Coast Road (31 page)

"Do you love her? " Jill asked.

"I don't know. I don't know. My life just seems to be turning on end.

" "You need space. That's okay. I'll wait. You can take your time.

I'm not going anywhere." He felt a stab of annoyance. It was a minute before he realized that the annoyance wasn't at her, butfor her.

She was too good. He could take advantage of her offer in no time.

Clasping her hands together in his, he said, "I can't do this anymore, Jill. It isn't fair to you." Her voice went high, urgent. "Am I complaining? " "No. That's the problem. You don't complain. You don't demand. You don't give me ultimatums."

"I don't have to. You know what I want."

"I do, and you've been patient, waiting, wanting it to happen, but it isn't going to."

"How do you know? Your life is turning on end, you just said so. Why not wait? Why call it offnow?

" "Because, " he said with greater feeling, "it's not going to happen.

It's not, Jill."

"But�" "Shh." He pressed a finger to her lips, stroked the blond hair that was so much like Rachel's but not. He spoke in a half whisper, urgent now himself. "Listen to me. Please.

I love you, Jill, I do, but as a person, a friend. It won't ever end in marriage, which is what you want, what you should have." Her eyes were large, teary. "Why . . . won't it? What's . . .

missing? " "Nothing. Nothing in you. It's me. I'm just . . . I'm just . . . " "Still in love with Rachel? " He released a breath.

"Maybe. I honestly don't know. But I don't feel free now. My marriage is still there. Unfinished business."

"Rachel ended it.

She left you. You always told me that."

"It helped keep me angry, but there are reasons why she left, things I didn't know about until now. I have to talk with her, Jill. I won't know where I'm going until I do." Bewildered, Jill asked, "Was it that good with her? " That good and better, he would have said if he hadn't cared so much, but he was hurting Jill enough without. "It was different. Unique in its way. Rachel and I have a history, Jill. We go way back."

"What if she doesn't wake up? " "Then I'll have the girls. And regrets." He sighed, running his hands up and down her arms. "Don't add to the regrets, Jill. I could keep this going between us and just take what I want. But I'm trying to do the right thing. Help me?

Please? " "IT"S DONE, " he told Rachel barely two hours later. Jill had cried at the end. They had agreed to talk from time to time. He was feeling empty, alone. But he had done the right thing. "She was a perfectly lovely woman, but Christ, you have a hold on me. You always did. I was dating someone when we met. Remember? I broke up with her, too.

Only, then, Jack had been madly in love with Rachel. Now, they weren't married anymore. But he remembered clear as day the tingling he had felt deep inside whenever she talked, touched him, even looked at him.

He remembered the anticipation of seeing her and the pleasure when he did.

It had been that way through the birth of the kids. Even after they'd started to want different kinds of everyday lives, there were times when a word, a look, or a touch could start the tingling.

"Were things so bad at the end? " he asked, studying her face. It was healing by the day. Her color was improving. He wanted to think that was propitious.

He curled and uncurled the fingers of her right hand, then did the same with the left. "Maybe we jumped the gun. Gave up too soon. Let it happen without enough of a fight. We had good stuff going." He concentrated on her ring finger, so slim and bare. "Didn't we? " He searched her face for a blink or a twitch.

"I keep thinking about that baby. Feeling that loss. Thinking maybe that would've done it, made us yell and scream and get it all out. Six years. What we could have had and done in six years." He felt a wave of weariness. "Talk to me, " he whispered plaintively. "Tell me. " Katherine turned into the room. He took a tired breath, sighed, straightened. "How goes it? " "Not bad. And here? " Jack shrugged.

He followed her gaze to the tray table that was covered with papers.

"Are you getting much done? " she asked without spite.

"Nh. I spread stuff out and pretend, but it's hard to concentrate.

What I'm working on feels stale. I was in the office this morning and got a call about a new project. If I hadn't been right there, I wouldn't ever have known. My partner would have said thanks, but no thanks."

"Why? " "The job is to build a private home. Granted, there are four acres to work with and the client wants more an estate than a home, but it's smaller than most of our recent jobs. David thinks it's a step back for us."

"What do you think? " "I think, " he said, flexing his spine side to side, "that it'd be a fun job to do.

It's in Hillsborough. Local. The zoning's all done. The client knows my work. He wants me to use what I've done in the past as a springboard. I. e., he wants something new and imaginative. " Katherine nodded her approval. Jack wanted to think Rachel approved, too.

He sat back and smiled. "So, how's the good doctor? " For a minute he saw the old, defensive Katherine. Then his smile registered, and she softened. "Sent me flowers yesterday afternoon, " she said.

"That's impressive." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Byron sent me flowers, too. The good doctor is as much in the dark about you-know-what as Byron was then."

"You don't think Bauer is used to medical quirks? " "Quirks? That's rich. And I'm sure he is. But that's a problem in itself. If he deals with medical . . . quirks all day long, why ever would he want to face them at night? " "The flip side of that argument is that he's become so inured to them, he wouldn't notice."

"He'd notice."

"Are they that bad? " Jack asked, frankly curious. From the outside, nothing was wrong. Absolutely nothing.

"Well, they aren't, " Katherine conceded. "They just . . . take a little getting used to. There are scars."

"Few people make it to forty without those."

"It's the idea of the whole thing."

"That may be more in your mind than anyone else's."

"Possibly." She paused.

"Why are you pushing this? " "Pushing what? " "The good doctor and me. Why do I need a man? " Jack sat back. "There's an interesting question. From what I've gathered, you and Rachel are two peas in a pod, very much alike, yes?

Strong, independent women? " Katherine considered that. "I'd say so.

" "Okay. Early on, I said that Rachel never really needed me. You said I was wrong. If you tell me how she needed me, there might be a message for you." When she didn't immediately respond, he said, "I assume you two talked about it."

"Not in as many words. Strong, independent women like us don't use the word need. We use the word want, like we have the power to choose."

But she grew reflective as she focused on Rachel. "She sometimes talks about things she misses.

" "Like? " "Help with the girls. Raising kids is hard. The bigger they get, the bigger the issues. Rachel misses having you there to talk things through with."

"She always had answers."

"Maybe when the gids were little. She had to. You weren't around, and little kids need immediate response. Big kids, big problems require more thought.

That's the discussion she misses." You weren't around. Well, he was, but not enough. He had missed some important times for the girls. And for Rachel? Okay. He should have been there more. He certainly should have known about that baby. He should have cut that trip short and come home. If he was haunted by the loss of that child now, he could imagine what Rachel had felt at the time.

She should have told him. He should have been there.

But if he had been there for her all along, she might have told him.

Accepting his share of the blame, he sighed. "What else did she miss?

" "I don't know, " Katherine said, seeming embarrassed. She pushed her fingers through her hair from underneath, then shook her head. "I know what I miss. I miss someone to be with after work. Someone to share wine with. Someone to share silence. Sharing. I guess that's it.

I'd venture to say that Rachel misses that."

"Sounds to me she found some of it with Faith Bligh. Sharing the silence over coffee."

"Not the same. There's something about lying in bed late at night or very, very early in the morning, talking, silent, whatever." Memory had Jack right back there, lying with Rachel. They were special times, which had started coming fewer and farther between. Then they had ended. "When you work and have kids, you're exhausted." But it was a stock excuse. Katherine's arched brow said as much.

You make timefor what you want, Rachel had said once. And she had tried. He recalled a time when he was due back from a trip in the evening. She hired a baby-sitter and made reservations at Postrio weeks in advance, then picked him up at the airport and drove him there. He proceeded to tell her that he had eaten at the place six times in the last month and couldn't bear to do it again.

He had missed the point, which wasn't form but substance. He realized that now, with no pride at all.

"I miss taking vacations with Rachel, " he offered.

He was rewarded when Katherine said, "She misses being pampered once in a while."

"Strong, independent women need pampering? " "We're human, too."

"Any man can suffice for that." She shook her head. "Only certain ones. It's an . . . intangibleX something. A man can be in a room with fifty women and fall for only one. A woman can be in a room with fifty men and fall for only one. Why? I don't know the answer.

Do you? " Jack didn't. But he hadn't fallen in love with Jill the way logic said he should. "Does Rachel have that . . . whatever with Ben?

" Katherine laughed. "Not quite." He was immensely pleased.

"Really? " "What do you think? " "Well, the guy doesn't turn me on, " he said, then asked a cautious "She hasn't found it with anyone else?

" Katherine slowly shook her head. Softly she said, "It's a very special quality. When it works, it works. Rachel had it with you.

She still thinks about that. She thinks about it a lot." SO DID JACK, most notably Katherine's use of the present tense. He might have taken it more lightly if it had come from anyone else. But Katherine said what she meant.

He could ask her for specifics, could prod and dig. But did he want to risk her saying that Rachel was simply analyzing and understanding the past, rather than feeling it in the present?

No.

Because the fact was that he did feel things now. He fek things every time he touched her, whether applying skin cream or exercising her limbs. He felt things looking at her mouth, or at those freckles that promised such spirit. He felt things walking down the hospital corridor and turning in at her room. Anticipation. Purpose.

Rightness.

Fine to say that he was here out of guilt, or for the girls, or for old times' sake, but the truth was that he still felt a connection with Rachel. Unfinished business, he had told Jill. He wondered if it was more than that. One of the things he had loved most about Rachel when they first met was believing that she brought out the best in him. He wondered if she still could.

SO HE SAT with her following his talk with Katherine, and though he didn't deliberately think about work, his mind wandered there on its own. Looking at Rachel, holding her hand, he began to talk out the Montana project, and suddenly he saw a design possibility. No, it wasn't the one he had originally wanted, or any one of his subsequent revisions, but yes, it would work.

Fearful that he might lose it once he left Rachel, he pulled up a pad and quickly sketched out his thoughts, then booted up his laptop and drew it there. He saved what he drew and took longer studying it, but way deep down in his fast-beating heart he knew it was finally, finally right.

His agonizing was over. The client would be pleased. The resort would be built in this design. Done deal.

RIDING THE TIDE of that sense of accomplishment, he painted in Rachel's studio agsun that night. He was up until four in the morning this time, but the satisfaction was worth it. He woke up to have breakfast with the girls and drive them down the road to the bus stop, to call the hospital for an update on Rachel, and to fax the new design from his laptop to the office. Ignoring E-mail from David, he went back to bed and slept until ten. Even then, he took the time to drink a leisurely cup of coffee, sitting on the fallen log in Rachel's woods, watching the foraging of half a dozen wild turkeys, big brown things the likes of which he couldn't imagine cooking and carving.

He didn't bother to shave. Rachel never minded stubble. He stopped at the market for a dozen two-liter bottles of assorted sodas and, feeling another bit of accomplishment, dropped them at school just in time for Hope's class picnic. Then he went on to Monterey.

He had known that Rachel was still comatose. What he hadn't known was that she had new guests.

chapter fifteen.

JACK WAS ALWAYS amazed when he saw Victoria Keats. She looked younger each time�and it wasn't generosity toward his ex-motherin-law that made him think that. It was fact. She was six years older now than when he had seen her last, but she didn't look a minute of it. Her eyes were bright and wide, her skin smooth. He figured she was on her third face-lift. She was always on the run, hence well toned, and not only had impeccable taste in clothes but refused to believe that trendiness had either age or business limits. She wore a chic wrap dress in a jersey print, produced by a designer whose styles were making a dramatic comeback. The print was heavy in brown, black, and beige.