“I’m not,” he said.
“Yes, you are. When are you going to let go of the past and take a chance on the future?”
“I can’t.”
“Then you’re not the man I thought you were.”
“Who am I?”
“Just another guy I should have known better than to waste my time on,” she said, slamming down the phone.
Harris packed his clothes quietly. The staff would come in later to box up his books and ship them along with his other household items to his home in Belair. Thinking about his home didn’t bring the gratifying feeling he was used to.
The house had a garden that made Eden look like a child’s first attempt at horticulture. His staff kept the place spotless and knew their places. They didn’t ask him questions about his love life or interfere like Ray did. He should be excited to be going home. But instead he felt…empty.
Why?
He glanced around the hotel room and realized these last few weeks in Orlando had given him something he’d never had before. Something he’d never realized had been missing until Sarah. He glanced once again around the room and saw her ghost everywhere. Saw the couch where she’d waited for him in the dark. Only the fireworks lighting the room.
Saw the bookshelves crammed with titles they’d discussed. Saw the door to the bedroom—the threshold he’d carried her across before making her his. He’d never been as close to another person as he had to Sarah.
He glanced around the room one more time while he walked toward the door. A new emotion kindled to life deep inside of him and he realized he missed Sarah.
But not enough to open his heart to the love she was sure he’d developed for her. He knew better. It didn’t make sense but he was certain that love wasn’t for him. He’d never confessed his love to another human. Not even his father. But then his father wasn’t usually interested in anything or anyone who existed outside the penthouse.
Was that a fair judgment? He picked up his cell phone before he could think about it and dialed his dad’s number. Felix, his father’s butler, answered on the third ring.
“It’s Harris. May I speak with my father?”
“He’s under the weather, sir. Not taking any calls.”
Harris started to hang up and stopped. But he needed to talk to his father. He’d never forced the issue before. “I, uh, I really need to talk to him, Felix.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see if he’ll take the call.”
He heard Felix’s footsteps and imagined the path the butler was taking. Through the marble-floored hallway up the carpeted stairs and then he heard Felix knock on the door. His father’s rusty bid for Felix to enter. Was this his own future without Sarah?
He realized his perception of the parental role had changed because of Sarah. She was always available for the twins. If she were in the hospital she’d take a call from them. She always put everyone she cared for before herself.
Had she done that for him? Would he really want her to? Someone should put Sarah first. Not someone, he realized. He should put Sarah first.
“Your son, sir, is on the phone,” Felix said.
“I’m not taking calls today,” his dad said.
So much for fatherly advice, Harris thought. “He said it was urgent,” Felix said.
“Urgent?” his dad asked.
Harris heard a twinge of emotion in his father’s voice. Not the same dull tone he’d been using earlier. Maybe he’d waited too long to call his dad.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll take it. Please open the curtains on your way out.”
Opening the curtains was a big deal for his dad. When he wasn’t depressed he spent his days on the rooftop garden, cultivating his roses and basking in the sun. But once his depression hit he’d lock himself away from the sun.
“Harris?” his father said. His dad, for all his weaknesses, had always been there for him and Harris felt a rush of emotion toward him.
“Dad, I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
The million-dollar question and he didn’t know how to ask it. How was he going to ask his father why he hid away? How was he going to find out if the same thing that was inside his dad was inside him? How was he going to find the answers when he wasn’t sure of the questions?
“Why did Mom leave?” Harris asked at last. When he thought about why he had troubles committing to women, the path always led back to that night he hated to remember.
His father sighed and Harris thought he might not answer him. “I wish I knew.”
“Have you ever thought about that day?” Harris asked. They’d never spoken of his mom after she left and Harris had never really understood why. He remembered very little of her departure.
“It’s all I do. Day after day.”
“Dad, you need to get out. Go tend your roses or something outside,” Harris said.
“Not today. Will you be on the East Coast anytime soon?”
“No,” Harris said, the lie coming easily to him. He didn’t want to visit his father. Especially with the holidays looming. He avoided the East Coast and his father’s home. It made him uncomfortable and for the first time he realized why. There was a bit of the future in viewing his father locked away from the world alone.
Now he had another reason to stay away from the East Coast—Sarah. He didn’t think he’d take any more jobs that weren’t in Asia.
“Thanks for talking to me,” Harris said. He didn’t feel any closer to the answers he sought then he had before he’d called his dad.
“Harris…”
“Yes?”
“I know I’ve never been father of the year. But if you need me…I’m here.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I’m always here,” his father said. The words had the sound of litany. One Harris had heard over and over when he’d been a child.
Harris hung up, convinced that the Davidson curse had struck again.
Eleven
H
arris packed his bags methodically, telling himself this was no different than the hundred times he’d moved on in the past. But there was emptiness deep inside him. It wasn’t new he realized. This was just the first time he’d been aware it was there.
He called down to make sure Ray was waiting out front and left the room, a suitcase in each hand. He knew that the memories he had of his time with Sarah would haunt him and for a short time, he was willing to let them.
He didn’t want to forget her yet. In time they’d fade as all memories did and he’d be living once again in the cold gray area that he was most used to.
Ray opened the back door to the limo and reached for the bags to stow them. Harris sank back in the leather seat. The scent of Sarah’s perfume lingered in the air. Was it only this morning that everything in his life seemed to finally be coming together?
How quickly the tide had changed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose feeling a headache coming on. Harris cursed under his breath.
“Where to,
compare?
” Ray asked from the front.
“The airport.”
Ray frowned back at him. “You’re leaving?”
Harris still didn’t like the familiarity that Ray had with him. There should be no questions. Ray should take orders and that’s the end of it. But Harris had come to like the rotund little man. He might actually miss the funny guy with his Italian cursing and bizarre phone conversations. “There’s no reason for me to stay.”
“Didn’t you talk to Sarah?” Ray asked.
He wasn’t going to share with anyone else the details of that conversation that made him feel like he’d come close to keeping her. And then a second later lost her for good. He’d never really understood what women needed from him. His mother had needed space—distance. His stepmoms had needed him to be invisible. Sarah needed love. The one thing he couldn’t buy her.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Damn, this headache was going to be one hell of one. But physical weakness was one he didn’t tolerate so he ignored the pain.
“There’s no changing her mind.”
“Did you send her a gift?”
“It’s useless. She wants something from me I can’t give her.”
“What?”
“Love.”
“Ah,
amore.
Why can’t you give it to her?”
“It’s like trying to get water from a stone. I don’t have anything to give,” Harris said, not sure why he was telling this to Ray. Maybe because he hadn’t been able to get anything from his dad.
“What made you a stone?” Ray asked.
Harris didn’t answer. He only knew he’d always known caring was a liability and that loving someone was a risk that wasn’t worth taking. He wished he remembered more of the day his mother had left them.
“Why don’t we go have a drink? I’ll help you come up with a plan.”
“Ray, there’s nothing you could do to change my mind.”
“
Merda.
Make sure your seat belt is tight.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to change your mind.”
The car moved away from the Dolphin but instead of heading toward the lights of I-4 and the airport Ray drove toward the darkened landscape that was undeveloped property, continuing to pick up speed. Going faster and faster.
“I don’t scare easily.”
Images flashed past the windows to fast for Harris to identify them. He sank deeper into the seat and wondered if maybe this wasn’t a pain-induced delusion.
Finally the car slowed and pulled to a stop. Harris was definitely calling the limo company tomorrow and having Ray fired. The guy had slipped over the edge.
“Where are we?” Harris asked.
“Unless I’ve lost my touch, 1978 Connecticut.”
Clearly, Ray was psycho. Harris didn’t know if it would be better to pretend to buy into his illusion if he should be the voice of reason and try to talk Ray down.
“Why are you doing this? Do you feel okay?” Harris asked.
“I wish it were only
agita.
I was assigned to be your driver to make sure you and Sarah fell in love.”
“Who assigned you to do that?” Harris asked, humoring the driver.
“A smart-ass angel.”
Harris wondered if Ray didn’t have a split personality disorder. He’d seemed so sane prior to this.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish.”
“How’d that happen?” Harris asked.
“When I was killed I asked God for forgiveness.”
“And he said, sure, just make Harris Davidson fall in love. I’m not buying it.”
Ray was suddenly by Harris’s side. He didn’t see the man move but there he was. He leaned into Harris personal space, in a clearly intimidating manner. Maybe he should just say he’d see Sarah again.
“Just shut up and listen. I’m buying my way to heaven one heart at a time.”
“I know you believe what you’re saying—”
“
Merda,
I sound like a
gavone,
but this is true.”
Harris said nothing.
“Enough talking. Follow me.”
Harris wasn’t getting out of the car with a crazy man who claimed he was a dead matchmaker that could travel back in time.
But Ray grabbed his arm and Harris found himself standing on the portico in front of his childhood home. Floodlights illuminating the topiaries in the front yard. The big brick fortress that he’d spent the first six years of his life in.
Harris realized he was buying into Ray’s delusion. He closed his eyes and reopened them but the house remained. What year had Ray said? God, don’t let this be real, he thought. Because if it was he was going to have to remember something he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.
“Let’s go inside.”
Harris stepped away from Ray and leaned against the limo. “I’ll wait here.”
“This whole trip is for you.”
Ray grabbed Harris’s arm and this time snapped his fingers. They flew up the side of the building into a room that Harris hadn’t been in since he was six. It was the master bedroom. Every light blazed in the room. Felix, his dad’s butler, and Mary, Felix’s wife, stood anxiously by the open door. Harris refused to look at the bed. He knew what he’d see. Didn’t want to see it.
Because suddenly he remembered the day his mother left. It all came rushing back and he knew why he’d spent a lifetime keeping other people at bay.
“What’s the point in this?” Harris asked.
“You picked this moment in time.”
He glanced at the bed piled high with suitcases. Slowly panned over to his father. A much younger version of his father stood stoically next to the window. Harris saw himself. A six-year-old boy clinging to his father’s hand.
God, he looked so scared. He didn’t like looking that way. It seemed to Harris that all those emotions should have been inside so that no one would know how bad he’d felt. He didn’t want pity, even then.
He glanced around the room at the other players in his mother’s little drama and saw Felix watching him with…damn pity. “What’s the point in this?”
“Just watch,” Ray said.
But Harris didn’t want to. He didn’t understand why reliving the night he and his father had begged
her
to stay was going to help with anything. But his father wasn’t saying anything. The boy did all the taking.
“Mommy, where are you going?”
She tossed a rainbow of silk dresses into a suitcase without care. Her attention clearly on one objective. Getting out has quickly as possible. “Away.”
“Why?”
“You’re a big boy now, Harris. You started school today. You don’t need me,” she said. His mother was a beautiful woman. Harris knew what the boy was going to say next and didn’t want to watch it.
“Let’s go, Ray.”
“Not yet,” Ray said, keeping his eyes on the mother and son discussion.
“I need you, Mommy.”
“Dammit, kid, you’re just like your father…too needy. I can’t give you anything more.”
Harris watched his father stroke his head and remembered how strong his dad had been that day. That one day. “Mary, take Harris to his room.”
Mary moved forward to take his hand but Harris knew his six-year-old self wouldn’t give up that easily. “I love you, Mommy.”
She looked at him, her eyes the same pretty green as the emerald necklace his father had given her at Christmas. “Love is a weakness, Harris.”
Ray took his arm and Harris found himself back in the car sitting in front of the Dolphin. Had he just dreamed the entire episode?