flick of his wrist, then filled a crystal goblet with a clear Johannesburg Riesling.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, tasting the wine and licking my lips to show I approved, “before you discovered your artistic talent you used to be head waiter at the Four Seasons.”
“Not exactly,” he admitted reluctantly, “but when I was in the marines I once spent an entire month mopping floors in the mess hall.”
“Aha!” I exclaimed. “I knew you’d picked up that high-toned panache somewhere.”
We both laughed and he got his own salad from the cabinet and touched his wineglass to mine.
“Here’s to Damon!” Dan proposed.
My smile disappeared and I abruptly set down my glass on the table. “Oh, God,” I moaned. “Damon! I meant to phone the hospital…”
I started to rise but Dan reached across the table and restrained me. “I called and spoke to Alice five minutes ago,” he informed me. “There’s been no change in his condition since you last checked. But the hotel switchboard has orders to put through calls from the hospital, no matter what time they come in.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, staring down at my lovely salad. My appetite was suddenly gone.
“Sue, you have to eat,” Dan firmly insisted.
“I know,” I replied miserably. “It just doesn’t seem as if I should be enjoying it so.”
He gave me an appraising look. “I wonder what Damon would have to say about that remark,” he speculated.
I thought that over for a moment. “Damon?” I found myself smiling again. “My God, Damon is so completely irreverent, he’d probably say something like, ‘Girl, if you’re not gonna eat those darlin’ little pink shrimp, then for the Lord’s sake give them to me.’”
“I sort of guessed it would be something like that,” said Dan. He raised his glass again. “Here’s to Damon. May he soon be with us to help with the shrimp.”
“To Damon!” There were tears in my eyes as I raised my glass and clinked it against Dan’s. “God bless him.”
As it turned out the meal Dan had ordered was just right for stressed-out stomachs. Following our salads we shared a delicate, light-as-air soufflé laced with tender slices of mushroom and succulent bits of chicken. Dessert was a simple lime sorbet.
As we ate, we spoke quietly and hopefully of Alice Cahill’s skills and Damon’s tenacious fight to live. And before long I found myself telling a funny story about an elderly New York society matron who was convinced that Damon was the reincarnation of a dashing English lord who had escorted her to her 1935 debutante ball. By the time I had finished the story we were both laughing again. And I really did feel much better.
We called the hospital right after dinner. Alice was not available to come to the phone, but the ICU duty nurse informed us that Damon’s condition remained essentially unchanged.
Later, we sat together on a sofa in the semidarkness and watched the cold rain falling on Boston. The imminent possibility that I might lose Damon this night weighed heavily on my mind. And our conversation soon shifted to our views on eternity, as we both speculated about what might await us beyond this Earthly life.
From my experience with the ghost of Aimee Marks, I confided in Dan, I felt assured that Damon’s spirit would go on, even if he lost his fragile hold on life. And I admitted to him that having encountered my ancestor’s gentle spirit was also helping me come to terms with Bobby’s death.
“Would you like to tell me about Bobby now?” Dan’s arm was resting lightly on my shoulder and his features were masked by the dim light.
I squirmed uncomfortably and tucked my legs up under me on the sofa. “I already told you about Bobby,” I said evasively.
“No, Sue. You only told me how he died and how distraught you were over losing him,” Dan challenged. “I’d like to know the kinds of things about Bobby that I learned from you about Damon today. What kind of person he was. The little things he did and said that made you love him so desperately.”
“Dan, please don’t,” I begged. “Not now.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why not now?”
“This is a difficult time for me,” I replied.
“I know it is,” he said. “It’s difficult for me, too. But I didn’t choose the time, Sue. Nobody did. You just stepped into my life out of nowhere. Neither of us planned it, and I certainly wasn’t ready for it, either.” He exhaled loudly, obviously frustrated over the emotions he was experiencing. “But here we are,” he concluded.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Here we are.” I thought I understood what he was feeling. For the same sense of frustration had been nagging at me since the day we’d first met out on the island. Then I’d been plunged into a quagmire of unreasonable guilt over having simply enjoyed our conversation together. Somehow it didn’t seem fair that I felt so guilty just for living.
“Why do you want to know those things about Bobby now?” I asked, which was my way of dodging questions for which I feared I would have no ready answers.
“Because,” Dan said softly, “I’m falling in love with you. And I don’t know how to compete with a dead lover who can never be anything but young and strong and perfect in your mind.”
His reply hit me hard, because Laura had said nearly the same thing when she had counseled me about the special difficulty of recovering from the loss of a loved one who vanishes without a trace, like Bobby did. And for once I believed she had been absolutely right on target. Because whenever I thought about Bobby, my thoughts—and dreams—invariably centered on the good things we had shared. Never on the darker moments of our relationship.
“Bobby was hardly perfect.” I said it cautiously, the well-intentioned words sounding cold and faithless in my ears. “Wonderful, but not perfect,” I amended. “I don’t think anybody is perfect.”
A clear image of Bobby suddenly popped into my mind, and an invisible wall came tumbling down. “Bobby was headstrong and reckless,” I continued truthfully. “And he used to do little things that annoyed the hell out of me, like leaving his dirt
y clothes on the bathroom floor, or forgetting his keys and then calling to demand that I come home and let him into the apartment.”
Dan was looking at me, his expression unreadable in the darkness. I swallowed hard and kept talking, knowing that this was important, but not exactly sure why. “He was strangely secretive, too, often refusing to tell me where he was going or when he would be returning. There were many times when I spent weeks on end, lonely and terrified,” I confessed, the emotion gradually rising in my voice, “not knowing where he was or what kind of risks he was taking flying his goddamn airplanes…I was always terrified that he was going to kill himself in them.”
I paused to catch my breath, surprised at the vehemence of my outburst.
“Then he did kill himself flying,” Dan said flatly. “And I think that beneath your grief you’re really very angry about that, Sue.”
“No!” I shook my head emphatically, knowing even as I denied it that there was a measure of truth in Dan’s harsh appraisal. “I mean, maybe I am angry,” I stammered. “But I’m angry with myself, because it was my fault that Bobby was flying that particular airplane. Don’t you see? I forced him into it…” I could feel my voice beginning to quaver, on the verge of sobbing.
“Sue, nobody forces someone like Bobby Hayward to do anything they don’t want to do,” Dan countered emphatically. “He was doing exactly what he wanted to do and he kept on doing it, even though he knew it bothered you—the long absences, the worry…” Dan stopped himself in midsentence and I could see that he was afraid he had gone much too far.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “That was out of line.”
“No!” I shook my head. Because what Dan had said was true. “Living with Bobby was like living in a vacuum,” I continued. “He’d be gone for days or weeks at a time and despite my work and my friends, my life always seemed to grind to a halt without him. I’d be completely miserable and empty, just waiting for his call. Then, suddenly, he’d come back home again and for a few days or a week it was like Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. Then the cycle would start all over again. The strain was almost intolerable.”
I gazed out the window toward the city and the distant medical center. “Damon always said he could never understand why I put up with it,” I murmured.
“You obviously loved him very deeply.” It was a flat statement.
“Yes,” I whispered sadly, “probably more than he loved me, maybe even more than I should have…” I paused and took a deep breath to steady myself. “But I guess that doesn’t matter when you’re so much in love with someone.”
Dan stroked my hair. “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.” He leaned closer, until I could feel the warmth of his breath against my ear. “And because of the way you lost Bobby,” he continued, “you feel like you’re betraying him by even considering the possibility of becoming involved with someone else now.”
I reached up and with a trembling hand touched Dan’s cheek. “I can’t be coy about this,” I said. “I’m strongly attracted to you. I even think…I could very easily be in love with you, Dan. But I just have yet to fully come to terms with the fact that Bobby is truly gone.”
He lowered his head and gently kissed my fingers. “It’s okay,” he assured me. “Take all the time you need, Sue. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
We sat there on the sofa for a while longer, not speaking, but simply watching the rain and reveling in being close to one another. As I snuggled in the crook of Dan’s arm, feeling the warmth and strength of his body next to mine, I knew that something extraordinary had just happened. A bond had been forged that did not require either of us to say another word.
We finally said good night, planning to be up early. I wanted to go to the hospital first thing, to be with Damon. Then, later, I would need to return to the hotel and begin calling our clients, who would be clamoring to know exactly what had happened.
Later, alone and naked beneath the cool sheets of the king-sized hotel bed, I tossed restlessly for a long time before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.
It seemed as though I had barely closed my eyes when I felt a weight pressing down on the mattress beside me and heard a low masculine voice in my ear.
“Sue?”
I opened my eyes to see him half-kneeling over me, his hard, muscular body sharply outlined in the fall of light through the open door.
With that peculiar sense of disorientation that comes from awakening in a strange place, for a moment I was not quite certain where I was, or who was leaning over me. I saw that he was clad only in black briefs. The tattoos on his upper arms were black in the feeble light.
“Dan,” I gasped. “What in the world…?”
“It’s the hospital,” he said, his voice still husky with sleep. “They want us to get over there right away.”
“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, leaping out of bed. “Damon. He’s not…?”
Dan shook his head. “No, he’s still alive. But they wouldn’t give me any further information,” he said, gazing openly at my nakedness.
I looked down at myself, dimly aware that I had let the sheet slip away and I was completely exposed to him. But strangely, I thought, I was not at all bothered by Dan’s frank gaze. Naked I walked deliberately across the room and put on my underwear. “Please, let’s hurry,” I said as I opened the closet to get my clothes.
Dan simply nodded and left the room. As I pulled my dress on over my head I could hear him phoning the hotel garage, ordering someone to have the Mercedes brought up immediately.
Chapter 21
Damon was propped in a half-sitting position as I rushed into his ICU cubicle. He was sipping water through a pink plastic straw from a cup held by a pretty nurse’s aide and blinking owlishly at Alice Cahill, who was probing his chest with a forefinger.
“Ow!” he complained, looking over her shoulder and frantically waving a stubby hand at me. “Sue, darling, puh-lease get this awful woman off of me,” he demanded.
“Damon, you’re awake!” I shrieked with relief.
Alice straightened and grimaced at me.
“Awake and uncooperative,” she grunted, though it was plain to see that she was immensely pleased with herself. She pocketed her stethoscope and stepped away from the bed so I could throw my arms around Damon’s neck.
“Christ,” I sobbed into his ear, “I thought you were going to die on me, too.” I pulled away after a long interval and grinned down at him through my tears. “You look like hell.” I sniffed.
Damon gave me one of his patented rueful looks. “I feel like Death eating crackers,” he moaned, struggling to raise himself higher on the pillows so he could glare directly at Alice and the nurses. “When they’re not draining off the last of my blood these philistines insist on sticking their damned freezing probes into every orifice in my body.”
Unimpressed by his rhetoric, Alice sternly wagged her finger at him. “Do not even attempt to sit up any higher than you are right now, mister, or I will have you tied to that bed,” she warned. “For your information, you have several broken bones in your right leg that are just itching to slice through those fat-lined little arteries of yours. And if that happens, I guarantee you’ll find out what real bleeding is all about.”
“See what I’ve been putting up with?” Damon whined, wriggling around to look at me.
“You stop being such a wise-ass and listen to Dr. Cahill,” I ordered. “Because whether you know it or not if it wasn’t for her I’d be planning your damn funeral right now.” I pointed a trembling finger at Alice. “This dear lady has just hauled your sorry, sarcastic butt back from death’s door,” I informed him. “And I do mean literally.”
Damon immediately stopped struggling and the frown vanished from his round baby face. “She did?” he gasped, rolling his eyes onto Alice and fixing her with an awestruck gaze. “Please forgive me, Doctor,” he begged. “You are undoubtedly an absolute angel of mercy and I am a miserable and undeserving wret
ch.”
Alice winked at me, then she and the aide withdrew. “Five minutes,” she whispered as she brushed past. “He’s not out of the woods yet by a long shot.”
“So,” I said, dropping into a chair and grasping Damon’s hand. “Do you remember what happened?”
Instead of answering me immediately, Damon closed his eyes. A beatific expression spread over his shiny countenance, almost as if he was reliving a beautiful dream. “Oh, God, Sue, the light,” he sighed. “I remember mostly that there was a dazzling golden light…the beauty of it was…indescribable.”
I sat there transfixed by the sudden blissful transformation that had come over him, not certain whether to interrupt or not. Because, in asking what he remembered, I had only meant, of course, the details of the horrible plane crash and his nightlong ordeal in the frigid waters of Narragansett Bay.
But Damon was obviously remembering something else altogether.
His eyes remained tightly shut. Then, without warning, his placid expression turned fearful. “Sue,” he called out, squeezing my hand with such painful intensity that I actually feared he might crush it. “Sue, girl?”
I placed my other hand on top of his, gently prying his rigid fingers away. “Damon, I’m right here,” I assured him. “You’re safe now, but you were in a plane crash. Do you remember that?”
Damon’s wide brown eyes suddenly popped open. “The plane? Oh, God, how could I forget that damned little piss-ant commuter airplane?” he replied in genuine annoyance. “Remind me never to get on another one of those sons of bitches again…” Then his lower lip began to tremble like a child’s, just before it cries. “Oh, Jesus, Sue,” he moaned, “I remember everything now. I was so scared…”
“I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for you,” I empathized. “It must have been dreadful, lost in the sea like that…”
Damon shook his head impatiently. “I wasn’t talking about the damned airplane crash,” he interrupted. Then the panic took hold of him again and his words were spilling out in a jumbled torrent. “Sweet Christ, Sue, I have got to tell you…I saw him glaring at me. Looking like a damned evil spirit…”
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