Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (24 page)

The sun was high in the sky when we finally walked out of the woods, all of us together, my fingers linked through Ben’s and the dogs walking side by side like well-trained little soldiers.

As we came back out to the edge of the field, I saw the solitary figure at the other end still working valiantly to launch his kite. He’d finally gotten it airborne, but it shuddered uncertainly twenty or thirty feet in the air behind his running form. This was the crucial part of flying a kite, I remembered from lessons with my mom and dad at the beach when Stu and I were kids. When it was fighting the air currents low to the ground it could go one of two ways: plunging back down to crash into the dirt, or lofting up and riding the gentler currents higher up.

We walked toward our vehicles, Ben and I both watching as the kite dipped, froze for a moment, and then launched high into the air, sailing smoothly into the sky overhead.

twenty-eight

We all gathered for Sunday dinner at my parents’ house—me, Sasha and Stu…and Ben.

“Of course he’s welcome, Brook Lyn,” my mom said when I’d called to make sure she was okay with one extra mouth at the table. Though I could tell she was trying to conceal it, I could hear the surprise in her tone. It had been a long time since I’d brought anyone to family dinner. “It’ll be a pleasure to finally meet this boy.”

Dad shook Ben’s hand at the door, welcoming him inside, and Mom greeted him with a hug.

A
hug
. Once again I had to wonder whether my mother had some terminal illness she wasn’t telling us about.

Ben pitched right in, asking what he could do to help, and Mom assigned him plate duty—bringing the dishes over while she filled them with meat loaf, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts, and taking them to the table while Sasha and I poured drinks, and Stu got out the cloth napkins at Mom’s directive.

The good linens meant Mom knew Ben was special.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the weekly download routine—where Mom grilled each of us kids on our week as we sat to eat, this time starting with me.

I told everyone about losing the radio show, and even my mom expressed sympathy. “But that’s okay,” I said. “Maybe this will open up other opportunities.”

“Good attitude, hon,” my dad praised me.

Ben was to my left, and I expected Mom to skip over him. To my surprise, she nodded down the table at him and said, “So, Ben, I hear you’re a builder. What’s the latest in your business?”

Mom was never my confidante—for dating or anything else—and I couldn’t remember when I might have mentioned Ben’s business to her. Maybe I had, or maybe it was Sasha—the two of them often seemed far closer than Mom and I usually found a way to be. Either way, it warmed my heart that she remembered.

Ben leaped right into the swing of things, briefly telling my family about his thoughts on repurposing the abandoned Seaboard railroad tracks through town, and that he’d already started drawing up a proposal to submit to the city.

“That’s a very civic-minded project to take on,” Mom said. “It’s good to leave the world a little better than you found it.”

I smiled inwardly at the advice she’d drilled into me and Stu since we were kids, thinking about how Ben had found a way to change the world after all—just a little closer to home. Thank God.

As if reading my thoughts, he found my hand under the table and squeezed.

When it was Stu’s turn, my brother was uncharacteristically brief—“Same old for now, Ma,” he said with a wink.

Mom pursed her lips—glibness was not okay at Sunday dinners—but out of deference to our guest, I was sure, she simply moved on to Sasha. “What’s going on at the paper these days?”

Sasha had stopped eating, her hands in her lap under the table. She looked nervous, and suddenly the breath froze in my throat. “Well, I got an offer from the
Tampa Trib
that would mean a big promotion for me,” she said hesitantly.

My heart dropped to my feet.

That was it. She’d made her final decision.

I’d sworn to support her and I would, but it would have been so much easier to have some time to absorb her choice alone, without having to paste a false smile on my face in front of my parents…in front of Ben, who still didn’t know anything about my brother and Sasha’s situation.

“Sweetheart, that’s fantastic!” Dad said.

Mom was frowning. “You’re moving?”

“Not exactly,” Sash said, resting her chin in one palm and drumming her fingers against her cheek.

“Oh, my lord,” my mother said in a strangely hushed voice. Sasha knew better than to put elbows on the table, but Mom castigating her for it was the least of my concerns at the moment.

And then I saw what my mother had seen—the glittering stone on Sasha’s fourth finger. My heart stuttered in my chest, then resumed its beating triple-time.

“I asked Sasha to get hitched,” Stu said, a wide grin splitting his face. “And by some unknown miracle, she said yes.”

The table exploded around me, but all I could do was sit motionless, cocooned in a bubble of shock.

Across the table Sasha met my eyes, never pulling her gaze from mine as she went on: “And there’s one other thing. There’s going to be a new Ogden in about seven months.”

This time I covered my mouth with my hands as everyone once again exploded into chaos. Sasha caught my eye and gave the tiniest of nods.

Dad was congratulating the two of them, lit up like the Rockefeller tree, while Mom tried hard to come up with something about doing things in the proper order and not jumping the gun, but she couldn’t suppress the smile—full teeth—that took over her face. Ben added his congratulations before sliding a glance to me, his expression suddenly turning concerned.

“Brook Lyn, what’s the matter with you?” my mom asked, startling me.

Tears—one more thing on the list of many that I was learning I couldn’t control—coursed down my cheeks, and I still sat with my hands over my trembling mouth like a speak-no-evil monkey. I lowered them, reminding myself that as far as anyone besides Sasha and Stu knew, this was the first I’d heard of any of this. “I’m just…happy for you guys. I’m so happy.” My voice choked on the last word, and Mom’s gaze on me narrowed.

“Since when are you so sentimental?” she said.

“Sometimes people can surprise you,” Sasha answered for me, but her eyes stayed glued on mine.

I held her gaze, unable to do anything more than nod.

After dinner, when the excitement of Sasha and Stu’s announcement had finally ebbed to a throbbing hum, Dad invited Ben to see his woodworking shop in the garage, and Stu bailed on clearing the table with me and Sasha to join them.

“Daddy made me that rocking chair on my back porch,” I told Ben as they filed toward the garage, and then looked over to my dad. “I use it all the time. Just to sit and relax,” I told him.

My father winked at me, as if understanding all that I didn’t say. “Looks like I gotta start a new chair now, so my daughter-in-law can rock my grandbaby,” he said with a glance to my mom, and to my surprise she sidled over next to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. As I set two dishes I carried on the counter (because God forbid we stack them at Mom’s house—“This isn’t a diner!”), I saw him squeeze her close, and she shut her eyes and pressed her face into his chest for the barest moment.

I didn’t know what had happened to bring them back together so tightly, but whatever it was, I was grateful.

He kissed the top of her head and let her go, and Mom dove into the dishes like a porpoise into a school of fish. As the boys trekked out toward the garage I grabbed a towel to dry, and Sasha stood ready to put everything away, but Mom made a shooing motion without looking up at us.

“That’s enough—all these people in my kitchen. Go on, you two—give me some space here.”

Being excused from cleanup duties was unprecedented, but Sasha and I weren’t about to question it. We absconded out to my parents’ lanai, settling onto adjacent chaises facing the pool. The canal leading out to the Caloosahatchee beyond it revealed itself in the purple evening only in the splashes of illumination from dock lights dotting its length, and the almost inaudible lapping of its calm waters.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said to me in the quiet darkness.

I angled a disbelieving glance at her. “Sorry? For what?”

“I know it hurt your feelings that I didn’t tell you first.”

I shrugged indifferently. “No, it didn’t.”

“Liar,” she retorted, and I had to laugh.

“Yeah, okay. It did. But I get it.”

“You do?”

“I know I made things harder on you while you were figuring all this out.”

Sasha shook her head. “No. That’s not it at all. It’s just…” She glanced up toward the kitchen window, where we could see the top of my mom’s head as she attacked the dishes with exceptional fervor. “I always thought that when the time came for something like this, I’d do some big wonderful announcement to you, just the two of us. But I kind of blew that,” she said wryly. “And then I realized I wanted us to share it with the whole family.”

A smile plucked at my lips at her words. We’d always seen Sasha as part of our family, but this was the first time she seemed to really believe that we were hers.

“Sash…are you sure about this?” I said, keeping my voice pitched low.

She looked at me with one skeptical eyebrow raised. “After spending weeks trying to convince me I’m ready, now you’re trying to unconvince me?”

“Not at all. It’s just…what changed?”

Sasha looked out toward the dark slash of my parents’ yard where it dropped off to the canal. “Nothing,” she said finally.

I puzzled over that for a moment—it was the same answer my dad had given me when I asked him what he expected me to do while I rocked in the chair he’d made me.

“You mean you just relaxed and leaned into it?” I ventured.

Sasha snorted. “Oh, hell, no. I’m still scared shit— witless.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I guess I have to start cleaning up the language. Anyway, ever since the night I came over to your house…after Lisa…Stu and I have really
talked
. And it turns out he’s terrified too.”

I shook my head. “But how does that help?”

She shrugged. “I was so freaked out. But he seemed like this was no big deal. And that was freaking me out even more—like he didn’t see what I was seeing: how huge this is, what a responsibility, how much can go wrong. But it turns out he has even more disaster scenarios than I do! I had no idea how many possible birth defects and disabilities are out there. And do you know how many women die in childbirth or experience serious complications? It’s horrific!” she said, but her tone was upbeat.

“And this magically assuaged your fears how…?” I asked, frowning.

She beamed, spreading her hands, palms up. “In no way whatsoever! I’m completely terrified! We both are!”

“Of course you are,” I said without thinking. “Any decent prospective parent in their right mind
would
be.”

I wanted to chew off my own tongue. Sasha had finally come around to everything I’d hoped so desperately to convince her of, and I was saying the exact wrong thing.

But far from panicking again, she simply fixed me with a steady gaze.

“Exactly,” she murmured, her smile softening to something almost beatific.

And I got it.

I reached over into the space between us, my hand extended, and Sasha took it. “You two are going to be more than decent parents.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “We can’t do worse than
my
mom and dad. And we’ve got an awfully good example in yours,” she said, tipping her chin toward the house. She looked away again, out over the light-studded canal, then looked down at her lap. “You know, for all the things I worried I’d have to give up by having kids…the one thing I couldn’t imagine losing was Stu.” She shrugged again. “As long as we’re doing this together, everything else will fall into place.”

My heart swelled, even as it broke a little for what Sasha was having to let go of. “I’m sorry about Tampa,” I said softly.

She looked up at me, and I was startled to see her still smiling. “Don’t be. At Stu’s suggestion I asked about work-sharing the position with another writer, and the
Trib
was open to it. Looks like I’ll be working there part-time…and Stu’s hiring a project manager for his company so he can stay home with the spawn on the days I’m in Tampa.” She rested a hand on her flat belly.

My brother, a stay-at-home dad? I marveled. Part-time or not, I’d never imagined it.

Just a couple of years ago our lives had all been on predictable, steady paths I’d thought they’d continue on indefinitely: I was blithely content in my old therapy practice, heading toward marriage with a man I thought I wanted to spend my life with; Sasha had one disastrous date after another as she searched for someone worthy of giving her heart to; Stu was working through a string of girls quickly enough to guarantee he’d never give his to any of them.

None of us were anywhere we thought we’d end up.

And yet…

I heard the glass door sliding open, and Stu and Ben came outside. Scooting over, I made room for Ben on the chaise next to me as Stu slung a leg behind Sasha and settled in behind her.

“What are you two doing out here?” Ben asked.

I glanced over at my brother and my best friend, nestled back-to-front with his arms cocooned around her, resting on her belly. The warmth of Ben’s hand wrapped around mine seeped inside me as I leaned closer into him.

“Nothing,” I said.

We sat silent in the comforting blanket of night, all of us listening to the steady nasal honking of a cane toad by the water, smelling the musky marine scent of the river, and feeling the mild tropical breeze against our skin.

It was strange that I’d never seen the monthly rental where Michael had been staying on San Carlos Island. It had never even occurred to me to come over.

Nestled in a tiny lot right on the back bay, the little cracker house was small, but charming, painted a sunny peach, with awnings in cheery stripes of green and white. A well-tended green lawn cocooned the house on all sides, leading back to the best part: a dock of weathered gray wood where a brand-new folding chair testified to Michael spending time sitting beside the water he loved.

I was glad to see that he’d been staying someplace nice. Even if he wasn’t staying any longer.

I’d gotten his call earlier today—he was headed out, back to Portland, and if I had a minute to stop by he’d like to say goodbye.

Of course I said yes.

When he opened the glossy wooden front door at my knock, his face was slightly flushed and shiny in the bright sun, his hair tousled and hanging into his eyes, the way it used to at the end of a long gig when he’d been giving it up onstage for two hours. His gray t-shirt clung lightly against sweat-damp skin to a body I’d once known as well as my own. Two suitcases behind him in the entryway testified to his imminent departure, and a lump clogged my throat. I wished he didn’t have to go, but I understood why he did.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

We stood there looking awkwardly at each other. Now, despite all that we’d been through together, with nowhere for us to go it seemed there was nothing left to say.

“You’re all packed?” I said stupidly, gesturing to the luggage piled in the front hall, and he shrugged.

“Didn’t have much.” Again we stood there in an uncomfortable silence, Michael just inside the door, me standing on the porch, the grating shriek of a seagull high overhead plucking at my nerves.

Finally I let out a nervous chuckle. “I’m glad you called. I was hoping to see you one—” I stopped before uttering “one last time.” “Well…to say goodbye in person.”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, staring at me. “Yeah. And also…I wanted to tell you something.”

My heart seized for a beat before resuming its rhythm. Whatever it was he needed to say to me, I would hear it. I owed him that, no matter how hard it might be for me to listen. “Okay.”

He met my gaze for another long, steady moment before turning abruptly and grabbing his two suitcases. Straightening, he stepped back toward me and the door, pausing on the threshold as I stepped back to allow him past and turning to face me fully.

“The radio station called. They want you back. Your own show this time.”

It took a second for his words to sink in—I’d been braced for something totally different—and when they did, I couldn’t quite believe them. “Are you serious?”

He dipped his head. “I heard this morning, but I was hoping to tell you in person. Congrats, Brook. You deserve it.”

Propelled along on a bubble of excitement rising up in me, I’d have thrown myself forward and hugged him if his hands hadn’t been full with the suitcases.

Which, I realized, was probably his intention.

Instead I just let the smile taking me over have its way with my face. “You really are great at this,” I said. “I would never have pursued it without you.”

He nodded once in acknowledgment, his lips still sagging downward, then walked on past me toward his car with the luggage in hand. “Keep it up,” he said over his shoulder. “What you do for people…you need to get the word out there.” I stepped off the porch and onto the walkway, semi-following him out toward the driveway. “A lot of us need it,” I thought he said as he set the bags down behind his car, but wasn’t sure amid the soft crunch of the suitcases on the crushed-shell drive and the sound of the trunk of his car clicking open.

As I watched him lift the bags into the back, I wanted to say something, to let him know how important he had been to me, and in some ways would always be. “I love you” seemed cruel, even though it was true.

“Michael,” I called as he pushed the trunk shut.

He turned, arms at his sides, waiting.

“I just want you to know…I’m so grateful. For everything.”

He lifted one eyebrow in a dear and familiar gesture, skepticism quirking one corner of his lips. “Everything?”

I thought of all that had happened in the last two years, good and bad. Thought about what I’d been through, and where I was, and nodded. “Yes. All of it. Thank you.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as a slow smile crept across his face, chasing away the sadness tugging at his features, and I felt an answering one stretch my own cheeks. We stood there like that, two survivors grinning at each other across the battlefield, until he stepped into his car, started the engine, and shut the door.

I waved him down the street until I couldn’t see him anymore, and then I turned to get inside my own car, headed back to the mainland and the life that was waiting for me there.