by Tracy Wolff
She went back to looking out the window herself. Started counting clouds. It was going to be a long few hours until they landed in Georgia.
SIMON UNFASTENED HIS SEAT BELT with combined feelings of relief and unease. Relief because they were finally in Atlanta after what had been one of the most emotionally uncomfortable flights of his life, with the exception of the one after Amanda had called to inform him that Gabby was dead.
He was uneasy, though, because these past few hours of silence between them had been colder than the temperatures he’d endured in Antarctica covering a story on climate change. The emotional chill and Amanda’s total and complete introspection made him wonder what she had planned. Because if he knew anything, it was that Amanda Jacobs was not the type to accept her fate—especially if that fate had anything to do with him.
Crossing to the rear of the plane, Simon retrieved her backpack from where he’d stashed it. She accepted it without a word, then walked toward the front and waited patiently for the door to be opened. Simon grabbed his bag and followed her.
In only a couple of minutes, they’d collected her suitcase and then headed toward customs. More than once, he tried to start a conversation, but she shut him down every time with her absolute refusal to speak. He might have thought her voice box had suffered some terrible calamity if she hadn’t spoken clearly and politely, if a little woodenly, to the customs officer who questioned her.
After checking out her American passport and welcoming her home, he let her enter. She walked through and then it was Simon’s turn to hand his documentation to the man. After answering questions about the stories that had taken him to four continents in three weeks, he, too, was allowed in.
Amanda wasn’t waiting for him on the other side of the gate. Instead, she’d taken off, using the extra time he’d spent dealing with the customs agent to put some distance between them.
Swearing bitterly, he set off running. It was evening, so the terminal wasn’t as crowded as it could have been, but it was still busy enough that he had trouble finding her, dressed as she was in simple baggy jeans and a black tank top.
When he got to the exit doors with still no sign of her, he paused, looked around wildly. Had he overreacted, jumped to conclusions? Maybe she’d had to use the restroom? But that didn’t make sense. She would have told him if that was the case. Wouldn’t she?
Walking slowly back the way he’d come, he scanned the exiting masses carefully. If he lost Amanda here, in Atlanta, he might never find her again. No cell phone, no address to go on, nothing at all. And while he’d spent the past eighteen months without her, he’d always known where she was. The idea of never finding her again was a sucker punch to the chest. Besides, how was he supposed to put his plans into action if he didn’t know where she was?
It was on his third scan of the area that his gaze fell on a sign that read Ground Transportation, Taxis. His heart kicked up its rhythm as he took off in the direction of the arrow. Why hadn’t he thought of it right away? Of course she would try to get a taxi.
As he burst into the steamy Atlanta night, he prayed he wasn’t too late. Not that he didn’t deserve to be left behind after his total and complete stupidity. But still, he couldn’t help hoping—
There. There she was. Thank God for the delay at the taxi stand. Amanda was still five people away from getting a cab.
Weaving through the crowd, he came up on her left side. “Thanks for getting in line,” he told her nonchalantly, as he cupped her elbow with his hand.
She whirled to face him, lips tight and eyes completely blank. The blankness frightened him. He’d always been able to tell where he stood, where Amanda was emotionally, by looking into her eyes. She’d never been one to hide her emotions away, so whatever she felt—happiness, anger, sorrow, confusion—shone brightly in the varying shades of gray.
Now there was nothing. He didn’t know if it was because she’d finally found a way to lock her emotions down deep inside her or if it was because she really didn’t feel anything. Either way, it didn’t bode well for her or the tattered remnants of the relationship he’d been hoping to salvage.
“I would suggest going to the back of the line,” she told him woodenly. “Because you are not sharing a cab with me.”
“Of course I am. How else are you going to find my apartment?”
A flash of surprise in those glorious eyes. Finally. “Why exactly would I need to know where your apartment is?”
“Because you’ll be staying with me.”
As they talked, the people in front of them slowly filed into cabs until, too soon, it was their turn. Simon slipped his hand from her elbow to her upper arm, tightening his fingers almost imperceptibly as he did so. Definitely not enough to hurt her, just enough that he’d have some warning if she decided to jerk away. He really didn’t relish the idea of explaining this whole scenario to airport police.
“How many riders?” the taxi regulator asked.
“One,” Amanda answered at the same time Simon said, “Two.”
The tired-looking woman glanced between them, no alarm on her face but a definite perking up of her ears. “What’s it going to be?” she asked.
“Two,” Simon said firmly, guiding Amanda toward the waiting car.
“I am not going to your apartment,” she insisted. “And I suggest you let go of my arm or I’m going to scream to the whole world how you managed to get me here.”
“Get in the cab, Amanda.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and the wrong tone to use. Every muscle in her body tightened with what he was sure was a painful intensity, and she said, very quietly, “Go to hell, Simon.”
“I’m not going to let you wander around downtown Atlanta on your own, especially not at night.”
“I am not your problem and haven’t been for a very long time.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve made you my problem.”
“Well, that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?”
Simon gritted his teeth, shoveling a hand through his hair in frustration as the taxi driver came around to get Amanda’s suitcase. “Is there a problem?” the round little man asked in heavily accented English.
“No problem,” Simon said. “We’re going downtown. I’m about—”
“We are not going anywhere. I am going to a hotel.” It was the most forceful Simon had heard her sound, and he was so relieved to see any expression of emotion from her that he conceded defeat. At least temporarily.
“Take us to the Loews.” He turned to Amanda. “Okay? I’ll get you settled for tonight and be back tomorrow so we can talk.’
She shook her head, a twisted smile on her lips. “I’ve been to a lot of places more dangerous than downtown Atlanta, Simon. I think I can handle this on my own.”
He didn’t like it, but short of kidnapping her again—something he didn’t think would fly a second time—he didn’t see that he had a choice. He felt the click of a sudden shift in the power dynamic between them and nearly choked as he firmly repeated, “The Loews,” to both her and the cabdriver. Maybe if he didn’t acknowledge his loss of control over the situation, no one else would notice.
“Fine. The Loews,” she agreed.
He stepped back, angry and confused and more than a little worried, as Amanda settled herself into the back of the taxi. As it eased from the curb, he rushed to the first of the three cars that had pulled up behind hers.
“Follow that cab,” he told the driver, feeling like a total idiot. “They should be going to the Loews, but I want to make sure she gets there safely.”
Point of fact, he wanted to ensure that Amanda didn’t change her mind halfway to the hotel and decide to go somewhere else. Or worse, back to the airport to catch a flight to God only knew where. After years of living in areas where it was almost impossible for her to spend her salary, she had the cash to disappear if that’s what she wanted to do.
But much to his relief, her cab didn’t stop until it deposited her outside
the hotel. And still he made his driver wait outside the huge glass doors as he watched her walk through the lobby, toward the registration desk. Only after she was engaged in conversation with one of the desk clerks did he return to his own taxi.
He’d give her some space tonight. God knew, she deserved it. But by tomorrow, all bets were off. One way or the other, Amanda was going to learn that, though their daughter was dead, she was still very much alive.
CHAPTER SIX
AMANDA DROPPED HER SUITCASE by the door and then spent a minute studying her hotel room as if she’d never seen one before. It was large and luxurious, as rooms at the Loews usually were, and the bed was as big as a lake. Part of her longed to curl up on it and sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep. It had been eighteen months since she’d slept in a real bed, longer if you counted the fact that she’d spent much of the six months before Gabby’s death sleeping in a chair beside her daughter’s bed—at the hospital and at home.
Images of Gabby from those last days—frail, emaciated, but still smiling—flipped through her mind and she knew she wasn’t going to sleep. Not now, despite the bone-deep weariness that dogged her every step.
Walking farther into the room, she laid her backpack on the dresser and crossed to the huge picture windows that looked out over downtown Atlanta. Business hours had ended long ago, so the city was relatively quiet—or at least as quiet as a place this size could get. It was still too loud, too bright, too crowded for her. But then, she always felt that way after a stint in Africa, as if the world she had been born into was too vibrant for her. As if she’d never really belonged here.
She knew she didn’t belong in this hotel in Atlanta. She’d been born and raised in Massachussetts, had gone to medical school at Harvard. Had established her own home there as an adult, as well. Her home and Gabby’s.
The smart thing to do, she told herself as she walked into the bathroom to take a shower, would be to catch a flight to Boston. She knew the city and her stuff was there, even if her life no longer was. It would be so much easier to start over in Boston than Atlanta, a place that felt more foreign to her than Africa ever had.
But just the thought of returning to Boston without Gabby had her hands shaking and the blessed detachment that had enveloped her for the past few hours threatening to wear off. Anger cracked through her—at Jack, at Simon, but mostly at herself for being so stupid. For not anticipating that they would come up with drugging her to get her on that plane.
She hadn’t planned on returning to the States, not now when the past was still so alive to her. When Jack had issued his ultimatum, she’d figured she would drift around Europe for a while. Find some low-income clinic to help out in until her friend decided to lift his ban. Not once had it occurred to her to come back here and face the cataclysm of agony that seemed to wait for her around every lamppost and street corner.
Caught up in her thoughts, she stepped into the shower without testing it and was hit with a blast of near-boiling water. It should have burned, especially considering the fact that in Somalia she’d been making due with water heated by the sun.
But instead of burning her, it felt good, the warmth seeping through her skin and into all the hollow spaces deep inside of her. She could feel her resolve melting, feel thoughts of Mabulu and Gabby and Simon all creeping in as the numbness finally began to thaw.
Panicked, she reached over and flipped the lever all the way to cold. Yet even as the frigid water bombarded her, she knew it was too late. She couldn’t refreeze her emotions, couldn’t put everything that had happened in the past two years back into the neat compartment it had once fit into.
Pain washed over her in waves, swamping her, nearly dragging her under, and Amanda started to cry. She turned, shoved her face into the shower spray so she wouldn’t feel the tears rolling down her face—after all, she’d learned in the past eighteen months that if she didn’t feel them, they weren’t real—but it was too little, too late. Sobs decimated her, harsh, painful convulsions that wracked her whole body and ripped into fears and sorrows and memories she would much rather have kept buried.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, crying, under the ice-cold water. Long enough for her teeth to chatter and her body to ache. Long enough for her stomach to burn with regret. More than long enough for exhaustion to swamp her and make her legs tremble beneath her.
Eventually the tears stopped, leaving her with a low-grade headache and eyes that felt as if she’d polished them with sandpaper. After making quick work of washing her hair and body, she wrapped a towel from the shower around her hair and then stepped out onto the bath mat. As she reached for a second towel, she got a full-body glimpse of herself.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Amanda froze in front of the full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door and simply stared. In Africa, there wasn’t much privacy and no full-length mirrors, so she hadn’t had a chance to look at herself, really look at herself, in months. Now that she did, she realized why Jack, and even Simon, had been so concerned.
She looked exactly how she felt. Like hell. As if everything important to her in the world, everything that made her who she was, had been yanked out of her and all that was left was this sick, empty shell.
She closed her eyes, wanting to turn away. Wanting to hide from this newest realization as she had done all the others. But this time, the doctor in her wouldn’t accept her cowardice. Her medical training forced her to stand there and catalog all the damage she’d done to herself since Gabby had died.
There was a lot of it.
Not sure what else to do, she finally decided to start at the top and work her way down. It was as good a method as any other, she figured.
Her hair was dull, lifeless, its usual glossy sheen almost completely gone, its curls limp. She ran a hand through it and realized it was thinner than it usually was. Vaguely she remembered it falling out in clumps for a few months right after she got to Africa. At the time she hadn’t paid any attention, but now…now it seemed that she should have.
Her face didn’t look any better, the skin sallow despite the tan that came from months of working under the African sun. The circles under her eyes were so dark that she looked as if she’d been punched, and there were deep grooves around her mouth that hadn’t been there two years before.
She dropped her gaze, continued to carefully consider the damage she’d done to herself. She’d always been on the thin side—often too busy working to eat—but now she looked downright emaciated. Her collarbone stuck out in stark relief and each of her ribs showed prominently beneath her skin. Even her elbows, knees, the knobs on her wrists were starkly outlined—as if every ounce of fat and muscle had somehow vanished and the skin now lay directly on top of her skeleton.
And even her skin was in bad shape. Dry, lackluster, it was cracked in numerous places.
She was a mess. An utter, absolute, unmitigated disaster. And she had no one to blame but herself.
Not enough nutrition. Not enough care. For too long, she had been so wrapped up in her inner torment that she had neglected her physical body. Now she was paying the price.
She remembered thinking, more than once, that her clothes had somehow gotten bigger. She wore baggy scrubs so much of the time that it was easy to forget the way her jeans had once fit. But this almost skeletal image staring back at her wasn’t her imagination. It was real and unhealthy, and if she didn’t do something about it, very soon she would be in real trouble. Shocked and more than a little appalled, she ran her hands over her too-narrow hips. Even at her skinniest, she’d always had a little bit of padding there, a little bit of roundness. All that was gone now. She could actually trace the bones of her pelvis through the fragile skin.
Forcing herself to look away from the macabre image, she reached for a towel. Dried herself quickly without looking in the mirror again and then went into the bedroom. She opened her suitcase, pulled out a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and tried to ignore how big they fel
t when she pulled them on.
The last thing she was interested in was food, but she crossed to the phone, ordered an omelet with toast, fruit salad and a large glass of milk. It might take her most of the night to finish everything, but she was determined to do it.
She might have longed to die in Gabby’s place, longed to die after her daughter had been taken from her. But she hadn’t. Which meant that unless she planned to actually neglect herself to death, she had to start taking better care of herself.
And since she’d never been able to stand the idea of failure, starving to death was not really an option, no matter what she’d told Jack last night in her tent.
With at least half an hour to kill before her food arrived, Amanda pulled out her laptop and logged on to the internet. The first thing she did was check her bank balance. Thanks to her job, the small inheritance from her parents, the money from the sale of her house and Simon’s child-support payments through the years—which she had socked away in a college fund Gabby would now never need—it was very healthy. Certainly healthy enough for her to do whatever she wanted for the next couple of years without having to worry about how she was going to support herself.
The only problem, then, was that she had no idea what she wanted to do. No place that she wanted to be besides back in the trenches, which she knew was out of the question.
So what was she going to do? Was she going to stay here, in Atlanta? There was nothing for her here but Simon, and now that they no longer shared a child, they had no bond. Yes, she had loved him desperately once, but that love was long gone. And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. After what he’d done, there was no way she would risk letting him get close to her again.
At the same time, there was nothing for her anywhere else. She’d grown up in Boston and loved it, but she wasn’t sure she could ever live there again. She and Gabby had spent a lot of time traveling the world together with For the Children, but once Gabby was diagnosed with cancer, they’d settled in Boston. If she went back there now, her little girl would be in every park Amanda walked by, in every corner ice-cream parlor and art store.