Someone Like You (33 page)

“It’s okay,” Cat whispered, giving her hand a squeeze. “Everything’s okay.”

And for a little while, as she watched her parents, it really was.

 

WILLIAM TOOK ANNABELLE to the cafeteria for a snack, but there was a limit to how much time they could spend over a wax carton of chocolate milk and a handful of chips.

Annabelle was bursting with questions. She wanted to know why Joely and Cat yelled at their father. She wanted to know why Mark had been away for so long. She wanted to know why families weren’t like the ones she saw on telly, why Joely had looked like she was about to cry.

He tried to explain the nature of sadness to his daughter. He searched for reasons that would make clear something that even he was at a loss to understand. He was reminded of the nature of fog, impossible to grasp and equally impossible to penetrate. He realized he had known only the bare bones of Joely’s life before she came to Loch Craig, and those things he didn’t know were shaping his future and Annabelle’s.

The only thing he knew with certainty was that Joely’s heart was breaking same as his.

They finished their snack and he waited while Annabelle carefully carried the tray over to the waste bin. Every now and again he caught a glimpse of Natasha in the way his daughter walked, the tilt of her head, and the pain felt as sharp and new as it had those first terrible weeks. But then it receded and he was left grateful for having loved Natasha, grateful for this child who made each day special.

Grateful that he had met a woman who loved his child as much as he did, a woman who had brought so much happiness into Annabelle’s life at a time when he thought happiness was beyond their reach.

When had that stopped being enough for him? Somewhere along the way a sea change had occurred and he began to want more. He wanted Joely to give her heart to him the way she had given it to his daughter, to see her face light up with happiness when he walked into the room.

All those nights they had spent together in their big wide bed and he had never once said the words. Never once let her know the depth and breadth of the feelings harbored inside his heart.

“Where are we going?” Annabelle asked as he took her hand and strode off toward the lobby. “Can we see Joely’s mum?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” he said as they boarded the lift.

The car shimmied to a stop at the fourth floor where he was met by a security guard who asked his name.

“William and Annabelle Bishop,” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the security guard said, “but you’re not on the list.”

“Please call Mrs. Doyle’s room,” William said. “One of her daughters will vouch for me.”

“Mrs. Doyle doesn’t have a phone in her room,” the guard said. “Why don’t you and your little girl go get something from the cafeteria? I’ll send Cat and Joely over when they come down.”

“Perhaps you could ring the nurses’ station.”

“Listen, this is the best I can do. Take it or leave it.”

He thanked the guard and took Annabelle’s hand.

“We can’t leave before we see Joely,” Annabelle said. “She’ll be worried.”

“She knows you have to go home to see your grandparents,” William said carefully. “She’ll understand.”

“Maybe we can sit by the elevator. That way we won’t miss her.”

He looked at the huge clock suspended over the bank of elevators.

“Thirty minutes,” he said, “then we have to leave.” Once again time was his enemy.

 

BY THE TIME the nurse came in to shoo them out so Mimi could rest, Joely felt like she had lived five lifetimes.

“We’ll grab some lunch,” she said to Mark but he shook his head.

“I’m not going.”

“You have to,” the no-nonsense nurse said. “She needs her sleep more than she needs you yammering in her ear.”

“Come on,” Cat said more gently than Joely had expected. “Get some lunch, Mark, then you can come back.”

He nodded then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Mimi’s cheek.

“She smiled,” Mark said with almost childlike pleasure. “Did you see that? She smiled.”

Cat opened her mouth to speak then shook her head. Joely smiled. She knew exactly what her sister was thinking. It didn’t matter a whit if Mimi had or hadn’t smiled. Mark believed it and he left the room on a high.

“There he is!” a female voice called out and a second later he was surrounded by admirers of a certain age, all of whom remembered The Doyles with affection bordering on fanaticism.

“Should we wait for him?” she asked Cat as they watched him sign hospital nightgowns, plastic bedpans, and outdated magazines for his fans.

“He’ll be fine,” Cat said. “He’s in his element.”

Joely took a good look at her sister. “You look knackered. Maybe you should go home and have a nap.”

“Knackered.” Cat gave her a tired smile. “I love it when you go all Brit on me.”

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll walk you out to your car.”

They slipped out the back way and crossed the sun-splashed parking lot toward Cat’s Jeep.

“You’ve done your sisterly duty,” Cat said as she opened the driver’s side door. “Now go back in and find William and Annabelle.”

She nodded, suddenly reluctant to say good-bye. “When Mark—” She paused, trying to put her thoughts into some semblance of order. “Was that real?” She gestured toward the hospital behind them. “The two of them, the way she looked at him—”

Cat reached over and smoothed Joely’s hair off her face. “It was real,” she said. “God knows I don’t understand it either, but it was very real.”

“Twenty-seven years,” Joely said, “and it’s like he never left.”

“Don’t get all sentimental on me,” Cat warned. “This is Mark Doyle we’re talking about. Wait until the camera crews leave then let’s see what we’ve got.”

“I think he’s going to stay awhile,” Joely said.

“I think so, too.” Cat looked at her for a moment. “I invited Michael up for a visit.”

Joely felt her eyes widen. “Full disclosure?”

“Meet the parents and everything,” she said.

“Wow,” Joely said, shaking her head. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

“No,” Cat said, “but I did it anyway.”

“The times, they are definitely a-changin’.”

“I like him,” Cat said.

Joely grinned and patted her sister’s belly. “I should hope so.”

“I’m talking about William.”

“You barely know him.”

“I know that your face lights up when he enters the room. I know that when you’re around him the rest of the world falls away. The three of you fit the way a family should. That doesn’t happen often in this world.” She reached for Joely’s hand and held it tight. “Don’t let them go without a fight, Joely. Life’s too short. We don’t have to make Mark and Mimi’s mistakes. We can get it right.”

Cat’s words lingered as she paced the hospital lobby. If she thought for an instant that William loved her, that they might have a future, she would crawl from there to Loch Craig to prove her love.

Mark was still upstairs holding court and probably would be for the rest of the day. She searched for William and Annabelle in the cafeteria, the solarium, and even the chapel, but they were nowhere to be found. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. She had been upstairs over an hour and a half. How could you expect a little girl to sit in a hospital lobby with nothing to do?

She checked the clock over the reception desk and then checked it again thirty minutes later. William and Annabelle would be leaving for the airport before long and nothing had been settled between them.

Don’t let them go without a fight,
Cat had said. Life was too short. Sometimes a woman had to do more than wish on a star to claim her happy ending.

Finally, after another hour of aimless wandering, she walked the half mile to Mimi’s house, where she found Zach sitting on what remained of the front porch, nursing a giant bottle of Pepsi.

“I found it,” he said.

“Found what?” She grabbed for the Pepsi and took a swig.

“The strongbox Mark told you about. There was a trapdoor in the floor of her bedroom closet. I found three metal strongboxes.”

“Did you open them?”

“Not my job,” he said with a grin. “But, damn, did I want to.”

“Did you call Cat?”

“Not yet. I figured you guys were at the hospital.”

“We were. She went back home to take a nap. I’ve been hunting down William and Annabelle.”

“They’re gone, honey.”

She felt the ground shift beneath her feet. “You mean they went back to Cat’s.”

“They left for the airport. Annabelle left Tigger here when they stopped by this morning, so they swung around to pick it up on their way out.”

She must have heard wrong. William and Annabelle would never have left without saying good-bye.

“They can’t be gone,” she said. “I thought they weren’t leaving until tonight.”
I thought I still had time.

“Check your watch, Joely. It’s later than you think.”

But not too late. It couldn’t be.

“I have to go.” She turned and ran down the street toward Cat’s house, heart pounding, lungs screaming for air.

There had to be a note, a message, something. He wouldn’t just leave that way, not after all the years they had spent together—

She found the note on her pillow and her hands shook as she picked it up.

Flight number.

Estimated time of arrival.

A promise to call when he and Annabelle got home.

“This isn’t enough,” she said out loud. It wasn’t close to enough. You couldn’t live with a man for almost five years, make a home with him, mother his child, and let it end this way.

There was too much left to say. They had shared too much, cared too much, to just let it all drift away. If she was going to lose him, she wasn’t going to let him go before she told him how she felt.

He could tell her it was over. He could tell her that they had run their course. But not before she told him that she loved him, not just his daughter, not the life they had made together, but him. William Bishop. She loved his heart, his soul, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, the smell of his skin. She wasn’t sure exactly when it happened, the moment when her heart opened wide enough to let hope slip inside, but it had happened and now she had one last chance to tell him.

She grabbed the keys to her rental and raced back to Zach’s.

“I need a favor,” she said, “and it’s a big one.”

He listened and, bless him, he didn’t bat an eye. Romantics never did.

“I’ll do it,” he said, and before she drew her next breath they had a plan.

They would drop the strongboxes off at Cat’s house and then head for the local airstrip where his single-engine jet was hangared.

If she was very lucky, if God was watching over her, she would make it to the Portland airport before William and Annabelle boarded their plane.

And if not, she’d find another way. She wasn’t going to give up on their future. Not without a fight.

 

CAT WASN’T A religious woman but she offered up a quick prayer as she waved good-bye to Zach and Joely. It was never easy to put your heart out there on the firing line, to open yourself up to the dangers of love, but oh God how wonderful it was to see that look of embarrassed hope in her sister’s eyes as she said, “Wish me luck!”

There had to be one more happy ending out there for the Doyles because it didn’t look like happily ever after was in her forecast. No phone calls, no e-mails, no text messages, nothing at all from Michael. The later it got, the more certain she was that she had made a terrible mistake. Michael never played the silence card. He was a talker, a communicator. This silence meant something but God help her she didn’t have a clue exactly what.

She glanced about for something to distract her and her gaze settled on the three strongboxes Joely and Zach had dropped off. The plan was to wait until Joely got back from her adventure and open them together but Cat’s resolve was disappearing fast.

She tried to pretend they weren’t there but they were the equivalent of a thousand-pound pink gorilla in tights. She tried to walk around them, look over them, ignore them, but the lure was too great, and she finally gave in to temptation.

“Oh God . . .” she breathed as she opened the first one and the past tumbled into her lap.

Mark hadn’t lied. There were letters. Lots of them. Postcards. Old photos. Mimi’s diaries. Handwritten music. Cassette tapes. The whole complicated, painful, messy record of a couple’s life together and apart, captured in three dented metal strongboxes.

She scanned a few of the letters, then put them down. They were too intimate, too personal. They cut across the years and threw her headlong into the heart of a complicated, messy marriage between two romantics who hadn’t a clue what real life was all about. Maybe one day she would be able to read them all, but her heart was too raw today, her emotions too close to the surface.

In a day or two, if he was still around, she would invite her father over, and they would go through things together. Sooner or later she needed to hear the stories, the real ones behind the legend she had grown up with. She owed it not just to herself but to the baby she carried.

Mark was definitely a wild card. He might decide to publish the letters or write a memoir. He might burn them in a bonfire on the beach. She couldn’t predict or control what he would ultimately do. All she wanted was the story of how their family came to be. She wanted to hear about the love that had brought them together, the strange strong love that had survived across the years of separation.