A Change of Heart (7 page)

“You miss him.”

She pursed her lips as though she were trying not to tell him how stupid he was for stating something so obvious.

“I've never left him alone before.” This time, her pain had an aching sweetness to it. A mother missing her baby, the combined force of those motherly memories mothers seemed to store beneath their surface tangible in every breath.

He lifted his hand, meaning to pat hers, to do something comforting, but in the end his hand found its way to his own stubbly head, which he had forgotten to shave again. “You said he's seven?”

She nodded.

“That is very young to be without his mommy.” He had meant to commiserate with her, but his words only intensified the pain she was trying so hard to hide.

“It is. I need to go back to him.” Her jaw barely moved, but there it was again, that delicate slash of bone holding in an earthquake as it pushed to the surface.

“Please,” those eyes said, in lieu of the words she was holding back. “Please help me get back to my baby.”

“Do you have any idea where Jen could have hidden the evidence?” Before he could stop himself the words were out, answering her silent plea, and the stab of relief was the last thing he'd expected them to bring.

* * *

Jess couldn't believe her ears. She felt like the runaway cart she was on had hit a slope. Yet again Joy had done what she hadn't been able to manage on her own: unfrozen another crack in Nikhil's heart.

The urge to see her baby swelled so large and fast in her heart, she had to wrap her arms around herself to hold it in. She wanted to hold his face in her hands and kiss his butter-soft skin. She sank back into the wooden bench and squeezed herself, crushing the yearning into a ball and pushed it to the bottom of her belly, where it was starting to get crowded with all the crushed-up balls of regret, anger, and unexpectedly overwhelming guilt.

“Where did you put all her things after you . . . after you cleaned out her flat?”

Nikhil's thumb went to work on his ring. Spinning the loose metal band around his bony finger. He had beautiful hands, this man. A surgeon's hands. She was going to need them to dig through Jen's things. But first, she had to help stop them from shaking like that all the time.

Nothing. Nothing came out of him. He sucked in a breath a few times as if he was ready to answer, but then, nothing. His eyes were so raw it was as if he were in a trance. She pushed her voice into his silence. “Is her stuff here on the ship?”

He laughed. “God, no. She would've killed me if I had ever suggested taking a trip on”—he waved his hand around all that red and gold—“on a cruise ship. Nothing of hers is here.”

Except him. He'd put Jen's precious belongings in a safe place. Except for what she cherished most.

“What about her Chicago apartment?”

He looked surprised, then angry. Of course he hated when she did that. Hated that she knew these things about Jen. What use was another apology? She pushed away the one that rose to her lips.

His wide, bony shoulders slumped. “No, I didn't move anything there.”

He disappeared behind silence again. She waited. He had to burrow out on his own.

For what seemed like an age, he spun his ring around his finger. Maybe it had been too early to heave a sigh of relief. She knew he wanted to believe her, but in asking him to trust her she was asking him to change everything he'd ever believed.

“Did you have a chance to check up on the transplant records?” she asked, trying to sound as if she were asking him if the weather was conducive to walking on the beach.

* * *

Her voice dragged Nikhil out of the sinkhole of his memories. Her nonchalance made everything seem mundane. As if these were not the most absurd of conversations. As if believing that your dead wife was communicating with the woman who had her heart was not downright certifiable.

He didn't respond. He shouldn't have hung up on the cop without checking out her story. What if she wasn't who she said she was? Well then, he'd make sure she never walked free to do this again.

Yes, he wanted nothing to do with the criminals his wife had staked her life to apprehend, but this calm-as-a-lotus-pond woman claiming to have his wife's heart, claiming to somehow be able to talk to his wife, he was willing to see her all the way to jail. Did his heroism know no bounds?

“If you need more time to make sure who I am, I can wait. We can talk about this later.”

He looked at her upturned face, where her need to go home to her child had just flashed so clear and bright. He searched for a scavenger's deviousness, but found only a strange mix of raw hope and understanding. Something sparked inside his numbness. “What was wrong with it?” He pointed a finger at the center of her chest.

She blinked in surprise. Then did one of her quick recoveries. “Congenital hole in the heart.”

“When was it diagnosed?”

“Eight years ago when I—”

“When you were pregnant.”

She nodded.

“You still had your baby.” Warmth crackled through his numbness, but her gaze went cold. What he had said made her furious.

“As opposed to what?” Her tone didn't alter, but he knew when he was being snapped at.

He reached out and touched her shoulder. “You risked your life for your baby.”

She lifted his hand off her shoulder and put it back on the bench next to her. “Actually, my baby saved my life.”

For a moment he couldn't look away from her eyes. All those clashing browns coalesced around something so fierce, he felt alive again. But only for the briefest moment. Whatever it was, it flashed by so fast his insides spun. She went icy calm again, drawing back into herself.

His own baby had gone before anyone could save her. But her little heart had kept her mother's beating long enough to save a life.

For hours, for years, for an eternity, neither one of them spoke.

Everything had seemed meaningless for so long, he couldn't ignore that tiniest ember kindling inside him. He couldn't ignore that he wanted to follow where this girl was taking him. Even if he didn't believe her story, he believed something.

He stopped studying the swirls on the thickly carpeted floor and met those perfectly shuttered eyes again. A lock of the violently red hair she had pushed behind a headband and a hood escaped and she shoved it back.

“How will I know what to look for in Jen's things?” he asked.

It took her a moment to absorb what he'd just agreed to. “I'm not sure.” Her eyes gave him another flash of hope, asking for things knowing they were impossible. “But I think I'll know when I'm near it.”

“Jen will tell you?”

She searched his face, unsure if he was mocking her. Hell if he knew what he was doing.

“Is she here now?”

She nodded. “She's always here. But she's been very quiet since I . . . since I met you. And I know that she'll help us,” she said in a small voice.

If anyone could help him right now, it was Jen. That was for sure. “The ship gets back to Miami in two days. It will take me that long to arrange for a doctor to replace me. Will you come to Chicago with me and help me look? All of Jen's stuff is there.”

* * *

Jess pushed past the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that led into the ship's salon. As if by magic, the red-and-gold splendor transformed into black-and-gold splendor. All that granite and gilding and sheets of falling water put together to affect a soothing mood. The Buddha might have been mistaken in searching for peace amid austerity. There was no austerity here, just a lot of rich people who seemed perfectly at peace thumbing through glossy magazines on plush sofas.

She climbed the black granite steps that led to the reception desk and waited. She couldn't believe they were actually going to disembark the ship today. She was another step closer to going home to Joy.

Part of her had never believed Nikhil would buy her story. If she'd had her doubts before she got here, after she had met Nikhil, it had seemed downright impossible to get through to him, and yet the impossible had happened.

Maybe it was time to move from being a chorus dancer to an actor.

Maybe it had nothing to do with her. Maybe Nikhil had been ready to stop drowning in pain and to move on to the do-something phase. Just his luck that she had caught him at the crest of that vulnerability.

She pulled her headband off and shook out Jen's hair, even as she tried to shake off all that strange, prickling concern and sadness for him that she'd been indulging in. The other choice was guilt. She couldn't afford to let herself feel that either. None of these feelings were worth anything in the face of what she stood to lose.

She was doing what she had to do, what she would do a million times over if needed. But at least she could stop twisting the knife she had slid so ruthlessly into his gut. The hair had done its job. It was time for it to go.

The receptionist at the ship's salon gave her a wide smile. “Welcome to the Well-Spa. How may we help you refresh and replenish today?”

I need to erase the past ten years of my life.
“I need to color my hair.”

The girl's gaze did a quick sweep of her hair and she looked visibly relieved that the hideous color had seen its last day, then apologetic for having made her relief so obvious.

“Sure,” she said, flashing her startlingly white teeth. “It will be five minutes. Please take a seat.”

Her phone buzzed just as she settled into the sleek patent-leather sofa that looked incredibly uncomfortable but held her body so perfectly, it was like finding an oasis on
The Oasis
.

It was a text from Sweetie asking her to text him.

Texts from someone asking you to text them were never a good sign.
What's wrong?
she typed out. Then changed it to,
What's the matter?
Not wanting to throw self-fulfilling prophecies into the universe.

Sweetie's text buzzed back in a second. Also not a good sign. It meant he was waiting for her to text.
Those bastards gave Joy a ride home today.

No.

She knew they were watching him, but the bastard had promised not to touch him.

The eggs she had eaten for breakfast crawled up her throat.

If he had worried about her then he had definitely not fallen asleep happy.

But he knew just as well as she did that they were empty words. The only thing she could make sure of was to hurry this along.

“They're ready for you.” The girl from the salon gave her another perfect smile, and Jess followed her across the mood-lit salon that no longer felt peaceful or soothing.

Another girl, just as beautiful, pulled out a chair for Jess. Both girls exchanged a look, taking in her black yoga pants, her black hoodie, her hair—every aspect of her appearance in a fraction of a second. An entire conversation passed between them without a single word being uttered. For a moment it was like being back in the dressing room on a film set. Why was appearance and judgment such a currency between women? Why wasn't it enough that they were no more than their appearance to men? Why did they have to be that to one another?

She sank into the chair and leaned her head back over the sink.

A soft pillow cradled the back of her neck, so different from the sharp-edged sink at Beauty's Beauty Parlor.

“I'm Tiffany.” The girl turned on the hand spray and started to work the warm water into Jess's hair. “What kind of color were we thinking?”

Warm water seeped through her hair and tickled her scalp. One of the girls at Beauty's had poured water on her head from a jug while another one had rinsed the color from her hair. The girls had argued about who should do the pouring and who should do the rinsing.

The scene should have been funny, but the fact that she was stealing a dead woman's hair to convince her husband that he wasn't done with the tragedy had sucked all the humor from it.

“Do you want to leave the extensions in?”

She wanted to leave nothing in. She wanted it all gone. The entire ugly mess inside her gone.

“Just the color for now, please.” The weight of the hair was a good reminder—of all the things that had to be done before she could go home to Joy, of all the things she could not wish away and that ticked inside her like a time bomb.

The blast of pain in Nikhil's eyes every time they landed on the hair flashed in her head. Maybe she should leave the color in; maybe she needed the pain to hurry things along. But she couldn't do it, couldn't go on witnessing it.

His pain, his anger, every shade of undiluted feeling that passed over his face in those ruthless blasts had taken to bubbling up inside her at the most unpredictable times. Ever since she'd left him last night, an odd fear had gripped her.

It was nothing like her fear when she thought about Joy in a car with those men, his little heart imagining her in trouble. That fear gave her purpose, made her so angry she would do anything. This fear she felt when she saw flashes of Jen's Nikhil emerging from behind his grief was different from any she'd known before, and every time it bloomed in her belly it took her by surprise. It reminded her of that first time she'd felt her baby kicking and not known what it was.