Beach Reads Boxed Set

by Marie Force

  “You asked me if I wanted out, and I’m telling you I don’t. What I do want is for us to have this day tomorrow without any clouds hanging over it. I don’t want anything to spoil it for you.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine, baby. As long as I look up and see you coming toward me on the arm of your father, I promise you I’ll be just fine.”

  While she believed him, she wished he had used a different word.

  Their wedding was beautiful and elegant and sweet because of all the people who were there—and bittersweet because of all the people who weren’t. Ted’s brother-in-law served as his best man. Her sister Courtney and best friend Tiffany were Caroline’s attendants. The bride and groom danced to the Lifehouse song, “You and Me,” that they had listened to after their first wedding, cut their cake, and Caroline threw her bouquet.

  After spending their second wedding night in a rustic Saratoga Springs inn, they went home to Boston and began making plans for a honeymoon in the Bahamas and to move Caroline out of her apartment in New York. They opened a joint checking account, legally changed her name, and got her a Massachusetts driver’s license. In late September, they visited Tish and Steven in the hospital after their daughter, Lillian Elizabeth Spencer, was born weighing just over nine pounds.

  They had four bright red check marks on their list by mid-October when they received an invitation to Chip and Elise’s Thanksgiving weekend wedding in New York City. Elise had enclosed a note that said, “Please come. I know Chip wants you there even if he’s too stubborn to say so. I love you both, and I miss you. Please come.” The invitation sat on the counter untouched until the RSVP date approached and Caroline asked Ted what he wanted to do about it.

  “Do you mind sending them something fabulous? I wouldn’t have any idea what to get, but you would know.”

  “What do I say in the card?”

  “That we wish them all the best?”

  “Ted, why don’t we go?” she pleaded. “He knows she invited us. Let’s go.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Would you go alone?”

  “You’re my wife, Caroline. I’m not going to a wedding without you. I don’t care whose wedding it is.”

  “You’re sweet to say that, but if it meant an opportunity for you to patch things up with them, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt if you went without me.”

  “I’m not going to bring all that tension to Chip’s wedding. He doesn’t need that.”

  “Okay, but if you change your mind, remember it’s fine with me if you go alone.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  Mitzi surprised them when she called the first week in November to invite them to Sunday dinner. While Ted wouldn’t have used the word “estranged” to describe his recent relationship with his mother, it certainly wasn’t what it used to be. So they were relieved when she reached out to them.

  Over dinner Mitzi asked if they were going to Chip’s wedding.

  “No, we’re not,” Ted said.

  “This whole thing is crazy, Ted,” Mitzi said. “How long are you going to let it go on?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Mother.”

  “Do you even know about Smitty?”

  Ted put down his fork. “What about him?”

  “Mitzi,” Ed warned. “Don’t.”

  “Why not, Ed? He needs to know his actions have consequences.” She turned back to Ted. “He married some girl he met in Sydney.”

  “What?” Ted whispered as if he hadn’t heard her right the first time.

  “He got married two weeks ago, and he’s moving to Sydney to run her family’s business. He’s resigned his partnership at the brokerage.”

  Ted got up and left the room.

  Caroline tossed her napkin onto the table and went after him. She found him in his father’s study and couldn’t help but remember the disaster that had occurred the last time they were in that room. Her stomach knotted with tension and a terrible sense of foreboding. With her hand on his shoulder, she said, “Ted?”

  He turned to her, and with one look at his face she knew their marriage was over. There’d be no more fighting for it, no more trying. No more of anything. He wasn’t going to be able to forgive himself. “Can we leave?” he asked. “Please.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  During the long, silent ride home, Caroline tried to calm her queasy stomach and frantic nerves. She glanced over at him and found him staring at the road. If he blinked, she didn’t see it.

  He opened the door to the condo and held it for her so she could go in ahead of him.

  “Ted, honey, let’s talk about it. Come on.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” He took the stairs two at a time on his way to the loft.

  She followed him.

  In their bedroom, he pulled out a duffel bag and began to pack.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the hospital tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to accept the job in New Hampshire. I’ll be moving up there.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes. I need some time, Caroline.”

  She swallowed hard. “How much time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not your fault. He’s a grown man, Ted. He made his own decisions, and it has nothing to do with you.”

  “Do you honestly believe that? You don’t know him at all, Caroline! You were with him for six fucking weeks. He was my best friend for twenty years! I’m telling you there’s no way he’s going to just get married. Not after what went down between him and Cherie. There’s also no way he leaves New York and quits a partnership he spent the better part of a decade slaving for. So if you want to be naïve enough to think what we did to him has nothing to do with the choices he’s making now, you’re deluding yourself!”

  “Why does it have to be the end for us?”

  “Because it was one thing when our relationship was ruining friendships. That was bad enough. It’s another thing altogether when it’s ruining lives. I can’t live with that, and every time I look at you that’s all I’m going to see.”

  She took a step back from him, feeling as if he had hit her. “If you do this to me, Ted, if you leave me, I’ll never be able to put the pieces back together. Never. Not this time.”

  He had tears in his eyes when he said, “We asked for too much.”

  “No,” she sobbed. “No. We asked for just enough.”

  “Too many people got hurt, Caroline. How do we go forward knowing we hurt so many people?”

  “How do we go forward alone after everything we’ve had together?”

  “I can’t stay here. I just can’t be with you right now.” He picked up his bag and left the room.

  She followed him down the stairs. “Now or ever?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll let you know where I am.”

  “Ted, please. Don’t do anything tonight. Let’s talk this out.”

  He dropped his bag by the door and reached for his keys. “You once called me a good boy. Do you remember that?”

  “Of course I do! You’re the best boy I’ve ever known.”

  “You’re right. I am. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so good. Sometimes I wish I’d been born with the ‘fuck it’ gene. It certainly would’ve made my life a whole lot easier. But since the words ‘fuck it’ aren’t in my vocabulary, I do what’s expected of me, and I follow the right path. When my sister was strung out on drugs for ten years, I was finishing college and going to medical school. And now my mother can barely look at me. I took something that didn’t belong to me, and people got hurt—people who mean the world to me. The ‘good boy’ can’t live with that. I thought I could. I really thought I could. But tonight I discovered I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” she cried as he reached for his bag. “Where am I supposed to go while you’re taking ‘time’?”

  “This place is all yours. You’ve got access to m
oney. Use it for whatever you need.”

  “You made promises to me, Ted. Twice you promised to stand by me and to love me for the rest of your life.”

  His eyes were sad as he brushed his index finger over her cheek. “And I will, baby. I’ll always love you. Love’s never been the problem for us, has it?” He picked up his bag and was gone before she could think of what to say to stop him.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ted spent most of that long night composing a letter to his patients and their families. As he deleted one draft after another, he heard Joey Gaither’s weak voice telling him to keep fighting, to not give up. “I’m sorry, buddy,” Ted whispered to the empty room. “But I’m all out of fight.”

  By six o’clock the next morning, he had a letter he could live with and saved it onto his flash drive. After he spent a couple of hours catching up on a mountain of paperwork he’d let slide, he took the flash drive and another letter he had printed with him to the elevator.

  Outside Martin Nickerson’s office, Ted waited for Marty’s assistant to get off the phone.

  “Hi, Ted.”

  “Is he available?”

  “He’s in a meeting, but it’s nothing you can’t interrupt. Go on in.”

  “Thanks, Patty.” Ted knocked and went into Marty’s office.

  “Hey, Ted, come in. Dr. Ted Duffy meet Dr. Aanandita Ramji. She’s just agreed to join our team as an attending. She’ll be taking some of the pressure off you and Roger.”

  Ted shook her hand.

  “Call me Ana,” she said with a warm smile. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Duffy.”

  “Likewise,” Ted said as he shook her hand.

  “I’ve heard so much about you and your family’s long history here.”

  Ted’s gut twisted when he remembered why he was there. “I’m sorry to interrupt your meeting, but I need a minute when you have some time today, Marty.”

  “We were done.” Ana stood up and shook hands with both of them. “I’ll see you on the first, Dr. Nickerson.” She nodded to Ted. “I look forward to working with you, Dr. Duffy.”

  “We’ll see you soon,” Martin said.

  Ana left them and closed the door behind her.

  Martin clapped his hands with glee. “Hot damn! We got lucky today, my friend. Yes, we did! She was trained at Johns Hopkins and had twelve other programs competing for her. It came down to M.D. Anderson and us.”

  “I’m sure it was your potent charm that won her over,” Ted said with a weak smile. This man had been a part of his life for as long as Ted could remember, and suddenly the magnitude of what he was about to do sat like a weight on his chest.

  “I’m glad you came by.” Marty refilled his coffee cup. “I was going to bring her down to meet you.”

  Ted shook his head to decline the offer of coffee.

  Marty sat down behind his large desk. “You look beat. Bad night on the floor?”

  “No. For once it was quiet.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Ted handed Marty the second letter.

  Marty perused it and looked up at Ted with shock. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You’re resigning. Why?”

  Ted’s throat tightened. “The ten years I’ve spent here have been the most rewarding years of my life. But I can’t spend my whole career here. I’ve suspected that for quite a while and have only recently come to realize it’s time for a change.”

  “You had a bad go of it for a while there this summer. That’s enough to make anyone take a second look. But to quit, I mean, Ted, come on. You know as well as I do that you’re on your way to sitting in this chair someday. It’s almost your birthright.”

  “I appreciate that you have that kind of faith in me, Marty, but it’s not what I want. Not anymore. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss and mentor than you’ve been to me. I know you’ve taken extra special care of me because my father did the same for you. You’ve invested a lot in me, and I’m sorry to let you down.”

  Marty sat back in his chair and released a deep sigh when he seemed to get that Ted was serious. “Have you told your father? And Theo?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “At eight o’clock this morning I accepted the job as head of the pediatrics department at Concord Hospital. They’ve been after me for some time. I went up there for a day about a month ago and liked what I saw, but I wasn’t ready then to make a move.”

  “You’re a talented oncologist, Ted. How in the world are you ever going to be satisfied with tonsils and croup?”

  “I’m sure I’ll find challenges along the way that I can’t imagine right now,” he said, aching as he used Caroline’s words. He couldn’t think of her. Not if he was going to get through this day. “I’m sorry to leave you without any notice, but they’re desperate for someone up there.”

  Marty got up and came around the desk. “You’re sure about this? Really sure?”

  “I am, Marty.”

  “You know you can always come back if you get up there and are bored senseless, right?”

  Ted smiled as he shook Marty’s hand. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “You’ll be impossible to replace, Dr. Duffy. Good luck and keep in touch.”

  “I will. Give me an hour to talk to my parents before you tell anyone?”

  “Of course.”

  He left Marty’s office and handed the flash drive to Patty. “I need a favor.”

  “Sure, Ted.”

  “Can you send the letter called ‘families’ to all my active patients and the parents of anyone I’ve lost in the last year?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I need an hour before anyone in the hospital hears what the letter says, okay?”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “Thank you, Patty.”

  As he drove to Weston, Ted tried to keep his mind from wandering. He had to stay focused on taking things a step at a time and just get through the day. Despite his best intentions, though, he thought of Caroline . . . and all their plans . . .

  Four out of ten is not bad, he thought. To say we had the deck stacked against us from the beginning, we got lucky to get to number four. Well, since we’ve figured out what I’m going to do about my career, I guess today counts as five. Halfway to happily ever after. That’s more than some people ever get. It’ll have to do.

  Caroline was resting on the sofa that afternoon when the doorbell rang. Her heart lifted at the thought that Ted might have come home. Then she remembered he wouldn’t ring the doorbell. She glanced through the peephole and suppressed a groan. Quickly, she wiped her tear-stained face, ran her fingers through her untidy hair, tied her robe tighter around her, and opened the door to her mother-in-law.

  “May I come in?” Mitzi asked.

  Caroline took a step back to let her in.

  Mitzi dropped her purse on the kitchen counter. “What’s going on, Caroline?”

  “I’m sure you already know or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “He’s quit his job. Do you know that?”

  “He said he was going to.”

  “And you don’t care at all about that?” Mitzi asked, incredulous. “Surely you know by now his position is not just a job. It’s his legacy.”

  Caroline snorted. “Mrs. Duffy—Mitzi—my husband has left me. The husband I’d planned to spend my life with. The husband I’d planned to have children with. He’s left me. So you’ll have to pardon me if I’m not all that concerned today with the Duffy family legacy.”

  With some of her starch gone, Mitzi sat down in the living room. “You have to do something. You can’t let him do this.”

  “I know you won’t believe me, but he was thinking about making a career change long before you dropped your bomb on him last night. The bomb was just the final straw in several situations, but I’m sure you knew that when you dropped it. I’m sorry if you got more than you bargained for.”

 
“I wasn’t hoping he would leave you when I told him about Smitty.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

  “Duffys don’t get divorced, Caroline,” Mitzi snapped. “That’s not what I want for my son.”

  “And yet, here we are.” Caroline smiled at the irony as she sat on the sofa. “He’s done everything you’ve ever expected of him, Mitzi, and then some. The first time he veers off the approved path to pursue something he wants, he loses you and just about everyone else who matters to him. You raised a good and decent man who can’t stand that he’s disappointed you.”

  “So you’re saying this is my fault?”

  “No. If you’re looking for someone to blame, I guess you don’t need to look much further than me. I’m the one who came between best friends and ruined their lives.”

  “You left last night before I could tell you that Smitty sounded so happy when he called. Really happy, Caroline.”

  Caroline stared at her, incredulous. “As we’d say in the newspaper business, you buried the lead. Why would you let Ted think that he’d caused Smitty more unhappiness? Why would you do that?”

  Mitzi looked almost ashamed. “I’ve been angry with Ted. And with you. I’m not about to deny that. I’d never begrudge him the happiness he deserves, but that so many people had to be hurt. I couldn’t stand that. This whole thing was so out of character for him.”

  “Maybe that’s what he needed, Mitzi! To shake things up a bit, to take a risk, to do something that wasn’t expected of him! Do you know how he’s suffered over what he did to Smitty? Do you have any idea?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.” She stood up. “May I have a glass of water?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t offer you anything.”

  “I’ll get it,” Mitzi said when Caroline started to get up.

  Knowing Mitzi had outfitted the place, Caroline didn’t bother to tell her where the glasses were.

  Mitzi took her glass to the fridge to get ice. “What’s this?”

  “What?” Caroline turned and found Mitzi studying their list.

  “Oh.” Mitzi exhaled a long deep breath. “Oh God.” Her hand came up to cover her mouth and her shoulders began to shake.