Double Wedding Ring (6 page)

“He needs a nap.” He took a step when she did, and she began to worry that she wasn't going to be able to get away from him.

“Lucky for him his sister is so much older. He needs a little more mothering than Susan can give right now.”

“I don't mother him.” Horrified, Malorie realized she had snapped at him. Uncertain what to do in the wake of her unacceptable behavior, she marched across the yard toward the children, aware that Sam was right behind her.

Before he could speak again, however, a thunderous roar filled the air. Frightened, Malorie turned to the street in time to see a sleek black motorcycle pull up at the curb. Leaving the engine idling, the rider yanked off his helmet, revealing a head of long, salt-and-pepper waves.

Her new boss. Had he come to fire her already? Had he suddenly figured out she didn't know a thing about running his store?

“Sam, you already telling tales to my new manager?”

Sam laughed and walked to the street, clapped Tag Hutchins on the arm. “Figured somebody ought to warn her off.”

Malorie saw the resemblance then. Although Sam was sandy-haired and Tag as dark as the devil, they had the same prominent noses, rangy, muscular builds, and square jaws that spoke of hardheadedness. But while Sam looked loose and easy, Tag looked tough and prickly.

“Sam here's my nephew, Miss Hovis, and likely to say most anything to a pretty girl,” Tag said, his voice gruff despite the teasing words. “I wouldn't believe much of what he says if I were you. ‘Specially anything he says about his old uncle.”

Malorie smiled, uncertain how to take the interplay between the two. She trusted the fondness she saw in Sam's face more than she did the crustiness in Tag's words. “I'll remember that.”

“How'd you manage to be so quick on the draw making the acquaintance of the first pretty girl to come to town in twenty years?” Tag asked, combing his fingers through unruly hair.

“Her mother is one of my new clients,” Sam said. “You might remember her, Tag. Susan Hovis. Used to be Susan Foster.”

R
EADING AND WRITING
were the things Susan had enjoyed most at the rehab institute in Atlanta.

With Betsy as her new tutor, she knew right away that was about to change. It was morning, the time everyone had agreed Betsy would tutor Susan in reading and writing. But Betsy quickly grew impatient.

“You mean to tell me you're still
printing?
“ Betsy had snapped. “You'll never make progress at this rate. It's time you started working on cursive writing.”

Susan was positive someone at the hospital had said cursive was not good, especially around children and the members of the clergy who came for daily visits. But she didn't say so to her mother, because Betsy's mood was sour enough without any help from her daughter.

“Okay, dammit,” she had muttered, determined to use cursives if her mother wanted her to. Who knows, maybe it would help.

Susan had also tried to mimic the pencil strokes her mother showed her, but the results were disastrous, and soon Betsy had stormed away from the desk in Susan's room.

“Hopeless!” she had exclaimed. “Why are we putting ourselves through this!”

So the reading and writing lesson was short this morning. After watching Betsy grab her gardening hat and the key to her garden shed from the hook beside the back door, Susan decided she would work on her physical therapy, instead. With her mother out of the house, she wouldn't mind doing some of the exercises her new physical therapist had showed her the day before. There would be no one to remind her how silly and inept she must look.

She rolled into the hallway and paused, realizing she couldn't quite remember which direction to turn for the dining room. But Susan was learning not to panic when she couldn't remember the simple things that others took for granted. She knew if she sat here for a moment, she would think of what to do next.

Before she could think, however, a bell jangled in her ear. Startled, she turned toward the sound and saw the telephone on the highly polished library table. She stared at it for a moment. If she answered it, would the person on the other end be able to understand her? Would she say the wrong thing?

Swallowing against the sudden dryness in her throat and mouth, she reached for the phone with her good right arm.

Triumphant, she held it to her ear and even remembered what to say. “Hello.”

The sound of the word made her smile. She had done it.

“Susan? Oh, Susan, that
is
you, isn't it?”

The happiness in the lilting drawl on the other end of the telephone line deepened Susan's smile. “Yes. Who are you?”

“This is Rose, Susan. Rose Finley.” A laugh. “Well, Rose McKenzie now. You know, it's been almost four years and I still have trouble remembering that sometimes.”

The woman's friendly laugh made Susan feel at ease, and she said, “I have trouble remembering some, too.”

Rose's answering laughter made Susan feel they had shared a joke. She couldn't really remember Rose, except in the childhood memories that were beginning to surface. But she had mentioned her at dinner the night before, and Malorie had told her about the woman who had been Susan's best friend since childhood. Susan had been in Rose's wedding four years ago, Malorie had said, and had been named godmother to Rose and Ben's first child, a little boy named Jake.

“Gosh, Susan, it's so good to hear your voice,” Rose said.

“I like it, too. Hearing yours, I mean.”

“Can I come visit soon? This afternoon, maybe?”

A cloud descended over the sunniness Rose's call had brought. Susan remembered what her mother had said, remembered that she should be ashamed for anyone to see her right now.

“Not...not today. Soon. I can tell you when later.”

They talked for a few more minutes, Susan pleasantly surprised that her speech was coming so easily. Then Cody toddled up and began trying to scramble into her lap. The distraction made it hard for Susan to concentrate on what Rose was saying. She said goodbye to her old friend, promising to call, although she couldn't imagine how long it would be before she felt brave enough to let outsiders see what she had become.

She tugged Cody into her lap and once again faced the dilemma of finding the dining room.

“Which way?” she asked Cody, who now snuggled in her lap. And she followed the direction of his pudgy finger, figuring he had at least as good a chance as she did of knowing where they ought to be going.

Cody turned out to be a master of navigation, and within minutes they were crossing the threshold into the room where Susan's first therapy session had taken place the afternoon before. For an hour, the physical therapist had made her practice standing, moving her feet a little closer together all the time. The young man had been right: it was hard work. Just balancing, after so many days of relying on her chair, had been exhausting and sometimes humiliating. Susan tended to shy away from that kind of hurt. But he was a nice young man and she liked the lines of his face.

Today when he came, she would concentrate very hard and perhaps she would be able to remember his name.

For now, Susan wanted to try some of the exercises he had shown her the afternoon before. She would be alone—Malorie was off at work, at her new job. Susan smiled, remembering how pretty her daughter had looked in her soft, gauzy dress, printed with tiny pink flowers. Looking so grown up and at the same time so much a little girl, at least in Susan's mind. She wondered if regular mothers thought their grown children still looked like babies, or if that was one more bit of warped thinking that came with her accident.

“But that's what
I
thought, anyway,” she said to Cody, who was just about the only person she didn't mind hearing her clumsy speech. After all, Cody's diction needed some work, too. “Didn't you? Pretty and young?”

Cody looked up, his round face eager and his blue eyes wide. A milky crust from his morning cereal clung to the side of his pouty pink mouth, making Susan smile. Was she supposed to wipe his face, the way they had reminded her to wipe her own back at the hospital? Or was he supposed to do that for himself? Never mind, it looked baby sweet and she decided to leave it.

“Okay, down.” She urged Cody to hop out of her lap as she rolled her chair up to the pull bar that had been attached along one wall just over the chair rail.

The little boy looked up, smiling even as he issued an adamant reply. “Not down. More ride.”

“Not more ride,” Susan insisted. “Down.”

For the next five minutes, Susan wondered if everyone had as much trouble negotiating with two-year-olds. At least other people had two good arms to lift the boy and put him wherever they wanted him. Susan had to appeal to his cooperative nature, which apparently was not well developed.

She felt tired by the time she had given him two trips around the perimeter of the dining room. But Cody had also grown tired of riding and cheerfully scrambled down. He toddled over to his pile of coloring books in the corner of the room and Susan once again rolled to the pull bar.

“Tired,” she said with a sigh. But she remembered the stern look her therapist at the hospital had always given her when she tried that excuse. Mimicking Yolanda's standard retort, she said, “Tired don't win no races.”

With her good right fist tightly in place and her less effective left elbow hooked over the bar, Susan pulled, using her good right leg for further leverage. Remembering the games she and Yolanda had played in the early days when any movement seemed agonizing, she pictured a determined lion in her mind and let out a long, low growl as she slowly rose to her feet.

She stood, gripping the bar, leaning one hip against it, but standing nonetheless. An instant of exhilaration flooded through her and she heard a baby-sized cheer from the corner of the room. Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, she looked over her shoulder.

Cody sat, a coloring book spread open across his lap, and clapped his hands together. “Yeah, Mommy! Good girl, Mommy!”

For a moment, Susan thought she might have to sit again to allow the tears that had risen in her eyes to subside. But she blinked them back, managed a thanks that might have been intelligible only to a two-year-old, and focused her attention on her left leg.

“Okay, move!”

Before she got her toes three inches off the ground, some kind of bell rang. This one was different from the bell that had rung earlier, when Rose called. Susan froze, struggled to interpret the sound. Squeezing her eyes together, she tried to force her brain to come up with an explanation, with a course of action. But when the noise came again, she still had no answer.

“Mommy, door. Me get door?”

Susan let out a frustrated sigh. The doorbell. Of course. Someone was at the door. But what in heaven's name could she do about it?

* * *

F
ED UP WITH ACTING
civilized, Tag pounded on the door.
Somebody's home and they can damn well answer.

He'd steamed over it all night. Actually, he'd steamed for a while, then started to stew over it, and finally, about daybreak, he'd erupted into a full-blown boil.

Imagine, Susan was right across the street and couldn't be bothered to call. As if nothing had ever happened between them. As if she didn't owe him...something. An apology. An explanation. Some damn thing.

When his insistent pounding on the door raised no more response than ringing the bell, Tag decided they must've seen him coming. Must have it in their heads to freeze him out. The way they'd been freezing him out for the past twenty-odd years.

Screw that.

Barely making an effort to check his pent-up rage, Tag shoved the big, pristine-white front door open, barely noticing that it slammed with a thump against the coat tree as he stormed into the entrance hall.

“Susan!”

Silence.

“Come down here right now!”

He looked up the curving flight of stairs toward her room, but before he could make up his mind what to do, he heard a noise from the dining room. He looked down the hall and saw a flash of movement as someone ducked back inside the door.

He was in the dining room in six quick strides, not even pausing to notice anything about the house or the rooms he hadn't set foot in in more than a quarter century.

“Susan, dammit, I—”

The sight of her stopped him in his tracks, stole the words and the breath right out of him.

She huddled against the far wall, hands behind her. Her hair was a short, soft halo around her pale, thin face, and for a moment Tag wanted nothing more than to mourn the loss of her long, blond ponytail. Ah, Lord, how many times had he remembered the feel of that soft stream of hair sifting through his fingers? He took another step in her direction and saw her flinch.

He had frightened her, and that angered him all over again. “After all these years, I think you owe me an explanation, Susan.”

She only stared at him, her stormy eyes growing bigger as she seemed to sag against the wall for support.

“Don't you think I deserve that, Susan?
I
waited. Why the hell couldn't
you?
“

She shook her head haltingly.

“I'm not going away, Susan. Not until I understand. I've spent half my life trying to explain it away. Now I want a few answers. Don't you think I deserve that much?”

He noticed her legs seemed to tremble and he had an instant of sympathy for her. Maybe this was just as hard for her as it was for him. Maybe she, too, had her moments of regret. Maybe—

“Who—?” Her voice, always soft, was something more now. Weak.

“You promised to wait, Susan.” He heard the pleading in his voice and was powerless to stop it. “Why, Susan? Why didn't you wait?”

She shook her head again. Her whole face was tense with effort. “Who? Who...are...you?”

For a moment, he entertained the notion she was trying to hurt him more, was saying this insane thing purely to cause him more pain. Then everything sank in. The confusion on her face. The limp left arm that had fallen away from the metal bar that lined the wall she leaned against. The wheelchair nearby. And, finally, the long, pink scar inching along her right temple, across her forehead, disappearing into the soft, short growth of new hair.

The ground shifted, buckling beneath Tag's feet. He staggered back, touched the door frame for support.

“Susan?”

Further awareness slapped him in the face. The spacious dining room, empty save for this woman and her wheelchair, a floor mat for exercise, and a variety of foam balls in different sizes. The kinds of things his nephew used with patients in rehabilitation. And hiding behind the wheelchair, peering out at Tag, a little boy in diapers.

Of course, Sam had said she was his patient. But he hadn't imagined, somehow, that it was serious. Not his Susan.

Tag looked back at the woman who had haunted every memory for so long and was stricken with a bitter knowledge. The Susan he had longed for, hated, come to confront, that Susan no longer existed.

He turned and ran out of the house, back to the motorcycle at the curb.

He couldn't ride fast enough to leave behind the memory of her pale, thin face and those wide, confused eyes. Eyes that had no idea who he was.

* * *

O
PERATING ON GUT-LEVEL
instinct she didn't understand, Susan lunged after the fleeing man. But the message didn't reach her left leg and it refused to budge. With a small cry, she landed in a heap on the floor.

Over the sound of Cody's wails, she cried out to the man. She couldn't understand the bereft feeling filling her heart as the roar of an engine met her feeble call. She sat on the floor, unable to decide what to do, unable to make sense out of what had just transpired, unable to dispel the sense of doom in her heart and head.

She automatically opened her arms to the crying little boy who sought her comfort, although she was too disoriented for a moment to remember why he called her mommy. But she held him, anyway, certain she could have no comfort for him when she so plainly had none for herself.