The Color of a Dream (13 page)

Later Diana went over to Jacob’s house and I
was left home alone.

After I put Ellen to bed, I made some
organic popcorn on the stove and stayed up late reading a romance
novel.

When Ellen woke me the following morning, I
was surprised to discover a text that had come in at 3:00 a.m. It
was from Jesse, and just like that romance novel, it caused my new
heart to flutter like crazy.

Are you free today? I’d like to talk to you
about something.

I rolled over onto my back in bed and texted
a reply: Yes, I’m free. What time and where?

I waited a few seconds to see if he would
text back right away and he did: You’re up early. Just heading to
bed. 2:00?

Sure. Can Ellen join us? I usually take her
for a walk in the afternoon.

He texted back a few seconds later: Yes to
Ellen joining us. I’ll come to your place at 2:00.

See you then! I replied.

Feeling exhilarated, I set my phone down and
got out of bed to fetch Ellen who was standing up in her crib,
waiting for me to lift her out.

“Good morning, sunshine!” I said.
“Weatherman says it’s going to be a beautiful day.”

I lowered the crib rail. She grabbed hold of
her blanket and dragged it with her as I lifted her into my
arms.

* * *

For some reason, I chose not to tell Diana
about my meeting with Jesse that afternoon. I wanted to find out
what he wanted to talk about first.

He knocked on my door at 2:00 on the nose
and I invited him in to wait while I put sunscreen on and buckled
Ellen into her stroller. He helped me lift her down the steps to
the street.

“How was work last night?” I asked as I
handed Ellen a sippy cup full of diluted apple juice before
adjusting the brim of her sunhat.

“Uneventful,” he replied. “I spent most of
the night in the hangar dealing with the engineers. There was a
problem with a gearbox.”

“What’s a gearbox?” I asked, gripping the
stroller handle and pushing off.

“A very important piece of machinery,” he
explained as he fell into step beside me. “It sends power from the
engine to the rotors.”

“The rotors are the blades that keep you in
the air?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah,” I said. “That does sound important.”
We chatted more about his work, reached the end of the street and
headed toward the Public Garden.

“You said, in your text, that you wanted to
talk to me about something?” I casually asked him.

“Yeah,” he replied, “though it’s nothing
specific. It’s just… After meeting you and Ellen yesterday, I can’t
stop thinking about your custody case. I’m surprised Rick is doing
this. It brought back some memories.”

“Your girlfriend?” I gently said.

He nodded and gestured with his hands. “I
want to
help
you. You said you couldn’t get hold of Rick.
What if I called my parents to try and find out where he is? I
don’t even know if they’re aware of what’s happening. Or maybe they
put him up to this for all I know.”

I gazed up at Jesse with bewilderment. “You
said you hadn’t spoken to your parents in ten years. Why would you
want to do that for me? You hardly know me.”

Jesse slipped his hands into the pockets of
his jeans and slid me a glance. “You seem like a nice enough person
and I saw how you were with your daughter yesterday. You’re a good
mom and I can’t stomach the idea of my brother taking Ellen away
from you.”

As I pushed Ellen’s stroller along the brick
sidewalk, I remembered Diana’s advice to me about the dangers of
inviting men into my life when the courts were judging my fitness
as a single parent. Yet nothing could stop the thrilling spark of
excitement that flared inside me when Jesse said those kind
words.

He squinted up at the sky. “I’ve seen Rick
do too many things without a single thought for how others might
feel. He was like that when we were young, especially with girls. I
don’t know how he lived with himself.”

Diana was right about something else—Jesse
was nothing like Rick. He was a kinder, gentler soul. I had known
few men like him in my life.

Though I’d only met Jesse the previous day,
I could easily see myself falling head over heels in love with
him—which was a dangerous thing because I needed to stay focused on
Ellen and the custody suit.

We entered the Public Garden at the corner
of Beacon and Charles Streets and walked leisurely down the wide
path toward the lagoon. As we entered the shade beneath a large
silver maple, I gazed up at the leaves, listened to the sound of
Ellen’s squeaky stroller wheels and breathed in the fresh scent of
the late summer air.

It was moments like these when I became
almost overcome by the rapture of simply being alive. I thanked God
for the miracle of modern medicine and the generosity of my organ
donor.

I wanted to share my joy with Jesse, but
something held me back. Maybe it was the fact that I sensed a
brewing attraction between us. Was I worried it might change how he
felt about me if he knew there was a long disfiguring scar between
my breasts?

Really…what man would knowingly become
involved with a woman who was constantly at risk for infections and
had to take medications for the rest of her life to prevent her
body from rejecting her own heart?

It was because of the scar that I didn’t
wear low cut tank tops, even in this scorching summer heat. I
preferred to keep it hidden from view.

We reached a giant weeping willow and I
heard the calming sound of the ducks quacking on the water.

“Have you ever taken Ellen for a ride on one
of the Swan Boats?” Jesse asked.

I smiled up at him. “Not yet, but it’s been
on my To Do list since the start of the summer.”

“We should go,” he suggested. “We’ll pretend
to be tourists.”

“All right,” I replied with a laugh, knowing
better than anyone that life was precious and opportunities like
this shouldn’t be squandered.

Together, we headed over to the boat dock to
buy our tickets.

* * *

It was a fifteen-minute ride around the
Lagoon with a college-aged captain who sat in the swan seat at the
rear of the boat and peddled us around. We passed slowly under the
bridge, past weeping willows with branches dipping into the water.
Ellen loved seeing the real swans that peddled faster than we did
and overtook us around the bend.

When we returned to the dock and stepped off
the boat, I laughed with Jesse that it was the best two dollars and
seventy-five cents I’d ever spent. He made sure to remind me with a
playful nudge that he had been the one to pay for the tickets.

Soon we were strolling along the wide path
again. Jesse wanted to know more about how Diana and I found each
other in Los Angeles two years ago.

“It must have been strange to meet your
identical twin for the first time,” he said.

I told him everything—how she’d contacted me
in a letter and how we exchanged emails back and forth, then
finally met in a nearby restaurant.

“I used to have a recurring dream,” he told
me, “that I was running beside myself around a race track. Kind of
like I was looking at my twin and cheering him on. I never knew
what it meant. I still don’t.”

“I have a recurring dream too,” I said. “I
dream that I’m flying, usually at night.”

“Really? I think that’s a pretty common
dream for people.” He pulled out his phone. “Let’s Google it and
see what it means.”

He typed in the question as we walked, then
cupped a hand over the screen to shade it from the sunlight.

“Here we go,” he said. “This is from Dream
Moods dot com. It says ‘If you are flying with ease and are
enjoying the scene and landscape below, then it suggests that you
are on top of a situation. You have risen above something. It may
also mean that you have gained a new and different perspective on
things. Flying dreams and the ability to control your flight is
representative of your own personal sense of power.’” He lowered
his phone and looked at me. “Do you fly with ease?”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I do. I’m not
scared or afraid of heights and I always feel pretty good when I
wake up, as if I had a good time exploring new places.”

He nodded. “Well, it’s very clear to me that
you have risen above something and I admire you for it.”

I inclined my head at him. “What’s that?” I
asked.

Had he caught a glimpse of my scar somehow?
Did he know the truth? Maybe at lunch, I’d leaned the wrong way and
my blouse had fallen open slightly.

Then he smiled. “You kicked my
good-for-nothing brother to the curb.”

There was no mistaking the flirtatious
glimmer of amusement in his eye and I felt a rush of excitement.
“You’re right. That has
got
to be my great accomplishment,”
I said with a laugh. “Now I understand!”

We continued walking and as I pondered the
true meaning of my dreams, I realized they hadn’t begun until about
six or eight months after my transplant surgery—when I was finally
on the road to a clean bill of health. It made perfect sense that I
would feel victorious while I slept.

Suddenly I felt foolish for imagining it had
anything to do with my donor. Had I truly contemplated contacting
his family to suggest that the spirit of their lost loved one was
inhabiting me, flying me over the hospital where he died? They
surely would have thought I was a basket case.

Jesse helped me push the stroller onto a
grassy knoll and I unbuckled Ellen so she could toddle around. She
laughed as Jesse chased her. He caught her, lifted her up onto his
shoulders and carried her to the edge of the Lagoon where they
watched the ducks and Swan Boats. Then they played elevator
again.

I stayed behind with the empty stroller and
wondered what the future held for Ellen and me. Here we were,
spending the afternoon with a man who was her uncle by blood—a man
I found immensely attractive. A man I already trusted in a way that
surprised me.

Meanwhile his brother, who had caused Diana
and me great pain and heartache in the past, was suing for
custody.

Our broken hearts were insignificant, of
course, compared to the thought of losing my daughter who I loved
with all my heart. Ellen was the whole world to me, the sole
purpose for my existence. She was my reason for living, for
surviving. I couldn’t lose her. I simply couldn’t.

Though Rick had been the one to give her to
me, I hated him in that moment. Did he know the level of pain he
would inflict if he took her away?

Did he care? Was he even capable of
caring?

According to Jesse, probably not.

Perhaps that was how I would prove I was the
better parent.

Jesse Fraser

I began this story with a query about
coincidences, but I’m not entirely certain that what happened to me
could be called such a thing. Everything seemed so orchestrated, as
if a puppet master stood over us plotting our movements, moving us
here and there, back and forth across a stage. It all came together
so tidily in the end that it seemed predestined, as if someone had
programed our lives to intersect at a certain moment in time, so a
deeper, more profound knowledge would come to all of us.

But I’m not sure you’ll believe in that sort
of thing.

When I first met Nadia Carmichael, I was the
most unromantic skeptic who ever lived. I was jaded and guarded
when it came to women, yet my heart nearly exploded out of my chest
when she looked up at me for the first time in the restaurant…with
her big, expressive eyes.

I don’t know why I reacted that way to her
when I was meeting her identical twin at the same moment. Why was I
so powerfully drawn to Nadia and not Diana?

I suppose I’ll never know unless I admit to
believing in love at first sight, or soul mates, or recognizing
people you know from some other lifetime or dimension. Or maybe it
was just chemistry. Hormones and pheromones.

Whatever the case, when I sat down at that
table for lunch with Nadia, Diana and Dr. Jacob Peterson, my fate
was sealed. There was no getting out of it. I simply had to help
this woman keep her child.

I just wasn’t sure
why
I needed to
help her. Or what my true motivation was.

* * *

Even when I sent the text to Nadia in the
middle of the night—twelve hours after we first met—I was still
unsure of my purpose. I had grappled with the decision to see her
again and had told myself it was a bad idea.

Don’t text her
.
Stay out of
it
.

Hadn’t she made her bed when she made the
mistake of falling for my brother’s charms? This wasn’t my problem.
Was I to spend my entire life cleaning up the emotional wreckage in
every woman my brother left behind? Was that even possible? I
certainly hadn’t been able to save Angela.

But was
that
what I was trying to do?
Save
Nadia? Did I even have the power to do that? What if I
somehow made things worse?

Nevertheless, despite all my angst,
self-doubt and clumsy decision-making, I sent the text and arranged
to meet her.

Then, true to form, I became even more
infatuated. So infatuated in fact, that in the first five minutes
during our walk to the Garden, I promised I would call my parents
and track down my brother. I would find out what I could to help
her case.

Was I mad?
Yes.

Did I regret it?
Definitely not.

Here’s what I learned…

* * *

“Dr. Fraser speaking.”

The sound of my father’s quiet baritone
voice on the phone was like a slingshot that sent me straight back
to my childhood, to the memory of how he could walk into a room and
intimidate me with just one look.