CHAPTER EIGHT
Her chance to get out came the very next day, but not exactly in the way she might have wanted. A freshly showered Rhys, dressed for work in his usual beat-up jeans and casual button-down, greeted her as she headed downstairs to the kitchen.
“Mrs. Hodge has an emergency dentist’s appointment this afternoon, and she was supposed to take Will to his speech-therapy session right after preschool,” he said after offering her a cappuccino from his fancy chrome espresso machine. “Any chance you could take him instead?”
“Oh.” Not what she’d expected. She collected herself. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, considering the number of hours she had free before Will’s OT session. “Sure, I can do that. What time should I pick him up?”
“One o’clock. You can use the Range Rover. Mrs. Hodge is taking her own car to her appointment.”
“Um, okay.” It was exactly the kind of expectation she was leery of. Minding Will while operating heavy machinery. A Range Rover. Sheesh! The thing must be three times as big as Ernie. But it would have been churlish of her to refuse. Who was she to be that precious, when Rhys was paying her very generously for her time?
“Thanks. You’ll be saving my life at work today.”
“No problem at all.” It was the kind of thing a grown-up would do. A normal, reasonable request of the kind functional adults took in their stride every day. She was functional, wasn’t she? Sure, she’d had stuff happen in her past, stuff that demanded some modifications to her expectations, to her life plan. But she prided herself on making it work, on operating successfully within the parameters she set for herself. She sealed her agreement with a resolute nod.
“Great!” Rhys smiled. “I’d better hit the road, then.”
“Right. See you later. I won’t forget Will’s appointment.”
All morning, the thought of the behemoth vehicle ate away at her. It was stupid, but she never drove anything but Ernie, and she didn’t like the idea of being at the wheel of something that cost a small fortune and probably maneuvered like an aircraft carrier. Worries kept flaring up to plague her. Would she hop into the vehicle only to find that the steering wheel was on the wrong side? Rhys was British, after all. Maybe she’d open the back door to discover that someone had uninstalled Will’s safety seat and she had to rig up the whole thing using only paper clips, string, and Scotch tape. She actually snuck down to the garage to check midmorning, while Mrs. Hodge was busy doing Will’s laundry.
Mrs. Hodge made herself some soup for lunch, while Andie hovered nervously, dreading the moment when the older woman would leave. Was her dentist’s appointment really all that important? She was able to eat soup, after all. Maybe she should just blow it off and chaperone Will as usual.
“So, having some problems with the old teeth?” Andie couldn’t resist inquiring as the woman seated herself at the small table in the upstairs kitchen. Mrs. Hodge glanced up, a slightly affronted expression crinkling her brow. Andie didn’t mean to refer to her teeth as old, per se. Well, no older than the average fifty-something-year-old’s teeth anyway.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. A crown popped off last night.”
“Ah. That must hurt,” Andie observed, hoping Mrs. Hodge would issue a contradiction.
“Actually, it does. But I’m getting it taken care of in an hour, so I expect I’ll be right as rain in no time.”
“Perfect. Lucky the dentist could fit you in.”
“Yes, quite.”
There was nothing more to be said about it, but Andie tracked Mrs. Hodge’s departure with wistful eyes as the nanny headed to the laundry room once more before leaving for her appointment. She admired the woman’s solidity, her workmanlike efficiency.
Andie entered the garage with a good half hour to spare before she was due at the preschool. She took her place in the driver’s seat, noticing that the doors of the Range Rover were about twice as thick as Ernie’s, and closed with an expertly engineered clunk that oozed money. At least in this tank, Will would be well insulated. She started the car and adjusted the mirrors, floating out of the garage bay. You can do this.
The floating sensation continued as Andie pointed the car down the driveway. It was actually quite refreshing, seeing the world from this vantage point rather than hugging the road at close range. She drifted toward the town center in the plush, climate-controlled bubble, her comfort level growing with every turn. Soon she reached the preschool, where she managed to find a spacious parking spot. So far, so good.
She went inside a few minutes early to chat with Will’s main behavioral therapist and to pack up his bag before leading him back out to the car. So far this mission was turning out to be a piece of cake, she thought with satisfaction as Will sank obediently into position in the car seat, and she fed his arms through the straps and snapped the buckles into place.
The speech-therapy clinic was only a mile away. Andie’s heart sank as she approached and saw that the small parking lot was full. Sighing, she kept going until she located a metered spot on the opposite side of the road. She hadn’t packed the stroller, so she’d have to walk Will across, or carry him, she realized, as she fiddled nervously with his hat and mittens and unbuckled his seat belt. He’d walk, she decided, as he complained and thrashed in her arms, slithering down her body to the edge of the curb.
She took one small hand snugly in hers and stood at the edge of the nearest crosswalk, fighting a surge of nausea as passing cars swished by. Don’t be silly. You’ve got this. A woman in a minivan drew to a stop in the nearest lane, ushering them across. Andie smiled and waved. She stepped into the road, stooping to encourage Will’s dawdling progress. One step at a time.
They were a couple of paces into the far lane when Will’s hand jerked in her grip. Andie’s heartbeat jolted as she looked down to find herself holding an empty fleece mitten. She turned in slow-motion horror to see Will darting back in the direction they’d come, back toward the lane where the minivan had just started to move into the crosswalk. A gust of freezing wind had caught the brim of his deerstalker cap and blown it backward, and he’d slipped her grip to retrieve it.
“No!” The scream tore from her throat, and she flung herself in front of the minivan before she even realized it. The bumper was up against her shins, her hands splayed on the warm hood as if she could hold back one and a half tons of lurching machinery. The frenetic strobing of police lights cut through the shadows of her memory. Not again. Never again. Her fingers burned where she should have held on—to Gus, to Will—and the thin thread of Susan’s long-ago scream vibrated through her.
Several seconds passed before she registered that the minivan had halted, and Will—huddled behind her legs—was miraculously safe. The driver’s look of concern melted into relief, and she flung Andie a commiserating smile. Children clamored in the back of the van, and small hands waved behind the tinted glass as the harried mom shuttled her charges on their way.
“Will! Oh God!” Andie snatched him up and propelled them both out of the crosswalk with inhuman strength, not stopping until they came to rest on a bench near a brick walkway leading to the speech therapist’s office.
“Andie, Andie, Andie,” he murmured, pressed against her chest, content to wait for her grasp to slowly, reluctantly, loosen. She ran her fingertips through the pixie-fine waves of his hair, over his shoulders, and down to his feet, double-checking that he was, as he had to be, all in one piece. The hot wave of terror was receding, and as it ebbed away, a chilling dread was creeping in to take its place.
Somehow, they made it up the path and into the sterile, fluorescent-lit waiting room, Andie’s chest still heaving with painful, splintered breaths. Will let go of her reluctantly to accompany the therapist into her office, and Andie searched for the nearest bathroom.
So, this was it: the end of her run at the Griffiths house. She shouldered through the door of the women’s restroom, bile rising in her throat. Clutching the edges of the mercifully clean porcelain sink, she retched until her throat felt scalded, and the waves of nausea finally subsided.
She would have to tell Rhys. There was no way around it. He deserved to know, and she needed to hand back the responsible adult badge she should never have been issued in the first place, fraud that she was. It was probably for the best, she told herself. That weird thing with Rhys in the bathroom the night before had probably been some kind of karmic warning. So why did she feel so desolate? Her eyes were huge and ringed with shadow in the harshly lit bathroom mirror, and she couldn’t fight back the sob that rose in her throat when she thought about leaving.
She’d felt so elated over Will’s success last night, before things had taken a turn for the strange. She couldn’t imagine leaving him now. Maybe there was a chance she would be able to continue to work with him—not from the house, of course, but under a different arrangement, back within the safe, institutional walls of a practice, if she could find herself another job. But, no, she had to be realistic. Rhys would likely never let her within five miles of Will once he learned what had just happened.
She trudged wretchedly back to the waiting room but found that she couldn’t sit. All she could do was pace and fret, clutching at the damp tissue she had to keep pressing to her eyes. She could hardly wait for Will to reappear so she could wrap him in her arms. But at the same time she dreaded the end of his therapy session because it would bring her one step closer to the moment when she would see the loathing in Rhys’s eyes and hear the contempt in his voice.
She’d been fooling herself. In spite of her misgivings, and over the strains of her own stern self-reproof, she had harbored the secret hope that her stint with Will would be a turning point. That working so intensively to build Will’s skills would engineer some kind of transformation in herself as well—opening her up, priming her for something more than the cramped half life she’d been living for so long. But it wasn’t to be.
She wondered what would happen to her now, wondered if she could keep going on the same treadmill she’d been on, pouring her energies into helping children she would grow to love just before she had to say her inevitable good-bye. She rubbed at her swollen eyes, certain of nothing except for the sobering fact that there was no sensation on earth worse than the whisper of a child’s fingers slipping from her grasp.
The door to Rhys’s den had never seemed so imposing, Andie mused as she stood on the threshold that evening. To her feverish eye, the doorframe itself looked at least twelve feet high. Rhys had only just arrived home, and Mrs. Hodge was with Will in the kitchen, starting his dinner. Better to get this over with right away, Andie figured. She’d already started collecting her things, hoping to make the process of packing her bags as quick and painless as possible.
She could hear Rhys moving around inside as she inched forward and reached out her hand. It’s now or never. She knocked decisively, and straightened. If she had to do this, she would at least try to keep her dignity.
“Andie?” Rhys craned to see her framed in the doorway, and a broad smile broke over his face. As she moved into the room on numb legs, she couldn’t help but notice that the midgray shade of his button-down brought out an almost purple-heather tint in his eyes. God, he was just so . . . devastating.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” she began. The warm curve of Rhys’s mouth straightened into a line, and his brows drew together in concern. Say good-bye to the last time he ever looks upon you with goodwill.
The pain of what she had to confess lodged like an icicle in her ribs. She’d drawn out Will’s OT session when they returned that afternoon, delighting in his progress as he tackled simple obstacle courses and worked on puzzles that tested his fine-motor skills. Then they giggled and played on the floor, and Andie had swiped away tears when Will, panting happily from exertion, laid his head in her lap, looking straight up at her with his sweet blue-gray eyes that tipped down at the corners like he was in on some eternally amusing secret.
“There was an incident this afternoon,” Andie said. “I take full responsibility, and I understand that after what happened, you won’t want me to continue on here. I’ve already started packing.”
“Andie.” Rhys shook his head in confusion, doubt blooming in his eyes. “What happened? Is Will okay?”
“He’s fine, thank goodness.” Andie’s right hand drifted up to hover over her heart. “But he could have been hurt.”
Rhys stepped toward her, his eyes haunted, urgent. “For God’s sake, tell me what happened.”
Andie relived the moment as she spoke. Her heart quaked as she saw the image of Will’s hand clasped in hers. In her mind’s eye, she watched him twist free from the mitten, her own fingers tightening around the empty scrap of fleece. She closed her eyes, letting the flood of sensation rush back in. She felt the cold blast of air on her face that had sent Will’s cap flying back across the road. The awareness of the looming shape of the minivan as it began to move across the crosswalk. The warmth of its hood under her bare hands as she’d screamed.
“So I turned and jumped in front of the minivan, and the woman saw me and stopped,” she finished, her voice smaller than she would have liked it to be. “I reacted as quickly as I could, and it turned out okay. But . . . things could have been different.” She turned to the side as she felt her brave demeanor buckle and crack. All of a sudden there were tears pricking at her eyes again. What was with all these stupid tears? “Like I said, I’m packing my bags. I’m so sorry. I’ll be out of your way tomorrow morning at the latest.”
Rhys kept his eyes trained on the floor near her feet. Any moment his fists would clench, and he’d look up with venom in his gaze. He’d call her incompetent, a waste of space—just like Susan had. She stood frozen, waiting for the verdict to be delivered. Guilty. Worthless.
Instead, he did the strangest thing. He raised his eyes to her face. They were warm, open, and full of compassion. His mouth tried for a smile, but it half collapsed under the weight of some emotion she couldn’t identify.
“Oh God, Andie.” He reached out toward her and suddenly he was close, and moving closer. She felt the warm pull of his arms as she was drawn up against the broad expanse of his chest, her damp cheek pressed into the soft, slightly nubby fabric of his shirt. He smelled like heaven—the familiar citrus of his soap or aftershave mingling with a warm scent all his own, firing up those greedy neurotransmitters that seemed to rouse from their slumber whenever he was around.
“I’m so sorry.” He exhaled into her hair, the errant jets of his breath sending jolts of sensation ricocheting across the nape of her neck and down the length of her spine. “I should have warned you when I asked you to pick him up. You’ve become a part of things so quickly, I guess I forgot.”
“Forgot?” she murmured insensibly, her wits dulled by the cocoon enveloping her senses.
“Yes, Will has a bit of a reputation. In fact, his name should really be Will ‘Houdini’ Griffiths. It was unforgivable of me not to give you fair warning. He’s done the same thing to me—or tried—at least ten times in the last six months alone.”
“But that doesn’t mean . . . I still should have—”
“You were perfect,” Rhys soothed. “I don’t know many people who would have thrown themselves into oncoming traffic to save him.”
“But you don’t understand,” she protested. “It was horrible. All of a sudden he was just gone, and I didn’t know what was happening. I should have been more on top of things. He could have . . . I wasn’t alert enough. I wasn’t . . . enough.”
The tears were flowing freely now, slipping down her cheeks in rivulets that left a darkening patch on the front of Rhys’s shirt. Whenever Andie closed her eyes, she saw her little brother’s outflung hand, so small and pale. She even heard the tinny strains of Christmas music floating on the air. I must be losing my mind, she thought as she clung to Rhys like a shipwreck survivor.
“Andie, you didn’t mess up. I did by not providing you with critical information.” His deep voice reverberated against her chest. He felt so strong and solid and good. “In fact, you’ve shown yourself to be a woman of impeccable reflexes.
“And you’ve done more than that,” he continued, his voice low, reassuring. “You’ve done more for Will than anyone. You can’t leave. You’re his connection to the world.”
“Maybe I’ve helped a little,” she conceded with a loud sniff. “But while he’s out in that world, he’s entitled to a minimal level of safety. You can’t have some hapless employee endangering—”
“Of course Will’s safety is paramount, but Andie, you’re hardly hapless.” He lowered his head and spoke next to her ear, the current of his breath stirring her hair and lighting up nerve pathways that sent odd little quakes vibrating through her belly. “And I don’t think of you as just an employee.”
“Oh?” Her mouth formed an astonished shape as Rhys’s hand stroked her shoulder and trailed down her back in motions that were not sensual but comforting. Somehow, heat bloomed under his touch anyway, and she felt that she could easily stand there all night, as long as he kept drawing those trails of fire beside her spine.
“No,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “You’re more like a . . . a miracle worker, or a mythical creature. At least, I think that’s how Will sees you. But, more importantly, you’re a friend.”
“A friend.” It seemed that all she could do was provide an echo.
“Yes.” He smiled, his lips moving against the sensitive lobe of her ear. “My friend.”
Now she really was melting. Her head had come to rest in the crook of his neck, and when she tilted her face up, the satiny skin of his throat was millimeters from her lips. She inhaled deeply, mainlining pheromones, or some quintessential chemical he alone manufactured—heady, addictive. Even more narcotic, though, was the almost incomprehensible fact that he somehow didn’t condemn her for what had happened. It was too much for her to wrap her head around. Far from blaming her, he was standing there with his arms around her, comforting her, offering her his friendship.
“And as much as you’ve done for Will,” Rhys continued, “I think you’re doing even more for me. Being able to talk to you about him, to see him through your eyes . . . dealing with this autism thing, sometimes it feels like I’m trying to dam up an ocean by tossing in one pebble at a time, just trying to get some solid ground under my feet, you know?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well, with you here, helping me, now I have someone tossing pebbles by my side—only you’re much more effective. You’re hurling boulders—or building a whole island or something. I think I’ve mangled this metaphor.”
“So, wait,” she said. “You really don’t want me to leave?”
“No, Andie. I really don’t want you to leave.”
He laughed—a short, warm outburst that told her he didn’t understand her uncertainty, her lack of self-assurance. To him, the incident at the crosswalk was a small thing, already receding in his rearview mirror, and he couldn’t understand why she didn’t see it that way, too.
She imagined having that ability, the power to shrink the incident back down to its proper size. Life was full of such forks in the road, she supposed, when worst-case scenarios loomed for an instant in all their awful potential. For the lucky majority, those moments became near misses, fleeting interludes of glimpsed horror that receded as quickly as they’d appeared—catastrophes averted so normal life could resume in all its happy obliviousness.
Andie no longer had the luxury of being able to shield her eyes. She saw every sinister possibility, every snare, every lurking calamity. She couldn’t explain her perspective to Rhys. Nor did she want to. She couldn’t infect him with her knowledge, because being a parent meant trusting that all the things that could go wrong wouldn’t. Being a parent was the ultimate act of faith.
She held herself perfectly still within the circle of his arms. His warmth, his kindness, and his regard were almost palpable things, swirling around and through her. Her first instinct was to reject them before he could snatch them back, realizing his mistake. But she forced herself not to move. Will wasn’t injured. Rhys doesn’t hate me. I can stay. At this moment, those truths were enough. In fact, they were pretty damn incredible.
“Okay,” she said. She pulled back from his embrace, shocked to discover that she felt robbed of the contact and wanted nothing more than to slide right back up against the solid wall of his chest. “I guess I’ll stick around. See if I can help you toss a few more pebbles.”
“Thank you,” he said fervently. “That’s all I ask.”
Funny, she thought, as she cast a wistful glance back at the sculpted line of his jaw, how he thought she was the one doing him the favor.