Career Girl in the Country / The Doctor's Reason to Stay (28 page)

But Molly wasn’t to be put off. “When, Rafey?” she persisted. “I want to tell her all about Ice Cream, and about my new pony, Lucky. She’s beautiful, Rafey. Black and white. And Aunt Grace is going to love her. She always says I can’t ride by myself until I’m eight, but with Lucky maybe she’ll let me ride by myself when I’m six. Do you think she will, Rafey?”

To break a child’s heart … this wasn’t the reason he’d come here. In his mind, it should have been a very simple thing. Take Molly to the place he most loved in the world, let her share that feeling with him, then tell her about the wonderful new mother she was about to have. It should have been a good evening, but now this. And he couldn’t wait for someone else to take care of it. Molly needed honesty, and understanding.
She needed it from him
—the least likely person in the world to do this.

Rafe drew in a shuddering breath, bracing himself. “Molly, we need to talk about Aunt Grace. And you have to listen to me very carefully, because what we have to talk about isn’t going to be easy for you.”

“Can we have a party for her? She loves parties, and a nice, big party will make it all better for her. We can
have cake and ice cream … the
real
ice cream, not the horse. And maybe party hats.”

He remembered those parties his aunt used to have … parties for all occasions. Big ones, little ones, private ones just for Aunt Grace and him. In his aunt’s estimation, a party could cure almost anything, and she had been right. Her parties had cured so many ills, wiped out so much cruelty, eased so many pains, all because her parties had been about caring. About nurturing. “I remember the cakes she used to bake for her parties. My favorite was chocolate, with lots of chocolate icing.”

“Mine, too,” Molly agreed. “And with sprinkles, too.”

“Especially with sprinkles.” Glancing out over the vast night expanse in front of him, Rafe wished he could be somewhere out there, having a party with his aunt, listening to her tell the little boy in him that things were going to get better. But he couldn’t. And it was foolish of him to think things could be different because there’d never been a moment in his life when he hadn’t known who he was, and what he was about. Festive little parties hadn’t changed that. “Aunt Grace loved baking those cakes, Molly, and she loved having those parties. Do you know some of the other things she loved, too?”

“Her horses. And you and Jess. She always told me how much she loves you and Jess, that you are her two favorite boys in the whole, wide world.”

The lump in his throat hardened. “And you, sweetheart. Aunt Grace loved you more than anything in the world. From the day she brought you home to live with
her, she loved you so much, and she wanted you to be her little girl, her daughter …”

“But she’s too old,” Molly chimed in. “I don’t think she is, but the people in charge said she is.”

“And they were wrong. In Aunt Grace’s heart, you
were
her daughter, and she loved you more than anything.”

“Will she again, when she comes back?”

Now the heartbreak. Molly’s and his. “Her love for you will never change, Molly. In fact, it’s bigger now. Bigger than anything you can imagine. For ever. But Aunt Grace can’t come back to tell you how much she loves you. Not any more.”

This time, Molly was quiet.

“She got very, very sick. Do you remember that?”

Molly nodded, but still didn’t speak.

“She wanted to get better so she could come back and take care of you, and the doctors tried very hard to help her, but it was something the doctors couldn’t fix, sweetheart. They tried so hard, and Aunt Grace tried so hard, because she missed you so much, but there wasn’t anything anybody could do. Do you remember when she had to go to the hospital?”

Molly nodded. “Summer said it was to get her all better. That when Aunt Grace was better, she’d come home again. But she hasn’t. Not yet.”

Summer Adair, Aunt Grace’s private duty nurse. Summer, herself, had a child, and Rafe knew that anything Summer might have said would have been with sensitivity. But it hadn’t been Summer’s place to explain the situation to Molly, and now he realized no one had ever taken up that responsibility. They’d simply assumed … too much.

“That’s what everybody wanted, sweetheart. Everybody wanted Aunt Grace to get better and come home.”

“But she couldn’t get better?”

The beginning of the realization. The taking away of innocence. It hurt. “No, she couldn’t get better.” He paused, searching for the right words … words that wouldn’t destroy Molly, words she would understand. Words that came so easily to Edie. “The doctors tried everything they knew how to do. Dr. Rick … he’s a very good doctor. You know that, don’t you?”

Molly nodded, but didn’t speak again.

“Dr. Rick did everything a doctor could do to make Aunt Grace get better, but sometimes even doctors can’t fix everything. And he was very sad … we were all very sad because we loved Aunt Grace so much. But she couldn’t stay here any longer, Molly. It was time for her to …” He choked on the words, as the tears fell silently down his cheeks. “It was time for her to go to a place where she could be well again, and stay that way for ever. But well in a different way. Molly, sweetheart, Aunt Grace died. Do you know what that means?”

Molly was quiet for a long time, trying to process it. He didn’t want to interrupt her, but he also didn’t want her to be lost in a dark lonely place. Not the way he’d been for most of his life.

“It means you go to live in heaven,” Molly finally said.

“It means Aunt Grace went to live in heaven.”

“But I don’t want her to go, Rafey! I don’t want her to go!” Molly threw herself into Rafe’s arms and sobbed … the great, racking sobs of a broken heart, of
a child who truly did understand but whose heart was breaking anyway.

“It’s OK,” he said, holding on to her, rocking her, feeling her tears soaking through his shirt. Feeling his own tears spilling freely down his face. “It’s OK, Molly,” he soothed, over and over. For Molly, for himself. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

He said the words, but he didn’t know how to make it OK for her. Dear God, he didn’t know how. And tonight he ached for Molly the way he’d never ached for anyone else.

“Can I go to heaven, too?” she finally whispered in a tiny, broken voice.

“No, sweetheart. Aunt Grace loved you so much she wanted you to stay here and have the best life you could possibly have.”

“But I miss her, Rafey. I want to see her again.”

“We all do, Molly.” He took a deep breath, sniffed, tried to brace himself … against what, he didn’t know. But none of it worked. Right now the world was made up of just the two of them … two broken hearts who could do nothing but sit and hold on to each other. Clinging for dear life. It didn’t seem enough, not for him but especially not for Molly. Yet maybe, in the grand scheme of things, this was all there was. “And we’ll never stop loving her. But it’s in a different way now. It’s in here.” He placed his hand on her heart, and took her tiny hand and placed it on his. “This is where Aunt Grace is now. She’s in our hearts, in a very special place.”

Molly thought about that then pulled herself out of Rafe’s arms and pointed to the vast openness that extended farther than any eye could see. “She’s out
there too, Rafey. Where you can’t see. You said that’s where things will make you happy, where things will help you. And that’s where Aunt Grace is.”

“In a world full of possibilities,” he whispered, gathering Molly back into his arms. “You’re right, Molly. That’s where Aunt Grace is.”

“No,
IT’S
already scheduled. I’ve got my plane ticket and I’m going home the day after tomorrow. Henry will have all the legalities worked out by then, you can move into Gracie House any time you want, and life will go on.”

“So that’s it? I sign the papers, you hand Molly over to me, then you leave?” She had known this was what was going to happen, but she hadn’t let herself believe it, or even think about it. On one hand, adopting Molly was the best thing she’d ever done in her life but, on the other hand, it was also the most difficult, because it felt like she was shutting all those doors she’d truly believed would open. She’d hoped for a miracle and while she had gotten one, it hadn’t been the one she’d planned on, and Rafe wasn’t shifting on this whole Molly situation. He was going ahead full steam with his plan, and she couldn’t stop him.

“You’re not your father,” she said. She knew it with all her heart, but Rafe didn’t, and there really wasn’t a way to convince him. If his heart wouldn’t budge, there was nothing she could do.

“Look what I did to Rick, and he’s still pretty scarred from it. That’s the way my father acted.”

“But you were a boy, Rafe. A boy who was in horrible pain, lashing out. You were thinking with an adolescent’s mind, reacting the way an adolescent would. You’re a man now. A gentle, compassionate man who takes care of people. What, in there, makes you think you can’t love Molly the way she deserves to be loved? The capacity to love isn’t dictated by heredity, as you seem to think it is. It’s dictated by your heart, and you have a good heart, Rafe. Good, but very scarred.”

“In an ideal world, I’d have moved home to Lilly Lake, married you, adopted Molly, practiced at the hospital. But I’ve never lived in an ideal world, Edie.”

“Married me?” she asked. “How can you throw that out there now, when you’re two steps shy of stepping on the plane and leaving for ever?”

“I can throw it out there because that would have been my ideal world. We would have dated for a while, the two of us. And the
three
of us would have spent time together, growing as a family. Then.” He shrugged. “Then you would have suffocated. One day you would have woken up and realized I wasn’t enough. That maybe I was too emotionally distanced. Or I simply wasn’t the kind of support you need. Then where would that leave us? And where would it leave Molly?”

“So, you’ve got this little life scenario all planned out for us without even including me? How could you do that, Rafe? How could you
assume
us all the way from beginning to end?” They were sitting on the front porch, Edie in the wicker chair, Rafe on the swing. Almost at opposite sides, the way they’d been for days, during the adoption preparations. During those days she’d had the impression, more than once, that Rafe
had been on the verge of regretting his decision. Now she knew it. This was what he wanted, but his scars were too tough, his walls too high.

“Just being practical. People don’t do that enough. They don’t lead with their heads …”

“Because leading with their hearts is so much nicer, Rafe. It takes you to better places, places your head would never allow you.” Instinctively, she pushed herself out of the chair then crossed the porch and sat down next to him on the swing. “Your head kept you here, on the opposite side of the porch from me. But my heart put me here, next to you.”

“It’s not going to work, Edie.”

“Why?”

“Maybe that’s the question I should be asking you. Why are you fighting so hard for me?”

“Because you’re not fighting for yourself.”

“I don’t need to fight for me. I have a good life, successful career, nice condo …”

“With a porch swing?”

“No!” he snapped. “Just stop it, OK?”

She was getting to him. She knew it, could feel it. So could he, but the feeling was so foreign to him he didn’t know what it was. Or maybe loving someone opened you up to the fear of losing them … a fear she knew so well.

“Rafe, when I was a girl, I didn’t have a life like all my friends did. My mother was sick, and she truly couldn’t get along without me. I took care of her, spent practically all of my childhood taking care of her, and it’s what I wanted to do because I loved her. But I lived with this horrible fear … actually, two horrible fears. The first was her death. The doctors were amazed she
lived as long as she did, but I think it was because she didn’t want to leave me. The second fear was that I would be taken away from my mother. The social workers tried so many times to do that. They thought I needed another life, needed another family … the way you think Molly needs another family. But all I needed was my mother, and everything she was, no matter how hard it got for us sometimes. Consequently I spent a lot of time scared to death they would come and take me away from the person I loved most in the world.

“All those years, that fear never went away. It was with me, day in and day out. And there were a couple of times when they did pull me out of the house and put me in a group home because it was in my own best interests. I know, Rafe, what it feels like to be wrenched out of your life and not be able to do a darned thing about it. But I always ran away, always ran back to my mother because she needed me. More than that, I needed her. Even in her sickest moments I needed her in ways no one could understand. I loved her, Rafe, the way Molly loves you. That’s all there was to it. In spite of all the complications and hardships … and there were many hardships … I loved her. It was a simple thing, and nothing else mattered.

“But that love always had this overwhelming dread attached to it because I knew her time was limited, and because I knew I could be taken away from her. So I do know what it’s like to have that fear surrounding something you love …
the way you do.
But I also know what it’s like to simply let the love happen, no matter what else is going on.”

“Then you have a bigger heart than I do,” he said, his voice filled with sadness.

“Not bigger. Just one that’s found out how to stay open.” She twisted to face him and laid her hand on his heart. “Molly could do that for you, if you let her.”

“Molly shouldn’t have to suffer for my trials and errors.” He laid his hand on hers. “Neither should you.”

“So you get to make the decision for all three of us? Molly and I don’t have a say?”

He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You see things in me that aren’t there. I’m not sure why, but I thank you for it. It makes me feel like I
could
have what you offer … someday. But not now. It’s too risky … for you. I’m too risky.”

For Rafe, risky translated into not worth loving. She understood that, and it hurt her deeply. Here she was, in love with the man and ready to throw aside all her caution about not getting involved again or waiting until she had more life experience under her belt. All because she’d found the person worth changing for. And she was pretty sure now he loved her back, or else he wouldn’t have so much conflict in himself. But maybe the problem here was that
she
wasn’t enough. Maybe she’d been deluding herself into believing that all he had to do was believe and they’d have their happily-ever-after when she was the one who didn’t have everything Rafe needed to make it come true for himself.

She’d always believed that love was enough, but this time she could have been wrong. Maybe it was time to count her blessings about having Molly in her life, and move on from there. “Life is about taking chances,” Edie said, as the sad realization washed down over her. “Everything we do is about taking a chance. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
You’re not like your father, but you’re going to have to put yourself out there in ways that scare you to find out. I hope, someday, that happens for you.” With that, she stood and headed to her car, leaving little pieces of her heart behind her. The fight was over. They’d been going round and round for days now, and ending up in the same place they’d started. Now it was time to move past it, time to look forward.

But it was tough to do when so much of what she wanted was behind her.

“I’ve never pretended differently, Edie. You know that,” he called after her.

“Yes, I do know that,” she whispered, but not for him to hear as she fought not to cry. This was what she should have expected after all. Rafe wanted a parent for Molly, and he’d got one. No regrets there. Maybe she should chalk it up to another reason to stay out of relationships and get on with it. If nothing else, it sure proved that she didn’t know how to pick them. In fact, she was abysmally bad at it. It was so hard, though, because she’d pinned so many hopes on Rafe. And had trusted him to come round. Except she hadn’t been enough to make him come round, and that was something she couldn’t overcome. She wasn’t enough for Rafe, wasn’t who Rafe needed.

Well, the bright side was she had a wonderful daughter now, and that did make up for everything else.

As Edie climbed into her car, she fought the urge to look back at Rafe. What was the point? He was done here in Lilly Lake now, and he’d never come back. And she was only beginning here. That was all there was, all there could ever be.

Yet, she did glance back anyway and he was. slumped against the white support column at the top of the steps, leaning there, his head hanging down. He looked like a very sad man, a broken man, actually. But he’d made the choice that had caused that, and there was nothing she could do about it. Yet, in spite of everything, her heart ached for Rafe because he knew what he was losing. Because, like her, his heart was breaking, too.

“Want to go for a ride?” Rafe called through the bedroom door. He felt like hell, and he didn’t want to stay in this house. He needed to get away, spend some last quality time with Molly and make sure she understood what was happening. When he and Edie had told Molly that Edie was going to become her real mother, Molly had been excited. But she hadn’t understood why he wasn’t going to be part of that family. They’d explained that he had to return to his real home, and Molly seemed to accept it. But who knew? Maybe she was still trying to process it. Or, in her young mind, ignoring it and focusing only on what she wanted. Whatever the case, he needed to spend some time with her. “Molly, did you hear me? Do you want to go for a ride?”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t blame her. “We can saddle up Lucky, and you can ride by yourself for a little while.” That was something he really did want to do for her before he left here—give her the thrill of riding solo on her very own horse. Or in this case pony. “You can use that saddle Aunt Grace had made for you. Molly?” He knocked again then pressed
his ear to the door to listen. But he heard nothing. Not a sound.

“Molly,” he said, twisting the knob and pushing the door open a crack. “Are you in there?” A chill of dread was creeping slowly up his spine. “Molly?” he said again, shoving the door all the way back, only to discover what he was afraid he’d discover. She was gone!

“Molly!” he shouted in a voice that resonated throughout the entire house. “Molly, where are you?”

She’d been there half an hour ago. He’d seen her go to her room, seen her start to line up all her dolls for a tea party. “Molly!” he shouted, over and over, as he ran up and down the second-floor hall, opening all the doors and looking in. To no avail. His downstairs search was just as fruitless. So he went to the stable, saw Johnny hand-feeding a new quarter horse arrival that was so emaciated it turned his stomach. Molly had to have known about this horse and she was down here somewhere, helping. That was it. She loved the horses as much as Aunt Grace had, and she was helping with this one.

“I need to talk to Molly,” he told Johnny, as he caught a calming breath. “Is she in one of the stalls?”

“Haven’t seen her all morning, Rafe. I was surprised that she didn’t come down to help me with this beauty.” He stroked the horse’s muzzle. “But with her big day coming up, I figured she was busy doing something else.”

The words sank in, but slowly. “So what you’re telling me is that she isn’t here?”

Johnny shook his head. “Haven’t seen her since you brought her down last night to say goodnight to Lucky and Ice Cream. Why? Is she missing?”

Panic started rising in him again. “Don’t know yet. I thought she was in the house, but she’s not. I’d assumed she’d be here.”

“Maybe she is, and I haven’t seen her,” Johnny said. “I’ve been pretty busy with this one, trying to get her back on her feed. Have you looked around the paddock? Or maybe out in the other stable? I’ve got a couple of volunteers out there right now, working with some of our problem horses, so maybe Molly’s gone out there to help feed or brush them.”

“Without permission?”

Johnny shrugged. “Kids are kids. When mine were little, there was always this test of wills going on. Most of the time they did what they were supposed to, but sometimes they did what they wanted to do, no matter what. Molly’s a good kid, and smart. When you catch up to her, don’t be too hard on her.”

“Like my old man would have been?” Rafe snapped, on his way out the rear door. “You were here in those days, so is that what you’re telling me? Not to be like my old man was?”

“What I’m telling you is not to be like
any
child’s old man who’s in a panic over not being able to find his kid,” Johnny shot back. “Parents have a way of overreacting when they’re scared for their child. I know I did that on more than one occasion. But that’s not about your father. It’s about you. Be who you are.”

Rafe heard the words, heard Johnny call him Molly’s parent, and thought about them as he ran to the second stable, only to discover that no one there had seen Molly that day. “Where’s her pony?” he asked one of the volunteers who came there as part of the Gracie Foundation.

“In the paddock,” a fresh-faced, college-aged volunteer by the name of Ben responded. “We took her out there earlier, along with Ice Cream and a couple of the others. Thought we’d take them over to the pasture later.”

But he’d gone by the paddock and hadn’t noticed Lucky. Or maybe he hadn’t looked thoroughly enough. So on his way back over to the main stable he took another look and Lucky was definitely not there. And Molly’s saddle was not hanging in the tack room when he went to find it. “Johnny!” Rafe shouted, on his way back through the building. “Tell me you did something with Molly’s saddle, that you hung it somewhere else. And that Lucky is already down at the pasture to graze.”