Miracle (35 page)

Amy’s breath evaporated. Her heart raced and she felt dizzy. Here. He was here, close by. She, too, heard the car engine. Fear and elation washed over her. Sebastien mustn’t know that she was here. It would be too humiliating for her. But if only she could see him, get just a glimpse of him.…

“Move from the gate, please,” the housekeeper told her.

“Sure.” Stepping with numb precision, Amy wheeled the bike into the tall grass a dozen feet away. She was standing in a ditch before she realized it, with a puddle of water creeping inside her cloth walking shoes.

But her attention was riveted to the gate, which slid back on both sides with majestic slowness when the housekeeper reached inside a control box and pushed a button. The approaching car seemed to take forever. Amy strained her eyes, staring at the place where it would appear. She would have only a second, as it slipped past, a second to merge memories with the present.

But the low-slung black vehicle purred halfway through the gates and came to a stop. Amy clutched the bike’s cold handlebars. She bled inside as if he had left only the day before, instead of almost five years ago. Sebastien opened the driver’s side—the side nearest to her—and climbed from the car.

He wore a long trench coat that billowed open as he stood up, revealing dark slacks and a light shirt, open at the collar. His charcoal-black hair was disheveled, his
expression dark and angry. He was thinner, older, with a tension in his face that gave a cruel slant to his features. She recorded all that in the back of her mind while silently chanting his name.

He didn’t look her way, didn’t realize that she stood there, watching him. With forceful strides he crossed behind the car and went to the housekeeper, who smiled despite his imposing attitude. He nodded to her brusquely and took a handful of flowers from the basket.

Amy glanced toward the car. Through the open door she met the stern gaze of a woman dressed in a dark maternity blouse and skirt. His wife. A book lay open on the woman’s lap. A pillow cushioned the back of her neck, and her black hair draped over the white case in a smooth river. She was in the early stage of a pregnancy, judging by her barely evident stomach. Which child—their first? their third? They had been married almost three years.

Amy’s attention jerked back to Sebastien. He came to the driver’s door and, bending over, handed the flowers to his wife. He adjusted a side mirror, his hands moving with impatient force. For one heartbreaking moment he seemed about to turn toward Amy. She had no idea what she’d do if he looked at her. She was frozen in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions—sorrow, jealousy, a need to call his name, the horror that he would look at her and know who she was, the horror that he would drive away and never know.

He didn’t turn toward her. He got back into the car and shut the door so hard that the window rattled. He threw the car into gear. Amy lurched forward one step but brought herself to a halt, pride stabbing at her. His wife frowned at her, then cupped the flowers to her face and leaned back on her pillow, shutting her eyes. His wife.

The car pulled away with the nearly soundless precision of a mechanical work of art. Amy watched it until it rounded a bend in the road. She felt as if every organ inside her body had been rearranged.

“Mademoiselle?” the housekeeper called, then called again. “Would you like to come to the house? It is starting to rain again. You can wait in my quarters until it stops.”

Wait in the servant quarters. Hide beside the gate, in a ditch. Be nobody. Be nothing. Be absorbed by wanting what can’t be had. No. No more.

Amy found her voice. “Thank you, but no. I can’t stay. I have a long way to go. It’s a real long way to where I’m going.”

And I’ve got a lot to do if I want to get there
.

When she walked off the plane in Atlanta, Amy found Mary Beth waiting. Mary Beth wasn’t supposed to be waiting. She wasn’t the sentimental type who’d greet a pal at the airport after only a week’s absence. Amy stopped in the aisle and stared at the grim expression on her roommate’s face.

“Let me guess. We’ve been evicted from the apartment for hosting that lingerie party. I knew the vice squad would get us for buying underwear with zippers in it.”

Mary Beth slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Honey, I hate to tell you this—”

“Who died?” An ominous feeling turned Amy into stone.

“Your stepmother.”

Amy sank onto a railing beside the aisle.
Maisie
.

True to her nature, Maisie had died without fuss. She had simply fallen off the top of a 30-foot ladder while adjusting one of the vents in the ceiling of her chicken house. Her head had struck a concrete block that she’d propped against the ladder’s base. The coroner said the fatal hemorrhage was probably quick.

There was only one note of drama, but a perfect one, one suited to Maisie’s love for the tabloid newspapers she’d bought every week at the grocery store for as long as Amy could remember. Amy strangled on a hysterical urge to laugh as she stared into Maisie’s coffin, surrounded by the cloying scent of gardenias and the antiseptic funk of the funeral home. She could see the tabloid headline in her mind:
Fowl Play—Maniac Chickens Maul Owner’s Dead Body
.

She gulped her bile. The mortician had done a terrific job of fixing the damage. Maisie appeared to have no more than a bad case of acne. But of course, beneath her eyelids there were no eyes.

Swaying, Amy clutched the side of the coffin. The room was empty. Maisie’s church friends had visited earlier, judging by the guest book on a stand by the door. The carpeted-and-brocaded silence made Amy’s skin crawl. She touched Maisie’s hand then drew back, jolted by the coldness and hardness.

This was her first experience with the death of a family member. She’d only been a baby when her mother died. Her thoughts flew back to Sebastien, wondering how he had been able to stand it when his family was killed in the car accident. How had he felt when he’d seen their maimed bodies? And later had he stood over their coffins and been sickened by this awful imitation of life? How in God’s name could a little boy deal with such a thing? How, then, could he go into medicine as a career, knowing that his whole life would revolve around the sick and dying?

Amy fought a rush of loneliness and confusion. Touching Maisie’s hair, she whispered, “Love you, Mams.”

She turned and stumbled from the room, winding the fingers of one hand into the skirt of her dress, holding numbly to her purse with the other. Pop was slumped on a claw-footed sofa in the hall. Even dressed in his best brown suit he looked like a long-haired bum who’d just wandered into someone’s nice parlor. He gazed at the patterned carpet beneath his feet and didn’t move.

“Come on, Pop.” Amy bent over him and touched his shoulder. Tenderness rose inside her, but fear held it in check. She spoke without emotion. “I’ll fix you some dinner.”

“Don’t need it.”

“Let me drive you home. I’ll stay overnight, and we’ll come get your car in the morning.”

“Don’t want you to do that. Don’t need you. Need Maisie.”

“Pop, I know—”

“I found her. I found her in the chicken house. Layin’ there, her face all, all … I’m gonna sell the chickens.”

“That’s a good idea. Now come on, let’s go home.” She slid her hand under his arm and tugged.

He jerked the arm away and glared up at her. “I don’t need you. You said you were never coming back. Too late to come back, now.”

“I’m trying to help you, Pop.”

He began to cry. “You hurt Maisie’s feelings by not ever coming to visit. You didn’t think about anybody but yourself. Mean-tempered little shit. I don’t need you. You don’t love me.”

She stepped back, stunned by the sight of him crying. Guilt filled her, but rage grew alongside it. “I want to love you, but you won’t let me.”

“Twist the truth! What do you want? To give me some more money? Well, forget it, all right? Don’t crawl to me and expect forgiveness.”

She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream and bury her head in her hands.
Stop looking for acceptance
, she told herself.
It never makes sense
.

“I give up, Pop. I’m not doing either of us any good here. I won’t be back tomorrow for the funeral. I’m going to visit a friend, in New York.”

“I don’t want you here. You show up here, I’ll throw you out! Get! Get out of here!”

Slowly she moved back from him, straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin, freezing inside. Her grief mingled with bitter resolve. Her life was twisting again, but now she was in control. Dignity, pride, honor—she wouldn’t give them up for anyone, ever again. She was no longer a victim, or like sweet, dumb Maisie, a passive martyr. She was going to New York, where Elliot was filming a television special. She would stay with Elliot and take care of him, because she was important to him, and that meant a lot to her. But Elliot was going to take care of her, too, in ways she had just begun to plan.

S
ebastien was appointed head of the transplant unit at Sainte Crillion on a January day when icicles fringed the stone fountains of Paris and added a crystal beard to the snarling stone lion who guarded the hospital’s front entrance.

Sebastien’s appointment was no surprise to anyone, even with his outburst of violence toward a fellow physician. The staff and his fellow surgeons had expected it to come sooner. So had Sebastien. Still, at age thirty-six, when most heart surgeons were just establishing themselves, he held one of the most respected positions in the European medical community.

“You know what some of the older physicians are saying, don’t you?” Marie’s father asked him on the day that the appointment was announced. “They’re saying that you were selected in part because you’re my son-in-law.”

Sebastien continued to gaze out a window toward the boulevards below, his hands clasped behind his back. He felt calm and reflective; he was at a brief peace with himself as he savored the moment. The loneliness of his life had never seemed more justified; the barrier reef that surrounded his emotions, more necessary. Idly he slid a finger over the back of one hand, caressing the dry, overscrubbed skin that was a surgeon’s trademark. “Ironic, isn’t it, since being your son-in-law has disadvantaged me.”

“I beg your pardon?” Christian’s chair squeaked as he shifted.

Sebastien reveled in the tension. “I have my informants, too, you see. I know that my father has lobbied you incessantly to keep me from being made head of the transplant team. I congratulate you on having the nerve to ignore him. Or was it simply that you could no longer ignore my qualifications without appearing foolish?”

“You bastard. You ungrateful bastard.” The older man slapped a hand on his desk. “Watch yourself, Sebastien. A man who has no friends should at least cultivate his relatives.”

“I find that my relatives have ulterior motives.”

“You mock my honor. You mock your father’s love. He may be misguided, but is it a crime for a father to want his legacy perpetuated through his most-deserving child? He wants only the best for you: power, prestige, family—”