Whisper Falls (27 page)

And when they’d walked in the door at home, Lucky had yelled out, “Mom! Dad! Look! Miss Bailey says I’m talented!”

And Mike had known from the expression on his mom’s face that it wasn’t a good time, but Lucky, in his excitement, had missed that and gone pulling the family portrait from his notebook. And their mother had promptly burst into tears and fled the room.

A familiar old sadness, too big for a kid to have suffered, closed around Mike now. He’d hated seeing his mom cry. He’d felt pissed at Lucky for causing it and for being too immature to see she was on edge when they’d walked in. And that overwhelming guilt from those days came roaring back to him. Another reason to be pissed at Lucky that day? Mike had been happy for a little while, distracted by something, and Lucky’s actions had brought all the bad stuff back.

Mike blew out a long sigh. He hadn’t had reason to think back on that day . . . probably since it had happened. And for the first time in his life, he wondered if his mom or dad had ever said anything nice to Lucky about the praise. Probably not.

Mike narrowed his eyes, still looking at the old stone building. It hadn’t been long after that when Lucky had won first place in the school art contest with a painting of their house. Mike remembered hearing about it at school, being proud of his little brother and a little amazed at how good the painting was. He remembered seeing the blue ribbon in Lucky’s hand, and later, hanging from a bulletin board in Lucky’s room. But what he couldn’t remember was . . . anyone at home making a big deal out of it. Or ever even mentioning it at all.

Shit. Was Lucky right? Had they really ignored him that much?

Whereas Mike could clearly remember feeling loved and acknowledged when
he’d
done good things. He recalled a special cake when he was named MVP of the basketball team in eighth grade. And his parents had been in the stands for every sporting event he’d ever taken part in, from Little League to high school. He remembered a special dinner at a steakhouse over in Crestview once after he’d brought his grades up from Cs to As.

Mike’s achievements had always been celebrated in their house. But maybe Lucky’s really
hadn’t
been. And until this moment, maybe Mike had chosen to believe Lucky just hadn’t excelled enough to
have
any achievements, but now he was forced to realize: He had. For a while anyway. Until he’d kind of just . . . given up and quit trying.

And maybe . . . maybe Lucky was right. Maybe Mike’s accomplishments had been celebrated because he’d been in his own private, guilt-stricken hell over Anna and his parents knew it. And because
they
felt guilty, too. And since Lucky was the only one of them who didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, maybe that had left him on the outside in a way. Hell.

Talk about guilt. Mike was starting to feel pretty fucking guilty right
now
.

By the time he pulled up outside Dolly’s a little while later, a knot had grown in his stomach. He kept thinking back through those years after Anna’s disappearance, and the more he thought, the more he realized . . . he’d never noticed Lucky was fading into the background. Because he was a kid. With his own issues. His own life. But Lucky
had
faded. Slowly but surely. And by the time he’d reached twelve or thirteen, he’d turned into a pretty bad kid.

When Mike walked into the café and sat down at a small table next to his fiancée, she looked into his eyes and immediately asked, “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about Lucky,” he said. “And I’m gonna say something I hardly
ever
say. I think I was wrong.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped, which Mike could easily understand.

“Not about everything,” he went on. “I still don’t know what he was up to the whole time he was gone, and I’m still not sure I trust him or think it’s smart for Tessa to be with him. But some of the stuff he said about when we were kids, about him getting neglected . . . I’m starting to think it might have been true and I just never saw it.”

In reply, the woman he loved reached under the table to squeeze his hand and said, “I’m glad—relieved—to hear you’re starting to see things in a new way. But . . . maybe instead of telling
me
, you should be telling your brother.”

B
y Saturday night, Tessa still felt lousy, and it made Lucky feel like someone was reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart. She’d insisted he work Friday during the day, but otherwise, he’d hung out with her and wished he could make her feel better. The fact that he couldn’t left him feeling helpless—as helpless as he had as a kid.

And what did Lucky usually do when he felt helpless, like he had no control over a situation? He ran. He’d run away from Destiny, and later, he’d run away from the Devil’s Assassins.
That
move had been a smart one—but it was still running.

Yet over the last couple of days with Tessa, he’d been forced to realize that . . . well, maybe his running instinct was more of an old urge than a thing he really wanted to do. And maybe his fears for the people in his life were silly and impractical. Maybe his fears about her expectations were silly, too. This, being here with Tessa when she needed him—
that
was practical. In fact, she kept telling him to go home, so he had an out if he wanted it—but while she was sick . . . hell, he couldn’t leave her. In fact, the second he’d discovered she was sick, it had washed away every thought in his head about slowing things down or staying away from her.

Now they lay on Tessa’s bed, atop the covers, side by side. Lucky stroked her arm, sometimes brushed his fingers through her hair, hoping it somehow helped a little.

“What exactly do you feel when you’re sick like this?” he asked her quietly.

“It varies from person to person, but for me, the main symptom is nausea. Sometimes I have a dull stomachache, too, or sharp pain in my lower abdomen.”

“I wish I could fix it, babe,” he whispered.

“I know. That’s sweet,” she said.

He glanced down at her—God, she looked so tired. “How long does it last?”

“Hard to say. These days, anywhere from a few hours to a week or so.”

He nodded.

“Although,” she went on, “I actually feel a
little
bit
yucky at some point every day. I’m just used to that part.”

And that took him aback. When he thought of all the time he’d spent with her, he’d never had any notion she’d felt bad, even for a minute. “I didn’t know that.”

She shrugged against her pillow. “No need to talk about it. And I don’t like bringing other people down.”

At that, Lucky reached to tilt her chin upward with one bent finger. “Tessa,” he said, “don’t worry about that with me. You can tell me if you feel bad. I mean, keeping it to yourself probably isn’t good. I kept a lot to myself as a kid and . . . let’s just say it didn’t do me any favors.”

Yet she shook her head. “No—it’s better for me to be tough about it. Talking about it much is just . . . indulgent. I never want to wallow in self-pity. I did that in the beginning, and it didn’t help.”

He sighed, gave another quiet nod, and thought she
was
tough. “Will you . . . at least tell me what happened? In the beginning? You never really told me the details of how you wound up back in Destiny.”

Tessa supposed she knew Lucky well enough now that she owed him an answer if he really wanted to know. And even though she’d actually been mad at him at first for forcing his company on her when she felt crappy, she was beginning to realize . . . how darn sweet it was. Pushy, but sweet. And whereas two days ago she’d been fairly horrified for him to see her like this, now she realized it was unimportant—he still liked her just as much. Nothing had changed . . . except that maybe she felt even closer to him now.

“I got sick out of the blue,” she said. “Just basically woke up one day unable to digest anything. I was living on cereal for a while, and I got very weak. I couldn’t go to work for a couple of months, and the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, even after extensive testing.”

“You were in Cincinnati for all this?”

She nodded against his chest. “My mother came after about a month. By then, I was having trouble taking care of myself. I was losing lots of weight, and before long, I couldn’t even think clearly. What I didn’t realize was that I was eating and drinking so little that I’d become severely dehydrated. And I later learned that once you reach a certain point, your body stops absorbing what you
do
drink.”

Tessa paused then, deciding how much to say. She was willing to share it with him, but she still wasn’t willing to indulge in making it as drawn-out and dramatic as it had been at the time. “At one point, I collapsed from the dehydration. My blood pressure was sixty over twenty.”

She felt him flinch slightly. “Jesus, is that even possible?”

“Believe it or not, yes. So I had to start drinking gallons of Gatorade and other stuff with electrolytes to replenish everything I’d lost. It took about six weeks to fully rehydrate my body, but even after that, when you add in the poor nutrition, I was pretty weak and underweight for about a year. I underwent tons more testing without a diagnosis, and though I became able to digest a few more foods, it was still rough.”

She sighed, remembering the next part. “On the occasions I did try to go to work, I’d end up with my head down on my desk or having to cut client meetings short because I was about to keel over. And I began to realize that my bosses and colleagues, even people who I’d considered real friends, were looking at me differently.”

Lucky sounded puzzled when he said, “Looking at you how?”

“I know they cared about me, but at the same time . . . I was very aware that I was making their lives harder by not being dependable. That’s when I felt people thinking of my condition as the biggest part of me. And after a few months, I knew they wanted to fire me and that only kindness was keeping them from it. So I quit, without a plan. Which was really scary. But it was
all
really scary, and kind of overwhelming.”

“I’m really sorry you had to go through that, babe.”

“Then another interior designer I knew told me she was opening a branch of her firm in Crestview of all places. She knew about my problem, and that my family was in Destiny, so she offered me a job with the understanding that I might need a lot of flexibility. Like I told you before, though, the job fell through—almost as quickly as I’d bought the cabin.

“Coming back to Destiny was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—because I felt like I’d failed, and it was for reasons totally beyond my control. But it seemed the only sensible choice—and it relieved my mom and dad to have me close. My little brother is in Afghanistan right now, and I think feeling like both their kids were in danger, away from home, was killing them.”

“I didn’t know that, about your brother,” he said, his voice soft with compassion.

And Tessa sighed. The truth was, Jeremy was like her Crohn’s disease: She thought of him often but tried not to. Because it came with so much worry, and left her feeling so helpless. “It’s scary. He e-mails us, but he’s kind of tight-lipped, so we don’t really know what’s going on with him.”

Lucky nodded, brow knit in understanding. “So . . . you came home, you bought this place, and . . . you started feeling better?”

She gave a slight nod, still resting against him. “Slowly but surely. Though it took a long time before I felt even remotely normal. It was the strangest, darkest time of my life. And . . . the oddest thing,” she said, looking back. “This all started in the winter, and other than doctor’s visits and occasional stabs at going to the office, I spent a few very long months mostly in my condo, never going out at all. And when I finally felt good enough to go outside again, it was like . . . it was brand new.”

“What do you mean?”

Tessa still recalled this part with a bit of wonder. “This will sound crazy, but it was like . . . the grass was greener, the sky was bluer, flowers smelled sweeter. I suddenly couldn’t get enough of being outdoors. Now, I’m all into gardening and sitting outside, even at night—”

“Like the night I found you on the deck looking at the stars,” he reminded her.

And she smiled softly against his chest. “Yeah, like that. I was never so into nature before, but the experience changed me in that way. And . . . I don’t take as much for granted anymore. Any day I feel well is a good day. Any day I can get dressed and go out into the world, I feel fortunate. Those are . . . the few good things that came out of it all.”

“You go through something tough and it gives you a whole new outlook, doesn’t it?” he said as if he knew.

She raised her eyes to his. “Yeah.” And she would have asked him
how
he knew—but just then, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was here, holding her, relating to her, making her feel better. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“Being here with me. I didn’t think it would help, but it does.”

I
t was almost twenty-four hours later that Tessa lay in her bed, but no longer in Lucky’s arms—now he hovered over her, holding a tray in his hands, clearly trying to figure out how to make things better. She’d slept a lot today, feeling worse than yesterday, and worry shone in his eyes.

“Feel like eating?” he asked.

“What is it?”

“Chicken soup. From your mom. And some Club crackers. She said you liked those when you aren’t feeling good.”

Tessa’s eyes opened a little wider. “My mom?”

He gave a short nod, looking uneasy. “She dropped by a little while ago.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah, I think I scared the shit out of her, answering your door.”

Tessa bit her lip. Her mother had called this morning after not hearing from her for a few days, suspecting she was unwell, and Tessa had tried to soft-pedal it. She’d also mentioned Lucky was there, looking out for her, “so you don’t have to come over. I’ll be fine.”

“Lucky’s there?” her mom had asked. Tessa had told her mother about her new neighbor—that he was Mike Romo’s long-lost brother, and that they’d spent some time together. She’d been trying to ease her into the idea.