Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour (12 page)

Mrs. Julian True
.

“Dr. Liam?”

He jumped, and his hand crashed on the keys in a blast of discordant sound.

Rosa stood in the archway that separated the great room from the dining room.

Liam didn’t want to talk to his mother-in-law right now. If she opened the door to intimacy, he might ask the question that was killing him:
Did she ever love me, Rosa?

And God help him, he wasn’t ready for the answer.

“
Lo siento
, I do not mean to bother you.”

He studied her, saw the nervous trembling in her hands, the almost invisible tapping of her right foot, and he was seized by a sudden fear that she knew what he’d found, that she’d talk about Mikaela’s past now, tell him more than he wanted to know. He got slowly to his feet and moved toward her. In the pale, overhead light, she looked incredibly fragile, her wrinkled skin almost translucent. A tiny network of blue blood vessels crisscrossed her smooth cheeks. “Yes, Rosa?”

She gazed up at him, her dark eyes steeped in sorrow, and he knew that she understood the pain of a broken heart. “The anniversary … it must be very hard on you. I thought … maybe, if you do not think I am sticking my old woman’s nose where it does not belong, that we could watch a movie together. Bret
has loaned me his favorite:
Dumb and Dumber
. He says it will make me laugh.”

The idea of Rosa watching
Dumb and Dumber
brought a smile. “Thank you, Rosa,” he answered, touched by her thoughtfulness. “But not tonight.”

“There is something else wrong,” she said slowly, eyeing him.

He tried to smile again. “What else could be wrong? Love will reach my wife, won’t it, Rosa? Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, that love will wake her up? But it’s been four weeks and still she’s asleep.”

“Do not give up, please.”

He looked at her for a long, desperate minute, then he said softly, “I’m falling apart.”

It was true. His wife was hanging on to life by a strand as thin as a spider’s web, and now suddenly it felt as if his whole life was hanging alongside her.

“No, Dr. Liam. You are the strongest man I have ever known.”

He didn’t feel strong. In fact, he’d never felt so close to breaking. He knew that if he stood here a moment longer, feeling Rosa’s sympathy like a warm fire on a cold, cold night, he’d ask the question:
Did she ever love me, Rosa?

“I can’t do this now.” He shoved past a chair, heard it squeaking and crashing across the floor. When he spun around, he found himself staring into the silvered plane of an antique mirror. The network of lines around his eyes had the ridged, shadowy look of felt-tipped etchings.

Laugh lines
.

That’s what Mike had called them. Only Liam couldn’t now recall the last time he’d laughed.

The image blurred and twisted before his eyes, until for a flashing second, it wasn’t himself he saw. It was a younger man, blindingly handsome, with a smile that could sell a million movie tickets. “I need to go to the hospital.”

“But—”

He pushed past her. “Now,” he said again, grabbing his coat off the hook on the wall. “I need to see to my wife.”

The emergency room was bustling with people tonight; the bright hallways echoed with voices and footsteps. Liam hurried to Mike’s room.

She lay there like a broken princess in someone else’s bed, her chest steadily rising and falling.

“Ah, Mike,” he murmured, moving toward her. It was beyond him now, the simple routine he’d constructed so carefully—the potpourri, the pillows, the music.

He stared down at her.

She was still beautiful. Some days he could pretend that she was simply sleeping, that it was an ordinary morning, and any moment she’d wake up and reach for him. Not tonight, however.

“I fell in love with you the first second I saw you,” he said, curling his hand around hers, feeling the warmth of her flesh. Even then, he’d known she was
running from something … or someone. It was obvious. But what did he care? He knew what he wanted: Mikaela and Jacey and a new life in Last Bend. A love that would last forever. He hadn’t known who she was—who she’d once been. How could he? He’d never been one to read celebrity magazines, and even if he had, he would have read about Kayla True, a woman who meant nothing to him.

After Jacey had recovered from her surgery, Mike had begun to pull away from Liam. He’d seen how tired she was, how frightened and worn out, and he’d slipped in to stand beside her.
Let me be your buffer against the wind
, he’d whispered.
Let me keep you warm
.

He’d known why she reached for him, why she’d crawled into his bed and let him kiss her. She’d been a fragile, lonely little bird, and he’d built her a nest. Over time she’d learned to smile again. And every day that she stayed with him was a blessing.

He closed his eyes and culled memories, brushing some aside and savoring others. The first time he’d kissed her, on a bright and sunny day at Angel Falls … the way she snorted when she laughed really hard and cried at a good Hallmark commercial … the day Bret had been born and they’d put him in Liam’s arms, and Mike had whispered softly that life was good. The day he’d asked her to marry him …

That was the one that hurt.

It had been the year
Batman
exploded across theater
multiplexes and the
Exxon Valdez
crashed in Prince William Sound.

They’d been at Angel Falls, stretched out on a blanket beside a still, green pool of water. There had been tears in her eyes when she told him she was pregnant.

He had known to tread carefully. It had been difficult, when all he wanted to do was throw back his head and laugh with joy, but he’d touched her cheek and asked her quietly to marry him.

I’ve been married before
, she’d answered, a single tear sliding down her pink cheek.

Okay
. That’s what he’d said, all he’d said.

It’s important
.

He’d known that, of course.

I loved him with all my heart and soul
, she’d said.
I’m afraid I’ll love him until I die
.

I see
.

But he’d known that she was the one who could see. She’d known she was breaking his heart. She turned and knelt beside him.
There are things I can’t tell you … ever. Things I won’t talk about
.

“I didn’t care about all that, did I, Mike? I was forty years old and I’d seen things no human being should ever see.

“Until I met you, I had given up on love, did you know that? I had grown up in a great man’s shadow; I knew that everyone I met compared me to the famous Ian Campbell, and beside him, I was an agate pushed up alongside a diamond.

“Then I met you, and you’d never really known my
father. I thought at last I’d found someone who wouldn’t compare me all the time … but you’d already had a diamond, hadn’t you, Mike? And I was still just an ordinary agate …”

But he hadn’t told her any of this when he asked her to marry him, when she told him she’d already found—and lost—the love of her life. All he’d said was that he loved her, and that if she could return even a piece of his love, they’d be happy.

He’d known that she wanted it to be true, just as he’d known she didn’t completely believe it.
I will never lie to you, Liam, and I’ll never be unfaithful. I will be as good a wife as I can be
.

I love you, Mike
, he’d said, watching her cry.

And I love you
.

He’d thought that over the years, she’d learned to love him, but now he was seized by doubt. Maybe she cared for him. Only that.

“You should have told me, Mike,” he said, but even as he said the words, he heard the lie echoing within them. She couldn’t have told him. She was right in that, at least. The knowing was unbearable.

She had loved him that much, anyway.

“I found the pillowcase, Mike,” he said, leaning close. “The pictures … the clippings. I know about … him.”

He squeezed her hand. “I guess I know why you didn’t tell me. But it hurts, Mike. Jesus, it hurts and I don’t know what to do with all of it.”

He leaned toward her. “Did you ever love me,
Mike? How can I go on without knowing the answer to that question?

“I guess I shouldn’t even ask,” he said. “I should have seen it in your eyes, should have known somehow that you were always comparing me to someone else. God knows I had the experience to see it, so why didn’t I? And how could I ever measure up to Julian True?”

She blinked.

Liam gasped, squeezing her hand so hard it should have crushed the fragile bones. “Mike … can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me.” With his other hand, he hit the nurses’ button.

Within seconds, Sarah came bustling into the room, already out of breath. “Dr. Campbell, is she—”

“She blinked.”

Sarah came closer to the bed, studying Mike first, and then Liam.

Mike lay perfectly still, her eyes sealed shut.

“Come on, Mike. Blink if you can hear me.”

Sarah checked each machine, one by one, then she moved to stand by Liam. “I think it was a reflex. Or maybe—”

“It
wasn’t
my imagination, damn it. She blinked.”

“Maybe I should call for Dr. Penn.”

“Do it,” he said, without looking up.

He let go of Mike’s hand for just long enough to hit the play button on the tape recorder. Music swept into the room, songs from the
Tapestry
album by Carole King.

Liam held her hands again, both of them this time, talking to her, saying the same thing over and over again. He was still talking, begging, when Stephen came into the room, examined Mike, and then quietly left.

Liam talked until his throat was dry and there were no more pleas left inside of him. Then he slumped back down into the chair and bowed his head.
Please God, help her
.

But deep inside he knew. It hadn’t been God who’d helped Mikaela blink. It was a name, just that after all these weeks, just a simple name. When she heard it, she responded.

Julian True.

She is floating in a sea of gray and black … there is the smell of something … flowers … a music she can almost recognize
.

She longs to touch the music, but she has no arms … no legs … no eyes. All she can feel is the thudding beat of her heart. Fast, like a baby bird’s, and she can taste the metallic edge of fear
.

“You should have told me.”

It is the voice she’s come to know, soft and soothing, and she knows that somewhere, sometime, she knew it, but here there is no before, there is no now. There is just the dark, the fear, the helpless longing for something.…

“Julian.”

Julian. The word seems to sink deep, deep inside
her; it makes her heart beat faster, and she wants to reach for it, hold it against her chest
.

Julian. In the black rubble of her life it is connected to another word, one she remembers
.

Love
.

The next morning, Rosa was finishing the last of the breakfast dishes when the phone rang … and rang … and rang. Frowning, she went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up for Dr. Liam to answer it.

In the other room, the answering machine clicked on, and Rosa was momentarily stunned to hear her daughter’s voice. For a split second, she felt hope … then she realized it was only the recorded message.

“Rosa? Are you there? Pick up the phone, damn it. It’s me, Liam.”

She threw the damp dishrag over her shoulder and raced back into the kitchen to answer.
“Hola,”
she said, a little out of breath.

“Have the kids left for school?” he asked.

“
Sí
. Bret’s bus just left.”

“Good. Come to the hospital.”

“Is Mikaela—”

“The same. Just hurry.” He paused, then said, “Please, Rosa. Hurry.”

“I am leaving.”

He didn’t even say good-bye before she heard the dial tone buzzing in her ear.

Rosa snagged her car keys from the hook near the phone and grabbed her purse.

Outside it was snowing lightly; not much, but enough to make an old woman like her drive slowly. All the way through town and out to the hospital, she tried to be hopeful. But Dr. Liam had sounded upset. He was such a strong, silent man that such emotion from him was frightening. He had remained steady through much bad news already.

She parked in one of the vacant visitor spots and reached for her coat. It was then that she realized she was still wearing the wet dishrag across her shoulder … and that she hadn’t braided her hair yet this morning. She would look like a demented scarecrow with all that snow-white hair flowing everywhere. A woman like her, old and unmarried, could not afford to look so bad.

As she crossed the parking lot, she braided her hair. Without a rubber band, it wouldn’t stay, but it was better than nothing.

She hurried through the hospital. At the closed door to Mikaela’s room, she paused and drew in a deep breath, offering a quick prayer to the Virgin, then she opened the door.

Everything looked the same. Mikaela lay in the bed, on her back this morning. A shaft of sunlight sneaked
through the partially opened curtains and left a yellow streak on the linoleum floor.