Shame and panic hit her.
They were going to know. Pam and John.
She tried to breathe. Crushing pressure built, squelching the air out of her lungs. She practically flew out of the waiting room. “Cathy!”
She evaded Pam’s hands. “Please! I can’t bear—not now. Just let me go!”
She heard her brother-in-law’s voice. “No, Pam! Let her go. She’s got to do this her way.”
Cathy didn’t turn or look back as she ran down the hospital hall to the elevators. She repeatedly stabbed the down button, the breath sawing harshly out of her lungs.
* * * *
At her sister’s hasty retreat, Pam shook her head. “I’m glad you came, Michael. She needs her friends. She needs all of us. She’s carried the burden alone for so long.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “When I think about everything she’s had to go through…”
John put his arm around his wife, and she leaned into him. “Hush, baby. It’s going to be okay. We’re here now. We’ll take care of Cathy and Chloe.”
Pam nodded. “I know. She’ll
have
to give up that awful apartment now.” She turned to Michael. “We’ve leased a house. John was able to apply for leave, and we’re going to stay in town for awhile until Chloe is stronger. Later, if Cathy decides it is what she wants, I hope that both of them will come back to
Singapore
with us.”
“
Singapore
?” Until then, Michael had just stood there, trying to take everything in. He had kept his gaze trained on Winter. She was still waiting at the elevator doors, and he watched her pull on her long black coat. He was impatient to get away from her relatives. But now, his attention swung back to Pam Thompson. There must have been something telling in his expression or in his voice because she looked startled.
Sudden compassion flashed over her face. “I’m sorry, Michael. I didn’t mean to—Nothing is really settled.” She looked up in mute appeal at her husband.
John cleared his throat. “Why don’t you go talk to Cathy, Michael?”
“I’ll do that.” Michael saw that the elevator had arrived at last. The door slid open, and Winter bolted forward into it, her coat flaring back. He strode down the hall, but the elevator had closed. He didn’t stop to wait for it. Instead, he pushed open the exit door to the stairwell and began running down the flights of concrete stairs. Winter had a start on him, but he hoped to catch up with her.
When Michael emerged from the hospital and walked outside to the parking lot, the winter wind whipped him. He turned up the collar of his coat and shoved his hands deep into the pockets. The fingers of one hand crinkled paper. He vaguely recalled stuffing a leftover napkin into his pocket at a fast food place earlier in the week.
Winter was waiting for him beside the Porsche. Her auburn head was bowed. Her arms were folded over her breast. She looked cold and miserable.
Michael’s heart began to beat thickly in his chest. He clenched his hands inside the coat pockets. He passed between the parked cars and crossed the graveled pavement.
Winter must have heard his approaching footsteps because she lifted her head suddenly. He was shocked by her pallor, by the ravaged look on her face.
Michael stopped and waited, painfully pulling cold air into his lungs.
Her voice was very low when she addressed him. “I don’t want them to know about you, about us. It’s over. I don’t need you anymore.” She bent her head again and started walking rapidly away.
Fear, anger, searing pain, all twisted through him. He ripped one hand free of a pocket and caught her elbow before she was out reach. “Wait.”
She raised her head. Her eyes were huge, deep pools of anguish. Her face was parchment-white except for the hectic flush on her cheekbones. “Michael, please. Don’t make this harder.”
“You should have told me about Chloe,” he said quietly. It wasn’t the only thing he could have said, but it was one of the most important.
She gave a quick shake of her head. Her reply was sharp. “She was my business.”
Despite himself, his voice rose. “It wasn’t fair to me. To us.”
“Fair! You are nothing in my life, Michael! Don’t you understand?” She wrenched loose of his hold.
He felt like he had been kicked in the gut. His own turbulent emotions coalesced into what he felt for her. He moved, stepped in front of her, and reached out to touch her. “Winter—”
Her eyes blazed, incandescent with rage and contempt. “My name is Catherine!” she spat. She stepped around him, quickening her pace. She stumbled on an uneven patch of icy ground, righted herself and kept going. She never looked back.
Michael stared after her, his heart pounding. His gut was clenched so hard that he felt like he was going to be sick. He watched, helplessly, as she walked away from him, out of his life. She made directly for the Lexus and climbed inside. Within moments, the engine was started to life, and the vehicle cruised smoothly away, leaving a white trail of smoke in the frigid air.
“You look like you could use a drink.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Michael turned. He hadn’t heard anyone approach. An attractive dark-haired woman looked up at him, sympathy in her gaze. She touched his coat sleeve briefly with gloved fingers. “Come on. I have a thermos in my car.”
Without a word, without knowing why he did it, he followed her to a parked sedan. She opened the front passenger door and bent inside to retrieve a large thermos from the floorboard. Unscrewing the top, she poured steaming liquid into the cup and handed it to him.
Michael took an experimental swallow and looked at her. “Cocoa?”
“You were hoping for a shot of something stronger?”
“Something like that.” He took another swallow. It was sweet and cloying and loosened the twist in his gut. Michael wrapped both hands around the plastic cup, welcoming the warmth against his stiff fingers.
“For a minute there, you looked white as a sheet.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m Vicky Sotero, by the way, one of Cathy’s friends. Her sister called me a few minutes ago to tell me that Chloe was doing better. I, uh, happened to overhear you and Cathy, but she took off before I could say anything. Cathy probably mentioned me.”
“No. She didn’t. She didn’t mention a lot of things.” Michael shook her small gloved hand briefly. “I’m Michael Lambert. And I’m sure that Winter… that she never talked about me.”
“No, she didn’t, at least not very much.” Vicky cocked her head, speculatively eying him. “You didn’t expect this, any of this, did you?” She waved her hand to indicate the hospital.
Michael shook his head. He didn’t bother to say that he hadn’t even met the child, let alone known that she was sick. He had actually told Darryl once that he didn’t care about Winter’s personal life, especially about her child or children. He had been a consummate ass.
“And you called her Winter.”
“She asked me to,” he said shortly, feeling defensive.
Vicky nodded. She turned away from him, her gaze returning to the hospital. She said quietly, “Chloe had been sick a long time, almost three years. She had acute lymphacitic leukemia, which is supposed to be one of the more treatable in children, but in Chloe’s case proved to be atypical. She went into remission once, but the leukemia came back. After that, there was never much real hope with traditional therapy.”
For the second time in the space of ten minutes, Michael was figuratively sent reeling. Leukemia? Her daughter had
leukemia
?
Unaware of the blow she had dealt, Vicky glanced over at Michael. “The bills were astronomical. When the policy cap was reached, the insurance company stopped paying. Cathy wouldn’t give up. She loved that little girl. She sold her house, liquidated her retirement and IRAs.”
Vicky gave a sudden, short laugh. “She told me once that she even donated her eggs for cash, for God’s sake!” Her smile faded. “She did everything she could, working full-time and taking part-time jobs whenever she was able. Even then, she still tried to spend every free minute she had with Chloe at the hospital.”
Michael poured the rest of the cocoa on the cold pavement. The scent of the chocolate was suddenly nauseating. “I knew that she was divorced and that she had a daughter. I knew that she needed money. She never told me why,” he said in a low, grating voice that he hardly recognized as his own. “I just suspected that she couldn’t get child support from her ex-husband, Rick.”
“She told you about Rick?” Vicky whipped around, shock in her expression. She shook her head. “That really surprises me. It was bad enough that he abandoned her and Chloe, but I think he really tore Cathy’s heart out when he refused to even be
tested
as a blood cell transplantation donor. It was Chloe’s last chance. She told him that.”
Stunned, Michael drew in a long breath of icy air.
What kind of man wouldn’t try to save his own kid?
What kind of asshole… Something echoed in his memory. He narrowed his eyes. “I remember she made a phone call to him that left her upset.”
“Yeah, I guess so! Rick—bastard—Stein couldn’t bother to come across town for Chloe, but Cathy’s sister could come all the way from
Singapore
!” Vicky’s glittering eyes were hot, her voice bitter. “It was Pam who became the donor for the transplantation. God, I’m so glad it worked! For awhile it looked like everything was going to be okay. I even announced on the website that it had been a success! Then Chloe got an infection, and we all thought…” Vicky ducked her head, her face flushed with anger and grief, and wiped her eyes with the back of her glove. “Sorry! Chloe is like family to me. Even now, I can hardly stand to think about it. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Cathy!”
Michael stared down at her. He carefully kept his expression neutral, even though he could feel the rage inside him boiling just below the surface. “You said this guy lives right here in
Austin
?” he asked quietly.
Vicky nodded and gave a contemptuous shrug. “He has an office-supply business. Believe me, no one who knows Cathy will buy from him.” She drew herself up, making an obvious effort to turn her own thoughts. “I’m glad you helped her out, Michael.” She took the empty cap from him and screwed it back onto the thermos.
He was stung on the raw. When Vicky glanced back up, she appeared startled by the blazing glare that he had pinned on her. Her expression altered with compassion. “Michael, look. I realize that you and Cathy had some sort of relationship. And that you’re hurt she kept all of this from you. But I don’t think it was from lack of trust.”
He gave a short bark of bitter laughter. “Don’t you?”
Vicky shook her head. “No, I don’t! You have to understand…” She hesitated, weighing her words. “Cathy was under tremendous pressure. She had a sick, possibly a dying, child. She was broke. She couldn’t give up her job to be with Chloe full-time. On top of all of that, she had to be strong, strong all of the time.”
“For her daughter. Yeah, I get that,” he snapped. He plunged his chilled hands into his coat pockets. He was furious, both with Winter and with himself. He should have pressed her. He should have found out why she needed the money. He should have cared more. And damn it, she should have trusted him more!
“Not just for Chloe! For everyone!”
Michael was startled out of his raging reverie by the vehement tone. He watched as Vicky viciously threw the thermos into the car. It thumped and bounced on the floor.
“Everyone who felt sorry for her, including me, who couldn’t see her without oozing sympathy and pity. Everyone who avoided her because they didn’t know what to say. Everyone who tiptoed around her or stopped talking when she walked into the room or who left the room because they were afraid that somehow her bad luck would rub off on them, or—” Vicky abruptly stopped, pressing her lips tight into a thin line.
Michael had turned fully toward her during the spilling tirade. His frowning gaze never left her face, and he listened intently to everything she said, everything that she didn’t say.
Vicky shook her head, still visibly upset. A smile flickered briefly across her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off like that.”
“It’s all right.”
“How did you and Cathy meet?”
Michael hesitated. He didn’t want to reveal anything that might hurt Winter. No, her name was Cathy, he corrected himself. The name felt strange to him, but that wasn’t important. He carefully chose to tell her friend only the bare minimum of the actual truth. “We exchanged e-mails a few times and then met over coffee.”
“Yes, I can see it happening that way.” Her expression was thoughtful. “And I can understand why she never told you about—about any of it. And why she wanted you to call her Winter. That’s her middle name, did you know?”
“No, I didn’t know.” Michael felt his facial muscles tighten, the twitch of a tick in his jaw. “I didn’t know anything about her that really mattered.”
“Michael, don’t judge her, please. Try to understand. She was compartmentalizing, disconnecting, in order to cope.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He was suddenly furious again. “If I’d known, I could have offered her sympathy. I could have helped her more financially. I could have been there for her!”
“You still don’t get it! Cathy needed someone, badly. Someone she could be her normal self with. Someone who wouldn’t look at her with pity or treat her like she was some sort of pariah. You did that!” Vicky’s voice gentled. She touched his sleeve. “You may not believe it right now. But you did help her, in a way no one else could have done. She didn’t have to be strong around you. That took the pressure off her. She could be herself with you.”