Hummingbird Lake (30 page)

“How about at the beginning?”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She didn’t want to go back to the beginning. She didn’t want to let anyone else into her world. It was dark and ugly and full of pain. Her pain, bone deep, pain that at this point was stamped into her DNA.

Frankly, now that the moment was here, she was having second thoughts. She wasn’t sure she wanted to share it.

The sights. The sounds. The smells. Oh, dear God in heaven, I don’t want to go back to that place
.

And the one time she’d tried, to the one man who should have supported her, the attempt had ended in disaster.

She walked up and down the pier. Finally Colt reached for her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Sit with me. You’ve made me tired just watching you.”

They sat and Colt pulled off his boots and socks, then allowed his feet to dangle in the water. “Brrr … I thought the water might have warmed up by now but it’s still just short of freezing. Honey, did something else happen in Africa?”

“Yes,” she responded before she realized he’d tricked her with a distraction.

“Tell me about it.”

Sage closed her eyes, dropped her head back and lifted her face toward the dying light.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the children. She heard the singing from the missionary school. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
”

A laboring mother’s moan as she expelled a brand-new life into Sage’s waiting hands. “It’s a girl.
”

The sound of a truck
.

No. Sage jerked her head down and banished the memory, but not before the old, familiar guilt flooded her body. Tears welled in her eyes and grateful, she allowed them to fall.

She wept silently, shedding healing tears that she believed were a gift from God working through the man she loved. As always, Colt was there for her, supporting her, waiting for her to trust him with the truth.

Trust. That’s what everything hinged on, wasn’t it? In her heart of hearts, she knew that in order to put that awful time behind her, to finally embrace the healing that Colt, her friends, this town and this valley offered to her, she would have to open up and tell him about her biggest secret, her greatest shame. Trust.

“It was six months after I … after the other incident I told you about. Peter and I and some nurses had traveled to a village down toward the border.”

Colt reached out and took her hand, lacing their fingers. “We’d been there two days. People came from all over.”

Jesus loves me, this I know
.

She exhaled a shuddering breath. “A woman had been in labor for days. Adaeze.”

Jesus loves me, this I know
.

“Dr. Sage. Dr. Sage. You must help my wife.”

Seated on the fishing pier of Hummingbird Lake, tears streaming steadily down her face, she said, “I did an emergency cesarean.”

The sound of a truck
.

Jesus loves me, this I know
.

Sage tugged her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself. She shook her head, rocking slowly back and forth, the pain inside her as sharp as a machete’s blade. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Colt said, shifting behind her so that his arms wrapped around hers. He held her as she rocked, holding in the horror. “You will when you’re ready.”

I’m not ready
.

Spit it out, girl. I don’t have time for this nonsense. Daddy!

“Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” Colt murmured. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let you down, love.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll let you down. I’m broken, Colt.”

“Then we’ll put you back together again.”

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Jesus loves me, this I know
. “All the king’s horses, all the king’s men …”

“Shush, baby.” He rocked with her. “We’ll fix you. I’m a great fixer. You wait and see.”

Jesus loves me, this I know
.

“How can you not know?” Colt demanded of the woman he hoped would someday be his sister-in-law. Since Sage had left with Snowdrop early this morning to spend part of her day off in Gunnison at the groomer’s, he’d used this opportunity to invite Rose to his office. He’d been grilling her about her sister for the past five minutes, and his discouragement was beginning to show. “If she’s this distraught five years after the fact, she must have been looney tunes when she arrived back in the States.”

“I told you, I didn’t see her,” Rose responded. She sat in an office chair opposite his desk and her gaze kept straying to his window. “She was in New York, said she was busy interviewing and that she’d get home as soon as she could manage. We talked on the phone and she seemed fine.”

She hadn’t been fine, Colt knew. She’d needed her family. They should have been there for her. “Why didn’t you and your father go see her? She’d been out of the country for some time, hadn’t she?”

“We didn’t know she’d come home,” Rose explained, obviously annoyed. “I still don’t know how long she’d been back before she finally called. Then, when she did come home, she didn’t tell us ahead of time. I was away with Brandon that weekend, so she only saw Dad.”

“How was she then?”

“Okay, as far as I know. He didn’t tell me otherwise. Three days later, he had the stroke.” Rose sucked in a breath, then let it out shakily. “When I called to tell her, she promised to come, to meet me at the hospital, but she never did. After Dad passed, I found out she’d come home, but she never came up to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly in the healthiest frame of mind myself at the time.” She glanced from the window to Colt. “Why are there Beanie Babies sitting on the windowsill?”

She’s changing the subject. She and her sister are more alike than either of them would admit to
. “I leave gifts for your sister,” he explained, deciding he’d pried enough for a moment. “She laughed at my reaction to seeing the science classroom at school for the first time. It’s the home of our local mountain man’s taxidermy collection. Have you seen it?”

Rose nodded. “Celeste showed me. She thought I might be able to use it in my book.”

“How’s that coming?”

“I’m enjoying the process. It’s good therapy.”

Which brought him back to the question at hand. Colt released a frustrated sigh. Two weeks had passed since his conversation with Sage on the pier, and so far he’d been unable to coax her into revisiting the subject of Africa. Even worse, she’d begun to pull away from him, attempting to push him back beyond the outer ring of castle walls he’d labored for months to breach.

He wasn’t about to allow that. She’d given him the ultimate weapon for this particular war. She’d told him she loved him, and he’d be damned if he’d let her try to snatch it away now.

“What do you know about post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Anderson?”

Rose blew out a sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. “I used to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I’ve seen my fair share.”

“I’ve seen it in my work, too. From what I can tell, your sister is a classic case. If you don’t know what happened, I guess you don’t know if she ever sought treatment?”

“No. Like I said, the timing stank. Our relationship didn’t survive our father’s death.”

He gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “But you came to Eternity Springs to fix the problem, didn’t you?”

She shrugged. “It was a thought. It didn’t get a lot of traction. You know all this, Rafferty. Why are you asking these questions again?”

“Because Sage is stubborn and scared and she needs professional help. I need help convincing her to get it.”

“Well, don’t ask me.” Rose’s words held a distinctly bitter tone. “Ask Nic Callahan and Sarah Reese and Celeste. Give Ali Timberlake a call in Denver. They all are much closer to my sister than I am.”

“Maybe that’s true, for the time being, anyway.” He’d talked to all of them already, in fact. “But you are her sister, Rose. She needs you in her life, and you need her, too. You should settle your differences with her for your own sake.”

“Have I walked into the middle of an Oprah show?”

Colt shoved out of his chair and paced the office until he ended up in front of the window. He gazed across the narrow space between the buildings and stared into the studio where one of those frivolous fairy paintings stood half finished on her easel. “I think she’s trying to do this all on her own. What’s that old saying? Physician, heal thyself? Maybe she saw someone before she came to Eternity Springs, but she’s not seeing anyone now. Until recently I thought she might be able to pull this off herself if I was around to help. Not anymore. This is bigger than I’d realized. Definitely beyond my pay grade. What am I going to do?”

“You really love her, don’t you?”

He turned and met her gaze. “I do. I want to marry her, raise a family with her. I want to make a life with her.”

Rose winced, sighed heavily, then pulled her phone
from her jeans pocket and asked, “What’s your email address?”

He told her and she continued, “I know a psychologist who works at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. I’m sending you her contact information, and I’ll send her an email telling her to expect your call. She might be able to give you an idea about where to go from here.”

“Great. Thanks, Rose.”

She stood and walked toward the door, then hesitated. “Does she ever talk about me?”

“She asks about you all the time. It’s killing her to know that you’re here writing a book but not to know the details. Plus, she wants to know if you’ve heard any more from Connor the Cartoon.”

“Cartoonist,” Rose corrected, a smile playing at her lips. “Actually, I have. Good-bye, Colt. Have a nice afternoon.”

She was out of the door and headed down the stairs before he could pry any more information out of her. As he walked back to his desk, he fished his phone from his pocket and checked his email. Finding the message Rose had promised, he sat and picked up the land line, then noted the number and made the call. As it connected, his gaze drifted toward the empty doorway. The Anderson girls were two special women. Frustrating, but extraordinary.

The call proved to be a quick one, as the doctor he asked for was away from the office. He left a message and hung up as he heard the sound of paws on the staircase. Lori Reese was delivering Shadow back to the office following their daily run.

When the girl and his dog walked into his office, he said, “You’re back early.”

“I cut our run short,” Lori replied. “Chase is only working half a day today, and we’re going to go up to Heartache Falls for a picnic with some friends.”

Now that Chase Timberlake was back for a second season as a trail rider at the Double R, he and Lori had begun seeing each other again. “That sounds fun. Thanks for exercising my dog today.”

“He exercises me. This puppy has more energy than any other dog I’ve known.” She unsnapped the leash and Shadow came running to Colt to say hello.

“Tell me about it.” Colt scratched the dog behind his ears and wrestled with him for a moment. “Nic says he’ll calm down in a few months. I hope she’s right.”

“When it comes to animals, she’s always right,” Lori replied. “I hope I’ll be as great a veterinarian as she is.”

“There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

They spoke about college for a few minutes, then when his office phone rang, Lori said good-bye and left. Lifting the receiver, he said, “Colt Rafferty.”

“Hello, Mr. Rafferty. My name is Cynthia Watkins. I’m returning your call.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Dr. Watkins, I’m so glad you did. Let me explain my problem.”

EIGHTEEN

A little after four, Sage returned to Eternity Springs with her long list of errands for the most part accomplished. Snowdrop sported a new haircut and a darling red, white, and blue bow on her head. It would look so cute with the outfit Sage had planned for her to wear on the Fourth of July. Colt would be so disgusted. Sage couldn’t wait.

Their bickering over the dogs was one of the few areas of their relationship she felt confident about. Being in love with the likes of Colt Rafferty was not easy. The man was always pushing. He did it subtly, she’d give him that, but he never stopped. He believed that he could chase away her shadows. Sage had her doubts, and that uncertainty was holding her back.

She stopped by Vistas to check with her summer intern, Dorian, who was an art student at UCLA. “What did I miss?”

“We had a lot of lookers, but only one buyer. A couple from Southern California were very interested in the Bret Austin watercolors, and I suspect they’ll be back. The wife really wanted them.”

“Excellent. What did we sell?”

“Another one of Mr. Burnes’ photographs. The mountain lion.”

Sage nodded. “He’s done phenomenally well with that series. Good job, Dorian.”

“Thanks.” The pretty brunette beamed. “You know, I was thrilled to get this internship because I thought working with you would help my art. I never expected to enjoy the selling part of the job this much.”