The Rebel and His Bride (11 page)

He almost walked by Annabelle without seeing her, then stopped. “Annabelle. What are you doing here?”

Without thinking, she laid her hand on his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Hilary Cochran just had a heart attack and they’ve taken her to Norfolk.”

“I remember Mrs. Cochran. She was my Sunday-school teacher for a lot of the summers I spent here. I liked her a lot. I guess you’re going to the hospital?” Silly question, Annabelle thought, but Gregory used to have a near phobia about hospitals.

He blamed it on a blackout that occurred when he was in the hospital for a tonsillectomy. He’d been visiting his grandparents at the time and the hospital in the small town where they lived had a generator that only provided enough energy for the intensive-care unit and surgery floors. Just four
years old, he’d been in a strange and scary place for hours in the dark.

He nodded. “This time I’ll be there not only as her minister but as a friend. She’s been the closest thing to family I have here.”

Annabelle saw so many emotions mingling on his face. Worry, shock, even a little fear. And the pain of a man who didn’t want to lose a dear friend. “I’d like to go with you.” She wasn’t sure what made her say it, but was glad she’d offered when she saw him relax a little in relief.

“If you want to. I’d appreciate the company.”

She walked with him out to the parking lot. “Shall I drive?”

“Would you mind?”

“Of course not. Yours or mine?”

“Yours will be all right.”

She slipped behind the wheel of her car and unlocked the door for Gregory. “I see you remembered to lock your doors for a change,” he said with a ghost of a smile.

“Tell me how you and Mrs. Cochran got to be so close.”

He gazed out the window, then said quietly, “When I first came to town, I felt very alone. I’d just been ousted from my church—that kind of rejection stays with a man for a while—and I didn’t know a soul in town. Hilary’s daughter had just remarried and moved up to Arlington and Hilary was feeling a little lonely too. And bored. She’d
retired at sixty from some office supply company over in Waverly and was at loose ends.”

He smiled slightly. “She decided to occupy her time by decorating the children’s Sunday-school rooms. She hand-stenciled rabbits and ducks all over the nursery walls and painted a huge ark with all kinds of animals in the preschool classroom. I’m not saying she’s the world’s best artist, mind you, but there’s a lot of love and joy in everything she’s painted.”

“She always took Danni and me under her wings when we spent summers here. She’d come by Gran’s whenever we got here and catch us up on what the Sunday-school class was learning so we’d never feel left out. When we were too old for her classes, she used to volunteer us to help out with Vacation Bible School. It made Danni and me feel so important.” Annabelle sighed. “She was always willing to work with kids.”

“She always reminded me of you that way.”

Annabelle cast a quick glance at Gregory. “Me?”

“Sure. Don’t you think I noticed? Every time there was anything going on that had to do with children, you were always right in the thick of things.”

She shrugged. “That was just because I was the head of my sorority’s special project committee and we always seemed to pick projects that had something to do with kids.”

“Maybe, but you volunteered to head that
committee and you were the one who seemed to propose those projects.”

Annabelle didn’t answer. That was one of the things she’d never really mentioned to Gregory, yet he’d noticed it anyway. Odd, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind, that she’d had her causes too.

They were silent most of the rest of the drive to Norfolk. When they reached the hospital, Annabelle dropped Gregory off at the door. “I’ll go park the car while you find out what floor Mrs. Cochran is on. I’ll catch up.”

Gregory waited for Annabelle in the lobby, and after she’d made a quick call to her grandmother to let her know where she was, they caught the elevator up to the cardiac intensive-care unit. Annabelle watched as Gregory talked briefly to the doctor, then sat next to Hilary Cochran’s best friend, Ada Wilson, Bosco’s mother. He took her thin wrinkled hands in his and spoke so softly that Annabelle couldn’t hear, but it wasn’t long before Ada smiled a little and her taut shoulders relaxed.

Gregory was allowed to see Mrs. Cochran for a few minutes, and when he came out, he had a smile for Ada. Only Annabelle noticed the shadows in his eyes and the lines that seemed more deeply etched in his forehead. When he came over to sit next to her, she said nothing, just took his hand and gave it a companionable squeeze.

Mrs. Cochran’s daughter, Pat, and her husband arrived about midnight, apparently having driven
down from Arlington at breakneck speed. They were allowed into CICU for a few minutes, and when they came out, Pat burst into tears. Gregory sat and talked with her while her husband went to make some phone calls.

It was a long night, and Annabelle marveled at how Gregory managed to be unfailingly gentle, supportive, comforting. She also wondered why no one seemed to notice that this was taking such a toll on him. The shadows in his eyes were increasingly dark, his shoulders seemed almost bowed by the weight he was carrying as he submerged the part of himself that was the worried friend and carried on as the caring minister.

Toward dawn, when Pat and her husband, Tim, had dozed off in their chairs and Bosco had come to insist Ada go home, Annabelle went to get a cup of coffee for Gregory. She came back to find him slumped in his chair, his head in his hands. She sat beside him and set the coffee down, then, without thinking, ran a comforting hand over his head. Wordlessly, he turned to her and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her neck. He held her tightly, as if trying to absorb her. She clung just as tightly, willing to let him draw whatever he needed from her.

The doctor came by about six and Gregory stood with Pat and Tim as they talked with him, then he came back over to Annabelle.

“How is she?” Annabelle asked softly.

“Holding her own. The doctor says the next few hours will tell.”

“Are you okay?”

Gregory looked at her strangely and waited a long moment before answering. “Funny,” he finally said, “I don’t think I ever remember anyone asking me that in this kind of situation.”

“They should have. Anyone can see you’re as worried and concerned as everyone else is. So, are you okay?”

He ran the tips of his fingers down her cheek. “I’m okay. But I’m glad you’re here.”

“Why don’t you sit down and catch a catnap? I’ll wake you if anyone needs you.”

He shook his head and took a sip of the now lukewarm coffee. “I’m fine. I’ve done with less sleep than this.”

Annabelle reached out and took the cup from him, setting it aside. “I’m sure you have, but it’s not necessary right now for you to turn yourself into a zombie from lack of sleep. Relax, close your eyes. I’ll wake you if you’re needed for anything. I promise.”

A tiny smile played about his lips as he looked at her. “You’re going to hound me until I do what you say, aren’t you?”

“Darn right I am!”

“What a bossy little thing you’ve turned out to be,” he murmured as he sat back in his chair and leaned his head against the wall. He looked at her
again, letting his gaze wander over her features one by one, before his eyelids drifted closed.

Annabelle sat next to him, watching until his muscles relaxed and his breathing slowed in sleep. Pat and her husband went downstairs to the cafeteria for breakfast after Annabelle promised to come get them if there was any change.

Alone, Annabelle yawned and rubbed her burning eyes. She’d had less than her usual eight hours sleep the night before last and none at all this past night. She massaged her temples, trying to forestall the beginnings of a headache. She was getting too old to handle sleepless nights, she thought.

In college it hadn’t been as much of a problem. She could remember lots of nights when she and Gregory would study throughout the evening, then make love until the early morning. Of course, sitting in a whitewalled, antiseptic-scented hospital waiting room all night was a far cry from making passionate love.

No, it wasn’t making love. Annabelle thought of how Gregory had comforted Pat, how he’d prayed by Mrs. Cochran’s bedside, how he’d stayed all night in a hospital when he still hated them. No, certainly not making love, but an act of love, nonetheless.

He
loved
these people. He loved them with a pure and unselfish love. He wasn’t just mouthing comforting platitudes. He meant them. Suddenly Annabelle wanted to touch him. Simply touch him.
Impulsively, she reached out and laid her hand on his arm.

He opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then looked at her. “Is everything all right?”

She’d forgotten what a light sleeper he was. Color flooded her face. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry. Everything’s fine. I just—just—” She fell silent. I just wanted to touch you? I just needed to reassure myself that you weren’t too good to be true?

He didn’t press her to finish her sentence. Laying his hand over hers, he leaned his head back against the wall. “What time is it?”

“Probably between seven-thirty and eight. They’ve been rolling carts of breakfast trays up and down the hall.”

He grinned at the sound of distaste in her voice. “Still not a morning person, are you? You always said it was a crime against nature to eat before ten.”

“If it isn’t, it ought to be.”

“Maybe you should bring that up at the next town council meeting. Especially if you’re planning to stay in White Creek.”

Annabelle shrugged, not yet willing to commit herself one way or the other. First she had to determine whether she could get her rapidly escalating feelings about Gregory back under strict control.

“Where are Pat and Tim?” he asked.

“Downstairs eating breakfast. I promised you’d
come get them if they were needed. Can I bring you some more coffee or something to eat? I think they have sausage biscuits or some such.”

“I’m okay for now. But you get something if you want.”

“At this hour?”

He smiled. “Sorry, I forgot myself.”

A nurse came out of the CICU and walked over to Gregory. “Excuse me. Are you Mrs. Cochran’s son?”

“No, I’m her minister.”

“Then she’d like to see you for a few minutes. No more than five.” The nurse’s expression plainly said that she wished Gregory were her minister, though Annabelle doubted she wanted his guidance on spiritual matters.

Gregory turned to Annabelle. “I’ll be right back.”

“That’s okay,” she said, still looking sourly at the nurse. She was hit with a sudden urge to print
OFF LIMITS
in big letters across Gregory’s shirt. Annabelle caught her breath, surprised she felt that way. Then terrified. She folded her arms across her chest and huddled back down in her chair, glad Gregory was with Mrs. Cochran for a few minutes. She needed to pull herself together.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, she told herself, and wondered if there was a hospital some-place where she could get an injection of common sense or a brain transplant. Or, she thought hopefully, maybe just a good night’s sleep.

About nine o’clock Mrs. Cochran’s son, Richard, and his wife, Susan, arrived from Ohio. Annabelle remembered Richard, who was a few years older than she, from her summers in White Creek. Richard had been a dark-haired, dark-eyed teenager who’d had most of the girls between fifteen and twenty-five at his heels. Still, he’d always been pleasant, even to Virgie Pace’s gawky and curious grandchildren.

Annabelle slipped down to the cafeteria to call her grandmother, then got cups of hot coffee to carry upstairs. She handed out the coffee, then sat down out of the way and watched Gregory and the others. Suddenly she couldn’t see Gregory, the boy, at all. There was only Gregory, the man. Gregory, the minister.

She leaned her head against the wall and wondered tiredly where the boy had gone all of a sudden. Even two nights ago, as they’d walked in the moonlight, she’d seen glimpses of the boy she’d loved so long ago, through the new and improved Gregory. This morning, the boy was nowhere to be found. She closed her aching eyes for a moment, wondering if she still carried traces of the girl she used to be or if they had disappeared just as suddenly.

“Annabelle?”

“Mm?”

“Annabelle.”

Her eyelids fluttered, then opened. “Gregory?” She realized immediately where she was and hastened to sit up straight, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Sorry, I must have dozed off a minute.”

“More like a couple of hours, but that’s all right. You were tired.”

“So are you.”

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”

“How’s Mrs. Cochran?”

“The doctor was by a few minutes ago and it looks like she’s come through the worst of it. Her family is with her now. I thought I’d go and get a few things done, then come back later today.” He held out his hand. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”

Without even thinking twice, she put her hand in his. He curled his fingers around it and tugged her to her feet, but didn’t release her hand as they went downstairs and walked out to the parking lot. Annabelle blinked at the brightness of the morning sun and stumbled a little.