Hummingbird Lake (32 page)

Sage drew in a deep breath and said, “No.”

“Why not? Are they full?”

“No, I can’t go to Texas with you. I’m sorry, Colt, but I just can’t.”

This time, finally, he heard her. He turned around and met her gaze, his own eyes shocked and confused. “Why not?”

She tried not to babble, but she feared she only halfway succeeded at that. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you, hoping to make you see. I’m too screwed up, Colt. I can’t go be around injured children. I can’t do it.”

His mouth gaped open in disbelief, then he snapped his jaw shut. “Sure you can. You’re stronger than you think. You need to do this.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“They’re little kids, Sage.”

“I know. I can’t do it.”

He briefly closed his eyes, then pinned her with a pleading gaze. His voice cracking, he said, “I need you, Sage. Please.”

She wanted to scream and throw something. She
wanted to fling herself on the bed and sob. She hated herself. Despised herself. This was the best man in the world. The man she loved. She was letting him down when he needed her the most.

A hospital filled with injured children. Crying children. Dying children.
Jesus loves me, this I know
.

“I’m sorry.”

Anger tightened his expression and bitterness filled his tone. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t have time for this.”

Turning away from her, he threw clothes into his duffel bag and gathered his toiletries from the bathroom. Sage stood watching him, tears rolling down her face, wishing she was different, wishing she could let her memories go. She offered him the only thing she had to give. “You could call me. You could fax records and I’ll study them. I’ll answer any questions you might—”

“No. I’ll find someone else.”

With that, he zipped up his bag and was gone.

Colt didn’t want to think about Sage and he didn’t want to think about Rachel, and with a fifteen-hour drive ahead of him, he didn’t want to be alone, either. So he did the only thing he knew to do to address the problem—he stopped by the doggie day care to pick up Shadow.

He wasn’t prepared to arrive and find his dog sitting calmly in a tub of water, his body covered with bubbly white suds. Celeste Blessing wore yellow gloves and held a soft bristled brush in her hand.

“Celeste?”

“Hello, Colt. Oh, dear. You are earlier than I expected. I’m afraid I took your Shadow for a walk and he managed to persuade me to allow him to play in a mud puddle. He was just so darned cute about it that I didn’t have the heart to tell him no. I thought I’d have time to get him all spruced up before you arrived to pick him
up. I thought for sure you’d stop for ice cream after the play.”

“No. Something came up. Let me help you get him rinsed off. I’m in a hurry.”

“Settle down, son. I’ll have him finished in five minutes. You can wait that long. Now, tell me why you’re in a hurry. Is something wrong?”

“Everything is wrong,” he grimly replied. In a dozen curt sentences, he summed up the evening’s events, finishing with, “I shouldn’t blame her. She’s told me all along that she was damaged beyond repair. Guess I should have listened to her.”

“Now, Colt, that doesn’t sound like you.” Celeste gently scrubbed Shadow’s coal-black fur. The dog sat amazingly quiet in the washtub. “You are not going to quit on her, are you?”

“She quit on me,” he fired back. “She won’t even try to get help. I’ve asked and asked and I’ve given and given and given. Tonight I needed her and she gave me nothing in return. What sort of a relationship is that?”

“One that is in crisis, I would say.” Finished with sudsing, she transferred his puppy to a basin of clean water and began to rinse the suds from Shadow’s coat. “I’d also point out that Sage is making an effort for you. Emotional healing is not a broken leg. It does not happen on a timetable. She has made great strides in recent months. In Sage’s case, however, it takes many little baby steps to cover the distance, so it’s not always as obvious.”

He closed his eyes. “She told me once that she’s in a deep, dark well and she’s not at all certain she’ll be able to climb out.”

“And yet you fell in love with her anyway. Or did you? Because if you truly loved Sage, I don’t think you’d turn your back on her at the first sign of trouble.”

“She turned her back on me,” he shot back, temper heating the words. Furious and frustrated and afraid, he added, “I’ve tried with her, tried so hard. But it doesn’t matter one damned bit. She won’t let me or anyone help her. She quit. She quit on me.”

“Did she? Really? Or did you ask too much of her too soon? I understand that Sage has let you down. Knowing Sage, she feels terrible for having done so. But you are not without some responsibility here. Be honest with yourself, Colt. You pursued her. You set out to win her. You pushed her. Sage fell in love with you despite her best intentions. She resisted you because she knew she wasn’t ready. She knew that she still had a ways to go in her recovery. Now that circumstances have proved as much, it could be argued that if you walk away from her now, you have let her down as much as she has you.”

With that, Celeste lifted Shadow from the rinse tub, set him on the floor, then leaned away while he shook. She picked up a fluffy white towel and briskly dried him off.

Colt sighed heavily, closed his eyes, and grimaced. “I don’t know, Celeste. I’m too shaken up over Rachel to be able to think clearly.”

“That’s understandable. All I ask is that when you are able to consider your relationship with Sage, you take into account what I have mentioned here tonight. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

Celeste lifted Shadow into her arms and gave him a hug. Then she lifted his snout and stared into the puppy’s big brown eyes. “You be a good boy on the trip, Shadow. You take care of your daddy. If he starts to get sleepy, paw at him. If he drives too long without taking a break, bark at him. If he gets too sad, climb up and give him your sweet little puppy kisses.”

“I can do without dog slobber.”

“I disagree. A person can never have too many kisses from someone who loves them. Now, go. Drive safely, and keep us posted on little Rachel’s condition, okay?”

“I will.”

Celeste handed the dog over to him, and Colt had to admit that the slight delay had been worth it. Shadow smelled a hundred percent better. He’d be a much more pleasant traveling companion. They headed for the door, where Colt paused and looked back at Celeste. “Thanks for everything, Celeste.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Can I ask you for one more favor?”

“Absolutely.”

“Will you pray for us? For Rachel and my brother and sister-in-law?”

“Consider it done. And Colt, I have faith that little Rachel will fully recover from her injuries. Be at ease. I have good instincts about things like this.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear, Celeste.”

She smiled indulgently. “Consider it done. Godspeed, Colt Rafferty.”

NINETEEN

Sage lay on Colt’s bed at the Creekside Cabins for a full hour after he left, sobbing her heart out into his pillow. She hated herself. Despised herself. Any doubts she’d had that she was indeed a horrible person had been laid to rest this evening. She was mean and awful and terrible and cruel and selfish and self-centered. She was every bad adjective in the language. She was making this all about her when it was really about Rachel and the rest of the injured children. The children. Innocent, trusting, fragile. Helpless. “Children,” she wept.

She cried so hard and so long that she never heard the knock on the door, didn’t notice the whoosh of evening breeze sweep through the room as the door opened. Didn’t register the whispered, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

What finally got through to her was the wet rasp of a tongue against her tearstained cheeks. She opened her eyes to see Snowdrop’s precious little face. Sage let out a little groan and hugged her dog tight, launching into another round of heart-sore sobs that lasted a good five minutes. Finally, it filtered through her head that Snowdrop hadn’t found her way here all by herself. She opened her eyes expecting to see Celeste or Nic or maybe even Sarah. “Rose?”

Her sister sat at the bottom corner of the bed. “What’s the matter, Goober?”

Her use of the old childhood nickname registered. In
that moment, Sage was just weak enough—or perhaps strong enough—to reach out to her sister. “Something horrible happened in Africa, Rose. Something so horrific that it haunts me still. I can’t be around children and blood. I just can’t.”

Then she told her about the bus accident, Colt’s request, and her refusal. “I am pathetic, Rose. Just pathetic. No wonder you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Sage,” Rose insisted. “I miss you.”

Sage looked up at her, tears flowing, and Rose reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Sage’s ear. “I think we got crossways when Dad died and we were both too wounded to be able to straighten the situation out. After that, well, we’ve always been hardheaded. We dug in with our positions and neither one of us was willing to give.”

“You tried. You came to Eternity Springs. You’re here.”

“Five years after the fact.” Tears pooled in her sister’s eyes as she added, “I’m ashamed it took me this long to be ready to listen.”

Sage bowed her head. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk. Even after five years. I’m broken, Rose. Tonight proves it. I let Colt down. He’s so wonderful, such a good man. I love him and I let him down.”

“Oh, honey. The only thing tonight proves is that the mental health canyon you fell into is deeper than any of us realized. It’s going to take longer than we’d like for you to climb your way out of it, but I know you, Sage Anderson. You’re not a quitter. If Colt loves you as much as he claims, then he’ll find some patience.”

Sage swallowed the lump of emotion in her throat. “I let him down tonight.”

“He asked too much of you tonight.”

“He doesn’t know that. I’ve told him some of what happened, but not the worst of it.”

“Could you tell me?”

She closed her eyes, swallowed the lump in her throat, and shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve tried to talk about it. I did one time, I told one person, and it was horrible. It only made things worse.”

“You told a therapist?”

“No.” Sage met her sister’s gaze with a pleading stare. “I told Dad.”

Rose sat back, and Sage could see her mental wheels turning. Long seconds ticked by before she asked, “Can you tell me about that?”

“He lashed out at me, Rose. He said some things that haunt me to this day.” With this, tears began to flow freely again. “He told me to quit crying about it and to put it behind me and soldier on. He told me not to be a coward. That was our final conversation. He was ashamed of me, Rose. He was my hero and I let him down and now I’ve let Colt down. I hate myself!”

Rose sat back. “So, that’s why you didn’t come to the hospital when I asked.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted me there.”

Rose dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “Oh, Goobs. Now it makes sense. I could never understand, but now it’s clear as the water in Angel Creek.”

“I’m sorry I let you down, too, Rose.”

Rose reached for her sister and gave her a fierce hug. “Right back at you. I wasn’t there when you needed me, and that kills me. But listen. I’m here now, and I want to say a couple of things. And you need to hear them. First, about Dad. This thing you can’t talk about. You were traumatized in some manner, weren’t you?”

Sage nodded, and Rose continued. “Do you remember that time I cut my finger while peeling potatoes with a kitchen knife?”

“You had to get eight stitches.”

“Yep. Do you remember what Dad did?”

Sage thought about it. “Yeah, I do. He took you to the ER.”

“That’s right. Because he couldn’t stitch me himself.”

“He was too busy yelling at you.”

“Oh, yes. My ears hurt as much as my hand. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but he did try to treat me at home. He couldn’t hold his hands still. Do you know why?”

“Because you were careless?”

“No, because he was afraid. The big, bad Colonel was scared, and when he got scared, he attacked. That’s what he did. Later he apologized to me and asked my forgiveness. He said he was frightened for me, and that’s how he reacted when he was afraid.”

“That’s stupid.”

“That’s a man for you. Sage, I’ll bet my favorite pair of flats that whatever you told Dad—if it was as awful for you as I think it must have been—scared him. Rather than giving you the comfort you needed, he reacted to his fear for his little girl.”

“No, he wouldn’t …” Sage’s voice trailed off. Hope flickered to life inside her and she added, “Do you really think he …?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

The sisters sat without speaking for a bit. Sage mulled over all that Rose had said. She’d love to believe it was true, that her father hadn’t died thinking her a coward. It would lift such a burden from her soul and be her own personal miracle.

She looked at Rose. Her sister would have made it happen. “Why did you come here tonight?”

She shrugged. “Celeste asked me to bring Snowdrop to you.”