Chapter 11
FEAR GRIPPED DEACON IN an unrelenting choke hold. His daughter, his baby, was hurting. And he wasn’t there.
He’d been one step from his room when his mother’s phone call had knocked his world off its axis. His mind hadn’t even been on his children. It had still been back in that warm bed with Clare’s naked body. The taste of her skin on his lips and thoughts of getting back to her heat as soon as possible.
“It’s Maci…” His mother’s broken words spoken less than an hour ago still made his stomach clench. “Her appendix burst. I… I thought it was just a stomachache. I put her to bed.” That last word caught on a sob.
His mother was not overly dramatic, and when her voice broke, when he heard his other daughter, Margo, crying in the background, he’d nearly gone to his knees. He’d just talked to his mom last night—No. The night before. It was the night before because I didn’t called home last night.
“She’s in surgery. You need to come home.”
Home. Yes. He’d thrown what was right in front of him into his suitcase, checked his briefcase for his passport, and been out the door.
Sprinting down never-ending pathways, turning left and right. There was no beauty in it now.
“I need a cab,” he’d said to the receptionist at the front desk, his suitcase knocking into the counter. “I need a cab,” he said again, louder. “I have to get to the airport now.”
The receptionist looked startled as he nodded. “Si, si. Outside.”
“Wait, I need paper. A piece of paper.” He didn’t have time to go to Clare’s room. He grabbed a map left on the counter and hastily scribbled an apology and his phone number. And what else? He couldn’t think. There was so much to say and no time to say it.
“Sir! Your cab!”
“Yes. Okay.” He hastily added Clare’s room number, slid the map back across the counter, and grabbed his bag. He didn’t have time for more. “Can you please deliver this?”
The man nodded. Noting his desperation, the man at the taxi stand spoke in rapid Spanish to the taxi driver. All he caught was rapido and he thought to himself, Yes. Hurry. Please hurry.
He used the thirty-minute drive to book a flight, not blinking at the price, grateful he’d gotten a seat at all on the only morning flight, but he’d be home in ten hours if he was lucky. Ten fucking long hours.
He called his mom again and spoke to his sister, who told him the same thing but slightly more calmly.
Maci was so small, not quite three. Sometimes the twins seemed so big, like they grew overnight, and he couldn’t slow it down. They told him all the time they were big girls. But they weren’t big. They were tiny. They were babies.
The pressure around his heart increased until he couldn’t get a breath. He knew too much. Even as a veterinarian, he knew too much about clamps and arteries and drops in blood pressure. The dangers of anesthesia and how one microscopic mistake could end a life in a millisecond.
It wasn’t until he was in the air, on the way to his daughter, that he thought of Clare again. He prayed she’d gotten his note.
After the longest flight of his life, racing to his car in the far corner of the airport lot and driving as fast as he dared, he finally reached the hospital. Long, jerky strides carried him down white, antiseptic hallways that he supposed were meant to look clean and instill calm. Instead, they were cold, reminding him it was a place of sickness and death. The first face he saw when he reached the pediatric surgery hall was his father’s.
“She’s okay. She’s okay,” his father said, wrapping his arms around Deacon so tightly that they shook, or maybe his dad was crying. Either way, it told Deacon just how serious the situation had been.
And I wasn’t here. Feeling sick, he looked around for a restroom.
“Daddy!”
Deacon sucked in a breath and held the nausea at bay as he knelt to catch a running Margo in his arms. He gathered her up, buried his nose in her soft brown curls, and took a moment just to breathe her in.
“Where were you, Daddy?” Her little arms circled his neck in a choke hold. “Daddy? Where were you?”
Not here, he thought. Not where I was supposed to be. And the knife lodged in his throat twisted.
Margo settled then pulled back. “I missed you, Daddy.”
He didn’t deserve the small smile in her tear-streaked face. “I missed you too, Muffin. I’m so sorry, baby.”
“Maci’s tummy hurted, and then it broke, and I was scared. And the amdabunce came, and it was so wowd, and it took her.”
Deacon brushed away fresh tears rolling down her cheeks then pulled her against his chest, hiding his own in her hair.
HOURS LATER, HE SAT at his daughter’s bedside. Monitors beeped while a bag dripped fluid into her IV. She’d come through surgery well, but sometime in the night, her fever had spiked. It was down some now, but she lay there, so small and utterly still, her usual olive complexion almost as pale as the sheets. He held her tiny hand, brought it to his lips, and minute by minute, hour by hour, watched her chest rise and fall.
It could have been worse. If his mom had waited. If the attending physician hadn’t considered appendicitis, which was rare in children under three. A lot of ifs. And all while he’d been concerned only with himself. Maybe if I’d been here. Maybe I would have seen something, noticed something. Maybe.
With his elbows on his knees, he bowed his head under the weight of it and knew he couldn’t bear it if he lost her, but then thought of Margo and knew he would. He would bear it. He would do anything, bear anything. Because he was all they had.
* * *
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU waited days to call me,” Jess said. “I’m dying here. Tell me everything.”
Clare stood with her cell to her ear, looking around at her new apartment. The brand-new-carpet smell and freshly painted walls just added to the feeling that it wasn’t quite home. Not yet. “I know. I’m sorry. I slept the entire flight home then dove straight into unpacking this mountain of boxes. I haven’t even unpacked my suitcase yet.” Too many memories, she thought.
“Well, you’re nothing if not organized. You can give me the sexy vacation story while you work.”
Right. No way Jess would have forgotten about that. And what could she say? I almost gave my heart away, really gave it away, only to be left again? No. Not even to Jess. “It was fun,” she finally said after a too-long pause.
“It was fun? That’s it? The man, Clare. I want to hear about the man.”
“It was just a few days.” Clare ripped the tape off the first box she came to. “Not even an affair. More like a fling, really. Nothing was ever going to come of it.”
Even if she had imagined herself flying back all warm and gooey, then talking it all out with Jess, telling her best friend every detail about Deacon, trying to put into words what made him so special, and how and when they planned to see each other again. Then with a smile so wide it made her cheeks ache, she’d say, I think I’m in love and Jess would squeal or more likely gape at her in horror, but no.
There was no warm and gooey. No smile. She’d been stupid, or at the very least, she’d been wrong.
“You know most of it already,” Clare said, moving to attack another box. “We met, we had dinner.”
“You had more than dinner. Which isn’t at all like you.”
“Yes. We did.” And no, it wasn’t like her. “I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“So you regret it?” Jess asked, her tone cautious and caring.
Did she regret it? She was disappointed in herself for going to bed with a man she barely knew. But did she wish it hadn’t happened? That she hadn’t met him?
“No,” she said, covering the sadness she still felt. “I don’t regret it. It was great.” Great and wild and explosive. It had been fireworks, something she’d always thought she wanted. But anything that hot and bright couldn’t last long. Fireworks were just quick, bright bursts that left behind acrid smoke and a dark sky. “It was your idea, if you remember.”
“I know but—”
“But nothing. It was fun. Fun and done. That’s what you always say, right? Damn it. If I don’t find my Keurig, I’m going to kill someone.” And she didn’t want to think any more about Deacon.
“Hey,” Jess said after a moment. “I was thinking I would come visit soon. I’ll bring wine and chocolate, and we’ll christen your new place as an official bachelorette pad.”
She nearly cried. “I’d love that. When were you thinking?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe? I’ll check with my boss. I’ve been traveling more and more. Sometimes leaving on Sunday and not returning until late Friday night.”
They continued to talk about Jess’s bank job and a possible interoffice relationship while Clare unpacked, piling the empty boxes in the dining room. There was no table yet, but mountains of unopened wedding gifts lined the walls. Guess Adam had left her to deal with that.
She spent the rest of the weekend putting things in order. She made up her bed with her old white bedding she’d planned to use in the guest room. She’d give away the dark blue she’d picked out with Adam. The pale-gray sectional had been her idea, and she still loved it, so it could stay.
Sunday night, she slumped onto the couch, a glass of wine in hand. As she sipped, she thought of another wine—a bottle of red she’d shared at dinner in the Caribbean. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and saw the man she’d shared it with.
Why was it when you needed to remember something like milk at the store, you always forgot, but when you wanted to forget a man, you couldn’t? They should do a research study on that. They would probably say the heartbreak was more important, that it left a mark, but milk was important, too. There was heartbreak when you got out the Oreos or poured the cereal and realized there was no milk.
With that, she went to the kitchen, poured her wine down the sink, and got out the milk. Her heart wasn’t broken. She’d barely known him. She could be furious with him and with herself, but hearts didn’t fall and crash that quickly. And hers wouldn’t fall again.
She ate a bowl of cereal while surfing the channels and finding nothing. It was after ten. She should go to bed, anyway. Big first day tomorrow.
After dumping her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, she turned to the calendar tacked to the end of the cabinet. She’d already circled tomorrow in red. Her first day at a new job in a new school in a new city.
With no more weekends in January, she flipped the page to February, thinking about when Jess might come. It didn’t matter. Her calendar was open. She flipped back to January, saw the previous weekend marked WEDDING and put an X over the word. Then she drew a thick red line through the stretched-out word honeymoon, that covered the week following it. Then just for good measure, she drew another line, creating a stark visual that last week was over. Done.
She’d been determined to come home from her would-be honeymoon a better version of herself, no longer wanting, just being happy where she was, with herself, by herself. That was still true. She could still do that. It felt good to start over.