Miracle (59 page)

Pop was mollified. His eyelids drooped, and after a few seconds he returned to staring benignly out the window. “I think he loves you more than you know,” Sebastien told her, stroking her shoulder. “He obviously loved your mother very much.”

“Maybe so, but I think he’s always resented me because I was the reason she died. I was a big mistake, right from the beginning.”

“
Look at me
” The fierceness in his voice startled her. He grasped her face between his hands and frowned harshly into her eyes. “We are more than we were expected to be. So to hell with how we got here. I love you.”

“Oh, Doc, I love you, too.” Amy hugged him and concentrated on thinking positive thoughts. She would not let their future be affected by anyone’s morbid memories—not Pop’s, not Sebastien’s, and especially not her own.

She had sold Pop’s place more than a year ago to cover his nursing-home bills. She’d given most of the furnishings to the Salvation Army and put the personal items—his circus memorabilia and the paintings—into storage at a warehouse. Sebastien wanted to see them, and she took him reluctantly.

“It makes me feel bad to look at them,” she explained. “Just reminds me of too much, I guess. I spent so many years watching him paint and drink and smoke dope.” Inside the small storage room she opened a wooden crate and gestured toward the canvases. “Flip through ’em and see what you think.”

When he came to the ones of her, he stopped. “Of course he loved you. It shows here.”

“You have a kinder eye than mine.”

“When we furnish our homes, I’d like to have some of these framed. They should be displayed.”

She kissed him gratefully, but shook her head. “I can’t imagine putting these paintings out where they can see me.”

“
See you
?”

“I feel like Pop’s watchin’ me when I look at these. And I’m not sure whether it’s good watchin’, if you know what I mean.”

“I think it is.”

She gently laid a hand along his cheek but looked at him with reproach. “You can be awful magnanimous about
my
father’s sentiments.”

“While still being utterly cynical about my own father’s? Yes, but you see, dear Miracle, that’s why you and I are so wonderful together. We want the best for each other. Without deception or dishonesty.”

Guilt made her look away quickly. “I do want the best for you,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him, not yet.

In the back of her mind she considered the B-movie quality of the scene. All she needed was a white handkerchief to wave as she watched the big jet taxi away from the gate. A gold-and-pink sunset streamed across the horizon; standing by the concourse’s windows, she rested her forehead on the glass and thought that the sunset would break her apart with its beauty.

She didn’t cry, though she knew she would later. She tried to think in terms of beginnings, not endings. That was how Sebastien had wanted it too. That was why he’d waited until they reached the gate to give her the ring—a large sapphire surrounded by diamonds, with their initials and the date engraved inside the band. And he’d given her a sterling-silver cross that had belong to his mother. It was a Celtic design, delicately ornamented with a circle surrounding the crucifix. He told her that to the ancient Celts the circle had represented both the sun, and as a symbol of endlessness, eternity.

He had placed it around her neck on a woven sterling chain, and now, as she watched the jet leave, she clasped it in her fingertips. It was warm in the sunlight, a promise of faith and, knowing Sebastien, of protection.

This doctor knew how to deliver news with style. “You guessed right. The bunny has gone toes up.”

Amy stared dully at a painting of frolicking lambs on the obstetrician’s office wall. “Could we try CPR on it?”

“Welcome to the world of improbable odds. You’re part of the two percent failure rate for the pill.”

“A few weeks ago I was sick. I throw up everything but the kitchen sink for two days. I took my pills, but maybe they never hit home.”

“It’s possible. How do you feel about being pregnant?”

“Worried.”

“I’m sure that you know what your options are.”

“Yeah.” She looked down at the flat abdomen covered by her sundress. She had tried to disassociate herself from the life that might be inside her. At the same time a deep, loving conviction had been growing along with that life. Bittersweet certainty made goose bumps rise on her skin. She put a hand on her stomach and said softly, “Hello, there. Your daddy wants you as much as I do. He just doesn’t know it, yet. But don’t get upset. Everything’ll be fine.”

“I guess I know which option you picked.” The doctor sat back in her chair and began scribbling notes on a pad. “You’re healthy, and everything seems okay with the pregnancy. Go see your regular ob/gyn when you get back to Los Angeles.”

“I’ll be traveling a lot in the next few months. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Not if you take care of yourself and arrange to have regular checkups.”

“Can do.”

“Will the baby’s father be around?”

“Nope.”

“He’s not interested?”

“Oh, he’d be very interested, if I told him. But I can’t do that to him right now. It’s complicated.”

Her hand became a fist. She
would
tell him when she was further along, when he had his family’s situation under control, when he might let himself see shades of light instead of shadows. Until then, she could only take care of her health and think good thoughts for the baby inside her.
This
baby would not be born under a father’s curse.

T
he cool autumn day turned rainy before noon; it was not a good day to be working the docks at a warehouse and shipping company, especially one that was poorly managed, losing money, and should never have been purchased by his father’s officers in the first place. But Sebastien liked the release of pent-up energy that came from lifting heavy boxes of automobile parts onto the wooden pallets that lined the docks.

Here he confronted forces he understood. In a peculiar way they reminded him of performing heart surgery: His hands were guided by instinct, his energy could burst through obstacles, he made decisions and watched them spring immediately into action. Stacking boxes made him ache to be in an operating room again. He smiled to himself at the strangeness of the comparison.

He was no businessman, and he didn’t pretend to be. Statistics bored him when they were attached to profit margins rather than blood pressures. There was nothing human about them, nothing touchable, nothing he could use to fix a damaged body and observe its owner’s recuperation with a sense of the most primal victory, life over death.

When called upon to make a business decision he had to sort through advice from a dozen executives, weighing each one’s points with painstaking skill but no talent; he was forced to hide his uncertainty behind a facade of
confidence, lest they suspect his vulnerability and take advantage of it. How different from surgery, where he had known every answer before the question!

Today his frustration was at a peak. He took fiendish pride in the way the managers crept around him in their white shirts and dress slacks, trying to look useful and hide their dismay. None of his father’s executives had ever donned canvas overalls and labored alongside the dockworkers. The dockworkers grinned at him now that their initial shock had worn off. They were enormous, brawny men of bawdy good humor. Sebastien remembered his mother’s people in the fishing villages of Brittany, and felt at home.

He watched sinews strain in his hands and wondered how much longer it would be before those hands could return to the work they did best. He wanted his surgical career back; he wanted his life with Amy back.

She called every night at twelve o’clock Paris time, and he was always waiting. Depending on what city she was in, it would be late afternoon or early evening there, and she would be getting ready to go to work, two shows a night, three on the weekends. Often she and he talked until the minute she had to leave her hotel room. A month had passed since they parted. He would see her again next week. It seemed years away.

Anticipating her nightly calls kept him going. His days were filled with meetings, travel, and paperwork. His father still clung to life in the hospital, though each day he remained in a coma made it less likely he would survive. Annette had been released from the hospital a few weeks ago, but only because Sebastien had arranged nursing care and daily visits from physical therapists at home.

What he could not arrange, no matter how hard he tried, was her contentment. Her jealousy over his new power had riddled the core of their relationship. Annette’s injuries and her grief over losing Giancarlo were no less potent than her suspicions about Sebastien’s authority. He had lost his sister, the one member of the family who had been close to him.

He threw boxes atop the highest stacks and felt neglected
muscles stretch taut in his torso. The company’s general manager came over for the fourth time in a half hour, wringing his hands. “Please, sir, there’s no need for this. I really don’t understand the point.”

“Stop bothering me, or I’ll put you to work at a job that requires more than a talent for making excuses.”

The manager turned red when the dockworkers failed to hide their smiles. “Sir, I’m tired of this humiliation! You complain about my organization of the warehouse, you say that my accounting procedures are unsatisfactory, and now you try to show me that my dockworkers are overburdened and underpaid. I won’t accept this! I’ll resign if you push me too far!”

Sebastien paused long enough to glower at him. “Your resignation is accepted. Good-bye.”

So much for diplomacy in management
.