Lynne folded like a deck of cards.
“That could be a problem,” Lucy spoke up. Richard jerked in her direction. “My father won’t come and see you. He’s terrified of leaving the house.”
His eyes narrowed in thought, but he didn’t look away.
Lucy swallowed, her throat feeling as dry as after a three-day bender.
“He won’t come,” Lynne confirmed. “He says I am going to lock him up somewhere.” Richard flicked his eyes briefly in her direction and Lucy stiffened. “I would never do that,” Lynne stated vehemently.
“It might not need to come to that.” Richard got to his feet. “The situation needs to be assessed and considered and once we have all the information, then we can look at options.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Lucy choked out and earned herself a hard stare.
“You don’t get committed for being a bit difficult.” The accusation went straight for the jugular and Lucy gasped.
“That is not what I am doing.”
“No?”
“No.”
“How is Donna?” Lynne chirruped desperately from her place in the chair.
“Fine,” Richard ground out with his eyes still locked on Lucy. He must have realized he was growling, because he lightened up slightly and managed a tight smile in Lynne’s direction. “My mother is well, thank you for asking.”
“I am trying to do what is best for both of my parents,” Lucy insisted.
“How novel,” he drawled.
“And Joshua?” Lynne piped up again. “I hear he is doing very well for himself. Something to do with the banks?”
The corner of Richard’s mouth twitched. Reluctantly, as if he had no intention of smiling, but the ridiculousness of the situation was not going to let him out of it. “Everyone is fine,” he told Lynne mildly. “And everything will be fine,” he said, turning the full potency of Richard on to Lynne and her mother opened up like a flower to the sun. “You leave this with me. Okay?”
Lynne nodded happily and simpered. Lucy realized he was now looking at her.
“Okay,” she said, stumbling into agreement. He had this and she took a step back and perched awkwardly on the end of the examination table behind her. The disposable paper covering crackled loudly beneath her butt and she cringed and tried to ease away.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen Carl,” Richard said.
“He doesn’t like doctors.” Lynne looked agonized by the confession.
Richard took it in stride and nodded. “I could always come around on some or other pretext and do a house call.”
“You would do that?” Lynne beamed at him in delight. “You already do so much for us.”
“Leave it with me.” He gave her mother another reassuring smile. “I will call you and set up a time you think would be good.”
“Oh, thank you,” gushed her mother.
Over Lynne’s head, Richard looked up suddenly, his expression unreadable.
Lucy looked away first. She trailed her mother out of the office.
Richard had already turned toward his next patient.
They were in the car and on their way home before her mother spoke to her.
“Richard is still rather angry with you, Lucy.” Lynne’s forehead crinkled up in concern.
Lucy heaved a sigh. “You think?”
“Oh, yes,” Lynne said, and nodded her head seriously.
Chapter Nine
“Lucy Locket?”
“Maddy Mads?”
“How’s it going, girl?” Mads sounded unbearably chipper.
“Not so good.” Lucy tightened her grip on her phone. It was so cold outside the house and her hand ached where she’d taken her mitten off to make the call. “Richard is my father’s doctor.”
A long silence. “You are
shitting
me.”
“I wish I was.” Lucy grimaced and pushed aside a small mound of ice outside the door. “And guess what?” Her breath hit the air in a white plume. “He doesn’t trust me.”
“And this is a surprise, how, exactly?”
“You’re all heart.” Lucy shook her head as a throaty chuckle hummed down the line toward her. She wouldn’t be Mads if she were any different.
“Oh, stop whining.” Mads had a smile in her voice. “You knew this was going to be tough.”
“I know.” And it was getting tougher. “I also know what I’ve got to do now.” Lucy peered up at the house next door. A light was on in the downstairs window. She now knew that was the kitchen and Richard was in it.
“Oh?”
“Stop being a ballbuster because I need a little cheering here.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going in.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone as Mads put the pieces together and then she gasped. “No?”
“Yes.”
“Are you ready?”
“Absolutely not.” Then again, she didn’t think she would ever be ready. “But he’s the one taking care of my dad and unless I get this part out of the way, we are going to continue circling each other like a pair of stiff-legged dogs.”
She had her phone in a death grip and Lucy tried to flex her frozen fingers. “Sweet Mother of God, but it’s cold.”
“Duh. That’s why you have to get your skinny ass back to Seattle as soon as all this is over. How’s your mother?”
“You want to talk about my mother? Now?”
“We both know you need a couple of minutes to stall. So, yes, let’s talk about your mother. Or even better yet, your father.”
“Damn, you’re good.”
“Uh-huh.” Lucy could hear Mads shift the phone into a more comfortable position against her ear.
“My mom’s not so good, actually.” The wind whipped around the corner of the house and stung her eyes. Overhead the clouds were looming ominously. Lucy decided to ignore the rather obvious portent. She was not much of a symbolism girl, anyway.
“Your father giving her a hard time?”
“He’s a lot worse than I thought.” Lucy took the stairs down to the sidewalk carefully. Salt crunched under her boot heels. She suspected Richard had been up doing his thing again. He really was one of the world’s last good guys. And she’d let him go. Nope. She’d not just let him go, she’d tossed him, like a caber, as far as she could. And he still shoveled and salted for her parents.
“So, she’s depressed, unhappy, scared . . . ?”
“It’s not that, Mads,” Lucy said, struggling to articulate a circling suspicion she hadn’t quite worked out for herself. “She’s hesitant, as if she is not sure she wants to do anything.”
“Ahh.” All that wisdom was a tad annoying sometimes.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” Mads compounded her sins by laughing. “You’ll work this one out.”
“Thank you, Obi-Wan.”
This was it. She stood on the walk in front of Richard’s house. “I’m standing right in front of his house.”
“Is that a song lyric?”
“No.” She’d been watching and seen him come home from work. A few minutes later, he’d come out again, dressed for a run. Oblivious to her bemused gaze, he’d trotted off and not returned for a good three hours. Who did that?
She’d given him an hour to have a shower and something to eat. It was now closer to eleven than ten thirty and very late for a social call, but she knew he was there. The element of surprise was on her side.
“Elliot called me,” Mads said into her left ear.
“What?” Lucy was momentarily distracted enough to stop her sharp focus on the cheery red door that marked the entrance to the dragon’s lair. “Elliot called you? Why?”
“He wants to know when you’ll be back.”
“I told him, not for a few weeks.”
“You know Elliot,” Mads murmured. “He likes specifics and anyway, it’s fair for him to ask. He deserves some answers from you.”
“And he’ll get them,” Lucy said through gritted teeth, aware she was irritated with Elliot and trying not to take it out on Mads, but, really? They so didn’t have to do this right now. Not when she was so nervous cookie-tossing started to feel imminent. “As soon as I have them,” she finished grimly and took a deep breath.
“That’s what I told him.”
“And he said?”
Mads laughed again, like Lucy wasn’t on the brink of one of the most defining moments of her life, but was sitting with Mads in her small apartment and eating something decadent and wicked. “Again, you know Elliot. He had plenty to say about it. I didn’t listen to most of it. It’s all about the same stuff anyway. He loves you, he wants to be with you, and he wants you to be on the same page.”
The small, paned window in the red door gaped like a troll mouth. Lucy stepped forward. She was now officially on Richard’s property. It was not quite the point of no return, but she was approaching it fast. Her breathing accelerated with her pulse rate. “I can’t deal with Elliot now. I’m almost there.”
“Is that why this is sounding more and more like an obscene phone call?” Mads teased and then said, “You are there to settle this thing with Richard, so you can move on. You can’t separate that from Elliot. I think you should bear this in mind when you go in there. You are doing this for a number of reasons. Your father is one, but getting on with your life and being able to commit to a relationship is another big part of why.”
“You think Richard is the reason I can’t commit.”
“Duh!”
“I suppose you’re right.” Lucy chewed her lip. No other man in her life had compared to Richard. She was almost at the front step. Unlike her parents’ house, Richard’s was fronted with a small covered portico. Beneath her feet, matting scrunched. “But do you think that’s because of guilt or residual feelings?”
“Lucy.” Mads suddenly lost patience with her. “That is what you are there to find out.”
Lucy didn’t rise to the bait. She had arrived. The door, with its grimacing glass, was right in front of her. It hadn’t seemed nearly as unfriendly the other night when she was here. Or maybe it had. Who knew? She got a firm grip on the mental jabbering.
“You can do this, Lucy Locket.” Mads grew serious. “You got yourself sober and this, you can do.”
“Bye, Mads.”
Lucy reached out and rang the doorbell. Half afraid he wasn’t there anymore and more terrified that he was.
He opened the door on an impatient yank. A
who the hell is ringing my doorbell at this time of night
type of gesture and Lucy jumped back a step. All the air left his body in a great whoosh and they stared at each other.
“Um . . . hi.”
Silence.
He stared at her.
Lucy stared back.
“It’s late.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that, but you went out earlier.”
“I was out for a run.”
“Oh, that’s what I figured. Since you were wearing all the . . . um . . . running stuff.”
Lucy’s eyes roamed a bit. He wore a ratty old T-shirt and a pair of track pants, both of which should have been consigned to dishrags a couple of years ago. They clung to the muscular lines of his body.
“I wondered if I could come in? Again?” That didn’t sound one bit like her voice. She sounded like a frightened teenager. Come to think of it, she felt like a frightened teenager. “You are Dad’s doctor and I am here to help out and I . . .” She stuttered impotently as he continued to turn her to a statue with his eyes. “I would like about half an hour of your time. It’s important.” Now she almost sounded adult.
“Yeah,” he finally spoke. His voice sounded a bit rusty as if it came from some place deep inside him. Still, he didn’t move, but stood in the doorway looking down at her. He hunched his shoulders against the cold.
“Should I come back at another time?”
“Um . . . no.” He stood a moment more, and then must have realized what he was doing and stepped back to allow her in. “Now is as good a time as any. I was . . . er . . .” He gestured toward the inside of the house vaguely. “I was . . . er. Jesus, Lucy.” He exploded all of a sudden. Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. “What is this all about? Is your mother ill? Your dad?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Lucy froze in the middle of shrugging out of her coat. “I wanted to speak to you. About something personal.” He still looked mulish. “Something to do with you and me and the past.”
“Ah, shit.” At least that’s what she thought he muttered. It was difficult to tell with him spinning on his heel and stalking away into the shadowed depth of the house.
She hesitated a moment before finally wrestling out of her coat and hanging it up. He disappeared through a doorway as she bent over and unlaced her boots, slipping them off her feet. She took a step into the house, preparing to follow. Lucy stopped, dashed back, and carefully placed her boots side by side on the rubber matting. She took a soothing breath.
The inside of the house was immaculately clean. There was nothing out of place and the floors gleamed like a ballroom. It made her feel like even more of an interloper. The faint smell of what he’d eaten for dinner hung about and it smelled good. He must have learned to cook. He would have had to. Ashley had barely been able to boil an egg without causing a major incident.
She peered around the door frame cautiously. The kitchen was a cheerful space that could have easily absorbed a family of ten, but it appeared lonely and abandoned and, once again, spotlessly clean.
Richard waited for her. His hips propped up against the far counter with the window behind him. A large, central island stood between them. His arms were crossed over his chest and his face cast in stone.
“May I?” She indicated a spindle-backed chair pulled up to a table. She didn’t trust her knees right now. The table was tucked into a neat little alcove and cheerfully curtained in lime green and white.
He nodded and shrugged, uncrossed his arms, and then crossed them again. “Do you . . . er . . . want anything to drink? I have beer, wine?”
“A soda would be fine, if you have it.”
He handed her a can.
Lucy took it and popped the tab. She had no idea what she was drinking, but she drank it anyway. It gave her hands something to do instead of fidget. She noticed he took a Landshark and popped the cap without taking a sip. He used to drink Heineken.
Actually, he never used to drink much at all. She’d covered that part of their relationship and done a rather thorough job of it, which brought her to what she was doing here. Lucy put the can onto the table with a dull thunk. She was not sure, but Richard might have jumped slightly.
“I wanted to talk to you because of my dad,” she said, wincing. She could do better than that. “Actually, that’s only part of it. The other part is about what you asked me the other night.”
The only sign he was still alive was the occasional rise and fall of his chest.
“You asked me why.” She cleared her throat and took another breath. “You wanted to know why I . . . you wanted to know why I left like I did.”
He shifted slightly, his jaw muscle clenching and unclenching rapidly.
“I think you deserve some sort of explanation.” She wished he would say something, but the silence clawed between them. She spoke again. “Um . . . it probably isn’t going to be huge news to you, but it turns out I am an alcoholic. I have been in recovery for the last three years.” It seemed the most logical place to start.
He didn’t look exactly blown away.
She’d certainly never hidden her drinking from him. Only then, when they were all doing it, it was easier to convince herself there was no problem. She was just a girl who liked to party. “And as such I am tasked with making amends.”
“So you’re in AA?” His deep, smooth voice cut her off.
“Yes.”
“I know about the Twelve Steps. I researched it for a patient or two.”
“Oh, right.” Lucy mentally cut out the middle bit. He clearly didn’t need a summary of the Twelve Steps.
“Why now?” He broke into her thoughts.
Lucy swallowed and weighed her answer. “I think it’s time.” Her mouth twisted into a rueful grimace. “Actually, it’s way overdue, but I—couldn’t before.”
He stood totally still with his arms crossed over his chest, his beer hanging forgotten in one hand.
“I owe you this.” She stopped talking and looked at him. Silently asking permission to continue.
Finally, he made a soft noise in the back of his throat and nodded.
“Um . . . you and I.” Lucy took a juddering breath and another sip from her soda. Something sweet hit the back of her throat and made her cough. Forget about hard, this was like ripping her soul out. “I should never have, what I mean is, that you and . . . ah. Damn, this is not coming out the right way.”
“You haven’t said anything yet,” he replied in a flat voice.
“Right.” Lucy blew out a breath.
Start at the beginning, Lucy
. “I suppose, it all really starts with Ashley and me. Even before you and me or you and Ashley, there was Ashley and me.” His face grew harder and she rushed through her words. “You see the thing with Ashley and me; I was always jealous of Ashley and if she had something, then I wanted it. And Ashley had you.”
“How flattering,” he drawled, and took a long sip of his beer. His hands were not quite steady. It gave her a small shot of courage.
“It was more than that.” Her voice grew stronger. “I took one look at you and knew that I wanted you for myself. Taking you from Ashley was icing on the cake. I deliberately set out to break you two up and I managed that.” He flinched slightly as if she had struck him. “I wanted you and like a spoiled and ungrateful child, I took you.”